her chest, he felt her heart leaping like a rabbit whose hindquarters
were already in the jaws of the fox. No one could possibly be
unconscious with a thundering heartbeat like that.
Besides, her eyes were open. They were staring blindly, as if she could
find nothing upon which to fix her gaze. Of course, she could not see
him in the dark as he could see her, couldn’t see anything else for that
matter, but that wasn’t the reason she was staring through him. When he
flicked the eyelash over her right eye with his fingertip, she did not
flinch, did not even blink. Tears were drying on her cheeks, but no new
tears welled up.
Catatonic. The little bitch had blanked out on him, closed her mind
down, become a vegetable. That didn’t suit his purpose at all. The
value of the offering was in the vitality of the subject. Art was about
energy, vibrancy, pain, and terror. What statement could he make with
his little grand Christ if she could not experience and express her
agony?
He was so angry with her, just so spitting angry, that he didn’t want to
play with her any more. Keeping one hand on her chest, above her
rabbity heart, he took his switchblade from his jacket pocket and popped
it open.
Control.
He would have opened her then, and had the intense pleasure of feeling
her heart go still in his grip, except that he was a Master of the Game
who knew the meaning and value of control. He could deny himself such
transitory thrills in the pursuit of more meaningful and enduring
rewards.
He hesitated only a moment before putting the knife away.
He was better than that.
His lapse surprised him.
Perhaps she would come out of her trance by the time he was ready to
incorporate her into his collection. If not, then he felt sure that the
first driven nail would bring her to her senses and transform her into
the radiant work of art that he knew she had the potential to be.
He turned from her to the tools that were piled at the point where the
art of his collection currently ended. He had hammers and screwdrivers,
wrenches and pliers, saws and a miter box, a battery-powered drill with
an array of bits, screws and nails, rope and wire, brackets of all
kinds, and everything else a handyman might need, all of it purchased at
Sears when he had realized that properly arranging and displaying each
piece in his collection would require the construction of some clever
supports and, in a couple of cases, thematic backdrops.
His chosen medium was not as easy to work with as oil paints or
watercolors or clay or sculptor’s granite, for gravity tended to quickly
distort each effect that he achieved.
He knew he was short on time, that on his heels were those who did not
understand his art and would make the amusement park impossible for him
by morning. But that would not matter if he made one more addition to
the collection that rounded it out and earned him the approbation he
sought.
Haste, then.
The first thing to do, before hauling the girl to her feet and bracing
her in a standing position, was to see if the material that composed the
segmented, reptilian belly and chest of the funhouse Lucifer would take
a nail. It seemed to be a hard rubber, perhaps soft plastic.
Depending on thickness, brittleness, and resiliency of the material, a
nail would either drive into it as smoothly as into wood, bounce off, or
bend. If the fake devil’s hide proved too resistant, he’d have to use
the battery-powered drill instead of the hammer, two-inch screws instead
of nails, but it shouldn’t detract from the artistic integrity of the
piece to lend a modern touch to the reinactment of this ancient ritual.
He hefted the hammer. He placed the nail. The first blow drove it a
quarter of the way into Lucifer’s abdomen. The second blow slammed it
halfway home.
So nails would work just fine.
He looked down at the girl, who still sat on the floor with her back to