Murder, She Did

by Gillian Roberts

  “Harry,” she whispered. “Your mouth is open. You’re drooling.”

  He tried to close it.

  “I guess it would be hard to remember one girl out of that crowd of them you had.” She smiled down at him and he felt the tension ease.

  There had been so many girls sticking to him as if he were made of Velcro. Such a good time while it lasted. He wondered where his old letter sweater was, whether it still fit him, then remembered he was supposed to be trying to remember Leigh. But the girls were one big blur of sweet-smelling hair, firm breasts, lips, assorted parts.

  She sat down so close to him that her perfume increased his dizziness. “Poor baby,” she crooned. “You’re woozy. Rest your head in my lap.”

  She stroked his thinning hair as if she loved every strand. Beneath her hand, his head swirled and popped, as the dinner wine and spices fermented. Maybe she wasn’t such a bitch. He couldn’t get a fix on her. Maybe it was good she liked the sound of her own voice too much. He needed time. She’d been at State with him. He rummaged again through his memories of all those girls, those legs and arms and shiny hair. Which one had been Leigh? He couldn’t remember any of them. Female faces had a way of blurring away by the next morning, let alone after decades.

  “Innasor-sor-sorority?” he said in a long hiss.

  She shook her head. “I was so shy. A loner. Until Harry Towers invited me to his fraternity party and everything was magically changed.”

  Which party? No way to separate out those drunken, sweaty, wonderful nights. God, but those guys were fun. So many laughs. Best years of his life.

  “Except that I never saw you again,” Leigh said.

  “Musta been outta my mind,” he gasped chivalrously. Maybe it would appease her.

  She chuckled softly. “Wish you hadn’t been. You can’t imagine what a difference it would have made to me if you’d asked me out again.”

  So he hadn’t been the most steady guy. That’s how he was, who he was. But he’d never been a fool, so why hadn’t he seen as much of this one as possible? Had something happened? Damn but the memory slate was clean. Not even a chalk smear on it. He tried to sit up, to face her, to say something, but he only made it halfway.

  Abruptly, she stood. He flopped down on the cushions, then grabbed the back of the sofa and tried to pull into a sitting position.

  She was going into the bedroom. Maybe talking time was over, just like that. Maybe they weren’t going to have to deal with ancient history and guessing games, after all. He staggered to his feet.

  “No. Stay,” she called out. “I need something.”

  Safe sex. Sure. Okay. His legs wobbled and he couldn’t stop swaying. He sank back into the sofa.

  She returned and handed him a ragged-edged snapshot.

  “Whadoss…” He gave up the effort asking what this had to do with anything.

  “It’s part of the game,” she said. “The last clue.”

  He focused his eyes with difficulty. When he had managed the feat, he regretted the effort. The girl in the photograph had a moonshaped face with dark hair pulled back severely so that her ears stuck out like flaps. Sunlight bounced off her glasses, emphasizing the shadows cast by her enormous nose, her chubby cheeks, and her collection of chins. For no reason Harry could think of, she was smiling, revealing teeth that gaped like pickets on a wobbly fence. A real loser. A dog. A pig. Harry let the picture drop onto the coffee table.

  “Too bad,” she said. “We’re out of time. Ladies and gentlemen, our contestant has forfeited the game. But don’t turn off that set—we’ve got a few surprises left! It’s not over till it’s over!” She loomed above him, a giantess. Then she pushed the picture back in front of him. “Harry Towers, meet Leigh Endicott,” she said.

  “Wha?” He had an overwhelming sense of wrongness. His mouth was painfully dry. He reached toward the coffee, but his fingers weren’t working properly. He sat, arms hanging loose, staring at the snapshot on the table.

  “How could you not recognize me?” Her voice was sweet and coquettish. “The only changes have been time—oh, and a few superficial adjustments, like a diet, a nose job, contact lenses, ear pinning, chin enlarging, straightening and capping the teeth and bleaching the hair. Nothing compared to what’s possible nowadays. But that was a long time ago.”

  A whoosh came out of the hollowness inside Harry. He’d taken her—that photo girl—to a party. He felt chilly then hot. Something wanted to be remembered. Something hovered just above his head, ready to fall.

  “I left school to earn the money for the changes,” she said. “Took me four years, same as my degree would have.” She walked toward the window. “Only thing is, at the end I was still the same girl inside, but who cares about that, right?”

  He put up his hand like a traffic cop, to stop her words from falling on his skull. He was cold again, afraid, needed to explain and defend himself, as if he were on trial, but when he opened his mouth, he gagged. When was it? Why? Did he really remember certain times…? Why did Duffy’s Desperates suddenly stampede into his mind in a great cloud of dust?

  “Your party,” she said. “My first date on campus. My first date, actually. I had such a good time. Every little girl knows the story of Cinderella. Why shouldn’t it happen to all of us? And Prince Charming had nothing on you, Harry. But when I left the room to powder my oversized nose, I overheard two of your darling fraternity brothers. Very drunk and very happy fraternity brothers. They were laughing so much, I could barely make out the joke, except that they kept repeating one particular word. This is the last question in the game, Harry. Do you know the word?

  His heart was going to explode. Party—ugly girl. Laughing. It all connected, turned fiery and molten. Pig. Pig Party. Had forgotten all about them. Probably didn’t have them anymore. Defunct, part of the world of the dinosaurs, but back then…

  “Weren’t supposed to know,” he said. “Just a…pr—prank. Fun. No harm meant.”

  She loomed over him, stony and enormous. A warrior woman.

  “F’give,” he begged. “Boys will be…” What? What will boys be? What did he mean? Now or then—what? His mind was falling apart, great chunks slopping like mud into heaps. His hands were damp and cold. He tried to smile, although his mouth had become enormous, like a clown’s, and rubbery.

  “Stop groveling,” she said. “There’s no point. Or do you still think we’re here because I yearn for you?” She laughed harshly but with real amusement.

  He was freezing. His hands trembled uncontrollably, even while they lay in place.

  She waved her arm at her imaginary audience, somewhere outside the windows. “The game is over, folks. Over,” she said. Then she turned back to Harry. “You thought you’d caught a dream tonight, didn’t you? Maybe I’d make up for everybody else’s indifference, would see past the sad slick of failure you wear like skin, past your dead-end job, your saggy gut, your stupid life, your smell of loneliness. You wanted me to find the real you—the special person inside, didn’t you?”

  Her voice was low and cool, only distantly interested in him, as if he were a specimen. He wished she would scream, maybe blot out the deafening sound of his own pulse.

  “I understand it all, Harry,” she said, “because that’s what I wanted, what I believed, too, the night you asked me to your party. And get this: Neither of us—not me years ago, not you tonight—understood one damn thing that was going on.”

  His head ached as if she’d physically beaten him.

  “I found out accidentally,” she said. “You’re going to find out very deliberately. That’s the only difference.” She walked away. “Pig party,” she said. “Where all you perfect, self-important fraternity jackasses could observe and be amused by a freak show of imperfect but oblivious females. How side-splitting of us to think we were actual dates, actual lovable, desirable humans! What fun it must have been to wink and poke each other in the ribs, award the man who’d found the absolute worst, laugh through the night about
us. It’s quite the experience, Harry, finding out you’re a laughing matter. Changes a person forever.”

  He had to get the hell out of here, but his limbs were boneless; he couldn’t stand.

  “Of course, it was also a learning experience,” she said. “A chance to grow. For years now I’ve wanted you to share it, have the same chance, but I don’t belong to a fraternity and besides, I’d like to think there aren’t any more pig parties. So I had to find a way to return the favor personally.” She came very close, kneeled in front of him.

  A wave of nausea engulfed him. He swallowed hard and struggled to get to his feet.

  “You’re not going anywhere!” she snapped, pushing him back in place with one hand. “Do you really think it’s the wine, or a few peppers making you feel so rotten? Aren’t you worried?”

  His burning eyes opened wide. “Poison?” he gasped.

  She smiled. “It’s a possibility, isn’t it? I’ve had years to prepare for tonight. But why be concerned? This is a party, Harry. Your very own pig party. In fact, my dear, you are the party—the pig’s party.”

  He nearly wept from the sawtooth edge of screams slicing through his mind.

  “The pigs behind the house, remember? Poor babies, they can’t enjoy the miracles of cosmetic surgery. They’re stuck as pigs forever, so surely they’re entitled to a little piggy treat now and then. You’ll give them such pleasure.”

  “Hhhhh?”

  “How?” Her voice traveled from a great distance and echoed through him, down to his fingertips. “They eat almost anything, of course. But you—you’ll be the best dish they ever had. Of course, we won’t let them have all of you, will we? Nobody’s ever had that. We’ll do it bit by bit. Start with gourmet tidbits. The, uh, choice cuts, shall we say? The sought-after, prized, yummy parts.”

  Tears dribbled down his face.

  “You know what they call pig food? Slops, Harry. How appropriate.”

  He heard dreadful guttural sounds.

  “Be still,” she said. “And your nose is running. How disgusting.”

  He was small and lost and terrified, poisoned and paralyzed on a velvet sofa, about to be butchered, to have pigs eat his—pigs swallow his—

  He summoned all of his strength, determined to get free. But his knees buckled and he dropped to the floor. “Please,” he said between sobs, “was long ago…”

  “Not long enough,” she said. “I realized that two weeks ago when I saw you downtown. My jolt of pain wasn’t old or faded. Some things are forever. You killed a part of me that night. However plain or fat or shy I was, I had an innocent pride and dignity, and you took it away. You turned me into a pig.”

  He howled at the top of his lungs.

  “Hush. Nobody can hear,” she reminded him. “Nobody knows you’re here. For that matter, nobody knows I’m here. This isn’t really my house. It’s a friend’s, and he’s away. So is the caretaker.” She walked around him. “And for the record, my name isn’t Leigh Endicott. Anyway, we’re both going to simply disappear from here. But you’ll do it bit by bit. She paused in an exaggerated pose of thought. “Or should we say bite by bite?” she asked with a grin.

  He crawled, crying, and moved an inch. No more.

  “Why struggle so?” she said. “You are, quite literally, dead meat. On the other hand, you’re about to be reborn, to give of yourself at last, to become whole—swine, inside and out.”

  The door was impossibly far away. He sprawled, numb and exhausted, gasping as the dark closed in. He could feel himself begin to die at the edges. His fingers were already gone, and his feet.

  Through static and sputters and whirs in his brain, he heard her move around, run water, open cabinets.

  “All clean now,” she said. “Not a trace.” She leaned down and pulled up one of his eyelids. “Tsk, tsk,” she said. “Look what’s become of the big, bad wolf.”

  He dissolved into a shapeless, quivering stain on the floor. All his mind could see was a pig, heavy and bloated, pushing its hideous, hair snout into its trough, into the slops, grunting with pleasure as it ate…him.

  *

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. He gasped, ran his own hands over his body once, then twice. Everything was there. He was intact and whole! He burst into tears.

  “Damn drunk. Probably a junkie,” a voice said. “Breaks in to use the place as a toilet. Jesus.” Harry was pulled to his feet by men with badges. Police.

  “Listen, I—” His head hurt.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” the taller man began. He droned through his memorized piece. Harry couldn’t believe it. They searched him and looked disappointed when they found nothing. “Passed out before you could take anything,” the taller one said.

  “But I wasn’t—” They weren’t interested. He told them about Leigh. They ignored him. He found out that an anonymous caller—female—had alerted the police to a prowler on the farm. He told them they had it all wrong, that it was her, Leigh. Somebody who’d picked him up, taken him here, drugged him, smashed the window so it’d look like he’d broken in and called them, setting him up. He explained it to them, to the lawyer they appointed, to the psychiatrist, to the technician who analyzed the drugs in his bloodstream—street drugs they were, nothing fancy or traceable, damn the woman. He explained it to the judge. Nobody listened or believed or cared.

  He stopped explaining. He endured the small cell until they released him. He paid for the broken window and the soiled rug. Paid the fine for trespassing, for breaking and entering. Paid through the nose for a taxi back to the city and his apartment.

  In his mailbox, the only personal mail was a heart-shaped card with a picture of two enormous pigs nuzzling each other.

  He burned it.

  From that day on, Harry Towers’ stoop became more pronounced. He no longer combed his hair over his bald spot or sucked in his stomach. He stayed home nights, watching television alone.

  And he never ate bacon or pork chops or ham steaks, for they, along with many other former delights, tasted like ashes in his mouth.