The Devil Next Door by Tim Curran

his own, her miniskirt practically pushed up to her hips. She went right at it, moving her ass and legs with almost professional zeal, grinding into him and making him first turn red, then start to sweat. He could feel the heat of what was between her legs just fine. He put a stop to it then and there, figuring he better before something embarrassing popped up in his pants. He pulled Jillian off of him, but she came right back, wrapping her arms around him and one of her long legs, trapping him, encircling him. Finally, all the boys laughing at him, he picked Jillian up to carry her back to her own seat and that was a mistake. For as he threw her over his shoulder, drunk himself, he saw the looks on everyone’s faces. What happened was, with Jillian over his shoulder, everyone saw that she had no underwear on. Her skirt had really hiked up to her hips and there was her fine, round ass on display along with her business.
    The women were either laughing or angry; the men laughing, too, or just staring with delight at all Jillian had to offer which was considerable. Most of them had not seen such an offering since their high school days…at least not in such wonderful proportions. Dick Starling, being the smartass he was, snapped a shot of that embarrassing moment with his digital camera: Louis standing there looking surprised, Jillian over his shoulder, one tit popped out of her tube top, legs kicking, ass and privates on full display. He liked to bring that picture out and show it to Louis whenever he came over.
    And, of course, Michelle never let him live it down.
    But that was, essentially, Louis’ first taste of Macy’s mother and each summer since she put on a similar show at the backyard parties. The sad thing was that Jillian carried on like that right in front of her daughter, had absolutely no qualms about it. Louis was not a parent, but even he knew there were things you did in front of children and those you did not.
    Macy sat there with him beside her for five or ten minutes before she spoke again. “But it’s all funny, isn’t it? Funny/scary? I mean, I can see a couple people losing it on the same day…but like this? Aren’t the odds against dozens of people going whacko on the same day, the same afternoon? Or thousands across the country?”
    “ Yeah, I guess they would be.”
    “ Insanity—if that’s what this is, Mr. Shears—isn’t catchy. It’s not a disease, a germ, a microbe, whatever. It does not pass from person to person.”
    Well, he couldn’t argue with any of that.
    It made him think of all those end-of-the-world movies he’d caught on the late show. There was always, ultimately, something to blame. An atomic bomb or a mutant germ or chemical warfare…something that made people change into monsters or crazies. There was always something. He could rule out radiation, he supposed, but the jury was still out on the biological or chemical agents. But if it was something like that, something in the soil or water or air, why hadn’t he been infected? That dying kid surely had it, whatever it was, and Louis had been in pretty goddamn close proximity with him.
    Shouldn’t he have been contaminated?
    But what if it’s nothing that simple, nothing that quantifiable, Louis. Not a germ or a chemical. Then that would make it even worse, wouldn’t it? The idea that what’s happening here and everywhere will keep happening until the streets are filled with bodies until there’s no bodies left?
    Yeah, that was somehow worse.
    That there was a force or influence that could change people into savage, brutal things. Yeah, that was terrifying. There would be no safeguard against it. Whatever it was, it was absolutely fucking dangerous. Equally as lethal, as far as the human race was concerned, as thermonuclear weapons or an unstoppable plague. Hadn’t Einstein said something to the effect that if the Third World War were fought with atomic bombs, that the Fourth would be fought with bow and arrow?