by Glen Frost
"You'll be warm soon enough, my friend," the pimp grinned, gesturing toward the back of the truck. Marko opened it up and the two men set to work, hauling out the dead woman's body first. With nobody around to see or hear, they dumped it straight onto the ground, where it landed with a sickening thump.
"How far?" Marko wanted to know, brushing the snow from his eyes.
Piotr thought about it for a moment, stamping his boot to test the ground, then finally said, "It's going to be a bastard for us, digging in this shit. It's rock hard." What he really meant was, it's going to be a bastard for YOU, digging in this shit, because Marko would be doing most of the donkey work.
"Find a patch inside those trees," he pointed into the darkness to their right. "The softest ground that you can. I'll take care of her."
Marko nodded obediently. Fishing around in the flatbed, he retrieved a long-handled shovel and crunched off into the darkness.
He had left behind a pick-headed fire axe and a bright yellow DeWalt power saw. It was the same equipment they'd used on the last three women who had pissed him off. Grunting with the effort, he unrolled the tarp, exposing the naked corpse to the freezing night air. She was still floppy and easily movable, but her back and the back of both legs were starting to turn purple as the blood leaked out of the veins and arteries. Without a pump to keep it moving, the blood tended to settle in those parts of the body that were closest to the ground, pooling in the tissues just beneath the skin. Piotr had looked it up on the Internet once, out of idle curiosity. They called it "dependent lividity," and he'd found some pretty gnarly pictures taken at death scenes by various coroners.
Anya's head was lolling to the side, staring lifelessly out into the darkness. Using the glow from the red tail lights to see by, Piotr took up the fire axe in both hands, testing its weight and getting used to its heft. He gave it an experimental swing or two, like a batter warming up at the plate. Satisfied, he laid the edge of the blade on top of Anya's face, resting it lightly on her cheek and forehead.
Planting his feet firmly a shoulder-length apart, he swung it in a high overhand arc, building as much momentum as he could for the downward part of the swing. The blade was a little on the blunt side (Piotr had never sharpened it since purchasing the thing) but with that much force behind the swing, it still managed to bite deeply into the side of the dead woman's face. Black blood gouted from her mouth, spraying the tarp in a fan-shaped pattern.
Piotr hit her a second time, then a third. Her nose, already flattened by the physical assault she had suffered just before her death, sheared off. Her cheekbone caved in, and one eye now bulged obscenely from its busted socket. For a split second, the image of Popeye the sailor man flashed into Piotr's mind, and he had to stifle a near-hysterical laugh, suppressing the surreal thought and taking a fourth swing, a fifth, a sixth...
He soon lost count of the number of hits. A pleasingly warm ache was beginning to spread through the pimp's shoulders and triceps, running down the length of both arms and into his hands. He would be sore tomorrow, Piotr knew, already beginning to feel the results of that exertion in the muscles of his chest.
Anya's face was an utter ruin, mutilated beyond all chance of recognition. That was exactly the point, although if pushed, Piotr had to admit to himself that he found the violence to be extremely cathartic. Looking down, he saw the proof of the pudding in the fact that he had a raging boner in his pants. Considering just how fucking cold it was out here, that was no mean feat.
The dead woman's features were gone. All that was left was a mass of bloody pulp. Her mouth was yawning in a garish, rictus grin. Piotr gave it a couple of extra whacks, just to make sure that any remaining teeth had been well and truly shattered. Even dental records wouldn't help the cops identify her, if the body was ever found.
Which just left the fingerprints.
Piotr tossed the axe back into the truck's flatbed, where it landed with a clatter that echoed for miles on the still night air. Wiping some of the snow away from his forehead and the bridge of his nose, the pimp reached for the rotary saw. Squeezing the trigger on its pistol grip, he was rewarded with a high-pitched whine as the carbide blade began to whir and spin.
Squatting down on his haunches, Piotr positioned the whizzing blade directly above the tip of Anya's left thumb and began to press firmly downwards. The whining noise changed to something that was more akin to a groan as the blade bit into the fatty tissue of her thumb, then increased in pitch when it started to grind against bone. He had to lean on the drill's handle, applying some body weight in order to completely shear off the end. The tip of the digit dropped into the snow, accompanied by a surprisingly small spurt of dark blood.
Repeating the process nine more times took him the better part of half an hour, and Piotr was seriously beginning to feel the cold by the time the end of Anya's right-hand little finger hit the ground.
Mission accomplished. Piotr's knees and lower back screamed in protest when he straightened up. He was getting fat, he had to admit to himself ruefully; out of shape. He told himself that once the holiday season was over and the new year had arrived, he'd get back into the gym again, shed some of this buildup around his middle and put on some more muscle.
But not now. Not tonight. Now he just wanted this awkward and uncomfortable business over and done with as quickly as possible. Piotr made his way carefully across to the shadowy patch of ground where he could see Marko's shovel rising and falling methodically.
"How are you doing?" the pimp asked. Marko was sweating, long rivulets of it running down his face and trapping snowflakes.
"Pretty much done. Is she ready?"
"Da. Completely unrecognizable."
"Good." Marko quit digging, dropping the shovel gratefully, and the two men made their way back to the truck. The burly enforcer eyed the end results of Piotr's handiwork with a mixture of grudging admiration and disgust. Already, a coating of white snowflakes was starting to accumulate inside the eye sockets and the gaping, toothless mouth."You weren't fucking kidding," Marko agreed, taking in the leering skull and squared-off fingers.
"Just a moment while I take care of one last detail." Piotr ducked back into the cab and came out with a brown paper Burger King bag, which had been thrown haphazardly onto the back seat and forgotten. It would serve his grisly purpose perfectly.
One by one, he bent down and picked up the severed fingertips, dropping each one into the bag. Once he had all ten, he replaced the bag inside the truck. It would get ditched on the way back, either pitched into the nearest convenient dumpster or perhaps thrown into a body of water, if they could find one that wasn't completely frozen over.
"That's all?" Marko enquired hopefully. "I want a cigarette."
"That's all," Piotr agreed, but then from out of nowhere he was overcome with the sudden urge to take a piss.
Nerves, probably. A little too much stress and excitement for one night, thanks to this stupid bitch...
Piotr slipped off his gloves and stuffed them into his jacket pockets. The chill night air was already starting to burn his fingers as he pulled down his zipper and took out his cock, which instantly shriveled when exposed to the sub-zero temperature. Pulling back the foreskin slightly, the pimp allowed his bladder to relax, sending out a hot stream of brackish yellow piss. His aim was a little off in the semi-darkness, as proven by the pitter patter drumbeat of it hitting the tarp. He adjusted a little, and was rewarded by the glint of urine splashing across the dead woman's exposed breasts and belly.
Smirking, Piotr swept his throbbing dick from left to right and back again, like a fireman playing his hose stream across the front of a burning building; one final, utterly remorseless degradation for the jumped-up little slave that had dared to insult him. Anya's sightless eye sockets quickly became two pools of steaming piss, melting the snowflakes and trickling down the bony cheeks and onto the tarpaulin.
His bladder finally empty, the pimp shook his dick a few time
s, then stuffed it back into the warmth of his pants.
"Do not worry, Piotr," Marko grinned, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. "It is cold night, nyet?" When the target of his humor looked puzzled, the big man crooked one little finger in the universal signal for you've got a tiny dick.
"Watch it, you great big lumbering fuck," Piotr snorted, giving the other man's bicep a comradely slap. If one of his girls had made the same joke, the chances were good that Piotr would have broken her nose and teeth, at the very least. The sheer hypocrisy of this particular double standard never even crossed his mind for a second.
After sharing a laugh, the two men rolled Anya's faceless, toothless, and fingerless corpse back up into the tarpaulin, then took hold of one end each. Thanks to the coldness of the ambient temperature, the corpse was starting to become stiff and less pliable. Crunching their way slowly and carefully through the snow in order to not slip, the Russians finally pitched the whole package, clothes and all, into the hole that Marko had just dug.
"It's six feet deep?" Piotr asked skeptically. It didn't look all that deep.
"Close enough. Unless you would like to dig a little further down?" Marko held out the shovel, knowing full well that Piotr wouldn't want to get his hands dirty with something as trivial as manual labor.
"Your word is good enough for me, my friend," the pimp said soothingly. "Please go ahead and finish up."
With a nod of silent satisfaction, Marko began dumping the earth and sod that he had excavated back into the hole once more. Each shovelful rattled as it landed on top of the tarp, but it took half the time to fill the hole back in than it had to dig it out in the first place. The big enforcer tamped down the dirt with the shovel's flat edge, then spread a little snow cover out on top of it. That was probably more than required, Piotr figured, because at the rate the snow was falling, the crude grave would be completely invisible in less than an hour.
"Good enough, Marko. Let's call it a night, shall we?"
"Da," Marko agreed.
The two men were back on the road less than five minutes later. Of the few sets of headlights they passed on their way back to Denver, not one belonged to a police cruiser.
Neither man knew that Anya herself had been watching them bury her, from the sheltering darkness at the edge of the woods.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The sudden violence of her demise had come as something of a shock to Anya.
One minute she was struggling, trying to fight off the lunatic that was holding a pillow down over her face; the next, she was standing in the bathroom doorway, watching the scene play out from a totally different perspective.
From outside her body.
"What the fuck...?"
She saw her own bruised and battered body, flailing and naked save for the high leather boots; saw Piotr pressing all of his weight down on her, his face contorted in a mask of sheer fury; saw herself kick him in the balls; saw him pull the gun...
Saw the blood explode from the back of her own head.
"No..."
She couldn't believe it. Didn't want to believe it. Anya watched her body go limp, recognized that her spirit, soul, whatever it was called, had left its physical home. Her suspicion was confirmed when Piotr took the pillow away from her face, and she saw the bullet hole in her forehead...her own forehead.
Looking at yourself from the outside was the strangest God-damned sensation, she realized. It just felt fundamentally wrong, somehow; like watching yourself on a TV screen and thinking to yourself, Is that what I really look like? Is that what my voice sounds like? Jesus!
Anya was stunned. She could barely think straight. Looking down at her body, she saw that she was dressed identically to her own corpse, wearing only the high leather boots. For a ghost (if that's what she truly was) she looked to be surprisingly solid. None of the bruises and wounds that her abusers had inflicted upon her showed up on this new body.
Running one hand warily across her brow, she was immensely relieved to discover the total absence of a bullet hole. Wandering around for all eternity with an open skull didn't sound like much of an afterlife to her, all things considered. At least she had retained her beauty after death, which was something.
She watched with mounting anger as Marko turned up and helped Piotr to wrap her body in a tarp, before hauling it out to Marko's pickup truck and dumping it in the back. She followed the murderer and his accomplice as they trudged through the snowy parking lot. Then a thought struck her. Anya held out a hand and turned it, first this way and then the other. The snow passed through her outstretched arm as though it wasn't even there, disappearing when it made contact with her naked skin and reappearing on the underside, resuming its steady fall to the ground.
At least it doesn't feel cold, the dead woman consoled herself, before adding, In fact, it doesn't really feel...anything. It would have been a hard sensation for her to describe, had there been anybody else present to listen; she no longer felt the weight and solidity of her physical body. Instead, she felt so much lighter. Gone was the tiredness, along with all traces of the pain that had wracked her in the moments leading up to her death.
Idly, Anya wondered whether she could get into the Ford along with the two men. She knew that it was morbid, but Anya burned with a curiosity to know just exactly what they were going to do with her body. Dodging around Marko with a neat side-step, she approached the cab and, holding her breath, stepped through the closed door and into the truck interior. She hadn't felt any resistance whatsoever from the heavy door, hadn't felt much of anything at all in fact, not even the slightest tingling to indicate the fact that she had just pushed her way through a heavy piece of metal and plastic.
She passed through the front seat as well, and sat down on the back bench seat, which in true pimp fashion had been upholstered in leather. Bizarrely, she had no problem with her butt sinking through the seat. Why Anya didn't simply fall out through the bottom of the truck, she had absolutely no idea, but she figured she'd just go with it. What other choice did she have?
The two men passed through most of the drive in silence, leaving Anya alone with her thoughts. So this was death, she thought to herself bleakly. No Jesus with His saints and angels. No Satan with his imps and demons. No stairway up to Heaven or fiery descent into the depths of Hell. Was this what it would be like, for all eternity: Just this...boredom?
That thought, alone above all others, filled her with despair.
Before she knew it, they had stopped, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Piotr and Marko climbed out of the cab, and she followed them, pleased to see that the murderous bastard seemed to be moving stiffly and with more than a little discomfort.
Good. May he die a thousand deaths for what he has done to me, that piece of shit...
They dumped out the tarpaulin containing her body without the slightest shred of dignity or remorse. Then Marko took a shovel and set to work digging what had to be a grave, while Piotr...
Oh, you motherFUCKER...
What that bastard did to her face and fingertips while she watched would have made Anya physically sick, apart from the fact that she was no longer capable of being physically anything. Seeing herself butchered and mutilated like that, as though she was nothing more than a hog on a spit, had been truly horrifying; yet when she looked at her hands, Anya saw with immense relief that her fingertips were still intact. As an added bonus, even her fingernails were immaculately manicured. That particular fact didn't cheer her up much, given the overall circumstances, but it was at least good to know that nothing Piotr did to her corpse was going to be reflected in the state of her new body.
"Disgusting, isn't it? Such animals."
Anya turned to look over her right shoulder, where the speaker was walking slowly out of the darkness of the trees.
"Who are you?" she wanted to know, both intrigued and afraid in roughly equal measure. The newcomer was a woman who looked to be somewhere in her early twenties, slim and wi
llowy, with chestnut-colored shoulder-length hair. She wore a plain white robe that fell to her ankles, belted at the waist with a simple length of blue cord. The fact that her feet were bare raised Anya's eyebrows, but then she noticed that the woman left no tracks at all in the blanket of freshly fallen snow...just as her own did not.
"My name is Emily" she said, offering Anya a little smile. Traces of sadness lingered around the edges of that smile, which never quite reached her eyes. Her voice was accented. Anya couldn't quite place it, but thought that it sounded British, like those actresses on the BBC costume dramas she sometimes watched on PBS. "I am very pleased to meet you, Anya. Though I wish that the circumstances could have been different..."
"How do you know my name?"
"I was sent to help you. Knowing your name was part of the deal."
"Sent?" Anya's brow furrowed in puzzlement. "By who?"
"By whom." The brunette laughed. "Sorry. One of the very few benefits of a private education in England. It somehow managed to turn me into a complete grammar Nazi."
"Grammar...Nazi? I am not familiar with this term," Anya admitted. Emily shrugged.
"Not worth worrying about." She looked meaningfully across the dark clearing to where Marko was now shoveling dirt back on top of the Russian girl's dead body, while Piotr stood there with arms folded and simply watched. "You have much bigger fish to fry."
"Such as?"
"Such as the big decision you're going to have to make, I'm afraid."
Anya opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get a word out, a second new arrival cut her off.
"She's right, Anya. And that's about as much truth as you'll get out of this dumb bitch, I'm afraid."
Though they had to be about the same age, this newcomer seemed to be Emily's polar opposite: she had blonde hair, cut into a short bob that was shaved along one side and combed over across the other. She wore a black leather skirt, knee-high boots not all that dissimilar to Anya's own, and a floor-length black leather duster over a dark button-down shirt. Her black lipstick and black eyeliner screamed Goth.