This Book Is Full of Bodies

by Rick Wood

  “Right.” She is now poised between annoyance and gratitude. Well, Lisa, which one will it be? “Thank you. I’m glad you’ve seen the light.”

  Neither; it is stupidity, then.

  I arrive home shortly and park my car with gentle precision outside the driveway. It is now late Sunday afternoon, and no police officers have come to knock on my door, and this reassures me that maybe I did cover my tracks well, or that he is yet to be reported missing, or that I at least have enough time to dispose of the evidence.

  After all, it would surely be almost impossible to convict a man of murder without a body.

  I wave at Lisa as she scowls at me from the window. I retrieve her car keys and go to her car. I then realise I will need another utensil, such as a hacksaw. I have no such equipment. But I do have a spade and a gardening fork. I also find a duffel bag from a brief period of going to the gym a few years back; a stint that lasted all of three days before I grew tired of the evident-steroid-abusers that barely did any exercise and spent hours just parading around the place in barely visible vests.

  I drive Lisa’s car until I reach a small village on the outskirts of Gloucester called Birdlip. I come here because I know the police will not. Birdlip is a famous – or infamous, depending on how you look at it – dogging site. The police did, once, have some presence here and convict such offenders, only to find those offenders took their lives due to the shame; a silly thing to do, if you ask me, and another example of society dictating what is normal and what is not normal. If enough people want to partake in public group sex that it has developed its own terminology, that means that it must be normal. Now, as a result, the police stay clear – a what I don’t see I don’t have to deal with kind of attitude.

  So I pass a few rocking cars, and keep going far enough past them that they will not try to involve me, and I find a place beneath a tree, surrounded by trees, on an outstretched country road. The angles are such that, should a car drive by, as unlikely as it is down this road; it honestly does lead to nowhere – I know that the car will probably not get a long enough glance to see what I am doing.

  I check the coast is clear anyway, which it is, and I take the spade and take the gardening fork and make my way to the boot.

  I open it, to find Carluccio staring up at me. His eyes are wide open and he seems shocked that I would be standing over him, but why should he be shocked, did he really think I was going to leave him? His eyebrows are raised and his cheeks are white and his fingers are chubby and gosh he really is an ugly fellow. God knows why I adored him so much. Seems foolish now.

  I try to move him and he is stiff. Rigor mortis, it is called. He is also cold. His lips are parted and he is still fat. Even in death, he fails to lose weight.

  I do not want to get any blood in the car – not that I think any blood would come out of a body so rigid – so I drag him out of the car and place him on the ground.

  I attempt to hack at his neck with the spade. It does little, he is too stiff.

  This is going to be tougher than I precedented.

  I remove my jacket, something one does when they are about to enter into strenuous physical activity in which perspiration may occur.

  I lift the gardening fork and plunge it down to his neck. It takes me a few goes but eventually a few holes are left. I do this at all the joints: the shoulders, the elbows, the waist, the knees, etcetera etcetera.

  I then use the spade and thwack down upon these joints I had supposedly weakened, and it takes me a great many strikes to be able to loosen a single joint. I will save you the details, my dear voyeur, about the arduous activity that was so repetitive it would bore you, and that would be a sin I could not forgive myself. I estimate it took upwards of one-hundred-and-three minutes to part many of his limbs from his body, but eventually I managed.

  Now to consider what to do with them.

  My objective was to put his body parts into smaller body parts that I could easily dispose of. But how do I now dispose of them?

  I could scatter them, perhaps. Place them at various points of the country so that they would be picked up by a fox or a rabid dog or the finder would be unable to place them with the other body parts from so far away.

  I could dump them in the ocean, attaching a brick to each limb to ensure it sinks. Then again, that would be a waste of a brick.

  Just as I begin to curse myself for not thinking in greater detail about what I was going to do, I see something in the distance.

  Animals.

  A farm.

  And, on this farm, a pen within a field containing many of what I am sure are pigs.

  A memory from whence I do not know flutters its way to the forefront of my confusion.

  Pigs eat anything.

  Anything.

  Even bones.

  Even clothes.

  Even an annoying fat fuck who smells like shit.

  Or so I have been led to believe.

  Ah, well, time to test the theory.

  I take the large duffel bag and shove each of the body parts into it. The bag ends up being exceedingly heavy, but manageable, and I place it in the boot of the car where Carluccio had previously laid intact.

  It takes little over sixteen minutes to find my way to the farm. It is an eleven-pound entry fee and another pound to feed the animals. I pay the eleven pounds but neglect to pay the extra pound even though I do, in fact, intend to feed the animals; just not with their bags of nonsense.

  I carry the bag through the farm and get a few inconspicuous looks from parents who look away when I meet their gaze. When I reach the pig pen I see them at a troth so full of gunk that I know I could bury the items inside it and they will surely be left unnoticed.

  I wait for a family to move on and look around. There is another family approaching but they are still fascinated by the bird section, so I shuffle my way around the fence until I am next to the troth. I open the bag and pour the contents in. I prod down upon a few loose fingers and the tip of a toe until they are completely submerged.

  I stand and watch and I learn that pigs do eat everything and anything.

  “Look, Mum!” shouts the snotty brat of the family just leaving the bird section. “Those pigs are really going at that food!”

  “They are, aren’t they?” his mother patronises. “They must really be hungry.”

  I stay until every piece of clothing and every ring finger and every facial figure and every piece of loose scrotal skin is gone. By the time dark has descended, their troths are empty, and I stand there holding an empty duffel bag.

  A teenager comes and tells me they are closing the farm soon.

  I leave, going to the petrol station and supermarket on the way. When I arrive home, I tell Lisa that there was some kind of trouble at the road leading up the petrol station, more specifically a road accident I fabricated that occurred just as I approached and blocked the road for an unforeseeable amount of time as emergency services intervened.

  She believes me.

  Flora isn’t interested. She’s busy on her phone.

  She giggles.

  “Mark,” Lisa mouths to me.

  Fuck sake.

  I just disposed of one sack of bones.

  Ah well, I think I may have an idea for what I shall feed to the pigs next.

  12

  Monday morning proceeds just as any other weekday morning does. I wake up next to the same tired wife, eat the same tired breakfast and make the same tired eyes at Flora while her mother’s back is turned.

  As I sip on my second coffee of the morning, I consider what to do with my day. I could go to the usual café in the morning, out for lunch, and stop at Carluccio’s on the way back.

  Oh, yes.

  I forget.

  Although, maybe I should still pop into Carluccio’s – if I suddenly stop going now, it would be as if I am aware of Carluccio’s absence. Then again, do I really wish to go? I mean, their salmon was good, but the rest of their menu was average at best, and Car
luccio’s endearing demeanour was the only reason for ever attending.

  I will miss that.

  Shame.

  Flora is texting on her phone again and then I remember – ah, yes. Mark. That was what I was going to do today.

  She smiles in a way I’ve never seen her smile at me and it’s not as if it’s fair, I suppose, for me to feel any jealousy. Not that I do. After all, I have fucked a great many whores in the time that I have been fucking Flora. I have even reluctantly been consoled into fucking Lisa within that time also, if only to keep up the pretence of love that supposedly exists between us. So how can I be mad when I have fornicated with her mother?

  Of course, in another context that would be a lot worse than it is now.

  Anyway, it’s not jealousy.

  I have no feelings toward Flora. She is a good fuck and she makes my dick turn into a rod with the slightest lick of her lips or up-ride of her skirt, but there has never been anything resembling affection toward her, just carnal lust.

  So why should I not allow it? Why should I not consent to her engaging in activities with a boy her own age?

  Well, two reasons, I suppose.

  Firstly, it’s irritating. How she buries her head in her phone, how she saves her smiles for his texts, and this constant ignoring of me for the phone when she could be shooting me dirty looks.

  Secondly, it’s gross. Not the idea of her and this boy’s premature penis, necessarily, but I read a while ago that when you kiss someone their saliva can stay in your mouth for up to seven days. That means that if she has kissed this Mark fellow, then she has inadvertently exchanged remnants of his saliva with my own. And it disgusts me to think that I have a pubescent boy’s saliva in my mouth. There are many offenders in certain types of penal institutions that may be envious, but I have never now nor will I ever have a predisposition toward young boys.

  Please do not see me as homophobic, dear voyeur, that is not what I intend. I would happily smile at a couple of two men or two women walking past me in the park with their hands and fingers interlocked. All sex is wonderful, whoever is partaking.

  It is just that I do not like young boys. It’s disgusting and deplorable and those people who do so deserve to be in whatever institution they are incarcerated to.

  Flora is my desire, my passion, my obsession. I want to fuck her right now, in fact, and it takes all the restraint I have not to pound her down upon the breakfast table – but, alas, Lisa’s presence once again ruins everything.

  Was I more attracted to Flora a year or so ago?

  With her body less defined and her hips less prominent and her breasts slightly deformed in their early growth than the rounded triangles they have sprung into?

  Honestly, I couldn’t say.

  Because I wasn’t fucking her then, and I am fucking her now.

  And would like to keep fucking her.

  But I do not want Mark’s saliva in my mouth, is the point.

  And, imagine if you will, she has done more than kiss him. Imagine his penis has been in her mouth. Imagine, even, that he has ejaculated into her saliva.

  Would that ejaculate remain for as long as the saliva?

  Would that mean that, when she kisses me, she is not just exchanging his pubescent saliva with mine but also his pubescent sperm?

  No, this would not do.

  And this is why Mark needs to be dealt with.

  Not for any possibility of me being a slave to jealousy, but for the grotesque nature of our interactions now that she is exchanging bodily fluids with a man closer to her age.

  “Right, I’m off,” Flora announces, standing and throwing her bag over her shoulder without once taking her eyes away from her phone. “I’ll be back after school,” she says, and glances at me, and it gives me relief that she still gives me the sign that we will later be fornicating; assuming I can do so without losing my erection at the thought of Mark’s bodily fluid.

  I know I keep coming back to Mark’s bodily fluids, and I truly do not mean to, but I just find the whole concept so detestable that the thought keeps re-entering my mind.

  “I have PE last period,” she says. “I just hope my teacher isn’t so rough.”

  She glances at me and is that meant to be some kind of code?

  Ah, I hate it when a woman does this.

  Expects me to read between lines.

  I can only understand things at face value, and so I discard the comment and watch her buttocks sway as they mount up the behind of her skirt and she is gone.

  “What time are you going to be home tonight?” Lisa asks like she does every day.

  “Late,” I answer like I do every day.

  “It would be good if we could spend some time together.”

  Oh, this again.

  Lisa does this every few weeks.

  She gets a sudden wave of sadness that we aren’t having a happy enough marriage and she spends a few days coercing me into spending some of my precious time with her.

  She does the same thing with diets, gym routines and motherly affection. Feels she is lacking in something, so does an excess of it for days; then the fad passes, and she resumes her life as it previously was.

  “Sure,” I say, hoping this will suffice.

  “I’ll see you later on then,” she says, and she kisses my cheek, and I know from this that she is definitely in one of her fads.

  She leaves and I check the time.

  I best get to school.

  I have a student to find.

  13

  Well aren’t I a cliché?

  Hovering outside a school in my car like some meandering pervert. I may as well adorn binoculars and an overcoat just to make myself look even more conspicuous.

  I try to rethink my tactics. A man alone in a car hovering outside a school during school hours is bound to attract attention, and the last thing I want is someone being able to refer to the strange fellow loitering around. If someone were to see me and be able to recall my car or my appearance following a student’s disappearance I would surely be approached by police, perhaps even arrested.

  Don’t get me wrong, with the lawyers I could afford and just a child’s poor description to go on, I would be liberated fairly promptly. But eyes would be on me. All actions on my part would have to cease.

  I was reckless with Carluccio. It was a crime of passion, an instinctive attack. I need to be smarter, be more cunning.

  I can’t expect to be lucky enough to kill the next one in an alley way that has no CCTV trail, or for Lisa to not look in the boot of her car, or for me to rely on the families in the farm being too stupid not to notice the pig was eating a human foot.

  No, if I am to continue in my tirade of tampering with nature, to continue to feel the rush and power I felt with my first kill and desperately wish to feel again, I need to be clever.

  Because it is a rush.

  It makes you feel powerful. Indestructible. Just imagine taking a human life with your bare hands… Your hands, those two paws you hold this book or eReader with – imagine wrapping those fingers around someone’s throat or holding a brick up high and slamming it down upon their cranium. Doesn’t the thought give you a rush? A high? Maybe even the tiniest of erections (unless you are female, of course, of which there is a higher statistical probability, considering that the majority of people who read books are women between 45-65, in which case, do forgive my presumption of your gender, and hey, fair play to you for sticking with me and not giving the book up for some soppy romance or erotic thriller you can digitally penetrate yourself over once your partner has grown bored with your ever ageing body.)

  Where was I?

  Oh, yes. The power.

  Imagine it.

  And don’t just read these words and ignore my request, this is not a request, it is a demand. To hell with society’s conditioning of what you believe to be right and wrong. You only believe murder is wrong because it has been imprinted on you from a young age. A few hundred years ago and you proba
bly wouldn’t survive without a little bit of murder.

  So imagine it, really imagine it. The way it feels as their life fades, as their eyes flicker, as they beg you – and they will beg, as you are the one with the power to stop or to continue and decease their breath, halt their heart, end their wretched life.

  Doesn’t the thought just give you that little surge of excitement?

  Well, I can tell you, the thought is nothing compared to the actual experience. I waited so long to actually do it, wanting to feel this power, that I can’t believe I deprived myself for so long.

  I plan to build up to the big one.

  Lisa.

  I cannot wait do away with her so I can live the rich bachelor life in my big house with a cook and a cleaner and too many rooms to keep track of!

  But, until then, I must build up.

  Start small.

  With a boy.

  A boy of which I am not jealous, I must remind you. It’s just an excuse, really. I needed a target and, through Flora, the target presented itself.

  Yes, I will kill Mark, maim him, torture him even should the environment give me enough solitude to do so without being caught. Then I will go home and fuck her knowing that I murdered her crush, that I destroyed the only other soul on earth who was willing to place their dirty hands on her filthy, filthy body.

  I move my car to the side of the school, where there is a small supermarket opposite, therefore giving me reason to park there that allows me to become less suspicious. From here I can see the bike sheds.

  That was where Flora said they had interlocked lips, of course. You may not recall from earlier in the book, and if so, damn your silly memory. Or were you not paying enough attention? Perhaps someone spoke to you at that bit of the novel and you didn’t have the guts you needed to tell them to shut up, as you were busy reading.

  Well, I assure you, Flora referenced this being the location she took him to.

  So, I wait.

  The school bell rings on the hour of ten.