*Justa cuts. They upset me."
Her hand squeezed him through the corduroy. *If I"d knowna What is it, a phobia or something?"
*I guess so. Maybe."
In a lighter tone, she said, *That probably explains why you carry bandages around, huh?"
*Yeah."
She patted his shoulder. *Maybe you"ll feel better if you get some fresh air," she said. *Why don"t you go ahead and take off? I"ll close up the library."
*Okay. Thanks."
He waited until she was gone, then carried his briefcase outside. The night was dank and misty.
Feverish with memories of Lynn"s cut, he lingered near the library entrance. Soon, the upper windows went dark. He pictured her up there, alone in the stacks, lowering her bandaged finger from the switch panel, starting down the stairwell.
His Swiss Army knife was a heavy lump against his thigh. He slipped his hand down into his pants pocket. He caressed the smooth plastic handle.
And savored thoughts of slitting her.
Just wait for her to come outa No!
He turned from the library and walked quickly away.
In his apartment three blocks from campus, Charles went to bed. But he didn"t sleep. His mind swirled with images of Lynn.
Don"t think about her, he told himself.
You can"t do her.
But it would be so nice.
But you can"t.
Lynn was a graduate student. Like Charles, she earned a small stipend by working part-time at the Whitmore Library. Everyone knew they worked the same hours. Too much suspicion would be focused on him.
Besides, he really liked her.
But d.a.m.n ita!
Forget about her.
He tried to forget about her. He tried to think only about the others. How they yelped or screamed. How their faces looked. How their skin split apart. How blood spilled out like scarlet creeks overflowing banks of ripped flesh, spreading and running, forming new streams that slid along velvety fields, that setded to create shimmering pools in the hollows of the body, that flowed down slopes.
So many faces. So many bodies flinching with surprise or thrashing in agony. So many flooding slits.
All belonged to strangers.
Except for the face and body and cut of his mother. Struggling to stop the confusing flood of images, fighting to keep his mind off Lynn, he concentrated on his mother. Her voice through the door. Honey, would you be a dear and get me a Bandaid? He saw himself enter the steamy bathroom, reach high into the medicine cabinet for the tin of bandages, take out one and step to the tub where she reclined. The water was murky. Patches of white suds floated on its surface. From her chest rose shiny wet islands, wonderfully round and smooth, each topped by a ruddier kind of skin that jutted up in the center. Looking at the islands made Charles feel strange and squirmy.
His mother held a razor in one hand. Her left leg was out of the water, its foot propped on the rim of the tub under one of the faucet handles. The cut was midway between her knee and the place where the water rippled around the wider part of her leg. I"m afraid I nicked myself shaving, she said.
Charles nodded. He gazed at the wound. He watched the strands of red slide down her gleaming skin. They made the bath water pink between her legs. She had a hairy place down there. He couldn"t see her dingus. He stared, trying to find it even though he knew he shouldn"t be looking at that place. But he couldn"t help himself. He felt sick and tight.
You didn"t cut if off, did you?
Cut off what, honey?
You know, your dingus.
She laughed softly. Oh, darling, mommys don"t have dinguses. Here. And then she took gentle hold of his hand and guided it down into the pink, hot water. She slid it against her body. Against a cut - no, not just a cut - a huge, open gash with slippery edges. He tried to jerk his hand away, but she tightened her grip and kept it there. Go on, feel it, she said.
But doesn"t it hurt? he asked.
Not at all.
It was almost as long as his hand. Warm and slick inside. And very deep. She squirmed a little as his fingers explored.
Her voice had a funny sound to it when she said, I"m made this way. All mommys are. She released his hand, but he kept it there. That"s enough, now, honey. You"d better put that Bandaid on my leg before I bleed to death.
Then Charles had the bandage ready. As he lowered it toward the small bleeding cut on her leg, she said, You aren"t gonna faint or anything, are you? But it wasn"t his mother"s voice. He turned his head. The woman sprawled in the tub was Lynn.
At dawn, groggy and restless, Charles climbed out of bed. He didn"t know whether he had slept at all. Maybe a little. If so, his sleep had been a turmoil of dreams so vivid that they might have been memories or hallucinations.
He felt better after a long shower. Returning to his bedroom, he sat down and stared at the alarm clock. A quarter till six. That gave him just more than ten hours before returning to work at the library. And seeing Lynn again.
He saw her naked beneath him, writhing as he slit into her creamy skin.
*No!" he blurted, and stomped his foot on the floor.
There were ways to prevent it. Tricks. He"d worked out lots of tricks over the years to feed his urges - to ease the needs, to keep some control.
Weller Hall seemed huge and empty. Charles knew that it wasn"t empty. But he saw no one as he eased the door shut and made his way to the staircase. Those few students and professors unlucky enough to be burdened with *eight-o"clocks" were already snug in the cla.s.srooms, probably yawning and rubbing their eyes and wishing they were still in bed.
He climbed four creaky stairs, then stopped. He listened. Beyond the sounds of his own rough breathing and heartbeat, he heard a distant voice. Probably Dr Chitwood. Dr s.h.i.thead to the students who had to suffer through his mandatory (this being a university of Methodist origin) History of Christianity cla.s.s. Known as Heist of Christ. Not only mandatory, but boring, and forever scheduled for 8 a.m.
It was one of only three cla.s.ses taking place in Weller Hall on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at such an unG.o.dly hour. Chitwoods"s room was right at the top of the stairs.
Grinning, Charles pulled out his knife. He pried it open and dug into the smooth, worn wood of the banister. He carved a neat, two-inch slot down the rail"s top. He sc.r.a.ped it clean of splinters. Crouching, he ran his thumb over a grimy stair. He rubbed his thumb against the pale cut on the handrail, darkening it with dirt, camouflaging it.
Using needle-nosed pliers, he snugged an injector blade into the slot.
He straightened up and admired his work.
The edge of the blade protruded just a little bit above the surface of the rail. It was hardly visible at all.
Shivering with excitement, Charles hurried outside. He waited on a bench and watched the entrance to Weller Hall.
This"ll be great, he thought. It was always great.
But he"d never done it on campus before. He began to worry about that. He even considered returning to the stairway and pulling out the blade. He could walk into town and set up the trap somewhere else, somewhere safer.
He didn"t want to do that, though. Too often, the trick ended up wasted on somebody old and ugly. He couldn"t take a chance on that happening. He needed to slit a co-ed, a fresh young woman. One like Lynn.
The minutes dragged by. When people began wandering into the building, Charles feared that he might miss the event. He waited a while longer, fidgeting. Then he rose from the bench, trotted up the concrete steps, and rushed inside.
A few students were wandering the corridor, lingering near doorways, entering cla.s.srooms. n.o.body on the stairs. He strolled to the far side of the hall. He removed a paperback copy of Finnegan"s Wake from his briefcase, opened the book, leaned back against the wall, and pretended to read.
From here, he had a good view of the stairway.
The book trembled in his hands.
He held his breath when a couple of girls walked past him and turned toward the stairway. They looked like freshmen. They acted like freshmen, the way they talked so loudly and laughed and gestured.
The girl on the razor"s side of the stairs held books to her chest with her left arm. Her right arm swung free. At the first stair, she rested her hand on the banister. It slid up the rail as she began to climb.
Her shiny blonde hair swayed against her back. She wore a sleeveless sweatshirt. Her arms were slender and dusky. Her white shorts were very tight. Charles could see the outline of her panties. Skimpy things.
His heart slammed.
As she stepped from the third stair to the fourth, she jerked her hand off the railing.
Got her!
But she didn"t flinch or cry out. She simply chopped her hand through the air. Some kind of d.a.m.n gesture to accompany whatever inane point she was making to her friend.
She was almost to the landing before her hand returned to the banister.
Charles sighed. He felt robbed.
It"s not over yet, he told himself.
She"d been so perfect, though. Pretty and blonde and slender like Lynn. A few years younger, but otherwise just right.
I couldn"t have seen the look on her face, anyway, he consoled himself.
From above came a thunder of footfalls.
Charles perked up. Heist of Christ was out, the students stampeding to escape. In seconds, the first of them rounded the landing and rushed down the lower flight. Trembling with excitement, Charles watched those near the banister. A boy in the lead. Luckily, his arm was busy clamping books to his hips. Behind him came a lithe brunette, b.r.e.a.s.t.s jiggling the front of her T-shirt. But she carried a book bag by its straps and didn"t bother with the rail.
Coming down behind her was a fat guy in a sweatsuit. But behind him was a real beauty with flowing golden hair, her shoulders bare, her torso hugged by a bright yellow tube top. Her hand was on the banister!
Yes!
*Ow! s.h.i.t!"
The fat guy.
No!
He jerked his hand off the railing and halted so abruptly that the blonde nearly crashed into him. He lifted his hand to his crimson, stunned face. Blood dripped off, streaking the front of his sweatshirt. *f.u.c.kin"A! Looka this! Jeeeeez!"
Kids started to crowd around him.
Before long, someone would find the razor.
Releasing a long sigh, Charles closed his book. He tucked it under one arm, picked up his briefcase and strolled up the corridor.
Later that morning, after his seminar in Twentieth Century Irish Literature, Charles sat on a park bench along one of the campus walkways. The bench was fairly well hidden by hedges at both ends and an oak to the rear.
He took two X-Acto blades from his briefcase. Each was about an inch in length, V-shaped, with fine sharp edges. At the blunt end of each blade was a tab that could be slid into one of the several handles which were part of the kit. Charles hadn"t brought the handles with him.
With the blades cupped in one hand, he pretended to read Joyce. He watched the walkway. People kept coming by.
Patience, he told himself.
Before he could find time to plant the blades, a couple roosted on the bench across from him. They had bags from the Burger King a block from campus. Charles waited while they ate and gabbed. He waited while they snuggled and kissed. Finally, they wandered away, the guy with his hand down a back pocket of the girl"s short denim skirt.
He checked the walkway. Clear at last!
Working quickly, he planted one blade upright in a green painted slat beside his right thigh. He scooted away from it, then dug a place for the other blade on a slat of the backrest. After checking again for witnesses, he inserted the blade.
Then he roamed across the walkway and settled down on the bench where the sweethearts had wasted so much of his time. They"d left a fry behind. He brushed it to the ground. He opened Finnegan"s Wake, and waited.
People came by. A lot of people. Alone, in pairs, in small groups. Students, instructors, professors, administrators, ground keepers. Male and female. Slender, lovely girls. Plain girls. Slobs.
Into the afternoon, Charles waited.
n.o.body sat on the bench.
n.o.body.
Still, Charles waited. Over and over again in his mind, beautiful young women sat down on the bench. Their faces twisted and went scarlet. They leaped up, shrieking. They hurried away, blood from gashed b.u.t.tocks spreading across the seats of shorts and skirts and jeans, blood from ripped backs staining blouses, T-shirts, flowing down the bare skin of those who wore tube tops or other varieties of low-backed garments.
In his best fantasy, it was Lynn who sat on the bench. Wearing a white bikini.
He often returned to that one while he waited.
Lynn stopped in front of him.
He gazed up at her, puzzled. She wasn"t wearing a bikini. She wore a white cotton polo shirt, pink shorts that reached almost to her knees, and white socks and sneakers. Her huge leather shoulder bag hung against her hip.
*Hi, Charles," she said. *How"s it going?"