The flesh in the furnace

store where Sebastian cowered.
        
        The prince cornered Belina in a side duct of the ventilation system while she was on her way to the booktape store. He had taken her by surprise, flung her against the thin metal wall, his arm across her throat as if he would crush her windpipe. At first, she thought he had finally gotten up the nerve to kill her. Instead, it turned out that he was aroused and that he wanted her but was afraid she would say no.
        "Now isn't the time," she said.
        Now is the perfect time, and you know it!" he countered. His face was flushed, his breathing harsh. His free hand roamed across her small body as if it were a separate entity with designs of its own aside from his. It touched her round breasts, squeezed them. It slid across her flat stomach, dug fingers into her nicely padded hips, cupped one of her firm buttocks.
        "I don't know what you mean," she said.
        "You do. Now, with him out there, trapped in the store. Just before we get him. It'll be best now, better than ever"
        
        She knew what he meant, of course. There was definitely something sensual about the chase and the kill. When they had murdered that gypsy, she had felt the same thing. When she had watched the prince and the angel lower the van onto the struggling driver, when she had seen the blades bite into him, she had responded to the blood and the screams. Afterwards, she had gone away with Wissa. They had smeared each other with blood and made love. Later, when Wissa was exhausted, Belina had gone to the prince and to the angel. In each case, sex had never been so full, so satisfying. It was all sharp edges and long slides, rising and rising and never falling, ballooning full of helium.
        
        "There's no time," she argued, trying to push away from him.
        He slapped her. His fingers left red welts across her smooth, freckled cheek. The moment he saw those, he realized what a horrible mistake he had made. Stepping away from her, he tried to find something to say that would appease her. But he knew there was nothing she would listen to.
        She said nothing at all. She gave him one, long searching look which turned his blood cold, then stalked off on her way to the booktape store and the final chapter in Sebastian's story.
        
        Sebastian realized that he could not remain in the store indefinitely. Before long, he would grow both hungry and thirsty. There was neither food nor water to be had here. Yet he barricaded the front of the store as if he intended to endure a long seige. He moved display racks before the glass door. He took crates of booktape cartridges from the storeroom and lined them from one wall to the other. The spiders would climb them, but they would be delayed a bit in the process. At the moment, every second of freedom from the hairy touch of those spindly-legged monstrosities was a blessing.
        Soon there was nothing else he could use to form an obstacle between himself and the spirit-analogues of Pertos, Jenny, Rudi and Ben (as he imagined the spiders were). He stood at the back of the main room, his spine pressed against the wall, watching the arachnids swarming at the corners of the glass, hunting cracks and crevices.
        What would they do to him if they got him?
        Make him die? Take him to some place where there were no windows, where he would be chained and tortured and punished for being such a stupid boy? Would they torture Bitty Belina and make him watch that spectacle while he was also confined in manacles?
        A truly terrifying notion: did they already have Bitty Belina and were they already torturing her?
        On the top of a display rack, by the front door, a spider appeared. It was silhouetted against the lighted window. Though he could not tell the head from the behind, he felt that it was watching him, gauging him for the final attack.
        Somehow, it had gotten through the storefront, the scout for the main pack, and it signaled his defeat by its very presence.
        He was perspiring. His throat was dry. He wished he were a boy again, at home in the woods, looking for centipedes under the rocks. Swimming in the hole in the creek. Hunting berries. Playing with jenny…
        He choked, pushed away from the wall.
        The spider was still watching him.
        He hurried into the storeroom and shut the heavy door behind. It made a tight seal on all sides. He