"Out." He stood next to the door, and I hurried past him, walking around the counter into the gift shop.

"I don"ta"" I began.

He pointed to a sign above the cash register: We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. "I don"t ever want to see you again," he said.

My face was flushed. He must have seen me, I thought. He must know. I looked away, started toward the door.

"And don"t come back!"

"f.u.c.k you!" I yelled over my shoulder.

I walked across the dirt to the Dart, my heart pounding in my chest. Ordinarily I was not the type of person to engage in any sort of altercation, verbal or otherwise. I always tried my best to avoid confrontation. But I felt a strange sort of defensiveness at the thought that the old man might have seen me looking at the panties, and I was angry enough that if he had responded to my epithet in any way, if he had come out of the building and come after me, I would have punched him.

I got into the Dart, drove out of the parking lot, pulled onto the highway. I drove five miles east until I saw the back of the billboard that I was looking for on the opposite side of the divided highway. I slowed, looked in my rearview mirror to make sure it was the right sign, then drove over the dirt of the center divider and parked underneath the words "See Marilyn Monroe"s Panties!"

I waited there until dark.

I had not checked to see what time The Place closed, so I drove closer, until I could see the building. The lights were still on in the gift shop, so I pulled off the side of the road and waited.

The lights went off at seven. I waited another hour, but the pickup in the parking lot did not move, and I a.s.sumed that the old man lived somewhere on the property and did not have to drive anywhere to go home. I gave it until nine, just to be on the safe side, then pulled forward to the arrow billboard, turned off my lights, and coasted to a stop in the parking lot. I waited a few moments to see if I"d been spotted, if the old man was going to come out, then took the flashlight from the glove compartment, got out of the car, and quietly hurried around to the side of the building where the door was. As I"d feared, the door was locked, but I knew there were no dead bolts or anything, just the k.n.o.b lock, and I took out my Texaco card, pushed it in the doorframe, slid it down, and was gratified to hear a click and see the door move outward. I pulled open the door and stepped inside. My heart was pounding, my hands shaking with the rush of adrenaline. Turning on the flashlight, I walked quickly across the room to the case housing Marilyn"s panties. I stood there and shone the light through the gla.s.s. The beam of illumination highlighted the dark fuzziness that coated the material. And the panties moved.

I stopped, the flashlight shaking in my hand. I held my breath, forced myself to exhale. This was stupid. The light had jiggled in my shaking hand. Or my perception had been off. The panties themselves had not moved. They moved again.

I stepped forward, peering through the gla.s.s, terrified and at the same time fascinated. The panties were definitely moving now, inching across the bottom of the display case in a wormlike crawl that was sickening and unnatural and . . . and somehow arousing.

I was already hard, and I unbuckled my pants with my left hand while my right trained the flashlight on the crawling panties. I yanked open my b.u.t.ton fly, pushed down my jeans and underwear. My p.e.n.i.s was firm and rigid, harder than it had ever been before, and I reached out and opened the back of the case.

I smelled mildew and dirt, rot and decay, and I wanted to touch myself, to stroke myself, but I was already coming, and my hips thrust convulsively in the air as my s.e.m.e.n shot into the case, the thick white liquid spurting onto the panties, the panties moving back and forth across the floor of the case to catch every last drop of my randomly pumping sperm.

It went on for what seemed like minutes, until my p.e.n.i.s was hurt and sore, still throbbing in time to spurts that were no longer coming. I was out of breath and shaking, and I stared into the case, holding weakly on to its frame, watching as the whiteness grew dark, hardening, solidifying, developing what appeared to be an outer covering of mold and mildew. The individual pools and puddles and drops and droplets slid over the irregular surface of the panties, meeting in the middle, becoming one unified ma.s.s that pulsed and undulated in a rhythm so alien that even in the aftermath of my ecstasy, I was frightened by its strangeness.

The wadded panties jerked once, throwing off the hardened lump of darkening sperm, which landed on the floor of the case next to it, still pulsating. The mound of sperm stretched, twisted, grew, and underneath the moldy surface, I thought I could detect a vaguely humanoid form.

The lights in the museum switched on.

I jumped, looking immediately toward the door to the gift shop. The old man was standing there, staring at me, his hand on the light switch. I"d half expected him to be holding a shotgun, but he was unarmed. I quickly reached down, pulled up my pants.

"I figured you might be back," he said. "I was hoping you wouldn"t be, but I figured you might."

I licked my lips, not knowing what to say.

He walked into the museum. "I know how it is, boy. I know how it gets."

He looked into the case, and I did too. My moldy sperm was now the size of a hardback book, and pale protuberances that definitely looked like arms stretched out from the fuzzy darkness. I swallowed. "What is it?" I asked. My voice was quiet, barely above a whisper.

"It"s yours. Yours and Marilyn"s."

"This . . . this has happened before?"

The old man nodded. "You could say that."

I looked at him. "Are you ... are you going to have me arrested?"

He shook his head. "Wouldn"t make much sense. You didn"t have no more control over it than I did. It"s not you. It"s her." He motioned toward the panties, now hunched in the corner opposite the open door of the case.

The pulsating ma.s.s was now obviously humanoid in shape, pieces of hardened mold and gelatinous blackness cracking and sliding off from the small figure as it struggled to right itself. I saw a head, eyes, mouth.

The old man cleared his throat. "I can help you dispose of that," he said.

I looked at him, not certain what to say, not certain of what I was feeling.

"Come here," he said. "Follow me."

I hazarded one last look at the twisting creature, at the panties in the corner, then followed him to the rear of the museum. We walked through the back door and out behind The Place. There was a full moon, and though no lights were on in the back of the building, I could see clearly and did not need my flashlight. I followed the old man down a barely extant dirt path, behind a stand of ocotillo and over a small rise.

And looked into the pit.

It was easily as big as a football field, sunk some twenty or thirty feet down in the desert. He obviously used this as his landfill. There were sacks of groceries, pieces of broken bric-a-brac, a couch, a car door, lying in the dirt.

But there were other things as well.

I felt sick to my stomach as I looked at the dried vaguely humanoid forms piled on the sloping sides of the pit, as I saw the small bones protruding from the dirt.

"Ten bucks," he said. "No one"ll ever know."

I don"t know what shocked me more, the fact that he had a killing field in his backyard and was willing to kill my . . . creature for me, or the fact that he wanted to charge me for it.

He must have guessed by my silence what I was thinking, because his voice, when he spoke, was softer. "It"s not human," he said.

I nodded.

"Do you want me to dispose of it for you?"

I shook my head, staring at the overlapping forms in the pit.

"Well, then, we"d better get it into your car."

We walked back into the museum, and he grabbed a large box from a pile outside the rear door. I walked back over to the case and was shocked to see that the creature had jumped or fallen out and was now on the ground in front of the exhibit. It was now the size of a medium-sized dog.

"Howa"" I began, but my voice cracked. I cleared my throat. "How big is it going to get?"

"How tall are you?"

I frowned. "Six feet."

"It"ll be six feet tall."

I watched as the old man gingerly picked up the creature and placed it in the box. Its mouth opened as he did so, as though it was trying to scream, but no sound came out. Its eyes, black and white, rolled strangely.

"Take it," the old man said.

I was frightened, but I forced myself to pick up the box. It was lighter than I"d thought it would be. I stared down at the creature. It was not human, but. . . but it looked like me. It also looked a little bit like Marilyn, and I was instinctively protective of it. Part of me was repulsed by the creature, but another part of me wanted to take care of it.

The old man held open the side door and walked with me as I carried the box out to the car and placed it in the backseat.

"Remember," he said. "I can get rid of it for you."

I shook my head. "No, thanks."

He held out his hand. "That"ll be five dollars."

I blinked. "What?"

"Five dollars."

"For what?"

"That"s half Marilyn"s," he said.

I didn"t want to argue, so I took out my wallet and gave him a five.

I got into the car, backed up and pulled onto the highway, heading toward Phoenix. I saw no other cars on the highway, no other lights, and I could hear the ... thing on the seat behind me, making strange mewling noises, as well as sounds like crackling cellophane and breaking twigs issuing from somewhere within its still-growing body. The noises sent a chill through me, and I turned on the radio, cranking it up. The only station I could get out here was a gospel station, but I didn"t care, and I tried to focus on the music, tried not to hear the noises on the seat behind me.

Ten minutes later, I heard it move out of the box.

I kept expecting at any minute to feel cold slimy hands touch the back of my neck, but I was afraid to look behind me, and I didn"t want to pull off the side of the road because I knew I might never get back in the car, so I kept driving.

By the time we reached Phoenix, I could see the thing in the rearview mirror, sitting up on the seat. It was as tall as I was. It had Marilyn"s face.

It smiled at me in the mirror, and against my will, I felt myself becoming aroused.

I pulled into the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour supermarket. I was no longer frightened of the creature, but reality had set in. How was I going to bring this thing into my brother"s house? I wondered. What was I going to say? How was I going to explain it?

I parked the car beneath one of the lights in an empty section of the parking lot and turned around to look at the creature.

It was male.

The sight of the p.e.n.i.s, long and gracefully slender, shocked me. The face was Marilyn"s, as was the hair, and I had automatically a.s.sumed that the creature was a female. I had seen no b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but I had not been able to see that low in the mirror.

Now I saw everything.

And I felt attracted to it.

The creature smiled at me.

And its p.e.n.i.s stiffened.

What the h.e.l.l was happening? My own erection was growing, even though I didn"t want it to, my body responding to this monster even as my brain was disgusted by it. It wasn"t even human, I told myself. Three hours ago, it had been a puddle of my sperm that had landed on Marilyn Monroe"s moldy panties.

The creature leaned forward, puckered its lips, and though there was no lipstick around its mouth, it looked exactly like one of Marilyn"s cla.s.sic poses.

My p.e.n.i.s hurt, it was so hard. I didn"t want to insert my p.e.n.i.s in the creature, didn"t want to stick it in its mouth or in its a.s.s. I wanted to do what I"d done with the panties: spurt on it.

But what would happen to that sperm?

In my mind, I saw it blackening, moldering, combining with the flesh of this monster to create yet another monster.

The protective feelings I had originally felt for the creature were gone, replaced by this unnatural l.u.s.t. The disgust was still there, though, augmented by an unfocused rage. I got out of the car, opened the back door, grabbed the creature"s arm, and yanked it outside. Its skin was soft, erotically smooth to my touch, and I could not help looking down at the erect organ pointing outward from between its legs as I pulled it from the car.

I hit it over the head with the lug wrench I took from the Dart"s trunk. It did not bleed, but it fell down in a crumpled heap on the parking lot. It had not even tried to avoid the blow, and though a brief flicker of that initial protectiveness returned as I hit it, the feeling was overpowered by my rage and fear, and I hit it again.

And again.

I glanced around the parking lot to see if anyone had witnessed this beating, but the lot was empty save for a few cars near the supermarket entrance, and there was no sign of any people.

I picked up the creature and put him in the backseat.

I drove at an even seventy miles an hour once I got past the outskirts of the city, but it was still close to dawn when I reached The Place. I skidded into the parking lot, braked to a halt. I opened up the back door and looked down at the form of my son. I didn"t know if he was dead or merely unconscious, but I didn"t really care.

I picked him up. He was warm, still alive. The sensuous smoothness of his skin aroused me again, and I glanced involuntarily at his slender p.e.n.i.s and I felt myself becoming hard.

I kicked shut the door of the car and carried him into The Place.

The front door was open, the old man waiting for me. He looked at me and there was neither horror nor humor on his face, no look of I-told-you-so in his eyes. He merely looked at the form in my hands, nodded at me.

"Want me to take care of it?" he asked.

I nodded. I could not even bring myself to speak.

"Ten dollars," he said.

I took out my wallet, handed him two fives.

He accepted the money, pocketed it.

I glanced toward the museum entrance, thought of Marilyn"s panties, then forced myself to turn and walked out of The Place. I pressed down on my erection. " I did not look back.

DEVIL WITH A BLUE DRESS.

P. D. Cacek.

You wan me suckee you good, GI?

Gil Thornton"s elbow slammed into the side of the restaurant"s neocla.s.sic facade as his hand reached for the side arm that should have been caressing his hip like an enamored lover.