The Killing Vision - By Will Overby Page 0,26

Boy, he had really been fucked up yesterday. He barely remembered getting up. Barely remembered Joel pulling in and talking to him. Barely remembered getting dressed and heading back into town. All he could recall clearly was sitting at the Wild Horse later with a beer and a plate of cheese-drenched potato skins, listening to some old geezer next to him ramble on drunkenly about his dog.

When he was finally feeling alive again, he left the bar and drove across town to the cable office. He was still tired. God, was he tired. In the lounge of the office was a large sofa, and he stretched out on it and slept for a few hours.

He awoke slightly achy but clear-headed a little after eight o’clock. He splashed some water on his face and ran a wet hand through his hair. Straightened the collar of his shirt. Refreshed, he headed back out to the truck and took off toward the other side of town.

The Capitol was already bustling, even at this early hour. Once inside, he scoured the dancing mob for Shelley and Abby, and when he didn’t see them, he grabbed a table and watched the dance floor, nursing a beer and filling up the ashtray. The crowd was about the same tonight—lots of attractive women, all young and lithe, but no one he felt he could connect with.

After an hour, just when he thought he couldn’t take the boredom any longer, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Shelley and Abby had appeared behind him. Seeing them again immediately charged his system, and the three of them were soon on the floor with everyone else. Shelley produced more of her magical tablets, and again he felt that wonderful, beautiful connection to everyone and everything. This time, however, he was prepared for it, and the feeling wasn’t quite as intense.

For the second night in a row, the three of them ended up in the same bed together. It was an apartment that Shelley and Abby shared, he discovered, but he never could quite figure out if the two of them shared the bed when they were alone. Again, the sex was mind-blowing and when he awoke this time, he was at least still in the bed between them, the morning sunlight spilling over the white sheets and their tangled limbs.

He climbed carefully from the bed and pulled on his jeans, lit a cigarette and looked around for his shirt.

“What’re you doin’?” said a groggy voice. It was Abby, brushing her tangled curls from her eyes.

“I gotta go,” he said.

“It’s too early.”

“It’s after ten.”

“Stay and have breakfast.”

He slipped on his shirt and stepped into his shoes. “I can’t. I really gotta go.”

Abby flopped back down. “Your clothes from the other night are on that chair over there.”

He found them and tucked them under his arm, then knelt beside her, kissing her twice on the lips. “Give one of those to Shelley for me.”

She smiled sleepily. “You’re beautiful,” she said, and then she was drifting off again.

Outside, the sun was dazzling and blinding as he left town, and when he got to the house, he was relieved to see Marla’s car was gone. He tossed his dirty clothes in the laundry room and grabbed a bowl of spaghetti from the refrigerator. He stood at the kitchen sink, staring through the window at the back yard and the barn, slurping down the cold noodles and acrid sauce until the bowl was empty.

He had promised Derek they would work on the Mustang, and he had blown it off yesterday, thinking today would be better. But here he was, dog-ass tired and hung over again, and he knew there was no way he would feel like bending over an engine out in the heat.

He was just like Clifton.

No, he thought. God, no.

When Wade was thirteen, puberty had hit him like a brick wall. Seemingly overnight he went from a scrawny little kid to a six-foot teen who had to shave at least twice a week. His hormones had been working overtime; in addition to the occasional wet dreams (which were scary at first, but he grew to look forward to them) and the sudden appearance of hair in all kinds of strange places, Wade was cursed with a severe case of acne. His face and shoulders—even his back and arms—erupted in ugly, angry, red blemishes that sometimes swelled to the size of boils. He tried everything to rid himself of them—soaps, lotions, ointments. Nothing seemed