Dig Ten Graves (9 page)

     Lex didn’t respond.

     Patrick said, “She had great tits.” He laughed weakly. “And great taste in dogs. She… she’s the one who picked you out, you know. Did you know that?”

     Silence from the darkness.

     “You… you probably don’t remember her,” Patrick said. “It was a long time ago.”

     His stomach rumbled and whined, and another wave of dizzy nausea passed through him.

     So hungry. So goddamn hungry.

     He thought, of course Lex doesn’t remember her. Lex is a dog. Lex is a stupid animal with no thought of the past or the future or anything except the moment she lives in. Lex doesn’t think of anything except food and running and playing and more food. Lex is a creature who, whenever you leave the room for half a minute and come back, she reacts as if she believed she’d never see you again and goes crazy with joy that you’re back.

     Lex is a beast. A dumb brute.

     My best friend, he thought, is a dumb brute, with no conscience or sense of right and wrong, other than what I’ve instilled in her through punishment and reward.

     Her love for me is based on what I
feed
her.

     Christ…

     A sort of madness had seized Patrick’s brain as he lay there in the darkness, a sort of ugly epiphany. Lex was not his friend. The love they shared was a lie. He fed her and she provided companionship, companionship he needed in lieu of another human being in his life. It was all an ugly, pathetic lie.

     Somewhere deep inside him, the realization sparked a glimmer of sorrow, but it was overridden by rage. The dog fooled me, he thought. The dog tricked me into loving her. The bitch. 

     He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth and imagined her, only feet away from him, laying there in the dark watching him, waiting for the opportunity to spring upon him. Waiting for the chance to seize him by the throat and kill him.

     He smiled an ugly, bitter smile.

     Oh, you think so, do you? You think you’re gonna kill me, you stupid dog? Better think again.

     Shifting his weight, he reached inside his jeans pocket with his free hand and felt the Swiss Army knife there. He pulled it out and flicked open the cutting blade. It wasn’t much of a weapon, less than two inches long, but it would do the trick. Bury it right in Lex’s throat, right under the snout, and it would kill her as thoroughly as any machete.

     Who’s gonna eat who, he thought. Who’s the smart one here, Lex? Who’s the one who can actually think?

     Raw dog meat. Well, it didn’t sound particularly appetizing, even as hungry as he was. But he could probably choke it down, in a pinch. Sure. Use the knife to skin her, take your time, cut out a few choice pieces, chow down. 

     “Ha,” he said, and it echoed chillingly in the dark cave.    

     He flicked on the flashlight again and the beam shone in Lex’s face. She was staring at him, and her eyes were big and blank, like doll’s eyes, or like black buttons on an overcoat. Her left ear twitched. 

     The beam started shaking again. 

     Lex looked so innocent. She looked innocent and hungry and scared. Patrick began crying.

     “I’m sorry,” he moaned. “Oh, Lexie, girl, I’m so sorry.”

     He dropped the knife on his lap, let the flashlight beam drop and lapsed into an almost hysterical fit of remorse. Sobs racked his body painfully and he wailed and moaned and cursed himself. Lex watched him with empty eyes.

     After a very long time, he began to pull himself together. The sobs degenerated into weak snuffing and sniffling, and finally he took a deep breath and again shone the flashlight on Lex.

     Lex cocked her head, stood up slowly. She stretched expansively, snorted, sighed, and gazed at him. 

     Patrick said, “Lexie. Come over here, huh?”

     Lex ambled around the small dark space, and for a moment Patrick feared that she might have gone loopy. Her wandering seemed strangely aimless. But finally she came near him and settled down next to his broken leg. With a weary huff, she rested her head on the make-shift splint. 

     Even that slight weight hurt his leg, but he winced and didn’t move. The pain was worth it, just to have her next to him again.

     He rubbed her head and scratched her behind the ear, just the way she loved it. She closed her eyes and pushed her head against his fingers, and Patrick realized how this all had to end.

     We are both going to die, he thought. Barring some miracle rescue, we are both going to die of starvation and dehydration. It’s just a question of which one of us will die first.

     And the one who dies first, without question, will become a meal for the other. It was just the most natural thing in the world, and there was nothing for it.

     Patrick wiped snot away from his nose with the back of his hand. He placed the flashlight on the side of him opposite Lex, unmindful now of the battery. He picked up his Swiss Army knife and gazed at it for a long moment, his other hand still scratching behind Lex’s ear.

     He plunged the blade into his own throat and felt Lex jump against him and then blood was choking him and he couldn’t breathe. The knife fell from his fingers and Lex started barking but the sound of it faded away quickly, much quicker than he would have expected, and he slumped over onto the hard ground and the flashlight rolled away.

     Lex barked and barked and barked.

     Many, many days later, rescuers managed to dig their way in. They were met by a raving, blood-thirsty brute that tried to attack them the second they punched a hole through the rocks. When they saw what else was in the cave, one man vomited and they immediately sent back up for a rifle. They gave it to the bravest of the rescuers, and he unceremoniously put a bullet through the beast’s brain.

Heart

     I’d been dead for three years before I realized it. That whole time, walking around, going to work (sometimes), making small talk when I had to, forced smile etched on my face. Not a clue I was a fucking corpse. Feeling something missing inside me, sure, but not really… you know. Not really
getting
it.

     It took the aftermath of the last big crack-up with Molly for it all to sink it. I was dead, and had been for three long, miserable years.

     Five days after the fight, after I’d walked out of the house, swearing I’d never come back, I was still drinking. But I couldn’t get drunk no matter how much I tried. The cold hard center of sobriety held sway over my dead brain, and resisted every assault against it.

     The bartender had been eyeing me for the last five minutes as I put back shot after shot of whiskey. He set a third beer in front of me, said, “This is the third day in a row I’ve seen you here, brother.”

     “Yeah. So?”

     “And you’re wearing the same damn clothes.”

     I looked around at the other patrons. Not a fashionista in sight. I said, “There a dress code here?”

     “No, brother. It’s not the sight of your clothes that’s bugging me. It’s the smell. You dig?”

     “So I stink. So what?”

     “So no one else wants to sit at my bar, brother. You’re stinking my customers out.”

     If someone had said that to me three years ago, I’d have been mortified. But now I didn’t care, not at all. So I smelled bad. So fucking what? Do you expect a corpse to smell like roses?

     “And so,” the bartender said. “I’m gonna ask you to finish that beer, and be on your way. No trouble, right?”

     I shrugged. “Okay,” I said. I suppose I could’ve argued the point, but I didn’t care about that, either.

     I just didn’t care about anything anymore.

     I finished my beer, got up, threw a fiver on the bar and walked out on steady legs.

     Drinking wasn’t really my thing. Honestly, I’d never been big on it, aside from a couple years of partying in my early ‘20’s. Booze always gave me a headache, and I never liked that fuzzy feeling that comes with drunkenness. But things were different now. I was dead inside and booze had no effect on me anymore.

     So why bother drinking? Good question. Outside the bar, I decided to stop it.

     Which meant I had to think of something else to do with my time. There was no home for me with Molly anymore. There was no job, either—I’d walked in at nine o’clock on the morning after the blow-out, went into Mr. Durkman’s office, and pissed on his desk. Yeah, literally whipped out my dick and pissed all over his teakwood. Said, “I hope you’ll kindly accept my resignation,” then walked out before he could get his jaw off the floor.

     I’d had fantasies about doing that. The fantasies made me smile. But actually doing it… didn’t feel like anything.

     I walked up the street away from the bar, toward the park where I’d slept the night before. It was a decent suburban neighborhood, and I remembered wondering how long it would be before the cops came and rousted me, but they never did.

     My stomach grumbled as I walked, and it dawned on me that I hadn’t eaten in a while. How long? Wasn’t sure. It must’ve been yesterday sometime. A hot dog, maybe, from the vendor in front of the bank? That sounded right. I didn’t want to eat, didn’t derive any pleasure from the thought of it, but I knew enough to realize I had to get a little food in me or my stomach wouldn’t shut up and leave me alone.

     Fingers fumbling in my filthy pants pocket found a ten dollar bill and a couple ones. I looked at them, frowning. That was it. That was all my money, right there. Didn’t I have almost two hundred bucks a couple days ago?

     I had a bank account. Or rather, me and Molly did. A joint account, even though, after my first marriage ended I swore I’d never do anything like that again. My first wife, Alana, absolutely took me to the cleaners after the divorce, claiming the entire twenty thousand we’d saved as well as spousal and child support.

     Child support for my boy, Jim. Eleven years old now. I hadn’t seen him in eight. The court ruled in Alana’s favor on that one. It didn’t matter that it was an accident, that I was only trying to spank him and I didn’t mean to hurt him in his… in his private parts. It was a fucking accident. But Alana made it sound like I did it on purpose and the judge was conflicted enough that he didn’t convict me. But he did forbid me from having contact.

     I used to cry about that, sometimes. But that was a long time ago. These days when I thought of Jim, I didn’t feel anything at all.

     So the joint account with Molly. I could’ve made my way over to the credit union—it was only a few blocks south—to withdraw some cash. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want any of that money. It had a taint on it that I couldn’t explain. Molly could have it all, for all I cared.

     Lying, cheating Molly.

     We met two years after my divorce, during that weird transitional period when I was beginning to pick up all my body parts and start stitching them back together into something that vaguely resembled what I used to be. I’d dated four or five women in that period—well, dated isn’t the right word. Fucked, that’s what I’m trying to say. I couldn’t get interested in anyone enough to take it beyond that. Until Molly.

     It was my fourth job in that two year stretch, this one at a mall book store (a dying breed, that). She came in the store, with her black hair streaked with purple, her geeky glasses and big boots. Ten years younger than me. Looking for Lolita, by Nabokov. And something happened in my guts, some bizarre feeling that had been missing for so long I didn’t even recognize it.

     I told her something about how I loved Lolita and next thing you know we’re talking and talking and when I got off work we met for a drink and went back to the motel room I’d been staying at. The next night we wound up at her apartment.

     And six months later, we were married.

     Six months after that, I started seeing the signs, the little subtle hints, that she was cheating on me. And would you believe I tried to ignore it? I really did. I just didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to go through another tragic ending, because I wasn’t sure if I could survive it.

     I didn’t survive it. I died when it finally happened.

     But no, that’s not really true. I was dead already, like I said before. That stitched-up Frankenstein monster was never really alive, never really a creature that could feel anything human, not like before.

     So I couldn’t blame Molly. She didn’t kill me. That little spark of life I felt when we first met was an illusion. It was some biological process, like gas escaping from a bloated corpse. That’s all.

     At the hot dog stand I ordered one dog, mustard, onions. The guy served it up, looking at me sideways, and as he handed it over I was horrified to realize the look on his face was pity.

     He said, “Hey, buddy. No charge for that, okay? You look pretty hungry.”

     “What do you mean?” I said. “What do you mean, no charge?”

     “I mean, it’s on me. On the house.”

     “What? You think I can’t afford it? You think I can’t afford one little stupid fucking hot dog?”

     “No, I mean… I’m just saying.”

     I threw the ten dollar bill at his stupid, smug face. He flinched. I said, “Fuck you. You hear me? Fuck you and your stupid fucking charity!” And then I threw the hot dog at him.

     Mustard spattered all over his face, onions down his shirt. He sputtered, and I reached over the stand and grabbed him by the labels and head-butted him. It made a solid chunk sound, solid enough to send him reeling backward when I let go of him. He stumbled two, three steps and fell on his ass.

     In a heartbeat I was around the stand and pummeling him.

     I was vaguely aware of people gathering around us, voices raised in alarm. I pounded my fist into the vendor’s face over and over again, and my head was clear and my thoughts were like crystal. This was no mad rage. This was studied and exact, an almost clinical doling out of vengeance. I even knew he didn’t deserve it, but so what? I didn’t deserve what happened to me, did I? No one deserves anything but to be left alone in peace, to seek out some simple, vapid happiness. But no one ever gets to do that, do they? No one ever gets to do that.

     At the sound of approaching police sirens, I finally let the vendor go and his limp body slumped to the pavement. Blood bubbled from between his lips and he moaned softly but didn’t open his eyes. I looked around. There were about ten or twelve people standing there, watching. None of them had done anything to help the vendor. They only watched. Two of them were filming the whole thing on their smart phones. Maybe I’d wind up on YouTube.

     I walked away.

     It didn’t take long for me to realize I needed to find someplace other than the park to crash that night. No doubt the cops would be looking for me, at long last. I’d gone suddenly from being a harmless, broken man sleeping rough to being a violent nut-case—they’d have to do something about me now.

     So I walked and walked, and I thought. And I marveled a little at this cold thing my heart had become. When you’re dead, you can still remember what life felt like, you know? You can still remember how it feels to know love, or rage, or fear. That’s the great tragedy of being dead. Remembering. But remembering the way you’d remember a movie you saw once. Interested in it, yes, but not… invested. It doesn’t touch you in any profound way.

     I was dead and I didn’t care.

     But I did need money. Throwing my last ten dollar bill at the vendor had been a stupid move. I could get by with stealing food, if I had to, but the whole episode had left me drained and tired. As night came rolling in, the rumbling in my stomach grew more insistent, and I knew I’d have to eat soon or pass out right there on the street.

     I walked through the night, trusting to providence to provide me with an answer. Providence didn’t let me down.

     It was almost three in the morning, and I’d been walking for what seemed like years. My feet were swollen in my shoes, my stomach tied in knots of hunger, my throat dry and my head pounding. My eyes had been downcast, mostly, watching the dirty and broken sidewalk get dirtier and more broken. And when I finally looked up, I was a little surprised to find that I’d walked all the way to the East side, the absolute worst part of town. It was a dark, deserted street in an industrial area, the only light coming from a flickering streetlamp at the farthest corner, and not a soul around.

     Not a soul, except for the thin, nervous young man leaning against the sheet metal wall of a factory.

     “Hey,” he said, with a slight nod. He wore tight jeans and one of those cut-off tee-shirts showing off a scrawny midriff. Mascara outlined his big blinking eyes.

     “Hey,” I said back to him. I smiled.

     He sniffed, ran the back of his hand under his nose. “Lookin’ for a date?” he said.

     I nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, man, I sure am.”

     “Okay,” he said. “Come over here.” He managed a sickly grin and started into an alley that ran behind him.

     Hands in pockets, I followed.

     A few feet in, he faced me, moved in close, put his hand on my crotch. “You want me to suck it?” he said. “Or you got somethin’ more serious in mind?”

     “Something more serious,” I said.

     I grabbed him by the throat with my dead man’s hands.

     He started to scream right away, but I slammed him against the wall and his breath wheezed out, stinking of cigarettes and spearmint gum. He started to slump, but I held him up, smashed my fist into his nose. It sounded like a vase being broken under a cushion, and blood washed hot over my fingers. I hit him again, the second time getting less crunch and less blood. His eyes rolled back.

     I jabbed him in the gut and he didn’t even have enough breath left to grunt. I let him fall that time, kicked him in the head once on the way down. When he was sprawled on the concrete I kicked him again, and then again, in the face and neck.

     While he lay there, unmoving except for the shallow rise and fall of his frail chest, I stepped back, breathing hard. I glanced around the alley. A few feet away, I spied a broken beer bottle.

     I staggered over to it, picked it up. I staggered back.

     He looked up at me with blank eyes, not even enough strength to beg for mercy.

     I started in with the broken bottle.

     Three minutes later I was done and he was nothing but a scattered mess of blood and ruined flesh. I was on my knees over him, and my throat was raw and I realized I’d been screeching and wailing the whole time, like some mad banshee. I was covered with his blood. Pieces of him were on my shirt and in my hair and he was not the young man he’d been, not anymore. He wasn’t anything.

     I’d taken it all away from him. Just like Molly had taken it all away from me.

     “There,” I screamed at him. “There. How do you like it? How do you like it?”

     And I realized there were tears in my eyes. No, not just tears. I was bawling. I was sobbing like a baby.

     “Goddamnit!” I screamed at the corpse. “Goddamnit!”

     Because I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t dead, after all.

     I was alive, and that was worse.