hates them with such passion that he is capable of any atrocity-even
though he has no idea what he expects to receive from them.
This mysterious need is sometimes so intense that it becomes painful.
It is a hunger akin to starvation–but not a hunger for food.
Often he finds himself on the trembling edge of a revelation, he
realizes that the answer is astonishingly simple if only he can open
himself to it, but enlightenment always eludes him.
The killer takes a long pull on the bottle of Beck’s. He wants the
beer, but he does not need it. Want is not need.
On the elevated stage, the blonde slips off her halter, exposing pale
upswept breasts.
If he retrieves the pistol and expanded magazines of ammo from the trunk
of the car, he will have ninety rounds. When the arrogant blonde is
dead, he can kill the other dancer. Then the three musclebound
bartenders with three headshots. He is well trained in the use of
firearms–though he has no recollection of who trained him. With those
five dead, he can target the fleeing crowd. Many who don’t die from
gunfire will perish when trampled in the panic to escape.
The prospect of slaughter excites him, and he knows that blood can make
him forget, at least for a short while, the aching need that plagues
him. He has experienced the pattern before. Need fosters frustration,
frustration grows into anger, anger leads to hatred, hatred generates
violence and violence sometimes soothes.
He drinks more beer and wonders if he is insane.
He remembers a movie in which a psychiatrist assures the hero that only
sane people question their sanity. Genuine madmen are always firmly
convinced of their rationality. Therefore, he must be sane even to be
able to doubt himself.
Marty leaned against the door frame and watched while the girls took
turns sitting on their bedroom vanity bench to let Paige brush their
hair. Fifty strokes each.
Perhaps it was the easy rhythmic motion of the hairbrush or the
tranquilizing domesticity of the scene that soothed Marty’s headache.
Whatever the reason, the pain faded.
Charlotte’s hair was golden, just like her mother’s, and Emily’s was so
dark brown that it was almost black, like Marty’s. Charlotte chatted
nonstop with Paige throughout her brushing, but Emily kept silent,
arched her back, closed her eyes, and took an almost catlike pleasure in
the grooming.
The contrasting halves of their shared room attested to other
differences between the sisters. Charlotte liked posters full of
motion, colorful hot-air balloons against a desert twilight, a ballet
dancer in mid-entrechat, sprinting gazelles. Emily preferred posters of
autumn leaves, evergreens hung with heavy snow, and moonlight-silvered
surf breaking on a pale beach. Charlotte’s bedspread was green, red,
and yellow, Emily’s was a beige chenille.
Disorder ruled in Charlotte’s domain, while Emily prized neatness.
Then there was the matter of pets. On Charlotte’s side of the room,
built-in bookshelves housed the terrarium that was home to Fred the
Turtle, the wide-mouthed gallon jar where Bob the Bug made his home in
dead leaves and grass, the cage that housed Wayne the Gerbil, another
terrarium in which Sheldon the Snake was the tenant, a second cage in
which Whiskers the Mouse spent a lot of time keeping an eye on Sheldon
in spite of the glass and wire that separated them, and a final
terrarium occupied by Loretta the Chameleon.
Charlotte had rejected the suggestion that a kitten or puppy was a more
appropriate pet. “Dogs and cats run around loose all the time, you
can’t keep them in a nice safe little home and protect them,” she
explained.
Emily had only one pet. Its name was Peepers. It was a stone the size
of a small lemon, smoothed by decades of running water in the Sierra
creek from which she had retrieved it during their summer vacation a
year ago. She had painted two soulful eyes on it, and insisted,
“Peepers is the best pet of all. I don’t have to feed him or clean up
after him. He’s been around forever, so he’s real smart and real wise,
and when I’m sad or maybe mad, I just tell him what I’m hurting about,