Blake Crouch - 69 # eng.pdf

(323 KB) Pobierz
*69
a short story by
Blake Crouch
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Blake Crouch on Smashwords
Copyright 2010 by Blake Crouch
Cover art copyright 2010 by Jeroen ten Berge
All rights reserved.
PRAISE FOR BLAKE CROUCH
Crouch quite simply is a marvel. Highest possible recommendation.
BOOKREPORTER
Blake Crouch is the most exciting new thriller writer I’ve read in years.
DAVID MORRELL
*69 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and
incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“*69” originally appeared in Uncage Me, edited by Jen Jordan and published by Bleak
House Books, July 2009.
For more information about the author, please visit www.blakecrouch.com.
For more information about the artist, please visit www.jeroentenberge.com.
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-
sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re
reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then
you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the author’s work.
* * * * *
*69
At nine-thirty on a Thursday evening, as he lounged in bed grading the pop quizzes
he’d sprung on his 11th grade honors English class, Tim West heard footsteps ascend the
staircase and pad down the hallway toward the bedroom.
His wife, Laura, appeared in the open doorway.
“Tim, come here.”
He set the papers aside and climbed out of bed.
Following her down the squeaky stairs into the living room, he found immense
pleasure in the architecture of her long legs and the grace with which she carried herself.
Coupled with that yellow satin teddy he loved and the floral tang of skin lotion, Tim
foresaw a night of marital bliss. Historically, Thursdays were their night.
Laura sat him down in the oversize leather chair across from the fireplace, and as she
took a seat on its matching ottoman, it struck him—this fleeting premonition that she was
on the verge of revealing she was pregnant with their first child, a project they’d been
working on since last Christmas. Instead, she reached over to the end table beside the chair
and pressed the blinking play button on the answering machine:
Ten seconds of the static hiss of wind.
A woman’s voice breaks through, severely muffled, and mostly unintelligible except for,
“…didn’t mean anything!”
A man’s voice, louder and distorted by static: “…making me do this.”
“I can explain!”
“…late for that.”
A thud, a sucking sound.
“…in my eyes.” The man’s voice. “Look in them! …you can’t speak….but…listen the
last minute…whore-life…be disrespected. You lie there and think about that while…”
Thirty seconds of that horrible sucking sound, occasionally cut by the wind.
The man weeps deeply and from his core.
An electronic voice ended the message with, “Thursday, nine-sixteen, p.m.”
Tim looked at his wife. Laura shrugged. He reached over, played it again.
When it finished, Laura said, “There’s no way that’s what it sounds like, right?”
“There any way to know for certain?”
“Let’s just call nine-one—”
“And tell them what? What information do we have?”
Laura rubbed her bare arms. Tim went to the hearth and turned up the gas logs. She
came over, sat beside him on the cool brick.
“Maybe it’s just some stupid joke,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“What? You don’t think so?”
“Remember Gene Malack? Phys ed teacher?”
“Tall, geeky-looking guy. Sure.”
“We hung out some last year while he was going through his divorce. Grabbed beers,
went bowling. Nice guy, but a little quirky. There was this one time when our phone rang,
and I picked it up, said, ‘Hello?’, but no one answered. The strange thing was that I could
hear someone talking, only it was muffled, just like that message. But I recognized Gene’s
voice. I should’ve hung up, but human nature, I stayed on, listened to him order a meal
from the Wendy’s drive-through. Apparently, he’d had our number on speed-dial in his
cell. It had gotten joggled, accidentally called our house.”
One of the straps had fallen down on Laura’s teddy.
As Tim fixed it, she said, “You just trying to scare me? Let’s call your brother—”
“No, not yet—”
“No, you’re saying that a man, who we know well enough to be on his speed-dial list,
was killing some poor woman tonight, and he accidentally…what was the word?”
“Joggled.”
“Thank you. Joggled his phone, inadvertently calling us during the murder. That where
you’re going with this?”
“Look, maybe we’re getting a little overly—”
“Overly, shit. I’m getting freaked out here, Tim.”
“All right. Let’s listen once more, see if we recognize the voice.”
Tim went over to the end table, played the message a third time.
“There’s just too much wind and static,” he said as it ended.
Laura got up and walked into the kitchen, came back a moment later with a small
notepad she used for grocery lists.
She returned to her spot on the hearth, pen poised over the paper, said, “Okay, who are
we close enough friends with to be on their speed-dial?”
“Including family?”
“Anyone we know.”
“My parents, your parents, my brother, your brother and sister.”
“Jen.” She scribbled on the pad.
“Chris.”
“Shanna and David.”
“Jan and Walter.”
“Dave and Anne.”
“Paul and Mo.”
“Hans and Lanette.”
“Kyle and Jason.”
“Corey and Sarah.”
This progressed for several minutes until Laura finally looked up from the pad, said,
“There’s thirty names here.”
“So, I’ve got an unpleasant question.”
“What?”
“If we’re going on the assumption that what’s on that answering machine is a man we
know murdering a woman, we have to ask ourselves, ‘which of our friends is capable of
doing something like that?’”
“God.”
“I know.”
For a moment, their living room stood so quiet Tim could hear the second hand of his
grandmother’s antique clock above the mantle and the Bose CD player spinning Bach up
in their bedroom.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin