I should have known it would be a bitch to get the body out of the trunk, she even had told me it would, but there was no way for me to anticipate the bags ripping and subsequently spilling their contents all over the side of the highway. I peered down the miles of road ahead of me and saw no encroaching lights, but upon glancing the other way, I was greeted with a set of headlights rapidly approaching, maybe 5 miles out, their shine illuminating an unmistakable set of red and blue reflections from the roof of the car.
I fell to the ground and started pushing the chunks of meat beneath the car, surprised at how quickly the flesh and meat had grown cold and hard, a body once capable of so much movement and grace one minute only to be reduced to cumbersome bricks of waste the next. I could hear the roar of the engine and stood up, using my heel to skirt the remaining pieces beneath the bumper and forcing the warmest smile I could muster under the conditions.
As I stood in eager anticipation a blinding light appeared from one side of the vehicle, forcing me to shield my eyes, partially obscuring the individual that emerged. As I peered beneath my hand I could see the silhouette of a man creeping toward me with his right hand sliding toward his waistline.
"Hello" I said to the approaching man, "Nice evening, I am just putting away my tire jack" hoping to distract him as I slightly angle my body to cover my reach for a weapon. Is that a second person in the vehicle behind the glare of the lights, will I be able to take them both out if it comes to that.
My hand grazed over the slick metal of my .44 S&W Special nuzzled tight within the interior of the trunk, fingers wrapping its polished rosewood grip, a gift from the wife on our 15th wedding anniversary. I heard the words "Everything...", and "allright"... while all the possible scenarios played out in front of me, and choosing the one future where I did not immediately die or spend the rest of my life in jail, I yanked the revolver from its holster, spinning around and leveling the weapon's sights to the head of the police officer before me.
It was so fluid, he never saw it coming; hell it was like I had just taken a single breath and my .44 S&W was 6 rounds liter. My heart pounded against my breast as I confirmed the kill of the officer, one shot clean through his right cheek bone, then I slowly approached the vehicle to confirm my other 5 rounds found their intended target.
I glanced about nervously, checking for any oncoming traffic and contemplating how I would dispose of yet another body. As images of possible consequences of my actions raced through my mind, I reached down and grabbed the policeman's limp body and dragged it off the road, covering it with a layer of brush while an idea began to form in my mind, a way to take care of all my problems in one fell swoop.
The first body I disposed of much like the second, hurrying myself; The last thing I wanted was another set of headlights to come down the road. With a few hurried steps, I cleared the brush, almost tripping over the cop's foot on my way past. As I got to the door and pulled it open, I glanced over my shoulder one last time to assure everything looked some semblance of the word normal.
"Normal........."
I never liked my apartment, but on three "jobs" a week what could I expect. As I stared at the ceiling, I decided that if I ever managed to get out of here I would never paint anything "slate gray". It reminded me too much of my own life, too much of....I closed my eyes trying to keep the colors out. As memories of the previous night filled my head, like a cup with too much water, I seemed to forget as much as I remembered.
There was budding light from between the shades, beams creeping along my floor with suspended dust looking like salt shakers in space, and my thoughts turned to her. She could be the death of me, or even worse, I of her, but she had been right about the trunk, so it is possible that a third outcome exists, one of a prolonged and beautiful mutual destruction, like two typhoons colliding, taking out everyone along the way.
My contemplation was interrupted by a loud banging at my front door accompanied by muffled shouts. As I reluctantly slid out of bed I approached the door, each step bringing greater clarity to the voice’s purpose and a greater understanding of problems to come.
I slipped my .44 special behind my back and into the waist of my pants as I peered through the peep hole in my front door. It was Miss. Crookshanks, the land lady, stumbling around with her hair in rollers and a pure gin martini in hand, half burned cigarette hanging out of her mouth; that woman wouldn't even need a reason to call the cops on one of her tenants, so I un-bolted the door and prepared myself.
I opened the door with one hand and rubbed my eye with the other, still groggy from just awakening, and I said to her, "This ain't groovy on my dreams at all lady, you're bein' a drag on my dreams." I then placed myself between the door and the worn, cracked frame of my apartment to keep her sights on me and not the several cans of FallsCity beer strewn about the chintzy apartment.
As the old crow began to speak I immediately tuned her out as painful memories began to seep out of my brain; memories of a darkened room, an angry man barking in my face, her. Through every painful recollection I kept thinking of her shape, her face, her lips; culminating into an emotional climax just as I felt a sharp pain on my cheek.
Her sharp, hoarse voice snapped me back into reality as she took a puff of her cigarette while her hand came across my face, "Are ya even listenin' to me ya birdbrain?!" Something seemed to snap inside me as I grew constantly tired of her bickering and noxious personality; I invited her in by saying, "Ms. Crookshanks, as your company is always 18 karat, I would like to take a minute of your time to put in a complaint about the cat upstairs .."
I stepped aside and she waltzed in, her tattered pink robe billowing behind her as a cloud of Aveeno and liquor molested my nostrils. I shut the door and turned to watch her survey the room, her brow furrowed and her head jerking back and forth, up to the ceiling and back down to the floor, like an angry pigeon that just stepped in its own shit.
As she continued to move forward through the mass of crushed beer cans and pizza boxes, my first instinct was to silence her, quick and quiet, like I had done so many times before. As angry thoughts ran through my mind, the night’s events kept repeating over and over in my mind, and the possible consequences of offing this old bag were not worth the rewards.
I shut and bolted the door behind her quietly and slowly took the knife off of my kitchen counter as I approached her from behind, holding the knife behind my leg until the last moment. "Please forgive the mess doll, it's been a pretty bad week at my gig and I've been kind of a spaz lately .." The gun was too loud and I wanted her to see it coming, to see the hate in my eyes for all the annoyance and negativity she'd given me over the years..
Even after all these years, the adrenaline still gets pumping, and everything that proceeded was reduced to slow motion as I brought the knife up past her shoulder and under her chin, turning it up a bit more then needed so that the severed carotid artery would have to fight gravity to empty and maybe she would bleed out a bit slower, possibly even be able to staunch it by compressing the folds of peeling skin and fat she called a neck, and I could lecture her on the dirt and grime of her world instead of mine, the broken faucet in my goddamn bathroom for the past month, and finally, that fucking cat upstairs. The blade rose softly to her skin like a conductor's baton at the start of his favorite composure, the muscles from my forearm up to my triceps tensed, and just as it began to make contact and peel through the thin epidermis, signaling the shrill first note of Death's pitch black violin, an F-sharp enough that those initial nerves would split without ever sending a distress signal, a familiar and unmistakable perfume wafted in from outside the front door and stopped the music dead.
Damn .. perfect timing Marlene.. I untucked my partially buttoned shirt to cover the .44 S&W and straightened slightly at the cool touch of the dark steel slide against my bare skin. Hearing the knock at the door I quickly spun the knife to lay flat against the inside of my wrist and forearm before Ms. Crookshanks could even react to the small paperlike cut.
She turned to me with a stunned expression for a moment and said "You might live in filth but getting fresh with me won't get you anywhere." Then in her gin induced hallucination she cracks a coy smile through those grimy teeth, then grabs my package and says "But we can always work something out if you are a little short on rent." I really better answer that, she looks at me with a confused expression just as knock comes to the door.
