'Stop it! Fucking stop it!'
She began to make a growling noise. It was surprisingly loud. Christ, what if someone heard her? What if he got caught here? This wouldn't be like explaining to his father why he'd left school (a thing Junior had not as yet been able to bring himself to do). This time it would be worse than having his monthly allowance cut by seventy-five percent because of that goddam fight with the cook - the fight this useless bitch had instigated. This time Big Jim Rennie wouldn't be able to talk Chief Perkins and the local fuzznuts around. This could be -
A picture of Shawshank State Prison's brooding green walls suddenly popped into his mind. He couldn't go there, he had his whole life ahead of him. But he would. Even if he shut her up now, he would. Because she'd talk later. And her face - which looked a lot worse than Barbie's had after the fight in the parking lot - would talk for her.
Unless he shut her up completely.
Junior seized her by the hair and helped her wham her head against the tiles. He was hoping it would knock her out so he could finish doing... well, - whatever... but the seizure only intensified. She began beating her feet against the Coldspot, and the rest of the magnets came down in a shower.
He let go of her hair and seized her by the throat. Said, 'I'm sorry, Ange, it wasn't supposed to happen like this.' But he wasn't sorry. He was only scared and in pain and convinced that her struggles in this horribly bright kitchen would never end. His fingers were already getting tired. Who knew it was so hard to choke a person?
Somewhere, far off to the south, there was a boom. As if someone had fired a very large gun. Junior paid no attention. What Junior did was redouble his grip, and at last Angie's struggles began to weaken. Somewhere much closer by - in the house, on this floor - a low chiming began. He looked up, eyes wide, at first sure it was the doorbell. Someone had heard the ruckus and the cops were here. His head was exploding, it felt like he had sprained all his fingers, and it had all been for nothing. A terrible picture flitted through his mind: Junior Rennie being escorted into the Castle County courthouse for arraignment with some cop's sportcoat over his head.
Then he recognized the sound. It was the same chiming his own computer made when the electricity went out and it had to switch over to battery power.
Bing... Bing... Bing...
Room service, send me up a room, he thought, and went on choking. She was still now but he kept at it for another minute with his head turned to one side, trying to avoid the smell of her shit. How like her to leave such a nasty going-away present! How like them all! Women! Women and their breeding-farms! Nothing but anthills covered with hair! And they said men were the problem!
6
He was standing over her bloody, beshitted, and undoubtedly dead body, wondering what to do next, when there was another distant boom from the south. Not a gun; much too big. An explosion. Maybe Chuck Thompson's fancy little airplane had crashed after all. It wasn't impossible; on a day when you set out just to shout at someone - read them the riot act a little, no more than that - and?he ended up making you kill her, anything was possible.
A police siren started yowling, junior was sure it was for him. Someone had looked in the window and seen him choking her. It galvanized him into action. He started down the hall to the front door, got as far as the towel he'd knocked off her hair with that first slap, then stopped. They'd come that way, that was just the way they'd come. Pull up out front, those bright new LED flashers sending arrows of pain into the squalling meat of his poor brain -
He turned around and ran back to the kitchen. He looked down before stepping over Angie's body, he couldn't help it, In first grade, he and Frank had sometimes pulled her braids and she would stick her tongue out at them and cross her eyes. Now her eyes bulged from their sockets like ancient marbles and her mouth was full of blood.
Did I do that7 Did I really?
Yes. He had. And even that single fleeting look was enough to explain why. Her f**king teeth. Those humungous choppers.
A second siren joined the first, then a third. But they were going away. Thank Christ, they were going away. They were heading south down Main Street, toward those booming sounds.
Nevertheless, Junior did not slow down. He skulked across the McCains' backyard, unaware that he would have screamed guilt about something to anyone who happened to be watching (no one was). Beyond LaDonna's tomato plants was a high board fence and a gate. There was a padlock, but it was hanging open on the hasp. In his years of growing up and sometimes hanging out here, Junior had never seen it closed.