Slaughterhouse High

He would brave the slasher, cut his way through the brambles, and emerge triumphant and ready to take his place as a useful citizen.

What more could he ask of life than that?

Dex poked a cufflink through a stiff ironed hole and snapped it into place.

*****

The principal of Corundum High was taking his sweet time getting ready.

He wasn't showering.

He wasn't dressing.

Nor was he busy thinking mean thoughts about the little shits who would get their comeuppance tonight.

In point of fact, Peyton "Futzy" Buttweiler was on his hands and knees in the playroom, being whipped senseless by his lacklove wives.

"I'm sorry," sniveled Futzy.

Torment sneered. "Far as I'm concerned, you're not nearly sorry enough. He isn't, is he, Trusk? Lay into the fucker!"

And Trusk, the heftier wife, did as she was told.

Frayed and beaded whip-ends sizzled through the air and snapped away, interwoven with the high smack of Torment's bullwhip, crosswise upon naughty little Futzy Buttweiler's back.

Bloodspray spattered the walls, an abstract mural in progress.

Futzy's much deserved flaying fired up his brain. But his dead daughter's image burned as bright as ever.

"Harder," he pleaded. "Harder!"

"You miserable little shit-smoocher," said Torment. "Don't you dare order me and Trusk about. We're not a couple of high school tramps. You see all those blood flecks on the wall?" She bunched up twists of Futzy's sweat-slicked hair and yanked his head back. "Tomorrow, first thing, you're going to lick 'em all off, every damned one of them. No breakfast for old Futzy-Wutzy till he gets these walls spanking clean."

"His wounds are closing," observed Trusk.

"Well, fuck," said Torment, "we can't have that now, can we? Open 'em back up. Make new ones. Real fierce and frenzied, Trusk. Slice the scumwipe some indelible memories. Volley!"

With that, Trusk and Torment redoubled their effort. Grunting into their swings, they so minced the skin covering Futzy's shoulders and ribs, that wide expanses of bone peered through. Seas of red rushed in, to be parted by renewed whipsmacks.

" Fuck his sorry ass!"

Futzy wept.

Kitty's young face shone bright and smiling. Her senior picture.

But around the edges of her smile peered an accusatory look, a look of shame and disgust at her father's inaction at her senior prom.

She was right to scorn him.

Do it, he thought to the two bitches he had taken in to punish him after Kitty's death.

A marital masochist, that's what he was.

Do it. Do it!

He dared not say it aloud, lest they withhold his punishment entirely.

"Now," said lean and mean Torment, the brains of the duo. "Give off. Man the machine."

Trusk's whip handle clattered to the floor.

Futzy braced himself for the pain.

Spang went the release mechanism and hush-hush-hush the grains of salt from the funnel above. They pinged and stippled against his skin, finding their way, much of them, into the V's of his wounds.

Salt knifed into him everywhere. Pain waved through his body like the unending misery twenty years before, the thoughts he could not shut off no matter how hard he tried.

Futzy passed out, the harsh words of his wives ringing in his ears, longing for death but knowing it would not yet be his.

*****

The blue clunker pulled up to the curb and parked two blocks from Zane Fronemeyer's house.

A quiet walk past manicured lawns, no faces peering out. The doorbell chimed. Zane would be in the basement. But if not, if he was finished already, knifing three of them wouldn't pose too great a problem.

All planned, all smooth.

Familiar heads appeared at the decorative window in the door: Hedda and Camille, taste of sex on the lips, a threeway suckle on left lobes until they had gone giddily into simultaneous oral orgasm.

The deadbolt snapped and the door swung open.

Surprise lit their faces.

"Hello, you two." Casual. Not too loud.

"Zane's home," said Hedda. "Are you sure-"

"It's all right. If he comes upstairs, I'll offer an excuse. I have a few things I wanted to give you. Is it all right if I come in?"

Better be.

Discretion cautioned against the ruckus of forced entry.

Empty boxes in the clutched paper bag hid the shape of the knife.

Camille fretted. "Well I don't-"

"Sure," said Hedda.

Snap judgment.

That and her sex drive, a burning focus on whatever flesh happened to be at hand, were Hedda's most alluring traits.

The door settled snug in its frame as Hedda surged forward into a kiss.

Camille went nonlinear: "Hedda, what are you doing? Zane could pop up any minute!"

Hedda's hunger was palpable. "Take us away," she urged. "Tonight."

"Soon. I promise."

"Zane's a prize bore," said Hedda, her eyes hard and fiery. Amazing how such an attractive woman now held no interest at all, had become so guiltlessly killable.

"We don't like him," Camille offered.

"The three of us will be dynamite together. It'll happen soon, not much longer. But for now, I've got to go. I only wanted to drop these gifts off."

Beyond the art teacher's fluxed mother, the vestibule arched into the family room, where heavy curtains shut out the night.