by Sachs, Zané
Almost forgot!
Movie time.
Between pussy juice and olive oil, his anus is slick and receptive; the borescope slips in easily. Thanks to the Unisom cocktails, he’s fast asleep and doesn’t flinch when I snake the camera deeper.
Who needs anatomy class?
The handheld monitor displays the shimmering walls of his lower intestine. It’s like a giant cavern. Spelunking fascinates me, so I snake the cable deeper.
The kid jerks, suddenly awake.
“What the—”
His hands claw at his butt, trying to rip out the cable. He can’t, because I’ve straddled him—ride ’em cowgirl style—gripping his cock from behind like it’s the horn of my saddle. I squeeze and he yelps. Grabbing at my thighs, his nails leave red marks. That really pisses me off.
I jump up, rush to the kitchen, pull a serrated bread knife from the butcher block. The kid is so wasted he doesn’t know which end is up. But I do. Mounting him again, I saw the knife across his wrist and slice into the skin. He’s a bucking bronco, but he can’t shake me. Blood spurts into my face, and I keep sawing. The kid is wide awake now, his body heaving. The speakers blast Metallica, but even “Kill Em All” doesn’t drown his screams. I’m a bit nervous about the neighbors, but it’s Friday night and they’ll assume I’m throwing a party. Blood spurts with each heartbeat, and he’s moaning like a wounded animal. The serrated knife takes forever to get through the wrist and the kid’s squirming doesn’t help. Then I remember the scissors I bought online, guaranteed to cut through anything, including metal.
I head back to the kitchen, thankful for the plastic tarps, since I’m tracking bloody footprints. When I hit the tiles, I skid. Frantically, I grab of roll of duck tape and the scissors. Is it duck tape or duct tape? If I’d thought this through, I would have kept the tape in the drawer of the side table by the couch.
Through the blast of music, I hear knocking.
I hurry to the door, wiping my hands on my tee-shirt (luckily it’s red), glance through the peephole and see the super.
I unlock the dead bolt, release the lock on the knob, but keep the chain in place. I open the door, just a crack, so she can’t see past the foyer.
“Hi,” I say, praying the kid won’t scream.
I’m a good tenant—hard working, pay my HOA on time—so the super’s polite.
“Sorry to bother you, Sadie, but it’s getting late and there’ve been complaints about the noise.”
“No problem.” I try to smile, but the corner of my mouth twitches, so does my eye. “I’m watching a thriller. I’ll turn the TV down.”
“You look kind of sick.”
“Working too much.”
I try to close the door, but she holds it open.
“See you tomorrow at the potluck?”
“Yeah. I’m making chili.”
“Great.” She points to my forehead. “I think you’ve got some on your face.
I slam the door, relock it. Sweat stings my eyes, and when I swipe my forehead, my hand comes away with blood.
The kid is out of it, but he’s managed to sit up. He’s weeping quietly, rocking back-and-forth while cradling his partially severed hand. When he sees me coming, he stumbles to his feet and tries to get past me, lurching toward the door. Raising the scissors, I collide into his naked body. As promised, the blades slice easily through flesh and muscle. The kid stumbles backward, his good hand holding his stomach, attempting to contain the purplish intestine, while his other hand moves frantically, dangling from his bleeding wrist. The tarp is slippery with body fluids and we both slide, falling onto the plastic. On the way down, he hits the corner of the coffee table. Blood gushes from his forehead. He tries to fight me off, but the light in his eyes is fading. He’s making a queer sound that can only be described as keening. I slap a strip of tape over his mouth. That shuts him up.
The last thing I need is another complaint from the neighbors.
I change the music to New Age. Synthesized sound streams through my apartment, helping me to focus.
Snip, snip, snip.
The scissors cut right through the wrist bones.
Make severing his balls a snap.
I make a mental note to post a 5-star review on Amazon.
Now that the kid’s hands are gone, his stumps flail around, still trying to remove the camera. Blood splatters all over the place—the curtains will have to be replaced. I’m glad the couch is stain-resistant manmade crap instead of real leather. Crimson sprays arc to the ceiling and red drips down the wall. I need to paint for real, and I think the kid is right. Forget Bone, I should go with something darker.
He’s making a weird wheezing noise and blood bubbles through the tape.
I run to the bedroom closet, pull out the power drill, hurry back to the living room, and let it rip. Transferring the drill to my right hand, for practice, I step onto the plastic.
“Okay, kid. Who’s boring now?”
Recipe
Sadie’s Southwest Chili
Chili is a crowd pleaser, and it’s easy to make. You can use stew meat, ground meat, whatever meat you have lying around. I’ve been experimenting with making large batches and the recipe holds up—as long as you have room to store it!
You may not know this, but chili powder is a blend of spices. The most important ingredient is the pepper. Chili peppers range from mild to hellishly hot depending upon how much capsaicin they contain. Capsaicin is the chemical compound that activates receptors in human nerves endings, creating the sensation of heat. A pepper’s intensity is measured in Scoville heat units. An average green Bell measures 0, Habaneros score up to 350,000. Ghost peppers, also known as Bhut Jolokin, measure 1,000,000. For a long time Ghosts were considered the hottest chili pepper, but the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion surpasses the Ghost, measuring up to 2,000,000 Scoville units—the equivalent of 400 Jalapenos. To avoid blistering on your skin, Scorpions should not be handled without gloves. When ingested they have a torturous effect on the mouth, nose and intestinal tract. So choose your peppers wisely. Chances are you won’t find anything hotter than a Habanero at your local market.
Southwest Chili
Ingredients:
3 pounds meat, ground or cut into chunks (be careful not to include bits of bone and sinew—I’ve learned from experience)
2 large Vidalia onions, chopped
3 (or more) cloves of garlic, minced
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup chili powder (more if you like it spicy)
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon oregano
¼ teaspoon cayenne (Ghost or Scorpion)
1 large can tomatoes, chopped
1 can red kidney beans
1 can pinto beans
Salt to taste
Preparation:
Heat olive oil in a large pot. Add onions and garlic, sauté until translucent and slightly caramelized. Add meat and cook until brown. (The younger the meat, the more tender, so it requires less cooking time.) Drain fat. Add chili powder, cumin, oregano, cayenne, and cook until the spices are absorbed. Add tomatoes and simmer for about a half hour. When chili is done, drain beans and heat through. Salt to taste.
Optional: green bell peppers, corn (I used to use corn, now I don’t), if you want thicker chili, use a little flour mixed with water and add at the end.
Potluck
Good thing I have today off. Clean up took most of the night, so I didn’t get much sleep. No matter how hard I scrub, I can’t remove all the stains in the living room. To hide them, I’ve rearranged pictures on the wall, but there’s a splatter of red I can’t reach on the ceiling. This morning I went out and bought several gallons of paint—washable, of course. I’m going with Red Obsession, dark red, and Smoky Salmon, muted pink. The colors are warm and feminine, plus the paint is dark enough to cover blood stains.
This afternoon the condominium complex is holding the annual potluck. I’ve got several large pots of chili simmering on the stove
.
The kid saved me a lot of money. Like everything else, the cost of meat has skyrocketed. Butchering him took forever, because I didn’t want to rev the chainsaw after 11 PM and risk more complaints from neighbors. I definitely need practice. First, I dragged the tarp into the bathroom, careful not to spill blood on the carpet. Talk about a workout, corpses weigh a lot. Lifting the body into the tub was too much for me, but after sawing it in half and trimming off the arms and legs, the job became manageable.
I’m not big on menudo and my freezer has limited space, so what I couldn’t use I wrapped in tarps, then stuffed into Hefty trash bags—doubled, of course. One by one, I carried the bags downstairs, checking for drips and spillage. At 4:00 AM, I heard bears out by the dumpster, and that gave me a scare. I imagined hipbones and intestines strewn around the parking lot. But the bears failed to raid the dumpster, because the super keeps the trash cans secured. The garbage truck picks up early on Saturdays, so by now the bones and offal should be resting peacefully in the city landfill.
Looking around my apartment, last night seems surreal—almost like it never happened.
There’s no evidence of an altercation. The place appears normal, as long as you don’t look up. When I paint, I’ll need to borrow the super’s ladder to get the ceiling. I shoved the paint cans into the corner of the living room, along with brushes, a pan and roller, and a stack of new tarps. Home Depot had them on special, so I bought a few extra. I’m sure they’ll come in handy.
I don’t have time to paint today because, while the chili simmers, I’m updating my résumé. I applied online for my current position, so the supermarket has my work history. Starting with my most recent experience: three months as a maid at Hotel 8—that job sucked; people are pigs. Before that, almost two years selling candy at the local movie theater—excellent job; I got to watch movies for free, but the manager fired me (my résumé says I resigned) when I got caught blowing a customer in the back row. I also worked as a waitress at Denny’s, and I was Bun Steamer at Burger King. Steaming buns is boooring, and going too fast leads to bun pileups. I gave BK one week’s notice, couldn’t face doing two. Before that, back where I come from … I don’t want to think about.
The thing is, none of these jobs qualify me for Assistant Store Manager. So I need to embellish. Who doesn’t, right? How does this sound: Department Manager at Brother’s Grocery, a store that went out of business eight years ago in the town where I used to live. They can’t trace my history if the place doesn’t exist, right? But I’m not sure if Department Manager is impressive enough. I’ll change that to Store Manager, say I worked there for five years. That sounds good. I want to show I’m stable.
I turn up the volume on my iPad, so P!nk can belt her heart out through the Bluetooth speakers. I’ve been avoiding newspapers, local radio and TV, because I’m avoiding Justus. Hearing his name makes me jittery. At work, when people talk about him in the break room, I plug in my earbuds and listen to music to drown the conversation.
Two days ago, when I got home from work, a paper was plastered on my door. The super says the police were at the complex making inquiries, interviewing potential witnesses. Apparently, I’m a good candidate, since my balcony overlooks the road. They left a phone number.
I tore it up.
We don’t need cops sniffing around our life.
I mean, my life,
The best thing about being two people is: you always have company.
I need to get this résumé submitted ASAP. I plan to shoot off an e-mail today with the résumé attached, so HR will go over my application first thing Monday morning. I’m sick of being a Courtesy Clerk. Terri the Terrible drives me loco, ordering me to mop spills, help customers load groceries into their cars, round up carts in the rain. I do as I’m told, even smile at Terri. Pretty soon I’ll be her boss.
If she lives that long.
I have to admit, Terri has taught me some useful skills. Last week, she showed me how to use the baler to crush boxes. I looked the model up online. The baler has a platen force of 62,202 pounds (I call it the flatten force). That’s more than thirty-one tons of crushing power. (A standard ton is 2,000 pounds.) A ton is approximately how much a bale of cardboard weighs, and cardboard bales make the store a ton of money, so we crush all the boxes. The baler is huge, I need a stepladder to reach the handle. Once you push the button, the crushing starts. Cycle time is forty-eight seconds, so it will take less than a minute to make a pancake out of Terri.
We’re not supposed to climb into the baler. Too dangerous. But what if some dummy dumps something into it … like a shopping cart. (I can raise a little cart over my head. I’ve been practicing at night, at the far end of the parking lot.) Say I’m emptying the trash, when a customer sneaks past me and slips into the employee only back area. It happens. Then, let’s say, I notice him sneak out. I tear after him, chase him into the parking lot, but he’s too fast and I don’t catch him. At night, when there’s no moon, it’s difficult to see anything out in the parking lot, especially at the far end, so I can’t read his license plate. Note to self: Check moon phases before taking action. Say this occurs at 11 PM when the store’s about to close and Terri is the only CRM around—too late for the porter, too early for the night stalkers—just me, the lowly closing Courtesy Clerk, emptying trash cans around the store, and one Checker up front at self-check. Terri would have to climb into the baler to retrieve that cart. Wouldn’t she?
And I’ll be there to push the crush button.
After completing my résumé, I shoot an e-mail to HR informing them that I want to apply for the Assistant Manager position.
The chili smells amazing. I give each pot a stir and taste it. Add a little salt, turn off the heat.
Finally, I can relax.
The potluck starts in two hours. After all the stress I’ve been through lately, I’m looking forward to a diversion.
I decide to wash my hair and take a long soak in the tub.
The bathwater has turned red. Body parts float around the tub. A thumb bobs past my right breast. A foot touches my big toe. A mangled tongue emerges through pink bubbles, so does a gnawed finger, a chewed up penis, and some other thing I can’t distinguish.
I wake with a start, splashing water and shivering. The bath has gone cold. I pull the drain and stand, reach for a towel. Looking down, I see a trickle of red moving along the inside of my thigh to my calf. At first I think I’m still dreaming, then the dull cramp in my gut makes me realize it’s that time of month.
I towel myself off, wipe off the blood. (I needed to do laundry anyway.) I plug the hole in the dyke with a tampon (Hahaha … I’m not gay), then search through the cabinet, shoving aside aspirin, sunscreen, and a small jar that contains something shriveled that I suspect is an ear. Having no idea how long the ear (or whatever) has been there or who it belonged to, I toss the jar into the wastepaper basket. Finally, I find Motrin and down three.
The bath off my bedroom has no tub, only a shower, so when I want to soak I use the bathroom off the hallway. The bathroom is smallish, no window, so it’s private. The tile is white, as are the sink and tub. Built for utility rather than luxury.
Wrapped in the damp towel, I cross the hall to my bedroom, open the sliding door leading to the balcony, and step outside. The day is warm, and late afternoon sun blazes in the clear blue sky. To the north, I see mountains, their peaks barren in late July, but come early September snow will fall above tree line. I climb onto the folding chair, wondering exactly where Justus went down. In my mind’s eye, I see him falling near the entrance to the parking lot, but I may have made that up.
I calculate the minute dimensions of the balcony, wondering if I could fit a chest freezer out here, wondering if it’s against the covenants. I could use the extra storage space for meat. I’ve learned a lot from watching Nightmare Next Door; for example, if you freeze a body before sawing into it you don’t have to deal with blood. Maybe I could put a freezer in the spare room.
I climb down from the chair and pass through the sliding door into my bedroom. I open the closet. All the power tools are clean and in their correct places. Despite last night’s excitement, I remembered to charge the chainsaw’s battery.
I decide to wear the red sundress I bought recently and high-heeled sandals. Decide to paint my toenails to match.
The potluck is held in the courtyard where there’s a lawn, flowers, trees, a picnic table and a playground. Lots of residents have kids. About forty people show up. Most of my neighbors look familiar, but that doesn’t mean I know them. I say hi to Lisa; she lives downstairs and reads a lot. I see her out on her little patio (downstairs they have patios instead of balconies) sitting at a tiny table, her nose stuck in a novel. Sometimes she drinks a glass of white wine, and once she invited me to share a glass. We talked about books. Unlike me, she prefers fiction. Other neighbors include a few people from work—two women from Bakery share an apartment across the way. And weirdo Jayne, who sits out on her balcony even when it’s snowing. A lot of college students live here too, and there’s the old lady with the cat. Which reminds me, I forgot to put the tuna out.
Children run around the picnic table where we’ve set our offerings: casseroles, green salad and macaroni, a chocolate cake, two apple pies, guacamole, and of course my chili. Other kids hang upside down on the jungle gym, swing on swings, shoot down the slide. Watching them, I feel more normal than I have for weeks, until a thought flashes through my brain: tender meat.
Sometimes I disgust myself.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m sane.
Speaking of tender meat, my chili is a hit. All my neighbors want the recipe.
A man I’ve never seen before is working on his third bowl. My gaze keeps drifting back to him, not because he’s devouring my chili, but because there’s a calmness about him that I find attractive, an air of intelligence. He’s older than me, graying at the temples, but in great shape. I can tell he works out.