Strange Highways

explain the mesh: how, when he had come to care for her deeply enough, their minds had blended in some mystical fashion. He didn't fully understand it himself - though it had happened to him before. He couldn't explain that she was now almost an extension of him, forever a part of him. He could only nod in acknowledgment of the dreadful truth: I can't stop reading your mind, Annie. It comer to me like air into my lungs.
     Thoughtfully, she said, "No secrets, surprises, nothing I can keep from you."
     Minutes passed.
     Then she said, "Do you begin to run my life, make my decisions, push me this way or that, without me knowing? Or have you already begun to do that?"
     Such control was beyond his power, although she would never be convinced of that. Breathing rapidly, she succumbed to that naked fear that he'd seen often before in others.
     She said, "I'll leave right now ... if you'll let me."
     Sadly, he put one trembling hand to her head and gave her deep but temporary darkness.
     That night, while she slept, he sensed into her mind and erased certain memories. He kept the wine jug at his feet and drank while he worked. Before dawn, he was done.
     The streets were bleak and empty when he carried her back to the alley where he'd found her, put her down, and placed her purse beneath her. She was still purged of all desire for drugs, and in possession of a new self-confidence and a profound sense of her value as a person that might help her make a new life. His gifts to her.
     Ollie returned home without taking a last look at her clear, perfect face.
     He opened a jug of wine. Hours later, drunk, he unaccountably remembered what a childhood "friend" had said when he first displayed his power: "Ollie, you can rule the world! You're a superman!"
     He laughed out loud, now, spitting wine. Rule the world! He couldn't even rule himself. Superman! In a world of ordinary men, a superman was no king, not even a romantic fugitive. He was simply alone. And alone, he could accomplish nothing.
     He thought of Annie, of dreams and love unshared, of futures destroyed. He continued to drink.
     After midnight of that day, he returned to Staznik's Restaurant to check the garbage for discarded tableware. At least that was what he intended to do. Instead, he spent the night walking swiftly down a succession of dark, twisting alleyways and side streets, his hands held out before him, a blind man trying to find his way. As far as Annie was concerned, he'd never existed.
     Never.

SNATCHER

BILLY NEEKS HAD A FLEXIBLE PHILOSOPHY REGARDING PROPERTY rights. He believed in the proletarian ideal of shared wealth - as long as the wealth belonged to someone else. On the other hand, if the property belonged to him, Billy was prepared to defend it to the death. This was a simple, workable philosophy for a thief - which Billy was.
     Billy Neeks's occupation was reflected in his grooming: He looked slippery. His thick black hair was slicked back with enough scented oil to fill a crankcase. His coarse skin was perpetually pinguid, as if he suffered continuously from malaria. He moved cat quick on well-lubricated joints, and his hands had the buttery grace of a magician's hands. His eyes resembled twin pools of Texas crude, wet and black and deep - and utterly untouched by any human warmth or feeling. If the route to Hell were an inclined ramp requiring a hideous grease to facilitate descent, Billy Neeks would be the devil's choice to pass eternity in the application of that noxious, oleaginous substance.
     In action, Billy could bump into an unsuspecting woman, separate her from her purse, and be ten yards away and moving fast by the time she realized that she'd been victimized. Single-strap purses, double-strap purses, clutch purses, purses carried over the shoulder, purses carried in the hand - all meant easy money to Billy Neeks. Whether his target was cautious or careless was of no consequence. Virtually no precautions could foil him.
     That Wednesday in April, pretending to be drunk, he jostled a well-dressed elderly woman on Broad Street, just past Bartram's Department Store. As she recoiled in disgust from that oily contact, Billy slipped her purse off her shoulder, down her arm, and into the plastic shopping bag that he carried. He reeled away from her and took six or eight steps in an exaggerated stagger