After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

  Carrie was laid out on the bed. Her dress was hiked to her armpits and she was stripped nude beneath. Her breasts and stomach were slick with the glistening crimson of fresh blood. It was not hers.

  Nearly naked himself, John knelt between her wide-splayed legs. He was arched backwards, his erection jutting forth like a lance. Blood frothed from his lips and ran from a horrible gash in his throat.

  Freddy stood over him. The knife in his hand pistoned up and down. Each wound brought another scream from John, another meaty rip of cartilage as it withdrew and brought forth a fresh glut of blood in splatters and fountains. In the midst of the violence he wrought, Freddy’s face was composed, relaxed. One could say happy.

  Carrie moaned quietly. I believe she was oblivious to what was happening beyond her, of what had just developed between father and son. Her head was turned toward me so that I could see the clean line down her cheek where her tears had washed away the blood. Her eyes were squinted tightly closed. She was conscious. Beyond that I doubt she was very aware.

  On the fourth or fifth strike the blade caught, wedging itself in John’s back between his ribs. Freddy’s contented look vanished. His face was split with a snarl of rage. He gave the knife a vicious twist and jerked it free. I could hear bones cracking.

  John was far from finished. He half turned and reached for his son. His fist closed around Freddy’s throat and he spat a blood-frothed curse in his face, meaning to choke out Freddy’s life even as his own life drained away.

  Only for a moment was Freddy off-balance. Only for an instant did he forget the knife in his hand. He struck at his father’s arm, the dripping blade sinking deep. It took only one thrust. John cried out and hurled him across the room with strength born of desperation. His feet barely touched the carpet as Freddy was flung away. He struck his desk, knocking papers askew and upsetting the can of Pepsi I had left there. I heard the angry surge of carbonation flashing off. The knife dropped from his grasp and landed nearly at John’s feet.

  I believe modesty is what saved Freddy and cost John his life. Bleeding horribly, John came off the bed, staggering to his feet. The knife was not a hand’s breadth from the toe of his left boot. He reached for it but stopped. He paused to hike up his pants.

  Freddy lunged. He took up the knife once more and, splayed on his stomach, he thrust blindly upward. The blade took John high inside his right thigh and severed his femoral artery. Twice more Freddy struck his father and twice more the blade sunk deep.

  John bled heavily from a dozen wounds. He sunk to his knees, straddling Freddy.

  “It was me, Dad,” Freddy hissed. “Maybelline: It was all me!”

  John reeled back, dim comprehension shading his confusion and rage. His fist came up, rose to strike but faltered. His eyes grew unfocused and glossed over. His limbs went slack and he collapsed. Dead.

  The sudden silence in the room was broken only by Carrie’s quiet sobs and Freddy’s harsh breathing. My own breath I held. My heart was beating like a drum in my temples. With a grunt Freddy thrust aside the dead weight of John’s legs and rose. The blood that had flowed glutting and puking from his father’s wounds flowed no more. He was dead. Freddy offered the body a derisive snort and dropped the knife.

  The room was awash in John’s blood. The floor, the bed, the walls and even the ceiling ran with spatters and trails of it. Freddy seemed not to notice or to care. He turned to Carrie, that deadly calm returning to his features and knelt at the bedside. His eyes glittered without care.

  “He just. He just,” Carrie began in a child’s voice. “I couldn’t -”

  “Shh,” Freddy smiled. His eyes scrolled over her naked body and he reached for the hem of her dress. With incredible tenderness he covered her.

  “Freddy,” again she began, covering her face with her shaking hands. The anguish in her tears rent my heart but Freddy was unmoved.

  “I forgive you,” he breathed. Like sweat, his father’s blood ran from his brow and cheeks.

  My heart stopped.

  Carrie’s breath caught. Her hands came away from her face and the anguish twisting away her beauty turned to outrage. “What did you say?”

  Freddy rose off his knees and sat on the edge of the bed. “He wasn’t the first one, was he?” With a hooked finger, he smoothed back the tangle of hair on her forehead, leaving a bloody track along her skin. “But it’s okay. I forgive you.”

  Carrie gasped. “He raped me!” She tried to sit up.

  Freddy casually shoved her back down.

  Carrie pushed his hand away. I think she was more angry than afraid. As yet she was not aware of John’s death. The fear would come soon enough.

  His face serene, Freddy thumped a fist into her mouth. He smiled. His eyes came alive with sudden joy. A titter of laughter escaped him and he hit her again, breaking her nose.

  Carrie reached for him, fighting back with fingers bent like claws. Almost absently he batted her hands away and struck her a third time. His own hands fell on her throat. Freddy arched upward and brought his full weight to bear. The cords in his forearms stood out as he poured every ounce of his strength into the act.

  Still I stood frozen. He was killing her and yet I could do nothing. Two strides into the room and I would have the knife in my hand – only two strides. Yet I did nothing.

  Carrie succumbed quickly, her struggles weakening, ceasing altogether as her windpipe was crushed. I heard a crackle of things in there. Briefly her gaze met mine. There was no pleading in that look, no cry for help. There was only resignation.

  She died then. The last thing Carrie saw was me. The last thought she had was of my cowardice, knowing I could have saved her and did nothing. It was as though I killed her myself.

  Her blood is on my hands.

  Ch7. On Murder and Making Love

  On Murder and Making Love

  It is my early twenties. I am standing on the upper deck of the Center Street Bridge in Calgary. It is some time after midnight and I am leaning against the guard rail, staring down into the dark, turbulent water below. I am thinking about Carrie. I doubt there is anything special about that. I’ve probably thought about her every day since she died.

  How easy it would be to step off, let gravity take me, let whatever gods watching decide. My life is worthless. My death is meaningless. My suicide will hurt no one but it will mean an end to my anguish. Suicide is a cowardly act, a selfish act. It is a lazy act. I know it will be much more difficult to fight on and far more unbearable. I am a self-confessed coward – I have always been – yet I cannot do it. Such a simple barrier, this waist-high wall of steel and concrete yet for me it looms a thousand feet high. Absurd isn’t it? Even when we cannot go on living, we fight, clinging onto that last handhold of life.

  This is a dream I have often had on nights when even sleep betrayed me. But I know I was there – at least once. The crystal black of the surging water below, calling me, is a welcomed traveler on my journey. And I have been looking over railings and out high windows since Carrie’s death. Her death – that’s funny. Even now I have a hard time saying Carrie’s murder. I think and say Carrie’s death as though in her dotage she slipped away in the night. Perhaps this is one of the ways I cope. I am able to go on living even when death would be infinitely more preferable. Carrie’s death is somehow made manageable, where Carrie’s murder would reduce that guardrail to little more than a stepping stone. Or a diving board.

  But I get ahead of myself. I am always doing that. That’s odd for someone who lives in the past. That is where I have always lived, always looked and exists only as the wellspring of my regrets. I think on the events of a decade past with greater clarity than this morning’s breakfast. More than a dozen years and I recall the pop of cartilage in her throat, the gurgle and sigh of her last breath. I saw the life flee her eyes like a dying ember on the night air – bright and timeless, flickering, ebbing … gone. I watched her cease to be a who and become a what, a thing. I watched Freddy do it to her. I su
ppose after a fashion I could understand Freddy’s longing for that power. To hold the keys to life and death was the power of a god – or more likely a devil.

  -

  Freddy loosened his grip on her throat. An odd look creased his brow, a thing part way between curiosity and confusion. He tapped her forehead roughly as if tapping on a window pane. He pinched her nose and squeezed her breast. She was dead. It could have been confusion – more likely incomprehension – that marred his blood-streaked cheeks but that does not quite describe it. He stared at her for a moment, his face softening and bent over her. Almost tenderly Freddy kissed her dead lips. He straightened and stood.

  His head swiveled robot-like in my direction. Only then did he see me but no sign of recognition lit his eyes. Freddy glanced down at the knife with John’s blood beginning to congeal along its polished length and back to me. A shadow seemed to pass over him. The monster was still there, its leash held in a loose fist. It would not take much to free it once more. All at once the numbness in my limbs that prevented me from saving Carrie vanished. I stepped out of my hiding place, slipped past Freddy and fled.

  -

  Dick Sumner had served with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for nearly eighteen years when the 911 call came through. Fifteen of those years had been spent with the Prince William Falls detachment. I bet he knew just about everyone in town and everyone knew him. To most of us he was Constable Sumner. To the more ribald he was Officer Dick. He didn’t mind either title. Dick Sumner was living proof you needed to have a good sense of humor to be a cop.

  Constable Sumner knew Nancy and Carrie. He knew Freddy and Maggie. His own son went to school with us and played baseball and soccer. He also knew John. Dick had drunk beers with John and the gang down at Dyson’s and had taken John’s keys away on more than one occasion. He knew John had a reputation but to most of the good ol’ boys around town, John was just too damned likable to believe it. Dick Sumner was not quite one of the good ol’ boys but he was known to shoot the shit with them and travel in the same circles when he was off duty. He did have to watch himself. As an RCMP constable, he was the first to admit even off duty he was never able to fully remove the uniform.

  Being an RCMP constable, Dick had seen his fair share of gore and carnage. Until to that September day, the worst had to have been a head-on between a semi and a minivan load of children. With a differential speed of better than two hundred kilometers per hour the average passenger vehicle does not stay together very well – nor does the average human body. Only the truck driver survived.

  I’m sure the haunted look on that man’s face was horrible enough, but to see it mirrored on the face of a fifteen-year-old boy with his father’s blood drying on his brow was far worse.

  From across the street I watched the arrival of Constable Sumner and his partner, a younger man new to town. By his age I’d say he was likely new to the force as well. They rolled up and got out. The younger cop reached for his gun but Dick stopped him with a reproving look and a quick shake of his head.

  They headed for the door and disappeared inside. I stood waiting, watching and listening. Not a minute later the younger cop was back outside. He managed two steps off the porch on wooden legs before doubling over to vomit in Maggie’s junipers. He stumbled to the cruiser. As he radioed in to dispatch, I could just make out the distress in his voice but not what he was saying. I felt for him.

  Five minutes passed. I could hear the wails of converging sirens. A second cruiser rounded the corner down by Maple, its squealing tires raising curls of blue-white smoke in the long, afternoon light. The engine roared up through two gears before the front end pitched down abruptly, nearly digging into the asphalt as the driver stood on the brakes. An ambulance followed somewhat less dramatically and bumbled over the curb to come to a rest on the front lawn.

  Two more cruisers converged, one from either end of the street. This represented a fair portion of the town’s law enforcement personnel. I hoped someone among them would be able to see through Freddy’s disguise. I recognized one of the cops as the constable who had come to the hospital to question John. I knew then my hopes were for naught. That man would believe whatever story Freddy told even if he claimed leprechauns held Carrie down while John raped her.

  By then the neighbors started popping their heads out. A crowd began to gather. Two constables with their obligatory rolls of yellow tape began to cordon off the street and the Cartwright place in an effort to keep the rubberneckers at bay.

  “What happened?” A woman asked.

  “Dunno,” someone replied in an awe-struck voice.

  “What’s going on here?” An elderly man asked as he strolled up with his meticulously groomed poodle.

  Candace Furlong, who had lived across the street from the Cartwrights for the last five years, snorted in disgust. “I betcha he’s finally gone and done it.”

  “Done what?”

  “Killed her – that’s what.”

  Shocked gasps rolled through the crowd. One woman started crying. Mrs. Furlong began to preach John’s wickedness. When the truth came out – Freddy’s truth that is – he would be praised a hero.

  “Maybe she killed him,” someone suggested.

  “Good,” the elderly man grunted, “they won’t charge her then.”

  “Whadya mean?”

  The elderly man adopted a scholarly look. “It’s like a pre-emptive strike – she kills him before he can kill her.”

  “Kinda like premeditated self-defense?” A twenty-something in a jogging suit suggested.

  “Exactly,” the elderly man agreed.

  “Serves him right, the bastard,” Candace Furlong muttered with a scowl. Her heavy-jowled face softened then. “God, I hope Maggie’s okay.” There were tears in her eyes.

  Someone put an arm around her. As the crowd continued to grow so too did the speculation. At one point someone suggested murder-suicide. Someone else asked if there had been any gunshots. There was also the question of who had called the cops. We all waited – some eagerly, some dreadfully – to see what would happen next. These people standing around me wanted blood and they wanted body bags. With the slack-jawed fascination gleaned from Saturday afternoon matinees they waited.

  Nearly an hour passed before Constable Sumner emerged from the house. Mrs. Furlong gasped, swooning to a near faint as he led Freddy into the waning sunshine. No effort had been made to clean the blood from his face and hands or to cover his clothing. No one even tried to hide him from the crowd.

  “What the hell?” The twenty-something gasped.

  Someone began to pray.

  “Whose blood is that?”

  People were craning their necks to see. Freddy was led to a waiting cruiser and helped into the back seat.

  “Hey,” the twenty-something realized, “he ain’t wearing handcuffs!”

  Freddy was not cuffed. Nor did Constable Sumner hang around to guard him. A woman in a business suit arrived a few minutes later. Carrying a soft-sided briefcase, she climbed into the back of the cruiser with Freddy.

  A half hour later they brought out John. I knew it was him by the bulk of the body bag.

  “Ohmyfuckinggod!” The twenty-something spat breathlessly. “That’s gotta be the old man.” He glanced at Candace Furlong for confirmation.

  “That’s him alright,” she sighed and crossed herself. “Watch your tongue,” she added absently. “God, please let Maggie be okay.”

  It became a kind of mantra, passing through the crowd like a rumor. We all waited nearly breathless. Only I knew what would happen next.

  A car came up to the barricade. It was a pale blue Caprice wagon. Dick Sumner was moving almost before Maggie’s door opened.

  “Freddy?” She called out desperately.

  Constable Sumner was on her, a hand on each of her shoulders. He spoke to her in a quiet voice none of us could hear.

  “Thank-you,” Mrs. Furlong sighed to the heavens. “Thank-you, Lord!” She embraced the middl
e-aged man who had supported her during her tears and the twenty-something she had rebuked for his foul language.

  “Where’s my boy?” Maggie’s cry reached us again. She craned her neck passed Dick Sumner’s head to see her house.

  “-fine!” I heard him say. He continued to speak to her, holding her shoulders with hands more suited to playing his guitar or doing card tricks than gripping the heavy butt of his service revolver.

  Maggie nodded once, the anguish clear on her face. More emotion came and went playing across her face like water brought to a boil. I had never seen such emotion from her but I suppose it was to be expected. Quite suddenly her legs came unhinged and only Constable Sumner’s intervention prevented her collapse.

  He lowered her to the grassy easement between the curb and sidewalk. Kneeling next to her, he held her as a piteous wail erupted from her throat. As one body the crowd flinched back.

  “She can’t be that broken up about it,” the twenty-something scoffed. In a small voice he added, “Can she?”

  My heart broke for Maggie. Seeing her this way was nearly as bad as witnessing Carrie’s last moments. I wanted to go to her but yet again my feet were frozen.

  “Was he abusing the kid d’you think?” I did not see who spoke.

  “Must a’ been,” the twenty-something said with a grunt. Again, his small voice returned. “Why didn’t she just leave him? She could have taken the kid and left him. Why didn’t she?”

  “I don’t think it’s ever quite that simple,” the elderly man sighed.

  These same conversations echoed around us as groups formed within the crowd, sympathizers to the same cause and concern. I could have wandered among them – that’s what Freddy would have done. I didn’t see the need. Here I had Mrs. Furlong and these three men with whom she shared these moments. There were others on the fringe of our circle but there were Furlongs and twenty-somethings just beyond. The other circles were the same. I would find nothing new ten paces away.