Dead in the Trunk: A Short Story Collection

by Craig Saunders

  Almost stuttering, she thought, like an idiot. Come on, come on. Just a guy, and nothing weird.

  But you do think there’s something weird about him.

  Why the hell are you standing on his doorstep, when you could have just called down on the phone?

  Because it seemed polite.

  No. Because you were curious. Curious the weird landlord in his dirty clothes smelling of weed. Under his smell, under his weed...

  ‘I’ll come up and take a look at it,’ he said, and closed the door behind him before she had a chance to think again.

  The smell fled as soon as he shut the door, like a prisoner trapped in his apartment that had tried to get out and been foiled at the last step.

  She followed him up, wondering, trying to dismiss that niggle. That tickle.

  Nothing, probably. Nothing.

  To his credit he didn’t try to let himself in, but waited for her to open the door and invite him.

  She led him over to the offending floorboard.

  ‘Sorry. I dropped the couch on it. It was a little heavy for me.

  ‘OK, let’s get it out of the way. Then I’ll see about fixing this for now. I’ll have to get a new board, but you don’t want to be tripping over that all day.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘You might hurt yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You want a coffee? I’ve got a pot on.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  Seemed like he was a different person than the first time she’d met him. But there was still something there in his eyes.

  She went into the kitchen and got a coffee. When she came back, she looked down at the floorboard, which stuck up more now he’d taken the couch of it. He had his back turned while he struggled with her couch.

  Under the floorboard she thought she saw part of a face, pulled taut like a parody of a robber’s face under a pair of tights, nose squashed flat by a clear plastic vacuum bag.

  The face looked a lot like that of her neighbour, David.

  *

  X.

  Yvonne moved to one side so she couldn’t see David’s face peering up at her. She put on her sweetest smile, though she must have been pale.

  Oh, oh. Jesus. Jesus. She wasn’t religious, but she couldn’t stop it. A litany in her head.

  She smiled as she held out the coffee.

  ‘Coffee,’ she said, thinking hard and fast through sudden terror. No doubt she was in the presence of a madman, her landlord, her neighbour.

  His apartment below hers.

  The dead man was in his apartment. The pyscho’s apartment. Stuffed in his ceiling. She felt like crying but smiled. The coffee shook, but she fucking smiled.

  He turned and thanked her, and for an instant she thought she saw his eyes register something in her face, but he returned her smile, all yellow teeth and stinking breath.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he said, nodding at the couch, panting from exertion.

  ‘No, not at all. Heavy, isn’t it?’ Keeping her voice light. Moving, subtly, she hoped. Moving away.

  He sat. ‘Yeah. Hard going. Not as fit as I could be.’

  ‘Me, either. I keep meaning to get some exercise...’ Truth was, she carried a little extra weight.

  Too much, should it come to running. He was panting, but suddenly she wasn’t sure if he really was out of breath.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Carrying a couple of extra pounds. Bit fat, truth be told...’ Blathering like an idiot. But she had to keep him talking. Just long enough to get over to the floorboard and stamp it down. Something. Just enough so she couldn’t see David. So he wouldn’t know.

  ‘Just the right size,’ he said, and he was smiling, too, but it wasn’t a comforting smile.

  She knew what it was she’d seen flicker in his eyes, now. Madness. Danger. She’d written about it often enough, but soft, not hard, like this was. She didn’t think she’d ever actually seen it.

  Now she had, and he was in her apartment. Just the two of them.

  Plus the dead body under her floorboards.

  ‘Well, I guess I should have a look at the floorboards,’ he said. Could’ve been sincere, she knew, but she didn’t think he was. But she held onto that. Maybe he didn’t know what she’d seen. Maybe she could reach the front door.

  Slightly overweight, just the wrong side of forty-five. Three locks on the door. Madman, young. Strong enough to overpower a big guy like David...

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘Could it wait a minute? The taps in the bathroom have a small leak and...’

  The phone rang.

  She stood dumb. She knew she must look like an idiot. Did she pick it up, scream for help, or try to get him out of her apartment until she could get the police round?

  It kept ringing. Insistent.

  ‘You want to get that?’

  ‘I suppose I should,’ she said, a tight smile on her face.

  She picked it up. She didn’t turn her back, like a lot of people do when they’re on the phone in company, but half-turned.

  ‘Yvonne?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Francis.’

  Keep your voice light.

  ‘Oh, hi. How are you?’

  ‘Fine, fine. Just thought I’d give you an update.’

  ‘I’ve got company at the moment. Can I call you back in a while?’

  ‘OK. I guess it can wait.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, thinking wildly. ‘My landlord’s just come round. A problem with the floorboards.’

  ‘Oh. OK. Well, nothing urgent to report.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty urgent. Bit dangerous to leave it like that.’

  ‘Yvonne?’

  ‘Better go, OK? Get back to me?’

  ‘Yvonne? Are you OK?’

  ‘Alright, then. Speak to you later.’

  ‘Shall I call someone?’

  ‘Thanks. Yeah. See you.’ All natural. She hoped.

  She turned round and he was standing right in front of her. Close enough to reach out and push, maybe he’d fall, maybe she could make it to the door. Maybe. But he was grinning, and her legs were suddenly cold as ice and solid, frozen to her bare floorboards.

  ‘You saw then?’ he said, still grinning, his rank teeth on full show.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Under the floorboards?’

  ‘What? I don’t...’ she began, thinking she’d make up something, but then not thinking much more because his fist lashed out, fast and strong for a small guy. It connected pretty well with her jaw, shattering it, and then she was out cold, though not cold enough so she couldn’t hear or feel. She felt the thump thump of her head hitting the risers on the way down the stairs.

  *

  XI.

  Pounding, bloody, pain. It felt like her brain was rocking in her head. She tried to get her bearings, figure out how bad the migraine was, what day it was. It was dark, but that might be because she couldn’t see. Sometimes in the worst migraines she all but lost her vision.

  But then it came back to her.

  Broken jaw. Bound.

  Her landlord. Her psychotic, psychopathic, downstairs neighbour.

  She was bound by her hands to the taps in the bath. The bindings were the synthetic kind, some sort of blue wire. Maybe a heavy fishing line, like for sea fishing, marlin, or tuna, or something like that.

  Shit, she didn’t know. Could be washing line.

  Either way, it wasn’t going to give. She was bound up tight as she could be. Her hands were a different hue to her forearms, and numb. Almost complete numb, but at the same time her wrists and her hands hurt, so it couldn’t be complete numbness.

  She was naked, too. At some point he’d stripped her out of her clothes. She could feel a nick on her ribs, maybe six inches down from her armpit. He’d cut her bra off.

  Raped?

  No.

  This wasn’t that. This was death, pure and simple. Her blood ran cold, because she�
�d seen David, because she was bound tight in a cold bath, because she’d wet herself and her urine had run up her back. Like even out for the count, her body knew she was dead, or soon would be.

  She remembered it all. The face in the ceiling. Clicked, at last. Just a face, she’d seen, but no neck.

  Decapitated. Dismembered. Stuffing in the ceiling. The smell.

  Her fucking nut landlord.

  Bound by her hands in the bath. The bath. Her urine flowing up her back, toward the plug. The same way her blood would flow when he came back.

  She didn’t have any doubt about that. No first impressions needed. No bargaining with herself, like, he didn’t really mean it, he wouldn’t, not really.

  Just cold terror and pain.

  No doubt.

  When he came back, he’d cut her up and stuff her in the walls, too.

  She cried, because of the pain in her arms, and because no matter what she did, she was about to die. There wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

  Not a damn thing.

  Francis? Francis Wayne knew. Did she get it? Sure, she got it. Yvonne was far from stupid, and so was Francis.

  A small flicker of hope lit inside. But then, would someone get here in time? But hope was a small candle against a heavy wind, because death didn’t wait for timely interventions, and because she could hear him, just down the hall.

  *

  XII.

  Simon heard her rustling in the bathroom. He stood in his bedroom in the metal t-shirt he didn’t understand. He wore stained jeans, a pair of tattered Converse, no socks. He wore no underpants. No jewellery for chunks of flesh to get stuck under.

  He opened his webcam. He had to stand back to get most of his body in, so he could keep a record.

  He took a shot of himself dressed.

  Then he sat on his bed and took a long pull of a lit joint. He held the smoke in until he felt his heart rushing as it fought to find oxygen. Only when his head was light did he exhale. Inhale. Exhaled and smoked again.

  He held the smoke in his lungs and took off his t-shirt, slowly.

  Under the t-shirt his upper body was scarred. Long thin scars from habitual self-harm, but not on his forearms, like he wanted people to see. He liked to cut when...but he found himself getting hard and didn’t want to. It wasn’t right. He didn’t want to be naked and hard in front of his upstairs neighbour. None of this was her fault, and he didn’t want her to think badly of him.

  Going in to cut someone up, cock on show, all proud...he didn’t want her to get the wrong impression. Like he was some kind of pervert.

  He pulled his jeans down. He wanted to cut, but he’d do that later.

  Took his jeans off over his Converse, then pulled those off last. Top to bottom. That was the way it had to be.

  He took another picture. Himself, naked, holding the cleaver.

  He cut himself then, a little, where it hurt most. Focusing. Getting ready. Not a sexual thing, but the apotheosis of sexuality.

  Turning off. Shutting down. Because he felt bad. He didn’t want to kill the woman. It was just the way it had to be.

  He wasn’t schizophrenic. He had an unspecified personality disorder that according to the doctors made him unable to understand other people, took away his empathy. They’d diagnosed him with as much and pretty much fucked his childhood and any chance of happy memories. They hadn’t got much further. His parents made him go see the psychiatrist, then the psychologist. He’d been eight.

  In the end, though, he didn’t need a doctor. He just had to cut and he felt better. Sometimes his own flesh, sometimes other flesh. Didn’t matter.

  Just enough so he could fill the walls and shut out the noise. Shut out the voice.

  The voice that told him to cut.

  But cut he did, and took a photo of his newest cut. Later, he’d be horny. He’d have to cut some more.

  But for now, his neighbour. The ceiling in his bedroom wasn’t finished and he could still hear the voice and that fucking voice...the voice knew what to say...how to push his buttons.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he told the voice, but it said things to him, like it always did, and he cried as he walked to the bathroom, ready for blood enough to drown that bastard out.

  *

  XIII.

  Whatever hope Yvonne had held onto fled because her landlord came back. He didn’t look remotely reasonable. He didn’t look remotely sane.

  ‘Don’t want blood on my clothes,’ he explained, and almost sounded embarrassed.

  He sat at the edge of the bathtub and she saw he was covered in scars, some old, some new. He bled, too, like he’d cut himself coming in here with the heavy cleaver he clutched in one hand.

  He sliced the blade along his own flesh as he sat on the bathtub, staring into space.

  A thick line of blood trickled from his wound down his muscled stomach and into his pubic hair. She fought down revulsion, but mostly her terror.

  She thought about kicking him, but couldn’t. The best she’d do would be a glancing blow. She didn’t care about pissing him off. This wasn’t that kind of jeopardy.

  She didn’t bother trying to reason. Nothing she could say would make any difference.

  Here was a man apologising for killing her while they both sat naked. A man cutting himself and crying, almost like he’d forgotten she was even there.

  Insulation, she realised. She could scream all she wanted, and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.

  Because his bathroom was so much smaller than hers.

  The floor, the ceiling, the walls. Everything but the door crowded in.

  What should have been identical dimensions to her apartment had been taken and shrunk and she was in the world of lunacy.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Just an accident. You’re a good neighbour. Shaky start, I know, but you’re quiet. Nice enough. Clean, I could see. Good tenant. Could have worked out. ’

  She kept silent. Thinking how the smell would have bugged her after a while, and almost laughing. Almost, but she managed to hold it in. She didn’t want that, because then she’d know she was broken beyond repair, and for some bastard of a reason she could still think about somehow getting out of this alive.

  Desperate thinking. Like, can I persuading him to start on an arm, to get free enough to maybe headbutt him when the arm comes off? Could I stab him with the end of the bone? Would it be sharp enough?

  Should I get him to start on my leg, if I can? Try to live a little longer?

  Will he give me a choice? Like a lunatic, thinking he’s reasonable?

  Should I choose just straight through the neck, get it done?

  All the while her jaw screamed at her and her head pounded and pounded, more powerfully than she’d even know. She didn’t cry, but thinking through the pain...she was used to that.

  Her jaw, shattered, screaming at her.

  Wanting to scream, but doing nothing. Watching the cleaver in his hand and the blood running down his stomach as he cut.

  Trying to ignore the cleaver, but her eyes being dragged back, just the same.

  Pain already. More to come.

  He stopped cutting and nodded. He turned to her.

  For a moment, she’d thought...he’d forgotten her. But that was stupid and that was fairytale shit. There was no deux ex machina in real life. Real life, you lived, you died. End of story, because life’s not a story.

  She didn’t have any doubt about that, and when he said, ‘Where do you want it?’ she was ready.

  ‘Seems only fair, you know?'

  A chance? No. Dangerous to think like that. Dangerous because hope would be worse. Wishing would be worse. Just die, she told herself.

  But a chance. Maybe.

  It all depended on just how mad he was.

  *

  XIV.

  Was fat slippery?

  Probably not. Not like lard or butter. But blood was.

  The walls. Tiled, all the way round. So the blood
was easier to wash off.

  But slippery, too.

  How mad was he?

  Mad enough for distractions?

  Somewhere that’d bleed well, but not be fatal?

  She’d read about fat guys getting stabbed and barely being hurt. Most knives wouldn’t go deep enough to hit anything major.

  She didn’t have that much fat, but then...a cleaver wasn’t for stabbing. It was for chopping and slicing.

  Wouldn’t go deep, but it’d go long.

  ‘The fat.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I could do with losing some weight.’

  Her words were slurred, her vision blurry. Her jaw ground as she tried to form words. She could feel the small pieces of bone. She thought it had dislocated the side he’d punched her, shattered the other side.

  ‘You want me to cut out the fat.’

  ‘There,’ she said, indicating her side, where her belly sagged. She wished she hadn’t nodded, but it was a toss-up, which was worse. Moving her head or speaking. Turned out moving was worse.

  ‘This isn’t a fucking game,’ he said.

  ‘I fucking know,’ she said. ‘Oh, I know.’

  He grabbed her side and cut without a further word. From conversation to cutting in an instant. From worrying about talking through the pain of a broken jaw to wide mouthed screaming, but with her eyes open, seeing well enough his bloody hands and her flesh carved away and thinking all the time.

  Now, no, now, no...

  Now.

  She lashed out a leg as high as she could get it. The blow glanced from his temple. His belly, resting on the side of the bath, slipped in her splashing blood. Slipped enough to drop the cleaver, his arms flying up. She bucked, her shoulders screaming at her, to hit him in the face with her blood soaked hip. Caught him hard enough to make him slip from the bath and crack his chin on the edge, then out of sight below the lip of the bath.

  *

  XV.

  She pulled herself up with her arms bent behind her. Craned her head over the side of the bath, whimpering from fear and agony.

  He was out cold on the floor.