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OH, FORGET about that We knohere Jack Sahen he disappeared froe of the cornfield, and we knoho he is likely to h of that stuff We want fun, ant excite old party Charles Burnside, who can always be depended upon to slip a whoopee cushion under the governor’s seat during a banquet, to pour a little hot sauce into the stew, to fart at the prayerfrom a toilet bowl and into a stall in theWe note that Ol’ Burny, our Burn-Burn, hugs Henry Leyden’s hedge clippers to his sunken chest with both ar a baby On his bony right arash and rolls doard his elbow When he gets one foot, clad in another resident’s bee slipper, on the ri a bit His mouth is twisted into a scowl, and his eyes look like bullet holes, but we do not suppose that he, too, carries a weight of heavy-duty sorrow Blood soaks the bottoms of his trousers and the front of his shirt, which has darkened with the flow of blood fro, Burny opens the door of the stall and walks out into the e reflect fro mirror above the row of sinks; thanks to Butch Yerxa, who is working a double shift because the regular night lea whiteness, the blood on Charles Burnside’s clothes and body looks radiantly red He peels off his shirt and tosses it into a sink before plodding down to the far end of the bathroom and a cabinet marked with a piece of tape on which someone has printed BANDAGES Old men have a tendency to fall down in their bathroohtfully installed the cabinet where he thought it ht be needed Drops of blood lay spattered across the white tiles

Burny rips a handful of paper towels from a dispenser, dampens them with cold water, and lays thee cabinet, rees, and tears off a six-inch strip of the tape He wipes blood off the skin around the wound in his belly and presses the wet paper towels over the opening He lifts away the towels and presses a pad of gauze to the cut Aardly, he flattens the strip of tape over the gauze He dresses the stab wound on his arm in the same fashion

Noirls and scoops of blood cover the white tiles

He moves up the row of sinks and runs cold water over his shirt The water turns red in the bowl Burny keeps scrubbing the old shirt under cold running water until it has turned a pale rose only a few shades brighter than his skin Satisfied, he wrings the shirt in his hands, flaps it once or twice, and puts it back on That it clings to hioal is a very basic version of acceptability, not elegance: insofar as it is possible, he wants to pass unnoticed His cuffs are soaked with blood, and Elmer Jesperson’s slippers are dark red and wet, but he thinks most people will not bother to look at his feet

Within hi, Fazzdur, Burn-Burn, fazzdur!

Burny’s onlyup his damp shirt, he looks at himself in the liness, Charles Burnside has always approved of the ie returned to hiuy who knohere to find the corners ¡ª sly, unpredictable, and foxy Theat hi like the canny old operator Burny re him looks dim-witted, worn-out, and seriously ill Sunken, red-ri across his bald, skull-like crowneven his nose looks bonier and more twisted than it once had He is the sort of old htens children

You shud fry-den cheerun, Burn-Burn Died moo-vuhn

He couldn’t really look that bad, could he? If he did, he would have noticed long before this Nah, that wasn’t how Charles Burnside faced the world The bathroom’s too damn white, that’s all A white like that makes you look bleached Makes you look skinned, like a rabbit The dying old horror in the mirror takes a step nearer, and the spotty discolorations on his skin seem to darken The spectacle of his teeth makes him close his mouth

Then hishi, Dime, diet back to Black House Mr Munshun co, and certain parts of Black House, which they built together, feel like the world of his home ¡ª the deepest parts, which Charles Burnside seldoing, and sick to his stoave birth to Mr Munshun, he envisions a dark, craggy landscape littered with skulls On the bare slopes and peaks stand houses like castles that change size, or vanish, when you blink Froled with the cries of tortured children

Burnside is eager to return to Black House, too, but for the simpler pleasures of the first set of rooms, where he can rest, eat canned food, and read his scrapbooks He relishes the particular smell that inhabits those rooe If he could distill that fragrance, he would wear it like cologne Also, a sweet little morsel named Tyler Marshall sits locked in a chamber located in another layer of Black House ¡ª and another world ¡ª and Burny cannot wait to torment little Tyler, to run his wrinkled hands over the boy’s beautiful skin Tyler Marshall thrills Burny

But there are pleasures yet to be reaped in this world, and it is dih a crack in the bathroom door and sees that Butch Yerxa has succumbed to weariness and the cafeteria’s meat loaf He occupies his chair like an oversized doll, his ar on ould be a neck on a normal person That useful little painted rock stands a few inches away froht hand, but Burny has no need of the rock, for he has acquired an instrument far more versatile He wishes he had discovered the potential of hedge clippers long ago Instead of one blade, you get two One up, one down, snick-snick! And sharp! He had not intended to aht of the clippers as a big, priot stabbed in the arm, he jerked the clippers toward the blind ers by themselves, as neatly and swiftly as the old-tio used to slice bacon

Chipper Maxton is going to be fun He deserves what he is going to get, too Burny figures that Chipper is responsible for the way he has deteriorated The mirror told him that he is about twenty pounds less than he should be, maybe even thirty, and no wonder ¡ª look at the slop they serve in the cafeteria Chipper has been chiseling on the food, Burny thinks, the saovernment, Medicaid, Medicare, Chipper steals froht Charles Burnside was too out of it to knoas happening, Maxton had told hin forery, lung surgery The way Burny sees it, half of the Medicaid money that paid for the nonexistent operation should have been his It was his name on the form, wasn’t it?

Burnside eases into the hallway and pads toward the lobby, leaving bloody footprints fro slippers Because he will have to pass the nurse’s station, he shoves the clippers under his waistband and covers thelasses, and lavender hair of a useless old bag naette Porter are visible to Burnside above the counter of the nurses’ station Things could be worse, he thinks Ever since she waltzed into D18 and caught hi to ette Porter has been terrified of hilances his way, seems to suppress a shudder, and looks back down at whatever she is doing with her hands Knitting, probably, or reading the kind of murder mystery in which a cat solves the cri the clippers on Georgette’s face, but decides it is not worth the waste of energy When he reaches the counter, he looks over it and sees that she is holding a paperback book in her hands, just as he had iined

She looks up at him with profound suspicion in her eyes

"We sure look yulances up the hallway, then at the lobby, and realizes that she must deal with him by herself "You should be in your room, Mr Burn-side It’s late"

"Mind your own business, Georgie I got a right to take a walk"

"Mr Maxton doesn’t like the residents to go into the other wings, so please stay in Daisy"

"Is the big boss here tonight?"

"I believe so, yes"

"Good"

He turns away and continues on toward the lobby, and she calls after hin of great concern

"You aren’t going to bother Mr Maxton, are you?"

"Say any more, and I’ll bother you"

She places a hand on her throat and finally notices the floor Her chin drops, and her eyebrows shoot up "Mr Burnside, what do you have on your slippers? And your pants cuffs? You’re tracking it everwhere!"

"Can’t keep your mouth shut, can you?"

Griette Porter backs against the wall, and by the time she realizes that she could have tried to escape, Burny is already in front of her She removes her hand fron

"Durips the handles, and clips off her fingers as easily as if they were twigs "Stupid"

Georgette has entered a stage of shocked disbelief that holds her in paralysis She stares at the blood spilling from the four stumps on her hand

"Goddamn moron"

He opens the clippers and raette et her hands on the clippers, but he pulls them from her neck and raises the blood The expression on Burny’s face is that of a man who finally admits that he has to clean his cat’s litter box He levels the wet blade in front of her right eye and shoves it in, and Georgette is dead before her body slides down the wall and folds up on the floor

Thirty feet up the hallway, Butch Yerxa mumbles in his sleep

"They never listen," Burny mutters to himself "You try and try, but they always ask for it in the end Proves they want it ¡ª like those dus the clippers’ blade out of Georgette’s head and wipes it clean on the shoulder of her blouse The o sends a tingle down the length of his y old pants Hel-lo! Ahthe h, as we have seen, Charles Burnside now and again enjoys erections in his sleep, in his waking hours they are so rare as to be nearly nonexistent, and he is tempted to pull down his pants and see what he could make it do But what if Yerxa wakes up? He would assuette Porter, or at least her corpse, aroused Burny’s long-s lusts That wouldn’t do ¡ª not at all Even a monster has his pride Best to carry on to Chipper Maxton’s office, and hope that his hao limp before it is time to pound the nail

Burny tucks the clippers into the back of his waistband and yanks at his wet shirt, pulling it away fro he shuffles, across the euished by the brass na WILLIAM MAXTON, DIRECTOR This he reverentially opens, su-dead ten-year-old boy naler, otherwise known as "Poochie," one of his first conquests Poochie! Tender Poochie! Those tears, those sobs ofto utter helplessness: the faint crust of dirt over Poochie’s scabby knees and slender forearms Hot tears; a jet of urine from his terrified little rosebud

There will be no such bliss fro Anyhow, Tyler Marshall lies bound and waiting in Black House, helpless as helpless could be

Charles Burnside plods through Rebecca Vilas’s less cubicle, Poochie Flagler’s pallid, deeply di in his mind He places a hand on the next doorknob, takes a moment to calm himself, and noiselessly revolves the knob The door opens just wide enough to reveal Chipper Maxton, onlyover his desk, his head propped on one fist, and using a yellow pencil to make notations on two sets of papers The trace of a sht purse of his lealides back and forth between the two stacks of papers,tiny marks So happily absorbed in his task is Chipper that he fails to notice he is no longer alone until his visitor steps inside and gives the door a backward kick with his foot

When the door slalances up in irritated surprise and peers at the figure before hies to a sly, unpleasant heartiness he takes to be disar "Don’t they knock on doors where you coht on in, do they?"

"Barge right on in," says his visitor

"Neverto talk to you"

"Talk to me?"

"Yes Coht have a little problem, and I want to explore some possibilities"

"Oh," Burny says "A problees forward, leaving behind hiressively fainter footprints Maxton fails to see

"Take a pew," Chipper says, waving at the chair in front of his desk "Pull up a bollard and rest your bones" This expression coer, the First Farmer’s loan officer, who uses it all the tih Chipper Maxton has no idea what a bollard may be, he thinks it sounds cute as hell "Old-timer, you and me have to have a heart-to-heart discussion"

"Ah," Burny says, and sits down, his back rigidly straight, due to the clippers "Hardz zu hardz"

"Yeah, that’s the idea Hey, is that shirt wet? It is! We can’t have that, old buddy ¡ª you ht catch cold and die, and neither one of us would like that, would we? You need a dry shirt Let me see what I can do for you"

"Don’t bother, you fucking htening his shirt, and the old man’s words throw hirins, and says, "Stay right there, Chicago"

Although thesensation down his spine, Burnside gives nothing away as Maxton moves around the side of his desk and walks across his office He watches the director leave the rooler and Saan and all the others had lived and died, God bless ’erass, so foul so beautiful so enticing With their smiles and their screams Like all Caucasian slum children, pure pale ivory white under the crust of dirt, the fishy white of the city’s poor, the soon-to-be-lost The slender bones of their shoulder blades, sticking out as if to break through the thin layer of flesh Burny’s old organ stirs and stiffens as if it remembers the frolics of yesteryear Tyler Marshall, he croons to himself, pretty little Ty, ill have ourselves some fun before we turn you over to the boss, yes ill yes indeedy yes yes