Slaughterhouse High

Whereas he was dumb and pokey. He'd never amount to much. Even Pim and Altoona-a couple o' trash-talkin' gals doomed to lives of dirt, snot-nosed brats, squinty-eyed crooked-lipped drags on ciggies that wrinkled their faces toward cronedom years before their time, and endless ineptly-done housework, as far as he could see-would probably reject him, make him watch, get it on in front of him with his best bud, steal him away, and leave poor Condor forever bereft.

"Oh shit, come on." Blayne hugged him as they moved, a cheer-up look on his flushed crazed swirly face. "Look, I'm zipping up my slagging mouth." He did so with a yank, then unyanked the zipper and brushed a finger along the crenelated niobium lining his lover's lower lip.

"I'm sorry," Condor said, feeling better.

"Pas de pro-blay-mo." Blayne tugged open the door to the backstage area and they went in.

Condor heard yells from the auditorium off right. No bodies found yet, though it sounded as if all the seats were being rocked furiously down-up-down-up in the futile search.

They passed a door marked PROPS on the left. Then BOYS' DRESSING ROOM, GIRLS' DRESSING ROOM, and finally, partly ajar, COSTUME SHOP. Blayne, hand to handle, zagged in, Condor behind.

The ceilings were high, but the place felt cramped and confined for all the crap jammed into it. Box after box serried and rose to their right and left. Scrawled labels vied with brittle typed ones for the truth about the boxes' contents.

Shoes lay heaped like war dead below. But before Condor could spook himself too much with the ghostly limbs akimbo'd bodiless out of them, they turned the corner into another larger room, where rack upon rack of fluff and color greeted them, a crazy salad of cloth, sequins, and odd-buttoned garments.

Blayne picked his way through, a jungle hacker amid old-outfit smells. "Yo!" he said. "Anybody home?"

"This way," trilled an amused voice.

Then Condor followed his date around one last switchback of gray-wheeled racks and faded finery gimcracked together.

There the girls waited.

Altoona and Pimlico, two incredible blips of life grinning and shifting and sexing over by the sewing machines, their legs crossed at the ankles, leaning back everywhere.

*****

Futzy's mind churned like a washing machine agitator. Pumps and clunky polished boy-shoes in vast mooing herds of babble were moving along the hallway outside the gym. As the scum scurried by, Futzy nodded at them.

It had been all he could do, speaking over their heads from the band risers, to control his anguish at the papier-mache creature before him and to keep from blasting the little shits with both barrels of his anger.

Now a few of their number were dead, waiting to be discovered and brought to the gym.

Futzy had thought that once this part of the evening arrived, once the Poindexter kid and his date had been dispatched, he'd be in for smooth sailing.

But his bloodlust was nowhere near sated, and he guessed he had known that all along.

"Hello, Mr. Buttweiler." High fluted voice, Charmina Fuchs bubbling by alone. She would make a couple of young studs an obliging breeder some day.

"Charmina," he muttered, stripping her with his eyes, imagining an impossibly long whiplash sweeping swifter than jag-lightning down the young girl's cream-curved torso, her skin blushing beneath the whip sting's fury.

Adora Phipps, wearing her granny clothes and antiquated lobebag, had been strangely attentive tonight. Weird duck, her hair up and wrapped in a tight bun, one strand astray. After the speech, over chaperone refreshments, she'd made feints toward kindness.

Futzy had kept his replies superficial and moved on.

As he watched flocks of boybuddies quickwalk off toward the labs, swivelbutted and gawk-armed, he wondered what the strange lady English teacher, this Adora, would think of his homelife, his cold wives, the spattered blood on his bedroom walls.

Would it shock her?

Would it turn her off?

Or on?

Kitty, holding back her hair with one hand, bent to a drinking fountain.

A rush to Futzy's brain.

Not his daughter of course, but maddening-without-meaning-to-be Wyn Wynans. She stood up, oblivious to him, licking her lips, and went into the gym with her unworthy date.

A sob escaped Futzy's lips. Luckily no one was by to hear. They had to pay-they'd pay in spades -for the Ice Ghoul's return.

He would see to it.

By God, he swore he would.

*****

First, Tweed tried the phone bank near the science rooms by the north exit.

"The phones are hosed," said Tad Verle, headed back to the gym in a pink bowtie that accentuated his outstuck ears.

She tried both phones. Tad was right. No dial tone. Dead air.

"That's weird," she said.

"Your dad'll be okay," replied Dex. "Come on."

"He'll be worried." She could feel fret marks on her brow and a tightening in her belly over delaying Dex's stupid hunt for the slain. "Let's try the ones by the front door."

Dex, saying nothing, trailed after her.

Tweed wished he would grow up.