The Least of My Scars

by Stephen Graham Jones

  Kid Hoodie tries not to smile here.

  That’s good.

  Not that it matters.

  “Guess I’m going to need a—” I say, finishing by pointing with my face at the paper towel roll way over on the other side of the table, and when he turns to reach for it, I push my hand into the vacuum cleaner bag, find the smooth wooden handle right where I left it, then stand behind him, the dusty little twelve-inch hatchet loose in my right hand, wormy little fibers floating all through the air now like smoke.

  The blade isn’t as sharp as it should be, but you can make up for that.

  I come down on him like judgment, hard enough that, later there’ll be a shadow of me, a little. Where the mist of blood didn’t spray the wall.

  As for Kid Hoodie, the third chop’s the one that goes all the way through to the face. The notched corner of the silver head pushes out through the always-fragile bone of his right cheek, plants him smack to the table. Naptime, junior. Nighty night.

  I laugh again now, smile for the camera that’s not in the vent, and touch five low things on the way to the door, to set the chain. Five low things in thanks, I mean, because that’s what you do, and lo to those who would forget.

  My name is William Colton Hughes.

  You haven’t heard of me.

  By the third day, Kid Hoodie’s stopped entertaining me.

  I eat breakfast across from him, and, because we’re buds now, reach across, shake some dry cereal into the back of his head. But he likes milk too.

  “Hold on, hold on,” I grumble, and come back from the kitchen with the jug, tip it in.

  It runs out his tear ducts, his nose. Coats his lips on the way down.

  I slap him behind the ear, because he should have known better.

  The smeary milk—it’s not red anymore, but has these black little impurities in it—collects on the table, walls itself up at the edge until the surface tension breaks and it can drip down into the soppy mess the carpet is.

  And yeah, some would use plastic here, at least linoleum or tile, but I don’t like the way that feels on bare feet at two in the morning, when everything’s dark and haunted. And anyway, am I going to doll the place up like it’s being remodeled, to keep this big plastic drop cloth from looking out of place? And then just live like that, always trapped in that deadspace after the before picture, but before the after?

  No thanks.

  As for the carpet, it’s not even stretched right, is just hooked onto the tack boards.

  You can reuse it a time or two if you don’t want to mess with rolling it up, too. All you have to do is keep it sprayed with scotch guard. Saturated, I mean. Layer after layer, like you’re trying to paint it clear, fucking erase it.

  It wouldn’t be good enough for any forensics team with half a degree between them and a lunch hour to kill, but it won’t show the stain too much, and the smell, well. If you can’t handle the smells, then maybe you should go back in time, have a little heart-to-heart with your guidance counselor.

  “Sorry,” I say to Kid Hoodie, about slapping him around like that.

  Sometimes my temper gets the better of me.

  In a plastic baggie on the table is his wallet, his keys, his cute little cell phone, a little music player thing, and the automatic that was supposed to have kept him safe.

  So far the cell phone’s only rang twice.

  Each time I watched it tremble on the table like it was about to unfold its new wet wings, lift itself into the air, ride the waves and signals home.

  In the wallet, like you’d expect, are IDs that don’t quite match, a clutch of cash stuffed in just any old way, in some stupid order, and a picture of a girl I think must be Sister Hoodie. Either when she was ten or now, I’m not sure. There’s no tells in the background either. The living room’s Christmased up, and Christmas doesn’t belong to any specific decade.

  As for the cash, I bake it in the oven, just to see what happens.

  At a touch over four hundred degrees, preheated, it takes twelve minutes for the first flame to lick up.

  I swirl the black flakes down the drain, leave the sink running.

  The mistake so many guys make is that they keep the money, stash it away in some hideyhole, promise themselves to only spend it on coke floats or something, but then never do. Instead they get busted with six thousand in small bills. Six thousand they can’t explain, after they’ve taken care of everything else so well.

  And it’s not like I have any use for money anymore.

  Sunlight though, yeah.

  From four-fifteen until six—this is in summers, mind—the sun comes through the window in my living room.

  My chair’s arranged to catch it.

  Used to, pirates all died from scurvy, because there’s no vitamin C out on the high seas.

  The same thing could happen to me, if I’m not careful up here.

  Without vitamin D, I’d get eaten up by some kind of cancer.

  Too much of that D, though, and my skin’ll bubble up with cancer all the same.

  The world’s not a perfect place.

  Ask Kid Hoodie, right?

  Not because I want to but because it’s time—he’s past stiff, is just a bag of soup now—I put my big apron on and peel him up from the table, sling him across my shoulder. Sticky sweet air trickles from him at both ends, and a long string of wet from his mouth catches on the back of my calf.

  I hitch him forward, push his chair back in, and carry him down the hall.

  Not to my bedroom, but to the other room.

  Back when, this room was supposed to be where all the action went down. I mean, I soundproofed it, made all the walls too thick to kick through, even beefed the floor and the ceiling up and fitted a drain and exhaust fan and fixed guards over all the outlets and drilled five spy holes.

  All the things you pray for when you’re young, they don’t turn out to be exactly what you really wanted after all.

  What I’m trying to say is that the only real way to get anybody back there, without them clawing at the walls and screaming the whole way, it’s to dope them, or sap them in the back of the head, or at the very least bind and gag them. And that just takes all the fun out of it.

  Want to play a board game, bub? Maybe talk?

  Never mind the chainsaw on the wall. And no, that’s not old blood on that drain grate. The door? Oh, it’s only locked so nobody disturbs us. It’s not to keep you in, not at all. These teeth? No, no, they’re not to eat you, dear . . .

  Yeah.

  So what’s happened over the past two years is that the whole apartment’s what that one room used to be. It’s the only way.

  There’s still the chainsaw, though, don’t get me wrong.

  I close the door before pulling the ripcord, then hit the vent hood first thing. Passing out from carbon monoxide while holding onto a live chainsaw’s no joke.

  No goggles, though, no beekeeper hat, no heavy duty gloves, and never any liquor. Not even a drop.

  The first cut into Kid Hoodie is along the meaty outside of the thigh, the football filet I call it. Both sides, almost down to the bone. Then turn him over for his ass, just one straight angle down through the jello to the hamstrings, then the calves all the way down to the Achilles, which makes his toes rattle when I ride it wrong.

  “Sorry,” I tell him.

  He just stares at the floor.

  Soon enough he weighs half as much as he did, and that wasn’t much in the first place, really.

  I killswitch the chainsaw, flick the vent hood off, wipe the splatter from my face.

  “Well,” I tell him, studying all the parts of him on the floor now, or hanging off the edge of the rusted table, or collecting in a slurry for the drain.

  My fingernails, again, are going to be crusted with leftovers.

  I wheel the wet-dry vac over, suck up what I can and have to tell myself not to grit my teeth.

  I can’t help it, though.

  It’s because of this one dream I h
ad early on, that involved the wet-dry vac. In the dream, I’d just walked into the living room, had this minty shaving cream still on my face, and in my mouth somehow, or maybe it was toothpaste, but anyway, the reason I’d stepped out of the bathroom was that there was a knock on the door. More forceful than usual, like whoever was out there in the hall knew that this was where they meant to be. Maybe even knew I was in here. Not that that makes any difference. I’ve had guys straight from lock-up, and I’ve had guys with nightsticks. So, wrapped in my towel, just a safety razor in my hand I was maybe going to improvise with, I shimmied between the table and couch, was almost to the door when I noticed something wrong behind me.

  It was the wet-dry vac. Just parked there by the television.

  We stared at each other for a bit, me trying hard to remember if I’d had it out here for a mess, it just thinking whatever wet-dry vacs think, I guess, which probably has a lot to do with wishing they’d been better in their last life, and then I turned to the door again, for Mr. No Nonsense, Mr. I-Don’t-Have-Time-For-This, Mr. Answer-the-Door-Already, but stopped, my hand to the chain.

  A wheel creaking? A caster? Does plastic even creak?

  I turned, just my head, some of my body I guess, and that’s when I saw it: the wet-dry vac, it had two hoses now, like arms. And was definitely watching me.

  And then the knocking insisted its way in, had been real, not some stupid dream. It didn’t go well for the guy.

  But then, yeah.

  Does it ever?

  Anyway, now the wet-dry vac’s power cord, it’s fixed to the wall with three clusters of five insulated staples. To anybody looking at it, they’d think I maybe just got tired of it coming unplugged all the time—some sockets are like that, end up with you pinching the metal ends so they’ll grip enough—but the fact is, that power cord’s only long enough for the wet-dry vac’s accordion hose to reach all around this room.

  No more dreams, either.

  Mostly because I’m living the dream, I mean.

  Ha.

  After the wet-dry vac’s over in its corner again, its belly heavy, I get the cat bar, pry all Kid Hoodie’s joints apart. If you do it right, you don’t even need a knife, really. It’s like they’re made to come apart. All you need’s a little pressure between, then some twists for the cartilage and ligaments, and you’re done.

  Except for the teeth.

  They come out one-by-one at first, with water pump pliers, but when I can’t reach the ones in back, even after flaying the cheek and wrenching the jaw down, a hammer and chisel takes care of the rest. I pinch them up from the throat, have to cut a couple from the neck, and rattle them in my hand, want to throw them like dice.

  I could probably sneak one into the Trouble bubble, I suppose. Make the game really matter.

  But I’ve made promises to myself.

  Each tooth, I hold it on a tailing of a railroad track that’s an anvil for me, and I smash it with one of my dad’s old spring-handled slag hammers. The thick molar from way in back has a bad cavity going on, too. Looks like I was doing Kid Hoodie a favor, maybe. Saving him some trouble.

  I wash the fragments down the drain in the floor, the water from the hose lapping at my boots but they’re oiled. My feet stay dry, always. That’s a rule.

  As for the bones, I braze them with the torch until the marrow bubbles up and out the little nail holes I tapped, then I turn the vent hood on again and light them with kerosene. While they burn, get brittle enough to grind down to powder like the teeth, I lug the wet-dry vac’s tank to the kitchen, leaving wet tracks all down the hall. If I had a wife, she’d be yelling at me right about now: You messing up my hall again, Billy? You think you’re the only one has to use that damn carpet? You didn’t get the cheap orange juice again, did you? Tell me you didn’t, William C. Hughes.

  For obvious reasons, I live alone.

  In the kitchen is the three-basin sink I had to special order, then install twice to keep it from leaking.

  In the bottom of each basin is a garbage disposal. The first is the heavy-duty one, with the big industrial teeth. It shits what it eats straight down into the black pail with the good handle.

  I feed Kid Hoodie to it then collect the pail, pour it slowly into the ammonia the second basin’s already lapping with. There’s just enough room.

  After soaking for two hours, long enough for me to remember the kerosene, and to check the plug on the wet-dry vac, and to strip the skull—I’m weak, find myself looking over my shoulder, studying the mouth of the hall, for these two grey accordion arms to throw themselves forward, catch on each side of the wall, pull the red plastic body up with them—I flip the disposal under the second basin on, let it whir dry for a few seconds before pulling the drain, letting it all slop down to the smaller teeth, so dry, so ready.

  They chew Kid Hoodie smaller and smaller, spit him down into their blue pail, and I pour it right back in without even setting the drain, only remember to kick the first basin’s black pail over at the last possible instant.

  Close call.

  The last basin’s already sloshing with bleach. I pour the frothy meatshake of Kid Hoodie in, and should let it soak but it’s almost four so I reach under, unplug the second disposal—only two can plug in at once, with these breakers I’ve inherited—and jam the third one in its place.

  I stand back while this disposal’s fine little teeth finish the job.

  Not because bleach might splash in my eye, burn me—I guess it could, though—but because the bleach and ammonia are poison together. People don’t realize the dangers built into all this.

  I turn the vent over the range on now, bury my mouth in the crook of my arm, and squint until Kid Hoodie’s all the way through the P-trap, surging down some mainline in the wall for the bowels of the city, which’ll shit him out into the river, I’d guess, which, for him, has a ferry up there in the filmy sunlight, about to tip over, break some mother’s heart.

  When I turn all at once to the hall, too, there’s nothing there.

  I knew there wouldn’t be.

  For the third time now, Kid Hoodie’s cell rings.

  There’s a thousand funny things I could say into it, I know.

  Instead I just watch it, wait for the call to shunt over to his voice mail, that I don’t have the password for.

  On-screen, it’s just a name, Mary, and, as a joke maybe, the picture Kid Hoodie’s made hers, it’s this little mass-produced Virgin, a halo wired up over her head, her base round and plastic and probably adhesive.

  I’m holding the phone up, studying it, when there’s a knock on the door.

  I pull my lips away from my teeth.

  I haven’t seen my face in a few hours, but the same stuff lining my fingernails, it’s dried at the corners of my lips, I know.

  And the apron, and the boots, and the carpet. The smell.

  A second knock, and then a claw scratching once down the outside of the door.

  Just what I need.

  On the way over, without even breaking stride, I reach up to the dummy fan, for the dusty little .22 on top of the blade with the one black screw, and don’t have to check if it’s got one in the pipe or not, and don’t have to thread the silencer on like they do in the movies.

  What you can say while pulling the chain back is Hold on, if you want.

  I don’t want.

  Instead, I slide the chain back then just rip the door towards me.

  The first thing I shoot in the face is the pit bull, already lunging for me, inches ahead of its line of saliva.

  The second is the man with the rolled-up newspaper under his arm.

  Some days you just don’t have the time.

  As for how a thing like this starts: say you’re like me, first of all.

  It’s not as far a leap as you might want.

  Have you never thought about it, how easy it would be? That you could get away with it. Say one night you’re working late and then coming home by some route you don’t usually take, some
sad and illogical route, a grief-spawned roundabout nobody’d ever suspect, and you see Cheryl, and she doesn’t recognize you now that she’s into her new job in that other town, is just here for some grand reunion tour, hitting all the bars she used to haunt, one last ride on the never-go-round, all that.

  For just a second, do you not realize that nobody knows where she is right at that moment? And that they don’t know where you are either? And that, if you’re suddenly behind her, making up a reason for her to step behind this building with you, she’s going to trust you, right? You’re just you, from her old job. Totally crazy seeing you here, now. But sure, yeah, I’ve got a minute, ha ha, all right.

  What she doesn’t see is that, as you’re ushering her into that alley, your index finger is dragging behind, touching five evenly spaced lines in the brick, and pushing a little too hard into the grit, so it hurts, so this can all be fair.

  After that—after that what you have is the magic.

  What they say on the science channels late at night is that each decision kind of kickstarts a new parallel world, like a burp into another dimension. That each life is a whole branch of lives, of what ifs, of other choices, other lucks.

  But there are bottlenecks too.

  There’s me.

  I’m the point where the branches, the options, the decisions and possibilities, where they all come back together, where they slam into each other like particles in a seventeen-mile supercollider and blossom into some perfect shape, just for a moment. Something never seen before.

  For a while I was addicted, yeah.

  Fucking science channel.

  And I don’t think there’s been a Cheryl either, don’t worry.

  Not that I keep drivers licenses or carve names into some bathroom stall or any of that.

  Like I’ve been trying to say, I’m in this for the long haul.

  Sixteen years and counting, baby.

  The first thirteen, though, yeah.

  I was thirty-one when I got saved.

  And it wasn’t at church, believe me.