Part 15 (1/2)

Thank G.o.d for Notorious, he thought, realizing the addictive purpose it served even as he craved the hit.

Thank G.o.d there were folks rotten enough to fry in public each year, not just for the s.e.xual thrill it provideda”considerable, certainlya”but also to divert the minds of anxious moms and dads across the nation.

Removing the towel, Matthew strapped on his Private Flogger, molded like a slug to his back, and turned it to Warmup. It sensed the contours of his muscles and their firmness, reminding him of heating pads applied to stiff necks as a boy.

Grabbing a Futterware container of coconut-oil on his nightstand, he made a nest out of his pillows and zapped on the TV.

National coverage of prom night. An East Coast map smattered with sporadic dots of early returns. At this point, the commentary consisted mainly of glib history and idle chatter.

Another station, a local Topeka business channel, scream-gabbled a pitch to survivors, showing a slashed red X simultaneously crossing out a cartoon picnicker and a box on an org-chart, urging its viewers to Call This Number Now!

Then Matthew found the channel he wanted.

Boggs Fleester, hair gray and combed back in perfect coif, sprang into his bedroom not two feet from the foot of the bed.

”Over my shoulder,” he said in measured tones, ”you can see the electric chair in which our two reprobates will fry.”

Fleester wasn't really in the execution room. You could tell that. Soon, the distinguished newsman would fade. The electric chair and its surround would surge out of a flat background into vivid holographic prominence.

As Fleester's voice jauntily recounted the couples' rampage upon a Rhode Island school bus of elementary kids, Matthew glared feverishly at the clock. Come on, he thought. Stuck at twenty-five past eight. Get the d.a.m.ned show on the road.

Tweed, a vision in pink chiffon, beamed at the front door. ”Good night.”

She was dancing now, fearful at Corundum High, slow and close and clinging to Dex, or giving and getting blows in a frenzied bout of slap'n'smack prior to dispersal twenty minutes away, the slash achieved by nine.

She might, his pride and joy might . . . no, shut it out.

Fleester wrapped up and faded. The music took on intensity. The grim cell moved forward, the chair growing greater both wide and tall, like the Christmas tree in The Nutcracker.

Off to the left, an inset bubble hovered, inside it the executioner beside her dials and the two men chosen to pleasure her, naked except for the obligatory lobebags the FCC and common decency insisted upon.

Matthew sobbed.

A cell door opened on the right. In were marched the twosome, stripped, pa.s.sive, doped up, and resigned.

Gritting his teeth, Matthew turned his Flogger to Low. The first lash fell with a pain that stung and diverted. He oiled his bare left lobe and his gens until the flesh flushed and stiffened. To the suggestiveness of the music he surrendered himself.

The aroma coming from the TV had a sufficient dankness about it to be convincing.

A sizzle of fire flared across Matthew's right shoulder, Cam's favorite place to flog him.

His darling wife Cam had birthed Tweed into the world, then Jenna, and loved them both dearly. Now she was gone, Arly with her, in that awful accident.

Soon Tweed would . . . no!

Matthew's hand fumbled as he notched it up, wincing at the increase in depth and frequency.

The couple were strapped in, the woman belted upside down, mouth to groin, groin to mouth. The executioner, her nipples hidden by two rotating male scalps, began to play with the dials.

They writhed as Matthew focused desperately on his own arousal. Uncensored black and white projections danced over their skin.

Funny, how the image of naked lovelobes posed no problem if they were grainy and contorted on curves of flesh. Yet the couple's lobes were crudely bagged. And the executioner's, bared now for action, had been expertly cubed out.

The condemned couplea”sc.u.m b.i.t.c.h and b.a.s.t.a.r.d, by any measurea”might in other circ.u.mstances have enjoyed the pain. But it was one thing to choose to have a lover inflict torment in measured doses within established limits. It was quite another to endure punishment, that would only worsen unto death, from that grim-faced invasive third called The State.

Matthew's arousal was progressing well. A lovely commonality of pull and tug, complementary and compelling, had arisen between his hands.

But the executioner's tinny voice, catching rhythm from another realm, threw a grit of grain into the turning cogs. Tweed at the door. ”Good night.” A vision in pink, her smile. Dex too so full of promise, his hands thrust to the cuffs into his tux pockets.

The execution on TV was suddenly nothing but sound and fury. Matthew, his p.e.n.i.s emblooded and his lobemeat throbbing beneath his ear, stabbed Mute and paused the flogger.

Hugging eight forty-five. He should have turned the d.a.m.ned clock to the wall!

Fifteen minutes to Tweed's phone call if she had been spared. She would make her way back from her a.s.signed spot, pa.s.sing pay phones, banks of them throughout the building.

He had given her plenty of quarters. More than she needed. He was surprised Tweed hadn't jingled as she left the house.

Matthew rose from the bed. He paced, still erect below, his stiffness a bother. He circled the projection. With the sound off, it seemed unreal.

How could people act the way these two had?

So many children so remorselessly used.

A sheen of floor dirt coated the wrinkles of the woman's soles where her feet hung, knee-bent, above the man's shoulders. He was gripping the arms of the chair, his p.e.n.i.s limp upon her cheek.

They had died an hour ago of course. Maybe more. East Coasters were already sated on this couple's prolonged miseries. West Coasters were still awaiting the arrival of dates.

Even the executioner, in her holographic bubble writhing under eager tongues, was in reality on her way home. Maybe she was even concerned with her kid brother's welfare that night at school.

Eight fifty.

This was unbearable.

Year after year, he had taught the prom kill in his soph.o.m.ore history cla.s.s as though it were nothing, accepted practice, forgetting the agony he himself had gone through at eighteen.

But it had torqued him, way back then.

It had turned him moody and morose as he turned fifteen. More adult, his folks had said. Until in college, junior year, he had lightened up, discovered song buried in the depths of his wounded heart, and let joy burst from his mouth.

Now, heaven help him, he had delivered his daughter into that same maw.

Even now, she might be . . .

He cut off the thought, a wash of fever at his brow.

Ten more minutes. Give it ten.