8

THE OLYMPIC SCREAM

Meat stepped outside Funny Bonz and took a deep breath of cool night air. He needed it.

It was nine o‘clock. Meat had somehow managed to get through the two hours of comedy class, but he had not learned one thing about begin funny.

The rest of the class obviously had. They had stayed behind to chat. As Meat left the room, the man in the backward baseball cap was flapping his arms. “Do I look enough like a goose when I do this?” Next to him, Barbie was telling someone, “I wish I could find some Barbie jokes. I mean, there have to be a zillion of them—and Ken—he’s such a nerd.”

It didn’t surprise Meat that no one had urged him to stay. Not that he would have. Nothing—no one—could have held him there.

“Don’t forget your assignment,” Mike called to Meat as he reached the door. Meat waved without looking around. He didn’t know what the assignment was. He didn’t care. He was never coming back.

Meat turned to the left and began walking home. He knew every store and building on this street, but tonight it was a street where the trees threw dead men’s shadows on the white concrete, and no cars passed. No people either.

Where was everybody? Meat had undergone such an ordeal that maybe the rest of the world had, too. Maybe he and the stupid people at Funny Bonz were all that was left.

Meat paused at the curb. Then the thought that he had been holding off all through the miserable evening rose before him like an atomic cloud—and, to him, just as threatening.

He had seen a dead girl. He had. This was an indisputable fact.

And, he went on to himself, there’s a big difference between a dead girl and somebody playing an April Fool joke.

No living person would press her face against that rest-room floor with the dirty paper towels and roaches and ... whatever. The very thought made him sick.

And nobody could hold still like that for that long.

Without even being aware of what he was doing, he crossed the street, arguing with himself the way he would like to have argued with those stupid people at Funny Bonz, especially Mike.

And, speaking of Mike, why had he stayed so long when he went to check the rest room? It would only take a minute to open the door and see that there was no dead body, wouldn’t it? He wouldn’t even have to click on the light.

And even if he had decided to check both bathrooms—just to be on the safe side—even if he had decided to use both bathrooms, it still wouldn’t have taken that long.

The four blocks to Meat’s house, which he had covered with such speed and hope two hours before, now seemed endless. He paused to check his surroundings, thinking perhaps he had missed his turn. He hadn’t.

What if Mike had moved the body? That would account for the time he’d been gone. But why would he do that? That would be a crime. There was a name for it. What was it? What was it?

Meat said the words, “Accessory to murder,” but instead of feeling a sense of satisfaction at coming up with the right phrase, a sense of foreboding came over him, a chill on the back of his neck.

Someone was behind him.

He dared not look around. He couldn’t hear anything, but that meant nothing. He seemed to be in a pocket of silence. He began to walk faster.

Now he heard it. A footstep.

He broke into a run. Now the footsteps were running too, closing the distance. Whoever it was was sure to catch him. He was the slowest runner he knew. And tonight he seemed to be running in molasses, his feet sticking to the pavement.

His street was just ahead. If he could reach that ... turn the corner ...

A terrible thought turned his blood to ice. He was the only person—other than the murderer—who had seen the body. And if the murderer caught him, killed him—and that’s what killers did—then there would be nobody who had seen it.

As he rounded his corner, the thing that he had feared the most in the world happened. Fingers grabbed him by the arm.

He gave one desperate twist to free himself, but the fingers held, drew him into the shadows.

Meat opened his mouth.

And the scream that had been stuck in his throat all evening, the scream that he had thought would have to be surgically removed, came loose, flooding his mouth.

It burst from him, and it was a scream that went through every door, every window on the block.

It was a scream to be proud of, even if it was probably the last sound he would ever make.

If screaming were an Olympic event, Meat would have gotten a ten.