[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
paper, but I AM a good journalist!
He spent the next several hours in the converted pantry but those hours flew by. He
started off with a bit of history, followed with incremental exposition, then cited witness
accounts. This is going great! he thought a while later. All of a sudden, the spurious
article he was being forced to manufacture was demonstrating some craft of his own. Dirk
will love it...
Melvin's journalistic jubilation carried him through another hour, then another. Then
He heard the front door barge open; Gwyneth stumbled in.
I guess the party's over, Melvin thought.
"Where are you oh," she slurred, standing unevenly in the pantry doorway.
"Hi, Gwyneth," Melvin said. It was hard not to shake his head. "How was your day?"
"I I...don't remember, I guess." She almost fell over when she rubbed her face. It was no
surprise to Melvin that she looked an absolute mess, hair askew like a handful of hay,
tight lavender top crooked and pocked with flinty smudges, and her jeans...
Oh, that's priceless! Melvin thought in a revel. "I hate to tell you this, Gwyneth, but those
designer jeans you're wearing? You've got them on backwards."
"I do not," she droned, then stared down at herself for a good 30 seconds. "How did I..."
She rubbed her face again.
"Where'd you go?" He stared up for the answer. "You look pretty messed up. Did you, by
chance, maybe, go to a bar?"
Her fingers opened over her face, bloodshot eyes peeking through. "A...bar? I...don't
know but I think maybe I did. Why don't I remember? I'm usually not forgetful." The
words continued to pour out in a slow, dreadful slur. "Could I have dreamed it? I
remember, earlier today, when you left to get lunch... I finished the plaque, and-and-
and I don't remember anything after that."
"Interesting," Melvin remarked. "I'm sure it'll come to you."
She brought her hand to her forehead and moaned, "And, God, I feel so woozy. I don't
understand why."
Well, Melvin thought in delighted sarcasm, I'm not a clinician, but do you think that the
mainline of heroin in your TIT might have something to do with it?
She stammered on, "And-and-and yuck! I've got the worst taste in my mouth..."
Might that be oh, I don't know but let me take a wild guess the prostitute feces you
were eating earlier?
She turned in the doorway, taking very small, calculated steps. "I have to go lie down."
"Good idea."
She clacked her teeth together at an obvious stab of pain when she took one step forward.
Her back stiffened, and she brought a hand back to her buttocks. "Oh, God!"
"What's wrong, Gwyneth?"
"I Oh! What is that?"
"What is what, Gwyneth?'
"It hurts so much..."
"What?"
"I " She shook her head as if in some arcane resistence. "I can't tell you."
"Sure you can," Melvin insisted.
"It's private."
"Tell me."
"No! I don't even know..."
Melvin had to toy along. "Gwyneth, you're in obvious pain. Tell me what's wrong. Where
does it hurt?"
Finally she sighed and simply gave up. "If you must know, Melvin, my asshole hurts real
bad and I don't know why!"
I do, Melvin thought.
(IV)
Well past sundown, Melvin called it a day as far as the article went. He felt coolly
satisfied with the work. He microwaved a few slices of pizza, then went to Gwyneth's
bedroom to look in on her.
Jeez...
She lay atop the bed like a ledgejumper on a sidewalk, limbs oddly angled, neck crooked,
hair in a tousled mop across her face. To his amusement he quickly recognized that she'd
obviously passed out in the middle of an attempt to take her backwards jeans off; they'd
been pulled halfway down, their butt at the front of her thighs. It was a mortician's
ultimate masturbatory fantasy: the intact yet outrageously sexy suicide victim spraddled
on the bed after ingesting a bottle of valium. Still warm, still soft, breasts full, and well,
not an expository term but none other would do for such a passage her pussy still
plump, perfect, and gorgeous and in some otherwordly way begging to be derricked by a
hard cock one last time before the inevitable redeposition into a casket. Was Melvin The
Mortician's penis up to the task?
Of course not. I can't have sex with my father's wife while she's unconscious! But it was a
hearty thought nonetheless, and he took the vivid fantasy with him, to the bathroom,
where he masturbated in grand style, ejaculating on the same pair of noon-blue Victoria's
Secret panties he'd drained his vesicles on earlier.
THUNK!
Melvin turned with a start, pants still at his knees. What was that? Something solid had
hit the floor. At first he thought Gwyneth might have fallen out of the bed but the sound...
Came from the living room, he realized, not the bedroom.
It was with more than a titter of fear that Melvin moved out of the bathroom and slowly
peeked around into the living room.
Oh, jeez, that's all it is!
The cheap pastoral print hanging over the couch had fallen down. It didn't even have glass
over it, so nothing had broken. He picked it right up ro re-hang it but then discerned the
cause: the weight of the frame had pulled the nail out of the wall, and now the print,
complete with "faux" brushstrokes, couldn't be put back up. I'll have to get another
nail...tomorrow, he decided. He set the print face-out on the couch, but then caught
himself staring at it: the pasture in the sweeping green valley. Then he glanced up at the
wall and saw the hole in the sheetrock that the print had been covering.
He remembered feeling ill at ease last night when he'd first discovered it, right after the
bizarre dream he'd had, the dreams populated by ghosts of what his imagination had
turned into Leonard D'arava and his two skeletal cohorts. Next, he remembered...
That smell.
An unpleasant odor had drifted from the hole. He squinted. Did I dream that or was it
real? His mind felt wiped out after working on the article most of the day. He couldn't
recall so he leaned forward and sniffed the hole
Ho-boy!
No, the dirty stink had not been dreamed, that was for sure. Must be a dead animal in the
wall. A mouse or something. And guess what? I don't care.
But a second later something glimmered in the carpet. Melvin picked it up: the nail.
"Might as well rehang it now," he grumbled aloud. But he'd need a hammer.
Gwyneth has one in her workroom.
He loped to the room, switched on the light, but didn't see the hammer anywhere. It was
here earlier, on the table. He felt sure. All that remained there now, though, was the
completed plaque along with a scattering of unused bone fragments.
Hmmm.
Would she have taken it into the bedroom? There was no logical reason for her to have
done so but...Gwyneth was probably significantly less than a well of logic right now with
biker heroin in her blood.
He looked back in her bedroom and saw she wasn't there.
Where on earth could she have gone? She was out cold less than ten minutes ago...
"Gwyneth? Where did you go? I need the "
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
When Melvin rushed to the living room, his jaw dropped.
Gwyneth, jeans still backwards and down past her butt, was
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
turning the small hole above the couch into a great big hole that was running toward
the floor.
"What are you doing!" Melvin shrieked so loud his voice went hoarse.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]