by S. A. Austin
He sliced the air with his arm. “C’mon over.” He was as happy to see her as he was not.
Jacob scanned her, head to toe. Mud-colored brown eyes. Plump cheeks, always pale and sweaty. Frizzy shoulder-length curls held in place above each ear with a claw hair clip matching her red hair and dress. White ankle socks, black buckle shoes.
Hadn’t changed one bit.
He turned toward the house. Heard her trotting to catch up.
At the rear of the house he opened the screen door with one hand, turning the knob and pushing in the interior door with the other. Stepped back pulling the screen door with him. It squeaked loudly, reminding him of the box springs on his parent’s bed. He nodded, impatiently, at the open doorway for her to go in.
Kelly waited near the kitchen table.
Jacob’s eyes lingered on her big tits.
Oblivious of his actions, she took in the room with genuine interest.
He came closer, bent down and kissed her. Grimaced with revulsion, wiped a string of her saliva off his mouth with his shirttail. She opened her eyes. When she smiled he tried but failed to give her one in return.
“I am so happy you’ve come home, Bernard Jacques Wentzel,” she gushed. “I have missed you sooo much. Good golly, you’ve grown into such a pretty boy. I’m a little embarrassed to tell you this, but I’ve been watching your house for a long time, hoping and praying you’d come back to me, er, umm.…” She focused her attention on an old key hanging on the wall.
An image of Eli and Vanessa popped into his mind. He speculated about when she had started spying on him. What did she know, and how soon did she know it?
Jacob rubbed a hand down his face. Debated about asking her.
“Okay, I’m ready to give myself to you.”
“Huh?” The offer sunk in. He stared at her. Vanessa’s the only girl he’d ever had sex with for free. He became aware of what a daring thing it was he’d done that day. Just then, something else occurred in Jacob’s mind. He had the whole house to do the things he used to fantasize about in the secret place in the attic.
Kelly appeared to be looking at humidity damage to the buckled wood flooring. He turned her back to him. Unzipped her dress, curious what he’d find under the baggy thing. Even more curious why she’d worn it. Was it one of Mama’s? He let go. The dress fell like a heavy stage curtain, blowing dust across the floor.
A beached whale, was his first impression.
Her body had a meaty, spongy look to it. Stretch-marked rolls of blubber swallowed up the wide elastic waistband of her white cotton granny panties.
A willing partner, was a more favorable view.
Clad only in panties, socks, and shoes, she had to step out and over her dress and bra before going any further. A foot got tangled in a bra strap. She almost tripped and fell. Red-faced, she sat down, slid her foot under the table to hide the bra.
Jacob rolled his eyes, reached into the cupboard next to the radio on top of the refrigerator, and brought down a full pint of whiskey and a shot glass. He blew in the glass a couple of times to remove most of the dust. Poured enough liquor to fill it near the rim. Handed her the glass.
He drank from the bottle. Listed in his mind the things he wanted to do to her. Stuff he had secretly watched his papa do to his Marie on the couch in the living room. Not enough to where he couldn’t get Kelly to come back, of course. He also didn’t want to frighten her. The last thing he needed was for her to blab to her parents, or to the police, about him.
As always, keeping a low profile was essential.
They remained at the table until they had consumed no less than five shots apiece, he guesstimated. He worked on her, trying to raise her level of passion, whatever the hell that was. Jacob unintentionally dredged up repressed scenes of the stuff a couple of older boys endeavored to teach him about sex, back when he was incarcerated in the county jail.
Sitting close together with their chairs slightly angled, he played with her breasts, squeezed and rubbed them as the thrill of it all shot to his groin. She moaned, softly. He jumped up so fast he made her tip back, nearly spoiling the mood.
He led her to Papa’s bedroom.
She removed the rest of her clothing.
He shoved her backward onto the bed.
Several minutes later, she screamed loud enough to wake the dead.
He knew he’d hurt her, but he was too far gone to give a shit. Did he want to humiliate her like his mama had done to him? He didn’t know. He was too drunk to think straight. After grunting to a climax, he quickly moved away from her. Rolled onto his side, turning his back to her. Stuck his thumb in his mouth.
* * *
Jacob awoke with a start. Lightning flickered on the ceiling. No sound of thunder yet.
Is it still Friday? He lifted his arm to check the time. Four... thirty-five? He wasn’t sure. A locust was in the way. Locust? He swatted it with his hand. Sat up gradually, becoming aware he had ended up on the floor somehow. He turned his head to the side.
“Gah!”
Jacob scampered backward on his bottom, scrambled to his feet. Pacing the room, he tried not to look at her. Kept doing it anyway.
Slashed from ear to ear, she lay on her back in a pool of blood. The remaining locusts still feasting on flesh and what appeared to be wild honey had eaten parts of her face down to the bone. The gaping hole in her neck coupled with the empty eye sockets transformed her face into a hideous Halloween mask.
He rubbed a hand down his cheek, came away with a bloody palm. Stared at his open hand, unsure what to do about the sticky mess. He glanced down. Blood spatter. Largely on the front of his naked body. He needed a shower but the water had been disconnected, along with the electricity, years ago after the property was declared abandoned.
Damn, how many drinks did I have?
He snatched the thin beige blanket off the bed. Wiped as much of the blood off of him as possible. Got dressed. Spread the blanket over her. Rolled her up inside, bugs and all.
“Whoa. Where’s the knife?”
His gaze encompassed the room in one turn. He looked under the bed. The closet. Sprinted to the bathroom in the hallway. A fast look in the sink, toilet, tub, and the linen closet.
“Goshdarnit.”
Jacob skipped the other rooms on the second floor, certain it’d be a lost cause since all the doors had remained closed. Disregarded the third-floor attic for the same reason.
In the kitchen he kicked over the trash can. Nothing spilled out. Inspected the sink, and the pantry. Not there or any damn where. Knowing it’d be a waste of time, he went outside and circled the house anyway.
Not sure what else to do, he brought her glass and the empty whiskey bottle to his car in the tall weeds at the back of the barn.
CHAPTER 7
Jacob sat on the floor with his back to the wall in the partially furnished living room. Most of their belongings had been sold over the years to help pay bills. Lighting a cigarette, he raised his eyes to the seascape, still hanging to one side. The wavering heat of the flame momentarily put the pirate ship in motion. He could see himself standing on the deck all decked out like a buccaneer. Aye, matey! Reflected on why the oil painting, that didn’t match anything, hadn’t also been sold?
When the sun disappeared behind low and dense clouds, he collected the cigarette butts from the ceramic soup bowl he’d used for an ashtray, and put them in his shirt pocket. For some odd reason he wanted to bring the bowl outside to dump the ashes. A gust of air blew them in his face. Imagining them being the cremated ashes of Kelly Murphy, his knee-jerk reaction caused him to drop the bowl, shattering it to pieces. He kicked the smallest ones under a nearby shrub.
Ran into the house and up the stairs.
There she was, exactly where he’d left her. He clutched a handful of the blanket, dragged her out of the bedroom. When he reached the stairs, he centered her on the top step. Shoved her downward. Strolling along with her as she bobbed toward the foyer, he thought about
putting her in his car and driving to the pond.
Changed his mind after she landed facedown, showing him how much of her blood had seeped through the blanket. He laid her outside on the ground. Clambered up the stairs to his papa’s bedroom, and changed the location of the bed to hide the bloodstained floor.
In an instant, it felt as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.
Spooked, he got the hell out of there.
Tossing things around in the trunk of his car he found a rag and a spray bottle of window cleaner. He stripped naked, saturated the cloth and washed off the rest of the blood. No choice but to leave his skin feeling yucky, he quickly dressed.
Starting in the foyer, he cleaned up any blood spots he found as he climbed the stairs.
Jacob rushed to the barn to fetch a few things. Loaded them in the wheelbarrow. The tire was going flat but it was still functional. He picked her up, placed her on top of the other items. Lifted the wood handles too fast and almost pulled a muscle. He readjusted his grip. Papa’s old rusty wheelbarrow tilted sideways with so much weight. Every few steps he had to stop long enough to catch his breath before maneuvering the wobbly tire over molehills and furrows.
The sky had gotten darker and the wind had picked up speed by the time he reached the water’s edge. Lightning whitened the horizon. A deep rumble of thunder soon followed. He plunked down the wheelbarrow, dashed to his car to get the flashlight he’d forgotten. Considered hiding the largest pieces of the soup bowl in the trunk.
Bad idea. He made a list in his mind of the things that needed to disappear without a trace.
On the way back to the pond he had a feeling somebody was watching him. Jacob fooled himself into believing it was just a guilty conscience.
Keeping her body wrapped in the blanket so he didn’t have to look at her face again, he fastened a burlap sack full of rocks to her ankles with three feet of baling wire wound tight. Placed a heavy rock in another sack along with the things that needed to vanish: empty spray bottle, bloody rag, shot glass, whiskey bottle, chunks of ceramic, her clothes, shoes, and one of two red claw hair clips.
He paused for a second. Was she wearing any jewelry? His mind flashed to her standing in the kitchen near the table. “Nope. She wasn’t.” He secured the bag around her neck. “Whoa.” With such a deep neck wound he figured before long she’d be decapitated, her head floating to the surface for everybody to see it. He hastily undid the wire, even though no one but him seemed to have found the salesman’s skull and bones. Firmly fixed the sack to her legs.
He rowed his papa’s boat to the middle of the large pond where dark green scum floated on the surface and mosquitoes multiplied by the millions. Ignoring feelings of remorse, he dumped her overboard. Stared in morbid fascination while her body sank below the surface. Nickel-size raindrops pelted him, bringing him back to reality.
“Ah well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
* * *
Windshield wipers thumping at their highest setting, Jacob Wentzel drove in a torrential downpour on his way to his apartment in downtown New Orleans. He only stopped once, just long enough to order fast food at a popular hamburger joint. The place wasn’t very busy for a Friday night, and that suited him just fine. Anxious to get home, he was unconcerned with the little globs of special sauce dripping on his wet shirt.
He threw the trash in the dumpster. Sprinted to the building, heavy rain plastering his hair to his forehead. He unlocked his door, leaped over the threshold. Instantly sensed the tension draining out of him. His comfortable, modern, third-floor apartment was a whole other world from the very old and dilapidated farmhouse.
Jacob paused before the coat closet in the hallway to admire his new uniform neatly arranged on a wooden hanger on a J-hook screwed into the door.
He had spent four long years in the Army. Four more years in a college mostly paid for by the government. Fresh out of the police academy, he may have graduated at the bottom of his class but at least he did graduate.
He tapped the button on the coffeemaker in the kitchen. Scooped the soggy cigarette butts out of his pocket and threw them in the trash. Undressed in the bathroom. A hot shower stopped him from shaking with chills. He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Slipped his feet into a worn pair of suede sheepskin moccasins. Raked his hair with his fingers.
Carrying a cup of hot coffee, he headed to the spare bedroom he’d converted to an office. Booted up his computer. Logged on to his favorite chat room. Eagerly searched for Suite Sue.
Compared to Kelly, Sue knew how to make him feel manly.
CHAPTER 8
Sometime between twilight and early morn BJ Donovan realized she’d had enough chat room nonsense to last her for a while. “At morn, at noon, at twilight dim....” she whispered, channeling Edgar Allan Poe, an ingenious and profound writer whom she greatly admired. She’d also grown weary of waiting on a response to an email she’d sent earlier. Yawning, she rolled her chair away from the desktop computer in her writing room (aka the study). Stood and stretched.
BJ went downstairs to the kitchen. Refilled her coffee mug. Wandered out onto the patio facing the back yard, and marveled over the sunny Saturday morning she was missing.
The only reason she was even home was because she couldn’t go to work. To her dismay she’d been unable to open Wild Capers, her surprisingly popular Italian restaurant in the French Quarter. Last night’s severe thunderstorm had caused widespread power outages across the French Quarter and some of the other neighborhoods surrounding New Orleans. She tried not to think about the food spoiling in the freezer or the eerie silence of the slip printer.
She set the steamy mug on the white wicker table beside her favorite chair. Extended her arms to the angled roof over the patio to get the kinks out of her back. Breathed in the fresh and fragrant aroma of wildflowers. At least the storm helped cool the air and lower the humidity. For now. Storms usually made the atmosphere hotter and stickier.
She followed a redbrick trail to the far side of the grassy and blossoming yard. The water in an acrylic birdbath, the previous owners of the house had left behind, had turned a dark shade of green. Bits of tree debris floated on the surface. BJ reckoned the stagnant water was most likely a haven for mosquito larvae.
She shoved the thing over with her foot. The slimy mold-green coating remaining inside the bowl reminded her of something, or someplace.
Whichever, the gunky water gave her an inkling of a story idea.
She grabbed her mug, and rushed upstairs.
BJ opened the BOOKS folder on her computer. Then the file marked MISC she used to keep track of plot ideas, character names, and other miscellaneous whatnots for her unpublished short stories about the misadventures of a sous chef turned amateur sleuth.
Unpublished. That was the keyword.
Harboring ambitions to be a successful author she had made the decision to write a book.
The first standalone mystery novel she started writing, The Angry Mourner, was based on a strange occurrence that happened a few years ago when she was a part-time telemarketer for a funeral home. Her hours were 4-8 PM. The office she worked in was nothing more than a singlewide trailer set up on the back side of Bald Cypress Cemetery. Instead of up front by the road where my car was parked, she recalled with a shudder, also remembering having to walk past graves where moonlight shining on thin branches of honey locust trees swaying in a light breeze created living shadows on the headstones.
October 31, her last night there, and she was the only employee to show up. Three hours into her shift she heard a faint noise at the back of the trailer where a few burial vaults and grave liners were stored. She peeked out the mini blinds on the rear window. A semi-transparent layer of fog swirled around the mossy statue of a guardian angel before continuing on a steady course toward the trailer. Inching closer to the window—
The honk of a horn made her jump. The mental picture exploded into a million tiny shiny pieces then dissolved int
o blackness. She walked over to the window, glanced down. The boyfriend of the girl, who lives in the house across the street, moseyed around to the passenger side of his car. Finished drinking a beer, lazily pitched the bottle onto the back seat.
BJ forgot how she intended to use gunky water in the story. She snorted, angrily. Closed the file. Scrolling past the spammy junk in her email, a real message appeared. It was a response to the email she’d sent to Mister Mystical, her favorite online lover. The very response she’d spent most of the morning waiting on. She had asked him for his real name, city, and state.
Gnawing her bottom lip she glimpsed at the open door of the study. Tiptoed to the stairway. Listened to the stillness of the old Victorian house in the Garden District, untouched by the storm. She tread softly all the way to the interior garage door in the utility room, and pressed her ear against the hollow wood.
Her husband, Frank, was busy tinkering with whatever it was he tinkered with in there.
She returned to her computer. Read Mystical’s email. Deleted it. Brought up the file for her current work-in-progress, just in case Frank comes upstairs. She wished she was able to relax, but some of the things Frank said to her last night had stayed with her.
BJ had a sip of coffee, stared at the keyboard, idly glided her thumb across the smooth surface of the large red and black mug with a silver trim.
Using a catchy screen name and avatar, many men, and women, were drawn to her chat room persona. Those faceless and voiceless people on the internet, so eager to please, so eager to be wanted, were nothing more to her than background information to construct lovable, and sometimes hateable, characters.
She made note cards on everyone’s description of his or her life and appearance. Switched things around enough to where they wouldn’t recognize themselves in her stories thereby protecting her own true identity.