by Jason Beymer
Burklin pushed the red button on the machine. It beeped. A familiar female voice, one afflicted by a lifetime of alcohol and nicotine abuse, said, “Hello.” The speaker wasted two minutes of tape repeating this word, as if on a loop. “Hello. Hello!” Then it said, “You still refuse to pick up the phone when your own flesh and blood calls? You can’t keep ignoring me.”
“I can keep trying,” he told the machine.
His mother continued, “I wanted to give you the good news. Your wildest dreams have come true.” She emitted a forced cough. “I saw the doctor about my wheezing condition. He said on top of the diabetes, the meningitis, and the hep A, B, and C, I’ve got the cancer. It’s in my lungs and spreading fast. I don’t expect you to do anything about it. We haven’t talked since your wedding, when you married that fat whore, but—”
The tape beeped and cut her off.
“Your mother has cancer?” Pearl asked.
“Sounds like it.”
“Are you going to cry?”
“Yesterday she said she had glaucoma, and the day before that scabies. Tomorrow she’ll have decapitation sickness. She’ll outlive us all.”
Pearl yipped and pushed her nose into the empty bowl. “More.”
“No,” Burklin said with a yawn. “You’ve eaten plenty.”
Pearl ran to the other side of the apartment. She returned holding a leash in her mouth. “Walkies, then?”
“Let me get my jacket.”
“Are you going to call your mother back first?”
“No.”
* * * *
Stenciled numbers lined the hallway on both sides, one on each door. Every unit contained a toilet, a sink, and a kitchen identical to his own. The Blue Bay Apartments resembled a prison, except these occupants paid rent and locked their own doors.
Burklin walked into the empty, silent hallway.
“What day is it?” he whispered.
“Sunday,” Pearl said. “Why? You want to go to church?”
“Hardly. Though I wouldn’t mind finding a priest to exorcise those bed sheets.”
Burklin led the miniature dachshund downstairs to the parking lot. As he opened the carport door, he saw the empty space where his black car usually resided. Garrick had ripped out his soul a second time.
They took their usual “walkies” route, his flip-flops loud on the concrete. Several other dog-walkers trudged along the sidewalk, pulled by their canines at the ends of leashes. He suspected none of these dogs had asked for “walkies” the same way as Pearl.
Burklin regarded the dog wistfully. “You acted less bitchy in your puppy days.”
“It’s not easy carrying around two souls,” she said. “Yours is hot tar. All bubbly.”
“You used to smell like corn chips. You smelled good. Now you smell like—”
“Shut up about my overactive anal gland. I’m sensitive about it, okay?”
They passed expensive two-story houses along the suburban street. A few kids pointed in his direction. He couldn’t blame them. He looked like a crazy homeless man arguing with a dog.
Burklin stuck his free hand in his coat pocket. This job grew worse every day. He’d cleaned up at least four dead bodies in the past week alone. Garrick blamed the meteoric rise in murders on the demon’s adolescence. Surging hormones increased the demon’s homicidal tendencies, making his urges more difficult to control.
Urges. Speaking of which …
As they arrived at an intersection, Pearl tugged on the leash. Burklin returned the tug. The dog let out a strangled cough. “We’re not going that way,” he said. “Let’s walk this way instead. There’s a nice hydrant over here.”
“Oh, no you don’t. We’re going this way.”
“You’re an eight-pound dog. Do you think I can’t drag you?”
Pearl lunged in the other direction and pulled on the leash. The effort didn’t amount to much. “It’s a bad idea,” she said. “Switching to decaf was the only good idea you’ve had all year.”
With the rising death count and increased responsibilities, Burklin had become more anxious than ever. This meant waving bye-bye to caffeine. He’d even visited a psychiatrist, despite Garrick’s warning. Burklin nearly tripped over a crack in the sidewalk as he remembered that visit.
“We all love our pets,” the psychiatrist had said. “It’s natural. We select a specific breed of animal to fill a void. Why, I own a parakeet myself. It gives the most peculiar squawk whenever it leaves a dropping. And the color? You’d think I dipped it in fresh green paint every morning.”
“You don’t understand,” Burklin had said. “When I say my soul is in my dog, I’m speaking literally.”
“You’re dressed light considering the weather. Is my office too stuffy for you?”
“No, I’m burning up.”
“Are you feverish? I know the flu is going around.”
“It’s not the flu.”
“I ask because my heater broke, and it is”—he’d craned his neck to look at the digital clock on the desk—”fifty-five degrees in here. It’s freezing.”
“So?”
“So you’ve come to a psychiatrist wearing shorts and a t-shirt in the dead of winter. I think most anecdotes begin that way, yes?”
“I left my dog at home. Pearl enjoys lounging next to the space heater. She’s smart enough to turn it on.”
“About that,” he’d said, examining the notebook. “On the phone you told me you have a symbiotic relationship with your dog. That you two share physical stimuli. Tell me more.”
“Symbiotic? I guess so. But it’s one-way. I feel what she feels, but it doesn’t happen in reverse.”
“You believe your dog has a heightened intellect.”
“Pearl can talk. She can turn on a space heater. Does that make her smart? I don’t know. At least she hasn’t figured out how to open the refrigerator. Thank God for that.”
Pearl nipped Burklin’s ankle and startled him out of the memory.
“Are you daydreaming again?” she said. “My feet are tired.”
“It’s just a little farther now.”
“I knew it! I knew we wouldn’t visit a hydrant. I refuse to take another step. Let it go. The sooner you accept the reality of our situation, the better it will be for both of us.”
“You sound like Garrick.”
“Really?” She puffed out her breastbone. “Cool.”
“Not cool.”
Minutes later, they came upon a two-story house. His house. At least it had been until the divorce. Burklin noticed a black automobile in the driveway. At first he thought, Gee, that looks like Black Beauty.
Then he realized it was Black Beauty.
“No,” he said. “No way.”
Pearl nuzzled Burklin’s leg, grimacing. “At least Garrick washed it.”
“I wish you’d stop talking.”
“And I wish I could get sniffed by a Doberman, but we can’t all get what we want. Let’s turn around and go home.”
Burklin crossed the street, dragging his dog like a four-legged brick behind him. Each step closer to the house peeled another layer off the scab. He’d left everything behind when he moved out of there, taking only his car, a few boxes, and his cursed dachshund.
Burklin stopped next to Black Beauty and ran his palm along its smooth frame. He loved the way it felt under his hand.
Pearl plopped down next to his foot. “Boy, you look mad,” she said. She sniffed some weeds near the back tire. “Well, not mad, per se. Not the way you used to get, but you know what I mean.”
Burklin stared at the house. The concrete reached from the sidewalk to the front door. Lively grass had once lined this entire walkway. A rose bush with a novelty post had proclaimed this Burklin’s Garden. Torn down. All of it. They’d even removed the Home of the Franks plate from the window.
“I’m not upset,” he said. “I’m … frustrated.”
“Thanks for setting me straight. You’ve seen enough, haven’t you?”
Burklin stomped up the path to the house. The leash went taut and flipped the dachshund on her side. She regained her footing and repeated the words, “Bad idea, bad idea,” as she scampered along behind him.
Burklin pressed his face against the living room window. He saw the couch, the love seat, and the big screen TV. No one there. Just his old furniture, lonely in the darkness.
“Oh well,” Pearl said, wagging. “Let’s go home.”
“I’ll bet she’s in the bedroom.” Burklin yanked the leash and worked his way around the side of the house. His flip-flops stuck in the mud. He abandoned them.
Burklin peeked into the master bedroom through an inch of neglected curtain and saw the king-sized mattress, the furniture, the antique lamp.
There she was, on the bed.
“Found you,” he whispered.
He studied his ex-wife’s feet: tiny today, no larger than size three. Much smaller than her normal size eight, with the long, unkempt nails. She’d also transformed her skin color to ebony. Her petite ankles brushed together as her toes curled.
He knew his ex-wife slept with the boss. This information didn’t come from peeping through windows; it came from Garrick himself. The old man took every opportunity to belittle him.
Burklin strained to filter out the ambient noise of squirrels, birds and barking dogs, his ear flush with the glass. The conversation inside the bedroom vibrated the double-panes and tickled his earlobe, but nothing intelligible seeped through. First, he heard his ex-wife, then Garrick’s deep voice somewhere outside his view.
Pearl sniffed at a patch of ivy. “Hmm, I smell the black cat. Pretzel. Wasn’t that her name? Little rat-muncher must still prowl around here. This is my house, under my protection. I made my barks crystal clear on the subject.”
“You don’t live here anymore,” Burklin said. “Neither of us does.”
“It’s the principle of the thing. I claimed this territory, not her.”
“If we’re thinking of the same cat, she outweighs you by twenty pounds. And I thought only male dogs were territorial.”
“Just because we don’t use a little pink dick to stake our claim doesn’t mean we’re not territorial.”
Shadows played along the bedroom floor. His ex-wife turned onto her stomach, dainty toes flexing.
“You know what I wish?” Pearl said. “I wish that black cat would climb over that fence right now. Right this second. I’d give her a piece of my mind. Boy howdy, would I. Can you imagine? The cat would walk up to me, and I’d say, ‘Bitch, this here my crib.’ We’ll see how frisky she gets then. She doesn’t know I can talk. I’d cuss her out. I’d even use the C word.”
“Hush.”
“Let me guess,” Pearl said with a labored sigh. “You’re watching your shapeshifting ex-wife, and she’s making herself slender, maybe even a different color. What is she today? Purple?”
“Black.”
“You mean the color of your car, black?”
“More like Whoopi-black.”
“Is Garrick on top of her?”
“No. I think he’s brushing his teeth. Probably with one of my old toothbrushes.”
“So I ask again, have you seen enough?”
The psychiatrist had asked him the same question, more or less: “Have you told me enough for one session?”
Burklin had wanted to tell the psychiatrist more. Once he left, Garrick would find out about the visit and punish him for it. The old man demanded he keep his secrets bottled up. He wouldn’t want Burklin to seek help, wouldn’t want him emotionally stable, lest he turn uppity.
The day after his appointment with the psychiatrist, Burklin had opened the newspaper and discovered a jarring article. Buried deep within the Living section he’d read the headline, Local Psychiatrist Dies from Eight-Story Fall. Witnesses had reported seeing the man jump from the window and slam onto the pavement.
Coincidence? Not a chance.
“You are what we in the psychiatric profession call a project, Mr. Franks,” the psychiatrist had said. “If you’re asking me to provide a cursory diagnosis, well … I suppose your issues stem from childhood. This man you work for didn’t remove your soul. You’ve turned him into the father you never had, blaming him for ruining your marriage and taking away your home. The impotence … again, that has nothing to do with your soul. It happens to men your age. What, are you fifty-ish, fifty-five?”
“I just turned forty.”
“Yikes, my mistake,” he’d said. “Anyway, you’ve concocted this soul-stealing fantasy to cover up the actual reason your marriage fell apart. Don’t you think it’s problematic to work for someone you blame for your misfortune? And if he’s sleeping with the woman you love—”
“I don’t love her anymore.”
The doctor had looked at his watch, signaling the end of the hour. “Nobody stole your soul. That’s physically impossible. Your relationship failed. It happens to many couples. This man manipulated you, and he continues to manipulate you to this day. In order to compensate, you’ve concocted some elaborate story about protecting a demon mass murderer, a talking dog—”
“And a shapeshifting ex-wife.”
“Right. Get out.”
Burklin felt a nip at his ankle.
“Let’s go,” Pearl said.
Burklin tried to get a better look, a better angle. Lorraine’s legs turned white again, fleshy and flabby. The fungus reappeared on her toes. Her feet grew to their normal length. Garrick’s fantasies must have been sated.
Life was cruel.
* * * *
Burklin sulked all the way back to the apartment.
When he made it through the door, he tossed the keys on the kitchen table with a groan and removed Pearl’s leash. He shuffled to the concave mattress, brushed aside a cockroach, and collapsed face down. His chin hit the springy surface hard.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Pearl asked.
“No.”
“I’m a good listener.”
“You’re a terrible listener.”
“I’ll listen. I don’t have a choice. It’s a studio apartment. Where can I go?”
Burklin closed his eyes and drifted off. He tried to get back to the dream of the black luxury car and the vaginal tailpipe. But this time the dreams didn’t come.
Chapter 3
The Last Job
“Wakey-wakey, you ungrateful shit.”
Burklin lifted his head, drenched in sweat. He opened one eye and discovered a leather shoe on the mattress. It smashed against his chest. “Ow.”
“Up,” the owner of the shoe said.
The old man hovered over him, dressed in a charcoal three-piece suit with sequins and a burgundy tie. Garrick stood a husky six foot five, and took the space of two lumberjacks. He resembled a caricature of a Cajun gentleman, one who survived on mayonnaise and lard. In one hand, he held a white take-out carton of chow mein, in the other, a plastic fork. “Up,” he repeated through a mouthful of noodles.
“Why is it so hot in here?” Burklin asked. An oscillating cyclone of heat whipped against his face, back and forth.
“Dog,” he said through cottonmouth, “did you turn on the space heater?”
From the corner of his eye, he could see the grille of the ancient machine. Its red light covered the dachshund like a stenciled blanket. Pearl responded with a snore.
“Some guard dog you are,” he muttered. “Couldn’t even bite Garrick when he came in.” He looked up at the intruder. “How did you get in here anyway?”
Garrick shrugged. “I have several keys to this hovel. I pay the rent, don’t I?”
Burklin wiped the sleep from his eyes.
“I’m disappointed in last night’s job,” Garrick said. “Lately you’ve been searching for loopholes in your servitude, ways to escape it. This behavior worries me.”
“It’s supposed to. Maybe you’ll give me back my soul.”
“Why would I do that? If I return your soul, you’ll abandon
this passive-aggressive approach and rip out my spleen.”
The room spun as Burklin stood. He flipped the switch on the heater. The motor puttered out with a whine.
“Hey!” Pearl said.
“That got your attention, huh?” Burklin pulled off his shirt and glared at the dog. “For once I’d like to wear a sweater around the apartment. But no, you’re always cold. Can’t I fall asleep without you turning on that machine?”
“I like it warm,” Pearl said with a bark.
“This isn’t warm. This is scalding.”
Garrick handed Burklin a carton of orange juice. “Thirsty?”
“Yes.” Burklin took it without looking. He gulped it down, then grimaced. “Jesus!”
“Good, huh?”
Burklin spit out what he could. He looked inside the carton and saw black dots floating in the orange juice. “Are those coffee grounds? You know I can’t handle caffeine.”
Garrick chuckled. “I added some pep. You’ll need it. I have a job for you.”
He waved his hands. “No more jobs.”
“It’s not as if you have a choice.” Garrick sighed. “This has gone too far, son. I removed your soul to keep you docile. I can’t have you sabotaging our opportunity to win the sweepstakes.”
He should have known the old man would bring up the sweepstakes. That’s all he ever talked about.
Burklin walked to the kitchen. The dog trailed behind him. “I don’t care about the sweepstakes anymore. Let that murdering shit get himself caught. Better yet, killed. At least then I could sleep later.”
“If anything happens to that ‘murdering shit,’ you know what I’ll do to your dog.”
Burklin picked up a bag of dog food and poured some into a bowl. “Here.” He slammed it on the floor.
Pearl inhaled the food.
Burklin turned on the faucet and drank from the tap. His eyes drifted to the window. “Hey, it’s dark outside.”
“It tends to do that at night,” Garrick said.
“Have I been asleep all day?”
Pearl lapped at her water, then said, “I didn’t have the heart to wake you. You looked so peaceful. Like chasing pheasants through a field of wheat.”
“Didn’t you have to go potty, Pearl?”
