Read The Collected Horrors of Tim Wellman for Free Online

posh and expensive for such a shit hole. A pair of
sexy see-thru panties and a bra apparently belonging to the same
owner, plotted a perfect dinner date for someone, but I guessed
that was now going to be table for one. I started to look around
the room, but I whirled around instinctively, and without thought
or intention, my gun was in my hand and aimed. She seemed even more
startled than I was, but then I wasn't naked.
    "You gonna shoot me?" she said. She knew I
wasn't and continued to walk to the bed and pulled on her panties.
"Getting so a girl can't take a shower around here without getting
something big and hard pointed at her."
    I got the joke but I didn't laugh. "You rooming
with another girl, dollface?" I said. "About your size but
prettier."
    "Dollface?" she said. The way she smirked
annoyed me. "Why not just call me a dame and compliment me
on my nice gams ?"
    "I would if they were good enough to mention," I
said.
    She laughed out loud and nodded her head. "I
like you," she said. She picked up her bra and put her arms through
the straps and turned her back to me. "Do me, will ya?"
    I gave the straps a tug and snapped the clasps
together and watched her pull her dress over her head and let it
fall down her body. "You look better in clothes," I said.
    "Everyone does except porn stars and teenagers,"
she said. She walked to the mirror over the old dresser and fluffed
up her still-damp hair. "So, ya gonna tell me why you broke in
here?"
    "I didn't break in," I said and dangled the key
on my finger. She looked at my reflection in the mirror. "You know
Susan?"
    I started to tell her we'd met, but that wasn't
completely true. "What's she to you?" I wasn't giving anything up
until I knew who the woman was and just how much she knew about the monsters . But at least I had a name to put to the broken
corpse.
    "We were lovers," she said. "Shock you?"
    "I stopped being shocked when I learned the
truth about Santa Claus," I said.
    "Well, we were lovers," she continued.
"She found some boyfriend a couple months ago, after that she cut
me off." She finally seemed satisfied with her hair and turned back
around. "My name is Karen, by the way. What's yours?"
    "Tommy," I said. "Tommy Marlin."
    "Well, Tommy Marlin, you still haven't told me
why you're standing here in a not-so-innocent girl's hotel room
playing with your... gun."
    "You watch Susan leave earlier?"
    "No, not past the door," she said. "I was
sleeping off an afternoon cocktail. We're supposed to leave this
dump tomorrow. Susan said her man was funding us, sending us up to
Vermont to a big country house he has up there, so we were
celebrating a little early."
    I nodded. I didn't particularly care whether I
hurt her or not, but I was having trouble blurting out what had
happened to Susan. "Susan is dead." It was easier than I
thought.
    Karen rushed me and grabbed the lapels of my
jacket. "Dead?!" Her eyes were wide in disbelief and mine were
watering from the remains of alcohol on her breath. I don't like
strangers getting too close to me and out of instinct I pushed her
back and she stumbled and fell across the bed. She rubbed her lips
with the back of her hand, checking for blood even though I never
went near her lips. Must have been used to being shoved around.
"Dead? But how?"
    "Jumped off the Cole building over on 53rd and
Wilmont," I said. "Sorry."
    She started crying and hid her face in a pillow.
I used the time to look around the room. There was a book of
matches on top of the TV, Top Heavy Club; neither girl would have
qualified. I glanced at her, still sobbing, and decided I had
enough time to rifle through the dresser drawers... part of a candy
bar, a stub from movie. As I turned around, she was sitting on the
edge of the bed, staring at me. "She wouldn't have jumped."
    "I saw it, she was alone, she jumped," I said. I
took out a pack of cigarettes and offered her one. She refused. I
lit one up and took a long drag. "You know anything about monsters ?"
    She looked