Slaughterhouse High

Principal Buttweiler, pacing the hall like a circus bear restive and unbicycled, looked stunned to see them.

He broke eye contact and edged away.

Tweed chalked it up to his unhinged state of mind-the Ice Ghoul, his rumored sado-mates, all of that.

Four phones were located near the entrance, silver corded and stained. Wood partitions scored with graffiti provided token separation between them.

A gaggle of girls were crowded about the left phone. "Shit on a stick," said a knobby-elbowed girl named Relda Weep, whom Tweed had known since first grade and not spoken to once in all that time.

The girls moved off and Tweed found the same damned dead lines here too.

"This is spooky," she said.

"Wonder what the deal is."

"Dad'll be worried, Dex. He'll climb the walls."

Dex looked concerned. "You're really torqued, aren't you?"

She nodded and bit her lip.

Dex hugged her.

Her fears conjured her father at home, his voice shifting into a soft dithering dirge as he eyed the phone and bullets beaded his brow.

"I'm sorry," said Dex. "I wish I could do something. Hey. What if we found Mr. Waddell?"

"The janitor?"

"Sure. He could fix it."

Dex was right. Soft doughy congenial Gerber Waddell, head janitor of the quiet ways and kind smile, would rummage around in his hollowed-out skull and come up with the fix, a found treasure glittering in his brain. She hadn't seen much of him since he had switched on the colored lights. "Where do you think he might-?"

A cheer went up beyond the table where Mr. Dunsmore and Daub Murch had sat, signing seniors in. A back-walking, front-walking band of kids appeared, surrounding and egging on a pair of football jocks who were carrying the corpses of two girls.

Oh lovely, came Tweed's first thought. Female dates, just like twenty years before. Wouldn't that non-linearize poor old Mr. Buttweiler!

Then she fixed on the victims, their heads rollicking jerkily in the crooks of elbows.

The one with the O'd mouth and not a drop of blood anywhere was Flense, a math whiz and a quick wit. It chilled Tweed to see the wan, slack-jawed face of a long-time friend approach so.

And lumbering by beside her in a crewcutted jock's arms, her fingers missing from the hand in front and a bib of blood splashed like a riotous poinsettia where her belly should have been, was Pescadera Carbone. Pesky. Flighty, funny, and now lifeless.

"Oh, God," said Dex. "It's so…"

"Yeah, no kidding."

Tweed stared at them.

The slow parade rhythmed by, some of the students sobbing, strange grins lighting other faces, all of them awkwardly taking up the pace no one in particular had established.

Dex and Tweed, latching onto the tail, made their way toward the gym. A great pain lanced through Tweed's gut, a pain inscribed with two names: Pesky and Flense.

But also there, and all about, were bright pings of joy, bubble bursts, sniffs of champagne, and each one said, Not Lon. Not Jerzy. Not Camilla. Not this friend or that.

The ping which burst most often, again and again, proclaimed, with sweet relief, Not Dex!

"Let's go inside," he said softly.

Tweed hugged him, long and teary, and they did.

*****

"Hi, Blayne," Altoona said. Friendly sarcasm and at-lastness colored her words. "See anything you'd like to try on?"

"Yep," he said. "Two things."

Condor stood next to him, a hair taller and hyped, his lip-zipper aglisten with fresh licked spittle.

Altoona's left hand lightly gripped the rounded edge of a sewing table. Pim's laced fingers stroked her date's knuckles in high elation.

"Hi, Blayne," Pim said. "Hi, Condor."

"Hello," Condor tried. Something in his tone provoked a round of giggling.

The windowless costume shop had its lights up full. Though the place went on for miles, the myriad racks, choked with costumes and huddled about them, made it feel somehow cozy.

Altoona became aware of her heartbeat, a delicious anticipatory lub-dub, lub-dub.

"You guys sure look sharp," her lover said.

She knew the soft-voiced anticipation that seized Pim in the prelims. That's what Altoona heard now.

It gave moisture and swell to her gens.

"And you girls look rounded in all the right places," said Condor.

It sounded stupid, fake-suave.

When Condor cast a look of embarrassment in Blayne's direction, it led to a second volley of laughter, during which Blayne ushered his friend forward.

"You take the stuff?" she asked. It hadn't done much for her, but Pim was pretty loopy.

"Oh yeah," Blayne said. "A killer coaster."

"Setting mostly," she commented. "But now that we're past the slaughter, ain't nothin' but smooth sailing and clear vistas ahead."

Blayne nodded as he came closer, but it was clear he wasn't one bit interested in listening.

He cobra'd Altoona's eyes. His hand found her free hand, their fingers entwining at their sides as he eased in to kiss her.

There was that warmth again, a zillion times warmer. His rough-nubbed lips pebbled across her pillowy ones. It turned Altoona on.

She tongued metal.

Rise, fall, rise, fall of zipper-teeth.