Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories (25 page)

  Her vaguely frightened eyes watched the road lurch beneath the wheels. In back, a silent struggle began, taut hands rubbing, parted mouths clinging. Search for the sweet elusive at 120 miles-per-hour.

"Rota-Mota honey,"
Len moaned the moan between salivary kisses. In the front seat a young girl's heart beat unsteadily. ST. LOUIS-6.

  "No kiddin', you never been to Saint Loo?"

  "No, I…"

  "Then you never saw the loopy's dance?"

  Throat contracting suddenly. "No, I… Is that what… we're going to-"

  "Hey, frosh never saw the loopy's dance!" Bud yelled back.

  Lips parted, slurping; skirt was adjusted with blasй aplomb. "No kiddin'!" Len fired up the words. "Girl, you haven't
lived!"

  "Oh, she's
got
to see
that,"
said Barbara, buttoning a button.

  "Let's go there then!" yelled Len. "Let's give frosh a thrill!"

  "Good enough," said Bud and squeezed her leg. "Good enough up here, right, Peg?"

  Peggy's throat moved in the dark and the wind clutched harshly at her hair. She'd heard of it, she'd read of it but never had she thought she'd-

Choose your school friends carefully darling. Be very careful.

  But when no one spoke to you for two whole months? When you were lonely and wanted to talk and laugh and be alive? And someone spoke to you finally and asked you to go out with them?

  "I yam Popeye, the sailor man!" Bud sang.

  In back, they crowed artificial delight. Bud was taking a course in Pre-War Comics and Cartoons-2. This week the class was studying Popeye. Bud had fallen in love with the one-eyed seaman and told Len and Barbara all about him; taught them dialogue and song.

  "I yam Popeye, the sailor man! I like to go swimmin' with bow-legged women! I yam Popeye, the sailor man!"

  Laughter. Peggy smiled falteringly. The hand left her leg as the car screeched around a curve and she was thrown against the door. Wind dashed blunt coldness in her eyes and forced her back, blinking. 110-115-120 miles-per-hour. ST. LOUIS-3.
Be very careful, dear.

  Popeye cocked wicked eye.

  "O, Olive Oyl, you is my sweet patootie."

  Elbow nudging Peggy. "You be Olive Oyl-
you."

  Peggy smiled nervously. "I can't."

"Sure!"

  In the back seat, Wimpy came up for air to announce, "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

  Three fierce voices and a faint fourth raged against the howl of wind. "I fights to the
fin
-ish 'cause I eats my
spin
-ach! I yam Popeye, the sailor man!
Toot! Toot!

  "I yam what I yam," reiterated Popeye gravely and put his hand on the yellow-skirted leg of Olive Oyl. In the back, two members of the quartet returned to feeling struggle.

  ST. LOUIS-1. The black car roared through the darkened suburbs. "On with the nosies!" Bud sang out. They all took out their plasticate nose-and-mouth pieces and adjusted them.

ANCE IN YOUR PANTS WOULD BE A PITY!

WEAR YOUR NOSIES IN THE CITY!!

Ance (anse)

Slang for anticivilian germs; usage evolved during W.W.III.

  "You'll like the loopy's dance!" Bud shouted to her over the shriek of wind. "It's sen
saysh!"

  Peggy felt a cold that wasn't of the night or of the wind.
Remember, darling, there are terrible things in the world today. Things you must avoid.

  "Couldn't we go somewhere else?" Peggy said but her voice was inaudible. She heard Bud singing, "I like to go swimmin' with bow-legged women!" She felt his hand on her leg again while, in the back, was the silence of grinding passion without kisses.

Dance of the dead.
The words trickled ice across Peggy's brain.

ST. LOUIS.

  The black car sped into the ruins.

***

  It was a place of smoke and blatant joys. Air resounded with the bleating of revelers and there was a noise of sounding brass spinning out a cloud of music-1987 music, a frenzy of twisted dissonances. Dancers, shoe-horned into the tiny square of open floor, ground pulsing bodies together. A network of bursting sounds lanced through the mass of them; dancers singing:

  "Hurt me! Bruise me! Squeeze me TIGHT!

  Scorch my blood with hot DELIGHT!

  Please abuse me every NIGHT!

  LOVER, LOVER, LOVER, be a
beast-to-me!"

  Elements of explosion restrained within the dancing bounds-instead of fragmenting, quivering. "Oh, be a beast, beast, beast,
Beast,
BEAST to me!"

  "How is
this,
Olive old goil?" Popeye inquired of the light of his eye as they struggled after the waiter. "Nothin' like this in Sykesville, eh?"

  Peggy smiled but her hand in Bud's felt numb. As they passed by a murky lighted table, a hand she didn't see felt at her leg. She twitched and bumped against a hard knee across the narrow aisle. As she stumbled and lurched through the hot and smoky, thick-aired room, she felt a dozen eyes disrobing her, abusing her. Bud jerked her along and she felt her lips trembling.

  "Hey, how about that!" Bud exulted as they sat. "Right by the stage!"

  From cigarette mists, the waiter plunged and hovered, pencil poised, beside their table.

  "What'll it be!" His questioning shout cut through cacophony.

  "Whiskey-water!" Bud and Len paralleled orders, then turned to their dates. "What'll it be!" the waiter's request echoed from their lips.

"Green Swamp!"
Barbara said and,
"Green Swamp
here!" Len passed it along. Gin, Invasion Blood (1987 Rum), lime juice, sugar, mint spray, splintered ice-a popular college girl drink.

  "What about you, honey?" Bud asked his date.

  Peggy smiled. "Just some ginger ale," she said, her voice a fluttering frailty in the massive clash and fog of smoke.

  "What?" asked Bud and, "What's that, didn't hear!" the waiter shouted.

  "Ginger ale."

"What?"

  "Ginger ale!"

"GINGER ALE!"
Len screamed it out and the drummer, behind the raging curtain of noise that was the band's music, almost heard it. Len banged down his fist.
One-Two-Three!

  CHORUS:
Ginger Ale was only twelve years old! Went to church and was as good as gold. Till that day when-

  "Come
on,
come
on!"
the waiter squalled. "Let's have that order, kids! I'm busy!"

  "Two whisky-waters and two Green Swamps!" Len sang out and the waiter was gone into the swirling maniac mist.

  Peggy felt her young heart flutter helplessly.
Above all, don't drink when you're out on a date. Promise us that, darling, you must promise us that.
She tried to push away instructions etched in brain.

  "How you like this place, honey?
Loopy,
ain't it?" Bud fired the question at her; a red-faced, happy-faced Bud.

Loopy (loo pi)

Common alter. of L.U.P. (Lifeless Undeath Phenomenon).

  She smiled at Bud, a smile of nervous politeness. Her eyes moved around, her face inclined and she was looking up at the stage.
Loopy.
The word scalpeled at her mind.
Loopy, loopy.

  The stage was five yards deep at the radius of its wooden semicircle. A waist-high rail girdled the circumference, two pale purple spotlights, unlit, hung at each rail end. Purple on white-the thought came.
Darling, isn't Sykesville Business College good enough? No! I don't want to take a business course, I want to major in art at the University!

  The drinks were brought and Peggy watched the disembodied waiter's arm thud down a high, green-looking glass before her.
Presto!
-the arm was gone. She looked into the murky Green Swamp depths and saw chipped ice bobbing.

  "A toast! Pick up your glass, Peg!" Bud clarioned.

  They all clinked glasses:

  "To lust primordial!" Bud toasted.

  "To beds inviolate!" Len added.

  "To flesh insensate!" Barbara added a third link.

  Their eyes zeroed in on Peggy's face, demanding. She didn't understand.

"Finish
it!" Bud told her, plagued by freshman sluggishness.

  "To… u-
us,"
she faltered.

  "How o-
rig
-inal," stabbed Barbara and Peggy felt heat licking up her smooth cheeks. It passed unnoticed as three Youths of America with Whom the Future Rested gurgled down their liquor thirstily. Peggy fingered at her glass, a smile printed to lips that would not smile unaided.

  "Come on,
drink,
girl!" Bud shouted to her across the vast distance of one foot. "Chuggalug!"

  "Live it, girl," Len suggested abstractedly, fingers searching once more for soft leg. And finding, under table, soft leg waiting.

  Peggy didn't want to drink, she was afraid to drink. Mother words kept pounding-
never on a date, honey, never.
She raised the glass a little.

  "Uncle Buddy will help, will help!"

  Uncle Buddy leaning close, vapor of whisky haloing his head. Uncle Buddy pushing cold glass to shaking young lips. "Come on, Olive Oyl, old goil! Down the hatch!"

  Choking sprayed the bosom of her dress with Green Swamp droplets. Flaming liquid trickled into her stomach, sending offshoots of fire into her veins.

Bangity boom crash smash POW!!
The drummer applied the coup de grace to what had been, in ancient times, a lover's waltz. Lights dropped and Peggy sat coughing and tear-eyed in the smoky cellar club.

  She felt Bud's hand clamp strongly on her shoulder and, in the murk, she felt herself pulled off balance and felt Bud's hot wet mouth pressing at her lips. She jerked away and then the purple spots went on and a mottle-faced Bud drew back, gurgling, "I fights to the finish," and reaching for his drink.

  "Hey, the loopy now, the loopy!" Len said eagerly, releasing exploratory hands.

  Peggy's heart jolted and she thought she was going to cry out and run thrashing through the dark, smoke-filled room. But a sophomore hand anchored her to the chair and she looked up in white-faced dread at the man who came out on the stage and faced the microphone which, like a metal spider, had swung down to meet him.

  "May I have your attention, ladies and gentlemen," he said, a grim-faced, sepulchral-voiced man whose eyes moved out over them like flicks of doom. Peggy's breath was labored, she felt thin lines of Green Swamp water filtering hotly through her chest and stomach. It made her blink dizzily.
Mother.
The word escaped cells of the mind and trembled into conscious freedom.
Mother, take me home.

  "As you know, the act you are about to see is not for the faint of heart, the weak of will." The man plodded through the words like a cow enmired. "Let me caution those of you whose nerves are not what they ought to be-
leave now.
We make no guarantees of responsibility. We can't even afford to maintain a house doctor."

  No laughter appreciative. "Cut the crap and get off stage," Len grumbled to himself. Peggy felt her fingers twitching.

  "As you know," the man went on, his voice gilded with learned sonority, "this is not an offering of mere sensation but an honest scientific demonstration."

"Loophole for Loopy's!"
Bud and Len heaved up the words with the thoughtless reaction of hungry dogs salivating at a bell.

  It was, in 1987, a comeback so rigidly standard it had assumed the status of a catechism answer. A crenel in the postwar law allowed the L.U.P. performance if it was orally prefaced as an exposition of science. Through this legal chink had poured so much abusing of the law that few cared any longer. A feeble government was grateful to contain infractions of the law at all.

  When hoots and shoutings had evaporated in the smoke-clogged air, the man, his arms upraised in patient benediction, spoke again.

  Peggy watched the studied movement of his lips, her heart swelling, then contracting in slow, spasmodic beats. An iciness was creeping up her legs. She felt it rising toward the threadlike fires in her body and her fingers twitched around the chilly moisture of the glass.
I want to go, please take me home
-Will-spent words were in her mind again.