I might still be there, she thought, if I hadn’t crashed and burned.
She saw herself lying on one of his loungers. She felt the heavy heat of the sun, and then Jerry’s hands sliding over her skin, spreading oil on her back and legs.
It might have gone that way, she thought. With a sigh, she entered the laundry room.
In spite of the light coming in through the curtained windows, the room seemed dark after the brightness outside. Next to a large basin stood a drier. On the other side of the drier was a top-loading washer. A nearby shelf held a collection of detergents and bleaches.
Gillian lifted the lip of the washing machine and peered inside. The drum appeared to be empty. She stuffed Jerry’s robe inside, sprinkled it with soap powder, and closed the lid. She changed the temperature setting to cold, and turned the dial to regular. The machine started with a rush of shooting water.
Jerry’ll think I’m terribly domestic, she thought, returning the robe to him all freshly laundered.
Smiling, she looked away from the washing machine. At the end of the room stood a white-painted cabinet. Its doors were shut.
Normally, Gillian’s curiousity would have been whetted by the sight. She would’ve hurried to inspect the contents.
But the urge wasn’t there.
She realized that she’d had enough of Fredrick. She didn’t want to inspect anymore of his possessions, didn’t care to discover anymore of his secrets.
She left the cabinet unexplored and went out the door.
Walking into the driveway, she angled toward Jerry’s fence.
Don’t be a ditz, she told herself.
Why not?
On tiptoe, she peered over the top of the fence. The pool was deserted. Jerry was nowhere to be seen. Feeling a small tug of disappointment, Gillian turned away. She cut across the driveway and entered the den through its sliding glass door.
In the bathroom, she searched the medicine cabinet. She found adhesive tape and a roll of gauze. And three straight razors, one with a scrimshaw handle depicting an old-fashioned sailing ship. She picked that one up. Holding it carefully, she fingered a trigger-like lever and the blade flashed up.
She grimaced and muttered, “Yook.”
Fredrick Holden would, she thought, have a collection of straight razors. They way his taste seems to run, he probably daydreams of slicing up naked women.
Maybe he does slice up naked women.
Goldilocks and the homicidal maniac.
Cute thought, that.
She looked closely at the white handle of the razor. Any bloodstains? Didn’t seem to be.
She set the razor down on the edge of the sink, then took off her shirt. There was only enough gauze to make a bandage for her main scrape, so she didn’t need the razor to cut it off the roll. Lucky me, she thought. She folded the netty fabric into a pad. Then she stripped off two lengths of tape to secure its edges. She used her teeth to rip the tape off the spool.
I could’ve gotten by, she thought, without even touching the damn razor.
She picked it up and carefully folded the blade. She put it back into the medicine cabinet, set the remaining tape inside, and shut the mirrored door.
Her face in the mirror looked flushed. Specks of sweat glistened on her forehead, under her eyes, over her lip. A hand towel hung from a bar beside the sink, but the thought of wiping her face on one of Fredrick’s towels was repulsive.
She used her shirt to mop the sweat off her face.
Then she stepped in front of the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. She turned around. Peering over her shoulder, she pressed the bandage into place.
She put on her shirt as she walked to the den. She went directly to the bar, opened the refrigerator, and took out a bottle of beer. After a few swallows, she sighed.
Now what? she wondered.
The washing cycle wouldn’t be finished yet.
She wished she could take her suitcase out to the car. That way, there would be no need to return here after leaving Jerry’s house tonight. But he might see her carrying it out.
I’ll get it all ready, she decided, and leave it by the door when I go over. Then I’ll just have to reach in, grab it, and take off.
Beer in hand, she stepped around the end of the bar and glanced at the digital clock on the VCR. Three thirty-eight. Christ. Only eighteen minutes had gone by since she woke up from her nap.
Give yourself about twenty minutes to get ready, you’ve still got an hour to kill.
Read? She felt too restless to read.
So watch the tube, she thought.
She wandered over to the shelves and looked at Fredrick’s collection of video tapes.
Should’ve known, she thought, as she started to read the tides: Maniac, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Friday the 13th, 2000 Maniacs, Psycho, Dressed to Kill Badlands, Visiting Hours, Mother’s Day, Body Double, Sleepaway Camp, Return to the Valley of the Dolls, Ten to Midnight, The Ripper, I Spit on Your Grave, and a lot more. Gillian had seen several of the movies in Fredrick’s collection. Most of them featured nude women and nasty murders.
This guy has a real bent, she thought.
Crouching to inspect a lower shelf, she found some tides that were more to her liking: Back to the Future, E.T., Star Wars, Alien, The Howling, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and about a dozen others. She’d never seen The Howling. She’d enjoyed the book, and the movie was supposed to be good. There wouldn’t be enough time to watch all of it, but she could take a look at the first half, then rent the tape later and watch the rest back at her apartment. So she slipped its case off the shelf and carried it over to the television.
The VCR was a different make from hers. She studied it for a few moments, then turned on the television, pressed a button marked Power and another marked Play. The machine came on. She took her beer to the easy chair and sat down.
The movie opened with a young woman standing under a shower. She turned slowly, humming as she soaped herself and the camera roamed her body.
Werewolf victim number one, Gillian thought.
She was a little surprised by the explicit nudity. They even showed a close-up of the girl’s vagina as she stroked it with a sudsy hand. The picture quality was poor, too. It looked grainy and cheap.
Suddenly, the shower curtain shot open. The girl yelped in surprise as a hand grabbed her hair and jerked her backward. She fell over the edge of the tub and landed with a slap of wet skin against the tile floor. Kicking and whimpering, she was dragged out of the bathroom by her hair.
The screen went dark.
Against the black background appeared the words: Torture Slave.
What’s going on? Gillian wondered. She glanced at the plastic box on the floor. It clearly belonged to The Howling, not something called Torture Slave.
Credits were still showing on the television. Screenplay by Tryon Cleaver, directed by Otto Keller. Obviously pseudonyms created by guys with terrific senses of humor.
Must be some kind of porn, Gillian thought.
The credits ended.
The girl from the shower was hanging by her wrists from ropes attached to ceiling beams in the living room of a house. She squirmed and screamed while a man in black clothes stood nearby. His back was to the camera. He was facing a fireplace, holding a wrought-iron poker.