Dismember (28 page)

Thirty years old. His birthday.

He circled the bed and stopped near Mr. Boots’s head. His naked leg stood only inches from Mr. Boots’s own, which gave him a sick sensation in his stomach and a bad taste in his mouth and, for some reason, a slick feel on the tip of his ear. He cocked his head and stared at the old man one last time, and then he swung.

The sword was a fine tool: light but not in a toyish way, maybe stronger than an ax or a baseball bat, and honed to a wicked edge. Mr. Boot’s leg came free from the rest of his body as if he were made of nothing more solid than mud. Blood sprayed across the room, the bed, and Dave, making different sounds when it splattered against the various surfaces but sounding in all cases a little like a lawn sprinkler. The leg slid first away from the body and then off the bed, its progress marked by a wet, dragging rasp. Mr. Boots’s sudden, confused screaming almost completely drowned out the thud of the dismembered appendage.

Dave leveled the sword at the old man’s head, and when Boots turned to face him, Dave jabbed the weapon forward. It entered the man’s eye, which promptly disappeared, replaced by a streamer of vitreous fluid that oozed down his cheek like an overgrown tear. Dave moved, the other man’s spilled blood dripping down his naked chest and onto his underwear, across the flaccid but still bulging mound of his groin, along the contours of his thighs, knees, and shins, and onto the tops of his feet.

Dave swung the sword again, this time over his shoulder like an axman splitting a log, and in a move that could not have had any thought behind it, Mr. Boots reached up to stop it with his hand. The sword descended between two of the man’s splayed fingers and sliced most of the way through his palm before it hit a tendon or a muscle or maybe a bone and stuck fast. Dave tried to jerk the blade free, but at the same time Boots pulled back his arm, wailing an old man’s gravelly scream, and the bloodied weapon slipped out of Dave’s hand.

Mr. Boots stared at the sword with his remaining eye as if he had never seen such a thing. Perhaps he hadn’t. Dave reached for the sword’s handle, but Mr. Boots spun away, taking the weapon with him. His leg stump flapped across the bed sheets, still spraying blood, and Dave couldn’t believe the man was conscious, let alone fighting. Mr. Boots rolled out from under the bed covers, completely naked. His wrinkled skin twisted and folded, his flabby muscles wobbled. Suddenly, Dave wished he’d put on a set of clothes. He didn’t want to be naked with Mr. Boots, or even close to it, but it was too late. He had to end things now.

Dave hopped onto the bed and kicked the old man hard in the side of the head. Mr. Boots turned back toward him, screaming and flailing, the sword still stuck in his hand and everything covered in blood. Dave reached for the handle again, got a grip on it this time, and stepped on the old man’s chest. He jerked, and the sword came free with a plop, bringing one of Mr. Boots’s fingers with it, curled around the blade like a skewered shrimp.

This time, Dave didn’t swing, he chopped, over and over again, not aiming at anything in particular, just bringing the sword down and down again until Mr. Boots looked less like a man than a pile of raw ground chuck and the sound of the impacting weapon went from thumping to squishing to splashing.

The blood seeped through the shredded sheets and into the mattress below. Dave stood there for a long time, breathing heavily, drenched in gore, the sword clenched in his hands, it’s blade quivering. Though not the first time he’d killed, it was the first time he’d killed a man, and it was not at all how he’d imagined it would be. He’d thought the smell would be similar to old, wet pennies, like when you cut your lip and couldn’t get it to stop bleeding, but this was thicker than that, more intense, and combined with the foul odors of feces and urine and vomit. He didn’t remember throwing up, nor did he think Mr. Boots had. Maybe the smell was simply spilled stomach juices, or maybe it wasn’t vomit at all but some similar-smelling combination of bodily fluids. Who knew? Who cared?

Dave dropped the sword on the bed beside the vaguely humanoid pile of meat and looked at his crimson hands. He smiled.

But he couldn’t let himself bask in the glory of his success for too long. He had a long day ahead.

Dave crawled off the bed, stepped over Mr. Boots’s leg, and backed across the room. Today he was thirty years old, the same age his daddy had been on that rainy night twenty-three years ago. Today, Dave was the new Daddy, and he had a family to save.

He left the bedroom and headed for the showers, thinking:
Happy Birthday to me
.

T
HIRTY

T
revor sat on the pile of blankets with his arms wrapped around his knees, watching Zach go through the clothes in the closet and occasionally touching his forehead, which had finally stopped bleeding but still hurt worse than any headache Trevor had ever had.

“Anything good in there?” he asked.

Zach shook his head. “Some of this stuff looks like it’s a million years old.” He pulled out a funny looking shirt with stripes. A boy’s shirt, but too big for Trevor. Maybe it would have fit Zach. Trevor wondered if there was a kid living here with the crazy man, if maybe he had a son or a little brother or something.

“Old clothes aren’t gonna get us out of here,” Trevor said and frowned at the shirt.

“Nope.” Zach returned the shirt to the closet and closed the door.

“Maybe you should try your mommy’s phone again.”

Zach looked like maybe he thought that was kind of a dumb idea, but he reached into his pocket for the phone and pulled it out anyway. It was as red as a dodge ball or Superman’s cape. Zach turned on the phone and stared at the screen. The phone beeped once, and Zach’s eyes opened wide, but then it beeped again, and he frowned.

“I had one bar for just a second,” he said. “It’s gone now.” He watched the phone’s screen for another minute, then held the power button again until the phone shut off. He flipped it closed and returned it to his pocket.

“Maybe we should try and get outside,” said Trevor.

“You think?” Zach said, rolling his eyes.

“No,” Trevor said and touched his head. “I mean maybe the phone might work better outside.”

“Well, yeah, it usually does.” Zach came over and sat down on the blankets near Trevor. “But how are we supposed to get out there? We’re locked in here, and there’s no window.”

Trevor nodded and sat quietly for some time. “I’m hungry.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“I never got my popcorn,” Trevor said. He didn’t want to cry about some stupid popcorn, but he could almost feel it happening anyway.

Zach didn’t say anything, just reached up and touched himself on the forehead.

Trevor leaned back a little, thinking, staring up at the ceiling, and suddenly his eyes widened.

Once, at Daddy’s house, there had been a dark spot on the ceiling in his bedroom, a spot his daddy said was from water damage. His daddy said he was going to fix the spot, but one night, before he could, Trevor was sleeping and some of the ceiling fell down on his toy box and got gray powder gunk on his action figures. Daddy had gotten the mess all cleaned up and the ceiling fixed, but first Trevor had touched the gunk in his toy box, and he still remembered how soft it felt, like wet sand or cookies that were old but not
real
old. There was a similar spot on the ceiling now.

“I have an idea,” Trevor said. He got off the pile of blankets and moved to the closet.

“There’s nothing in there,” said Zach. “We already—”

Trevor flapped a hand at him. “Just wait.” The closet door swung open, and he smelled old clothes, the smell of garage-sale boxes full of other people’s old, used-up shirts and pants. He reached in and tugged on the first thing his hand touched, a plain blue sweater with a torn sleeve that looked almost big enough for a grown-up but not quite. The hanger holding the sweater slipped off the wooden closet rod, and the sweater fluttered to the floor by Trevor’s feet.

“What are you doing?” asked Zach from the blankets.

Trevor said, “Help me,” and pulled down another piece of clothing, this time a pair of denim cutoffs, the fringed bottoms of which Trevor could only just reach. Zach joined him at the closet door, and together they took down the rest of the clothes, making a pile on the closet floor that came up past Trevor’s knees. When the last item was off the closet rod, Trevor asked Zach to push up on it.

“Why?”

“Just see if it’s loose,” Trevor said, head aching. “We might be able to use it.”

Zach did, and the rod popped out of the plates nailed to the wall on either side of the closet. Zach fumbled with the rod for a second and nearly dropped it, which might have made the bad man catch them, but then he got a real good hold of it and took it out of the closet.

“Okay,” said Zach, “so what are we going to use this for? Bash the guy’s brains in? Ram the door?” He held the wooden pole at his side; it was just a little taller than he was.

Trevor shook his head and said, “Come here.” He led the bigger boy to the other side of the room, to an area just beneath the dark spot on the ceiling, which was a couple of ruler lengths across. “See that?” He pointed up.

Zach looked at the water damage but didn’t seem to understand. He eyed Trevor as if he thought this was some kind of joke, then looked up again. “What?” he finally said. “That stain?”

“It’s not a stain,” Trevor said, meaning that it wasn’t
just
a stain. “Try poking it with the pole.”

Zach raised the closet rod and touched the gray area with the tip. Some of the ceiling in the middle of the spot flecked away and fell down on the two boys’ heads. Trevor smiled. Then the whole section began to crumble, and it came down on them like dirty, heavy snow. Trevor managed to get his arms over his eyes and mouth before the bulk of the mess came down, but Zach kept his hands wrapped around the closet rod, and he ended up with a whole face full of the crud.

Trevor brushed dust out of his hair and looked worriedly at the door. The falling ceiling hadn’t made a loud sound, but it hadn’t exactly been quiet either. Trevor expected the crazy man to come bursting in, maybe with a chainsaw.

But nothing came. No stranger. No chainsaw.

He turned to Zach and asked if he was okay.

“Not—” Zach spit on the floor. “Really.” He let go of the pole with one hand to wipe at his dusty eyes. He looked like a ghost, all covered in gray, but Trevor wouldn’t think about that. Ghosts were dead, after all, and Zach wasn’t. Not one bit.

Trevor looked up at the hole they’d made. It was about the size of those holes in the street the Ninja Turtles used to get to their home in the sewers. Above it were two wood boards and some clumps of yellow stuff. For just a second, Trevor imagined he was seeing the hairy bones of some sort of attic monster, and then he shook his head.

Zach was still trying to get the gray stuff off his face. He finally leaned the closet rod against the wall and went to work wiping at his face with both hands.

“What is this stuff?” Zach said, pawing furiously. “I hope it’s not asbestos.”

“What’s that?”

“Never mind.” Zach leaned over and brushed at the top of his hair. The ceiling powder came pouring off and piled on the floor below.

“I think,” Trevor said, “I could get through that hole and in between those boards.” He looked at Zach. “If you lifted me.”

Zach spat again and looked at the hole himself. “I’ll try. But it’s awful high.”

If he could get through the hole, maybe he could escape and try Zach’s mommy’s phone outside. Maybe he could get them help.

“Let’s try,” said Trevor. “We have to.”

Zach wiped one last time at his face and moved back beneath the water-damaged section of ceiling. There should have been more of the yellow stuff up there, Trevor knew. His daddy had told him all about houses and how to build them, and he knew that yellow stuff was probably old insulation. He saw right through the yellow stuff to the roof above, but it was so dark up there he couldn’t really see much more than the darkness itself. It looked scary, and he thought about bugs and bats and spiders, but he had to try, had to help himself and Zach. He
had
to.

“Okay,” Zach said, cupping his hands and holding them low so Trevor could step up into them. “Let’s give it a whirl.”

“Give me your phone first. I’ll try to call for some help.”

Zach straightened, took the phone out of his pocket, and looked at it for a long time. Trevor thought he was probably remembering his mommy and wondering when he would see her again.

“Be careful with it,” Zach said. “Have you ever used one of these before?”

Trevor frowned at him and said, “I’m not a baby. I know how to use a phone.”

Zach said, “Yeah, sorry,” and handed over the cellular. Trevor slid it into his shirt pocket, where he’d stored the five dollars earlier that day when he’d messed his pants. Thinking about that worried Trevor. Could he really expect to get out of this room, out of the house, and call for help if he couldn’t manage to potty in the toilet like a big kid?

Just an accident
, he thought.
Happens to the best of us
. His mommy had said that, and although he knew she was just trying to make him feel better, that she probably never pottied her pants, that Daddy never did either, he
did
feel better. He could get them help. He
would
.

Zach cupped his hands together again the way you do when you’re drinking from the faucet, and he hunched over. “Okay,” he said and lowered his hands. Trevor slid one foot into the finger cup, thinking about the poo on his shoes that morning, wondering what Zach would say if he knew he was touching poo shoes. He grabbed the older boy’s shoulder.

“Kay.”

Zach lifted, making a soft groaning sound. Trevor wobbled, and the two of them started to tip over. He grabbed Zach’s other shoulder and tried to balance. He looked up to the ceiling, and it still seemed a very long way away.