Head in the Box

by C.P. Kemabia

  Mrs. Brummer emptied her cup. Charlie offered more lemonade, but she turned it down. She then got up to her feet and inhaled deeply. “I do feel better now,” she said.

  While Charlie went off to put the lemonade and the cup away in the kitchen, the old lady pointed at the wine bottle (the one Simon had been drinking from) sitting on the main table of the living room.

  “How surprising to find young people with a taste for delicacy nowadays,” she said, taking a couple steps forward as she spoke. “I for one enjoy a fine drink of wine on Sunday mornings. Very delightful, isn’t it?” They all made quiet nods for an answer. “A couple months ago, when my daughter bought me a computer for God knows what reason, she also got me a USB cork. I’ve never had any use for that gizmo, but I thought it was a nice touch, considering that I’m a wine enthusiast…”

  She paused for a moment, gave her audience a smug look and added, “Now I feel like I’m obtruding and you’d rather be among yourselves instead of listening to an old woman talk.”

  Mrs. Brummer thanked Charlie for the lemonade and was about to take her leave when Carol suddenly asked, “For how much longer are we gonna be stuck up here?”

  “Well, like I was telling your friend here, the repairmen should arrive any minute now and enable us to tend to our Sunday outdoor pursuits. I want to apologize for any inconvenience this whole door deal may have caused you all. And you know what––” Mrs. Brummer quickly looked the mess in the living room over “—I’d gladly pass over the little shambles that I see everywhere in here, as long as it’s not long-lived, okay?”

  Charlie quickly nodded.

  Completely recovered, the old lady finally stepped to the front door, but turned before opening it.

  “And do me a favor, will you? Put whatever that thing is away.” She was indicating the cardboard box and Charlie quivered in her bones. “It smells awful; don’t tell me you can’t smell it? Let alone it’s going to stink up the whole unit.”

  Charlie thought she was seeing two or three bugs dangling above the box and, in the same bossy tone, Mrs. Brummer added, “And since safety is paramount in our compound, I would encourage you not to leave sharp objects hanging anywhere.”

  “What sharp object?”

  In response to Charlie’s question, the old lady indicated a piece of furniture which stood not far off from where she’d been sitting a moment ago.

  “I think there’s a knife or something behind that cabinet. You should be more careful where you keep those.”

  On that last note, Mr. Brummer exited the apartment. Carol muttered, to no one in particular, “Great, a knife…”

  Charlie came close to the designated cabinet and detected the handle of a knife protruding from behind it. She budged the cabinet just a notch to see the knife plainly. It was a meat cleaver and there were bloodstains all over the large, rectangular blade.

  Charlie retched, her face turning a different color from the effects of this new discovery.

  “What’s wrong?” Simon asked.

  She didn’t answer then, breathing in and out with difficulty, her head tilted down. And feeling her strength go, she told the others what it was that she had found—the murder weapon…

  IV

  “What?” It was Jen who exclaimed, leaping to her feet.

  And as they all rushed over to see for themselves, Charlie found something else laying quite near where the meat cleaver was. It was the wine cork. She picked it up and looked it over, puzzled by what it was doing there. But she gave no more thought to it and pocketed it when the others approached.

  They all came rushing and then halted, standing stock still as a new shock built and stunned their minds. Then Jen caught Carol’s arm and the grip of her strong fingers almost left a mark on Carol’s delicate skin.

  “Oh my God,” she said.

  “What’s happening?” Tara asked, coming back from her bedroom with her kitty cat.

  Alvin filled her in and a hot panic immediately touched her.

  “It’s getting better and better,” Carol said.

  Simon grabbed a hanky lying about and, clasping the knife handle with his thumb and forefinger, he carefully held the evidence up for a close examination.

  The handle was not stained a dull brown as was the sharp, heavy metal. And as Simon looked the cleaver over, he suddenly realized, almost with a quiet fascination, that the thing had likely bitten through layers of human flesh and yet, without the knowledge of the head in the box, one could easily think it was cattle, and not a person, that had been slaughtered. This lack of distinction brought on a new understanding: just like people, cattle did not deserve to be slain in the cruel slaughterhouse fashion.

  Furrowing his brow, Alvin, who was standing next to Simon, nodded his head thoughtfully and said, “This seems to be the kind of knife that could’ve been used to cut the victim’s head from the rest of his body.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Simon, “like a butcher’s knife.”

  “But it isn’t ours…” Jen said, studying it from where she stood.

  “It’s not?”

  “No. I mean, we do have a meat cleaver but ours is smaller and it’s a Kershaw.”

  “That’s the only brand we have here,” Tara concurred. “Our cutlery set is in the kitchen right now and the knives are all there.” She turned to Charlie. “Isn’t that right, Charlie?”

  Charlie was staring down at the floor as if she was searching for something that was supposed to be there and was not. But her far-off and unfocused gaze also suggested she was lost in her thoughts. So hung up was she about finding the cork next to the cleaver that she barely heard Tara calling to her a second time.

  “Charlie… Charlie, is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What are we going to do with that?” Tara chin-indicated the cleaver. “I mean this is pretty strong evidence!”

  Charlie knew so and said nothing. Instead, she started to nervously work her lips with her teeth and suddenly felt like sitting down and taking her head in her hands because it was becoming too heavy with thoughts of fear and anxiety for her slender neck to hold.

  Simon read the morale fatigue on her face and put the cleaver down where it’d been found to go and be her rock.

  “I guess there’s no more argument,” Alvin slowly said. “Everything seems to fit.”

  “No, wait a minute…” Charlie said, shaking her head with a new-found strength.

  “Are you kidding me?” Carol jumped at her. “The evidence is piling up! What more do you need? We need to call this in now.”

  Charlie said, “I thought we were going to wait until the door––”

  “—No! Enough with the recalling bit! I’ll tell you what I think: ever since we found out about Max, we’ve been setting ourselves up to be looked at as accomplices. Now there’s no point in this thing going on anymore. Hell, we tried your way and put ourselves at risk: what if your landlady had found out about the box? How do you suppose that would’ve gone down? You think she’d have believed us if we claimed we had no part in it and yet the thing was sitting like a vase on the table?”

  Even though Alvin felt that Carol was not faulting his thoughtless handling of the cardboard box, he nonetheless said in his defense, “But that didn’t happen, right?”

  “What if it had happened?” insisted Carol. “Do you guys even realize what we are doing?”

  Charlie said, “Carol, there’s still something that doesn’t add up. I can’t put my finger on it yet, but I know it’s there.”

  “Oh, please! Don’t give me that.”

  “You … you don’t even listen to me.” Charlie’s voice wavered. “I’m telling you, with more time, there’s a chance we could figure this out, we could––”

  “—You’ve got to start looking up the best defense lawyer there is in the state,” Carol roughly cut her. “That’s what you should be thinking about right now. You need to find someon
e who’s going to fight for Max and get him the best deal possible if it ever happens that he’s found guilty for this. And I can help you out with that.”

  “But we’re not there yet. And it’s now that I need your help.”

  “Christ!” Carol said with a curt exclamation. “It’s like talking into a dead phone.”

  Still cradling her cat to her chest, Tara said to Carol, “You still don’t see that there may be some cracks on the surface of this killing?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  With a certain resignation of heart, Dom slowly pulled himself away from the group.

  “Dom…?” Tara called after him.

  And, without even looking her way, he said, “Just… I don’t know what to think.”

  His tone had not been mean, but it had an edge that clipped Tara all the same and she held her cat tighter in her arms as she watched Dom sit back on a couch and leaf through a newspaper.

  “I know I’m putting you all through a lot,” Charlie said. “But maybe if we look a little deeper…”

  “No, Charlie!” Carol said with a definite gesture. “It’s getting us nowhere. You’re going to have to accept the facts.”

  And as they stood face to face looking at each other, both girls could feel a strange bitterness slowly form between them, the kind that grew out of a broken friendship. It was the worst kind…

  V

  “If the knife is strong evidence,” Tara said, “then where did Max get it from? It doesn’t come from this apartment.”

  “Maybe he bought it,” replied Alvin.

  “You don’t go around buying something like that with the specific intent of beheading someone unless you’re a sadistic killer. You think that’s Max?”

  Alvin did not answer.

  “What difference does it make how he got it?” Carol said, no longer tempering her aggravation. “I mean he got it, one way or the other.”

  “I don’t go along with that,” Tara said firmly. Charlie felt grateful to her beyond measure for fighting her battle.

  “Hey, I think we’re missing the point,” Jen said, looking to settle down everyone’s passions. “Charlie, you said Max had this thing, this … mood disorder thing ever since he was nineteen. You know people afflicted with that may do things that they wouldn’t normally do if they were in their right mind. Though it pains me, and believe me it really does, it’s logic to assume that that’s what happened.”

  “That alone can’t be enough to account for this gruesome act of decapitation,” Charlie quickly countered.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Carol exploded, losing her temper altogether this time. “It’s like you’re deliberately ignoring the reality of the situation. You just want to believe what you want to believe. This is more than just denial; this is bordering insanity.”

  Carol’s face had almost darkened with anger and she was looking sort of unstable as if she could blow a gasket any second if not soothed.

  Simon intervened: “Okay, I think you need to calm down, Carol.”

  “Don’t freaking tell me to calm down!” She shot an accusing finger at Charlie. “She’s being irrational and, frankly, quite selfish.”

  Alvin groaned. “Aww, come on now, huh, what is this?”

  Tara agreed, saying, “We don’t need that kind of contribution.”

  “Well, that’s the last one you’re going to get from me anyway. I’ve had enough.”

  Decisively, Carol turned on her heel and headed toward the front door.

  She said, “I’m going to find myself a phone and call the police if none of you will.”

  “Carol––” Charlie immediately started after her dissenting friend, her face stamped by panic and her heart falling into a crazy pounding.

  “I got this.” Simon seized Charlie’s arm and hurried past her. Before Carol could get to the front door, he caught up with her and grabbed her hand. “Carol, wait!”

  She turned on him in a fury, broke from his hold, and bunched herself up against the door like a cornered wild cat. Though she was no match for him in strength, Simon sensed that Carol would claw her way out of the apartment if it came to that.

  He said, “Easy … easy … I’m not going to try to stop you. Look, you’re frustrated; we all are. But you can’t take it out on her. She’s your friend.”

  “Well, why don’t you reason with her then? I haven’t seen you try.”

  “You don’t have a sibling so I cannot expect you to understand,” he said. “But listen, use your wits, put yourself in her place. There’s always been this connection between her and Max, you know it; I know it. They’ve always had each other… She can’t bring herself to believe that she might lose him. Not just yet. It is a tough reality to accept. So let her have it her way. You know her, she’ll eventually come to her senses.”

  By the time Simon was done talking, Carol had settled down into her composed self. Her shoulders relaxed and she took a few seconds to think and soak up all those words which had somehow contributed to putting out the fire inside her, a fire which had hardened her heart like coal and stiffened her mind. No, she didn’t have a brother or a sister and she didn’t give a penny, but, by watching Charlie defend Max so brazenly, Carol thought that, given their similar hot personalities, she would’ve probably acted the same way for someone she deeply cared about. Someone like Jen.

  “Okay … fine!” Carol said after a moment.

  And she moved off to the central table of the living room, quietly sat somewhere and crossed her legs in her ladylike manner. Jen joined her, and pretty soon, Alvin, Peter and Tara silently commuted there too.

  Charlie approached Simon and he said to her, “She calmed down.” He added, “Charlie, we can’t go on like that forever.”

  “I don’t know what to do––” she said, her voice thick with despair. He could see that she was holding back tears. “I don’t know what to do––I’m terrified. Oh, Gosh… There’s no way out of this for him, is there?”

  Simon threw his arms around Charlie’s shoulders and pulled her into him. She didn’t feel any better.

  VII

  Dom felt Tara’s silent stare fall over him like the first drop of morning dew and he did not look up from the paper he was reading to acknowledge her presence near him. He forced his eyes to remain on the page and she said, “Are you okay?”

  He did not answer. He was bent on giving her the silent treatment.

  “Hum… Look,” Tara went on, “I’m sorry about before. I wasn’t aiming at bruising your feelings, you know. I mean… Look, if sometimes I give you the impression that I resent the way you fly off the handle over my being with someone else, then you’re misreading… I very much like it… At first, I mean. But now… Look, I need to know that you trust me…” Dom gave her nothing, not a sign that he was even listening.

  “Are you just going to sit there or talk to me?”

  “I’m kind of busy now,” he told her.

  “With what?”

  “Was just checking out the winning numbers.”

  “What numbers?”

  “The lotto raffle,” Dom said. The expression on his face informed Tara that he had shut himself off from all further discussions.

  Tara looked at him, slowly shaking her head. Then she said, “You know I don’t like the idea of you gambling.”

  “Do I look like I care?”

  She took in both his cold stare and shoulder with dignity, at least she tried. Then snatching the paper from his fingers, she said, “We’re in the middle of a crisis and you do this.” She shoved the paper back to him. “Have your numbers.”

  Tara moved off, irritated, passing in front of Jen and Carol, who, by now, sat closely together. One second later, Dom folded the newspaper and put it away in anger.

  Jen turned to Carol; between the two of them, their complicity of old had returned and Jen whispered into Carol’s ear. The subject of the whisper was the friction between
Dom and Tara, and Jen was just glad that Carol was not giving her a hard time too.

  “Well, what can I say?” Carol said in response. “I know I can be quite bitchy when I’m angry. But what would be the sense in that now?”

  “Then what was that petulant stunt you pulled back there?” Jen said. “Got almost everyone freaked out, me included.”

  “Oh, I just want this nightmare to be over.”

  “Yeah… I hear you.”

  Meanwhile, Tara joined Peter and sat next to him.

  “How are you holding up?”

  “Well, you know, just hanging in there…” For a minute or two, they both remained silent. Tara was stroking her cat which lay on her lap.

  “By the way,” Peter asked, “what is Dom getting so hot about?”

  Tara hedged the question with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  “You know,” she said, “I must apologize for that.”

  “Well, you don’t have to apologize for him.”

  “It’s not just that; it’s my fault if you’re here. If I hadn’t invited you over, you wouldn’t have been swept into this mess.”

  Peter smiled. He’d always had trouble sleeping in other people’s places. And so he thought about his wakefulness of last night, and how it led to the moments he spent with Tara out on the terrace talking at length about anything and everything, and the warmth he felt to be in such agreeable company, not because she was a lovely girl but, rather, a lovely person who easily trusted you and let you enter her intimate space. And inside that space, you wanted to get real because she herself was real. Peter could almost sympathize with Dom and his territorial aggressiveness. She’d probably have that effect on any wise boyfriend.

  “I’m glad I accepted your invitation,” he finally told her. “I had a really good time, even considering what’s happening now. Do you think we’ll be much longer?”

  “I don’t know… I’m just hoping there won’t be any more surprises.”