Slaughterhouse High

Something caught Matthew's eye. A shadow of darkness straight ahead roiled with movement.

Once one saw a real being in this impossible obscurity, one's imaginings dropped away as obvious frauds.

This vision was distant, the slow roll of a back perhaps, dark restlessness upon darkness, a form reaching for existence as it passed weak bulbs, then lapsing again into nothingness.

But always a restless motion forward.

Matthew stalked it, thinking he was gaining on it, thinking it had disappeared into the gloom, then catching sight of it once more.

An excitement grew in him, the soft melody acquiring an upbeat rhythm in its steady movement onward.

*****

Tweed didn't like leaving Dex in the hallway. But she had to pee and this was the girls' room.

Inside, she found the lights on full. That was a relief. No one here, she thought.

But as she rounded a baffle, an ankle came into view, a dress hem, telltale red slut-heels. And there was Peach the floozy, leaning against Bowser McPhee.

"Hey, come on, you guys," Tweed said. "Boys don't belong in here."

The back of Bowser's dark combed head, an odd warped plane of skin and hair, reflected in the mirror. His coatback creased like twists of milk against the shiny jut of a sink. Dreamy-eyed, he wallowed in bliss.

"Buzz off, Tweediebird," said Peach. "Me and him are sticking together for protection."

Bowser said, "Maybe I should-"

"Hey, baby," said Peach, rubbing herself against him, "we're just getting started. Don't you move a muscle. Not this one anyway." Her hand slid down along his zipper, gripping the cream-white bulge below.

"Sure, cool, why not?" said Tweed, not trying to disguise her disgust. She flounced to the nearest stall, went in, and locked the door.

Let them suck lobe. Let them strip and do it right there on the scuzzy tile floor, within reach of sink pipes, scurries of hair, and decades of impacted scum no janitor's mop would ever touch.

Tweed didn't care.

Peach was a slut and Bowser was bratty and obnoxious. Fuck 'em, she thought, fuck 'em both to hell and back.

She set her purse on the silver shelf and rustled her gown and panties this way and that, planting her naked bottom on the commode's cool seat. She leaned forward intently. Her rustlings fell away. In their place, low moans and groans assaulted her ears.

Her bladder refused to cooperate.

Jesus, at a time like this!

Dex was waiting outside in the hallway, skittish as a colt, while her dad fretted at home.

By all report, the backs of restroom stalls were solid. But what if this one wasn't?

An insane janitor could do whatever he liked. He could prepare for years, breaking every rule in the book just like he'd broken a bunch tonight.

Then there was Bowser and Peach.

Sure, they were into each other. That much their ugly gruntings made clear.

But Tweed bet they each had half an ear on her, picturing her bare-bummed, waiting for that first quick splash of liquid on liquid, then a full stream.

The seconds crept by.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Soon they would notice.

They would stop what they were doing and giggle. Peach would chime in with a crude remark and Tweed's bladder muscle would seize up tighter than ever.

The pressure mounted, but the dam refused to burst. Come on, she thought, come on.

Think of something else. Let the body take over. The past hour's killings came welling up: blood, icicles, Sheriff Blackburn dropping like a sack of flour.

Strangely enough, for all his prim stiffness while he lived, it was the death of Jiminy Jones that prompted much of Tweed's shock. Short in stature, an imitative trumpet player, Mr. Jones nonetheless displayed always an infectious love of music, a love that had inspired her and Dex, that made them reach beyond the norm in their playing and in what they listened to.

She couldn't believe Mr. Jones was dead, his corpse tarped upon the risers he would no longer break down or set up. His short fat arms would no longer wave a baton at them. His tinny dictator's voice would no longer bark, "Don't rush," in time to the strict beat he heard in his head.

Tweed's bladder let go.

Thoughts of Peach and Bowser came rushing in. But the process had been set in motion, a steady stream that would go to completion.

Did she detect any increase in their moans, anything to signal an untoward interest in her bodily functions?

None.

Surely, it had all been in her head. As usual, she had been too damned self-conscious. Her father had made a Broadway show tune out of it, even softshoeing to it and brandishing an imaginary cane and straw boater. "Get out of your head," he had sung, "and into my heart, bah-pitty bah-bah bah-pitty bah-bah- bah."

Tweed wiped, stood, adjusted her prom dress, and flushed.

When she emerged from the stall, she spied Bowser's white sleeve, the gold cufflink, where his right hand had disappeared in a flurry of red frills hiked high up on Peach's stockinged outer thigh.