The Crawling Abattoir Page 8

  “Come on in,” he said.

  The door opened and a young man stepped inside, his generic sneakers crunching on red-circled newspapers. He wore khaki pants and a white cotton shirt. He looked utterly normal.

  “You are Grady Ernest Sykes,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  Grady looked in his eyes.

  He saw walking honesty; he saw a mirror held up to his own conscience, a mirror barely misted by the breath of life. He saw truth coming at him on two legs, and he knew there was no stopping it. There were no automatic doors, no emergency exits, no secret panels into hidden rooms, no cushions to soften the fall, no blindfolds, no flak jackets, no plans, no backup plans, no sleep, no drink, no drugs, no dreams, no kind words, no lover’s cool touch to help him ease what was coming. He was alone. Alone with himself.

  He raised the shotgun.

  The young man zipped himself open.

  Grady fired three times into darkness without effect before he felt hands around his throat. His feet were lifted off the floor. He felt himself rushing off-balance, headlong, ears ringing from the shotgun, into moonless night, tipping over an edge, falling.

  His dark, curtained apartment was as bright as daylight compared to the sky without stars.

  He tucked the shotgun barrel under his chin. He had never had much enthusiasm for his backup plan, but even less for ending up like Joe or Annie or Sam.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Grady walked down the street. Well, the young man walked down the street shaped like Grady.

  Never a particularly handsome man, Grady had made no improvements with the shotgun blast. The really surprising thing was that he was alive at all.

  The shell had blown off his jaw and his nose and obliterated one eye, but the barrel had been aimed askew. Most of the force had expended itself on his face, and not nearly enough on his brain to kill him. His face looked like a furrow dragged through meat. Well, he did have a picture of Gandhi on the wall in his den.

  So Grady, but actually Not-Grady, walked down the street like the loser of an ax-throwing contest.

  The apologies had to be attempted in person. The phone was not an option with only the jagged, ripsawed end of a windpipe remaining.

  It was a small problem. Not-Grady wasn’t seriously inconvenienced. His thoughts were not layered or richly textured or complex. It didn’t occur to Not-Grady that any person looking like he did shouldn’t be walking down the street, and neither did it matter to him that people scrambled to get out of his way.

  There were apologies to make.

  As he walked, for example, he made a continuous apology. No one heard it, though, because no one got close enough to hear the wheezy, gurgling sounds that percolated up out of his naked trachea.

  “I’m sorry I missed,” said Grady, if anyone cared to press an ear close to the quivering gristle that poked out of his throat. “God, I’m so sorry I missed.”

  It was a good start, but Not-Grady went in search of an ex-wife for his first specific apology, an ex-wife who would not be happy to see him.

  After all of Grady’s apologies were made, Not-Grady had a solid lead for his next task. He had read an article, in one of Grady’s newspapers, describing a prosecutor in Reading, Pennsylvania. A defense attorney was quoted as saying that this evil man was using Gestapo tactics against his client, said that he was worse than Hitler. Such behavior could not be allowed to continue.

  His instructions from Ben were simple.

  Nazis murdered. They raped. They tortured. They burned. They stole. They cheated.

  Nazis lied, and there were many people out there who lied, so there were obviously many Nazis out there. Many, many Nazis.

  The world must be protected from such people. Force was not the only weapon with which to protect people.

  The truth also worked.

  The young man’s task was to see that the truth came out. There was a whole world full of lies for him to expose.

  It would be a long job, but the young man was infinitely patient.

  Kevin Bacon Killed My Girlfriend

  y girlfriend was a dead ringer for Pamela Anderson, except that she wasn’t quite as tall as Pamela, only about 5’2”, and she weighed a little more, maybe 145, maybe 150, no more than 155, you know, and her breasts weren’t nearly as big, and her figure was more stopwatch than hourglass, but she didn’t have all the time and money in the world to work out with personal trainers and have plastic surgery and liposuction and that collagen stuff, you know, so she looked like Pamela without all the glamour and Hollywood glitter, know what I mean, but she especially looked like Pamela in the face, except that her eyes weren’t the same color really, and she got her nose broken pitching 16-inch, so it was kind of bent in a way that Pamela’s isn’t, and her lips were thinner than Pamela’s, and her hair wasn’t blond and it was a lot shorter than Pamela’s, even though she could have had it long and blond if she had ever really wanted to play up the I-look-like-Pamela thing, right?

  But still, if you’d passed her on the street, you’d have gone, Whoa, that’s Pamela Anderson.

  People tell me that they didn’t see it, that I wore Pamela-Anderson-colored glasses when I was around her, but I think they were just jealous.

  I don’t even think she saw it herself, because she used to get all bent out of shape when I called her Pammy, you know, like a pet name, just like I nicknamed her breasts C and J, and she always kept telling me to call her Lisa. Call me Lisa, call me Lisa, and sometimes I just got sick of it, you know? You know how a woman can get on your nerves like that just by nagging you about stupid shit like what her name is?

  And then she started telling me not to call her at all, and I tried to, you know, give her a little perspective on the way she was seeing things, so I said, you know, Pammy wouldn’t tell me not to call her, right? And she just got mad all over again and hung up on me, but I knew that she was just in one of her moods, being on the rag or something, just the way a female thinks, know what I mean, trying to make me jealous, teasing me. I’d been through it often enough before.

  You know, as a general rule, you never want to listen to what a woman says, you want to listen to what she really means. They’re usually not the same thing, you know, since women most often don’t say what they mean. It’s all a game with them. Women require lots of interpretation, and that’s what I’m good at, modesty aside. Like, for example, “Go away” and “I don’t like you.” And you can’t take “Drop dead” literally, right?

  It takes years of practice to know what women are really talking about, but it’s not their fault. They’re just like that.

  I used to get really pissed off, what with women telling me to Drop Dead with regularity, until I realized that it’s all a game to them.

  They’re just trying to weed out the guys who give up too easily. They like it when you won’t give up. They get off on it. “Drop dead.” “I’m calling the police.” They all do it. I’ve never met one who didn’t. They’re always playing, What do I really mean? Giving guys higher and higher hoops to jump through. And they love it when a guy just won’t give up.

  And I never quit, because I’m not a loser, know what I mean? How could a guy who looks like Kevin Bacon be a loser, right?

  Really. People stop me on the street and say, You look like Kevin Bacon, at least this one guy did, and after that I started seeing it in other people’s eyes, too. I mean, most people won’t say anything because they’re too intimidated by the whole Hollywood-star thing, but I can see them checking me out on the street with that, Hey-is-that-Kevin-Bacon look in their eyes.

  I myself personally don’t play up the resemblance, but that Hey-look-at-me-tossing-around-my-long-and-sexy-wild-untamed-Kevin-Bacon-hair kind of thing just comes naturally for me.

  And it’s not like, you know, he had it first, or it’s his patented style or anything, and I’m copying him, saying, Hey, look at me, I look like Kevin Bacon, aren’t I cool, right? It’s not like that at all.

>   It’s more like, I’ve got it, and he’s got it, and we’re, like, both attractive, both beautiful in a completely masculine, totally heterosexual way, right?

  Maybe he’s a little more attractive, because he’s got the whole Hollywood hair-and-skin and body-sculpting support system working on his side, but maybe on the other hand I’m just more at ease with myself, you know? Maybe I don’t need to be reassured constantly by a bunch of hair-and-skin and body-sculpting support-system flunkies. Maybe I’m just secure enough to be me.

  Like, for example, my hair.

  I don’t have Kevin Bacon hair exactly. I don’t obsess about my hair. So what if I don’t have quite as much hair as Kevin Bacon does? I’m not going bald or anything, just losing a little up front. A receding hairline would sound like a lot more hair loss than I’ve really got, know what I mean? I mean, it’s no serious, Eddie-Munster kind of catastrophe we’re talking about here. It’s just like if Kevin Bacon were losing a little in front, and a tiny, tiny patch of thinning in back, too. But it’s not a big deal, because, like I said, I’m not some Hollywood type, and I don’t obsess about it.

  I got more important things to think about, like lining up investors.

  Remember these words: pet piercing. I’m going to open a pet-piercing boutique on the Gold Coast. I mean, baby boomers getting their ears pierced? Where’s the imagination in that? Everybody does it now. You can’t make a fortune off something that everybody wants to do, right? But getting your dog’s ears pierced, now there’s an idea with some originality. That’s the kind of idea I come up with, know what I mean? Cutting edge ideas. Real intense, edgy ideas with attitude, know what I mean?

  All I need to do, you know, is to get maybe the Mayor, or better yet Roger Ebert, to let me put a few diamond studs in his dog’s ears, or maybe a bar-and-ball through his cat’s tongue, and then my boutique idea would be golden, know what I mean?

  All you need is an in with those kinds of people, a toe in the door, and then you’re like their brother, secret handshakes and class ties and low-interest loans with a wink and a nod and everything, right? That’s how rich people operate. You get the word to the right ear that you’ve got an idea that’s going to make you rich, and you’re in the club. Just like that.

  At that point, it’s all just marketing. Rich people will buy anything. It’s all style and fashion and attitude, you know? That’s where I expect the whole Kevin Bacon thing I’ve got is going to really pay off big-time. OK, so I’m taller and skinnier, and I’m about ten years older than Kevin Bacon, but that just goes to show you how really good I look, you know, because I don’t even work at it. But I got plans, you know, to work out and get myself all tanned-up real California-style and drop about ten years at the health club, and then Kevin and I will look like brothers. Hell, like twins.

  I just need that one big break, know what I mean?

  And that’s when I found out that Pammy was cheating on me, right when I needed a lot of support and stuff because I was, like, about to start pricing tanning beds, which was a big step, you know?

  We hadn’t seen each other in a while, what with me spending all my time trying to line up investors and everything. And I guess I know now why she wasn’t complaining about our lack of quality time together, don’t I?

  She kept saying, I don’t want to see you any more, I don’t want to see you any more, and so, you know, I said to myself, Fine, she’s got something else to do this weekend, and I’ve still got to find out Roger Ebert’s home phone number and find out if he owns a dog, so I didn’t think too much about Pammy blowing me off once, right?

  Then she didn’t want to see me the next weekend or the next weekend, and she said, I don’t want to see you any more at all, and she hung up on me every time I called her, and I started to get real suspicious, you know, like any normal boyfriend would, am I right?

  So naturally I started following her, watching her while she was at work, camping out in the bushes across the street from her house, because I had to sort out this personal problem with Pammy, because that’s just the kind of guy I am. My Pammy always came first.

  That’s when I saw him.

  I saw this guy with my Pammy, a couple of times at work, every other night and all weekend long at her house. And damn it, would you believe he looked just like David Hasselhoff?

  I mean, it was weird. My first thought was, like, when did my Pammy meet David Hasselhoff? And my second thought was, man, somebody like David Hasselhoff ought to know better than to steal another man’s sweetie, am I right? I had always gotten a better opinion of the guy on TV, you know?

  Then I started noticing little things, like this guy wasn’t quite as tall as Dave, and he was heavier, like thirty or forty pounds heavier, even though he hid it real well. And he was blond, which I originally chalked up to Dave doing some movie for which he needed to be blond for awhile, you know?

  But I finally thought to myself, hey, I don’t think this guy is really David Hasselhoff, and that just pissed me off, you know? I mean, here’s this guy, this nobody, this little shit, zero, asshole slug, and he’s doing this big David Hasselhoff song-and-dance, right, and he’s got my Pammy believing him.

  And believe me, he had Dave’s moves down pat, know what I mean? He had his own car; he wore nice clothes, a different shirt every day; he even pretended to listen to Pammy when she talked. Can you believe that? I mean, you could just see the insincerity oozing out of this guy. But Pammy went for it, the imitation Hasselhoff charm, the boyish Hasselhoff grin, that distinctive Hasselhoff strut.

  I mean, the guy was a bank teller, and he was lording it over me. Oh, La-de-da, look at me, I’m a bank teller, and I got a regular job, and I got regular hours, and I’m regular in the john too, and he made me sick, and I wanted to say, Screw You. I hate guys like that, always throwing their careers up in my face like I’m not fucking good enough, like I’m nothing but some garage-band roadie or some squeegee-guy on a street-corner or something like that, like being self-employed like I am is a crime or something. Like there’s something wrong with trying to get the scratch together to open my own upscale, pet-piercing boutique.

  I just got madder and madder at this guy, and I got pretty damn fed up with Pammy, too, because why couldn’t she see through this Hasselhoff clone like I could? So then I thought, maybe she just didn’t want to see through this guy.

  Now that thought was a kick in the head. Here she was, my sweetie, my Pammy, and she didn’t mind another guy putting some big imitation-Hollywood, hand-me-down David Hasselhoff moves on her.

  She was a big disappointment, going along with this guy’s cheap, TV-look-alike con, eating that David Hasselhoff shit up, laughing and having a good time like she was going out with Dave himself.

  That’s when I realized how shallow Pammy really was, how she was only concerned with looks, how she only cared how I looked like Kevin Bacon, or how this guy looked like David Hasselhoff.

  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before, but Pammy had really sold me on the whole California-girl-next-door, hey-look-at-my-breasts, Oh-I’m-such-a-nice-girl-I-won’t-even-have-sex-with-my-boyfriend thing.

  And I fell for it.

  Well, not any more.

  I had to put a stop to it. I ask you, what else could I do? I just had to put a stop to it.

  So I let myself into Pammy’s house one Saturday night when the both of them were out having dinner somewhere. I got in no problem, so she had probably forgotten that she’d given me a key, right? Well, she didn’t actually give me a key, it was more of an understood thing, an implied thing between us.

  She gave me her key-ring one day and told me to go get her something or other at the supermarket, so I got all her keys duplicated while I was there, because, you know, that’s the kind of closeness there was between us then, that I could just do something like that, no problem. It was a boyfriend-girlfriend thing, you know, in case I really needed to get into her house or her business or her car or her safe-deposit box when s
he wasn’t around.

  When I got inside, I took my whole stock of Rohypnol and injected some of it into everything in Pammy’s refrigerator, because, like I already said, Fake Dave was packing a few extra pounds, and I knew that Pammy didn’t push herself away from the table too quickly either, so I was pretty sure they were going to have something to eat when they got back, you know?

  Then I waited in the dark for them to come home.

  They went straight to the open bottle of wine when they got there, and in half an hour they both went down like stunt-doubles. I clobbered Dave a few times while he was on the floor because, on TV, a guy like David Hasselhoff always seems to get up even after you think you’ve got him unconscious, know what I mean?

  I opened my duffel-bag and arranged all my equipment on the coffee-table, and then I stripped and shaved Pammy, from her scalp to her toes, and started working.

  I pierced her all over her body and put rings into her, maybe five or six hundred. I ringed her scalp and her ears about six times each and her face, eyebrows, eyelids, nose, lips, cheeks, her tongue three times, her neck, her breasts and nipples, her arms, her belly, her fingertips, her snatch, her thighs, her ankles, her feet, everywhere I could, like I said, probably five or six hundred.

  Then I stripped and shaved and pierced and ringed Dave the same, except for anatomical variations, you know? I ringed the both of them real good.

  Then I proceeded to step number two.

  I started with the chains and padlocks.

  If they wanted to be together, then they were really going to be together.

  I started with their faces. I padlocked the rings in their tongues together, then I padlocked the rings in their lips together over their tongues, nice and tight and inseparable. I padlocked their eyelids and eyebrows together, and their noses and foreheads. I padlocked them nipple-to-nipple. I padlocked the fingers of Dave’s right hand inside Pammy’s snatch, and the fingers of his left hand as far up into her ass as I could, because that’s where they were spending their time anyway, right? I padlocked Pammy’s fingers around his dick. I wrapped and crossed Pammy’s legs around Dave’s waist and padlocked her ankles to his ass.