Free Ladies' Night by Jack Ketchum Page A

but that was okay because her stomach was nice and flat and she had lovely breasts and it was all so good he could barely look at her. But he did look. She smiled.
    "What do you think?"
    This wasn't like Lydia at all.
    Lydia was his boss.
    Lydia was . . . modest .
    He couldn't believe his luck.
    But he couldn't answer her, either. Not while he was looking at her body anyway. So he wrenched his eyes up to her face and held them there, determined, her face in shadow, looking at it anyway because it was the right thing to do even as she bent slightly to pull down the pale-colored panties and then stood a moment and then took one step toward him.
    Out of the shadows.
    And Sheldon wanted to scream.
    Because the lips that were smiling at him were split in a dozen places and gleaming with blood, her blood where she had bitten them, bitten almost through them in some places and he started to say, Lydia, Jesus ! what've you done? but he didn't really think there was a Lydia there anymore to talk to.
    Her teeth were grinding so hard he could actually hear them. Her pale blue eyes looked contaminated with red, twitching in their sockets like caged birds. And he did not even consider seizure, epilepsy or something, because the look on her face was evil, terrible, the fear of her went right to his bones and he screamed, long and loud and yet without the strength to pull away as her cold arms wrapped around his neck and she opened her ruined mouth and bit him, deep into his neck and pushed him to the floor.
    His glasses cracked beneath him. He heard his own blood pulse and splash the dirty concrete floor.
    As consciousness raced away from him and she clung and bit deeper and he felt her tongue move inside the open wound he gazed up at the boxes above him and saw the one marked with red grease-pencil near his head and even upside down he could read it.
    FILE UNDER HORROR it said.
    ~ * ~
    On 73rd and Broadway in front of the Beacon Theatre a stewardess who had worked the first-class compartment on the very same flight that had brought Elizabeth in from LAX to Kennedy was walking her dog, a miniature poodle named Marvin, her pooper-scooper, toweling, and plastic baggie in hand, when a pair of teenage girls with leopard jackets and red and green hair jumped out of a '74 Chevrolet and approached the dog murmuring nice doggie, nice doggie , bent down and with one girl holding and the other pulling tore its head from its body.
    ~ * ~
    Jim " Jumma " Jackson moved slowly off the yellow plastic seat and tossed his food wrappers and the cup from his shake into the trash bin.
    It was about fuckin' time.
    Over an hour, watching and waiting for the booster who was the only potential trouble in the place to get the hell out of there like he was doing now, ambling out the door.
    He pretended to study the overhead menu, like here was a dude with one real big appetite back for seconds and then moved up to the counter. It was only then he realized that there was nobody there.
    What the fuck's this?
    Break-time, bitches?
    The Man went by outside, siren wailing. About the sixth in the past hour. But the squad car wasn't stopping here and that was what counted. He tapped the call-bell for some service.
    Nobody home. Come on , he thought.
    He couldn't even see the cook at work behind the rows of stacked-up burgers, fries and Big Macs. He tapped the bell again. He could hear the burgers working on the grill and he could smell the fat. He fingered the pistol in his jacket pocket.
    "Hey! How 'bout gimme some service here!"
    He glanced around the restaurant. The only one looking at him was the old bag lady by the window. The kid and his girlfriend were playing at some touch-me shit. The old man wolfed his burger.
    He hit the bell a third time.
    "Hey! What the fuck you doin ' back there!"
    Easy; brother , he thought. You be cool now.
    The bag lady was grinning at him. The old man blinked up from his burger. The bag lady wouldn't remember him, she was too fucking crazy