Dread: A Head Full of Bad Dreams

By Anthony Rivera, Jonathan Maberry, Ray Garton and 19 more

There are some nightmares from which you can never wake.

Dread: A Head Full of Bad Dreams, from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated editoral team of Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson, is Volume One in the Best of Grey Matter Press series. Selected by readers and horror fans, the twenty short stories contained within the pages of Dread include some of the darkest hallucinatory revelations from the minds of the most accomplished award-winning authors of our time.

Travel dark passageways and experience the disturbing visions of twenty masters from the horror, fantasy, science fiction, thriller, transgressive and speculative fiction genres as they bare their souls and fill your head with a lifetime of bad dreams.

 

Includes the work of Jonathan Maberry, Ray Garton, John F.D. Taff, William Meikle, Michael Laimo, JG Faherty, Bracken MacLeod, Tim Waggoner, Rose Blackthorn, Chad McKee, T. Fox Dunham, Edward Morris, Trent Zelazny, John C. Foster, Jonathan Balog, Jane Brooks, Peter Whitley, Martin Rose and John Everson.

 

Praise for Dread: A Head Full of Bad Dreams

 

"Reading Dread: A Head Full of Bad Dreams is my very first experience with the small publisher Grey Matter Press -- and let me tell you, I cannot wait to read more. Dread is a solid ode to nightmares that will keep you up -- and most importantly, keep you reading." -- Michelle "Izzy" Galgana, FANGORIA

"If you consider yourself a discerning reader of horror fiction but have yet to sample the dark delights of Grey Matter Press then you are in for a treat. This collection should be filed under essential reading. Grey Matter Press are one of the leading lights within the dark fiction genre." -- Adrian Shotbolt, THE GRIM READER

"This is sure to be a great addition to any horror-lover's collection." -- Natalya Lainhart, SCREAM SIRENS

 

 

Proudly presented by Grey Matter Press, the home of multiple Bram Stoker Award-nominated volumes of horror.

 

Grey Matter Press: Where Dark Thoughts Thrive

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grey Matter Press
• Release date: Jan 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201157609

Anthony Rivera

Anthony Rivera is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated editor committed to discovering, developing and nurturing the finest talent writing in the thriller, crime, fantasy, psychological, horror, and speculative genres that are published by Grey Matter Press. Having spent the majority of his professional career in consumer product marketing supporting an array of global brands, he established the press in 2012 and has leveraged his extensive communications and branding expertise to build a publishing house that has become one of the most respected independent fiction presses in the industry.

Book preview

titlepage

All stories contained in this anthology remain the copyright © of their respective authors. Additional copyright information is located in the Declarations of Copyright section.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Grey Matter Press except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This anthology is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors' imaginations, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DREAD: A HEAD FULL OF BAD DREAMS

ISBN 978-1-940658-68-1

First Grey Matter Press Electronic Edition

May 2016

Anthology Copyright © 2016 Grey Matter Press

Design Copyright © 2016 Grey Matter Press

Cover Artwork © 2016 Victor Slepushkin

Short Stories © [various years] Individual Authors

All rights reserved.

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To all those who still have pleasant dreams.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Anthony Rivera

HOUSESITTING

Ray Garton

ANGIE

John F.D. Taff

ON THE THRESHOLD

William Meikle

THROUGH THE GHOSTLANDS

Rose Blackthorn

PURE BLOOD AND EVERGREEN

Bracken MacLeod

THIS IS NOT A HORROR STORY

Tim Waggoner

MOONLIGHTING

Chad McKee

THE LAST ELF

T. Fox Dunham

CITY SONG

Edward Morris and Trent Zelazny

MISTER WHITE

John C. Foster

THE TROLL

Jonathan Balog

RELEASE

Jane Brooks and Peter Whitley

WORMHOLE

J. Daniel Stone

HEIRLOOM

Michael Laimo

SECOND OPINION

Ray Garton

HOW TO MAKE A HUMAN

Martin Rose

MARTIAL LAW

JG Faherty

SHOW ME

John F.D. Taff

AMNION

John Everson

MISTER POCKETS

Jonathan Maberry

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

DECLARATIONS OF COPYRIGHT

MORE FROM GREY MATTER PRESS

To pursue passion is to journey into darkness.

The last three years have been an adventure into the unfamiliar that’s filled my head with both in equal measure. While at times the trip was admittedly rocky, it has never been anything short of gratifying. And having my own head full of bad dreams to guide me along the way hasn’t hurt.

Following a long journey through life’s darkness that often led me to places I’ve thankfully not returned, in 2013 one of my baddest dreams was finally realized. On September 17th of that year, Grey Matter Press released its first volume of horror, Dark Visions: A Collection of Modern Horror – Volume One. Five months later that book was nominated for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award®. Talk about a badass dream come true.

What a long strange trip it’s been…

Since then I’ve had the pleasure to share my bad dreams, and those of a cavalcade of talented authors, with readers from around the world who’ve made room for these nightmares in their own heads. After filling thousands of minds with the baddest dreams possible, it’s now time for some of them to return home.

Readers who embrace darkness are souls of conscience with hearts of passion and voices that must be heard. It’s from this group of passionate voices that the nightmares in Dread: A Head Full of Bad Dreams were born. Arriving to mark the beginning of what I hope to be a long line of reader-selected volumes, Dread is the first in a series of the baddest bad dreams to come from Grey Matter Press.

What a long strange trip that’ll be...

Turning over the reins of editorial curation for this volume to the readers who matter most may well have been the best decision I’ve ever made. This book that you’ve created embodies your passion for dark fiction and serves as your own head full of bad dreams come to life.

I find it only fitting that I kick off the discussion of the nightmares included in Dread at the beginning, in more ways than one, with Ray Garton’s own bad dream entitled Housesitting.

Ray’s Housesitting was one of the first manuscripts I read during the review process for Splatterlands and the two books that would later become Dark Visions One and Dark Visions Two. What can I say about Garton’s fiction that hasn’t already been said by hundreds of editors and critics before me? Ray has been in the trenches for decades and is undeniably a master of his craft. There isn’t a story he’s written that doesn’t seamlessly blend comfortable familiarity with palatable unease. His words flow across the page with the simplicity of a tale told by campfire to eager listeners awaiting some unknown horror that will leap from the shadows and hit them like an unexpected punch to the gut.

Garton does this effectively in Housesitting where a suburban housewife offers to look after the home of neighbors as they travel out of town. Once the couple leaves, she goes about her mundane tasks of watering plants and feeding pets. But alone and with free reign in the normally off-limits domain, she succumbs to the most problematic of human behaviors. As the cliché goes, her curiosity dooms far more than the cat when she uncovers secrets never meant to be revealed.

Housesitting is an exploration of how the simplest of life’s actions can have the most tragic consequences. Garton’s nuanced tale is an extraordinary example of how horror literature can intelligently investigate the most taboo of subjects without spilling a single drop of blood.

Another example of highly nuanced horror is John F.D. Taff’s Angie. The setting for Angie could be Anytown, USA, in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse. It’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of zombie fiction. Like many standard horror tropes, I feel the zombie may be on the verge of jumping the shark, if it hasn’t already done so. But like most everyone else, I enjoy The Walking Dead. However, to me, this series is a classic tale of human survival against insurmountable odds, very much like Angie.

Much like the survivors in The Walking Dead, the main characters in Angie are working together to ensure their mutual safety. Taff’s story focuses on a couple with a troubled past who’ve reunited after their divorce. On its surface, Angie might be considered by some to be just another in the long line of zombie stories. I see it as a metaphor for the ability of humans to work through their personal issues to overcome emotional distress. Or to put it another way, it’s about the power of true love to conquer all.

Like much of John’s work, Angie is a highly accomplished piece of fiction. Every choice of word and turn of phrase plays with our emotions. He utilizes subtlety to hint at impending danger and tone to exacerbate tension while allowing the reader to walk away with the understanding that there is a far more important meaning in his message that is as relatable as it is disturbing.

Conflicts with the advent of technology are far from unique in the horror genre. The struggle between the light and the dark in the science versus nature argument is a thread that runs through a number of pieces in modern fiction. This idea takes center stage in William Meikle’s On the Threshold.

At its most basic level, On the Threshold is a great work of science fiction. But all too often, science has the capacity to produce horrors beyond our wildest imagining. This concept may be most famously exemplified in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Like Shelley’s doctor, Meikle’s scientists are forging ahead with their own attempts at a creation of sorts. As their experiments progress, it becomes evident that the results are unlikely to be positive. When I read On the Threshold, I recall the experiments of the scientists at Los Alamos who created what may be the greatest monster of all time. If Oppenheimer was the father of the atomic bomb, Meikle’s counterparts are the parents of the apocalypse. But, at least for us, Meikle’s scientists are fictional.

As a general concept, the idea of the end times plays an important role in much of dark fiction. We see an evocative example of this struggle to survive a post-apocalyptic world in Rose Blackthorn’s Through the Ghostlands. In this piece, Blackthorn recounts the lives of a trio who find themselves thrown together after the world is blanketed by volcanic ash. Deep human emotions and interpersonal conflict play a major role in the relationship between twin sisters and the man who has come between them.

Through the Ghostlands puts a new spin on the apocalypse as Blackthorn thrusts her characters into a world where they need to be wary of the malevolent spirits of the dead who now roam the land searching for their proper place in the dichotomy of their new existence. Sometimes evocative of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, if McCarthy had set out to write a ghost story, Through the Ghostlands uses the strength and exposes the fallibility of its characters to depict the double-edged sword that is love—both old and new as well as familial and romantic.

Emotions play an integral role in the friendship of two young boys who find themselves imprisoned in an internment camp in Bracken MacLeod’s bleak dystopian world of Pure Blood and Evergreen. Human horrors are those that tend to frighten me most, and there’s no shortage of them in MacLeod’s story. There’s something chillingly tangible about the horrific conditions experienced by MacLeod’s protagonists in this piece that depicts the ability of humanity to inflict pain and degradation on its own. MacLeod accomplishes this brilliantly, utilizing the concepts of racial intolerance and religious fanaticism in a story that seems uncomfortably prescient today. Pure Blood and Evergreen is one of most moving pieces I’ve had the pleasure to read, and it remains today one of the most haunting depictions of man-made horror published by Grey Matter Press.

Another, albeit far different, example of the horror of mankind is Tim Waggoner’s delightfully dark This is Not a Horror Story. Don’t let the title fool you. Waggoner has crafted a brilliant horror story that Ellen Datlow named as an honorable mention in her Best Horror of the Year series. The fact that readers have selected it to appear in this volume is further proof the recognition was well deserved.

Waggoner’s work is always a pleasure to read. What he does in This is Not a Horror Story effectively conjures up the dread we feel when faced with a visit to the DMV. Bad customer service and governmental bureaucracy aside, the experiences of the protagonist living in a surveillance state resonate with utmost clarity. Suffice it to say the next time you need to renew your driver’s license, you’ll be thinking of Tim Waggoner.

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of secret societies. If they do exist, I believe they’re probably much like that portrayed in Chad McKee’s Moonlighting. In this piece set in modern-day Manhattan, McKee paints a startling picture of two stockbrokers with an insatiable desire to experience the most salacious and violent of thrills. Moonlighting is built on the premise that a mysterious underground thrives in the shadows of normal everyday society. McKee’s narrative draws readers into an elusive game whose players are encouraged to take an active role in making their darkest fantasies come true. An example of the ultimate in voyeurism, Moonlighting is a disturbing commentary on society that’s executed in such a way it has us questioning whether the people in our lives who we believe we know might actually be harboring an unknown darkness.

It’s no secret that T. Fox Dunham has had his fair share of struggles. As a cancer survivor, Dunham may have already accomplished more in his life than most of us will ever achieve. I’ve spoken at great length with Fox about his time spent hospitalized for lymphoma, during which he went to great lengths to help improve the lives of a number of children receiving cancer treatment with him. Where Fox was able to overcome, many of his younger counterparts sadly did not.

Set in Nazi Germany during WWII, Dunham’s The Last Elf may seem on the surface to be a tale of dark fantasy and the struggle between light and dark. One need only look a bit more closely to understand the importance of this piece. The Last Elf is a painfully dark story about the despair Dunham has harbored having lived through the passing of those children who he so wishes would have survived along with him.

I believe when read with that understanding, readers are likely to have a far greater comprehension of the depth of this piece of fiction. I expect many will come away, as I have, with the realization that The Last Elf is one of the most influential examples of horror literature they have ever read.

The plight of marginalized communities in our society has always been a great personal concern of mine. The manner in which the homeless are both noticed with derision and also made invisible with the turn of an eye is an issue that’s long past its date of expiration in needing to be addressed. So when Edward Morris and Trent Zelazny’s co-written City Song appeared on my desk during reads for Dark Visions, I was enthralled with the subject matter.

Their depiction of a group of Portland’s underprivileged who’ve banded together as the rest of society ignores them is disturbingly bleak and deeply moving. At its essence, City Song is as much political commentary as it is dystopian horror fiction. An underlying thread of personal anguish is woven throughout the fabric of the forgotten community in City Song, and it slowly unravels to ultimately reveal that there is beauty in the darkness if we only open our eyes wide enough to allow ourselves to see it.

Then there are those times when we read a piece of fiction that makes us not want to open our eyes at all. This is the case with John C. Foster’s brutally visual short story Mister White. What more can I say other than Foster’s story is an incredibly visceral piece of work that, upon my first read, I knew needed to find a home with Grey Matter Press.

I’ve long been a fan of spy thrillers, having consumed novels like Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal and more of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne titles than I can name. Like his predecessors, Foster’s Mister White is a tale of danger and intrigue. His masterful use of setting and attention to detail transports readers to the snow-driven streets of Vienna, making it seem as though we’ve lived there all of our lives. But in Mister White, Foster takes a different approach to the subject of espionage by doing the unthinkable. His introduction of the supernatural propels the story far beyond the typical boundaries of the genre. The portrait he paints of the villainous Mister White is deliciously malevolent and purposely vague, aspects that enhance the unsettling nature of the overall plot, making it one of the eeriest and most disturbing short stories we’ve published to date.

It’s often said that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. And if that’s the case, one should also not judge a story by its title. The Troll by Jonathan Balog is an exceptional piece of psychological fiction that has deep and lasting repercussions. On a very basic level, Balog’s tale is a coming-of-age story about a young boy struggling with the effects of grade-school bullying. But readers soon learn that the surface horrors go much deeper and are far more troubling. The Troll is one of those stories that resonates long after it’s over.

Another story that’s destined to be remembered is Release. Co-written by Jane Brooks and Peter Whitley, Release is a tale about a couple living on the cul-de-sac at the end of the world, in more ways than one. I can honestly say that I’ve never read anything quite like Release, a piece that deals with the complicated issues of survival, isolation and the despair that comes with ultimate loss. To have been the first work of published fiction penned by this duo of writers is something that stands as a testament to their immense talent.

Wormhole by J. Daniel Stone is another example of the capacity for humankind to harbor unending despair as a result of events that are beyond our control. Wormhole recounts the story of a pair of New York artists who attempt to capture the spirits of the dead on film in the hope that doing so will provide an answer for a mother’s premature death. Stone’s prose is lyrical and poetic throughout as he depicts the struggle of these two friends to deal with issues of abuse, abandonment and suicide.

As a fan of intelligent dark fiction, the splatterpunk movement of the 1980s had a powerful impact on me. John Skipp and Craig Spector are credited for igniting this genre whose flames were later fanned by other influential authors that include two of my favorites, Clive Barker and Poppy Z. Brite. Over the years, the depth of meaning, once the benchmark of splatterpunk, has waned as intelligence was replaced by buckets of blood poured onto the pages during the 90s and up through today.

Michael Laimo’s Heirloom recaptures the essence of the original movement by re-injecting character, plot and thought back into the genre. While containing its share of spilled blood, Heirloom finesses the taboo subjects of incest, sexuality and psychological abuse. The topics covered in Heirloom are not for the faint of heart. But when readers look closely at the words on the page, I believe they’ll uncover something quite profound lurking just beneath the surface.

Ray Garton’s Second Opinion explores the life of a washed-up author trying to regain the success of his glory days. In the story, the author has stumbled upon what he believes to be the best idea he’s had in years and, over dinner, seeks out the opinion of a colleague. At its heart, Second Opinion is a tale of jealousy and greed. But in Garton’s capable hands it becomes something so much darker.

To many readers, How to Make a Human by Martin Rose will seem like yet another tale added to the post-apocalyptic brew that is a trend in this volume. However, Rose takes a different spin on the end times in this story where mankind has been destroyed but our robots have remained. If Rose’s piece was actually about robots intent on recreating their inventors, How to Make a Human would be incredibly successful. But that’s not what it’s about at all.

How to Make a Human shows Rose’s innate ability to pull his readers heartstrings while lulling them into a false sense of reality. It’s not until the final sentence when we learn what Rose is really after. It’s a rare gift when an author is capable of using a single sentence to completely reimagine everything that came before. Martin accomplishes this literary transformation with skillful ease, making How to Make a Human one of my favorite stories that I’ve had a role in publishing.

Yet another example of literary horror fiction is JG Faherty’s Martial Law. Here, the residents of a small town find themselves trapped in an ice cream parlor as their town is overrun by zombies. Where most zombie fiction fails, Faherty’s Martial Law succeeds in a way that is stunningly intelligent. To use this common horror trope to send a far greater message indicates that we are in the presence of a master. Faherty’s skill to utilize horror literature as metaphor is what makes Martial Law such a powerful read.

 Show Me was the first piece of fiction I read that was written by John F.D. Taff. Since then we’ve gone on to publish a great deal of Taff’s work, including his critically acclaimed The End in All Beginnings, the book that prompted me to first call him the King of Pain. So I guess it could be said that Show Me was my initiation to his pain.

For many of us, college is a time of exploration—educationally, emotionally, sexually and more. For the students in Show Me, it’s a time when they’re discovering their own identity and, in this case, they learn that that identity is strongly linked to their own sexuality. Show Me is a sexual coming-of-age tale that has far deeper ramifications for both its characters and the readers combined.

It’s no secret that sex and horror often go hand-in-hand, and John Everson is a master of the erotic. Everson’s ability to capture the darkness of the human condition while also titillating readers is always a recipe for a thrilling read. Everson’s Amnion is set in the dystopian future where corporate medicine has found cures for most diseases. With sunset having fallen on sickness, extreme body modification has now become the rage. Considering the success of today’s plastic surgeons, this concept doesn’t seem to stray too far from current reality. Venturing beyond the realm of horror into science fiction and back again, readers come face-to-face with the sci-fi erotic horror of Everson’s Amnion.

Then we come to the last piece in the book. Written by Jonathan Maberry, Mister Pockets was one of the first manuscripts I reviewed during our call for Dark Visions. I firmly believe that Maberry is one of the most effective storytellers of our time. His vivid imagination and attention to detail in every aspect of his fiction is delivered with such dexterity that it could easily be a retelling of an actual experience delivered by Jonathan over beers at the neighborhood bar.

As somewhat of a vignette in his popular Pine Deep series, Mister Pockets continues the saga of the quaint Pennsylvania town that once experienced a devastation commonly known as The Trouble. Mister Pockets takes readers back to Pine Deep to experience life, death and much more through the eyes of the charismatic Lefty Horrigan. Lefty is a boy to whom many of us can relate. He’s just a regular kid, not great at much of anything who occupies his time doing regular boyish things. That’s the case until, one day, his life becomes entangled with that of Pine Deep’s only hobo, the mysterious Mister Pockets, who unleashes a terrifying series of events that could signify the return of The Trouble.

It’s no surprise to me that this story has resonated with readers and was selected to appear in this volume as it is a perfect example of the quintessential tale of horror.

In 2013, Jonathan’s Mister Pockets began chapter one in the history book of Grey Matter Press when it appeared the lead-off position of our debut title, Dark Visions One. It’s more than fitting to include it in the clean-up spot in this volume, thus effectively bookmarking the first year of publishing for our company.

So, with that, the readers have spoken and they’ve collected their favorite bad dreams from our first year into this single volume so that they may now fill your own head. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading Dread as much as I enjoyed working with the authors who wrote it and the readers who put it together.

All you need to do now is turn the page and let your own strange trip begin…

Anthony Rivera

Publisher and Editor

Grey Matter Press

Darlene left her house at a few minutes after nine in the morning, went across the street to the Cullpeppers’ and let herself in with the key they had given her. It was a crisp, fall morning and she wore a heavy wool sweater of forest green, a pair of jeans and tennis shoes.

Nancy Cullpepper’s aunt Eva had died and she and her husband Harold had gone north to Medford, Oregon to bury her. They had left two days ago and would be back tomorrow. Darlene and her husband, Ralph, had agreed to housesit, although it was Darlene, of course, who did the work. Nancy had insisted on paying the going housesitting rate, whatever that might be.

It’s a chore, Nancy had said, "so I insist on paying you. I mean, even though it’s only three days, it’s still a terrible inconvenience for you. You have to come over twice a day to feed and water the cats and the iguana. You have to clean out the litter boxes. I insist on paying you."

Darlene felt strange taking money for it because they had known the Cullpeppers for so long and were such good friends. Nancy was her best friend in the world. Housesitting for them just seemed like something they should do, something the Cullpeppers would certainly do for them if the situation were reversed. Of course, Darlene and Ralph didn’t have four cats and an iguana.

It was strange being in their house alone. Somehow, the empty silence was not welcoming. Two of the cats—Rosie, a sleek Abyssinian, and Buster, a gray tabby with white socks—met her at the door when she came in. The other two—Maxie, a moody Siamese, and Carmen, a Persian—were more skittish and tended to keep to themselves. She bent down and petted them, talked to them a little.

Darlene went to the kitchen, to the door that led out to the garage. It had a kitty-door built into the bottom of it so the cats could go through. Their food and litter boxes were kept out there. In the garage, she opened a couple of cans of Friskies and spooned the food onto their plates, poured some dry food into the bowl. She took their water bowl into the kitchen and freshened it, scooped out the two litter boxes and put in some fresh sand.

Back in the kitchen, she went to the refrigerator, reached into the resealable bag in the crisper and got a handful of greens for Wallet, Harold’s iguana. She took the greens down the hall to Harold’s office, where they kept the lizard’s large terrarium. The green lizard gave Darlene the creeps, so she did not enjoy reaching into the terrarium to put food in its bowl. But Wallet seemed to feel the same way about her and backed away from her hand each time she reached in. She took the water bowl out and across the hall to the bathroom to refill it, then put it back.

She had a headache that throbbed at her temples. She’d had a fight with Ralph that morning. She couldn’t even remember what it was about. Something stupid. She left Harold’s office, closed the door, and stood there in the hall, thinking, trying to remember what the fight had been about. She had neglected to wash the shirt Ralph had wanted to wear to work that day, that was it. Such a stupid thing. But it seemed they fought over stupid things quite a lot lately.

Part of it was that Ralph was unhappy at his job. He was general manager at Circuit Breakers, an electronics store. The chain was cutting back and there was a lot of tension because no one knew if the store would be closed. Everyone was afraid, polishing their resumes just in case.

Ralph had been against the idea of housesitting for the Cullpeppers at first. What if something goes wrong? he’d said. What if one of the cats gets sick and dies? Even if it’s not your fault, if it happens while you’re taking care of them, it’s your responsibility. Or what if that damned lizard of Harold’s dies? Anything could happen, you never know. It’s like loaning money between friends, it’s the kind of thing that could damage the friendship. She had assured him nothing like that would happen. It was only three days, after all. He’d gone along with it in the end.

Darlene went across the hall to the bathroom and looked in the medicine cabinet to see if there was something she could take for her headache. All she had at home was Tylenol, and that never worked for her. Some real aspirin would do the trick. But the cabinet contained no medicine.

She went down the hall to the master bedroom and into the bathroom there. It was much larger than the one in the hall, with two sinks, a medicine cabinet over each. She checked the first cabinet and found a bottle of Vicodin. She shook two into her palm and replaced the bottle. She removed a Dixie Cup from the dispenser on the wall and drank the pills down with cold tap water, then crushed the cup and tossed it into the small garbage can under the sink.

Darlene left the bathroom and sat on the edge of the king-size bed. Curled up at the foot of the bed, Carmen looked up for a moment with sleepy eyes. She reached over and gently stroked the Persian. Carmen purred. Darlene looked at the pictures of the Cullpepper children on the wall. In one framed photograph, Kristine wore her cap and gown and held her high-school diploma. She was attending Stanford now, studying speech pathology. Beside it was a photograph of their son, Lewis, at his college graduation. He was married, living down in the Bay Area, serving his internship at a small law firm in San Raphael.

Ralph was sterile from a childhood case of the mumps. They had looked into adoption, but had never followed through with it. Darlene had never felt any great yearning for children, but she often wondered what their life would have been like with them. They would be grown now, like the Cullpeppers’ children, and she and Ralph would be alone anyway.

She stood and went over to Nancy’s closet and browsed through her clothes. Nancy was a paralegal and a snappy dresser. She was svelte, with a figure Darlene envied. Darlene was not overweight, but clothes never looked as good on her as they did on Nancy.

She went from the closet to Nancy’s dresser and opened a bottle of perfume. She sniffed it, rubbed a little on her wrist. She opened the top drawer. Underwear. She opened the next drawer. Sweaters folded and stacked neatly. Cashmere. She took one out and rubbed it against her cheek a few times, then put it back. She closed the drawer, bent down, and opened the next one.

A quick chill passed over her. What am I doing? she thought. She suddenly felt like a child doing something naughty. It was not exactly a bad feeling. It had a certain thrill to it.

There were some small cardboard boxes in the drawer. She took one out and opened it. It contained a collection of lapel buttons that bore slogans. One read: SO, WHEN IS THE WIZARD GOING TO GET BACK TO YOU ABOUT THAT BRAIN? Darlene chuckled and looked at another. In dripping red letters: WANNA COME UP AND SEE MY CHAINSAW? There were dozens more in the box. She didn’t know Nancy collected buttons. She wondered how old the collection was, when she’d started.

She put the box back and opened another. She gasped. It contained Polaroid snapshots of Nancy in lingerie, some of her naked.

Oh, my, Darlene said with a smirk.

She felt a pang of guilt mingled with a frisson of excitement.

You’re a bad girl, Nancy, she whispered as she browsed through the photos.

There were some pictures of Harold, too. He was a large man, six-four, broad-shouldered with a deep chest. But he was less than well-endowed. Harold was an insurance salesman, white and doughy from too much time spent indoors at a desk.

She came to a few pictures of them together: holding each other, fondling, playing, all smiles. Darlene wondered if someone else had been there to take them, or if they’d managed to take the pictures themselves.

A thump in the living room startled her so badly she dropped the pictures and they scattered over the floor. She quickly gathered them up and put them back in the box, put the box back in the drawer, and closed it. She left the bedroom and hurried down the hall.

Rosie and Buster were rolling around on the living room floor, rough-housing. Darlene sighed with relief.

She’d had only a banana for breakfast and was hungry, so she went to the kitchen to find something to eat. On the counter by the toaster she found a box of Little Debbie donuts and took one, bit into it. She knew she should leave, but there was no compelling reason for her to go back home. She worked at an answering service, but it was her day off. She had laundry to do, but nothing else. She wanted to make sure she had Ralph’s shirt washed and ready for tomorrow by the time he got home so he would have nothing to complain about. She hoped his mood was better when he returned