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  Everything was as it was. She wondered if anyone had seen the cars, if anyone had stopped, then decided it didn’t matter. There was no one here now, and that’s what was important.

  She took the keys from her purse and tried the engine. It turned over. That was a relief.

  She killed the engine, got out and went around and opened the trunk of the Chevy and looked down at Bruce’s body. His face looked like one big bruise, his lips were as large as sausages. It made her happy to look at him.

  A new energy came to her. She got him under the arms and pulled him out and managed him over to the rail and grabbed his legs and flipped him over the railing and onto the trail. She got one of his hands and started pulling him down the path, letting the momentum help her. She felt good. She felt strong.

  First Bruce had tried to dominate her, had threatened her, had thought she was weak because she was a woman, and one night, after slapping her, after raping her, while he slept a drunken sleep, she had pulled the blankets up tight around him and looped rope over and under the bed and used the knots he had taught her, and secured him.

  Then she took a stick of stove wood and had beat him until she was so weak she fell to her knees. She hadn’t meant to kill him, just punish him for slapping her around, but when she got started she couldn’t stop until she was too worn out to go on, and when she was finished, she discovered he was dead.

  That didn’t disturb her much. The thing then was to get rid of the body somewhere, drive on back to the city and say he had abandoned her and not come back. It was weak, but all she had.

  Until now.

  After several stops for breath, a chance to lie on her back and look up at the stars, Ellen managed Bruce to the hut and got her arms under his and got him seated in one of the empty chairs. She straightened things up as best as she could. She put the larger pieces of the baby back in the crib. She picked Moon Face’s knife up off the floor and looked at it and looked at Bruce, his eyes wide open, the moonlight from the roof striking them, showing them to be dull as scratched glass.

  Bending over his face, she went to work on his eyes. When she finished with them, she pushed his head forward and used the blade like a drill. She worked until the holes satisfied her. Now if the police found the Buick up there and came down the trail to investigate, and found the trail leading here, saw what was in the shack, Bruce would fit in with the rest of Moon Face’s victims. The police would probably conclude Moon Face, sleeping here with his “family,” had put his bed too close to the cliff and it had broken through the thin wall and he had tumbled to his death.

  She liked it.

  She held Bruce’s chin, lifted it, examined her work. “You can be Uncle Brucey,” she said, and gave Bruce a pat on the shoulder. “Thanks for all your advice and help, Uncle Brucey. It’s what got me through.” She gave him another pat.

  She found a shirt—possibly Moon Face’s, possibly a victim’s—on the opposite side of the shack, next to a little box of Harlequin Romances, and she used it to wipe the knife, pan, all she had touched, clean of her prints, then she went out of there, back up to her car.

  Murder for Beginners

  BY MERCEDES M. YARDLEY

  Sometimes, you just gotta kill that bastard. Just seems like the natural thing to do. Not a whole lot of explanation necessary. If you knew him, you’d probably want to kill him, too.

  This is the story that first made me fall in love with Mercedes M. Yardley and her cheerfully deranged young ladies. I think it’s charming and hilarious.

  And I don’t know about you, but right about now, a laugh sounds great to me.

  She looked at the shovel in her hands and then at Rob’s dead body. “Ah, snap,” she said. “Nah, it’s not that bad,” Dawn said, tipping her head to look at the carnage. She nudged Rob a bit with the tip of her red high heel. When he didn’t move, she nudged him harder. Taking heart, she gave him a good kick. And then another one. She was just gearing up for the granddaddy of all kicks when suddenly the blunt shovel snapped lightly against her foot.

  “Stop it.”

  Dawn’s balance was thrown off, and she fought for a second to regain it. She blew her hair out of her eyes.

  “Aw, Jaye, you never let me have any fun.” “Hey, I let you go at it for a while, didn’t I? You can’t say I’m not gracious.” This spoken from a woman holding a bloody shovel over a dead man.

  “True,” Dawn agreed. “Very gracious.”

  They grinned at each other. “So. What do we do?” Jaye asked. She patted Rob’s corpse on the rump with the tip of the shovel, then stabbed the end into the ground and sighed.

  “Um…we apologize?” “Sorry, Rob. I didn’t mean to kill you.” “No.” Dawn shook her head. “Not to Rob. Let’s drag him somewhere else. Maybe we can write a note, or something. Leave it in his pocket. ‘I’m sorry I killed Rob, he really was a jerk. Do what you want with his body.’” She looked at Jaye. “Isn’t there a better way to word that?”

  Jaye leaned her head against the shovel handle. “You mean like, ‘Please dispose of his body properly’?”

  Dawn’s eyes shone. “Yes! I’m sorry about Rob; please dispose of his body properly!” Jaye thought about it briefly. “I like it, but it doesn’t seem very fair to do that. What if a kid should find him? Or an old lady?”

  “Or his wife.” “Oh, yeah. Her.” Jaye winced. “Think we should tell her?” “I don’t wanna.” “I don’t, either. But it seems mean not to. What if she’s waiting up for him, or something?”

  Dawn flopped down on the ground beside Rob. “I need a cigarette. Got one?” “You know I don’t.”

  Dawn lay on her back and looked at the treetops. “You are such a priss. You know that?”

  “Watch it!” Jaye raised the shovel threateningly.

  Dawn rolled her eyes before shutting them. “So not scared,” she said. “Mmmmm, cigarettes.”

  “What happened to yours?” “They fell out of my purse when I was running away from Rob. They’re back there somewhere.” She fluttered her hand distractedly toward the woods.

  Jaye was silent for a second. “Rob smokes. Every now and then. Betcha he’s got something.”

  Dawn opened her eyes and looked at Jaye. “How do you know that?”

  Jaye shrugged. “I tasted it. You know. That one time.” “Oh yeah. Right.” Dawn rolled over on her stomach and stared at Rob, nose to nose. “So I’ve always wondered. What’s he like, as a kisser? We sort of always skipped that part.”

  Jaye wrinkled her nose. “Hmmm. Not too bad, I guess. Not great. He needs to work on his technique.” She knocked the shovel against the soles of his shoes. “You need to work on your technique.” Rob didn’t respond.

  “So,” Dawn said urgently. “The smokes.” “I’m not sure where they are. Check him.” “You check him!” “I don’t want the cigarettes!”

  Dawn’s brown eyes were sad. “Oh, come on. Please? It’s Rob. He’s just so…gross, now that he’s dead. Kinda when he was alive, too. I don’t want to touch him.”

  Jaye glared at Dawn and then dropped to her knees beside Rob. “Okay. I understand. But,” she said, when Dawn clapped her hands, “when I roll Rob for his cigarettes, you have to call his wife. It’s only fair.”

  “But…” “Here.” Jaye held out her cell phone. Dawn looked at it as if it would bite her. “Or I could call and you can paw dead Rob. Your choice.”

  Dawn snatched the phone and punched in some numbers. She turned her back on Jaye, who started going through Rob’s pockets.

  “Oh, Dawn! He’s starting to cool down!” “Well, that’s just gross. I’m glad that—hello, Karen? Hi, this is Dawn.”

  Jaye found a wad of used tissue in Rob’s coat pocket. She yicked and threw it over her shoulder. She slid her hand back inside.

  “I’m great, thanks! How are you? Uh huh. Oh, and Quinn said what? Oh! Isn’t he just a little card?”

  Only half listening to Dawn’s end of the conversation, Jaye scored an open pack of gum and a ha
ndful of change from the other coat pocket. She took a piece for herself and flipped one to Dawn. Dawn caught it and opened it neatly.

  “Listen, Karen, I called because there’s been a situation with Rob. Yeah. She’s here with me. Jaye,” she whispered, covering the phone with her hand, “Say hi to Karen.”

  “Hi, Karen!” Jaye yelled, and slid her hands into Karen’s dead husband’s pockets. “How’s Quinn?”

  Dawn popped the gum into her mouth and chewed loudly. “Quinn’s good, Jaye. He said something hysterical. I’ll tell you later. So Karen. Jaye here hit Rob on the head with a shovel. Pretty hard. Uh huh. Oh, I don’t know. Five or six times, I’d say. What do you think?” she said to Jaye. “Five or six times?”

  “At least.” “Yeah, about that much.” Dawn listened on the phone. Jaye pulled out Rob’s wallet and started flipping through it.

  “Yeah, it was pretty amazing, Karen! She just went to town. She had a shovel out here ‘cuz she was planting something…”

  “Geraniums.” “Geraniums, she says. And she just went to town all over his freaking head. It was wild.”

  Dawn caught Jaye’s eye and winked. “Karen says you’re a freaking Amazon.” Jaye snorted and continued looking through the wallet. “Yeah, he was after me. I told him I’d just found out that you two were married and I wasn’t into that scene. I mean, you guys got married when? Tuesday? And it’s, what, Friday now? I mean, really.”

  Jaye pulled a nude picture of Dawn out of Rob’s wallet and raised her eyebrow. She handed it to Dawn, who deftly tucked it into her bra.

  “Yeah, he got mad, Karen. Chased me all the way to Jaye’s. I mean, if it weren’t for her and her daffodils…”

  “Geraniums.” “Geraniums, I’d probably be toast!” Dawn listened. “Yeah, he’s pretty dead. Sorry.” Jaye straightened up on her knees and looked at Dawn. Dawn shook her head. “Uh uh. We haven’t. No, she’s right here, going through his clothes for cigarettes. I dropped mine, and I don’t want to touch him. Oh. Why would he do that? Thanks, I see. Okay.”

  Dawn pointed at Rob’s legs. “She says he keeps a few loose ones tucked into his socks. Because he feels cool reaching down to get them.”

  Jaye shook her head and pulled up Rob’s pant leg. She took three loose cigarettes from the top of his tube sock. She handed them to Dawn along with her own lighter.

  “You’re such a pyro,” Dawn whispered, and lit up. She took a deep drag. “Mmmmm. Thanks, Karen!” she said into the phone. “That was very helpful. Okay, I’ll tell her.”

  Jaye was checking Rob’s other sock. She pulled out a comb and a badly written love poem that bordered on the obscene. She showed it to Dawn, who grimaced.

  “I hope it wasn’t for me. Karen wants to know if he has a heartbeat.” “Of course not. He’s cold!” “Well, would you listen? She wants to make sure.” “I’m tired of touching him!” “Oh, come on. Necrophiliacs do it all of the time. Besides, you did kill him.” Jaye growled. “Okay. Fine!”

  She unbuttoned his shirt and put her ear to his cool chest. The curly hair tickled her ears. She didn’t hear a sound.

  “Sick, now I’m going to have to wash my face!” “Nope, no heartbeat,” Dawn told Karen. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Will do. Still up for a movie tomorrow? Okay, see you then.”

  She snapped the phone shut and handed it to Jaye, who was standing up and brushing off her dusty knees.

  “She says we should probably call the police soon, and not to worry because she’ll testify about his temper and stuff. But let’s eat first. I’m starving. How about chicken salad at Irelands? My treat.”

  “No, Rob’s,” Jaye said, and flashed the twenty from his wallet. “Best thing he ever did for us. All right, let’s go,” Dawn said, and poked Jaye hard in the side as they walked away. “Don’t forget to wash your hands before you eat.”

  “As if.”

  Jesse

  BY STEVE RASNIC TEM

  Some writers have a way of getting under your skin, and making it feel kind of greasy in there. Not dirty in the typical pervo sense, but unclean on some deeper, more fundamentally disturbing level.

  Steve Rasnic Tem has an uncanny knack for conveying that squirming, wormlike kind of crazy. And in “Jesse,” it’s an atmosphere that literally drips from the pages, the deeper you sink your reluctant fingers in.

  Jesse says he figures it’s about time we did another one.

  He uses “we” like we’re Siamese twins or something, like we both decide what’s going to happen and then it happens. Like we just do it, two bodies with one mind like in some weird movie. But it’s Jesse that does it, all of it, each and every time. I’m just along for the ride. It’s not my fault what Jesse does. I can’t stop him—nobody could.

  “Why?” I ask, and I feel bad that my voice has to shake, but I can’t help it. “Why is it time, Jesse?”

  “‘Cause I’m afraid you’re forgetting too many things, John. You’re forgetting how we do it, and how they look.”

  We again. Like Jesse doesn’t do a thing by himself. But Jesse does everything by himself. “I don’t forget,” I say.

  “Oh, but I think you do. I know you do. It’s time all right.” Then he gets up from his nest in the sour straw and starts toward the barn door. And even though I haven’t forgotten how they look, and how we do it, how he does it—how could anybody forget something like that?—I get up out of the straw and follow.

  When Jesse called me up that day I didn’t take him all that seriously. Jesse was always calling me up and saying crazy things.

  “Come on over,” he said. “I gotta show you something.”

  I laughed at him. “You’re in enough trouble,” I said. “Your parents grounded you, remember? Two weeks at least, you told me.”

  “My parents are dead,” he said, in his serious voice. But I had heard his serious voice a thousand times, and I knew what it meant.

  I laughed. “Sure, Jesse. Deader than a flat frog on the highway, right?” “No, deader than your dick, dickhead.” He was always saying that. I laughed again. “Come on over. I swear it’ll be okay.”

  “Okay. My mom has to go to the store. She can drop me off and pick me up later.” “No. Don’t come with your mom. Take your bike.” “Christ, Jesse. It’s five miles!” “You’ve done it before. Take your bike or don’t come at all.” “Okay. Be there when I get there.” He made me mad all the time. All he had to do was tell me to do something and I’d do it. When I first knew him I did things he said because I felt sorry for him. His big brother had died when a tractor rolled over on him. I wasn’t there but people said it was pretty awful. I heard my dad tell my mom that there must have been a dozen men around but none of them could do a thing. Jesse’s brother had been awake the whole time, begging them to get the tractor off, that he could feel his heart getting ready to stop, that he knew it was going to stop any second. Dad said the blood was seeping out from under the tractor, all around his body, and Jesse’s brother was looking at it like he just couldn’t believe it. And Jesse was there watching the whole thing, Dad said. They couldn’t get him to go away.

  It gave me the creeps, what Jesse’s brother had said. ‘Cause I’ve always been afraid my heart was just going to stop some day, for no good reason. And to feel your heart getting ready to stop, that would be horrible.

  Because of all that I felt real bad for Jesse, so for awhile there he would ask me to do something, anything, and I’d do it for him. I’d steal somebody’s lunch or pull down a little kid’s pants or walk across the creek on a little skinny board, all kinds of stupid crap. But after awhile I just did it because he said. He didn’t make you want to feel bad for him. I wasn’t even sure that he cared that his brother was dead. Once I asked him if he still felt bad about it and he just said that his brother picked on him all the time. That’s all he would say about it. Jesse was always weird like that.

  I hadn’t ridden my bike in over a year—I wasn’t sure I still could. I thought sixteen-year-olds were too old to ride bikes�
�guys were getting their licenses and were willing to walk or get rides with older friends until that day happened. And I was big for my age, a lot bigger than Jesse. I felt stupid. But I rode my bike the five miles anyway, just because Jesse told me to.

  By the time I got to his farm I was so tired and mad I just threw the bike down in the gravel driveway. I didn’t care if I broke it—I wasn’t going to ride it home no matter what. Jesse came to the screen door with a smirk on his face. “Took you long enough,” he said. “I didn’t think you were coming.”

  “I’m here, all right? What’d you want to show me that was so damn important?” He pulled me down the hall. He was so excited and it was happening so fast I was having a real bad feeling even before I saw them. He stopped in front of the door to his parents’ bedroom and knocked it open with his fist. The sound made me jump. Then when I looked inside there were his parents on the floor, sleeping.

  A short laugh came out of me like a bark. They looked silly: his mom’s dress pulled up above her knees and his dad’s mouth hanging open like he was drunk. They had their arms folded over their bellies. I never saw people sleeping that way before. The sheets and blankets and pillows had been pulled off the bed and were arranged around them and underneath them like a nest. His mom had never been a good housekeeper—Jesse told me the place always looked and stank like a garbage dump—but I’d never thought it was this bad, that they had to sleep on the floor.

  The room was full of all these big candles, the scented kind. There must have been forty or fifty of them. And big melted patches where there must have been lots more, but they’d burned down and been replaced. There was a box full of them by the dresser, all ready to go. They also had a couple of those weird-looking incense burners going. It made me want to laugh. There were more different smells in that room than I’d smelled my whole life. And all of them so sweet they made my eyes water.