After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

  With no idea how to tell Çin, Freddy decided just to tell her. He was pretty sure she would not be stupid enough to go around broadcasting the whole thing to anyone and everyone who would give her the time of day but he wasn’t absolutely positive. Still, she had been good so far. If Çin did say anything, Freddy could deny it. He would scoff, he would laugh in her face and then he knew Carrie would likely beat her into unconsciousness for spreading the rumor. But that could also mean the end of Carrie. Çin was a coward at heart – just like yours truly. The difference was she really had nothing to fear. I knew she would not say anything. I told him – and against my better judgment – to go with it and enjoy what she had to offer. It was a once in a lifetime experience.

  But Freddy could not trust that. The damage would be done. Teenagers are like mosquitoes. They constantly search for a chink on the armor. Once they discover it, they exploit it ruthlessly. They would talk behind Freddy’s back. Everyone would know how unfaithful he was. He would fight a few but it wouldn’t matter. No matter how adamant or violent his denial he would be branded. If Carrie left him and he did not have Çin he wouldn’t have anyone. His high school life would be ruined before it even began.

  -

  It was Saturday afternoon. Liz was in the ground. Carrie and her mother were eating cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and drinking Mateus. John was busy working out how to pay his body guy the nine hundred dollars it would cost to fix Maybelline. Çin couldn’t talk on the phone because her parents had returned unexpectedly from Houston.

  The house on Crocker Heights was going on the market. They were selling their Canadian assets and moving south. The market in Alberta was somewhat strong but the market in Prince William Falls was great. To the rich, houses are like cars are to the rest of us. We sell them and trade them – even lend them out on occasion – but it’s just a car. Prince William Falls was unique: Its landscape was well sheltered from the high winds of southern Alberta but the town was also far enough south to enjoy good or at least decent weather three quarters of the year. There were very few higher end homes in the area and rarely did they go on the market. That house would not last long and Çin would be gone before school even started.

  Freddy felt an instant of relief. It was replaced quickly with dread. She had nothing to lose. She could tell everyone about their little affair without fear of hurting her own reputation or any reprisal from him or Carrie. She would be thousands of miles away and safe. Freddy suddenly knew. Like a jilted lover Çin would tell – if just to get even.

  With cold logic Freddy decided what he had to do. Çin needed to go away. Çin needed to go away now. She needed to go away before Carrie came back and she needed to go away before she could talk to anyone. Freddy concluded there was only one way to accomplish this.

  -

  On Sunday evening Freddy told me what he had done. I remember the day as though it were yesterday. It was mid-August – around the twentieth. The days were still hot but the evenings finally granted relief. The nights were not quite cold yet but it had grown cool enough to pull out a light sweater or that thin coat that is only really serviceable for these few weeks of the year. Out on the Green the baseball diamonds were nearly deserted in favor of the tail end of the soccer season and the earliest tryouts for football.

  I have always found the crack of a ball on bat to fill me with joy. We knew it meant spring and the glory days of summer. We knew we were free. That whistle, the coach’s whistle on the football field, was the death knell. It meant the end. Beneath my feet the grass was still soft but it lacked the fullness of summer. Soon it would begin to wither. Like a cancer, the vibrant emerald green of the poplars had begun to fade. Tumors of musty, dusty yellow crept into the forest canopy.

  That Sunday I could smell the dry crackle of autumn in the air. Beneath the sun’s warming rays, a chill prevailed. To the west, a heavy bank of ominous clouds hung low over the mountains, painted a thousand shades of violet by the evening sun. Overhead the sky was scrubbed clean, its threadbare azure fading to indigo.

  I watched the first stars come out. Mars was visible near the horizon. Low in the southeast Orion was beginning his ascent. There were street lights in Prince William Falls of course but back then there were no lights in the Green. On a clear night like that Sunday night you could just make out the blurred line of the Milky Way when the sun went down. It was beautiful. It should have been beautiful.

  It was there on the Green I met Freddy – just north of where the forest began. I could still smell the lingering aroma of smoldering charcoal in the picnic area. Already a scattering of autumn-bleached leaves lay on the grass, stirring and settling as an errant breeze trickled through the field. As Freddy strolled up to me the setting sun put a sinister cast to his features. I wished suddenly I had worn a coat. He did not look at me as he approached but sat instead at a picnic table, a look nearing blissful on his face. I stood beside the table expectantly, fearful, dreading his revelation.

  Freddy sighed, smirked and sipped from a can of Pepsi. Only then did he look at me but it was as though he looked right through me. His eyes were two deepened ponds catching and casting the light of the stars. It was then I knew what he had done.

  -

  “I didn’t even tell her it was over,” Freddy said. “I didn’t have to. She told me they were moving. She said she was going to miss me.” Briefly his face twisted into a sneer of disgust. “She told me that she loved me. I decided to change things up.”

  Freddy told Çin they could do it one last time. The house was no good. Her mother was there with the movers. Instead they met in the woods south of the Green. Freddy suggested they go deeper in, past the amphitheater, beyond the paved pathways. He wanted to find a secluded spot. The last thing he wanted was to be disturbed.

  Çin was nervous and excited. She clung to him like a girl in love while they walked. Her smile and her eyes were lost in the lyrics of a song as her fingers twined in his. Freddy held her close once they were back out of sight. I think she was excited because Freddy had not rejected her and nervous because of Freddy’s mood. But she followed Freddy willingly enough. They both knew Sunday evening was a dead time on those trails. They met no one on their way out.

  “Let me do you,” Freddy suggested, “like last time.”

  Çin was confused. “You said you didn’t want to do that again. I thought you didn’t like it. I thought because of Carrie-”

  “I guess I’ve had some time to think about it,” Freddy told her. He reached for her. “You’re moving. We’re not gonna have another chance. I want to fuck you one last time.”

  Çin was willing enough. She smiled and demurred while Freddy undressed her and himself. She knelt before him and used her mouth to get him ready.

  “Okay,” Freddy drew Çin to her feet. She needed little coaxing to go further. His senses told him she was already waiting. “Turn around.” The look in Çin’s eyes was revolting to him but Freddy waded in anyway. She kissed him and he let her. Her wetness shocked him, the ease with which he entered her.

  As before he could not touch her with his hands. He kept one at his side, the other hidden behind his back. Çin moaned softly as Freddy began, bracing herself against a tree trunk. Freddy started gently. His pace grew.

  Once again, his desire bloomed but it was not the same desire his partner felt. His dark urge returned, a compulsion so absolutely overwhelming he knew this time he could not fight it even if he wanted to. It must be satisfied. Heat rose in his loins, a surging fire matched only by the inferno in his brain. The blood mist returned. He held it back – not fighting it, but controlling it. He was the surfer riding the crest, the fatal curl of foam less than the reach of one outstretched palm. But every wave must end.

  As his climax neared, as unstoppable as an avalanche, Freddy let one hand fall on Çin’s hip. He grasped her tiny waist in his firm grip. The other came out from behind his back, clenched into a tight fist around the short-bladed hunting knife he had conceale
d so well, taped to his lower back before he left home.

  At his touch Çin’s moans escalated, further fueling Freddy’s rage. If she felt such pleasure now at this violation what would she feel in the next moments?

  The thought further spurred Freddy forward. His orgasm began. Instinctively he knew his timing needed to be exact. His loins exploded and the knife came down.

  Beneath him Çin moaned with every thrust, bunching and flexing as Freddy’s erection pulsed inside her. She went rigid. Her moans turned to a strangled gasp as her jugular was opened. Her knees buckled and her grip on the tree went slack.

  Freddy rode her to the ground, twisting the knife to open the wound. He continued to thrust slowly as the dregs of his orgasm pulsed out of him just as Çin’s life pulsed out of her. She made no move to fight it. She did not struggle or even try to look back. The flow ebbed quickly, the convulsive spurts slackening as the force behind them declined. Çin’s body went limp with a last slow exhale, barely more than a whisper of sound.

  Freddy remained inside her still. He felt almost numb from the chin down. Instead of the exhaustion he expected, a warm lassitude crept over him. He dozed for a time, holding onto the memory of the moment not quite passed, awed by it. Endorphins still flooded his system as he dozed. He floated, stoned on death.

  Eventually Freddy roused himself, forcing his muscles to move. He withdrew himself from her, drawing out the knife as well, and crept back on hands and knees. The thing that had been Cindy Macpherson lay before him, crumpled and bloodied at the foot of the tree. It was no longer human. It was merely a thing, a tin can. Some object cast into the undergrowth as though what had made her human fled with her life.

  On his knees Freddy could only stare. He had done this thing. He had taken from Çin everything that made her who she was. His mind floated with the implications of it. Every nerve in his body was alive, tingling with raw energy captured in the moment. It was a glorious feeling.

  A creek trickled nearby. Freddy rose and padded barefoot and naked to cleanse himself in its clear waters. He expected blood and lots of it. He did not expect it to erupt so violently. His clothing was fine, shucked and tossed clear before they began but Çin’s blood had bathed him from scalp nearly to his knees.

  Freddy did not mind the blood – quite the opposite actually. The clinging heat of it on his skin was erotic. The way it pooled and ran along his body was exquisite. He did not want to wash it off but it would not do to emerge from the woods with her blood drying on his cheeks. He lowered himself into the stream’s frigid waters, gasping with shock until his heated skin adjusted. Compulsively he laughed out loud. A sense of complete joy filled him.

  The dog had been different, smaller and somehow less significant. He knew that now. That night he only came to realize his potential but had yet to grasp it. Çin was something closer to that potential. Her death was more potent, more vital and immensely more gratifying.

  Freddy lay in the stream and scrubbed cold water over his bare flesh. He relived those last moments. To him the mongrel in the alley had been a convenience. That one was unplanned. This escalation to taking a human life was premeditated and in his eyes it was necessary. As he said, Çin needed to go away and her moving to the bottom half of the continent was not going to be enough.

  Completely unconcerned with the ‘what now?’ Freddy rose from the stream and returned to the body. Çin would surely be missed – and soon. Some might believe she ran away. She had been talking about it for years. Who knew what others would think, but not many of them would suspect foul play – at least, not right away.

  Freddy stood in the clearing to contemplate the situation. He glanced around the natural hollow in the forest, a low spot between two gently rising hills. He lucked out finding this spot. Not ten paces from where the body lay grew a densely tangled growth of Buffalo berries. The screen was nearly impenetrable. Moving Çin’s body was not overly difficult. She had been quite petite – not even a hundred pounds – and Freddy was quite fit. He hefted Çin’s legs and dragged her into the bush. The branches were still supple enough and did not break as he forced his way into the thick tangle. As for Çin’s clothing, Freddy shredded it and left it cast around the body.

  Eventually the body would be found. Freddy had no delusions about that. But fall was fast approaching and as evidenced by the bushes around him, the pickings were getting slim. Bears were common in these woods and although his knowledge of woods lore was restricted to movies and the occasional Reader’s Digest story, Freddy could read these signs clearly enough.

  Çin would be found, scant miles from her home, the apparent victim of a bear attack. A hungry bear will eat anything – garbage, roots, berries, grubs and even rotting flesh. The scent of fresh blood would draw down a black bear or even a grizzly faster than flies to shit.

  But Freddy wanted to sweeten the pot just a little. He retrieved his jeans and pulled a slim vial from one of the pockets. Scented to mimic the pheromones of a sow in heat the lure would bring horny males in from miles around. At least one of them would be hungry.

  The lure spread; Freddy returned to the stream. He washed again and dressed quickly. He cast about the clearing in search of anything he might have missed. He scattered loose duff and fresh leaves over the faint drag marks Çin’s shoulders had made and tossed a few handfuls over the pool of blood near the tree. Critically he glanced around again. Once satisfied, he sighed contently and left.

  -

  With breaks only long enough to sip his Pepsi Freddy told me all of this. He showed no self-consciousness about telling me of their affair. My knowledge of it did not matter to Freddy. He knew I would not tell a soul. But his description of the murder did strike me wrong somehow. It was too calculated, too well-planned for an act that was in essence both compulsive and passionate.

  Not lightly does one consider the taking of a life. Not even Freddy could do that. But his story did not fit with what I understood about him. For all the ice he claimed filled his veins, for all his studied calculations of his desires and his detached observations of humanity, Freddy was a creature of impulse. Everything he had thus far killed, everything he had done had been done without forethought. His treatment of Carrie aside, Freddy acted on impulse. So it was for the fallen bird, for the mongrel and those that followed. So too should it have been for Çin. I thought him impulsive. I knew he was. But then again, I recalled his attacks on Maybelline. That whole affair had been planned and executed with perfect precision. But that was not murder. Or was it the same to him?

  As I watched Freddy swilling the last mouthfuls of his drink, listening to him talk of death, I knew he was not lying. But still I could not believe him. There was something about him that was wrong, off, out of place. I knew how far his fantasies could take him but this was different. It was more real to him – almost real enough to be real for me as well. I knew it was because as he spoke, he did not care if I believed him or not or even if I listened at all.

  When he seduced Mrs. Anders, when he was promised the secrets hidden beyond Nancy’s white triangle of lace, Freddy was adamant and desperate for my approval. He told me often about these fantasies even as the apparent memories began to fade. I’m sure he soon grew to disbelieve them himself – every one, save for Nancy’s promise. But still he told me as though in the very telling of them he could revive them.

  No. This time Freddy did not care. I knew as he finished his tale, tipping the last syrupy droplets of flat, warm cola into his complacent mouth, he would never tell me again. If this was a fantasy it would be for him alone. If this was his fantasy it was my nightmare. If it was real, it was worse.

  The sky was full dark when I left him still sitting on the edge of his picnic table. I crept away, turning back often as I crossed the Green. I was afraid he would chase me down. I thought he would grab me by the throat and drag me out into those woods to see what he had done with my own eyes. I did not want to see. I could not. While there remained a lingering thread of uncerta
inty, I felt safe. At the same time, I needed to know. Mostly I just wanted to scream.

  Later, I lay in bed unable to sleep as a late summer storm over the foothills gave light to the night. It was not the storm that kept me awake. It was this death that did not seem right. I did not want to be in denial but I could not simply accept this tale as the truth.

  It dawned on me. It is not conclusive but it was a hope at the least. When he came to me out of the woods Freddy had barely walked two miles since washing himself in the stream. The sun was lowering, nearing dusk. The air on the Green was cool enough to consider a light coat and the forest would have been cooler still. His hair was thick and, although not quite long, it was full. Freddy’s hair took half the morning to dry without a blow-dryer. Whatever other variables came into play I don’t know but when Freddy came out of those woods his hair was not even damp.

  Ch6. Summer's End

  Summer’s End

  A different Carrie Hicks returned home late that August. She was still beautiful – achingly so I thought. She still shone with the innocence of youth. But with it, blending perfectly, was the reserved calm of greater wisdom. Hers was the mien of one who has travelled the road that leads beyond the borders of our little worlds, to something … more. She had grown, matured. She was granted knowledge of things greater than she knew could exist – granted and accepted.

  More obvious was her appearance. Even as she began developing the outward signs of womanhood, Carrie still carried herself with the awkward gait of a child. She had always been active and she was coordinated but it was difficult to see her as anything more than a child even as her hips flared and her chest grew. I’m sure she could still pitch one hell of a knuckle ball and easily out-distance most of us in a sprint, but this new Carrie possessed a certain unconscious grace, a fluidity in her movements that was not there before. Also, the ball cap was notably absent and her hair was longer now. Her hair was not flat or unadorned as it had been, clipped off simply as the inches grew. It glowed now and cascaded over her shoulders the way only a woman’s can and a man’s almost never does.