by Jeff Strand
He cleaned up the mess. Fortunately, he had three hours to do it, and all of the blood was on tile and cement. He triple-bagged the dog, dragged it upstairs without spilling anything, and got it into the plastic garbage bin by tipping the bin on its side first.
When Mom and Dad got home, Jamie told them that Farley had gotten out, and that he'd run all over the neighborhood trying to find him. He didn't have to fake his crying; he was genuinely sad that Farley was gone, though he didn't regret what he'd done. He wished they had another dog so he could do it again.
Garbage collection wasn't until two days later, but Jamie wasn't too worried. His parents were frantically searching for Farley but they weren't going to look for the dog in the trash bin. The truck came and took Farley away, and Jamie knew that he'd gotten away with it.
He didn't go out and start killing dogs left and right, of course, but in rare circumstances, when he knew he wouldn't get caught, when he had complete privacy, he'd do it again, and it would get him through the next few months of torment.
When he turned eighteen, he decided he wanted to upgrade to humans.
Jamie froze as he saw me. Even in the poor light, his expression was pretty easy to read: I'm out here hunting for you because I have to be, but I was hoping somebody else would find you, and I'd be just as happy if we pretended we didn't see each other.
I ran at him.
He looked shocked, because if anything, he would've expected me to run away from him. By the time he started to flee I'd already caught up to him. I dragged him back to the relative darkness of where I'd been hiding, not caring that he was biting the hell out of my hand as it covered his mouth. I threw him to the ground.
"I didn't kill her," he insisted.
"I saw what you did."
He vigorously shook his head. "No, she was already dead. It wasn't a bad death. They smothered her with a pillow. It was quick. It didn't hurt."
"Suffocation is a horrible way to go," I informed him.
Jamie shook his head so violently that I thought it might pop off. "She didn't suffer. I promise you. I swear."
"Liar."
"It was her fault. She wasn't cooperating. All she had to do was take it easy, just like we asked."
I slammed his head into the side of the trailer to get him to stop lying.
This was probably a mistake. If somebody was asleep in there this might have woken them up. I waited for a few seconds, expecting a light to turn on, but the trailer remained dark inside.
Some blood ran down the side of his face, but it wasn't too bad. His face was bleeding less than my shoulder. He'd be okay if for some reason I changed my mind about killing him.
"Why are you acting like I'm stupid?" I asked him. "I saw the man behind the curtain." I was surprised at myself for being able to make a Wizard of Oz reference under these conditions.
"I told you, she was already dead! I—I—I, yes, it's fucked up what I was doing, but she didn't feel anything. It was already over."
"The world is better off without you," I said.
He punched me in the face. Hard enough to split my lip. Possibly hard enough to loosen a tooth. I didn't flinch. It didn't make me angrier. I didn't care what he did to me; I cared what he did to Abigail.
Jamie looked terrified by my complete lack of a reaction, as if he'd hit somebody who felt no pain and might not even be human.
"I didn't kill her," he whispered.
"You were there."
Jamie opened his mouth as if to scream for help. I couldn't let that happen, so I slammed my hand over his mouth again, while holding the back of his head with my other hand, pushing against his jaw so tightly that he couldn't bite me.
"You never should have hurt those dogs," I told him.
Jamie looked baffled by the statement, but he couldn't speak to question it.
I was human, and thus I didn't have the physical strength to simply crush his skull with my bare hands. Instead, I dragged him a few feet away from where we were crouched, and I slammed him face-first against the garden gnome's pointed hat.
The first blow may or may not have killed him. I didn't check.
The second blow sounded wetter than the first. His arms and legs began to twitch. The gnome toppled onto its side.
I continued to bash him against the gnome, shattering the gnome on the fifth or sixth slam. I went far beyond that. I wasn't the kind of morbid person who would count the number of times I smashed somebody into sharp chunks of hardened clay (I think that's what it was made out of) but it was far into the double digits.
I didn't purposely let go of him; at some point there just wasn't enough of his head intact for me to keep a grip.
I wiped the gunk off my hands onto his pants.
How did I feel? Not good. Not bad. Not numb. It was like when you're moving and you carry in those first few heavy boxes, and you're glad those boxes are in the right spot but there's a whole U-Haul worth of boxes left to go, so you don't get to rest quite yet. That's actually a terrible comparison. What I'm saying is that I wasn't horrified by what I'd done, but I wasn't celebrating. There was a lot of work left to do before I'd made things right for Abigail.
My lower lip began to tremble, and I bit down on it. It was bleeding and swollen from Jamie's punch, so this was a regrettable way to keep myself from crying. Still, it was not yet time to mourn Abigail.
I sat next to the practically headless body of Jamie and listened. No sirens, but I did hear automobiles. Could be anybody. Also could be Wulfe's men getting the hell out.
How long had it been since I was shot? It was really difficult to keep accurate track of time. I honestly couldn't tell you how long I'd been smashing Jamie's skull. However, it was my belief—possibly wrong—that the gun had fired long enough ago that if somebody had called the cops to report it, I would've heard sirens by now.
So the important questions were...
Was anybody else actively trying to find me?
Was anybody watching the entrance to the trailer park in case I tried to leave?
Was anybody still in the trailer where Abigail had been murdered?
There was probably more than one way to get out of this trailer park, especially on foot. If I focused all of my attention on surviving the night, I'd most likely get out of here alive. The worst decision, from a personal safety perspective, would be to return to the trailer.
I decided that I was going to return to the trailer. I was not making the types of decisions where one would ruminate for several hours and arrive at the conclusion of "Yes, this is a swell choice!" And I was okay with that.
I crept back toward the trailer. There was less blood on me than you might expect considering how I'd spent my time recently, but there was more than enough to raise an eyebrow if somebody saw me creeping between the trailers. I'd have to be quick and stealthy.
There was only one car still parked out front. Though that didn't reveal how many of them were still inside, if any, it was fewer than before. Probably only one or two. I could kill one or two.
I walked around the trailer, hoping that I could look through a window. No luck—the curtains were all drawn. I hadn't actually thought they'd be dumb enough to let me see what was happening inside by peeking through a window, but it would've been nice.
I went up to the front door. I assumed it was locked. Maybe not. If I tested it, I'd give away that I was trying to get in. And so, what the hell, I just knocked.
Footsteps inside. Just one set.
The footsteps stopped on the other side of the door. I imagined somebody either readying their gun to blow my head off, or taking a deep breath and smoothing out their hair to give the impression of a cool exterior when assuring the police officer at the door that everything was just fine.
The door opened.
It was the guy I'd seen at the seafood restaurant. Handsome guy, even with several moles on his face. He'd given himself the nickname Moles and tried to encourage others to use it, figuring that people couldn't mak
e fun of him if he embraced the nickname himself. Unlike poor Jamie, Moles couldn't get the nickname to stick. People either called him Charlie or, more often, they forgot his name altogether.
Moles had never used an illegal drug in his life. "Drug dealer" was the last possible profession he could have ever imagined for himself. He hated people who sold drugs. Despised the people who made them. Was disgusted by the people who used them. On the other hand, he loved gambling, especially high-stakes (by his standards) poker. Nothing compared to that high. In a dark, smoky room, he laid down a straight flush and couldn't stop grinning...at least until the guy next to him laid down a royal flush.
He had, quite reasonably, believed that he was going to win this hand for sure, and he'd wagered accordingly. He didn't know that the guy next to him had cheated, and it didn't matter: Moles was given a generous twenty-four hours to come up with the cash, or his arms and legs would be broken, but he wouldn't suffer long because he'd be killed right after that. Moles wept when his cousin Wulfe offered to settle his debt in exchange for, say, five years of labor.
So now Moles worked with drug dealers. And they treated him like crap. When somebody needed to stay behind to clean up a blood-covered bed in a trailer, he knew it was going to be him and he didn't even bother to protest. He wasn't sure how the death of Wulfe impacted the three years he still had left; presumably he was free now, but he honestly didn't trust Wulfe not to fake a picture of himself lying dead in a bathtub just to test loyalties.
Moles seemed very surprised to see me.
I shoved my way into the trailer and slammed the door behind me. Moles didn't reach for a gun so they must not have left him with one. He was a small, slender guy, and if it came down to a weaponless fight between the two of us, he was screwed.
"Why are you here?" he asked, incredulous.
"Why do you think?"
"I don't know! That's why I asked! There's nothing for you to rescue!"
"They took her?"
"Of course! They weren't just going to leave her body here."
"Where did they take her?"
"To a shallow grave somewhere! Why didn't you run? Are you insane?"
I nodded.
Moles backed away. He was moving toward the sink, which seemed like a good place to grab a knife from a drawer, so I had to put a stop to that.
"Stop moving," I said.
He stopped.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"I'm going to kill you."
"They'll never stop looking for you if you do."
"I don't care. That will make it easier for me to find the others."
"Just run," said Moles. "Get out of here while you can. Flee town like Marc did. Being here with me is suicide. Killing me isn't worth it."
"Marc's alive?"
"Yeah. We got the money back, made sure he'd never do it again, and sent him on his way. He'll be fine. You can be fine, too."
I took a step toward him. "Are you the one who murdered Abigail?"
"No! I had nothing to do with it."
"Why didn't you stop them?"
"I did! I mean, I tried to!"
"What did you do?"
"What?"
"How did you try to stop them?"
I could see Moles frantically trying to figure out how to answer the question. What answer would make me sympathetic toward him, yet seem credible?
"I told them we might still need her."
Credit where it's due: it was a good answer.
"I don't believe you," I told him.
"It's the truth!"
"What did they say when you told them they might still need her?"
"They—they told me to shut up."
"So then what else did you to do try to save Abigail's life?"
"Look, I did everything I could! I swear to you! I didn't lay a hand on her! Ask any of them! They'll tell you!"
"I believe that you didn't lay a hand on her. I don't believe that you did anything to try to save her. And I'd kill you anyway."
Moles glanced around, as if trying to find a weapon. Nothing was within reach, so he reluctantly raised his fists.
"Put your fists down, Moles."
"Moles. Funny. Real mature. Gotta get in an insult before you kill me, huh?"
I ran at him. I wasn't sure if he'd throw a punch or try to run, but he didn't seem sure either, so he kind of twisted around as if he wanted to run, while staying in place. I grabbed him and threw him against the wall. He didn't hit all that hard, but he flopped onto the floor as if all of his bones were broken.
I grabbed him by the back of the collar and pulled him to his feet, then I dragged him over to the table where they'd been sitting. It was a square table. Sharp corners.
I didn't want to create a modus operandi where I killed people by bashing them against pointed or jagged objects, but I didn't have any weapons and the corner of the table was the most dangerous thing available to me. I was surprised by how little struggle Moles was putting up. Maybe he agreed that he deserved to die. Maybe he had some sort of plan—a knife strapped to his leg that he was going to whip out at the last second.
I grabbed him by the ears, one hand on each, and then slammed his face into the corner of the table.
He did not whip out a knife.
I did it twice more.
Then I let him go. His body crumpled to the floor. As blood from the corner of the table dripped onto his chest, I walked over and got a knife out of the drawer he'd been eyeing. It hadn't been washed properly before somebody put it away.
I wasn't sure if Moles was dead or not. There was no good reason to waste time checking to see if he was breathing or if he had a pulse when I could simply slash his throat and eliminate the doubt.
In movies when people cut somebody's throat, they just slide the blade across their neck in a smooth motion. I slit his throat like I was cutting a piece of steak.
When I was done, I slammed the knife into his chest. Then I immediately regretted it—he was dead. No reason to mutilate the body further. I was better than them.
I stood up and went over to wash my hands in the sink.
I happened to glance over at the bed, and then I completely fucking lost it.
sixteen
When you have committed two gruesome murders in the same trailer park, and the second corpse is still only a couple of feet away from you, and you don't know if the police are on the way or if the bad guys are coming back, it's best not to succumb to primal rage and sorrow. I knew this. I knew this while I was kicking furniture and flinging objects against the walls. I couldn't stop myself.
They'd murdered Abigail. She was a good person and we were going to run away together. We were going to have a blissful goddamn life and they'd stolen it away from us. Abigail deserved far more pity than I did—she was the one who was dead—but I was allowed to feel sorry for myself, too. Abigail actually liked me. No women liked me. This may have literally been my only chance to be with somebody who truly cared about me.
Maybe she didn't care about me. Maybe she had no intention of us running away together. Maybe she'd only said that because she was frightened of me. She was scared that if she broke things off with me, I might try to strangle her right there in the park.
No. Not true. Stop it.
They'd killed Abigail, who'd done nothing, but they'd let Marc go. How was that fair?
I didn't hurt myself while I trashed the trailer. That is, I didn't shatter my hands or anything while punching immobile objects—I certainly didn't do the wound on my shoulder any good. I resisted the temptation to do further damage to Moles' body. But I made a lot of noise and I'm sure I left fingerprints and DNA evidence a-plenty.
I think my tantrum lasted less than a minute, though I crammed a lot of destruction and poor decision-making into that minute. When I was done, I sat down in one of the unbroken chairs and gasped for breath. Even if nobody called the police, somebody would've called animal control to report that a bear was destroying som
ebody's trailer.
After I could breathe again, I went back outside. A few people were standing outside their own trailers, staring at me. I gave them a light wave. "Everything's fine, folks," I said. I hoped they'd be amused by this, since I had a lot of blood on me and things were quite obviously not fine. Nobody smiled, though.
I hurried out of the trailer park. I was a twenty-minute drive from my apartment, so at least ten to fifteen miles. More than I wanted to walk tonight. Since my abductors had made me give up my cell phone along with my guns, I couldn't call an Uber. I'd have to walk until I found a pay phone, if those things existed anymore, or somebody kind and dumb enough to give a ride to a big creepy looking guy in bloody clothes.
I could've ditched the bloody clothes, of course, but then I'd be a big creepy naked guy, which I suspected was a bigger stumbling block in getting a ride. Another stumbling block was that Wulfe's crew might still be actively searching for me. So I had to stay off the road until I was at least a couple of miles away from the trailer park.
This meant that I got to spend a lot of time in my own head.
It was not a pretty place to be.
I tried not to wallow in misery over what had happened to Abigail (unsuccessfully) and I questioned whether I'd made wise choices today (obviously I had not). I replayed the head-smashings in my mind and wished I'd felt guiltier about them. I felt some guilt, and a lot of disgust, but I had to accept that I was the kind of person who could bash in not one but two heads until the brain was visible and only feel mild regret.
I also thought about a minor pet peeve of mine: the use of "brains," plural, as in "I bashed in his head until his brains leaked out." Unless you're an alien, you only have one brain. I did not think about this for very long.
The most important question that I asked myself as I walked was: are you willing to let this be the end? Wulfe, Andy, Jamie, and Moles were dead. Was that enough? Could I switch my focus to getting out of town?
No. It was not enough.