by McBain, Tim
Teddy
Moundsville, West Virginia
262 days after
Every death was a gaze into the abyss, into the big nothing. It was unpleasant – an emptiness that clawed at the walls of your soul — even if you were the one administering it.
He always dismembered the girls before he dumped the bodies. He didn’t know why. It was no effort to conceal what he’d done. There was no one left to find that out. It was more like one last interaction, a final caress.
A kiss goodbye from his blade.
But now he found himself hesitant to go through with it. He stood over the broken girl, over the human doll he’d made. She was starting to go, and the maggots would get to her soon. He’d left them too long before, so he knew this too well. The flies would find the smell. They always did.
The knife dangled at his side. He adjusted his grip on it, but he didn’t move to act just yet. He looked at the way the light filtered through the basement window, bars of sunlight angling down onto the dead girl’s feet which dangled off of the end of the mattress.
Bodies were impossibly strange things. Meat and bone that held such power over him, filled him with such crazy feelings. The girls seemed different when deconstructed. The teeth sprouted from the gums like some strange coral in the bottom of the ocean. The skin stretched over the skeleton, the soft and smooth draped over the hard and pointy bits. All of the pieces pulled apart into smaller things that revealed how weird the whole was.
Even now, in this decaying state, she was a strange and beautiful thing – the contours of her skin seemed so intentional, a notion directly at odds with that sense of her being a naturally occurring oddity like coral, but that was what drew him to it so completely. It was chaos and order at the same time, meaninglessness and all meaning, nothing and everything. He felt this more than it occurred to him in words – a repulsion and a sense of wonder that balanced themselves in his brain.
It was just meat, wasn’t it? Once it was a heaving piece of flesh, and now it was still. Was that all it ever was? Sometimes he didn’t think so.
He just didn’t want to let her go, to toss her down into the ditch to never be seen again. He knew he must, but he was all torn up about it this time.
What kind of a way was this for someone to live?
He brought the back of his wrist to his brow and pressed it there, the blade dangling just in front of his right eye. It looked huge this close up. He really had to get ahold of himself.
As he stooped to get to work, he reassured himself that he was fine. He told himself he would be OK. He wasn’t dying. He wasn’t going to be alone forever. Things would come and go like they always did – that was the nature of life – but he would be here for a long time yet. He was fine. Just fine.
The blade’s edge pierced the skin near the shoulder. The tension of the knife against the meat made him feel more normal, brought him back to the sense of carrying out a routine activity.
The way the head came off held the most fascination, so he always saved it for last.
Marcus
Rural West Virginia
265 days after
They crouched, still hidden by the trees, staring at the wreckage. Below them was the bridge they’d intended to cross, but the end closest to them had been sheared away from the road, leaving a large gap surrounded by jagged, crumbling concrete.
“What happened?”
“Flooding,” Erin said. “I mean, look at it. That whole trailer got washed down here from somewhere upriver.”
She pointed at a dented building that blocked the middle of the bridge. It was the kind of trailer Marcus remembered seeing at construction sites and gravel pits, essentially just a rectangular box with a few windows and a door. Ugly and industrial. How much did something like that weigh? A few tons? He tried to imagine the force of the water required to move something that heavy.
“Is that what broke the bridge?” Izzy asked.
“Maybe. Could have just been the floodwaters, though. The river must have been really high to wash the trailer onto the bridge.” They were silent for a few moments, and then Erin spoke again.
“It’s weird to think about how all this stuff we built out of metal and concrete used to seem so permanent. Way more than the grass and the trees and the rivers. But with no one here to fix things, it’s only a matter of time. The bridges and the buildings and the roads, they’ll start to crumble and rust. And eventually they’ll be gone.”
“But the trees and the rivers will still be here,” Marcus said, eyes on the rippling water below. He felt her eyes on him.
“Exactly.”
She struggled out of the shoulder straps on her bag, and Marcus reached out to help hold some of the weight.
“Thanks,” she said, and she smiled at him. His cheeks got warm, and he looked away.
Stupid Izzy. Ever since she started in on him, he felt self-conscious around Erin. Not because he actually liked her or anything. It just made him feel awkward was all.
Luckily, it seemed like Erin hadn’t noticed his unease. She unzipped the bag and pulled out a pair of binoculars.
“What are those for?” Izzy asked.
Erin spun one of the adjustment dials.
“Uh, do you not remember what happened the last time we crossed a bridge?”
Izzy tossed a handful of peanuts into her mouth, and then extended another handful to Rocky. She responded mid-chew.
“Excuse me for asking.”
Erin spent a few moments scanning the road, head swiveling back and forth.
“You’re still planning on trying to cross it?” Marcus asked.
“Do you have a better plan?”
“Yeah. Find somewhere else to cross.” Marcus rubbed at the stubble along his jawline. “I don’t trust the structural integrity of that bridge. Do you?”
He saw the twitch of her lips as she tried to hold back a smirk. With the big lenses of the binoculars pressed up to her face, she looked like some kind of futuristic bug.
“If it can hold the weight of that trailer, then it can hold us. Actually, the trailer is what I’m worried about more than the bridge itself. It’s blocking the whole thing, and I’m not sure if there’s a way around it.”
She passed Marcus the binoculars.
“I’ll scout ahead, see if I can find a path through,” Erin said and then added, “I can also test the, uh, structural integrity.”
She kept a straight face when she said it, but he knew she was teasing him by the twinkle in her eye.
“If that thing crumbles, and you go into the water, I’m not fishing you out.”
Erin smiled. “Good thing I can swim, then. I’ll give you a thumbs up if it’s OK to follow. Got it?”
He nodded. Erin slung the pack on and slid down the embankment to the road. She waited there, watching, before she crossed to the bridge.
Marcus’ heart thudded in his chest. It made him nervous watching her out there, by herself, in the open. He wondered if her heart rate matched his.
She disappeared behind a van, and it was a few moments before she reappeared again. He watched her scoot closer to the crumbling edge of the road, peering down into the chasm. This was it.
Her feet shuffled two steps back and then propelled her body forward, lifting as she sailed over the rift in the bridge. She landed in a cat-like crouch, hands touching the ground. The bridge held, not even so much as a piece of gravel shifting under her weight. At least not that Marcus could see.
He let out the breath he’d been holding and lifted the binoculars away to pinch the bridge of his nose.
“Where is she? What’s happening?” Izzy asked.
Marcus resumed his place behind the lenses.
“She just hopped over the gap where the bridge is all torn away from the road. Now she’s walking along that office trailer, trying to find a way around it.”
“Let me look. I wanna look.”
“Hold up. I think she found a way under the trailer. She just c
rawled underneath it.”
“My turn!”
Marcus felt a tug at the binoculars.
“In a minute. I don’t want to miss it if she gives the signal.”
Izzy released the binocular strap and started to sing quietly.
“Marcus and Erin, sittin’ in a tree. K-I-S-S-”
Marcus clenched his teeth and handed the binoculars over. Izzy accepted them with a wicked grin.
She pressed the eyepieces to her face, squeezing them together to suit her smaller skull, adjusting the autofocus.
He didn’t know how to make her stop. With the teasing and all that. So he saw Erin’s brassiere and got embarrassed. Big deal. How was he supposed to know she was going to do that? She didn’t give any warning. Of course he was embarrassed.
But Izzy wouldn’t let it go. She’d latched on and wouldn’t release for nothing. He thought back to sixth grade, when they gave him that test and told him he was dyslexic. Mrs. Lintz and Nina told him it was nothing to be ashamed of. And he believed them. Until Jeremy Dillard found out and started telling everyone that Marcus couldn’t read because he was retarded.
It was funny, because Jeremy was in the special classes, too. Marcus couldn’t ever figure that out. It seemed to him that they should have been allies. Friends.
Marcus never figured out how to make it stop.
He had this friend back then. Grisha. Grisha was from Russia, and because his English skills weren’t 100%, he’d also been placed in the special classes. Jeremy and all his lackeys called him Goulash.
“Focking eediots. Goulash isn’t even from Russia,” Grisha would say, and then he’d mutter something in Russian that Marcus always assumed was some kind of swearing.
“You have to hit him,” Grisha said one day when they were eating lunch in the cafeteria.
“What?”
“If you want Jeremy to respect you, you have to put him in his place. Show dominance. Like the wolves.”
Marcus would look at his Russian friend and wonder where he got this stuff. You only had to take one look at Grisha to know he’d never punched anyone in his life. And of course it was easy for him to say it when he wasn’t the one that had to do the punching.
Marcus was bigger, that was true. But Jeremy had that look in his eye. A cold gleam.
Marcus sighed. He could fight fire with fire. You learned things being in the special classes. And even though Marcus was only in the one, he caught bits and pieces from teachers whispering. From an incident report left out on a desk. From Jeremy himself.
Like the fact that Jeremy’s older sister had gotten pregnant and dropped out of school. Or the time Jeremy came to school with a black eye and a broken arm and a story about tripping over the toilet in the middle of the night. A story no one really bought. Marcus could have used any of that as ammunition. And he thought about it. He had the words poised on the tip of his tongue for the next time Jeremy called him fucktard or whatever particular name he chose that day. But when the time came, Marcus couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t bring himself to inflict pain, even if it was done in self-defense. He didn’t want to hurt Jeremy. He just wanted him to stop.
So he did what the adults always told him to do. Ignore him, son. Pretend you don’t hear. Don’t let it bother you.
“Let’s go.”
Marcus snapped back to the present, blinking a few times like he was awakening from a dream.
“Did she give the signal? Thumbs up?”
“No, she disappeared somewhere over there, and I’m sick of just sitting around waiting all the time.”
“She said not to move until she gave us the sign.”
“Whatever. I’m going.”
Izzy started to rise, but Marcus hooked a finger around the loop at the top of her backpack.
“No. You’re not.”
“Then I’ll just tell Erin about how you want to touch her boobies and all that other boyfriend-girlfriend stuff.”
Marcus sighed. He looked at Izzy, searching for some resemblance to the meanness in Jeremy Dillard and finding none. She was just a kid being a kid.
“OK look. You have to stop with that. That’s our deal. We go now, but you never bring it up again.”
Izzy shrugged.
“It’s a deal. But I still get to carry the gun whenever I want.”
Marcus ran his hands through his hair. This kid.
“Fine. Just let me go first, at least.”
Up close, the gap was wider than Marcus had envisioned. A three-foot fissure, looking like an angry mouth ready to swallow him hole. It was a jump he could make easily. Izzy too. What worried him was landing on the other side. He reminded himself that Erin had done it and survived.
Still, as he soared over the break in the bridge, he imagined his feet hitting the pavement on the other side, the cracked road quaking under his feet, jarring loose and floating the rest of the way down the river. But when his feet struck the ground, it was as solid as any other road he’d ever walked on.
He turned back, putting out a hand to help Izzy with the jump, but she was already on his heels. She hurdled the cleft in the road then bounded ahead, itching to explore the bridge further.
“Stay close.”
She let her head fall between her shoulders and emitted an irritated grunt.
“You sound like Erin.”
The bridge was strewn with debris from the floodwater, both natural and man-made: tires, empty bottles, plastic bags, tree branches and clumps of wet leaves, a single shoe. The whole scene reminded Marcus of something built out of Lego blocks and then smashed by a child’s tantrum.
“Erin’s right a lot of the time.”
Izzy snorted, and then the teasing face returned.
Marcus pointed at her, cutting her off. “You said you’d stop.”
He expected her to renege on her promise, to launch back into her nursery rhyme about kissing and baby carriages. But she kept her end of the bargain, making a farting sound with her mouth instead.
When they reached the trailer, Marcus got down on one knee to peer into the narrow passage Erin had slithered through.
“I don’t think I’m gonna fit,” he said.
The side of the trailer facing them had no door and no windows. Marcus walked along the length of it, eyes fixed on the one opening available to him: a rectangular hole near the roof, formerly occupied by an AC unit. The dented air conditioner lay on the ground below, bolts rusted through.
Marcus shoved the air conditioner closer to the building and stepped up onto it. From there, he climbed over to an electrical box secured to the side of the trailer. He could reach the opening and easily slide in from there.
“OK, I’m gonna climb through. You crawl under, and I’ll meet you on the other side.”
“No way! I’m coming with you.”
Marcus eyeballed it and shook his head. “You won’t be able to reach this high.”
“I don’t want to go by myself. I’m scared.”
Marcus chewed at his lip.
“Come on. Give me a boost,” she said.
He waved her over, stooping so she could climb onto his shoulders. Raising himself to his full height, he put a hand against the trailer for extra balance. The soles of Izzy’s shoes dug into his back as she squirmed into a standing position. Then her weight shifted, and she hoisted her upper body through the opening. She hung there for a moment, half-in and half-out.
“You got it?” he asked.
Her voice came back slightly muffled.
“Yep. I just need a little push.”
He gave her a nudge, and she disappeared through the hole. There was a crash and thunk that sounded like furniture tipping over.
“You OK in there?”
There was no answer.
“Izzy?”
He scrambled up and thrust his head into the opening.
“Boo!” Izzy said, giggling when he recoiled.
“Good one.”
He backed out, passing Rocky
and then his backpack through, and re-entered feet first.
It was dank inside and smelled of mildew. The floor creaked under him. It was no longer flat, hammered into small hills and valleys during its trip down the river. Some of the low spots had formed puddles, which he tried his best to avoid. He shouldn’t have let Izzy come in here with him. The whole thing might be structurally unsound.
“I tried the door, but it’s stuck,” Izzy said.
Marcus crossed the trailer, stepping over a jumble of soggy books and office electronics. He turned the handle and pulled, but the door wouldn’t budge. Probably swollen or rusted from the water.
He circled the floor, looking for something he could use to break one of the windows. His foot bumped something heavy. He lifted it. It was a black marble obelisk with a miniature bronze hard hat attached. Etched into the marble were the words, “Thompson Contracting - Award of Excellence 2002.”
“Watch out,” he told Izzy and tossed it through the glass.
Shards tinkled onto the pavement outside, and they both peered through the jagged hole.
“Let me clear those sharp pieces away, and then I’ll help you climb out.”
Izzy started to say something and stopped, her smile disappearing. He was going to ask what the problem was when he heard it too. A scrape and shudder.
Something was moving in the far corner of the trailer. They could hear it, the sounds echoing in the enclosed space.
Swiftly, like a bird, Izzy scampered behind Marcus and clung to his elbow.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Marcus felt a prickle at the back of his neck.
“Let’s not wait around to find out,” he said and lifted the base of a table lamp. He swung it at the window, knocking more of the shards free.
Izzy’s grip tightened on his arm. He barely heard her when she spoke.
“Too late.”
Deirdre