Flyblown and Blood-Spattered

by Jarred Martin

  The old man screamed, sitting ankle deep in the flood, a dark scum of insects littering the top of the water, floating and rolling like waves.

  Alene looked up through the hole and saw Paulo peering over the edge. He was gone in an instant, leaving his room and running downstairs. Alene lifted a bare foot out of the water and flicked a cricket off the side of her leg.

  “The heavens have collapsed and sent down a plague of pestilence. They will devour me. Begone, ye plagues of Egypt. Scaphism. SCAPHISM!” The old man screamed.

  And just then, Paulo came back into the dining room. He walked through the shallow water, clearing a path through the flotilla of insects, his tuxedo pants tight, riding so high the cuffs didn't come down to the water's surface. Somewhere he had picked up a fire place poker. He gripped it in both hands and came to the old man.

  The old man was still screaming about pestilence and being devoured by insects, he hardly seemed to notice Paulo at all.

  “And now,” said Paulo raising the poker to strike, “a plague of iron shall be visited upon your head.”

  The old man looked up at Paulo, finally silent. He seemed utterly baffled, as if Paulo had deviated from some script. He wasn't supposed to die like this. It was the bugs, the insects, he would die fighting them, not like this.

  The old man lowered his eyes sadly, resigned to fate,“If it must end this way for me, then it must. I can only ask that you-”

  Paulo came across with the fire place poker, swinging it into his head hard enough to knock him out of his wheelchair and splashing into the murky water below. The old man resurfaced, crawling on his hands and knees toward Alene. She could see the torn flesh of his cheek, where Paulo had struck him, hanging down. The water had washed the blood away and there was just a pink gouge of soft skin beneath. He reached out and grabbed a handful of her peach dress by the bottom, “Please don't bury me in the garden,” he begged.

  Paulo laughed and brought the poker down on the old man's back, producing a sickening snap as his spine broke.

  All the air left the old man's lungs at once. Alene backed away, but the old man kept crawling toward her, dragging himself to her with his hands and forearms. “Please, don't bury me in the garden,” he repeated, wheezing, looking up at her with mad eyes, still piercing despite the light slowly leaving them.

  “We are gonna bury you in your garden, abuelito,” Paulo crooned behind him, “plant you just like a fuckin' bulb.” He laughed again and swung the poker like a golf club, smashing it into the old man's head. The old man rolled over, face-up in the shallow water and Paulo raised his arms above his head and brought the fiWith poker down in an arc, again and again.

  Alene couldn’t watch. She turned away with her hands covering her eyes, but there was nothing she could do to ignore the awful sound of Paulo hammering away at the old man's skull; the splash in the water, the dull smack of something unyielding colliding with something infirm.

  And then it was over. Paulo threw the fiWith poker down, flexing his fingers, making fists and then releasing. He was breathing heavy and there were spatters of blood all over his face.

  He caught his breath, “I'm going out to the shed, get some stuff. I'll be back,” he said, showing no more emotion than if he had just chopped a pile of wood. He left the room.

  She didn't want to look, but some morbid impulse deep within got the better of her. She stood over the old man, looking down as a cloud of blood swirled into the water. His head was submerged just up to his ears, his pulverized face sticking up like some horrible island. She half-expected his eyes to fly open, he would grab her and pull her down screaming, “Don't bury me in the garden. Please don't bury me in the garden.” But he didn't, of course. He was dead.

  Paulo came back. He leaned a shovel against the wall and and held up a pair of hedge clippers. He gave her a feral smile that was all teeth and no good humor and threw the clippers down in the water by her feet. “Start with the head, then do the hands. And hurry the fuck up, 'cause we're leavin' real soon. I gotta go dig a hole.”

  “Why?” Alene asked. “I don't even think-”

  “Just do what I fuckin' tell you to,” Paulo said. “No question. Just do.”

  Alene watched him turn his back and walk away.

  She fished around in the shallow water and found the hedge clippers. She looked down at the corpse. This doesn't make any sense, Paulo, she thought. Why take his head and hands? Do you think they won't be able to identify the body? It's buried in his own front yard for Christ’s sake. But still... she would have to do it. She didn't want to think about what Paulo would do to her if she didn't.

  She pulled the body up, trying to decide the best way to go about it. At first she tried to sever his head all at once, just cut right through it under the jaw. She didn't even break the skin. She eventually had to plunge one blade into his neck and bring the other blade down to cut away the skin and muscle. She cut a ragged circle around the circumference of his neck, sawing through the thick tendons with the edge of the blade. When she got to his spine she had to hack through it, using the hedge clippers like an axe. She wasn't able to cut all the way through, his spine was like a frayed rope at this point. She ended up having to pull the head with her foot against his shoulder to separate it completely. The spinal chord gave way with a faint snap.

  The hands came a little more easily. She propped the old man's body up and laid his arm across a chair. She found the fiWith poker and smashed his wrist bones to pulp and then cut through them with the hedge clippers. It took her as long to do this as it took Paulo to dig the hole.

  He came back in, covered in mud, looking exhausted; except his eyes, Alene thought. Those eyes could stare for days and never blink.

  Together they dragged the old man's mutilated corpse out to the garden. Where the garden used to be. The storm had uprooted every flower, stripped every bush. All around them branches lay scattered amidst the muddy field. The ugly statues had been turned over, they were all half-buried in the mud. The charred willow tree had collapsed into the fountain, reducing it to a scatter of broken bricks when it fell.

  They rolled the old man over the edge of the grave, his body splashed down into the cold brown water. Paulo took the old man's head and set it on a mound of wet earth (so he can watch) and they began to fill in the hole.

  When they were done, they looked down at the patch of ground with the old man beneath. It looked a little smoother than the rest of the former garden's odd dips and shallow craters filled with rainwater, but they didn't think it was noticeable.

  They stood for a moment, letting the rain clean the mud from their bodies. Paulo gathered the old man's head and hands and walked away. Alene followed him.

  They walked around to the side of the house where the driveway ended. Paulo led the way to the carriage house with the dual garage doors. He opened one and they went inside. Paulo reached up for a pull chain dangling above his head. The lights came on to reveal a dusty garage that smelled faintly of oil and gasoline. There was a dingy blue tarp stretched over a car. Probably something from the 30's, thought Alene. I just hope it runs.

  Paulo peeled the tarp back and Alene was surprised to find it was covering a cherry, black BMW, still polished to a high shine, that couldn't have been more than two years old.

  “He never even drove the fuckin' thing,” said Paulo, digging around in the pockets of his tuxedo pants. “Not even once.”

  A minute later the BMW tore out of the carriage house and down the drive.

  He didn't mind the rain. He had a big yellow poncho that reflected the beam coming off his taillights as he opened the trunk. The lid raised up and the smell of decay wafted into the damp air around him. He kept the shovel on top of the carcasses heaped inside. He reached for it.

  The trunk was filled with the flattened remains of animals he had scraped off the road. There were mashed dogs and crushed kitties, piled together with squashed armadillos, and towards the back, barely visible, was the slim, rotting arm o
f a child, the rest of him buried under an indistinguishable mound of roadkill.

  Gonna have to do something about that, he thought. I'm near full up.

  He took the shovel around the front of the cruiser. It was a possum. Damn things were a nuisance; fuckin' idiots wandered into the road and when a car came along they'd just stare down the headlights, until: SMACK! No more possum. The car keeps rolling along, feeling no more than a slight bump in the road. Shit. Maybe they want to die. I'd probably wait in traffic too if the Lord made me a giant fucking rat.

  The shovel scraping against the asphalt had to be his favorite sound in the world. Something about it just made his dick twitch. He got the possum up in one scoop and started to carry him to the trunk.

  Then he saw the BMW speed past him close enough to make his poncho shiver in the resulting rush of wind.

  He tipped the shovel over, letting the possum smack down on the road and he hurried into his cruiser, struggling to wedge his fat ass between the seat and the steering wheel.

  He smiled to himself, flipped on the red and blue overhead lights and took off after the BMW.

  “Shit,” said Alene, from the passenger seat of the BMW as the flashing lights behind them began to fill the interior.

  Paulo slowed the car down to pull over, “Just relax. That fat fuckin' hillbilly don't know shit.”

  “Relax?” Alene was frantic, searching the floorboard and then the backseat. “Where the fuck is his head, Paulo? What did you do with it?”

  “It's in the trunk,” said Paulo. “You better calm the fuck down. I'm in control. I'm controlling all this, not him. You understand?”

  Alene faced the front and nodded her head slightly as the car pulled off to the shoulder and Paulo shifted into park. The cop car, sirens blazing, pulled up behind them.

  A bright flashlight beam penetrated the window as the cop's fat frame eclipsed the view from the driver side. Paulo ran a hand back through his wet hair, straightened his drooping bow tie and cracked the window.

  “Night of the goddamned driving dead,” the cop bellowed over the downpour. “What the fuck are you doing on my road, boy? You makin' a run for the border?”

  Paulo held up a hand to shield his eyes from the blinding flashlight, “No candy for you in here, fat man. Whatever you thought you were smelling, it ain’t here.”

  The flashlight beam moved over Alene, who was still staring straight ahead, wondering how long she would go to prison for, what state she was in, and if it had the death penalty.

  “Something awful sweet in there, candy or not,” said the cop. “Where'd you get the beemer, Pancho? You get this from the old man? He know you're takin' this little girl here for a ride?”

  “Why don't you ask him,” said Paulo.

  “I'm sure he'd love to know what his gardener gets up to at night in his car,” said the cop.

  “I'm sure he'd love to know anything anymore. I bashed the fuckin' brains out of his senile skull and stuck him in the trunk.”

  “No!” Alene shouted. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Paulo reached down and hit a button below his seat and the trunk came open with a metallic thump.

  “Go ahead, take a look if you don't believe me.”

  The cop glanced at the open trunk and turned back to Paulo, “Stay right where you are. Playin' some fuckin' game with me,” the cop muttered.

  Paulo took his hands off the wheel and displayed them for the cop in a gesture of innocence, “No game. Go and see for yourself.”

  The cop walked around to the rear of the vehicle.

  “Seriously, what is the fucking plan here, Paulo? We are so fucked right now and you don't even care,” said Alene.

  “I told you to shut up,” said Paulo. “I'm the one in control here.”

  The cop stared down into the open trunk, shined his flashlight inside. “Shit.” He spat tobacco onto the rain-drenched highway.

  “Shit,” he said again.

  And then the night lit up around him in an explosion of red as the car's brake lights came on.

  “Goddamn, he's making a run for it,” thought the cop, as the car shifted gears.

  The taillights flared an even brighter red as Paulo slammed the car into reverse.

  He heard the tires squeal, briefly, spinning on the wet road, before the car slammed into him.

  The rear bumper hit him in the knees, causing him to fall down on his ass with his legs beneath the car. He held on to the car through the backside of the open trunk to keep the car from driving over him. Paulo floored the accelerator and the cop was dragged through the small space of road between the two cars, leaving a long red smear of blood and skin on the black asphalt.

  The BMW stopped dead with a neck-snapping jolt as the bumpers banged together.

  The impact crushed the cop's chest, driving his sternum into his spine with enough force to stab shattered ribs out the back of him.

  Paulo eased the car forward and watched the cop slump over in the rear view.

  “Wonder who's gonna scrape him off the road,” he laughed. He turned to Alene, who was on the verge of hyperventilating, repeating “ohshitohshitohshitohshit,” like a mantra. Paulo snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Hey, listen to me.” She looked up at him. “Go shut the trunk so we can get out of here.”

  Alene swung the door open and stepped out of the car, feeling the shock wear off. She walked around the to the trunk thinking: as soon as I get the chance, I'm going to kill him. If I don't, if I see an opportunity and don't take it, I'm dead. Dead or in prison. Paulo had lost his mind completely, killing police officers on public highways and not even bothering to cover it up. It wasn't a question of if they will be caught now, it was a question of how soon. I just wish to Christ I knew where we're going. She touched the cup of her bra, where she had been keeping her small fold of bills ever since she had convinced Paulo to kill the old man- she didn't know when she would have to leave in a hurry. Like tonight.

  She reached up to pull the lid of the trunk down and stopped. The cop had dropped his flashlight inside when Paulo drove the car into him, and the beam was turned on the old man's head. It hardly looked like him any more, the bones in his face had been smashed giving him the look of an amorphous caricature from a first-time sculptor. One of his ocular cavities had been bashed in and the eye looked ready to roll out. But that's not what gave Alene pause; it was his mouth, hanging open in an eternal yawn. His toothless maw was full of what looked like moss, or some kind of green mold growing all over the insides of his cheeks and covering his tongue. She looked closer and saw it was sprouting little tendrils, like miniature vines budding, not even a quarter of an inch long. She looked at his hands and discovered the same green mold growing under his fingernails. There was a brown roach-like insect crawling out of the old man's mouth, and then another, scurrying over his lips. Fucking weird. Is this what happens when we die? Does all the bacteria and shit start to reproduce instantly like that? Or maybe it's-

  Paulo laid on the horn and she jerked her head up and banged it on the underside of the trunk lid. “Let's fuckin' move, girl. This is a crime scene, lets roll the fuck out.”

  Alene slammed the lid down and got back in the car.

  They didn't drive far. Paulo turned into the first motel they came to.

  They were sitting in the car in the motel parking lot, under the buzzing neon sign that said: ACNY, Paulo reached for the door handle when Alene said, “Wait.” He froze. “What's our story?”

  “What story?” Said Paulo.

  “Like what do we say to avoid suspicion. We're traveling salesmen, or newlyweds from Omaha. Something like that? You know? Our story.”

  Paulo thought for a minute, “Okay, our story is: We're two people who want to sleep in a shitty motel. How's that? Sound believable? Now get the fuck out of the car.”

  The night manager was some bored, greasy-haired kid in his early twenties, staring blankly at a little TV behind the desk. It was playing one of those late-ni
ght infomercials for a Jack Lalanne juicer. He noticed them but didn't move.

  Paulo rang the bell to get his attention. He turned slowly to face them, displaying a name tag that said “Dobbs.”

  “Yeah?” He said.

  “We need a room. A single.”

  The kid yawned, “Major credit card, or if you're paying with cash, I'll need to see a driver's license.” He looked them over as if seeing them for the first time, Paulo in his skin-tight tux and Alene barefoot in her ugly ball gown, both soaking wet.

  “We just came from a wedding,” Alene started to explain, “in...” She forgot that she didn't know what state they were in. Stupid. “...a church,” she finished.

  “Cool,” said the clerk. “Major credit card, or if you're paying with cash I need to see some ID.”

  Paulo dug around in his pocket, pulled out a credit card and slid it across the desk.

  That's gotta be the old man's. Paulo, how can you be so fucking stupid?

  The clerk looked at Paulo's face, all dark sores and crusted skin. He pulled a tissue from a box on the desk and used it to pick up the card. He swiped it and slid it back across the desk, along with a room key.

  “15,” the clerk said. “If you need any extra towels, they're out at the laundry, so make what's in there last 'till in the morning. I'll bring them by.” They walked out of the office and the clerk swiveled his chair back around to watch his infomercial.

  Paulo gave the room key to Alene and went to drive the car around to the parking space in front of their room. Alene hurried inside and shut the door behind her.

  It's gotta be tonight. Tonight while he's asleep, Alene thought. She searched the room for a weapon, something she could end his life with relatively quick. She opened the drawers of the low dresser with the TV on top. Nothing. A fucking bible and a book of coupons for local restaurants, the rest were empty. She pulled the thick curtains apart to look out the window, she saw taillights as Paulo backed the car into the parking space. She turned back to search the room. There was a TV remote, a little plastic bucket for ice, a stack of plastic cups. Fuck. There wasn't even a lamp, just light fixtures mounted to the wall on either side of the bed. Not much in the bathroom, plastic shower curtain rod. Maybe she could poison him with a little bottle of shampoo. She lifted the lid of the toilet tank. Heavy. This could do it. She set it back down. There was a little hair dryer mounted on the wall by the sink outside. If she could detach the cord, maybe she could strangle him with it.