Look, if you really want to know, it was all that fat fuck Samuel’s fault. And before you get on my case about how “that’s not very nice,” and “you shouldn’t talk about your friends like that,” let me assure you that a) you can fuck right off, b) Samuel and I were never friends, that’s abundantly clear now, c) I didn’t come up with that particular description (Perry, over in accounting, did) and d) I’m pretty sure I’ve earned the right to be goddamn bitter after everything I’ve been through.
The call came through at three in the morning. I’d been working graveyard at Henderson’s Cattle Co, a ruthlessly efficient slaughterhouse-slash-meat-packing-plant in a nothing town, for the past four months. It was the sort of company that attracted dropouts and burnouts and molded them into beacons of adult responsibility and productivity. Unless you worked in the packing department, where both Samuel and I were stationed, a position that labeled us replaceable rungs on an already shaky ladder.
If the name on my phone’s screen has been anyone other than Samuel’s, I’d have hung up, but back then I was still blind, prone to pity because nobody at work much cared for him. He had an odd way about him, that was the thing. It wasn’t just his appearance, though that certainly didn’t help—he had food crammed in the corners of his mouth more often than not, bulging eyes reminiscent of a thyroid disease, and perpetually stained polo shirts pulled tight over his generous belly—but rather the way he kept to himself while, somehow, always making his presence known.
Shelby, the woman who ran the janitorial department, pointed it out one morning while we chatted over our (pre-shift for her, end-of for me) coffee.
“He’s staring again,” she said, having trailed off from a story about her husband’s torn ACL and the softball match that made it so.
“Who?”
“Samuel.” She said his name like it left a bad taste in her mouth, and when I turned around, sure enough, there he was, sitting across the room with a sandwich and a drink, chewing slowly, thoroughly, his jaw moving in so wide an arch it reminded me of a cow working over a mouthful of cud, watching us. “He never even blinks. It’s so unnerving.”
“He’s not so bad. I think he’s, like, just not great at social stuff. Guys here give him a hard time.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“Sure, yeah. I mean, kind of.” I talked to him as much as one could talk to him. Samuel wasn’t the sort to share his feelings about Sunday night football or what his obnoxious neighbors had been up to over Labor Day weekend. Ask him a question and you were likely to receive silent, bug-eyed staring. Or, if you were lucky, a monosyllabic grunt.
But most of my banal co-worker greetings and farewells received aforementioned grunts, which made me feel like he actually liked me a little, and thus a touch of loyalty had blossomed within me.
“I think he’s just misunderstood,” I’d said. “Maybe needs a friend.”
“Yeah,” she said, pulling her cardigan tightly around her, “well, he gives me the creeps.”
After that I made it a point to go out of my way to say hello to him, ask him how the day was going. He never responded, at least not outside of a grunt, but he did start bringing me a fresh cup of coffee whenever my shift was about to end.
“Thanks, man,” I’d say, “for the drive home, right? Gotta stay awake on the road.” And Samuel would say nothing, merely stand there and observe me until I knocked the entire thing back like a shot, at which point he’d nod, satisfied, and waddle back over to his side of the packing plant.
Weird, sure, but were office friendships ever normal?
Anyway, I stared at the name on my phone, groggily trying to recall when Samuel and I had exchanged numbers.
“Hello?”
“Joel, my friend, I’m so pleased you answered. I do apologize for the late call.” The voice that emanated from the speaker was deep, crisp at the edges, sure of itself.
It was not a voice I’d ever have associated with my generally silent, food-stained co-worker.
I blinked a few times in rapid succession, thrown, then flipped my phone over to make sure the name on my screen said what I’d initially thought.
It did.
“I … Samuel?”
“Indeed. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Er, no, I just … wasn’t expecting a call.”
“Nor should you, considering. But I’m afraid it can’t be helped. Are you by any chance free?”
“Free?”
“Free of obligation or prior plans. Having shed the bonds of duty. Available to accompany me on an errand, as it were.”
“I—dude, you sound different.”
“Do I?”
“I mean—yeah. For one, we’ve never even had a conversation before. Like, ever. I’ve never heard you talk. I—is this—is this a prank? Are you fucking with me? Because it’s three in the goddamn morning, and if this is some kind of–”
“It is not a prank, Joel, I assure you. You’re right; I don’t much feel the need to amuse our fellow wage slaves with small talk, but then one can’t very well share their interior world with every mental oyster who exists in their ecosystem, can they?”
“Mental. Oyster.” I rubbed idly at my temple—I was starting to get a headache—and glanced mournfully at my tv, glowingly silently across the living room. So much for a late night of couch-naps and Top Chef reruns.
“Don’t sound so dour, my friend, it’s not as if I’m lumping you in with their lot. I’d hardly have called you were that the case, no?”
“I guess not.”
“Precisely. Now, how do you feel about giving me a ride to Duncan’s place?”
Duncan? Who the Hell was—
“Wait,” I said, startled, “you mean our boss?”
“The manager of the packing plant, yes. I wouldn’t necessarily call him our boss, considering there are several positions above—”
“Right now? You want me to drive you to Duncan’s place right now.”
“That’s the idea, yes.”
“For what, for God’s sake?”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, a sentiment that struck me as rather fucking rude considering he’d called me up to ask for an absurd favor at an absurd hour of the morning, “but my paycheck was short this month, and while I would love to be able to say it doesn’t make much of a difference in my daily life, I fear it does. One must feed their cats and take their medications, after all.”
I softened. I wasn’t struggling as much as many of my friends were, but I wasn’t exactly coasting on easy street, either. “I get that. But can’t accounting fix that for you?”
“Not until next week, and I’m rather in need of it before then. Duncan said if I could simply stop by his house he’d be happy to pay me in cash to get it all sorted.”
“But at this hour?”
“I just spoke to him; apparently he’s something of a night owl.”
I sat up and clicked off the tv, tossed the remote beside me on the couch. “Yeah, all right, man. Where can I pick you up?”
“No need, I’m quite close to your house; I’ll ring the bell when I arrive, and we can set off for Duncan’s house.”
“You’re close to my—” I began, but Samuel hung up before I could finish. “Fuck, guess I better get dressed,” I mumbled.
Only when I pulled on a clean shirt and I heard my doorbell ring did it occur to me to wonder how Samuel knew where I lived.
***
According to Samuel, oddly expert on such matters, Duncan lived a mere thirty minutes away. With anyone else I might’ve chalked that up to good fortune, happy enough to make small talk and get to know one another in the limited capacity that co-workers so often did, but our car ride was mostly silent, if not exactly tense.
He’d brought a coffee and muffin with him, pointedly did not offer to share, and spent the majority of the time gazing out the window as my shitty neighborhood bled into a nicer, more gentrified one, and then finally the tree-lined expanse of roads that signaled we were moving into wealthier territory.
“So,” I said, disrupting the peaceful, albeit uncomfortable silence, “speaking of Duncan, you hear about the shitstorm Shelby gave him the other day? She must’ve ranted at me for a good ten minutes afterwards. Apparently he hasn’t been playing well with the clean-up crew. She said something about her guys coming in with hazmat suits if he didn’t—”
The sentence died the second I glanced in his direction and realized he’d been staring at me, though for how long I hadn’t a clue.
“Do you,” he said slowly, his gaze unrelenting, “ever find it bothersome that our corporate overlords see it fit to pay us so little?”
“Uh. I mean, yeah, sure, man. Who doesn’t, right?” I laughed, but it was hollow; the intensity of his scrutiny made me want to fidget.
“You’d be able to purchase a better vehicle for yourself if they did. Doesn’t that bother you?”
My car was a piece of shit, of that there was no doubt. A beat up old Chevy, long past it’s Cherry Red days, that had no doubt belonged to somebody’s grandfather before I’d picked it up for just a few grand. But I kept it clean and in decent working condition, and considering he was the one calling me for a favor, the implication ruffled.
Still, I didn’t much see the point in getting into some bullshit pissing match over it, so I tucked my annoyance under a chuckle and shrugged.
“Ah, you know, I do the best with what I’ve got.”
“No doubt. But one might argue that an employee’s wage is a direct estimation of their value, and considering what it is we do for them, don’t you find that infuriating?”
I glanced over. “Considering what? Seems pretty standard in this day and age, right? Big corporations taking advantage of the working folks. Eat the rich and all, you know?”
He stared at me, unmoving and in such a way a pit of unease began to coil in my stomach. I had to fight to turn my attention back to the road, fix my hands on the wheel. Something old and simian didn’t want me to turn my back on him, and I was reminded of something my father told me years ago, when I was just a kid:
“You know why we see so many shades of green, Joel?” he’d asked. I didn’t. “Back when we were monkeys, it was the only way to spot predators in the trees.”
Finally, after what felt like an eternity but must’ve only been a few seconds, he turned away.
“You don’t know, do you?” he said, voice soft, as if it’d been little more than an afterthought.
“Know what?” Silence. “Know what, Sam?”
“Nothing for you to worry about at this time, my friend.”
“Which implies there’s something to worry about.”
He didn’t turn towards me, but cocked his head, watching the houses we passed through the window.
“I suppose there’s always something to worry about, if you’re in the market.”
Being around Samuel outside of work was ushering in a recurrence of my headache. At work, things were relatively simple. Pleasantries, predominantly mine, and coffee, and then we retreated to our respective sides of the warehouse, busying ourselves with packing whatever rolled down the conveyor belt, loading it onto another and knowing, with the satisfaction of a job decently done, it was shipped off to the local grocery store.
But this was something else. Out here, in the world and and in my car, suddenly cramped and airless, I felt like I was trapped with an unknown and thus unpredictable animal.
I chided myself for the thought, it seemed so unkind—though odd, Samuel had never actually been unkind to me, aside from a jab about my shitty car, and that was nothing, really—and I was just about to drudge up some mindless bit of small talk to ease the guilt when he pointed to a spot on the side of the road just ahead of us and said, “There he is.”
Duncan was a large man, tall and broad with an an athlete’s build that had just started leaning towards soft in late middle age. Decked out head to toe in a polyester track suit, he walked two small white dogs on leashes, both obediently trotting behind him.
They were fucking adorable, for what’s it worth, but Duncan had always given me Former High School Jock vibes, and I very much did not picture him with two tiny, adorable Maltese at his side.
I cracked a smile. “Gotta be honest, if I’d known Duncan had a dog, I would’ve expected something like a Doberman or a Boxer.”
“Hm?” Samuel glanced over, distracted. “Oh. The dogs. Yes, that would be something you’d think about, I suppose.”
Irritation prickled. “Hey, man, I’m starting to get the impression you—”
“Pull over, would you? He’s right there. I just need to talk to him quickly.”
“Fine, yeah, one second.”
I pulled over, the tires noisy on the gravel For the first time, Duncan turned around to look at us over his shoulder, shielding his eyes from the glare of my headlights.
“I’ll only be a moment,” Samuel said, and then he was out of the car and at his full height. I’d never realized how tall he was—it was only when he walked up to Duncan, a mere six or so inches away, that I realized they stood nearly eye to eye.
Something about that made me uncomfortable, although it was a formless unease, nagging at the edges of my thoughts, refusing to define itself.
I turned on the radio to have some distraction, dismayed that the local classics station was playing shit from the 90s—since when did Nirvana qualify as a classic?—and tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, ignoring the lack of rhythm that forever ruined my childhood dreams of any variation of sports stardom.
I didn’t want to spy or eavesdrop, but it was becoming hard to avoid watching the two of them. What at first seemed an amicable exchange devolved into raised voices and florid faces, hands gesturing wildly. One of the little dogs barked, alarmed, and Duncan yanked on his leash.
Whatever it was, this didn’t seem like a calm discussion over a salary mistake. It made me tense, watching it, so I did just about the only thing I could think to do without looking like an overly intrusive asshole: I rolled down my window and leaned my head out.
“Hey, guys?” I said. They either didn’t hear me or chose to ignore me, and the yelling continued. Well, Duncan was yelling, at least. I couldn’t make out what Samuel was saying, though he certainly looked … not agitated, but annoyed. Put out.
“Guys!” This time I raised my voice, drawing Duncan’s attention. He shielded his eyes again, trying to peer into my car, see who the fuck was yelling at him.
That, I’d tell myself later, was unfortunate but not my fault. I’d remind myself of that over and over again, a mantra for the nights the guilt crept up on me.
I’d distracted him, sure, but I had no way of knowing what was coming. How could I?
Duncan’s attention shifted, Samuel pulled something out of his pocket—something I didn’t know he’d had—and shoved it into Duncan’s neck.
I blinked; both dogs barked, alarmed; Duncan’s hands flew to his neck; and Samuel, now composed, withdrew what I now understood was a knife, and thrust it back into Duncan’s neck, over and over again, until Duncan was no longer standing but sprawled, legs kicking, violent and uncontrolled, on the ground below.
“Fuck! Samuel! What the fuck!” I sprinted out of my car and over to them, trying to dodge the furry little bullets running circles around their injured owner. “Samuel, what the everloving Christ are you doing?” I jerked the knife from his hand and stepped back a few paces, staring at him.
He turned to me, placid, almost bovine, except for the sharpness of his gaze; calm and watchful.
“I,” he said, after a moment of silence in which we stared at one another, “may have bent the truth about the origin of our visit.”
“You don’t fucking say. Jesus Christ.” I knelt over Duncan, whose palsied hands pawed desperately—uselessly—at his throat. I gently pushed his fluttering fingers away and held my hands to his neck, trying to find the right balance of pressure that would still allow him to breathe.
“Fuck, man,” I said, voice barely above a whisper. “You’ll be okay. I’ll get you an ambulance, you’re gonna be okay.”
I wasn’t sure if he could hear me. I didn’t know a Goddamned thing about first aid, but it seemed to me there was already more blood outside of him than in—I’d never seen that much spill from a person, even on the worst B-flick the horror industry could churn up—and my hands were slick with it.
“An ambulance would be a very bad idea, Joel,” Samuel said behind me.
“Fuck off,” I snapped. “Just shut up. Where’s my phone? I need my—”
“You need your phone, yes, to play the hero and save our ‘boss,’ as you’d call him. But it’s already too late for that.” Samuel appeared beside me and nudged Duncan with his foot.
No reaction.
“That’s—I still feel a heartbeat,” I said, which was true, though it was weak and I’d already noted the staccato rise and fall of his chest had slowed dramatically. “So there’s still time.”
“There’s not. More to the point, how would you explain that?” He pointed to my right hand, the one still holding the knife I’d ripped away from Samuel.
“What about it?”
“All those fingerprints. On the weapon. On the body.”
I stared at him, stomach knotting up, the first bit of clarity dawning on me. “What are you saying?”
Earlier, in the car, I hadn’t noticed the gloves. I suppose there’d been too many other things going on—the odd presence of Samuel himself, the vague annoyance of driving around a new neighborhood at three in the morning, trying to find an address I’d never been to.
I had no reason to look for gloves, no reason to wonder why, on a moderately warm evening, he’d be wearing them.
Samuel wiggled his fingers in the leather, turning his hand back and forth as if admiring the fit.
“It would be your word against mine, of course. At least at first. They’d likely arrest us both, I’m sure. But then there’s the matter of evidence. Fingerprints. Whose car is parked in front of whose house.”
I glanced back at my Chevy; for the first time I’d noticed we’d parked in front of a wrought iron gate. Behind that sat a house, large and ornate, complete with sprawling lawns. All the lights were off, but they wouldn’t be for long.
“The fuck are you saying, man?”
“Calm yourself, Joel, my intent isn’t to threaten you. Only to explain—”
“What the fuck are you saying?”
“—Why it would be advantageous for you to take a breath and think this through.”
“Fuck you. I’m calling the cops.”
Samuel held his hands up in surrender. “I won’t try to stop you. I’ll only mention that Alan, in human resources, is rather prone to speaking out of turn.”
I froze. Heat crept up my cheeks. “Meaning?” I asked, my voice low.
“I’m a good listener, Joel. An exceptional one, really, though I fear my gifts are wasted at work. Apart from Alan. Alan has a deep appreciation for my abilities. And he wonders—frequently, I might add—why you felt the need to bribe him to avoid a background check.”
“Bullshit. You don’t know shit.”
“It’s not as if I care, Joel. Truly, I couldn’t care less. My God, look at Duncan; does that seem like the end result of a man who cares? Nor do I have any great desire to see you languish in the prison system.”
“But you won’t shed a tear if it comes to pass, if I don’t go along with … whatever this is.”
“Something like that, yes.”
I stared at Duncan’s lifeless corpse. Never had anything against the guy. He was neither the world’s greatest boss nor the worst. But I had an aging Mom to take care of and a warrant I’d fled from and couldn’t afford to have catch up with me, and as much as I wanted to be a Good Guy, the kind of guy my mother tried to raise me to be, the one who made the right choices even when the right choice fucked you in the ass …
Well, sometimes you just needed to be the guy that survived.
“Fine,” I whispered.
“Hm?”
“Fine. What did you want me to do?”
“Help me bury him, of course.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Then why all this? Why all the spectacle and bullshit?”
“I had a theory.”
“…Okay…?”
“One worth disproving.”
I waited for more, but nothing came.
Finally, after a long moment of silence, he looked at the two dogs.
“What shall we do about them?”
“Don’t fucking touch them,” I snapped.
So now I had a dead boss, a deranged co-worker, and two dogs.
Great.
***
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Samuel had everything planned out. Once we had Duncan in my trunk and the two dogs in the backseat—probably the only thing Samuel wasn’t planning for–we drove north to a patch of woods on the outskirts of town.
I unlatched the trunk and sighed. “This is going to be a lot of person to move,” I said, already trying to piece together the logistics. Duncan had to weigh at least two-forty-ish, and I hadn’t been to the gym in a while.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Samuel gestured me over, and we walked a few feet into the treeline. There, leaning against a trunk, half-hidden by the understory, sat a dolly.
I stared at it, bewildered, until finally I laughed, shaking my head.
“And what, precisely, is so funny?” Samuel asked.
“You just—you really had this planned out, huh?”
He let out a long sigh, those unblinking eyes narrowing as much as they could in my direction. I got the impression I’d finally managed to irritate him.
“Don’t pretend to understand what’s happening here, Joel. Just make yourself useful.”
So I did. We left the dogs in the car and hauled Duncan onto the dolly. I pushed our former boss along while Duncan led us through the trees, taking turns here and there, until we rolled straight into a clearing, stopping short of a pre-dug grave and a series of tools.
I laughed again. “Fuck, man, you dug this yourself?”
He cocked a brow. “Who else?”
“I’m just impressed. That’s a lot of work for a man like you.”
His expression didn’t change, but I’d struck a nerve, I could tell that much. The corners of his mouth tightened into something almost resembling a frown.
“Do be quiet, Joel. Thinking isn’t your strong suit.”
“Whatever you say, man.”
“Move his body over here, would you?” he asked, pointing at the patch of dirt next to him. “I need to take care of something before we bury him.”
I moved Duncan to the predetermined spot, and then, per Samuel’s instructions, rolled him off the dolly and onto the ground.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to steal his wallet.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Then what—”
It was a question I really should’ve learned not to ask by that point, but I’d always been something of a slow learner. Took several repetitions for me to really get something drilled into my head. According to my third grade teacher, anyway, who kept bemoaning my inability to learn from my mistakes to my already exhausted mother.
Samuel rummaged through the set of tools he’d brought, metal clanging against itself, until he found what he’d been looking for: a machete.
He stood, had the fucking audacity to smile at me, and then brought it down across Duncan’s neck with a hard thwack.
I startled, in spite of myself, and tripped over my own feet, landing hard on my ass.
“Shit! Is that really fucking necessary?”
“Like I said. A theory worth disproving.”
“I don’t even fucking know what that means.”
“No, of course not.”
Wet work finished, Samuel stood back and hoisted Duncan’s head with him. I turned away, not eager to see a mouth gaping open in horror and eyes rolled back into its head.
“Fuck, man, just do whatever you’re going to do and let’s get out of here.”
He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket, shook it out, and carefully dropped Duncan’s head inside. He sealed it with a twist tie, and tucked it under his arm.
“You’re not seriously taking that thing with you, are you?”
His smile was so indulgent as to be mocking. “Does it matter?”
I wanted it to. I wanted to open my mouth and explain that, yes, it all fucking mattered, every bit of this. That Duncan was our boss, and a pretty okay one at that. I wanted to point to his wedding ring and remind Samuel that this was a man who was loved, who had a wife and two cute fucking dogs and, yeah, I was pretty sure he was also sleeping with Janet over in craft services, but philandering did not a death sentence warrant.
But I was also a blood-covered, guilt-ridden fuck-up in the middle of a thatch of forest with an objectively dangerous man and a now-headless corpse.
So, no.
“I guess it really fucking doesn’t,” I said, and I hated the defeat I heard in my voice.
Samuel considered me, and then the head nestled against his elbow.
“It’s just a piece of him, Joel. Nothing to get so upset about. Like I said: this is all a theory worth disproving.”
“And like I said, I don’t have a fucking clue what that means.”
Samuel sighed. He walked over to Duncan’s body and glanced up at me; clearly under the impression I wasn’t going to be of much further use at this point (he was correct), he rolled the corpse into the grave with his foot, gently placed the bagged-up head on the ground, and strolled over to the nearest shovel.
“You really,” he said through panting breaths, shoveling dirt into the grave, “don’t pay attention to what happens around you, do you?”
“Fuck you. The fuck does that even mean?”
“It means that in a few minutes you can drive yourself home. Walk those dogs you’ve taken such a shining too. Have a drink, or three. Go to bed and show up to work the next day like nothing happened. Go back to your bland, blind life and continue prattling on, oblivious as always.”
The touch of loyalty I’d once felt towards this man had long since fled, but now it hardened into a solid, malignant hatred.
“Go fuck yourself, Sam. I liked you better when I thought you were a fucking moron.”
He stopped shoveling and stared at me, eyes hard, clear.
“Yes, Joel,” he said, slowly, enunciating each word as if trying to ensure I’d understand. “That was the point.”
***
I drove back to my house and left Samuel sitting in my car, staring at me. He’d already known where I lived, and he could steal the fucking car if he wanted to, I didn’t give a shit by that point. Although I did, once I was inside with the dogs, hear a car door slam, so I assumed he got out and made his way home.
Whatever. Fuck him.
I didn’t have any dog food in the house, but the poor things were whining, pacing around my feet, likely nearly as traumatized as I was. I put down a bowl of water and two bowls of beef stew—the only thing I had on hand that I thought might work as dog food—then grabbed myself a beer and flopped on my couch.
Downed the entire bottle in four generous gulps, waiting for the first flush of warmth to hit me.
I stared at my living room wall, vaguely aware of the sound of the dogs eating. Put my empty beer bottle on the coffee table. And then:
“Fuck today.”
I had the absurd urge to bury my head in my hands and cry, but I hadn’t done shit like that since I was a kid, and I sure as fuck wasn’t going to start now.
***
I took the week off. If anyone thought it was suspicious, they didn’t say anything. Nobody even asked if I could afford it, which I couldn’t, but fuck it. I needed the break. I had a television and an Xbox; I could sell those if I really needed to.
The dogs, which I’d named Mickey and Minnie, never having been overly creative in the pet naming department—my childhood hamster was named Hammy, for God’s sake—were sweet and relaxed, once that first night was over. They cuddled with me on the couch and seemed to like playing fetch in my backyard. If they contained any disappointment at the downgrade from their original owner’s palatial home to my shitty duplex in an even shittier neighborhood, they didn’t make it known.
Got some proper dog food, too. I may’ve assisted in a murder and illegal disposal of a corpse, but I wasn’t a total bastard.
I’d been dreading hearing from Samuel for days, yet he never called. Somehow, that was worse. The complete silence drilled in how much every move he’d made had been carefully orchestrated, and how little I truly knew about him.
He’d been pulling the strings, whatever his reason and whatever his end-goal might’ve been, from the get-go.
There were a few times I even thought about calling him, not that I had any idea what I’d say, or even what the point would be. I wanted, I think, to find the ever-elusive feeling of closure, permission to let it all go somehow.
Ultimately, I tried to put it out of my mind. Easier said than done, certainly, but I got a solid three days of effort in. And then Thursday evening rolled around.
I’d fallen asleep on the couch only be startled awake by the dogs going apeshit at something outside. Groggy, I blinked in the glowing haze of the tv and shushed them. They didn’t listen.
“Guys,” I said, “it’s fine. Everybody chill out, it’s like two in the morning.” But they kept barking, incessant, the tone high and alarmed until, finally, I heard it.
It took a second to place it, that sound, really put my finger on what it reminded me of. A hollow thump, like something bumping up against the window.
Which made sense, much to my horror, because I swiftly realized that was precisely where it originated.
A stack of old mail I’d laid on a table next to the living room window shuddered with the force of every thump—they were spaced approximately five seconds apart, and didn’t seem ready to stop—and the table legs creaked with the strain.
“The fuck,” I mumbled, voice low, the sort one uses exclusively for solitary, self-aimed conversation lest they be overheard.
I glanced through the archway into the kitchen; I could just make out the microwave timer glowing green in the dark. 2:17 a.m.
I told myself it was probably just some dumbfuck kids, or maybe a drunk. It wasn’t uncommon to get them in this neighborhood at this hour, the bars eager to shuffle them out before official closing at three.
Probably nothing. Just a standard nuisance. And yet something in me absolutely did not want to reach for the cord and pull the blinds. A bone-deep certainty that I wouldn’t like whatever was on the other side gnawed at me, so much so that I had to force myself—absolutely will myself—forward each step, berating myself for acting like a child the entire way.
But when I pulled the blinds an elevator dropped my heart into my gut. Standing at my window, the barest pooch of a belly thumping into my window repeatedly, was Duncan.
Well, his headless corpse, anyway.
It was like a fish bumping against a fishbowl; I couldn’t tell what it was that he wanted, or if there was even a goal, but he rocked back and forth on his feet and thumped lightly into the glass, reminding me, absurdly, of the bumper cars I used to love.
When I was a kid, my Dad came back from Desert Storm. Wasn’t too much going on back then, it wasn’t the big dust-up like the post 9/11 bloodshed, but still, people got hurt. More than that, people got scared. He used to tell me that it wasn’t uncommon for somebody, usually one of the younger guys, to go out on patrol and come back just a bit different. Nothing had to happen, either, they just locked up real tight, and when they came back they weren’t the same anymore.
They laughed, he said. Laughed all the goddamn time even when there wasn’t anything to laugh about anymore. Eventually they’d be dragged in for a psych eval, and they’d keep on laughing, and some of them—the lucky ones, maybe, or the not-so-lucky ones, depending on how you looked at it—would be shipped back home to their families and their local therapist, laughing all the way.
“It’s the denial,” he’d said. “When the horrible meets the absurd you find yourself terrified, and if you ask me, the only thing to do about that is laugh.” He’d never talked much about his time in the desert, not before he fucked off and ran off with bartender from his local haunt, a 30-something blonde who was always nice to me but didn’t seem to have much interest in marrying a man with a pre-made family, but that was one thing that always stuck with me.
Point is, I laughed. I laughed really fucking hard, so hard my stomach ached, the muscles tense against my frame, though there wasn’t a single thing funny about this.
The man I helped murdered, the one I buried in the woods, was standing at my living room window, bumping up against the glass like a depressed fish at the local aquarium.
“Fuck you, Duncan,” I said through the laughter. “Fuck you, Samuel.” I let the blinds drop, scooped up the two dogs—still barking frantically at the headless remains of their owner—and started walking up the stairs to my bedroom.
Turns out you can do more than just laugh when you’re terrified.
You can pretend the damn thing isn’t happening and go the fuck to bed.
Assuming he didn’t bust in and murder me in the night, this was all a problem for Tomorrow Joel.