Nell walks in to see her Mistress without Her face on and barely retains bowel control. Truly, Her visage is terrible to behold!
THOU SHALT KNOCK, says Mistress Anne, and Her voice is the voice of a thousand Hell-bound souls.
“F-forgive me, dread Lady,” begs Nell, shaking with fear at the fires of Her mouth. “Y-your personal assistant merely th-thought to advise the band of Your chosen encore…”
WE SHALT PLAY ‘DANNY’S SONG.’ She turns back to the mirror, stretching the leathery mask with Her flippers.
“Your mercy is great,” Nell gasps, stumbling for the door on legs numb with terror.
When the four of them came up with The Swap over Jägerbombs at Jillian’s, Vic was so excited that even drunk, he had to conceal a stiffie. They were all excited. Scandalized. Titillated.
But now he’s in bed with Elise, and all they’ve done all night is talk and touch hands.
He likes it.
“I never really trusted myself to hang out with you,” says Elise. “I wanted to.”
“Yeah,” he says, “I thought Toni would get weird, or Carl would.”
“This has been really good.” She smiles.
“Yeah,” he repeats, “yeah,” and their naked fingers lock just like a zipper.
“Want some more?” Summer asks, but Gil shakes his head. The house is yellow. There are real lemons in his lemonade.
“I’m glad you came!” She turns to the oven. “We’ll eat when Kevan gets home, and then discuss after that. You like tetrazini?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Ma’am.” Kevan? His English teacher has a first name?
Summer smiles. “Maybe if you like this, you can host a meeting sometime.”
He shakes his head. He’ll be fine in the book club, but not at home. How could he bring them there, to the dark walls, the smell of human, ketchup and dog?
He’s incredible inside her, long legs strong, deep moans and afterwards he holds her, blue eyes compassionate. She told him that after Eric she just wanted to feel alive again, and he believed her. He understood.
It was a lie. She can’t grieve for Eric; she doesn’t even believe he’s dead, really. But she wanted to fuck Dominic the day Eric died, wanted to fuck him at the funeral, had wanted him for months, long before the end.
And now Kelly has what she wanted. She’s horribly happy, satisfied and nauseous, her stomach burning with almost all the guilt she deserves.
The morning’s warm and flat as summer soda, and Whit’s pants are stiff. He should have realized the black slacks were the only pair left last night, should have done some laundry. Now his legs are hot. He looks like he forgot his jacket at a funeral.
The phone jerks his pocket and he pulls it out, thumbing the voicemail button, expecting a dentist’s reminder. Instead, Lottie sings to him.
Her voice is sleepy, untrained, quiet and perfect. Whit’s hand drops away from the car door; he’s suddenly happy, then giddy, then smiling helplessly, so hard his face hurts. Smiling aloud.
Maddy pulls it in and holds it in her mouth, swirling thick as water, something she could swallow. Its taste is exactly the same as its color, rich red-brown and warm to the touch.
They got stoned a while ago and now it seems to Maddy that she must keep very still: her head is hollow, filling with the taste and color of this cigar. It’s the dark subtlety of oiled oak paneling, the tang of woodsmoke from the fireplace where her father, the great writer of letters, would sit and hold curling vellum and say nothing for hours on end.
Edgar never liked the way of most shops, papering the walls with collector-grade books. He said it damaged the binding, and put them on the ceiling instead.
Fox hefts yet another white box and threads between fat, grieving men in Daredevil t-shirts. Nobody wants to believe the Purple Hippo’s closing, but they’re here anyway, helping pack up. Edgar himself is boxing miniatures, claiming anyone else would bend the lead. They’ll get bulk-eBayed to offset the debt, Fox knows. He just wants to say goodbye.
Outside, they’re taking the big sign down. Another empty shopfront, Fox thinks. One more shut-down funnybook store.
Mex stops at the fourth house and uses the hose to refill his HydroMaster 4010, then seals the cap and looks around. It’s getting late; this looted suburb will throw the advantage to his opposition in a night fight.
At the end of a hedge, he spots one of them. She’s low, using a long tree shadow for concealment.
The rock he throws glances off that tree. She realizes it’s a distraction quickly, swings her own squirtgun around–too late. With a hiss, the 4010 pumps four rounds through her neck: fine sand in hyperpressurized water. She falls without a sound.
Rita’s vaguely aware that she’s dreaming. The Cold Man is in her dream, and he’s sitting at a table with other men. There’s something wrong with them: a flickering in peripheral vision, a cruel and articulated menace, hint of beetle-wing sheen.
The Cold Man removes his hat. His head has shrunken and withered, and his eyes are darkly enormous. “I am jessed and hooded,” he tells her, and somehow this makes a terrible sense. “They have made of me a dog to hunt.”
A deep gasp of cold air, and her hand is on the Glock before she knows she’s awake.
Toe estimates their speed at about 40, but the cars are still packed from the traffic jam and they’re keeping up. He bounds off a Corolla to an old Geo hatchback, just long enough to spring out again, aiming for a red Cherokee luggage rack. Which suddenly changes lanes.
Panicking, he flails away from the asphalt and the sixteen-wheeler bearing down on it–and Daniel crashes into him, midair spin, fling and Toe slams into a pickup bed.
He scrambles up to see Daniel slide along the trailer’s edge, grinning nervously, the grind plates on his soles kicking sparks from the corner.