Gotcha.
Vaughn tipped his drink to her and smiled, gave her just the tiniest wink. Nice-guy shy. Her eyes flashed, and she smiled what he thought was a sly and very wicked smile. Yes, Vaughn thought. Please come over oh please please please . . .
But instead of coming over to his table, or even inviting him to sidle up beside her, the woman drained the glass in a single gulp.
Then set it back on the bar. Grabbed her jacket.
And left.
Vaughn was flabbergasted. He watched her disappear through the door, caught the most fleeting of glimpses of her as she headed down Front Street. How could she do that? It was so rude. The very least she could have done was say thank you, maybe come over and have another. Maybe even—God forbid—buy him one.
"Well, fuck you very much," he sighed. He reached for his cigarettes, discovered he was down to his last two. "Great," he muttered. There was no doubt about it. He was in hell.
The waitress came back around, dropped him his change. He counted it out, tipped her two. "Thanks," he said dolefully. There wasn't even enough left for more smokes, no less cab fare. He wondered for a moment if he might not be cursed.
"Can I get you anything?" the waitress asked as she scooped up the empty pitcher and glasses.
"Yeah." Smiling wanly. "A new lease on life."
"Sorry. Fresh out." She swabbed the table. "But seriously, folks. It's last call."
"Okay. How 'bout a shooter?" he asked. "And maybe a smile? I could use one of each right about now." The waitress smiled. She was cute, he realized now; her short black hair and green eyes gave her a punky, gamine quality. Her legs were a little thicker than Vaughn liked, but nothing he would kick out of bed. "So what's your name?" he pressed, his interest piqued.
"Karla. With a K."
"Ah-hah." He pretended to be amused. "So, Karla-with-a-K. What are you doing after you get off?"
'Going home with my boyfriend," she said, deflecting him.
"Oh," Vaughn said. "Lucky guy."
It was the waitress's turn to feign amusement. She rolled her eyes and returned to the bar. He watched her ass sadly as she departed. It wasn't one he'd be getting to know.
Sure enough, when Karla came back, she was all business. "Thanks," she said, taking the last of his cash. "Have a good one." She headed off without another glance back.
Yeah, sure. You bet, he thought morosely. He couldn't imagine how it could get any worse.
IT WAS JUST past two by the time Vaughn hit the street.
The wind had picked up considerably, bitter and biting. In fact, the weather forecast had underscored his day just perfectly: warm and sunny early in the day, turning much colder as the night wears on. You could say that again. It rustled through the trash in the gutter, sent cigarette butts and old dead leaves pinwheeling end over end, chasing each other down the empty sidewalks. Front Street was desolate, the last vestiges of nightlife having already packed off to the sanctuary of warm bodies and beds.
Up ahead, a lone taxicab prowled, slicing across the intersection at the end of the block. It slowed when it saw him. He shook his head. Damn. The cab gunned its engine and sped away; an old newspaper danced like a dervish in its wake. Vaughn watched it spin, felt his head echo the motion.
The wind gusted again, knocking him off-balance. This utterly sucked. The air cleared his head somewhat, but the ground still felt rubbery beneath his feet: that last shot had snuck up on him, left him with a beer-and-tequila cocktail sloshing in his guts. Killian's alone was bad enough: it always gave him a vaguely reamed-out feeling, as though his bowels had been freshly Roto-Rootered. The Cuervo had capped it like a shooter of mucus and grease.
A nagging little voice in his head lectured him on the perils of mixing liquor, warned him that he'd pay in the morning. He tried hard to ignore it, though he knew it was certainly right. The thing to do right now was keep moving. Take deep breaths, get his blood circulating. Get home.
Vaughn stuffed his hands in his pockets and hugged the wall, stumbling past the darkened shops and stores, hiding from the wind. Somewhere, a trash can tipped into the gutter with a hollow metal clang. He started at the sound, felt the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen and tingle, kept walking.
It was less than two blocks later that he started to get that old familiar feeling: like a hair-triggered silent alarm that tingled down the length of his spine. Watch your back, it told him. Watch your back. It was a reflex action, a survival skill, born of too much time spent dodging drunken boyfriends or vengeance-crazed mates. It was wrong roughly three-quarters of the time, but it had saved his white ass more than once.
Vaughn cast a nervous glance over his shoulder, searching the shadows. Nothing but wind, whipping down the empty street. A dog loped across an intersection a few blocks back. There were a lot of strays in town these days, he remembered, courtesy of jobless families picking up and moving on, in the process leaving ol' Fido to fend for himself. They lived in abandoned buildings and empty lots, eventually turned feral and ran in packs, ripping into trash and feeding on rats, or the odd luckless cat. He stared for a moment longer, just to be sure. Nothing. Just paranoid, he told himself, and continued on his way.
But a dozen steps later, he felt it again. Substantially stronger. Frighteningly so.
Vaughn looked back, caught a fleeting glimpse of furtive movement some twenty yards behind him. Someone was moving in the shadows, hugging the wall and pacing him. It occurred to him that he was about to get jumped. His system began to brace itself. He took another peek: something was definitely back there. Just my fucking luck. Thanks, Trish.
And that started the wheels turning in his head: thinking Ray, oh shit, what if it's Ray? That put a real blush of reality on it. He wondered just what the fuck she'd told him, in the heat of the confessional crunch. Had she spilled the beans on their sexual positions? Had she told him little details that drove him nuts? There was no telling what a guy might do—even a doughy little putz like Ray—if you gave him an image-vivid enough, goaded him over the line.
Vaughn was moving just as fast as he could withqut breaking into a run. He was trying his best not to show it; but he, himself, would not have been fooled. His stomach burbled and churned. His temples thudded with adren-alated blood. His bladder ballooned in his jeans. He had to piss like a fire hydrant. Great.
The good news was that he did not have that far to go: another three blocks and he was home free. The bad news was that he had to turn onto Beaver Street at the next corner to do it. Vaughn's apartment was a loft in the warehouse district, and the homestretch was not nearly so well-lit.
The other bad news was that, whoever it was, it was getting closer. Ten yards now, and closing. Still hugging the shadows. It was definitely a setup. But not a mugger, he thought. They would usually stalk more openly, approach under the pretense of asking directions or bumming a smoke-—at least until he was within striking range.
Shit. It's Ray. It's gotta be. His mind raced in drunken overdrive: plotting panic vectors, weighing his options. Running was out of the question: he was already a heartbeat away from heaving, and his bladder felt like it was going to explode.
But there was something else about it that didn't sit well, especially since his run-in with Syd. Vaughn's pride still stung at the memory; it shouldn't have gone down that way. Syd had just gotten lucky, on account of how distraught Vaughn was over Karen. He also fought dirty, the sonofabitch. He hit him when he wasn't expecting it. The guy was a fucking animal.
Ray, on the other hand, was not a big man: five-five, tops, and not much known for his machismo. Vaughn was six feet, one-eighty, and a pretty fair hunka manhood, if he did say so himself. If push came to shove, Vaughn knew he could take him.
His spirits lifted as he sized up his odds. The more he thought about it, the more the whole thing pissed him off. He was cold and tired and he felt like shit, and now some asshole was gonna jack him up just 'cause he couldn't keep his woman home? Honest to god, enough was en
ough.
There was one more street lamp before the corner, casting a wan circle of light on the darkened sidewalk. It was maybe ten yards away when the glimmer of a strategy formed in his mind. Vaughn smiled, moved away from the wall, steering ever so casually toward the light.
And he began to rehearse a speech in his head, the speech he would make when he hit the spotlight. He'd starred as Conrad Birdie in the Central High School production of Bye Bye Birdie oh those many years ago; so he knew a thing or two about stage presence, not to mention projecting his voice.
Okay, fucko! he planned to say. I see you slinking around in the dark! Let's see what kind of man you are in the light! Or something hard-hitting and edgy like that. Ever since Syd, he'd paid particular attention to the tough-guy dialogue in action films; he'd learned firsthand, when it came down to fighting, the withering power of a good one-liner.
He could picture Ray now, stepping into the spotlight: be he pudgily defiant or suddenly embarrassed, realizing too late what a fool of himself he'd made. No matter how it played, Vaughn saw himself coming out on top. He couldn't picture it any other way.
Unless, of course, it wasn't Ray . . . And that was when all his alarms went off, less than twenty feet from the edge of the light. That was when he began to turn, just in time to see the darkness descend upon him. A flash of teeth, so many teeth, moving toward him at such an incredible speed, closing the distance in Seconds that vanished before he could even scream . . .
. . . and he started to run, legs desperately pumping under him, fleeing for dear.life as he realized christ it's a dog a fucking feral dog. And he didn't get a clear look at it but he could hear the ragged chug of its breath and the slap of its feet as it closed the distance, and he knew it was huge, a shepherd or wolfhound but wrong, it was much bigger, it was built like a refrigerator like a car like a motherfucking truck. . . .
Vaughn ran like a bastard, boots clomping wildly on the pavement, his all-state track star days way too many tar and nicotine years behind him as he tried to make the corner, slipped, recovered . . .
. . . and then came the moment of impact, as the animal hit him three quarters from behind and slammed him sideways, like being run over by a truck with a great slavering mouth bearing dozens of chrome incisors. He felt fangs like roofing nails punch into his midsection even as his head cracked the pavement, was dragged forward by the sheer momentum of the attack. Vaughn tried to scream but the jaws clamped down, got a deathgrip on his midsection, squeezing the air out of his lungs in mid-shriek as they tumbled into the street lamp's glare.
Then the light struck his eyes, half-blinding him, making ugly dots swim in the frozen air. His mind raced madly, thinking it's gonna kill me someone save me please jesus help! as he scrabbled and fought to escape. His left arm was free, and he flailed out with it, desperately twisting in the animal's jaws. He aimed for the snout and missed, struck a glancing blow over its eye. The beast released him just enough to turn.
And Vaughn got his first good look at his destroyer. not a dog not a dog at all oh jesus
And Vaughn got religion in that instant, oh yes he did, pissing himself and praying to his maker as the horrible maw clamped down harder this time, piercing his jacket and sweater, cracking his chest like a walnut. He felt something go pop and squirt stale rank mist, as twenty years' worth of pent-up tobacco smoke vented from his punctured right lung . . .
oh god oh god help me
. . . and then he was out of the light, removed from the light forever: the monster lifting him in its jaws, carrying him helplessly farther into the warehouse dark. He smelled himself, borne on the beast's hot breath, got a vivid flash of his future at the pay end of the food chain. The animal started to run and his mind blacked out, snapped back again: awash with agony, denied the luxury of oblivion. There was no escape, save death. And death was still minutes away.
Vaughn spontaneously voided, almost as a courtesy, loading his pants and throwing up the last meal of his life. Chunks and stomach acid wrapped around his face, lay scalding in his eyes as the monster loped across the broken rubble of a back-alley lot.
Then suddenly he was falling, the agonizing pressure on his torso released. There was no mercy in the movement, just a sickening plummet and the brittle crack of his skull fracturing as his face smacked a ragged outcrop of cinder block and slid. His cheek came away like cheese through a grater. His head filled with billions of stars.
The seeing part was over now, and shock was setting in. The noises he made were not human at all. Blindly, he shivered as the thing flipped him over onto his back. He heard panting, felt the tug of something working at his belt, then the front of his jeans.
Dim confusion flickered in his muddled trauma-mind. Buried memories wrenched themselves free, floated to the surface as raw experience. Was he having his diaper changed? It seemed like it, yes. But there was blood in his mouth. His vision whirled and blurred. His mind skittered and split in half, trying to make it make sense: part regressing to infancy, part fast-forwarding to death.
A giant loomed over him. A hairy mountain with hands. Its breath was a swampland of hot damp rot and something else that he recognized. It took him all of one infinite second to place; and, once known, it was too late to forget. It was a smell that yanked him unpleasantly back to the present.
The smell of tequila.
oh god.
Then his sodden pants were shredding and sliding down his legs, bunching in tatters at his ankles as his bare ass slapped the icy ground. Oh god, he thought, his mind at once totally, terribly clear. His scrotum retracted into a shriveled pouch, his penis turning thimble-sized as it shrunk like a turtle's head ducking into its shell. Vaughn went fetal, felt his sanity smack against reality like a bird hitting a plate-glass window as the beast hunkered over him, its monstrous hands gripping his knees. He fought to keep his legs closed. It spread its arms wide. Vaughn heard two wet pops.
The world went hot and white.
He came to less than three seconds later: his pelvis cracked like a sloppy-wet wishbone, his hips dislocated, his thighs mashed into the ground on either side. The monster hovered at the shattered juncture as its great snout descended, buried itself in his all-too-exposed crotch. His mind bargained madly through the pain, going sorry I'm so sorry I'll never fuck again oh please jesus . . .
The monster sniffed him a moment, reading his scent. Then the corners of its ghastly mouth curled upward, became something that very much resembled a sly and wicked smile.
And then the jaws snapped and closed, sawing through strips of omentum and coils of colon, coming up from below to latch hold of his spine and shake it like a dog with a rag. He shrieked and wheezed, shrieked again. His bowels tore loose as his spine went snap and the world went red and numb and dead, as the great chomping maw came away with a mouthful, leaving him a huge raw jigsaw-puzzle gap where his groin used to be.
OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH
At that moment, Vaughn merged with the scream, became that wild and dying sound, his soul spinning out and out of his throat like a slowly unwinding thread. His eyes attempted one final focus, saw only eyes and fur and blood-covered snout. It hovered inches above him, brimming.
And then, horribly, opened wide.
Vaughn Restal's mouth was open, too, caught in the act of his last dying gasp. It left him no defense against the sudden gushing torrent of his own masticated organs, a steaming mouthful of entrails spilling into his face. His mangled penis slapped his cheek like a gory coda: a pallid slug, skidding down its own slime trail.
Vaughn Restal died, choking on his own shit and viscera.
Nora felt certain that Syd would be pleased.
21
IN THE HOURS that followed her departure, Syd had way too much time to drink and think: pacing the too-small confines of his apartment, alternately damning her and cursing himself for being such a fool. He'd actually gotten dressed to go chasing after her, got all the way down to his car before he realized he didn't have a clue
where she'd gone, if she was still even in the town. Or the state, for that matter.
And that thought had made him crazy, sent him careening back to hit the bottle and bounce off the walls. And even though three days ago he would have laughed out loud if someone had suggested that he would ever let himself get so totally flummoxed over a complete stranger, he could not deny it: she was in him now, under his skin and in his blood, completely invalidating his previously sacrosanct autonomy.
The phrase rebound relationship sprang to mind. Syd laughed until he cried. This was not about "healing" and "feeling good about yourself" or any other psychobabble bullshit; this was something he'd hungered for his whole life long. The simple truth was he needed Nora, needed her desperately in his life.
And now she was gone.
He stumbled into the kitchen, found the bottle of tequila, downed a double shot, looked around. Detritus from their lost weekend lay scattered across every available surface. He began to clean: muttering to himself as he sorted through the wreckage, tried to put his life back in order. Dirty plates and crusted cookware, empty bottles and full ashtrays were everywhere. He found a broken wine bottle in the living room; as he washed the dishes he found the little-chicken-that-wasn't, still congealing in the bowl.
What the hell was that all about? He tried to remember and the pain between his eyes returned, a dullbright throbbing ball of misery deadbang in the center of his skull. The only way he could make it go away was to not think about it, concentrate instead on the mundane.
Syd thought of Karen, for some strange reason. As he cleaned he flipped the stove light on, spotlighting the little figurines perched atop the range hood. They were the figures from their wedding cake: little wind-up Godzilla and King Kong toys, custom-altered into a tiny monstrous bride and groom. King Kong sported a little top hat above his nasty simian scowl; Godzilla had a veil, and clutched a tiny bouquet to her scaly reptilian breast. When you wound them up, they whined and wobbled mechanically forth, and sparks shot out of their mouths.
Animals Page 17
