Bumper Crop

  That put steel in Freddie's bones. He cleared his eyes with the back of his sleeve and steadied the barrel on the derelict's duck's head.

  "Do it!" came the cry. "Do it! Do it! Do it!"

  At that instant he pulled the trigger. A cheer went up from The Hunting Club, and out of the clear, cold sky, a dark blue norther blew in and with it came a flock of ducks. The ducks lit on the great idol and on the derelict. Some of them dipped their bills in the derelict's wetness.

  When the decoy and the derelict were covered in ducks, all of The Hunting Club lifted their guns and began to fire.

  The air became full of smoke, pellets, blood, and floating feathers.

  When the gunfire died down and the ducks died out, The Hunting Club went forward and bent over the decoy, did what they had to do. Their smiles were red when they lifted their heads. They wiped their mouths gruffly on the backs of their sleeves and gathered ducks into hunting bags until they bulged. There were still many carcasses lying about.

  Fred's father gave him a cigarette. Clyde lit it.

  "Good shooting, son," Fred's father said and clapped him manfully on the back.

  "Yeah," said Fred, scratching his crotch, "got that sonofabitch right between the eyes, pretty as a picture."

  They all laughed.

  The sky went lighter, and the blue norther that was rustling the reeds and whipping feathers about blew up and out and away in an instant. As the men walked away from there, talking deep, walking sure, whiskers bristling on all their chins, they promised that tonight they would get Fred a woman.

  Author's Note on Down by the Sea Near the Great Big Rock

  I came up with this before we had kids, or I would say quarreling kids gave me the idea.

  I don't really know where this one came from.

  No memory of it really.

  But I think it may have come from the fact that sometimes, no matter how much you know better, no matter how many books you may have read on relationships or how many Doctor Phil shows you've watched, and no matter how hard you try to avoid pitfalls and fight in a manner that's correct, sometimes, well, you just screw up and get into something nasty with a friend, spouse, brother, sister, child, what have you. And when it's over, you think, how did that happen? Where did it come from? And now that I think about it, was really silly.

  And man, the stuff I said.

  I think that was its inspiration.

  Like many of the stories I was writing at this time, it came quickly. I sent it to Twilight Zone sensing a sure sale.

  T. E. D. Klein passed.

  I was shocked. I thought it was one of the best pieces of its type that I had shown him. I felt it fit snugly beside other tales I had written for him. And, was in fact, better than a couple of the others.

  Hell, I liked it a lot.

  He still passed.

  It ended up in Masques, an interesting anthology from Maclay Associates (John Maclay is also a writer, and an underrated one, I might add), and the book was edited by J. N. Williamson. There have been several others in this series, but the first one was the best. The best story in it was "Nightcrawlers" by Robert McCammon. It made a great Amazing Stories.

  I think this story would have been fun there.

  Few special effects.

  Odd.

  Creepy.

  Down by the Sea Near the Great Big Rock

  Down by the sea near the great big rock, they made their camp and toasted marshmallows over a small, fine fire. The night was pleasantly chill and the sea spray cold. Laughing, talking, eating the gooey marshmallows, they had one swell time; just them, the sand, the sea and the sky, and the great big rock.

  The night before they had driven down to the beach, to the camping area; and on their way, perhaps a mile from their destination, they had seen a meteor shower, or something of that nature. Bright lights in the heavens, glowing momentarily, seeming to burn red blisters across the ebony sky.

  Then it was dark again, no meteoric light, just the natural glow of the heavens—the stars, the dime-size moon.

  They drove on and found an area of beach on which to camp, a stretch dominated by pale sands and big waves, and the great big rock.

  Toni and Murray watched the children eat their marshmallows and play their games, jumping and falling over the great big rock, rolling in the cool sand. About midnight, when the kids were crashed out, they walked along the beach like fresh-found lovers, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, listening to the sea, watching the sky, speaking words of tenderness.

  "I love you so much," Murray told Toni, and she repeated the words and added, "and our family too."

  They walked in silence now, the feelings between them words enough. Sometimes Murray worried that they did not talk as all the marriage manuals suggested, that so much of what he had to say on the world and his work fell on the ears of others, and that she had so little to truly say to him. Then he would think: What the hell? I know how I feel. Different messages, unseen, unheard, pass between us all the time, and they communicate in a fashion words cannot. He said some catch phrase, some pet thing between them, and Toni laughed and pulled him down on the sand. Out there beneath that shiny-dime moon, they stripped and loved on the beach like young sweethearts, experiencing their first night together after long expectation.

  It was nearly two A.M. when they returned to the camper, checked the children and found them sleeping comfortably as kittens full of milk.

  They went back outside for a while, sat on the rock and smoked and said hardly a word. Perhaps a coo or a purr passed between them, but little more.

  Finally they climbed inside the camper, zipped themselves into their sleeping bags and nuzzled together on the camper floor.

  Outside the wind picked up, the sea waved in and out, and a slight rain began to fall.

  Not long after, Murray awoke and looked at his wife in the crook of his arm. She lay there with her face a grimace, her mouth opening and closing like a guppy, making an "uhhh, uhh" sound.

  A nightmare perhaps. He stroked the hair from her face, ran his fingers lightly down her cheek and touched the hollow of her throat and thought: What a nice place to carve out some fine, white meat. . . .

  What in the hell is wrong with me? Murray thought, and he rolled away from her, out of the bag. He dressed, went outside and sat on the rock. With shaking hands on his knees, buttocks resting on the warmth of the stone, he brooded. Finally he dismissed the possibility that such a thought had actually crossed his mind, smoked a cigarette and went back to bed.

  He did not know that an hour later Toni awoke and bent over him and looked at his face as if it were something to squash. But finally she shook it off and slept.

  The children tossed and turned. Little Roy squeezed his hands open, closed, open, closed. His eyelids fluttered rapidly.

  Robyn dreamed of striking matches.

  Morning came and Murray found that all he could say was, "I had the oddest dream."

  Toni looked at him, said, "Me, too," and that was all. Placing lawn chairs on the beach, they put their feet on the rock and watched the kids splash and play in the waves; watched as Roy mocked the sound of the Jaws music and made fins with his hands and chased Robyn through the water as she scuttled backwards and screamed with false fear.

  Finally they called the children from the water, ate a light lunch, and, leaving the kids to their own devices, went in for a swim.

  The ocean stroked them like a mink-gloved hand, tossed them, caught them, massaged them gently. They washed together, laughing, kissing—

  Then tore their lips from one another as up on the beach they heard a scream.

  Roy had his fingers gripped about Robyn's throat, held her bent back over the rock and was putting a knee in her chest. There seemed no play about it. Robyn was turning blue.

  Toni and Murray waded for shore, and the ocean no longer felt kind. It grappled with them, held them, tripped them with wet, foamy fingers. It seemed an eternity before they reached the shore, yelli
ng at Roy.

  Roy didn't stop. Robyn flopped like a dying fish. Murray grabbed the boy by the hair and pulled him back, and for a moment, as the child turned, he looked at his father with odd eyes that did not seem his, but looked instead as cold and firm as the great big rock.

  Murray slapped him, slapped him so hard Roy spun and went down, stayed there on hands and knees, panting.

  Murray went to Robyn, who was already in Toni's arms, and on the child's throat were blue-black bands like thin, ugly snakes.

  "Baby, baby, are you okay?" Toni asked over and over. Murray wheeled, strode back to the boy, and Toni was now yelling at him, crying, "Murray, Murray, easy now. They were just playing and it got out of hand."

  Roy was on his feet, and Murray, gritting his teeth, so angry he could not believe it, slapped the child down.

  "MURRAY!" Toni yelled, and she let go of the sobbing Robyn and went to stay his arm, for he was already raising it for another strike. "That's no way to teach him not to hit, not to fight."

  Murray turned to her, almost snarling, but then his face relaxed and he lowered his hand. Turning to the boy, feeling very criminal, Murray reached down to lift Roy by the shoulder. But Roy pulled away, darted for the camper.

  "Roy," he yelled, and started after him. Toni grabbed his arm.

  "Let him be," she said. "He got carried away and he knows it. Let him mope it over. He'll be all right." Then softly: "I've never known you to get that mad."

  "I've never been so mad before," he said honestly.

  They walked back to Robyn, who was smiling now. They all sat on the rock, and about fifteen minutes later Robyn got up to see about Roy. "I'm going to tell him it's okay," she said. "He didn't mean it." She went inside the camper.

  "She's sweet," Toni said.

  "Yeah," Murray said, looking at the back of Toni's neck as she watched Robyn move away. He was thinking that he was supposed to cook dinner today, make hamburgers, slice onions; big onions cut thin with a freshly sharpened knife. He decided to go get it.

  "I'll start dinner," he said flatly, and stalked away.

  As he went, Toni noticed how soft the back of his skull looked, so much like an overripe melon.

  She followed him inside the camper.

  Next morning, after the authorities had carried off the bodies, taken the four of them out of the bloodstained, fire-gutted camper, one detective said to another:

  "Why does it happen? Why would someone kill a nice family like this? And in such horrible ways . . . set fire to it afterwards?"

  The other detective sat on the huge rock and looked at his partner, said tonelessly, "Kicks maybe."

  That night, when the moon was high and bright, gleaming down like a big spotlight, the big rock, satiated, slowly spread its flippers out, scuttled across the sand, into the waves, and began to swim toward the open sea. The fish that swam near it began to fight.

  Author's Note on I Tell You It's Love

  There are people who like pain and inflict in on themselves, and I am not one of those who believe it is lifestyle or a valid choice.

  People like this have, to put it mildly, problems.

  Maybe not as severe as the problems my two characters have in this story, but problems.

  You don't hurt yourself as a normal course of events. It goes against solid survival instincts. I'm not talking about piercing your ear, and I'm not talking about learning to deal with pain because you box, do martial arts, or any sport or self defense system.

  I'm talking about pain for pain itself.

  And if you like to give pain for pain itself that's another problem, in reverse.

  That's fucked up. Either end of it.

  Take my word for it.

  Or don't.

  I no longer remember what inspired this story. Maybe the fact that this sort of thinking struck me as so amazing. We're not talking about people who are mentally ill, we're talking about people who make these choices because they get a kick out of it.

  Ouch. Times ten.

  I Tell You It's Love

  The beautiful woman had no eyes, just sparklers of light where they should have been—or so it seemed in the candlelight. Her lips, so warm and inviting, so wickedly wild and suggestive of strange pleasures, held yet a hint of disaster, as if they might be fat, red things skillfully molded from dried blood.

  "Hit me," she said.

  That is my earliest memory of her; a doll for my beating, a doll for my love.

  I laid it on her with that black silk whip, slapping it across her shoulders and back, listening to the whisper of it as it rode down, delighting in the flat, pretty sound of it striking her flesh.

  She did not bleed, which was a disappointment. The whip was too soft, too flexible, too difficult to strike hard with.

  "Hurt me," she said softly. I went to where she kneeled. Her arms were outstretched, crucifixion style, and bound to the walls on either side with strong silk cord the color and texture of the whip in my hand.

  I slapped her. "Like it?" I asked. She nodded and I slapped her again . . . and again. A one-two rhythm, slow and melodic, time and again.

  "Like it?" I repeated, and she moaned.

  "Yeah, oh yeah."

  Later, after she was untied and had tidied up the blood from her lips and nose, we made brutal love; me with my thumbs bending the flesh of her throat, she with her nails entrenched in my back. She said to me when we were finished, "Let's do someone."

  That's how we got started. Thinking back now, once again I say I'm glad for fate; glad for Gloria; glad for the memory of the crying sounds, the dripping blood, and the long, sharp knives that murmured through flesh like a lover's whisper cutting the dark.

  Yeah, I like to think back to when I walked hands in pockets down the dark wharves in search of that special place where there were said to be special women with special pleasures for a special man like me.

  I walked on until I met a sailor leaning against a wall smoking a cigarette, and he says when I ask about the place, "Oh, yeah, I like that sort of pleasure myself. Two blocks down, turn right, there between the warehouses, down the far end. You'll see the light." And he points and I walk on, faster.

  Finding it, paying for it, meeting Gloria was the goal of my dreams. I was more than a customer to that sassy, dark mamma with the sparkler eyes. I was the link to fit her link. We made two strong, solid bonds in a strange, cosmic chain. You could feel the energy flowing through us; feel the iron of our wills. Ours was a mating made happily in hell.

  So time went by and I hated the days and lived for the nights when I whipped her, slapped her, scratched her, and she did the same to me. Then one night she said, "It's not enough. Just not enough anymore. Your blood is sweet and your pain is fine, but I want to see death like you see a movie, taste it like licorice, smell it like flowers, touch it like cold, hard stone."

  I laughed, saying, "I draw the line at dying for you." I took her by the throat, fastened my grip until her breathing was a whistle, and her eyes protruded like bloated corpse bellies.

  "That's not what I mean," she managed. And then came the statement that brings us back to what started it all. "Let's do someone."

  I laughed and let her go.

  "You know what I mean?" she said. "You know what I'm saying."

  "I know what you said. I know what you mean." I smiled. "I know very well."

  "You've done it before, haven't you?"

  "Once," I said, "in a shipyard, not that long ago."

  "Tell me about it. God, tell me about it."

  "It was dark and I had come off ship after six months out, a long six months with the men, the ship, and the sea. So I'm walking down this dark alley, enjoying the night like I do, looking for a place with the dark ways, our kind of ways, baby, and I came upon this old wino lying in a doorway, cuddling a bottle to his face as if it were a lady's loving hand."

  "What did you do?"

  "I kicked him," I said, and Gloria's smile was a beauty to behold.

  "Go
on," she said.

  "God, how I kicked him. Kicked him in the face until there was no nose, no lips, no eyes. Only red mush dangling from shrapneled bone; looked like a melon that had been dropped from on high, down into a mass of broken white pottery chips. I touched his face and tasted it with my tongue and my lips."

  "Ohh," she signed, and her eyes half closed. "Did he scream?"

  "Once. Only once. I kicked him too hard, too fast, too soon. I hammered his head with the toes of my shoes, hammered until my cuffs were wet and sticking to my ankles."

  "Oh, God," she said, clinging to me. "Let's do it, let's do it."

  We did. First time was a drizzly night and we caught an old woman out. She was a lot of fun until we got the knives out and then she went quick. There was that crippled kid next, lured him from the theater downtown, and how we did that was a stroke of genius. You'll find his wheelchair not far from where you found the van and the other stuff.

  But no matter. You know what we did, about the kinds of tools we had, about how we hung that crippled kid on that meat hook in my van until the flies clustered around the doors thick as grapes.

  And of course there was the little girl. It was a brilliant idea of Gloria's to get the kid's tricycle into the act. The things she did with those spokes. Ah, but that woman was a connoisseur of pain.

  There were two others, each quite fine, but not as nice as the last. Then came the night Gloria looked at me and said, "It's not enough. Just won't do."

  I smiled. "No way, baby. I still won't die for you."

  "No," she gasped, and took my arm. "You miss my drift. It's the pain I need, not just the watching. I can't live through them, can't feel it in me. Don't you see, it would be the ultimate."

  I looked at her, wondering did I have it right.

  "Do you love me?"

  "I do," I said.

  "To know that I would spend the last of my life with you, that my last memories would be the pleasure on your face, the feelings of pain, the excitement, the thrill, the terror."