PAGE THREE OF THREE
After that, it took a long time.
It was 6 am when the job was done – I had been up for more than two days. But as you understand by now, there would be no sleeping until it was complete. Until I finish hacking Matt’s body into two distinct halves, and rearrange him.
Now, as I write this confession after a full night’s sleep, I can see that I would not get away with this. Prison or suicide awaits me. But in the frenzy of my, no, our condition, we saw this as the only way to prevent my going insane. Would I have found another way if I was smarter?
But once again, as you, dear reader, have reached the final parts of my long-winding story, you know that I am not intelligent.
Back to the story. My brother’s corpse still had his eyes wide open from the moment of his death. His expression appeared to be frozen in alarm despite his quick, peaceful death from the wound on his throat. When I finally stopped weeping, I gathered my wits and picked the meat cleaver off the floor.
Heed this warning, dear reader, as the story is about to get bloodier.
The soft throat – some of the blood was clotting – was the place to start. I placed the blade perpendicular to the horizontal slash across it, and put my weight on it. I heard the windpipe crunch under the force, and more blood oozed out of the wound, colouring the bedsheets a deeper red.
I hardly believed it at the moment, but Matt rolled his eyes right then.
I screamed and dropped the cleaver.
He remained still.
“Matt?” I tried again, fear not overshadowed by hope. I took a step forward and leaned over the bed above him.
It was subtle, but the corner of my brother’s mouth twitched. Like something being defrosted, he struggled to move his features.
Like he was patient with me in the 16 years he spent raising me, I suppressed the impatience borne of sleep deprivation, and let him defrost out of death at his own pace. His eyes and some parts of his mouth and cheek found some movement, and his fingers, already stiff from the lack of life in their joints, wiggled a little.
“Donn…” came a voice from the corpse, hoarse and low. The mouth moved out of sync, but it was fine. It was Matt’s voice.
“Matt!” I exclaimed, “Matt, you’re back!”
His tight lips struggled to crack into a smile.
“Had to help you with this,” he managed, a little easier than it had been, “Shouldn’t have left you like this.”
It took everything not to break down and sob until my lungs gave out. Even in death, my elder brother remained my guardian angel. Even when I was about to mutilate his corpse.
“Saw, silly, not knife.” Matt instructed sweetly, the hint of a smile still on his blood-drained face. I could positively hear love smoothening his hoarse voice like honey.
I dug around in the messy room for the saw. We had a small one, and I didn’t know what it was used for, except it had not been in use for years.
“Kitchen.” Matt’s voice sounded from the bed behind me.
I ran into the kitchen and turned on the light. A sea of roaches dissipated from the floor, scurrying their way into nooks and crannies. I bet it was in the cabinets beneath the sink. Sure enough, there it was among buckets and other old tools, now rusty and a piece of furniture for the rat family living in the cabinet, but a saw nonetheless.
I showed it to Matt. He didn’t react.
“Matt?”
He was dead again.
Matt was right. The saw worked better than the knife. The sharp apex sliced his throat open neatly, and I shoved it deep, until I felt the crunch of the spine. I hoped my brother was proud of me. With renewed fervour overlapping my grogginess, I sawed the tool back and forth downwards, until the chest, the torso, and the waist were all sliced in half. Hours later – probably two or three – the rusty saw, now coated with another layer of iron compounds, rested deep in Matt’s body, like a mad replica of King Arthur’s sword in stone. I sat at the edge of the bed, exhausted. Two areas remained: his “private parts” and his head, the only two intact parts pinning his body together through the growing hole in between. I hesitated, not ready to see the body of my beloved brother open up like a zipper.
Matt spoke again.
“Donnie, it must be done.”
His voice had such heartbreak laced in it, it tugged my heartstrings as well.
“Matt, I’m so sorry…” I started, hot tears filling my eyes.
“Don’t cry,” said Matt, his lips barely moving, but the sentiment clear as day. “Don’t cry, it doesn’t hurt… This is all for the best.”
“I know.” I said. “Just needed a moment.”
He whispered, “I wish I could do it all for you instead.”
I thought of all the times Matt helped me through life. Most of the time, I had remained too weak-willed to manage any hardship, and being unable to bear my turmoil, my brother always stepped up and did the task for me instead.
But not this time.
This time, I must brave it on my own. The fact that he returned from death to talk me through it was already a miracle.
I got up and Matt’s spirit was gone again. Pumped full of determination, I sliced over his penis and testicles, not quite cutting them into a perfect half, but it was done. A few more saws – up, down, up, down – and it was all the way through his tailbone and buttocks. Matt was now longitudinally divided from the neck down. His legs, splayed apart in his final moments, seemed to open further apart with the new position.
Above, his head, the only intact part along his midline, held a blank expression. His dead eyes started into nothingness.
I walked behind the headboard of the bed. His face, upside-down, looked so unfamiliar here. I dug the tip of the saw into the open throat again, and began sawing.
I’m not sure if I imagined it, being in a strange position and all, but Matt seemed to have smiled the very millisecond before the tool cut the smile in half.
Sawing through the skull was the hardest part. It took me more than an hour solely on the head area. I worked, bent over the headboard and working on his face like a mad dentist. By 6 am, the job was done. When Matt’s corpse became two disjointed divisions, the leg on the outer side of the bed slid off from its weight.
That half of Matt’s body was dragged off the bed by the force. It thumped onto the ground with little grace.
I left the saw on the nightstand. The work was done.
I huffed. My body ached from the labour. My clothes and my home were covered in blood and god-knows-what fluids, and smelled like metal. My head was spinning from the lack of rest. I only needed one thing now – the same thing that started me on this whole ordeal, and took my brother’s life.
I heaved the half off the ground and back onto the bed. As per Matt’s last earthly instructions, rearranged him in the exact way he described. He was right – always was.
The rooster next door crowed, and I fell into sleep like the sink into death.
#
I hope these pages find their way to the public. In this long-winded story, I kept the tale (in chronological order) in three pages. This is the final page. Hopefully, I lined up the “schedule posting” correctly – this is my first time with this function.
It has been 5 days since Patrick’s death, and 2 days since Matt’s. With two full 12 hour’s sleep in me, I now see with clarity that the story from my perspective must be told in my own terms, through the bittersweetness of our family’s misfortune, the ugliness of the solution, and the strangeness of the haunting. Both my brothers would have wanted it this way. This letter is both a confession of a crime, and a declaration of love – a love among three brothers.
Oh, here comes the neighbour, knocking on my door again, complaining about the smell. My excuses can only hold her off for so long before she calls the cops. Will it be today? Tomorrow? I surely won’t last a week. I asked Matt for advice the last time she came knocking, but he doesn’t seem to haunt me anymore; not since his body was completely divided. I am on my own now.
She’s gone. I think I should go to bed; catch another bout of sleep before they take me away. With the way I am, I surely wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink in prison.
So, good night, dear reader.
And to Matt and Patrick, wherever you are: I’m sorry, and I love you.
Love,
Donnie
END OF PAGE THREE
<2> PAGES REMAINING IN SCHEDULED PUBLISHING