The black corpse suddenly lifts its broadsword and scrambles forward in a run, hoping to use reach and speed to get its kill. But Trager"s corpse is no longer there when the enemy"s measured blow cuts the air where he had been.
Sitting comfortably above the fighting pit/down in the arena, his feet grimy with blood and sawdust-Trager/the corpse-snaps the command/ swings the morningstar-and the great studded ball drifts up and around, almost lazily, almost gracefully. Into the back of the enemy"s head, as he tries to recover and turn. A flower of blood and brain blooms swift and sudden, and the crowd cheers.
Trager walks his corpse from the arena, then stands up to receive applause. It is his tenth kill. Soon the championship will be his. He is building such a record that they can no longer deny him a match.
She is beautiful, his lady, his love. Her hair is short and blond, her body very slim, graceful, almost athletic, with trim legs and small hard b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her eyes are bright green, and they always welcome him. And there is a strange erotic innocence in her smile.
She waits for him in bed, waits for his return from the arena, waits for him eager and playful and loving. When he enters, she is sitting up, smiling for him, the covers bunched around her waist. From the door he admires her nipples.
Aware of his eyes, shy, she covers her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and blushes. Trager knows it is all false modesty, all playing. He moves to the bedside, sits, reaches out to stroke her cheek. Her skin is very soft; she nuzzles against his hand as it brushes her. Then Trager draws her hands aside, plants one gentle kiss on each breast, and a not-so-gentle kiss on her mouth. She kisses back, with ardor; their tongues dance.
They make love, he and she, slow and sensuous, locked together in a loving embrace that goes on and on. Two bodies move flawlessly in perfect rhythm, each knowing the other"s needs. Trager thrusts, and his other body meets the thrusts. He reaches, and her hand is there. They come together (always, always, both o.r.g.a.s.ms triggered by the handler"s brain), and a bright red flush burns on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and earlobes. They kiss.
Afterwards, he talks to her, his love, his lady. You should always talk afterwards; he learned that long ago.
"You"re lucky," he tells her sometimes, and she snuggles up to him and plants tiny kisses all across his chest. "Very lucky. They lie to you out there, love. They teach you a silly shining dream and they tell you to believe and chase it and they tell you that for you, for everyone, there is someone. But it"s all wrong. The universe isn"t fair, it never has been, so why do they tell you so? You run after the phantom, and lose, and they tell you next time, but it"s all rot, all empty rot. n.o.body ever finds the dream at all, they just kid themselves, trick themselves so they can go on believing. It"s just a clutching lie that desperate people tell each other, hoping to convince themselves."
But then he can"t talk anymore, for her kisses have gone lower and lower, and now she takes him in her mouth. And Trager smiles at his love and gently strokes her hair.
Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the cruelest is the one called love.
Night They Missed the Horror Show.
Joe R. Lansdale.
"Night They Missed the Horror Show" was originally published in the 1988 anthology Silver Scream, edited by David Schow, from Dark Harvest Press. It later appeared in By Bizarre Hands, a collection of Lansdale"s short stories published by Avon Books, and in High Cotton: Selected Short Stories of Joe R. Lansdale, published in 2000 by Golden Gryphon Press.
"Night They Missed the Horror Show" won a Bram Stoker award for Best Short Story, 1988.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over 30 novels and numerous short story collections. His work has been filmed and adapted to comics. He is the editor or co-editor of a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, The British Fantasy Award, Seven Bram Stokers, The Grinzani Cavour Prize for literature, and numerous other awards. He lives in Nacogdoches with his wife and near his son and daughter.
For Lew Shiner, a story that doesn"t flinch If they"d gone to the drive-in like they"d planned, none of this would have happened. But Leonard didn"t like drive-ins when he didn"t have a date, and he"d heard about Night of the Living Dead, and he knew a n.i.g.g.e.r starred in it. He didn"t want to see no movie with a n.i.g.g.e.r star. n.i.g.g.e.rs chopped cotton, fixed flats, and pimped n.i.g.g.e.r girls, but he"d never heard of one that killed zombies. And he"d heard too that there was a white girl in the movie that let the n.i.g.g.e.r touch her, and that peeved him. Any white gal that would let a n.i.g.g.e.r touch her must be the lowest trash in the world. Probably from Hollywood, New York, or Waco, some G.o.d-forsaken place like that.
Now Steve McQueen would have been all right for zombie killing and girl handling. He would have been the ticket. But a n.i.g.g.e.r? No sir.
Boy, that Steve McQueen was one cool head. Way he said stuff in them pictures was so good you couldn"t help but think someone had written it down for him. He could sure think fast on his feet to come up with the things he said, and he had that real cool, mean look.
Leonard wished he could be Steve McQueen, or Paul Newman even. Someone like that always knew what to say, and he figured they got plenty of bush too. Certainly they didn"t get as bored as he did. He was so bored he felt as if he were going to die from it before the night was out. Bored, bored, bored. Just wasn"t nothing exciting about being in the Dairy Queen parking lot leaning on the front of his "64 Impala looking out at the highway. He figured maybe old crazy Harry who janitored at the high school might be right about them flying saucers. Harry was always seeing something. Bigfoot, six-legged weasels, all manner of things. But maybe he was right about the saucers. He"d said he"d seen one a couple nights back hovering over Mud Creek and it was shooting down these rays that looked like wet peppermint sticks. Leonard figured if Harry really had seen the saucers and the rays, then those rays were boredom rays. It would be a way for s.p.a.ce critters to get at earth folks, boring them to death. Getting melted down by heat rays would have been better. That was at least quick, but being bored to death was sort of like being nibbled to death by ducks.
Leonard continued looking at the highway, trying to imagine flying saucers and boredom rays, but he couldn"t keep his mind on it. He finally focused on something in the highway. A dead dog.
Not just a dead dog. But a DEAD DOG. The mutt had been hit by a semi at least, maybe several. It looked as if it had rained dog. There were pieces of that pooch all over the concrete and one leg was lying on the curbing on the opposite side, stuck up in such a way that it seemed to be waving h.e.l.lo. Doctor Frankenstein with a grant from Johns Hopkins and a.s.sistance from NASA couldn"t have put that sucker together again.
Leonard leaned over to his faithful, drunk companion, Billy-known among the gang as Farto, because he was fart-lighting champion of Mud Creek-and said, "See that dog there?"
Farto looked where Leonard was pointing. He hadn"t noticed the dog before, and he wasn"t nearly as casual about it as Leonard. The puzzle-piece hound brought back memories. It reminded him of a dog he"d had when he was thirteen. A big, fine German Shepherd that loved him better than his Mama.
Sonofab.i.t.c.h dog tangled its chain through and over a barbed wire fence somehow and hung itself. When Farto found the dog its tongue looked like a stuffed, black sock and he could see where its claws had just been able to sc.r.a.pe the ground, but not quite enough to get a toe hold.
It looked as if the dog had been scratching out some sort of a coded message in the dirt. When Farto told his old man about it later, crying as he did, his old man laughed and said, "Probably a G.o.dd.a.m.n suicide note."
Now, as he looked out at the highway, and his whiskey-laced c.o.ke collected warmly in his gut, he felt a tear form in his eyes. Last time he"d felt that sappy was when he"d won the fart-lighting championship with a four-inch burner that singed the hairs of his a.s.s and the gang awarded him with a pair of colored boxing shorts. Brown and yellow ones so he could wear them without having to change them too often.
So there they were, Leonard and Farto, parked outside the DQ, leaning on the hood of Leonard"s Impala, sipping c.o.ke and whiskey, feeling bored and blue and h.o.r.n.y, looking at a dead dog and having nothing to do but go to a show with a n.i.g.g.e.r starring in it. Which, to be up front, wouldn"t have been so bad if they"d had dates. Dates could make up for a lot of sins, or help make a few good ones, depending on one"s outlook.
But the night was criminal. Dates they didn"t have. Worse yet, wasn"t a girl in the entire high school would date them. Not even Marylou Flowers, and she had some kind of disease.
All this nagged Leonard something awful. He could see what the problem was with Farto. He was ugly. Had the kind of face that attracted flies. And though being fart-lighting champion of Mud Creek had a certain prestige among the gang, it lacked a certain something when it came to charming the gals.
But for the life of him, Leonard couldn"t figure his own problem. He was handsome, had some good clothes, and his car ran good when he didn"t buy that old cheap gas. He even had a few bucks in his jeans from breaking into washaterias. Yet his right arm had d.a.m.n near grown to the size of his thigh from all the whacking off he did. Last time he"d been out with a girl had been a month ago, and as he"d been out with her along with nine other guys, he wasn"t rightly sure he could call that a date. He wondered about it so much, he"d asked Farto if he thought it qualified as a date. Farto, who had been fifth in line, said he didn"t think so, but if Leonard wanted to call it one, wasn"t no skin off his back.
But Leonard didn"t want to call it a date. It just didn"t have the feel of one, lacked that something special. There was no romance to it.
True, Big Red had called him Honey when he put the mule in the barn, but she called everyone Honey-except Stoney. Stoney was Possum Sweets, and he was the one who talked her into wearing the grocery bag with the mouth and eyeholes. Stoney was like that. He could sweet talk the camel out from under a sand n.i.g.g.e.r. When he got through chatting Big Red down, she was plumb proud to wear that bag.
When finally it came his turn to do Big Red, Leonard had let her take the bag off as a gesture of goodwill. That was a mistake. He just hadn"t known a good thing when he had it. Stoney had had the right idea. The bag coming off spoiled everything. With it on, it was sort of like balling the Lone Hippo or some such thing, but with the bag off, you were absolutely certain what you were getting, and it wasn"t pretty.
Even closing his eyes hadn"t helped. He found that the ugliness of that face had branded itself on the back of his eyeb.a.l.l.s. He couldn"t even imagine the sack back over her head. All he could think about was that puffy, too-painted face with the sort of bad complexion that began at the bone.
He"d gotten so disappointed, he"d had to fake an o.r.g.a.s.m and get off before his hooter shriveled up and his Trojan fell off and was lost in the vacuum.
Thinking back on it, Leonard sighed. It would certainly be nice for a change to go with a girl that didn"t pull the train or have a hole between her legs that looked like a manhole cover ought to be on it. Sometimes he wished he could be like Farto, who was as happy as if he had good sense. Anything thrilled him. Give him a can of Wolf Brand Chili, a big moon pie, c.o.ke and whiskey and he could spend the rest of his life f.u.c.king Big Red and lighting the gas out of his a.s.shole.
G.o.d, but this was no way to live. No women and no fun. Bored, bored, bored. Leonard found himself looking overhead for s.p.a.ceships and peppermint-colored boredom rays, but he saw only a few moths fluttering drunkenly through the beams of the DQ"s lights.
Lowering his eyes back to the highway and the dog, Leonard had a sudden flash. "Why don"t we get the chain out of the back and hook it up to Rex there? Take him for a ride?"
"You mean drag his dead a.s.s around?" Farto asked.
Leonard nodded.
"Beats stepping on a tack," Farto said.
They drove the Impala into the middle of the highway at a safe moment and got out for a look. Up close the mutt was a lot worse. Its innards had been mashed out of its mouth and a.s.shole and it stunk something awful. The dog was wearing a thick, metal-studded collar and they fastened one end of their fifteen-foot chain to that and the other to the rear b.u.mper.
Bob, the Dairy Queen manager, noticed them through the window, came outside and yelled, "What are you f.u.c.king morons doing?"
"Taking this doggie to the vet," Leonard said. "We think this sumb.i.t.c.h looks a might peeked. He may have been hit by a car."
"That"s so f.u.c.king funny I"m about to p.i.s.s myself," Bob said.
"Old folks have that problem," Leonard said.
Leonard got behind the wheel and Farto climbed in on the pa.s.senger side. They maneuvered the car and dog around and out of the path of a tractor-trailer truck just in time. As they drove off, Bob screamed after them, "I hope you two no-d.i.c.ks wrap that Chevy piece of s.h.i.t around a G.o.dd.a.m.n pole."
As they roared along, parts of the dog, like crumbs from a flaky loaf of bread, came off. A tooth here. Some hair there. A string of guts. A dew claw. And some unidentifiable pink stuff. The metal-studded collar and chain threw up sparks now and then like fiery crickets. Finally they hit seventy-five and the dog was swinging wider and wider on the chain, like it was looking for an opportunity to pa.s.s.
Farto poured him and Leonard up c.o.kes and whiskey as they drove along. He handed Leonard his paper cup and Leonard knocked it back, a lot happier now than he had been a moment ago. Maybe this night wasn"t going to turn out so bad after all.
They drove by a crowd at the side of the road, a tan station wagon and a wreck of a Ford up on a jack. At a glance they could see that there was a n.i.g.g.e.r in the middle of the crowd and he wasn"t witnessing to the white boys. He was hopping around like a pig with a hotshot up his a.s.s, trying to find a break in the white boys so he could make a run for it. But there wasn"t any break to be found and there were too many to fight. Nine white boys were knocking him around like he was a pinball and they were a malicious machine.
"Ain"t that one of our n.i.g.g.e.rs?" Farto asked. "And ain"t that some of the White Tree football players that"s trying to kill him?"
"Scott," Leonard said, and the name was dogs.h.i.t in his mouth. It had been Scott who had outdone him for the position of quarterback on the team. That d.a.m.n jig could put together a play more tangled than a can of fishing worms, but it d.a.m.n near always worked. And he could run like a spotted-a.s.s ape.
As they pa.s.sed, Farto said, "We"ll read about him tomorrow in the papers."
But Leonard drove only a short way before slamming on the brakes and whipping the Impala around. Rex swung way out and clipped off some tall, dried sunflowers at the edge of the road like a scythe.
"We gonna go back and watch?" Farto asked. "I don"t think them White Tree boys would bother us none if that"s all we was gonna do, watch."
"He may be a n.i.g.g.e.r," Leonard said, not liking himself, "but he"s our n.i.g.g.e.r and we can"t let them do that. They kill him, they"ll beat us in football."
Farto saw the truth of this immediately. "d.a.m.n right. They can"t do that to our n.i.g.g.e.r."
Leonard crossed the road again and went straight for the White Tree boys, hit down hard on the horn. The White Tree boys abandoned beating their prey and jumped in all directions. Bullfrogs couldn"t have done any better.
Scott stood startled and weak where he was, his knees bent in and touching one another, his eyes as big as pizza pans. He had never noticed how big grillwork was. It looked like teeth there in the night and the headlights looked like eyes. He felt like a stupid fish about to be eaten by a shark.
Leonard braked hard, but off the highway in the dirt it wasn"t enough to keep from b.u.mping Scott, sending him flying over the hood and against the gla.s.s where his face mashed to it then rolled away, his shirt snagging one of the windshield wipers and pulling it off.
Leonard opened the car door and called to Scott who lay on the ground, "It"s now or never."
A White Tree boy made for the car, and Leonard pulled the taped hammer handle out from beneath the seat and stepped out of the car and hit him with it. The White Tree boy went down to his knees and said something that sounded like French but wasn"t. Leonard grabbed Scott by the back of the shirt and pulled him up and guided him around and threw him into the open door. Scott scrambled over the front seat and into the back. Leonard threw the hammer handle at one of the White Tree boys and stepped back, whirled into the car behind the wheel. He put the car in gear again and stepped on the gas. The Impala lurched forward, and with one hand on the door Leonard flipped it wider and clipped a White Tree boy with it as if he were flexing a wing. The car b.u.mped back on the highway and the chain swung out and Rex cut the feet out from under two White Tree boys as neatly as he had taken down the dried sunflowers.
Leonard looked in his rear-view mirror and saw two White Tree boys carrying the one he had clubbed with the hammer handle to the station wagon. The others he and the dog had knocked down were getting up. One had kicked the jack out from under Scott"s car and was using it to smash the headlights and windshield.
"Hope you got insurance on that thing," Leonard said.
"I borrowed it," Scott said, peeling the windshield wiper out of his T-shirt. "Here, you might want this." He dropped the wiper over the seat and between Leonard and Farto.
"That"s a borrowed car?" Farto said. "That"s worse."
"Nah," Scott said. "Owner don"t know I borrowed it. I"d have had that flat changed if that sucker had had him a spare tire, but I got back there and wasn"t nothing but the rim, man. Say, thanks for not letting me get killed, else we couldn"t have run that ole pig together no more. Course, you almost run over me. My chest hurts."
Leonard checked the rear-view again. The White Tree boys were coming fast. "You complaining?" Leonard said.
"Nah," Scott said, and turned to look through the back gla.s.s. He could see the dog swinging in short arcs and pieces of it going wide and far. "Hope you didn"t go off and forget your dog tied to the b.u.mper."
"G.o.dd.a.m.n," said Farto, "and him registered too."
"This ain"t so funny," Leonard said. "Them White Tree boys are gaining."
"Well speed it up," Scott said.
Leonard gnashed his teeth. "I could always get rid of some excess baggage, you know."
"Throwing that windshield wiper out ain"t gonna help," Scott said.
Leonard looked in his mirror and saw the grinning n.i.g.g.e.r in the back seat. Nothing worse than a comic c.o.o.n. He didn"t even look grateful. Leonard had a sudden horrid vision of being overtaken by the White Tree boys. What if he were killed with the n.i.g.g.e.r? Getting killed was bad enough, but what if tomorrow they found him in a ditch with Farto and the n.i.g.g.e.r? Or maybe them White Tree boys would make him do something awful with the n.i.g.g.e.r before they killed them. Like making him suck the n.i.g.g.e.r"s d.i.c.k or some such thing. Leonard held his foot all the way to the floor; as they pa.s.sed the Dairy Queen he took a hard left and the car just made it and Rex swung out and slammed a light pole then popped back in line behind them.
The White Tree boys couldn"t make the corner in the station wagon and they didn"t even try. They screeched into a car lot down a piece, turned around and came back. By that time the tail lights of the Impala were moving away from them rapidly, looking like two inflamed hemorrhoids in a dark a.s.shole.
"Take the next right coming up," Scott said, "then you"ll see a little road off to the left. Kill your lights and take that."
Leonard hated taking orders from Scott on the field, but this was worse. Insulting. Still, Scott called good plays on the field, and the habit of following instructions from the quarterback died hard. Leonard made the right and Rex made it with them after taking a dip in a water-filled bar ditch.
Leonard saw the little road and killed his lights and took it. It carried them down between several rows of large tin storage buildings, and Leonard pulled between two of them and drove down a little alley lined with more. He stopped the car and they waited and listened. After about five minutes, Farto said, "I think we skunked those father rapers."
"Ain"t we a team?" Scott said.
In spite of himself, Leonard felt good. It was like when the n.i.g.g.e.r called a play that worked and they were all patting each other on the a.s.s and not minding what color the other was because they were just creatures in football suits.
"Let"s have a drink," Leonard said.
Farto got a paper cup off the floorboard for Scott and poured him up some warm c.o.ke and whiskey. Last time they had gone to Longview, he had peed in that paper cup so they wouldn"t have to stop, but that had long since been poured out, and besides, it was for a n.i.g.g.e.r. He poured Leonard and himself drinks in their same cups.
Scott took a sip and said, "s.h.i.t, man, that tastes kind of rank."
"Like p.i.s.s," Farto said.
Leonard held up his cup. "To the Mud Creek Wildcats and f.u.c.k them White Tree boys."
"You f.u.c.k "em," Scott said. They touched their cups, and at that moment the car filled with light.
Cups upraised, the Three Musketeers turned blinking toward it. The light was coming from an open storage-building door and there was a fat man standing in the center of the glow like a bloated fly on a lemon wedge. Behind him was a big screen made of a sheet and there was some kind of movie playing on it. And though the light was bright and fading out the movie, Leonard, who was in the best position to see, got a look at it. What he could make out looked like a gal down on her knees sucking this fat guy"s d.i.c.k (the man was visible only from the belly down) and the guy had a short, black revolver pressed to her forehead. She pulled her mouth off of him for an instant and the man came in her face then fired the revolver. The woman"s head snapped out of frame and the sheet seemed to drip blood, like dark condensation on a windowpane. Then Leonard couldn"t see anymore because another man had appeared in the doorway, and like the first he was fat. Both looked like huge bowling b.a.l.l.s that had been set on top of shoes. More men appeared behind these two, but one of the fat men turned and held up his hand and the others moved out of sight. The two fat guys stepped outside and one pulled the door almost shut, except for a thin band of light that fell across the front seat of the Impala.
Fat Man Number One went over to the car and opened Farto"s door and said, "You f.u.c.ks and the n.i.g.g.e.r get out." It was the voice of doom. They had only thought the White Tree boys were dangerous. They realized now they had been kidding themselves. This was the real article. This guy would have eaten the hammer handle and s.h.i.t a two-by-four.