Drag Thing; or, The Strange Case of Jackle and Hyde: A Novel of Horror. Victor J. Banis
Читать онлайн книгу.
of squeaks and squeals until he landed atop Hector with a loud Kerplunk!
Hector gave a howl of agony and cried, “Shit. Get off, me, you fuck.” He scrambled to get out from under his sudden burden.
Tom made no pretense of heroics. He was not much of a thinker, but in a situation like this, he thought very clearly that it was every man for himself. He turned and ran without a backward glance.
Archie and Hector, seeing her attention momentarily fixed on Tom’s fleeing back, scrambled to their feet and tried to run in the other direction. Hector’s left arm hung down limply while Archie dragged one leg and hopped frantically on the other, which made for a slow shuffling process. Hector easily outdistanced him, bad arm and all, and disappeared around the nearest corner, but Archie paused to look back, scared that she might be after them. If she was, he had decided his only hope would be to drop to his knees and plead for mercy. He thought that this was no time for pride. He knew he didn’t have a chance of outrunning her with his leg hurting the way it was and, strong as she was, he was certain now that he couldn’t outfight her.
He was relieved to see that she was still where she had been, though, hands on hips, looking after them with a big grin on her face.
“Hey,” Archie shouted, leaning against a brick wall and trying to ignore the pain in his leg. “Who the hell are you?”
“Me?” For the first time since they had met her, she looked unsure of herself, as if she didn’t know the answer to that question either. “I’m—er....” She hesitated, her face screwed up in a thoughtful expression.
“Come on, you gotta have a name,” Archie said. “Everybody’s got a name, don’t they?”
From around the corner, Hector said, “Forget it, man, let’s go,” but Archie stood—or rather, leaned—his ground.
“I do have a name, of course I do. My name is....” Again she hesitated. Then she threw her head back and gave a loud guffaw. “It’s Thing,” she said.
“Thing?” Archie said in confusion. What kind of fucking name was that?
“My name is Thing,” she repeated, sounding altogether pleased with the revelation. “Drag Thing, to be exact.” With that she turned and sauntered away, still chortling to herself.
Archie followed Hector around the corner and found him backed into a darkened doorway, his eyes wide.
“Jesus, what happened there?” Archie asked.
“I think we just had a nightmare,” Hector said, anger taking over for his fear. “That fag, Tom, did you see him just take off running like that, the chicken shit, I thought we was Moes, we’re supposed to help one another out, ain’t we? Come on.”
Personally, Archie thought Tom had shown rare good judgment in running. In retrospect, he wished he had thought of it sooner himself, while he still had two good legs. But he didn’t think it wise to say that to Hector when he was sore. “What are we doing, bro?” he asked instead.
Hector, who felt that his role as captain of the Moes had been compromised by the events that had just occurred, thought it essential now to reestablish his leadership. “Just come on,” he said. For the first time in his life instead of dodging cops, he was looking for one to flag down. “And hope and pray we don’t run into that Drag Thing again.”
* * * *
By the time Drag Thing had gone two blocks, however, she had all but forgotten the Moes in the thrill of her new discovery: a shop called For The Girls. At first glance it might have been taken for just another woman’s store, but it took no more than a second glance to see that the clothes and accessories in the window were actually meant for men who wanted to dress as women. For one thing, most of them were huge. Even the wigs in the far corner, cascading down Styrofoam heads, were overlarge.
In her opinion, the dresses were tacky, though. She had an idea that she knew someone who could do much better for her than these, although at the moment she could not quite get that information to come into focus. Someone...she was sure of it. It would come to her in due time. Her memory was oddly fuzzy.
But the wigs, now...her eyes fell on a platinum blonde creation, in a Farrah Fawcett style. Twenty-nine ninety-eight, the tag said. Cheap, she thought, for such a beautiful head of hair.
“Hair,” she said aloud. “That’s what I need. Hair. Turbans are so out.” She whipped the makeshift turban from her head and tossed it into the street.
Of course the store’s entrance door was locked at this time of night, and, for some reason that she did not examine, she felt certain she was not likely to get back to shop in the morning, during normal business hours. She looked around and her glance fell on a broken piece of brick lying in the gutter. She picked it up and hefted it in her hand.
“We oughtn’t to be naughty,” she said aloud. “We really oughtn’t.” After only a moment’s hesitation, she lobbed the brick through the plate glass window. Crash! A shower of glass crystals rained down upon the sidewalk.
An alarm went off inside. Pooh, now the police will be on their way, she thought. Well, she consoled herself, her shopping would not take more than a minute, surely. She grabbed the blonde wig and plopped it on her head, unmindful of the fact that it was askew. She found a wallet in her fanny pack and took out a wad of cash, fingering through it. She slapped bills down in the window in quick succession. A five. Slap. Two more fives and a ten. How much was that? She counted out five ones and tossed them down beside the naked Styrofoam head. That was thirty, wasn’t it?
She was about to go when she noticed the make-up display. Yes, of course, she thought, I must have makeup too. And perfumes, you had to have perfume to be a real woman. There were bottles and bottles of perfumes here, and lipsticks. She grabbed a handful of the lipsticks and checked them for color. Too red. Too orange. Ugh. It was certainly evident that some people had no sense of style.
Inside the store, the alarm continued to ring ceaselessly. Clearly this was taking far too long. The police would be coming any minute now, wouldn’t they?
The police—something about the police teased her mind; but there wasn’t time now for her to think about that. She must away. She snatched up a huge purse from the window display and raked the entire array of makeup into it: lipsticks and rouges, mascara and scents, a full arsenal of quasi-feminine pulchritude.
Oh, dear, she thought, looking at the cash she had left. She really did not have time to add up her “purchases” and the money she had didn’t look like enough anyway. On the other hand, she truly did not want to cheat anyone either. She was not a dishonest person, after all. She had a great respect for the law. She was sure of it.
She fumbled one of the lipsticks out of the purse and used it to write on the broken glass: “I.O.U. for all these goodies. I promise to come back and pay.” She signed it Drag Thing and as an afterthought added a final, “I truly do promise.”
A wail in the distance warned of the approach of a police car. She started to go, and saw an enormous pair of shoes on a platform at the rear of the window, wonderful strapped things with towering heels and all aglitter with sequins that blinked an invitation at her.
How on earth had she missed those? She grabbed them as well before she turned and ran, her long, powerful legs eating up the distance in a flash, so that she had already vanished into the foggy night by the time the police car roared to the curb outside For The Girls.
As she ran, Drag Thing sang under her breath, and unfailingly out of tune, that song about how hard it was to be a woman.
CHAPTER THREE
It was a contradiction, of sorts, but it was at times like these—in the wake of some action on the street—that Teri felt most like a woman.
“It was really something,” she told Peter, her voice vibrant with excitement. “These street toughs flagged us down, two of them, they’re part of a trio who call themselves The Moes. I’ve tangled with them before, and usually they take off