With a satisfied smile upon his lips, George laid a kiss upon the hairpiece. It tickled his nostrils and he gave a quiet giggle. He returned to the basement with that same reassurance in his head. He had no hesitation when he descended the stairs this time, because he knew what the end result would be: his hard-earned happiness.
Rosa stood precisely where George had left her, with her naked tits pointed at the wall. He picked her up by the waist and carried her into the mannequin room. Once she stood in her rightful place at the very front of the line, George dusted off the freshly acquired scalp and placed it over her bare skull. Its fit was exquisite. And when George stepped back he felt his heart warm at the sight of her. And he likely would have stood there staring for ten whole minutes except something caught his eye. There was blood smudged on her face, right at the corner of her lip.
George tsk-ed and peeled off his shirt. He took the cleanest sleeve and tried to daub at the bloody streak. Much to his dismay he found that the stain had dried. No getting that out; it was going to need paint. It wouldn’t take a lot of work, but considering all that remained on his chore list for the rest of the night, he didn’t have time to fix it right now. George growled, bit his lip. He was very disappointed in himself, so disappointed in fact, that the moment was completely spoiled. He couldn’t even look at her without his eye being drawn to the single marred flaw in her once perfect beauty. His reverie was broken and the only thing to do now was clean up the mess that awaited him in the third room.
But before dealing with that, George made one final futile attempt at daubing the blood from Rosa’s lip, this time licking the powdery corner of his shirt to wet it first. He swabbed her face, managing only to smear the spot.
And that was the moment it happened. George saw movement in her face, from muscles that did not exist, as Rosa shifted her fiberglass eyes. At least George imagined that they shifted, and he paused with his hand still rubbing at her protruding lip. And then, as he stared into those ivory peepers that he swore stared back, an incredible jolt of pain fired through his fingertip and up his forearm.
George rocked back, howling, and dropped his shirt to the floor. It flopped in a heap, creating a mini mushroom cloud of dust. Atop it, drops of his blood bubbled down like the contents of a leaky gutter in a rain shower. George gaped at the wound that had become of his middle finger, cupped in a warm red pool in his other hand. He squeezed his damaged left hand, the one that had been injured at work. The fingertip, which had finally stopped bleeding from earlier, was now sending blood out in steady, rhythmic spurts, where the tip of it had been completely cut off. It was gone. A raggedy strip of skin had been left dangling at the end of the knuckle, and from it hung the fingernail, sagging like a fleshy fishing line with a full load.
3
The wounded digit spilled drops of blood freely, which were swallowed in the fine dirt of the floor, becoming tiny dark craters in the surface. It was not until George’s back hit the wall, knocking a wheeze from him, that he realized he was screaming. The pain did not register at first; shock and horror had delayed that. The natural opiates of George’s body helped too, for those first few moments. George wailed until he was out of breath, clasping his tattered finger with his good fist. His breaths came in haggard, irregular gulps once he finally stopped screaming. The air was cool but stale and he couldn’t seem to get enough of it into his lungs. His head swam while he watched his arms tremble uncontrollably.
And then, in a brief resurgence of mental clarity, George leaned forward and grabbed his shirt. Doing so threw him off balance and brought him to his knees, but he did manage to get hold of the shirt and wrap a fold around the severed finger. The moment heavy fabric grated at exposed nerve endings George screamed again. Fire radiated up his forearm. He clenched his jaw, biting his lip open in the process, and continued wrapping until his whole hand had been balled up like a stick of cotton candy.
Once he could no longer see the mangled thing, the pain oddly subsided some. It stopped hurting enough so that George could begin to process the situation. He lifted his eyes to Rosa, who loomed over him like a scolding parent, hands still firmly buried against her sultry hips. But her eyes were blank, devoid of life. There was not a trace of menace in her seductive form, the eternal form that George himself had sculpted for her. And of course there would not have been. There should not have been, George knew. Yet when he saw the rivulets of his own blood now dribbling down her pale chin in two parallel streams, he only halfway believed it. For that very brief second, he believed in his heart that the mannequin had taken his fingertip on purpose, with scornful hatred.
George rocked back onto his heels, lost his balance again. He caught himself on his hands, with excruciating results, and scuttled on his ass toward the door. His eyes never left Rosa as he fumbled his way out of the room. Finally, he made it through the door. George slammed it shut. He closed his eyes, leaned his forehead against its cool pine surface, and felt himself shudder as he breathed. Perhaps a minute passed as he sat there, just swallowing air. Perhaps it was ten. His only thought was of the magnificent beauty on the other side of the door, his greatest achievement, and the terrifying thought that he might very well be losing his mind. He knew precisely what it was that his brain wanted him to think, but he could not bring himself to believe such absurdity. He knew that it was impossible. Rosa had not intentionally hurt him. She was utterly incapable of it, logically and physically. She wasn’t like the other Rosa, who screamed and kicked and clawed at his bare arms when he tried to feed her. No, his Rosa could never do any of that. Nor would she ever want to. After all, he had created her and given her life.
The mannequin’s thin, smooth face was the only thing he could see when he shut his eyes. He saw her impassive look, despite the fact that her suggestive lips had been sullied with his blood. He pulled his head away from the door and clasped his oversized bandage. George stroked the makeshift mitten, swallowing hard. When he opened his eyes he saw just how ridiculous it looked at the end of his arm. It was obscenely overdressed. In fact, it looked as if his entire hand had been amputated, not just the square inch of flesh of his fingertip. From here, there was so much wrapping he couldn’t even see any blood, except for what had wet his chest and right hand. His tan stomach was splashed with a thin layer of it, a macabre work of contemporary impressionism on sweaty human canvas.
George cleared his throat. It was hoarse from all the yelling.
“Rosa,” George said, feeling an unnatural chill in the pit of his stomach as he did. “How did this happen, my lovely? How did this happen?”
And then the answer was right there, staring him in the face. It had been all along. Its obviousness had just gotten lost in the confusion of his paranoia. At that very moment he recalled the injury he’d sustained only two hours prior in the factory. It was the exact same finger that he’d hurt while handling Rosa’s still unsanded skull.
A snort escaped George’s lips, followed by an excited sigh of relief. How could he have been such an idiot? Somewhere on that beautiful face of hers was a very sharp edge in need of smoothing. It must have been small, but George knew that even the smallest edges of fiberglass could be dangerous. Were they dangerous enough to remove the tip of a human finger? Well, that was a thought he quickly kicked to the back of his mind. After all, maybe his finger wasn’t in that bad of shape. He had been fairly worked up at the sight of so much blood, and he’d gotten it bandaged quickly. Yes, the more he thought about that, the more sure he became that the injury could not be that terrible. Messy, sure, but not that terrible. In fact, the pain had abated almost totally. It could only be felt when he flexed his hand deep within the beehive-shaped bandage. It was warm, tingly even, as if that part of him had been sitting in the sun too long and gotten burned.
“Rosa,” George said again, thinking of her quiet, abandoned form waiting for him on the other side of the door. He knew what he must do. And of all the chores yet awaiting him for the evening, this one he would act
ually enjoy. He would remedy the problem of the sharp edge at that very moment. It would only take a minute—the lighting in the mannequin room was decent enough—and George already had a sanding block there on his bed.
His knees popped when he stood, as did his lower back. But George ignored them. He retrieved the tiny rectangular sanding block, feeling more confident with its familiar shape in his hand. The thing’s rough grit was a welcome sensation between his fingers. Walking to the stained mattress and back to the door was doubly profitable. Getting his circulation moving again had helped George’s mental state immensely.
Without hesitation he turned the tarnished brass knob. He stepped into the room, welcomed by a familiar, but silent, crowd. The lovelies all stood in their row of proud display, even Rosa. Her chin was still painted with crimson dribbles and that caused a pang of distaste to roil George’s stomach. He took a deep breath, reassured by the unbroken silence, and approached the room’s newest (and loveliest) inhabitant.
With the coarse sanding sponge held like an unopened deck of cards, he raised his hand toward Rosa’s face. He squinted his eyes, looked carefully at every contoured angle. He rotated slowly around her front side, examining the frozen curves of her chin and lips for the offending edge. But he could see nothing out of place. Everything was as it should have been.
George wrinkled his brow. And then he paused to listen.
Someone had called his name. It was faint, but he was sure of it. At once, his heart quickened, picturing someone standing at his front door. But who could that possibly be at this hour? Sunrise was still over two hours away. He licked his lips, wondering whether or not to climb the stairs and investigate.
And then he heard it again. It was a whisper, but it was undoubtedly speaking directly to him. It was saying his name.
George turned toward the door. He squeezed the sanding block, which pooted out a cumulus cloud of dust in protest.
George.
This time, George dropped the sponge. His breathing had unconsciously slowed to a halt as he listened. He recognized that voice, its hollow, nasal whimper. It was a voice that had pleaded with him in drained whispers for almost five weeks. And it was not coming from the upstairs. Nor was it drifting to him from the bedroom on the other side of the door. No, it had come from the direction of the water heater closet on the far side of the room.
“But—that can’t be,” George said.
And yet he heard her, the dead girl whom had lent her namesake and physical likeness for his latest creation. She called his name once more. George felt the corner of his lip twitch. And at once, both the heated throb of his mangled finger and the wound on his other arm began to itch fiercely. He tried to scratch at the terrycloth covering with his teeth, which actually did help. Maybe it helped too much, because he found that while the sides were crusted and dry with blood, the middlemost part was wet. The gouges given to him by the dead woman were bleeding again.
“You’re dead,” George warned. “So you just shut your filthy mouth.”
George.
George stared at the doorless opening to the water heater closet, transfixed. He laughed. He was losing his mind. It had finally happened. The stress and pressure he had placed upon himself while working on his masterpiece had finally become too much to bear. And because of it his imagination was now revolting, giving him clear warning that his body and mind needed rest. Looking down at the wounds he had allowed to be inflicted upon himself in the last twelve hours, the fact could not have been any clearer. He needed rest. This project, his Rosa, had been unequivocally rewarding and satisfying, but it had taken its toll on him. He was no longer a young man. Things were no longer as easy as they had been with Carmelita.
George knew that his wounds needed to be cleaned and properly dressed. Something involving more soap and scrubbing, and less sweat and dirty rags. He sighed, dropped his eyes beyond the horizon of his modest, hairy gut and down to the floor.
Yes, he would rest. There would be no more tinkering with his masterpiece until his body and mind had recuperated. He’d done enough damage already. God knew he couldn’t afford to have any more accidents that evening.
But first, George lifted his gaze again to the closet. There was one last thing that needed to be done. The girl had to be disposed of before she started to stink. And he had long ago promised to himself never to let that particular unpleasantness happen again.
*
Ten minutes later, George had returned to the basement carrying a plastic blue tarp under his arm. Folded up in it was a roll each of duct tape and paper towels. He had not bothered to put on a new shirt since there was no sense in dirtying another. He crossed the middle of the mannequin room, casting a quick glance at his lovelies as he passed by. He stopped at the closet entrance, exhaled deeply, and walked through.
Aside from the water heater, the confined space was barely big enough to hold the occupancy of two human bodies along with the spread of an unfolded tarp. But George made do. The tarp crinkled as he ripped open the packaging and spread its membrane across the floor. With his breath held, he daubed at the floor beneath Rosa’s dress with wad after wad of paper towels. After a few foul minutes of this, he put the lid on the shit bucket and shoved it into the mannequin room behind him.
He tried his hardest not to look at her when he untied her wrists from the water pipe. And he managed to do a fairly good job of it, until her head slumped to the side as he lifted her, landing with a gooey thud against his left forearm. When that happened he let out a disgusted grunt and dropped her to the floor. She didn’t seem to mind as much as George did.
George dragged the sticky smear across his pants, shuddering away the brief urge to vomit as he did so.
“With the best, comes the worst,” George said, in an unusual burst of philosophy.
And then she spoke his name again.
At this point he allowed himself a glance at the girl’s body. She still wore the grimy red sundress, torn beneath one arm, and at the bottom edge. Her once tan skin was now sickly white, the only color lent to them from dirt streaks and bruises. She was, without question, dead as a doornail.
“There will be no more talking,” George said. “Not from you. Not from anyone.” With that, he took the roll of duct tape and tore off a strip. And just as he leaned forward to apply it, he was halted by horrible fascination. Both corners of Rosa’s mouth were stained with lines of blood. And it was wet. She had been dead for the better part of eight hours and had remained unmoved. Except for when George had borrowed her scalp. But, at that time, he knew that the blood had not been present because he had studied her face, had even stroked it fondly during the process. Where then, had it come from? When he’d just dropped her to the concrete?
The thought disturbed him. It bothered him enough that all he wanted to do was apply the tape and be done with it. But he couldn’t do it. Not yet. Because there was something else on her lips besides gore. It was a solid whitish clump, wetted by the blood. George prodded at Rosa’s jaw with his bandaged hand, feeling his stomach lurch at the same time. He depressed her chin. It took a fair amount of pressure, but her jaw eventually unhinged. Yes, there was definitely something bound up in there.
George tacked the strip of tape to the surface of the water heater and used his good hand to reach down and into Rosa’s mouth. He pinched the soft object between his fingers and tugged it free. There, under the dismal light of the closet’s single light bulb, George sat, mouth set in the wide ‘o’ of a silent scream.
He was not looking at the remnants of the woman’s breakfast, caught fast in her lips as she died. Nor was he seeing the chewed up remains of a tongue, bitten free during a death seizure. What George Sandoval had removed from the dead girl’s mouth was the ragged, nail-less stump of his own middle finger. Bone protruded from one end of the inch long digit. The other end was whole, and relatively unscathed, with the exception of the missing fingernail, which George knew was still attached and wadded up in the makeshift ban
dage on his left hand.
George stared silently at the severed chunk. There was no doubt that it was his. And that terrified him, made his bare, sweating torso quiver. He could hardly breathe, his lungs pulling air in short chuffs. His hand trembled, letting the finger fall between his knees in the dirt.
“How?” George said. A tingle ran up the flesh of his neck, pulsing in his scalp. He itched his forearm absently with his swaddled hand. Rosa stared up at him with rheumy red eyes, her involuntarily bald head cocked at an unnatural angle. George stared back, aware only of the chill that had overcome his bare skin. He listed to one side, unbalanced, and nearly toppled. He was unaware of it but he had begun to hyperventilate. In his chest, his heart beat steadily faster, keeping rhythm with the deadly melody of George’s panicky brain.
And then he swooned once more. This time, George was unable to catch himself. He put out his good arm as he rocked, but the elbow simply folded when his palm met the floor. In the next instant George’s head met concrete and he collapsed on top of the open tarp.
*
When George awoke, he found himself supine, staring up at the rust-patched eggshell cylinder of the water heater. The bare cement walls were at once familiar to him. He blinked his eyes and licked his lips, both very much in drought. He took a deep breath, which filled his nose with fine dust, and caused him to erupt in a coughing fit. This stirred more dust beneath his face. His coughing intensified, until at last, he doubled himself into an upright position, leaning against the water heater. In the cool room, its warm surface was a welcome sensation on the skin of his back.
George flexed his stiff jaw, finding that both his cheekbone and that side of his skull tingled with radiant pain. He remembered falling, but had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. And there, still lying beside him, was the reason for his fainting.
The Graveyard Shift Page 14
