The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror by Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, David A. Riley Page A

hard ground to come to rest a couple of yards away from the car.
    Driver pounced upon it. When he straightened up, Kez was hardly more than an arm’s length away, staring incredulously. The axe whirled, and a head bounced along the ground. The body swayed; then as twin founts of blood spouted from the neck, Kez fell across his brother, who writhed and moaned in the dirt.
    Driver dropped the axe, turned, and stumbled idiot-faced towards his car. Dull-eyed and openmouthed, relying on habit to pilot him, he fell into the driving seat and turned the ignition key. No-one stopped him as he drove away. The sound of the engine faded, and the white dust settled again.
    For a while Adam lay still. The discomfort had passed, and he would have liked to sleep; but the ground was hard and gritty, there was a weight on his back, and some hot, sticky liquid had been poured over him. He stirred, then sat up.
    His brother’s body rolled over. His brother’s head, still incredulous, stared at him. Adam stared back.
    ‘I guess that was your fault, Kez,’ he said at last. ‘Goin’ on ’bout them canned beans. If the Lord had meant beans fer eatin’ they’d walk on legs just like you’r me.’
    He stood up and rubbed his bruised belly.
    ‘That’s what comes of questioning the Lord’s provisioning arrangements,’ he went on. ‘Looks like we’ll be eatin’ this winter, Kez, but you won’t be sharin .’
    He put his hands under his brother’s shoulders, and began to drag the body towards the shack. ‘The Lord provides,’ he cried.
    One of these days he would go back and pick up the head.
    ‘Praise the Lord!’
     

PERFECT LADY by Robin Smyth
     
    I DON’T KNOW WHETHER to jump. It’s a long way down. Long way from the roof to the ground. Twenty-one storeys. And at the bottom it’s all those concrete pillars. What a mess I’ll be in. Makes you go cold just to think about it. Still, without my Winnie, life’s going to be all hairshirts and sourberries and I’ll never get my Winnie back now. I saw them wheeling her out of the garden in her chair. Two big policemen. They looked ever so small from up here. Like shadows on the stone. They don’t realize what they’ve done to me those policemen, taking my Winnie away like this. I mean, what has my Winnie ever done to deserve such treatment? She’s a very nice girl. Perfect lady. Never nags. Just accepts her role in life as a servant to the male. It’s going to be terrible without her. No more cuddles on winter’s nights. No more kissing on the sofa. No more reclining on the rug listening to Beethoven together. I like Beethoven, I do. Winnie does too. Everything I like, Winnie likes. And that’s as it should be.
    God, it is a long way down and there’s a cold wind blowing across the river from Fulham way. Suppose I did jump and the wind caught me and tossed me into the branches of that oak down there. I’d be impaled. That’d hurt. Perhaps it wouldn’t be right to jump. Not a man of my age. Thirty-six. So young. Be a crime against humanity. Poor, dear Winnie. I wonder what they’ll do to her. I bet that Lizzie Spring’s got something to do with it. I wouldn’t be surprised. She’s a funny woman that Lizzie Spring.
    I loved her, Lizzie Spring. Long before I got Winnie of course. Long before. But I did love her. Yes, I did. From the moment I spotted her in the automatic laundry place down Lillie Road one January evening. I thought she was I the loveliest, most desirable creature I’d clapped eyes on since Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch .
    She was blonde and doll-like and as feminine as a lace handkerchief and I wondered if I dared talk to her. I was going on thirty two at the time and though I wore rather thick-lensed glasses and had a slight limp due to childhood rickets and a lump on my neck which was not noticeable when I bad my coat collar turned up, I was quite handsome in a journalistic sort of way. Kind of a Scoop McCoy, Fleet Street special reporter