Slaughterhouse High

At rest now, the blade stuck deep, through skin and skullbone, parting the halves of her brain. Though sprays of gore had spattered her flesh, most of it had shot across the room like spoutings from a dying whale's blowhole.

The scene was breathtaking.

"We can explain," came Brayton's voice, a warmth to it that moistened Jonquil further.

"Oh no you can't," she said, not accusing but filled with the wonder she felt.

"We were in the backways," said Raven. "We saw the killer come out of here. He had the boy's head by the hair. He got away."

"Marvelous," said Jonquil. The woman before her was one succulent saucy wench. Then it struck her. "How did you break into the backways? Only the slasher's supposed to know the combination, him and the janitor."

"Should we tell her?" Brayton asked.

Raven made a face. "What choice?"

He shrugged. "Zane Fronemeyer was chosen to be your school's slasher. He's dead. The janitor axed him in his basement. Fronemeyer's wives are dead too."

Jonquil shuddered. "Zane was a scumsucking zit from the word go. He wanted to suck my scum. He kept nagging, long after I made it clear he was less than zero in my book. Camille and Hedda deserved better. But the question remains: How do you two know all this?"

Brayton tried to speak, then gave up.

"Let's show her," his date said. She raised her hand to her left ear.

Brayton did likewise.

Christ! In the presence of death, these two sexy people, thought Jonquil, are about to expose their sexlobes to me. They're as turned on by all this as I am.

Ripples of come-need treadled through her loins. The right word, the right look, would set her off without a touch.

Their lobebags fell away.

And there, in all their glory…

But Raven's exposed lobe was dyed a godawful green, some ridiculous protest among the homeless-by-choice. And Brayton yanked and peeled and his sexlobe, his friendship lobe too, came away in his hands like some spent Cyrano's nose putty.

The crude puckers of flesh which punctuated the question marks of his ears meant but one thing.

"You and Raven… you're-"

He nodded.

"My name's Winnie," the woman said.

"They took us off the streets, drugged us, delivered us to Fronemeyer. But Gerber Waddell killed him before he could kill us."

This changed everything.

A couple of freaks.

From the look of his severed lobes, Brayton was a promjumper. No way would Jonquil deign to suck on the vestigial stump of anyone's sexlobe, least of all some joker who had dodged his prom. Why, blowing a fucking eunuch would be about as frustrating and far more humiliating.

Jonquil sublimated her lust and grew cool.

"You've got no business being here," she said. "I ought to have you, I will have you arrested."

Brayton raised his hands. "Hey now-"

"We're your best chance of catching the killer. You need access to the backways, and we've got it."

The feisty little slut was right.

Jonquil still had the hots for Gerber Waddell. If she expected to fuck him before he was futtered, that could only happen by playing along with these two.

She deflated and stood down. "I give," she said. "The backways it is. Let's find him."

"This way," said Brayton, putting his lobebag back on. He punched a tiny keypad over the panel they stood before.

Winnie entered first, a soiled doll returned to the dingy package it had arrived in.

Jonquil went next, loving all over again the musk Brayton wore as she passed him and regretting what she'd learned about him. He'd have made an irresistible bedmate.

Brayton trailed after her.

The panel slid shut as the musty backways swallowed them up. Fired up at the prospect of finding the janitor, Jonquil moved between the homeless pair as though she were a convict and they her jailers.

*****

Sandy glanced about nervously.

The larger stairwells, wide and step-scuffed at the four corners of the school, always teemed with students between classes.

But halfway along the east, north, and west sides of the school were less-frequented stairs, shut off at top and bottom by steel safety doors. The lights burned harsh here, throwing hard-edged shadows across pink-tiled walls.

The stairwell, which stank of Lysol, was a place of loneliness and crushed cigarette butts.

Rocky was squatting against one wall.

Beside him stood Cobra, his knee bent and one cleated heel stuck to the wall like a magnet. His back bent, he puffed on a coffin nail.

Sandy feared the lulls, those times when the three of them were here alone. Rushes of kids would come by from above and below, the bars of the steel doors clanging and releasing, latches raucously catching as they swung shut. Then for a time, no one. Ominous stillness. All a-fidget, she would long for the next wave of promgoers, her friends, Rocky's friends.

Or total geeks, it didn't matter.

Anyone to suggest safety in numbers.

They had hit another lull.

"Let's go some place else," she said.

Rocky, on automatic, began to rise.