Richard Laymon - Flesh

Facing the rest room door, Roland flipped off the light. He opened the door. “Jase?” he asked in a loud whisper.

“Find it?”

“Yeah, but come here.”

He listened to the shuffle of Jason’s shoes on the floor.

“What?”

“Come in here a minute, we’ve got to talk.”

Jason stepped inside and shut the door. “What is it?”

“I’m getting scared.”

“Oh, for Christ—”

“No, really. He reached out with his left hand, found Jason’s shoulder, and gripped it. “I never really believed the guy’d show up, but I don’t know anymore. What if he does, and we can’t handle him? I mean, he might kill us all.”

“Calm down, Ro. My God. There’s two of us, and we’ll have the element of surprise, and besides which, he isn’t gonna show up anyway. We’ll wait for a couple of hours, then I’ll take Celia home and—”

Roland punched the knife into Jason’s belly. The impact slammed him against the door. Roland twisted the knife hard, pulled it out and shoved it in again. Jason grabbed his wrist. Roland jerked the knife back, freeing his bloody hand from Jason’s grip. Before he could strike again, a blow to his chest knocked him backward. He staggered through the darkness and started to fall. The edge of something—the sink?—pounded his rump. His feet slid forward on the wet tiles. He was going down. Throwing back his arms, he caught the sink with both elbows and braced himself as he struggled to get his legs under him. His feet kept sliding away.

The light came on.

He saw Jason on his knees, a shoulder against the door. The wall around the light switch was smeared with bloody handprints, as if Jason had found it essential to get the light on, to see what was happening. Jason turned his head and looked at Roland. His face was the color of dry ashes. His eyes were bugged out, his mouth so wide open that the corners of his lips had split and blood trickled down the sides of his chin.

Most of the floor between Jason and Roland was coated with a spreading red puddle. Roland, legs stretched out, had his heels in it. Still braced, he bent his knees and drew in his legs until they were directly beneath him. Carefully, he stood up. With his left hand on the sink, he held himself steady.

Jason clutched the doorknob and started to get up. His feet slipped away. He landed on his rump with a quiet splash of blood.

Roland switched the knife to his left hand. He pulled the hammer from his belt and started forward slowly, not daring to lift his feet, sliding them instead, skating over the slick tiles. Jason gaped at him and raised a hand to ward off the blow. Roland swung, hammering the back of his wrist. The arm flopped aside. He brought the hammer down with all his strength on top of Jason’s head. It went in only half an inch. Lifting it, he saw a quarter-size indentation with matted hair inside. Blood began to fill the hole. He pounded once more, trying for the same place. The hammer, slightly off target, nicked a half-moon of skull off the edge of the original hole, smacked up a quick spray of blood and sank in deep.

Roland left the hammer embedded. He slid himself backward to admire his work. Jason was seated on the floor with his back against the door, his legs stretched out, his arms hanging at his sides. His pants and the lower half of his shirt were sodden with blood. His head, streaming blood, hung forward, chin against his chest. He wore the hammer like a weird party hat.

Though Jason didn’t move, the amount of blood spilling out from under the hammer meant that he wasn’t dead yet.

Some folks don’t die easy, Roland thought.

The thought surprised him. After all, Jason was only his second victim and Dana hadn’t been a problem.

But he knew there had been others—some who’d been very tough to kill. No big mystery, he told himself. The memories of the other kills had to be coming from his friend. Smiling, he rubbed the bulge on the back of his neck. He felt it squirm, and a small wave of pleasure washed through him.

Get on with it, he thought.

He skated closer to Jason. Hanging onto the doorknob, he squatted and slashed open Jason’s throat.

He stood up, tugged the hammer free and jammed its handle under his belt. He closed his knife and pushed it into its leather case, but didn’t bother to snap the case shut. Digging a hand into a front pocket of his jeans, he took out the handcuffs.

Jason’s weight was against the door. He tumbled onto his side when Roland opened it.

Roland flipped off the light, stepped out, and shut the door.

At first, his feet were slippery against the floor. But they became less slippery with each step. He stopped beneath the entryway to wait for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

As he stood there, he felt a few tentative beats of pleasure. They came from his friend. Hints of the maddening ecstasy it would blast through him just a few minutes from now. Licking his dry lips, he wondered why it hadn’t given him a good zap for wasting Jason.

He wondered, then he knew. Jason had simply been in the way—an obstacle, not the real target. You just get a little boost for taking him out, the biggy is saved for when you deliver Celia.

Makes perfect sense, he thought, and was rewarded with a small thrill.

You don’t know, he thought. Shit, maybe you do, maybe you do. This is just my thing. I’ve always wanted to pull this kind of stuff, just never had the guts till you came along. I don’t need your zaps to get a charge out of it.

But the zaps are great.

Oh yes, oh yes. And I’ll get one soon.

His heart was thudding, his mouth dry, his breath trembling, his penis growing hard.

It was almost time. He could see a few things, now, in the darkness: the vague shape of the card table with a few bottles and glasses on top, the long flat surface of the bar counter, and a corner of something dark—maybe Jason’s blanket—caught in a spill of gray light from a window.

He couldn’t see Celia.

She had to be there. Asleep on the blanket.

He couldn’t hear her, either. Just his own heart and breathing.

She’s there unless she heard us in the can, he thought.

We didn’t make much noise. Jason hardly made a sound. There hadn’t been anything to hear except maybe a couple of thuds. If she was good and plastered, she should’ve slept through all that.

Roland touched his knife case. The flap was loose. Beneath it, the brass butt of the knife handle felt gummy. He left the knife inside its case. He wouldn’t be needing it for a while.

He only needed the cuffs.

On the seat of his jeans, he wiped as much blood as possible off his hands.

He held one bracelet in his right hand, letting the other dangle by its chain, and started forward.

His bare feet snicked each time he lifted one off the floor. With each step, his heart pumped harder, his breath grew more raspy. Sweat stung his eyes and trickled down his sides. He walked with a slight stoop to ease the pressure of his erect penis against his jeans. He grinned. He felt so good now, and he wasn’t even getting any new surges from his friend. Those were yet to come.

He halted at the foot of the blanket. He still couldn’t see Celia.

What if she’s gone!

Then he heard her. She was taking long, slow breaths.

Roland crouched. He reached out carefully until his hand met the blanket. He felt something through its softness—probably a leg—and realized that Celia must have covered herself after lying down.

On his knees, Roland moved to her side. He searched with one hand for the edge of the blanket, found it and lifted it. As he uncovered her, she mumbled something but didn’t awaken.

He could see her now, in spite of the darkness. She was naked, and enough light found her skin to give it a vague, dusky hue. She lay on her back. Her legs were slightly apart, bare except for darker wrappings at her knees. Her right arm, inches from Roland’s knee, lay against her side. The wrapped elbow was bent slightly, and her hand rested with curled fingers just above the jut of her hipbone. Her other arm was high, elbow pointing off to the side, hand beneath her head for a cushion.