Gleefully Macabre Tales

by Jeff Strand

"Show me what you’ve got."

  She led me to the dining room table. The wooden chairs looked kind of flimsy. "Got anything better?"

  "We have a metal folding chair for guests."

  "Well, obviously that would be better than the balsa wood shit you’ve got going on here, don’t you think?"

  "You don’t have to be a jerk."

  "You’re asking me to kill your husband! Do you expect me to be Miss Manners?"

  "I’m just saying."

  "Well, don’t say."

  She opened a closet door, pushed some crap out of the way, and pulled out a folded metal chair. I took it from her and returned to the recliner.

  Her husband still looked pretty damn dead.

  "All right, slump him forward," I said.

  "Why?"

  "So I have a straight shot at his head! Why are you asking dumb questions? I’m not asking you to wiggle your tongue in his slit throat, I’m asking you to slump him over."

  "I was just making sure you had a plan of action." She pinched his shirt collar between her thumb and index finger and tugged. Her husband’s head dropped to his knees.

  I hoisted the chair over my head, accidentally smacking the ceiling.

  "Careful!"

  "Shut up, bitch!"

  "You can stop calling me bitch. You’re not robbing me anymore."

  "I’ll call you bitch as many bitching bitch times as I want, bitchy bitch bitch."

  "No, you won’t. Use that word again and I’m going to ask you to leave my house."

  "You won’t let me murder your hubby?"

  "That’s right. And then no reward."

  "Can I call you a wench?"

  "No. In fact, you need to stop disrespecting me altogether. You’re not the only man who would commit murder for me, you know."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I’m serious."

  "Yeah, well, I’m already here, so I might as well do it." I hoisted the chair over my head again, being more careful about the ceiling this time. "Now you’re sure you want me to do this, right?"

  "I’m sure."

  "I don’t want to hear any whining after I hit him."

  "You won’t."

  I took a deep breath, then swung the chair as hard as I could, and let me assure you that it’s pretty goddamn hard. The back of the chair connected perfectly with his skull, knocking his body right onto the floor. He lay on the carpet with a brand-new dent in his head and his neck at a really fucked-up angle.

  "Hubby’s dead," I announced.

  She crouched down next to him and held the mirror next to his nose. I thought this was pretty stupid, considering that his head and his body weren’t quite facing the same direction anymore.

  "He’s still alive," she said.

  "Bullshit."

  "Look at the mirror."

  "I don’t care about the mirror. If the mirror is fogging up, then you’ve got funky A/C in here. That guy is dead."

  "Check his pulse."

  "I already said no."

  She pulled up the corpse’s sleeve and pressed her fingers against his wrist. "He still has one."

  I crouched down next to her and grabbed the dead guy’s wrist. It felt cold and creepy. "Nothing."

  "Your fingers aren’t in the right place."

  "Yes, they are."

  "Don’t you know how to check for a pulse?" She pushed my fingers into the proper spot. "Feel it?"

  Yep. There was a definite pulse. A strong one.

  "How is he still alive? I broke his neck!"

  "I told you! He won’t die!"

  "That’s impossible!"

  "Apparently it’s not."

  "This is crazy! What the hell kind of vitamins does he take?"

  I stood up. No way should he have survived that hit. At least not when he was 97% dead already. Unless…

  "Did he have a metal plate in his head?" I asked.

  "No."

  "Damn."

  Once again, a big red neon sign was flashing before my eyes: Get The Fuck Out. Get The Fuck Out. Get The Fuck Out. But now it had become a personal challenge. I mean, how dare that decrepit prick not die when I bashed him over the head? If I couldn’t kill him, then I was a complete loser of a human being, and I just wasn’t willing to walk out of there without my dignity intact.

  Her husband was toast.

  "What’ve you got in the way of butcher knives?" I asked.

  - 3 -

  "I already tried stabbing him," said Gretchen.

  "I don’t want to stab him. I want to cut his head off."

  "I already tried that, too."

  "I’m going to try with more skill."

  She went into the kitchen. Her husband was resilient, all right, but a little decapitation would keep him from fogging up that mirror. He’d never done anything to me personally, but man, I was ready to kick his severed head out the goddamn window and try to hit a dog with it.

  "Here," said Gretchen, holding out the knife.

  "Don’t hand it to me blade-first, wench."

  "I said you couldn’t call me a wench."

  "Fine. That’s not how one properly hands a sharp instrument to another human being, Gretchen." My British accent sucked, but she got the idea.

  "Much better." She flipped the knife around and handed it to me. I took it by the handle and rolled her husband onto his back. Then I decided that I didn’t really want to look at his face while I was cutting his head off, and re-rolled him onto his stomach.

  She’d already made a pretty decent groove in the back of his neck, so I pressed the blade of the knife into the groove and gave myself a mental pep talk.

  I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m not a wuss. Remember how I told you that I beat that guy to possible-death with a gun? You can’t do that kind of thing if you’re a wuss. I’ve never been squeamish. Bring on the Faces of Death movies. Give me good seats to an open heart surgery. Shred some old lady with a cheese grater on my dining room table while I’m trying to eat lasagna. No problem. Honestly, the only thing that has ever bothered me is when I was a little kid, and my friends would do that thing where they pulled on their lower eyelid and turned it inside out. Holy fuck, is that ever disturbing! But aside from that, nope, not squeamish at all.

  But you have to keep in mind that I was about to cut off somebody’s head. Oh, sure, for all I know, you might be the Havana Head-Chopper and whack off people’s heads every other Tuesday, but most people would have a problem with the concept.

  So I hesitated.

  "What’s wrong?" asked Gretchen.

  "Nothing."

  "Then do it."

  "Don’t even think of giving me orders. I’ll do it when I feel like doing it and not a second sooner." I removed the knife from the neck groove.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Waiting."

  "For what?"

  "For enough time to pass that I’m doing this of my own free will." I set the knife down on the floor.

  "Are you kidding me?" Gretchen asked.

  "Nope."

  "How childish can you be?"

  "I’m not being childish. But I don’t take orders from anybody, especially some chick I just robbed, and even more especially when I’ve got a gun and a butcher knife. I’ll cut his head off for the sex, but I’ll do it when I’m good and ready."

  Immediately after saying it, I hoped that the phrase "I’ll cut his head off for the sex" would never be taken out of context.

  "Okay, whatever. I take back what I said. You may decapitate him at your leisure."

  "I will."

  We were silent for a long moment.

  Gretchen sighed.

  "I’ll take that sigh as a signal of impatience," I said. "Keep it up and we’ll be here all night."

  "Being impatient isn’t the same as telling you what to do."

  "It’s close enough."

  We waited for an even longer moment.

  "Do you think he knows we’re hovering over him ready to cut his head off?" I asked.<
br />
  "I’m not sure. I assume so."

  "That would suck."

  "Yes, it would."

  "Bummer for him. I guess I’m in the mood to cut now. Thank you for your patience." I picked up the knife, pressed it into her hubby’s neck, and pushed down.

  I didn’t seem to be making any progress, so I pushed harder.

  And harder.

  And even harder until I felt compelled to say "Dammit!"

  "What’s wrong?"

  "This knife won’t go through the bone."

  "I know! That’s the problem I had!"

  "Then why did you give me this crappy knife?"

  "Don’t blame the knife."

  "Of course I’m going to blame the knife! A Ginsu would get the job done. I can’t cut through bone with this dull-ass piece of shit."

  "It’s not dull. It’s a great knife."

  "His non-severed head says that it’s not."

  Gretchen grabbed the knife out of my hand, which pissed me off but I decided not to make an issue of it. She walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a cellophane wrapped t-bone steak. She held it up. "See this?"

  "Yeah."

  She slammed the steak down on a cutting board. "Watch."

  I stood up and walked over to see the exciting demonstration. She pressed the blade of the knife against the meat, pushed down, and with only a little bit of effort sliced through the steak, bone and all.

  "It’s a good knife," she informed me.

  "Well…maybe it’s harder to cut through human bone than cow bone."

  "Maybe, but we’re not trying to cut through his leg here! We’re cutting through his neck! And it’s not working! He’s unkillable!"

  "We just need a better tool. What have you got that’s better than that knife?"

  "Nothing!"

  "What about a hacksaw?"

  "I told you, this knife is the best I’ve got!" she said, practically screaming.

  "Gee, why not shout that a bit louder so all of your neighbors can hear? Hey, actually, do you think any of your neighbors have a hacksaw we can borrow?"

  "I’m not going to ask anybody for a hacksaw in the middle of the night."

  "Then how about I come back tomorrow?"

  "How about you go get a hacksaw and come back?"

  "I don’t own one."

  "So buy one."

  "Where?"

  "Wal-Mart. There’s a twenty-four-hour one."

  "Let me try something else first. How many times do you think you stabbed him?"

  "Ten or eleven. Maybe twelve."

  "Give me the knife."

  She handed me the butcher knife. I clutched it in my fist and returned to her husband. I crouched down next to him, raised the knife, and slammed it into his back. The knife went in deep. I wrenched it out and stabbed him again.

  Gretchen, still in the kitchen, leaned over the sink and gagged.

  I stabbed him three more times. There was some blood, but not as much as I would’ve expected and there wasn’t any spurting.

  "Do a breath check," I said.

  Gretchen, who now looked positively sick to her stomach, hurried over. I lifted the back of his head by the hair, and she placed the mirror under his nose.

  "Still alive."

  "Shit!"

  I rolled him onto his back and stabbed him another five times in the heart. Again, a little blood, but not much.

  "Breath check."

  Gretchen checked. "Alive."

  Okay, now we had issues. Killing a human being is a lot more difficult than it looks in the movies, but at the same time, when you get stabbed in the heart five times, you’re pretty much supposed to die. And you’re supposed to bleed all over the place.

  "Was your husband into black magic?" I asked.

  "Yeah, a little bit."

  "Did he ever say anything about spells or rituals or anything that could grant him eternal life?"

  "Not that I remember."

  "Is this something he might have kept from you?"

  "I wouldn’t have thought so, but I also didn’t think he’d be cheating on me with some slut."

  "Okay. I thought I’d ask because it looks like we’ve got something supernatural going on here."

  She frowned and nodded.

  I stayed calm, but I was absolutely furious. How could she be so irresponsible as not to warn me that there might be otherworldly elements involved? That should’ve been the first goddamn thing out of her mouth: "Hey, could you help me murder my husband, who by the way might have struck a deal with Satan for eternal life?"

  "I’m leaving," I said.

  "What? No, you can’t!"

  "You should’ve warned me."

  "We don’t know for sure that it’s black magic."

  I stabbed him in the heart again and left the knife sticking out of his chest. "Black magic."

  "Okay, it’s probably black magic. But I still need your help!"

  "I’m not questioning that you need my help. I’m saying that I’m done helping you."

  "I’ll call the cops."

  "Huh?"

  "You stabbed my husband almost ten times with a butcher knife. You also bashed him in the head with a chair and broke his neck. Those are both felonies."

  "I’m not the only one who stabbed and hit him."

  "They won’t know that."

  "Actually, they would. Autopsy results would show that the second set of injuries came a long time after the first."

  "They wouldn’t do an autopsy. He’s not dead."

  "But they’d look at his injuries."

  "He’s not bleeding like a normal person. The tests they use to determine time of injury might not give accurate information."

  "They’d figure it out."

  "I’ll change our deal to twenty-four hours."

  "No deal. I didn’t even plan to use the full twelve."

  "How about three eight-hour sessions?"

  "How about forty-eight half-hour sessions?"

  "Four six-hour sessions."

  "Six four-hour sessions, and you bring a friend."

  "Guy or girl?"

  "What do you think?"

  "No deal."

  "You bring a girlfriend for the last session."

  "No. The deal was no other parties involved."

  "We’re renegotiating."

  "Not gonna happen."

  "Four six-hour sessions, with a quickie in advance."

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I said no. Four six-hour sessions, and you have to use them up within a week. That’s my final offer."

  "What if I find a friend for us?"

  "No."

  "Prude."

  "Then leave," she said. "You’re clearly not interested, so just get out of here. You probably couldn’t get it up anyway."

  I chuckled. "You think that insulting my manhood is going to change my mind?"

  "Yes. I think it’s going to make you feel threatened, and when you walk out that door I’ll always think of you as somebody who couldn’t handle six hours with me. I’ll have mental images of your poor little penis shriveling into a tiny nub, and I’ll tell my hot girlfriends all about it. We’ll laugh and laugh and laugh. You’ll never hear about it, probably, but deep in the back of your mind you’ll always know that I think you’re not up to the sexual task."

  Wench.

  "I’m not that easily manipulated," I said.

  "Then go."

  "Nah, I’ll stick around."

  I want to make it perfectly clear that I did not agree to stay because I was worried about some imaginary women laughing about my dick. I stayed because this was still my only real opportunity to experience a golden shower.

  "So what next?" she asked.

  "Hacksaw. No, chainsaw. We’ll get both."

  "I can’t run a chainsaw in my apartment."

  "You will if that’s what it takes to cut off hubby’s head. Look, I don’t know much about witchcraft, but I can’t imagine
that he’d keep breathing after we cut off his head with a chainsaw. It just doesn’t happen."

  "It’s not witchcraft."

  "Huh?"

  "He wasn’t Wiccan. Leave witchcraft out of this. Wicca is a very misunderstood lifestyle, and I really get offended when people think—"

  "I don’t give a sloppy shit if this is witchcraft or Satanism or fuckin’ Dianetics! His head needs to come off! Are we agreed on that?"