No Sanctuary by Richard Laymon Page B

more easily but her heart continued to race. Though she was no longer cold, she felt shivery inside. She noticed a tingling tightness in her chest and throat—a peculiar cross between pain and pleasure that she associated, somehow, with sliding down a rough hill on her rump. Her skin was crawly with goosebumps. Her nipples felt stiff and sensitive, alive to every touch of her blowing shirt. The inseam of her tight jeans pressed against her like a finger. The denim was moist.
    For a long time, she didn’t move. She simply leaned against the wall, hidden by a thick hedge along the neighbor’s property line, and wondered what was going on with her body. It had to be a combination of fear and excitement—the thrill of doing something forbidden and a little bit dangerous.
    I’d better get on with it, she finally told herself.
    Easing away from the wall, she walked alongside the house. The weeds crunched under her feet. She crouched each time she came to a window. At the rear of the house was an overgrown yard.
    She found a back door. Stepping up to it, she tried its handle.
    The door was locked. Good. If it hadn’t been, she might have given up, figuring that somebody else might be inside. She realized that she hadn’t tried the front door.
    Too late for that now.
    With the screwdriver, she dug into the doorframe beside the lock plate. Bits of wood broke off. Splinters tore loose. Finally, she worked back the lock tongue and opened the door.
    She entered the house.
    The stale air was warm and had a faint, sweetish odor that Gillian found a little sickening, but not so bad that she needed to gag.
    She was in the kitchen. For a while, she stared straight ahead into the darkness and didn’t move. She heard the rush of her heartbeat, the sounds of her shaky, ragged breathing. She tried to hold her breath, but couldn’t. She still trembled. The current sizzling through her body seemed even stronger than before; it made her ache for release, to cry out in terror or quake in orgasm.
    Get moving, she told herself.
    She turned on the flashlight and swept its beam through the kitchen. There was no writing. Maybe John had it all wrong.
    Then Gillian stepped into the hallway. The ancient wallpaper, yellow with age and peeling in places, looked like the canvas of a crazed graffiti artist. So did the ceiling. Amazed, she swung her light beam along the multi-colored words and drawings.
    All the drawings seemed to feature an obese woman. They were as primitive as the artwork of a four-year-old: bloated bodies, pumpkin heads with scrawls of orange hair and faces composed of bright slashes and circles, oval legs and arms, stick fingers. There were pictures with colors scribbled onto represent clothes. In many of the pictures, the woman was naked, with mammoth, pendulous breasts and huge red nipples. Here and there were drawings of a rump that looked like a pair of clinging balloons.
    Must be self-portraits, Gillian thought. She felt a little sorry for the woman, but her pity was mixed with astonishment.
    As if she had discovered a hidden treasure.
    She read some of the scrawled messages:
    Mabel Mabel big as a stable,
    Finished her meal
    So she ate the table.
     
    I think that I shall never see—
    my feet!
     
    Blubber. Blub blub blub.
     
    It is no fun
    To weigh a ton,
    It is no fun at all.
    It’ll take a crane
    As big as a train
    To pick me up if I fall.
     
    Deader is bedder.
     
    I have no kids,
    No Mary or Bill.
    It’s just as well.
     
    I have no kids,
    No Bonnie or Jim.
    If I had kids
    I’d eat them.
     
    Wingle wangle
    Hang and dangle.
     
    Why me?
    Gillian didn’t read anymore. She had brought her camera along, intending to take photographs of whatever she might find interesting in the house, but she wanted no reminder of this woman’s torment.
    She didn’t explore the rest of the house.
    She left.
    Would’ve been fine, she thought as she walked home, if the woman hadn’t put such depressing shit on her walls and