Until You Are Dead by John Lutz

Bill's throat that would not escape — anger that paralyzed him. He stood unsteadily, the room whirling at first, and began to move toward Cal Tinky. The long revolver raised and the hammer clicked back into place. Bill stood trembling, grief-stricken, enraged and afraid. Cal Tinky held the revolver and his smile steady as the fear grew, cold and pulsating, deep in the pit of Bill's stomach. The floor seemed to tilt and Bill screamed, a hoarse sobbing scream. He turned awkwardly and ran in panic from the room, from death.
    He stumbled through the dining room, struggling to keep his balance. At the edge of his mind he was aware that Cal had put something in the drinks, something that had destroyed his perception, sapped his strength, and he tried to fight it off as he ran to a window. The window was small and high, and as he flung aside the curtains he saw that it was covered with a steel grill. With a moan, he ran awkwardly into the next room, to the next window. It, too, was barred. All the rooms that had windows were inescapable, and all the outside doors were locked. He ran, pounding against thick barred windows that wouldn't break or open, flinging himself against doors that wouldn't give, until finally, exhausted and broken, he found himself in the kitchen and dragged his heaving body into a small alcove lined with shelves of canned goods, where he tried to hide, to think, to think .
    In the recreation room Cal Tinky looked at his wife over the game board. "I think he's had enough time," he said. "It never takes them more than a few minutes to run to cover."
    Emma Tinky nodded and picked up the dice. With a quick expert motion of her hand she rolled a nine.
    Cal rolled a six. "Your shot," he said.
    Emma rolled the dice again, a seven. She leaned over the board and, counting under her breath, moved her yellow block forward in short tapping jerks.
    "The kitchen," she said. "Damn! They never hide in the kitchen."
    "No need to get upset," Cal Tinky said. "You'll probably get another roll."
    Emma drew a long revolver exactly like her husband's from beneath her corduroy vest and stood. Stepping over Della, she walked from the recreation room toward the kitchen. Her husband picked up the game and followed, careful to hold the board absolutely level so that the dice and the colored blocks wouldn't be disturbed.
    The sound of the shot that came from the kitchen a few minutes later wasn't very loud, like the hard slap of an open hand on a solid tabletop — but Emma Tinky's high, long laugh might have been heard throughout the house.

The Basement Room
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    S ay this about Bernice — she believed in getting things done, and so she did them.
    Her husband Eldon, on the other hand, was more than something of a procrastinator. It was his philosophy that problems, like clouds, if simply ignored long enough would often drift away. And while Bernice wasn't exactly careless with money, she wouldn't hesitate to spend what had to be spent. Eldon, to the contrary, was notoriously tight-fisted.
    Another of Bernice's traits was curiosity, or nosiness, as Eldon thought of it. Not that she was overly interested in other people's concerns. She would enter the affairs of acquaintances slowly but inevitably, gradually permeating their situations as water wends its way into too-porous cement. There was no defense against her. Eldon, however, was aloof, self-contained, even secretive at times in the jealous protection of his privacy. Eldon was tall, sharp-featured and almost completely bald; Bernice was a short, round-featured woman, attractive for her forty-five years, and with a huge mop of naturally curly chestnut hair.
    After fifteen years of marriage, Eldon and Bernice Koins were living examples of the adage that opposites attract, but only initially.
    "Eldon," she said to him one morning before breakfast, "it's already so hot in here I could fry your eggs right on your plate. When are you going to have the air conditioner