The Collection

by Bentley Little

  Himself.

  He pushed aside the grape vines and stepped back to get a better view, to gain perspective. Seen from this angle, it was obvious whom the rendering was supposed to represent. Distance flattened out the jagged veerings of the crayon which occurred at each mortared juncture of brick, lent sub­stance to the rough hesitations of line. He was looking at his own face simplified into caricature and magnified fivefold. The receding hairline, the bushy mustache, the thin lips: these were the observations of an adult translated into the artistic language of a child.

  Barbara had drawn this picture.

  He noticed dirt spots on the brick where mudballs had obviously been thrown at his face.

  The question nagged at him: Why? Why had she done all of this?

  He dropped to his hands and knees, crawled through the garden, fueled now by his own obsession. There was more here. He knew it. And he would find it if he just kept look­ing.

  He didn't have to look long.

  He stopped crawling and stared at the cat's paw protrud­ing from the well-worked ground beneath the largest tomato plant. The paw and its connected portion of leg were pointed straight up, deliberately positioned. Dried blackened blood had seeped into the gray fur from between the closed curled toes.

  Maybe Monteith was the name of the cat, Andrew thought. Maybe she accidentally killed a neighbor's cat and had guiltily buried the animal out here to hide the evidence.

  But that wasn't like Barbara. Not the Barbara he knew. If she'd accidentally killed a pet, she would have immediately gone to the owner and explained exactly what had hap­pened.

  Perhaps, he thought, she had deliberately killed the ani­mal in order to provide nutrients for her soil, for her plants. Or as part of a ritual sacrifice to some witch's earth deity in order to ensure the health of her crop.

  He thought of the woodchuck in the garage.

  He wondered if there were dead animals hanging in other garages on the street, if pets were buried in other back yards. Perhaps the neighborhood wives took turns meeting at each others' houses while their husbands were gone, performing dark and unnatural acts together. Perhaps that was where Barbara was right now.

  Such are the dreams of the everyday housewife.

  The tune to the old Glen Campbell song ran through his head, and he suddenly felt like laughing.

  An everyday housewife who gave up the good life for me.

  The laughter stopped before it reached his mouth. What if Monteith wasn't the name of an animal at all but the name of a child? What if she had killed and sacrificed a child and had buried the body under the dirt of the garden? If he dug down, below the cat's paw, would he find hands and feet, fingers and toes?

  He did not want to know more, he decided. He'd already learned enough. He stood up, wiped his hands on his pants, and began walking back across the yard toward the house.

  What would he do when he saw her? Confront her? Sug­gest that she seek help? Try to find out about her feelings, about why she was doing what she was doing?

  Would she look the same to him, he wondered, or had the woodchuck and the snails and the cat and everything else permanently altered the way in which he viewed her? Would he now see insanity behind what would have been perfectly normal eyes, a madwoman beneath the calm exterior?

  He didn't know.

  It was partially his fault. Why the hell had he come home early? If he had just come home at the normal time, or if Barbara, damn her, had just been home, he never would have found all this. Life would have just continued on as normal.

  The question was: Did his newfound knowledge auto­matically mean that he gave up his right to happiness with Barbara? Part of him said no. So what if she sacrificed ani­mals? She had, in all probability, been doing that for years without his knowledge, and they'd had what he'd always considered a good life. Unless she was unhappy, unless this was all part of some twisted way she was trying to exorcise her negative feelings about their marriage, couldn't he ig­nore what he had learned and continue on as normal?

  Monteith.

  It was Monteith he couldn't live with. He could live with the animals, with the fetishes, with the graffiti. If Monteith was some god or demon she worshiped, he could live with that. But the idea that she was seeing another man behind his back, that Monteith was a lover, that he couldn't abide.

  Perhaps she was with Monteith now, both of them naked in some sleazy motel room, Barbara screaming wildly, pas­sionately.

  But why couldn't he live with that? If she had been doing this for years and it had not affected their relationship until now, why couldn't he just pretend as though he didn't know and continue on as usual? He could do it. It was not out of the question. He would just put it out of his mind, make sure that he did not come home early anymore without first checking with Barbara.

  He walked into the house through the garage, walked back to the kitchen, sat down at the table.

  He stared at the piece of stationery, but did not pick it up.

  Ten minutes later, he heard the sound of a key in the latch. He looked up as Barbara walked in.

  Her gaze flitted from his face to the paper and quickly back again.

  Was that worry he saw on her features?

  "I felt sick," he said dully. "I came home early."

  She smiled at him, and the smile was genuine, all tiace of worry gone—if it had been there at all. She walked over to him, patted his head with one hand, picked up the stationery with the other. She gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "Other than that, how was your day?"

  He looked at her, thought for a moment, forced himself to smile back. "Fine," he said slowly. "Everything was fine."

  Pillow Talk

  When my wife and I were dating, we used to go to this bargain theater and basically see whatever movie hap­pened to be playing that week. One night we sat in front of two young women who were commiserating with each other about their nonexistent love lives. Just before the movie started, one of the young women said that sometimes at night she fell asleep hugging her pillow. It was an odd image, and I found myself wondering if a man would ever do such a thing.

  And then I thought, what if a man did?

  And what if the pillow hugged him back?

  * * *

  When my pillow first started talking to me, I ignored it. I only heard it speaking when I drifted into sleep, and I put it down to the inevitable merging of the material world and the dream world which occurs when the waking mind relin­quishes its hold on consciousness.

  But when I woke up one morning and felt the pillow pulsing beneath my head, I knew something was wrong.

  I jumped out of bed, simultaneously throwing the pillow away from me. It landed flat on the floor next to my dresser and was perfectly still. I bent down closely to peer at it but could see nothing out of the ordinary. I touched it with my foot, prodding it, half afraid it would leap up at me and at­tack, but there was no movement at all. I thought, perhaps, that I had dreamed the whole thing.

  Then I heard the pillow speak.

  It was a soft voice, whispery and seductive, neither male nor female. At first, it might sound like the rustling of dry sheets on a quiet morning or the gentle stirring of clean linen on a clothesline. But those soft sounds formed human words, turned those words into sentences, used those sen­tences to express thoughts.

  "I want you," the soft voice said.

  I ran from the room in a blind panic, not stopping until I was outside the apartment. I was wearing nothing but my underwear, but I didn't care. I was breathing heavily, not from the exertion of running, but from fear. I did not feel, as people often do in books or movies, that I was going mad. I knew I was sane. I knew the pillow had actually spo­ken to me.

  I shivered as I recalled the whispery sound of those words. I want you. I had no idea what that meant. For all I knew, the pillow planned to kill me. But I perceived no threat in the words. Instead, I sensed an undercurrent of erotic longing.

  And that scared me even more.
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  I heard the door to the next apartment open. A little girl came out to get the newspaper. She looked at me and gig­gled, averting her eyes. I forced myself to gather my courage and go back into the apartment. I looked around carefully, afraid that the pillow was hiding behind a door or a couch, but it was nowhere to be seen. I crept down the hall to the bedroom. It was still lying on the floor next to my dresser. I slammed shut the bedroom door, grabbed some dirty clothes out of the hamper in the bathroom, put them on and left.

  It was after twelve noon before I was brave enough to re­turn to the apartment. Even in the harsh heat of midday, my fears did not seem stupid or childish. The pulse of that pil­low beneath me, the horror of that soft voice was still very real, and I came back to my apartment with a newly charged pitchfork and a large plastic bag.

  The pillow was still lying on the floor.

  Had it moved?

  I couldn't be sure, so I stabbed it with the pitchfork and tossed it into the bag, using a wire twist tie to seal the open­ing.

  Inside the bag, the pillow jumped.

  I fell back, shocked, though I had been preparing myself for exactly that. In a series of short leaps, the plastic sack moved across the floor. Fighting down the dread that was building within me and threatening to take over, concentrat­ing on my anger and trying to nurture my aggressive feel­ings, I grabbed the squirming plastic bag and took it outside.

  The second I crossed the threshold, the pillow stopped fighting me. The movement died. I did not stop to ponder the reason for this sudden good luck, I simply ran to my car, opened the trunk, and threw in the bag. I drove to the dump, still keyed up, and was gratified to see that a pile of wood and leaves was in the process of being burned. Taking the bag out of the trunk, I threw it on the fire, not daring to move until I saw the greenish black plastic sizzle and evaporate, until I saw the pillow inside blacken and wither and burn.

  I had expected to feel relieved, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from my shoulders, but the anxiety I'd been ex­periencing stayed with me. I felt no joy after the pillow had been destroyed; I felt no freedom. My dread became less im­mediate, but it was still there. The pillow was gone, but it had won its war. It had done its job. I drove home feeling frustrated.

  Before going to bed, I took a spare pillow from the hall closet—the pillow guests use when they sleep on the couch. I was still nervous, tense, but the sight of the new pillow made me smile. I took off my clothes, turned down the blan­ket, and got into bed. The pillow felt soft and comforting, re­assuring in its ordinariness. My body was dog-tired, but I'd expected to have trouble falling asleep, afraid that my over­taxed and overactive brain would keep me up all night. My mind, however, was tired as well from the day's exertions, and I fell almost instantly into a deep, dreamless slumber.

  I awoke to the sound of the pillow whispering in my ear. "Take me," it said, and there was no mistaking the intent be­hind that statement.

  "Take me," it whispered again.

  I'd been sleeping with one hand under the pillow, which in some grotesque way could have been considered a posi­tion of perverse embrace. My mouth was open, drooling onto the pillow cover, and in the second before I leapt out of bed, I felt the cloth press upward against my mouth.

  As if to kiss me.

  I spent the rest of the night sleeping outside, in my clothes, on the stoop.

  In the morning, I was angry. My fear had turned to fury, as fear will do after a suitable gestation period. I refused to be intimidated by whispering voices, I refused to let squares of padded cloth rule my life. I boldly went inside, closed the bedroom door, showered, shaved, and made breakfast.

  After I ate, I took every piece of linen in the house and threw it into the Dumpster outside the apartment complex. None of it fought me. None of it even moved. I would have taken the linen to the dump but I was too angry. I refused to have my life dictated by inanimate objects, and I refused to devote anymore time to this ludicrous pursuit. I threw the sheets and pillows and bedspreads into the blue metal con­tainer, then afterward, in a gesture of supreme disgust, I emptied my garbage on top of the linen.

  "Eat shit," I said.

  And this time I really did feel good. The dread, the ten­sion, the nervousness left me and was replaced by a sense of optimistic finality. The horror was over.

  I slept that night on a bare bed, with no pillow, no covers. And the feeling was nice.

  In the morning, after breakfast, I went outside. I'd been intending to stop by, see a couple of friends, maybe catch a movie, but the sight that greeted me on the apartment stoop stopped me cold.

  A trail of sheets and pillowcases, covers and comforters led from behind the building, where the Dumpster was lo­cated, to my door. On my doorstep, leaning upright, as if they'd been trying to get inside, were three pillows.

  It wasn't the pillows, I realized. It was the apartment. There was a spirit in the apartment, or a demon, which ani­mated the linen. Factory-made cloth in and of itself could not be malevolent, could not be alive. Something else was doing this.

  I took only my wallet, leaving everything else, afraid even my clothes could be contaminated, and spent the morn­ing looking for a motel. I found one close to the library, and I spent the afternoon among the stacks of books, reading everything I could about poltergeists and TK and the super­natural.

  I ate alone in the coffee shop across the street from the motel, staring through the plate glass window next to my table at the black square window of my room. I thought of white sheets climbing up the cold glass, shutting in the room from the outside world, and I shivered. Maybe I would spend the night in the car.

  But no. I was being paranoid. There was no way the ... whatever it was ... could track me there.

  It was dark when I returned to my room, and even in the antiseptic light of the motel lamp, the two long pillows on the bed appeared somewhat threatening. "Better safe than sorry," I mumbled to myself. And I threw the pillows in the bathroom and closed the door.

  In my dream, a gorgeous woman, the most perfect I'd ever seen, offered me her body. I hemmed and hawed, nerv­ous, not believing that such a woman would desire me, but she pushed me onto my back and began unbuttoning my shirt. She unbuckled my pants, pulled them down, then slipped out of her own clothes, revealing a body surpassing even the high expectations generated by her beautiful face and covered figure. She lowered herself onto me, kissing me, pressing against me, moaning with passion, promising pleasure. It was the most realistic dream I'd ever had, and definitely the most arousing. I awoke on the brink of or­gasm, feeling as though I was still inside her, feeling her still-thrusting her hips with me.

  And I saw the pillow pushing rhythmically against my crotch.

  In one instant, my glance took in the open bathroom door, the pillow pulsing between my legs and the other pil­low moving up the bed toward my face. I was too confused to react spontaneously. I knew the pillows were having their way with me, but in my sleepbound mind I saw the gorgeous face and figure of my dream lover.

  I came, ejaculating heavily into the pillow, which sud­denly increased its movement. I threw the pillow off me, and it landed on the carpet, glinting wetly in the diffused light from the bathroom. I grabbed the other pillow and heaved it against the wall.

  I was breathing heavily, both with panic and with the ex­ertion of my sexual activity. Other than my breathing, the room was silent.

  I could hear the pillow perfectly.

  "Good," it whispered, its seductive voice sounding sated. "So good."

  Sickened, appalled by what had just transpired, feeling both guilty and victimized, I put on my pants and dashed out of the room to my car. I locked the doors and sat unmoving in the dark, listening to my own breathing and the sound of my heart, trying to stop my hands from shaking.

  Good.

  So good.

  The clock in my car said it was twelve thirty. I was tired, but I could not sleep. I stayed there, unmoving, wide-awake, until dawn. At a little pa
st three, a square white shape inched its way up the side of the motel room window. Moonlight glinted off my semen, and I felt like vomiting.

  I wanted to kill the pillow.

  But how can you kill a piece of cloth filled with stuffing?

  My vacation was almost over, and I realized that I'd have to return to work in three days. Where would I live? How could I live, knowing that whenever I tried to sleep, my pil­lows would try to attack me?

  Have sex with me.

  Kill me.

  Rape me.

  I knew, deep down, that the pillows meant to do me no physical harm. But what they did want to do was so terrify­ing, so perversely alien, that I could not think about it. I could not handle it. So I stared at the window and tried to figure out my next move. The rational ideas I discarded al­most immediately. Rationality was not a legitimate defense against the irrational. What was next? An exorcist? Spiritu­alist? Faith healer?

  When dawn arrived and the coffee shop opened up across the street, I went in for some breakfast. I ordered hash browns and eggs with orange juice. I stared at my plate after the waitress brought it, and I could think of no way to escape from this horror. No matter where I went, no matter what I did, this would continue. I knew that, even if I slept alone on a hard park bench, some article of cloth would find me and attack me.

  Rape me.

  I took a bite of my egg and used the napkin to wipe my mouth.

  "Thank you," the cloth whispered.

  I dropped the white napkin and stared at it. It looked for all the world like a miniature pillow. As I stared, I noticed that one of the creases looked almost like a smile. A smile of unbridled lust. I felt no shock, though. I felt no terror. I was too jaded for that. I'd gone through too much.