I saw plenty of animals enter Cyrus’ house, but I never saw any leave. All throughout middle and high school, the guy would catch everything from bugs to squirrels to stray cats from the neighborhood and bring them home. “To take care of ‘em,” he always said, but no one ever believed him. The small animals were the least of anyone’s qualms with Cyrus; the teachers were more concerned with him beating up his classmates and the sheriff’s department was too preoccupied with putting out his fires (both literal and metaphorical).
The issue with Cyrus was that he wasn’t the oafish high-school bully you see in movies; his brand of cruelty was a patient and calculated one. He only picked on lonely kids; he stole exclusively from stores that were already struggling; and he only involved himself with girls with low self-esteem because, in his words, they could be “convinced” into putting out more easily. The younger folks in town knew he was trouble, but he was also charismatic, decently good-looking, and clever. No one could ever pin a real crime on him, and so he was allowed to turn what should have been a charming childhood in an idyllic town into a living Hell.
When the summer before senior year rolled around and Cyrus got a job at the same ice cream store as my girlfriend, I begged her to quit. The shop was so small that there were usually only two employees on shift at a time, and the thought of Lia being alone with that maniac for hours made me sick to my stomach. Lia was reluctant to do so, especially since few businesses in our town were willing to hire minors. Instead of making her give up her job, I decided to apply to work at the shop myself.
Luckily, I was offered the job for the summer. The pay was awful, but it was only three days a week (Friday to Sunday) and I liked the prospect of working alongside Lia. Who wouldn’t want to get paid to sit on their ass and eat ice cream with their beautiful girlfriend? Together, Lia and I signed up to work the 4-to-10 PM shift at Sundae Central, and although I hadn’t planned on working two jobs over the summer, I was still excited. On the first Friday of June, I swung by Lia’s house and drove us to the ice cream shop. I remember thinking hey, this could be a lot of fun, before I stepped into the shop and immediately spotted Cyrus. I gave him a stilted greeting which he answered with a warm smile.
“You clocking out?” I asked.
“Clocking in.” He answered. Lia and I looked at each other.
“Must be some kind of mistake. Lia and I have the 4-to-10. We booked it with Alice weeks ago.”
Just then, Alice, the twenty-something year-old manager of Sundae Central, came bustling out of the backroom. She apologetically explained to Lia and me that there had been a scheduling error; Cyrus could only work the second shift on weekends, and so one of us would have to work the 10-to-4 shift instead. I asked Alice to work something out so that Lia and I could be together, and she promised to look into it. But until then, one of us would have to work with Cyrus. I didn’t want to be stuck with him all season, but I wanted my girlfriend to be stuck with him even less. Begrudgingly, I fished my car keys out of my pocket and handed them to Lia, asking her to pick me up at ten. She insisted on keeping me company for my shift, but I told her to go enjoy the afternoon, and after some back-and-forth, she agreed.
Since Cyrus and I were new employees, Alice spent a few minutes showing us around. The orientation was brief given the straightforward nature of the job, but we did have to learn how to troubleshoot the freezers in the back room. The shop was too small to have its own cold room, and so the back room had two standing freezers. It also had one chest freezer which, to my amusement, had a built-in lock. Alice showed us the location of the freezer keys, but instructed us to keep it unlocked for convenience. It wasn’t as though we were storing anything of value inside. The last thing Alice told us was to be wary of a homeless woman who sometimes begged outside of the store in the evenings and had been known to be aggressive from time to time. After that, she gave us her number for emergencies, and then left me to get acquainted with my new coworker.
For a while, my tactic was to engage as little as possible. I hardly spoke to Cyrus, which wasn’t all that hard considering how busy we were. I learned quickly that he didn’t like being ignored. He’d take breaks at inopportune times so that I’d have to handle a crowd alone, he’d “accidentally” hit my elbow just as I was handing a customer their ice cream, and he was a shit conversationalist, constantly making jokes about racism or assault and then laughing at my discomfort. I thought often about quitting, but if I left, there was a chance that Lia would have to take my place. She was a headstrong girl, and I had no doubt that she’d force herself through a miserable summer as long as it meant adding to her college fund.
“Maybe you can try being friendly,” Lia suggested to me one Thursday evening. We were sitting on her porch swing, her reading a book and me playing a game on my phone. I grimaced at the idea.
“Why would I want to get friendly with a guy like that?”
“Cause you’re in for a real unpleasant time if he doesn’t like you.” I said nothing at this, considering her suggestion. Lia shifted closer to me, resting her head on my shoulder. “I really appreciate you doing all this for me, you know. I’m lucky to have you.” She gave me a kiss, and all of my turmoil was immediately forgotten.
The next day, I took Lia’s advice and tried being more friendly with Cyrus. I was careful not to overdo it—I just started talking to him a little more and smiling at his weird jokes. Surprisingly, it worked. All of a sudden he was bumping into me less and taking fewer breaks, though he was still dead-set on being as morbid as possible. On one quiet Sunday, he came up behind me, wrapped an arm around my shoulder and held a phone up to my face. There was a video playing on screen that made me want to throw up; it featured a man whose skin had been peeled off of his face being tortured while some disco-funk song played in the background. To this day I don’t know what movie that scene was from, and I’m certainly not about to look it up.
After twenty seconds, he lowered the phone and asked me what I thought. I wanted to tell him that he was a fucking weirdo, but hoping that an unaffected demeanor would make him lose interest, I just shrugged.
“I’ve seen worse,” I lied, and Cyrus laughed warmly, giving me a pat on the back as he stepped away.
“I knew I liked ya,” he said.
The weeks trekked on. I finally spotted that homeless woman Alice had warned us about. I had completely forgotten about her, so I was in for quite a shock the first night I left the store and saw her waiting for me outside. She stood in the shadows, just out of reach of the streetlight, and called out to me in a low, hoarse voice. I apologized, telling her I didn’t have any change as I quickly walked past. After that, Cyrus and I would see her every once in a while, staring at us for hours on end from her place in the dark. It was unsettling, but harmless.
By July I had started to almost enjoy the job. The chest freezer had somehow gotten locked and its key misplaced, rendering it unusable, and so we had to make do with the two standing freezers. Aside from that, little ever changed at the shop. I got used to our regulars and their preferences, and in some ways, I even got used to Cyrus. He had calmed down significantly since the beginning of the summer, though he still liked to show me gorey videos. Why he did so I’m not entirely sure. Maybe he thought my reactions were funny or maybe he was just curious to see if I’d ever tell him off. I tried not to let the videos get to me, shrugging or laughing them off each time. “Not your best,” I’d always say, and in return, Cyrus would smile and promise to find me a better one next time. It was annoying, sure, but I figured watching a few disturbing movie clips was a small price to pay for a tolerable coworker.
One Saturday, after I’d been working at Sundae Central for about six weeks, Lia picked me up after my shift and took us out for a late dinner. After an hour, I realized my phone wasn’t in my pocket, and Lia kindly offered to drive me back to the ice cream shop to look for it. I was a little embarrassed, but I took her up on the offer. We paid and drove back to Sundae Central. She parked on the street outside the store and I exited her car into the dark night. I’d never been at the shop so late and was surprised by how abandoned the street looked after all the businesses closed for the day. I opened the front door to the building, turned on the lights, and started looking.
Luckily for me, I had simply left my phone in my locker. I pocketed it and made my way out of the breakroom, happy to have the manner resolved so easily, when I heard a strange thumping sound from outside. There was an alley behind Sundae Central that housed our two dumpsters, and Alice constantly complained about having to chase all kinds of wild animals away from our trash. I decided to investigate the sound so that Lia wouldn’t have to deal with torn trash bags or a squatter family of raccoons in the morning.
I stepped outside. The usual foul odor of the trash was undercut by something faintly metallic. I wondered if I was smelling a rat that had gotten trapped in the dumpster and died, though it seemed as though Alice or someone else would’ve noticed a decaying carcass sooner. Making my way over to the dumpsters, I lifted each lid but found nothing inside but plastic bags and ice cream cartons. I figured I must have scared the animal off, but then I heard another thump and realized that the sound was coming from in between the container and the alley wall. Stupid animal must’ve gotten trapped, I thought. I rounded the dumpster and crouched down, peered into the small space between the dumpster and the wall, and was greeted by a sight I will never forget.
There was a creature there in the dark. It had gaping black eyes and a wide, toothy grin stretched across its face. Pulsing blue veins snaked their way across slick red skin and a deep, warbling sound escaped the creature’s mouth as its teeth clacked open and closed. Two long, thin appendages reached out in my direction, and I realized that the creature was pulling its way towards me.
I ran back to the car like the Devil himself was chasing me, throwing myself inside and yelling at a bewildered Lia to get us the Hell out of there. I called the police as she gunned it down the block, though I wasn’t exactly sure what to tell them without making myself sound insane. I told them that there was some kind of large animal trapped behind our dumpster, and they promised to send someone in the morning to check. Needless to say, I was unsatisfied with this timeline. There was no chance that the creature would still be there in the morning, but what could I say? That I had seen a monster?
Sure enough, a police officer arrived the following morning and found nothing suspicious in or around the dumpster, though I didn’t think the cop was nearly as thorough as he should have been. I could tell Lia was concerned about me. She assured me that she believed my story, but I knew that deep down she was skeptical about what I had seen.
“Maybe it’s Cyrus’ pet monster,” she joked, trying to lighten my mood. “Maybe he feeds the cats to it.”
Despite Lia’s attempts to cheer me up, what I had seen that evening stuck with me in the following weeks. I thought about the creature often, especially when I was alone or in the dark. Sometimes, when on break at Sundae Central, I’d walk into the back room and seek reprieve from the heat by sitting on top of the locked chest freezer. It was always on, which seemed like a waste of energy, but I figured Alice kept it running so that she didn’t have to deal with the trapped ice cream inside spoiling. In any case, I’d often lay on the flat lid of the chest and press my hands into my eyelids. Every time I did so, I could see the face of that creature as clear as I’d seen it on that one fateful night.
Eventually, summer drew to a close. Temperatures cooled and some of the younger kids returned to school, meaning business at the ice cream shop slowed. Before I knew it, I was working my final Friday of the year. There was a town barbeque happening that day, so the shop had been pretty dead all evening. I’d spent most of my shift in the back room, laying on that chest freezer and reflecting on my eventful summer. In a weird way, I was going to miss the shop. I closed and rubbed my eyes as I had countless times before, and then I thought of something I hadn’t considered before. I got off the freezer and walked into the empty front-of-the-house where Cyrus was sitting on a stool behind the counter.
“Hey …” I began tentatively. “Remember that video you showed me? The first one?”
His interest piqued, Cyrus considered my question for a minute. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Can I see it again?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow, you must’ve liked it more than I thought.” He shifted in his seat to pull his phone out of his back pocket. After a minute of searching for the video, he held up his phone, and I stepped closer to get a clearer view of the man on the screen. Of his gaping, empty eye sockets. Of his bare flesh and his angry, pulsating veins. His exposed teeth. His inhuman moans of agony. Suddenly, all of it was very familiar. I had seen a person that night. I had seen a half-skinned person barely clinging to life.
And I had run away.
I tore my eyes from the screen to see Cyrus watching me very carefully. “That doing it for ya?” He asked, and though I hated myself for it, something told me to play along.
“It’s not bad,” I told him. “But I’m still waiting on your best.”
At that, Cyrus’ lips pulled back into an elated, almost manic smile. He hopped off of his stool and walked towards the front of the store. I thought he was about to walk outside before he flipped our “Open” sign to “Closed” and locked the front door. He turned around and walked into the back room, motioning me to follow. Once I joined him in the back, he reached into his pocket and tossed something small and shiny in my direction. Upon inspection, I realized that it was the lost key to the chest freezer.
“Go on.”
Slowly, I made my way over to the freezer I had been laying on just moments prior. I had an idea of what I would find inside, but it did nothing to steady my racing heartbeat. Holding my breath, I unlocked the freezer, lifted the heavy lid, and stared inside.
My monster stared back at me.
“What … What am I looking at here?” I asked, even though deep down I already knew.
“My one-hundredth,” he said nonchalantly. “And my first in some ways, I guess. My first woman. First person.”
He watched my reaction carefully, the same way he had every time he’d shown me one of his gore-videos, and I knew that unless I wanted to end up in that freezer too, I’d have to stay calm. More than calm—I’d have to actively pretend to be into it.
“There’s nothing like it. No animal could ever compare, no matter how big or intelligent.” As he spoke, he reached down into the chest, running his fingertips along the corpse’s icy skin the way one pets an animal in a touch tank. “It was kinda sad, you know—celebrating my big one-hundred alone. But the more time I spent with you, the more I got the sense that we might have similar … interests.”
I forced a smile onto my face. “You saying you’ll let me help with the next one?”
“Well, it’s hard to say no to such enthusiasm,” Cyrus laughed. “I guess you can help with one hundred and one.”
Cyrus started talking about his plans, about people in our town he thought might make a good fit for next time, but I was barely listening. I nodded along, watching his fingers trace over the monster’s features. But really … It was wrong of me to think of them as a monster. They had been a person, a human being, and a month ago, they had been alive. They had lived in my town. They had breathed the same air and watched the same sunsets as I had. I didn’t know their name or their story, but I knew that they had suffered, and that I had failed miserably when I saw them fighting for their life and chose to turn away. It was too little too late, but perhaps there was one small thing I could do for them.
“What is that?” I interrupted Cyrus’ rambling to ask. He stopped talking and came to stand next to me, trying to figure out what I was looking at.
“What’s what?”
I furrowed my brow and pointed at the gaping slit in the corpse’s neck. “That shiny thing in there. Looks like … Maybe a necklace?”
“A necklace?” Cyrus leaned forward, squinting. “I don’t see any—”
I slammed the lid down as hard as I could. It made a sickening crack as it came into contact with his head, and he howled in pain as he began to stumble, thrown off balance by the blow. Taking advantage of his surprise and his disorientation, I shoved him from behind as hard as I could, pushing him into the freezer and locking it shut. I almost didn’t make it in time—even with the concussion I had likely just given him, he very nearly kicked the lid open before I could get the key in the lock. Maybe it was dumb luck or karma or a little help from the other side, I didn’t know. All I knew was that it was over.
I wish I could end my story by saying that the police swept Cyrus away to jail. I wish I could say that he spent a lifetime rotting in a prison cell. I wish I could say that I was hailed as a hero in my small town, as the kid who’d saved countless lives from the hands of a ruthless killer.
But I didn’t go to the police.
After I locked the lid, I stood there with my hands braced on the freezer to keep it from toppling over as Cyrus writhed around inside. As he screamed at the top of his lungs, promising to do things to me that I don’t dare repeat here, I imagined what would happen if I went to the police. What if they couldn’t find enough evidence to convict him? What if they sentenced me instead? What if they let him off with a slap on the wrist and he returned with a thirst for vengeance? There was so much that could go wrong, so many ways that his evil could bleed through the cracks of our flawed legal system. I thought of all the misery he had caused, all the life, big and small, that he had taken, and I made my choice.
I turned the temperature down to its lowest setting, and then I waited. After a few hours, I heard only faint movement from inside. By dawn, I heard nothing at all.
I spent the next day hanging out with Lia while she worked, distracting her every time she swore she heard a thump from the backroom. I worked the evening shift alone, not complaining to anyone when my coworker never showed up. Weeks later, when the police questioned me about this, I told them truthfully that Cyrus was an unpredictable guy who often skipped shifts or stepped out for long breaks. They believed me.
I bought the chest freezer off of Alice for fifty bucks. As it turned out, three freezers was kind of overkill for such a small ice cream shop anyway. I loaded it into my dad’s truck and drove it straight to the dump. I imagine it got incinerated, or maybe it’s still sitting there in my hometown junkyard. If anyone ever cracked it open and discovered the bodies inside, I never heard about it.
I think Lia knew. I’m not sure how she knew or to what extent, but by the way I would catch her staring at me in the months that followed, I think she could tell something had changed. I still think often about the awful thing I did, and I still can’t decide if I was justified or not. When the guilt eats away at me, I try to remember this: had I not done what I did, Cyrus might never have stopped. He might have continued to torture and kill for no other reason than his own amusement, and one day, if he was ever found out, there might have been thousands of human and animal deaths attributed to him. But instead, there will only ever be one hundred.
Well, maybe one hundred and one.