by Daniel Parme
And their brains. I’d eat their brains, too.
Chapter 38
I was beginning to feel bad about the nature of my recent conversations with Dave. Opening his door to find me standing there could only mean bad news. I could see it in his face. He knew I was going to say things like, “Virginia’s dead. I’m pretty sure your uncle and his friends killed her because she knew about them,” and, “I hate that it’s this way. I’m sorry about it. But if they find out you know, they’ll probably kill you, too,” and, “I think we have to kill your uncle.”
If I were Dave, I wouldn’t even have opened the door. I’d have said, “Fuck you. Go away, and never talk to me again.”
Either he was stoned, or he never imagined he’d have to hear such things coming from my mouth. Whichever it was, he let me in, and I said all those things to him.
“Call the police, Travis. You can’t kill anyone. Call the police.”
I explained to him all the reasons the police were no good to me. Some of these people were the police. The rest of them were rich enough to do whatever it is rich people do to keep their hands clean.
I did not, however, explain to him that I had no desire to call the police. I did not want justice. I wanted revenge, vengeance, retribution. I wanted a reckoning of Biblical proportions. If I had the power, I’d rain down sulfur, turn them into pillars of salt, cover them with boils before force-feeding them their own first-born.
He’d have thought I’d gone crazy.
And he’d have been right.
“So now you got me involved, too.”
Yeah. Sorry about that.
“And my uncle’s a cannibal. And they’re killing and eating, who? Everyone?”
Certainly seems that way.
This is about the point in the conversation where Dave was supposed to flip out. This is about when I expected to get screamed at, maybe hit with something. This is when I expected to get thrown out of his apartment.
But none of that happened.
He stood up and paced around the living room, smoking, presumably trying to make some kind of sense out of all this nonsense his friend was laying on him.
“You’re sure Virginia’s dead?”
“Yeah. I saw her. She’s dead.”
“And you’re sure they killed her? I mean, her blood alcohol level was really high, right? You sure she just didn’t get blitzed and miss the top step or something?”
“Well, I don’t have proof, but I’m sure it was them. It’s just too coincidental to be a coincidence, you know?” I couldn’t stop rubbing my temples.
Dave couldn’t stop pacing and smoking. “This would be easier if I wasn’t stoned.”
“Not really,” I said. “Listen, Dave. I know how screwed up this is. I mean, I’m sure you hadn’t planned on being involved in murders and conspiracies and everything. And I’ll understand if you’d rather me just leave and not get you any deeper into this.”
He stopped walking. “Yeah. I’d rather not be involved. But if they really killed Adam and Virginia, and if they’re going to kill you, and maybe me, I think I’m already a little too deep to get out, don’t you?” Pothead friends rock.
“I guess you’re right.”
“I don’t think I can kill anyone, though. I mean, I’m a pothead, man. Murder isn’t really my thing.”
I told him I understood. He didn’t have to kill anyone.
“And,” he said, “I’m not so sure you can kill anyone, either.”“If I can eat people, I can kill them.”
To change the story, sometimes you have to change the characters. They have to grow. Sometimes they have to become something totally new. Weak to strong, alive to dead, frightened to courageous.
To change where this story was going, I had to become a killer.
It’s funny how something so big can change so suddenly.
I don’t think he believed me.
“Dude, why don’t we try the police?”
“Dammit, Dave! Listen to me!” I was getting a little heated, but I didn’t think he was listening to me. “If we call the police, these people are going to find out about it. And then, we’ll be dead. They’ll kill us and eat us and get away with it. I’m telling you, the only way to stop them is to kill them.”
He listened that time. “And how many of ‘them’ are there?”
“Somewhere between forty and a thousand.”
That caught him off guard. “A fucking thousand?!”
“Not really a thousand, Dave. That was a joke.”
“Not funny.”
“Sorry. But I don’t think we really have to kill many of them. I think just the head guys. Maybe like seven people.” Seven, even to me, sounded like too many.
“And of those seven people?”
I hated to say it, but, “Yeah, buddy. Your uncle’s one of them.”
Poor Dave. “This is not right.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“They’re going to kill us, Dave. Well, probably me. And maybe you. And maybe Angela.”
“Who the hell is Angela?”
“The head guy’s niece, remember?”
“That girl you fucked?”
“Yep. She’s going to have to kill her uncle, too. You guys should meet. You have a lot in common.”
He laughed a little at that one. “That’s really not funny.”
“Sure it is.”
“How can you make jokes about this?”
“I’m planning on killing a bunch of people, Dave. I have to laugh about it, or I’ll go insane.”
“Yeah. You’re really in your right mind now.” He lit a smoke. “And what if they kill you?”
It was a good point.
“Well, I imagine I get murdered, and they feed me to the fucking pigs.”
Chapter 39
Back in my apartment, I had a new window. It was locked, a note taped right to the middle. No charge. But be careful. There’s been some strange people around. Mr. Hanlon.
I thought maybe I should warn him. Yeah, there are some strange people around, and you’ll never believe who they are or why they’re around.
It was beginning to feel like I was stranded again, like my legs were broken and everyone around me was dead. No one to call to. No one to help me. It was unfair that this should happen to me again. I would have given God one hell of a talking to, but I knew better than that. If He existed at all, cursing him out would not have helped my situation. Of course, if He existed at all, why was this happening?
Luckily, this time around I had two friends who were still alive, at least for the moment. Survival is much easier when it’s a team effort.
I got back to my apartment and checked my phone. The light flashed. I hated that fucking thing.
It was Angela. She said not to try to get a hold of her. She’d see me at PEP on Wednesday. Don’t call. Don’t try to find her at the bookstore. Just wait to see her on Wednesday.
She wasn’t whispering, but she was quiet, hushed, brief. Maybe it was more like she was rushed. There was a sense of danger in her voice that made me nervous, and I was instantly and acutely aware that I would have to end this, and it would have to be on Wednesday.
I had no plan. I had no help from Angela.
On Wednesday, this would be over, one way or the other.
On Wednesday, stories would change.
On Monday, however, everything would remain the same. I’d get a phone call from Dick before I was ready to leave for work, and he’d tell me to take the morning off, we had a delivery to make that night.
And I knew who that delivery would be. I’d have to load poor dead Virginia onto a truck, drive her to Gregor’s “research facility”, and carry her into a fucking meat locker. I just knew it.
I showered and thought about the Wari in Brazil. I thought about this tribe that ate their deceased loved ones rather than burying them in the ground. It was
better, they thought, to eat them than to let their bodies decompose in the cold earth, to be devoured by worms and time. These people, they loved each other so much that it was unthinkable to abandon their dead. It would be disrespectful. It would show the person no honor.
I ate breakfast and thought about the Aztecs. I thought about this tribe in Central America that would eat their enemies. The hearts of their brave warrior enemies, they thought, would give them more courage. They’d be stronger because the heart of this person they were eating, it was a strong heart. It was just as much out of respect for the fallen enemy as it was out of the desire better themselves.
I thought about Mama Cass, a cat I’d had when I was growing up. This cat, she ate most of a litter she’d had under the back porch. Mama, she ate her own children because she didn’t think she’d be able to care for them well enough, and she didn’t want them to suffer. It was better, this cat thought, that they should die now, before things got bad.
I thought about people in China, during the Great Leap Forward, who were so poor and hungry that they’d sell their children to other hungry Chinese, or just eat them themselves.
I thought about Dahmer and Fish. About these fucked up men who just plain got off on eating and fucking and doing God knows what else to the bodies of the men, women, and children they’d killed.
I thought about transubstantiation. About all these Catholics chewing and swallowing the body of their Savior. These righteous, pious believers who want to get divinity through the absorption of the honest to god flesh of Jesus Christ.
I thought about the Donner Party. The Franklin Expedition. That damned rugby team in the Andes. These people, they’d have died if they hadn’t done what they’d done. If they hadn’t eaten those who were already dead.
I thought about myself. I’d have died, too.
I thought about all those crazy, greedy bastards, obsessed with power and money, who would kill me and eat me for little more than a decent high.
This is some heavy thinking for first thing in the morning. But if you’re going to change what the story is going to become, you have to give some serious consideration to where it’s been.
If you’re going to change where the characters are going, you have to think long and hard about where they’ve been.
And if you’re one of those characters, you better be damn sure about what you believe and why you believe it.
Sometimes the changes are for the audience, sometimes for the storyteller, sometimes for the characters, and sometimes, just sometimes, they’re for everyone involved.
The only problem is, when you’re in the middle of the story, you can’t be sure how it’s going to turn out. Before you set out to change things, you have to accept that the results often have relatively little to do with the intentions.
After my pensive morning, I’d come to the conclusion that my intentions were good enough to risk my life for. In fact, I’d decided that my intentions were good enough to risk Dave and Angela’s lives for, as well.
This guy here, he was the new me. And the new me had a plan.
I called Dave and told him what I needed him to do.
He sounded a little skeptical. “You sure about this? I don’t want to end up in some rich guy’s fat belly.”
“I’m sure,” I said, almost completely honestly. “You’ll be fine. Just make sure you don’t mention me, Adam, Virginia, or Angela. You’ll be fine.”
He sighed one of those sighs that are unmistakably of resignation. “Ok. Where do I go, and what time do I need to be there?”
The fear of death will drive people to do some crazy shit.
Chapter 40
That night I got to the morgue a little before seven and found Eli at the front desk, filing things, doing more work than I’d ever seen him do before.
“You know,” he said, huffing and puffing a little, for effect, “I hate when you get to come in late just to help Dick drop those bodies off. It always means more work for me.” Poor guy.
I made my way behind the counter. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I don’t really like delivering the bodies. If I wanted to be a delivery boy, I’d just get a job with FedEx or UPS or something.”
He laughed. “You would look damn sexy in those little brown shorts.”
“Right. What’s with all the work?”
He told me that, that afternoon, an elevator cable snapped, and something was wrong with the emergency brakes, so the thing just dropped, and fourteen people died. “You lucky bastard,” he said. “I’ve been doing paperwork for these fat, non-stair-taking assholes all day. I’ll be here at least another three hours, and you’ll be riding around in a fucking truck.”
I didn’t care. Not at all. Not about his extra work. Not about those fourteen people who probably had enough time during their fall to realize that they were about to die very painful deaths. I just didn’t care.
“Bummer,” I said.
He shook his head and glared at me, kind of. “Right. Dick’s in the back. I think he’s already started loading up the truck.”
I thanked him, took a breath, and went back into the human filing cabinet room. The back door, the pseudo-garage door, was open, and Dick was in the back of the truck, heaving a bagged body onto a shelf about waist-high. This was the second body on the truck. The first was resting comfortably on the shelf at his knees.
“Hey, Travis.” He was breathing heavily. “I figured I’d get started a little early, you know, to make up for not helping load it up last time.”
“That’s nice of you.” I couldn’t take my eyes off that first body bag. I knew who was inside. “How many more we got?”
He came out of the truck. “Just two.” He shook my hand. “Apparently, Wednesday’s going to be a smaller group.”
“Why’s that?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Walter just wanted a smaller group this week. He did mention the other day that he sort of missed the way it was in the beginning. It was more intimate. It felt like we had more of a bond with one another.”
It’s still amazing to me that all these people thought this was a normal thing, like getting together to smoke cigars and talk about the stock market, or maybe a potluck at some church some Sunday afternoon.
“And who’s in this smaller group?”
“The older guys, mostly.” He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Me, Walter, Conicella, Cansellini, Stearns, and their wives. Gregor, of course. And a few others. It’ll be nice, I think.”
I tried not to, but I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. This smaller group of psychos would make things infinitely easier on Wednesday, my day of reckoning. Still, it made me a little suspicious.
“Wow. How’d I manage to get into such an elite group?”
He didn’t answer right away. In fact, he hesitated long enough to convince me that something was up. Finally, he said, “I think Walter thinks a smaller group will help you acclimate yourself. And Angela will be there. She asked if you could be there, too. I guess she likes you.”
Sneaky sonofabitch, working a sweet, cute little girl into the conversation that way. They say flattery will get you everywhere, and I guess they’re usually right about that. Unfortunately for Dick, he wasn’t exactly sly.
“That’s good to know,” I said. “I do like her. And a smaller group will be less intimidating, I guess.”
“I hope so.”
I asked him who we still needed to put on the truck, and he pointed me to a couple of shorter guys, both a good bit heavier than they appeared. And that was that. We loaded them up and headed for the warehouse, this time remembering the gurney.
Dick drove, and on the way we again listened to jazz. “This must be a little more pleasant when you’re sober, eh?”
I laughed and nodded. It was a shame that Dick had to die. I really did like him. But I’m sure even Dahmer had a friend or two. And, when you think about it, Dick was exactly the kind of guy who, if other peopl
e ever found out he was a cannibal, they would say, “He was such a nice, quiet guy. I can’t believe he’d do something like that.” It’s always the quiet ones.
We got to the warehouse, and everything went just like last time. We wheeled the corpses into the big fridge, lifted them onto the tables, and talked to Gregor for a while.
This time, though, I had a plan. During a lull in the conversation, I turned to Dick. “Hey Dick, I have a question to ask you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Is Virginia in one of these bags?”
That caught him off guard. He stammered in his normal Dick way. “Why do you ask?”
I wanted to hit him. I knew damn well she was in one of those bags, and I was in no mood to play games. But I had to play it cool. “Well, she doesn’t have any family, so I figured no one would have claimed her body. And since we bring the unclaimed bodies here, I figured she’d be one of them.”
“You sure you want to know?” I told you, he was a decent guy.
I nodded.
“Yeah, she is.” He lowered his eyes. “I thought it might make you uncomfortable to know.”
Here it was. My plan. If I was really going to pull it off, I had to start right here. And so I did. “It would have,” I told him, “but I’ve been doing some research about cannibalism, and I came across this tribe in the Amazon that eats their dead loved ones. They feel that it helps the mourning process. They believe it’s a way to keep them alive forever.”
Gregor smiled and nodded. “You mean the Wari. It’s good to see a young man who knows the importance of knowing about what he’s getting into.”
I didn’t bother to tell him the reason I was in this mess in the first place was because I didn’t look into what I was getting into. At least I learned from my mistake. I did, however, tell him, “Yeah, the Wari. Anyway, they have this whole ritual of dismembering the deceased themselves, and then cooking and eating them. And, I don’t know, I guess it just sort of makes sense to me. I feel like maybe it would help me with everything.”
Dick looked at me as though my head had just fallen off. Gregor, though, seemed to understand what I was saying, even if he didn’t know I was lying about it.