Don't Open The Well

by Anderson, Kirk

  He wouldn’t be, couldn’t be like him.

  That night, Michael arrived to find his father in his recliner, plastered as always, and grinning like a fool, no doubt pleased with his handy work. But Michael didn’t say a single word to him. He didn’t even give his father the pleasure of showing the slightest hint that his sadistic actions had affected Michael. His face impassive, betraying no emotion whatsoever, Michael went up to his room, lay down, and stared at the ceiling until the sun came up.

  Inside him, the beginnings of an unfamiliar feeling were stirring. Beneath the numbness, the hatred that had lay dormant since the beatings and the mistreatment at the hands of his father began, was making its way to the surface.

  He didn’t sleep that night, nor did he do anything else – not even move, and to an observer he might have looked like he was day-dreaming. He was thinking of life without his father, thinking of the crematorium and how it could benefit him.

  Chapter 5

  Over the years that followed Michael did as he was told, seldom uttering more than the words “yes sir” and “no sir.”

  His father had become so smothered in his addiction to the drink, that he barely even visited the crematorium any more. This suited Michael just fine. He just did what had to be done, and woke up the next day and did it all over again, an endless repetition of mind numbing work and school that soon became as routine to him as sleeping, although sleep wasn’t what it had once been.

  One night, just before Michael turned eighteen, he awoke to the sounds of his father stumbling around the house, more drunk and belligerent than usual. It quickly dawned on him why. It was eight years to the day that his mother had finally been released from her life of suffering and pain. Michael smiled in the darkness as he stood on the landing looking down into the gloom, seeing nothing. He couldn’t exactly tell what was going on, but he didn’t really need to know the details. His father was suffering and that was enough. He deserved to suffer for what he had done and if Michael had his way, he would suffer even more than his mother had years ago.

  From downstairs in the darkness, he heard a loud crash as the back door was slammed shut – his father was going somewhere but where. Going to the window of his bedroom, he looked out into the night and was pleased to see the stumbling, crawling figure of his father amongst the weeds of the beaten path that led to the crematorium, a barely discernible shape in the blackness beyond. As he watched, a faint smile dancing around his lips, Michael saw that his father was carrying something under his arm, gripped tightly to his body like a child.

  Watching the pitiful figure of his once proud father, slowly disappear into the darkness; Michael wondered why he would be heading towards the crematorium at such an hour. It was just past midnight, but it occurred to him that his father wouldn’t go to the crematorium unless he meant to burn something – but what?

  A part of him wished it would be his father that would burn within the ever hungry mouth of the incinerator.

  The crematorium was ominous in the moonless night, just a smudge on the dark horizon but Michael no longer feared the crematorium and what it contained – he had seen hundreds of bodies. In the end they all looked the same, just like his father had said on that first day – “sacks of blood and bone.”

  Michael slipped into his shoes, and followed his Father’s tracks, made by his knees digging and dragging through the dirt as he crawled along the ground. The tracks ultimately led to the very place Michael had assumed they would - the crematorium.

  As quietly as possible, he pushed open the door to the old, grey building, and was immediately struck by the acrid stench of smoke, noxious and suffocating, emanating from within – it was the furnace but what was his father burning? Michael took his shirt off, and held it over his mouth as he walked deeper into the crematorium. The lights were off but that didn’t surprise him, his father had crawled into the building, after all. When he arrived at the furnace, he saw the door was wide open, and inside was a pile of clothes. He immediately recognized his mother’s wedding dress. He hadn’t even been born when they were married, but she had worn it for him.

  She was so beautiful in it, and Michael was struck by a rush of memories that suddenly filled his mind as the dress, amidst the other clothes, began to smolder and disappear in the hungry flames. Anger once again filled his heart and he clenched his teeth, the muscles in his jawline standing out like cords as he mourned all that had been lost.

  Not everything…

  At his feet, he was disgusted to find his father lay prone on the ground, a whiskey bottle just out of reach of his grasping fingers. He stood watching, until the acrid smoke billowing from the open incinerator began to burn his throat and eyes, making them water but still, he smiled, despite the pain.

  It was the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to rid himself of his alcoholic father once and for all.

  Michael kicked the whiskey bottle out of reach, he wouldn’t give his father the comfort of a last drink. No, he would die in the dark, alone and suffering just like Michael’s youth had all those years earlier.

  He kicked his father hard in the gut, drawing a gasp of pain from him before turning and walking off, leaving his father to his fate.

  “Ain’t no good thing you can’t turn rotten, dad….”

  Michael pushed open the door to the outside, and immediately took a deep breath of the fresh night air. Before leaving, he turned back and stared into the black smoke filled passageway, half expecting his father to come stumbling out – but he didn’t. He watched as the billowing dark clouds lit up with an angry orange glow from within, the clothes inside steadily disappearing in a wave of hungry flame.

  He closed the door gently before turning and walking back towards the house, a smile on his face.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning, Michael calmly called the police, breaking down at the right moment as he explained the discovery of his father’s blackened body within the incinerator.

  It was immediately ruled an accidental death. He’d been too inebriated, and due to carelessness on his part, had died of smoke inhalation from the burning clothes.

  Of course, Michael had told them of his mother’s death years earlier and how it had broken his father’s heart, turned him into a raging alcoholic. With a few well-placed sobs here and there, they bought it hook, line and sinker – why wouldn’t they?

  Besides, thought Michael, as he watched the patrol cars and ambulance pull away from his newly acquired property, he wouldn’t be missed. For the last two years, his father had barely even set foot in the town except to purchase more alcohol or cause trouble in the downtown bars.

  No, it was over now and Michael couldn’t wait to consign his father’s body to the hell inside the furnace.

  His father’s body was placed in the Coroner’s van, and the officers sat and consoled the crying young man. It was a fine performance, but the show wasn’t over yet. It was his eighteenth birthday, and now all the decisions were his to make. The land, the home, and even the damned crematorium were now all his.

  The next day, Michael contacted the Coroner’s office, and let him know that he was going to cremate his father’s remains. The Coroner asked Michael if he’d like him to assist, but Michael let him know he’d been running most of the business over the last few years, and that this was a solemn event that he needed to do alone.

  Michael’s tears fell on cue as the Coroner wheeled his father’s body into the main furnace room of the Crematorium. They walked back outside, and the Coroner gave the young man his business card, immediately followed by a hug. He told him to be strong, but if for whatever reason he needed help with this, to call the number on the card.

  He needed no help. This was his moment and he alone would push the button that would burn the hateful man that had stolen his sanity.

  The Coroner slipped behind the wheel of his vehicle, and Michael watched him drive away, waving as he did so until the car was out of sight. The sad countenance remained on th
e young man’s face until the Coroner’s van turned the corner. Once the vehicle had disappeared from sight, Michael’s face lit up, and a wide grin spread across his face.

  It was time, at last.

  He re-entered the Crematorium, unzipped the body bag, and spat into his father’s dead face.

  “Everything I’ve ever loved, you’ve burned away,” Michael said leaning into his father’s gray and motionless face. “You burned it all. My toys, my clothes, my pictures, my books, my tree house…even my mother – you burned her,” he said, his voice filled with anger. “Well, old man, now it’s your turn.”

  Michael pushed the gurney up to the mouth of the furnace, slid his father’s corpse feet first into the smooth and recently cleaned chamber, and then leaned close to his father’s ear, and whispered, “I will burn away everything that you are, that you were, and that you ever could have been.”

  Michael left the incinerator’s doors open as he turned the knob, filling the furnace chamber with white-hot fire. He stared, unblinking, as his father’s body was devoured by the growing inferno. There was a dark pleasure to be found in those dancing flames, and a smile played upon Michael’s lips as the flesh blackened and curled on his father’s bones. Michael’s mouth opened wide, and he began to laugh.

  As the laughter died down, Michael took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and prayed aloud for the first time in over eight years.

  “May the fires of hell burn a million times brighter as they receive your tainted soul and make you suffer for the sins you committed upon this earth, you despicable man.”

  Chapter 7

  A few years went by, and thanks to his dedication, the business wasn’t just doing well – it was now operating better than ever before. Michael had managed to bring in business from funeral homes all over the tri-state area, and soon, he had so much money stashed away that he decided to splurge. He hired a construction company to build an enormous live-in tree house, high up in the two-hundred year old oak that grew deep in the wooded and undeveloped part of his property.

  He was taking back everything his father took from him, piece by piece.

  The construction wasn’t cheap. In fact, he had to take out a loan on half of the cost, but it didn’t matter, as people were always dying and business was booming.

  Things went quite smoothly for a few more months, and Michael began to feel almost human again, now that he was rid of his father.

  It didn’t last long though.

  One day, the furnace just stopped.

  Michael tried to fix it himself, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what had gone wrong. He brought in a specialized furnace repairman, and the worst possible scenario unfolded. The furnace was so old that there were no replacement parts for it. He’d have to buy a completely new unit to meet current standards and regulations. This was a problem that would, easily, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to solve.

  Suddenly, Michael felt his life slipping into disarray. He had three bodies in the lockers, already paid for in full, the money already spent on his latest loan payment, and no way to incinerate the corpses.

  Michael returned to his tree home, and sat in his new La-Z-Boy recliner, wracking his mind for a solution to the problem.

  It occurred to him that he could bury the bodies somewhere instead, rather than paying out everything he had to fix the furnace. How to make this work though? The families of the deceased would be expecting their ashes once the cremation was complete. He could always burn something else – make a fire out in the woods and collect a pile of ash for them, after all, it was just ash right? They wouldn’t ever know the difference. He smiled, nodding as he stared out at the now useless crematorium through the leafy canopy of the old oak.

  There was still the considerable matter of the burials. Would he really dig holes each and every day for the several corpses he received each day? No, that wouldn’t do. It was too time-consuming, there had to be another way.

  Staring out of the window, Michael thought hard about how he could dispose of these poor sacks of flesh and bone. Soon it became apparent that the answer was literally staring him in the face – the old well. He could see it from where he sat; a small circular dot in the distance – perfectly placed out in the woods away from prying eyes. He remembered the day he had dropped a penny into it, before making a wish. Such foolish superstitions had been all but beaten out of him since then, but he remembered and the memory served him well because he had heard the clink of the coin as it hit a stony bottom.

  It had been dry for years. An ideal spot for what he had in mind.

  Chapter 8

  Now in his mid-twenties, business was still booming for Michael and his crematorium -- although it had literally been years since the furnace had actually been lit.

  You see, Michael had stuck to his guns and rather than pay the extortionate fees required to fix the incinerator, he had begun to dispose of the bodies in the old well. They were now stacked so high that if one shone a flashlight into the hole, the rotten remains could clearly be seen, piled up. It was a putrid mound of dead, rotting flesh that stunk to high heaven in the deep of summer.

  To mask the stench rising up from the well during summer, Michael dumped some of his garbage in there on top of the bodies, as even the smell of hot garbage was an improvement.

  If anyone asked, he could tell them that it was his land and he would do as he wished, after all, it’s just garbage, right?

  Everything was proceeding perfectly. The loved ones of the deceased never questioned the ashes he gave them. Why would they? Flesh ash was the same as most any other ash, and no one dared disrespect the dead -- he had that on his side.

  Despite the success of the family business, Michael remained alone – unmarried, in fact he didn’t even have a girlfriend, nor had he ever had one. He seldom went into town and when he did, it was only for supplies. He had no social life to speak of and his property had not had any visitors, except for the loved ones of the deceased, for an age.

  The bodies would come; Michael would wait until he was alone and immediately dump the human remains into the well with the other several hundred already down there, lying in the cold darkness, out of sight of prying eyes.

  One day, perhaps in a few years, he realized the well would no longer be a viable option for dumping the bodies. He figured he had enough saved to go through with the repairs when that time finally arrived but he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

  Until then, the well would serve its purpose.

  ----------

  Days later, Michael was wheeling a gurney out towards the woods when he spotted a technician heavy with equipment and tools standing next to the well, about to lift the cover. Michael was stopped in stunned horror. In one hand, the man carried a flashlight – he couldn’t allow the man to look into the well, he would ruin everything that Michael had worked so hard to conceal.

  Michael left the body on the gurney and ran as quietly as he could towards the man, an expression of grim determination clouding his face as he hefted his own bulky flashlight high into the air. As Michael neared the well, the man pulled out his flashlight, and shone it down into the gloom below before immediately crying out in fear and stumbling backwards, shock etched across his features.

  His scream was cut off as Michael’s own flashlight crushed his skull from behind, repeatedly landing blow after blow, as Michael made sure the man wouldn’t spoil all he had worked so hard for. When he had finished, Michael stood panting, his bloodied hands resting on the well’s edge as he looked down into the abyss. Michael quickly collected himself and checked the dead technician for any signs of movement.

  There were none. His skull had been completely caved in from the repeated blows of Michael’s flashlight.

  Who had sent him? Would more come looking for him when he didn’t return?

  Afraid that the man’s colleagues might show up looking for him, or worse, the police, Michael went to town and purchased a heavy padlock and
chain with which to better seal the well and protect his dark secret.

  Still, paranoia had become his new companion, rearing its ugly head whenever he heard an engine or looked out of his window in the morning.

  If they came, he would kill them too.

  Chapter 9

  Michael had come home from a trip to the grocery store to find a very expensive looking vehicle parked out front of his old house. A late model BMW X5 in deep blue, not the type of car law enforcement would drive.

  As Michael exited his car, so did four men inside the BWM, its diesel engine idling.

  “Michael, I presume,” stated the man in the impeccably tailored suit. “I’m Antonio Fagozzian, the head of this county’s water, sewage, and waste management company. May we come in? We have some business we need to discuss.”

  Michael saw the glint in the man’s eyes, and the stone-cold seriousness in the eyes of his associates, and immediately felt uneasy. “Sorry,” Michael spoke quickly, “but I have an appointment in just a few minutes, and I’m running late. So maybe we could meet at a more convenient time?”

  The man in the suit smiled broadly. “The mountain of corpses in your well say that ‘this’ is the ‘perfect’ time to speak. Shall we?” he quipped, gesturing to the front door of Michael’s property.

  ----------

  As it turned out, this man was a lot more than your average county head of waste removal. He removed all ‘kinds’ of waste, including the occasional wasted life.