Nether

by Jason Beymer

  “Maybe it’s a flat tire,” he said. “Maybe a small animal got caught in the undercarriage.”

  “It’s not an animal,” Pearl said. “Be careful out there.”

  Burklin gave her a sideways glance. “How do you know it’s not an animal?”

  “I think it’s her.”

  “Her who?”

  “Her. The dead girl. As in the-body-you’re-supposed-to-toss-in-the-Dumpster.”

  Burklin smacked his lips. “Right. She turned into a … a what? A zombie, maybe?”

  “Oh, so now you have the ability to smell everything even when you don’t want to? No. You’re not a dog.”

  “What do you think you smell?”

  “We’ve been doing this for a while, collecting dead bodies, throwing them in the trunk, dropping them into Dumpsters behind this diner. I’ve gotten the scent of dead people. They smell like … oh, I don’t know, what’s the soap you use when you take a shower?”

  “My body wash? The Irish Gleam body wash? Come on, Irish Gleam smells good.”

  “Dead people smell like Irish Gleam.”

  “Offensive, but not helpful.”

  “You’re right. You should gather a dozen canines from the hound family. Post an ad on Craigslist, get yourself a focus group, and conduct a scientific poll. How many talking dachshunds have you had intelligent conversations with?”

  “You can smell the corpse in the trunk?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s Asian. Maybe Asian people smell different.”

  “Racist.”

  “What about the Hispanic? Did the Hispanic guy smell like Irish Gleam too?”

  “No, he smelled like an enchilada. Of course he smelled like Irish Gleam. You all do after you expire.”

  “So what does she smell like?”

  “Vinegar.” She took another sniff. “Like your dirty underwear.”

  Burklin stepped out of the car. He stooped to one knee and checked the undercarriage for a small animal. No such luck.

  “Be careful,” Pearl called out.

  Burklin walked to the trunk. He inserted the key, then moved his hand away.

  What am I doing? he thought. Stop listening to the dog. The woman is dead. You saw her with your own eyes.

  He would open the trunk and find nothing but a corpse wrapped in black garbage bags, crumpled above the spare tire bay, arms limp, pelvis twisted, just as he’d left her. Still …

  Burklin turned the key and popped the latch. The trunk lid rose. One glazed eye stared at him through a tear in the garbage sacks. As he leaned in for a closer look, the dead Korean’s arms ripped through the plastic and swung a wrench. It smashed against his ribs.

  “Ow!” He grabbed at his midsection.

  The corpse dropped the weapon and collapsed into the trunk. “Let me go,” she said. Her head twisted with a series of pops and cracks.

  Pearl shouted from inside the car, “I told you!”

  “You’re not supposed to be—” Burklin closed his mouth. Wait. This woman was dead, wasn’t she? He had seen her lying on the carpet, bleeding from multiple holes, stabbed, beaten, slit at the throat. Now she looked frightened, disemboweled—and very much alive. Pearl had been right about the vinegar smell; it was strong.

  He set his hands on the trunk lid. “I’m sorry about this … nice lady … but, um. I’m sorry about this?”

  “Wait,” she managed.

  Burklin slammed the trunk shut.

  “Keep quiet in there, please,” he said. “Don’t talk and stuff.” Burklin returned to the driver’s seat and leaned into the car. “Pearl.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to answer the following question with a yes or a no.”

  “Is this a game?”

  “When I ask this, you’re not going to chastise me, cluck your tongue, or say anything other than yes or no. Understand?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Wait. Was that the question?”

  “No.” He gritted his teeth and asked, “Have you seen any change on the floor? Any quarters?”

  “Why? You need to do laundry?”

  “I told you not to ask.”

  Pearl tilted her wee head at him. “Oh, no,” she said.

  “I warned you, dog.”

  “Tell me you’re not this stupid. I always suspected you were, ever since you picked me from the litter instead of my recluse dappled brother, but—”

  “I don’t have a choice.” Burklin leaned in farther. “I need to call Garrick.”

  “Are you insane?”

  He rummaged along the floorboards looking for coins, spare change, anything he could deposit into a payphone, but nothing silver jumped out at him. He picked up an old French fry and a clipped fingernail.

  Burklin considered asking the corpse if she had a couple dimes in her shredded skirt, but didn’t want another whack to the ribs. Instead, he left the car and walked to a payphone near Hoppy’s entrance. As he grabbed the receiver, he fished in his pockets for any loose change and found none. The dial tone droned in his right ear.

  With no money, he couldn’t call anyone. Unless …

  * * * *

  “Collect, Burklin?” Garrick said. “Collect? During a job?”

  “I ran into a problem.”

  Silence, then, “Explain.”

  The dead woman beat her fist against the inside of the trunk lid. Each pound echoed in the vacant parking lot. “Quiet,” he said to the car, then into the phone, “Garrick, you didn’t give many details about this job, but I never thought—”

  “Calm yourself. Breathing exercises are key, son. Remember what that quack shrink told you about hyperventilation. Bad for the lungs.”

  “How can I calm down? You know how I get. And stop calling me son.”

  “Calm down.”

  “You could have warned me.”

  “Is the stiff in the Dumpster or not?”

  “Not yet.” Wait a minute. “You’re testing me, right? Was this whole evening a test? Are you trying to make sure I’m still loyal after the Burger Clog episode last night?”

  “You sound like a woman. Where’s Lorraine? If I have to speak to an estrogen-charged bitch, I’d prefer her.”

  “She’s not here. She stayed behind at Max’s house to clean up.”

  More silence, then, “She stayed. Are you trying to spoil another job? Two nights in a row? That’s a record. One I might not forgive. Don’t tell me you’re transporting the corpse by yourself,” he swallowed audibly, “in that shitty automobile I left you.”

  Strange. Was Garrick unaware of the Asian’s resurrection?

  “So.” Burklin spoke as clearly as possible. “You wanted me to dump the dead body in the Dumpster, right?”

  “Did I stutter?”

  “Nope,” Burklin replied quickly. “Okay then. Bye bye.”

  He set the phone back on the cradle and looked at the idling car. Oh, why couldn’t he make a decision?

  Buzzing with adrenaline, Burklin returned to the Eiffel Perdue. He popped the trunk open and peered inside. “Are you still not dead in there?”

  “Let me go,” the corpse whimpered. She started to crawl out, but slipped on the bags. Her bleeding hadn’t stopped, and puddles soaked the paper beneath her. The blood seemed thicker than he usually dealt with, and darker, but the parking lot’s bad lighting made it difficult to tell. “Please.”

  Burklin used his best Pearl-command voice. “Stay.” He shoved the woman back into the trunk.

  It came down to two choices: throw her in the Dumpster, or …

  Or what? he thought, hearing Pearl’s voice instead of his own. What’s hiding behind doggy-door number two?

  Even if he did come up with some ingenious plan to get his soul back, would he go through with it this time? Pearl was right. He never finished anything. Burklin stared at the Dumpster. Do it, he thought. Drive forward and throw the talking garbage away. Lorraine wanted him to finish the job, Garrick too. Even Pearl had begged him to do it.

&nbs
p; He slammed the trunk lid shut and sauntered back to the driver’s side.

  “It’s about time,” Pearl said as he slipped into the seat. “I’m hungry. Maybe we can stop for a burger on the way home?”

  Burklin put the car in reverse. Pearl clucked her tongue. “Dumpster is forward,” she said. “Put the car in Drive.”

  “I spoke to Garrick. He doesn’t know about the—”

  “Oh, no. No way. You’d better not finish that sentence with anything other than ‘I’m going to dump the body, drive home, and give my loyal dachshund a full-body massage.’“

  “This could be the opportunity we’ve been waiting for. I need to see if there’s anything, you know, exploitable. This is different than the other schemes. Different than the Burger Clog. Garrick doesn’t know the woman came back to life.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Not really. “Yes,” he said.

  “You’re confident enough to bet your soul on it?”

  He swallowed. “Uh-huh.”

  “So what happens now, genius? Are we heading to Garrick’s office to dump the body?”

  Burklin grimaced.

  “Oh no,” Pearl said. “You’re bringing her home with us?”

  “Stop talking. God, I should have adopted a basenji.”

  Chapter 7

  Bag o’ Death

  The Blue Bay Apartments’ landlord never paid much attention to burnt-out bulbs. This resulted in a poorly lit, dangerous parking lot. Burklin turned into the carport and eased the Eiffel into his spot next to the stairwell. He kept his eyes moving, worried he might see Garrick lurking in the shadows with a sausage grinder, ready to dispose of Burklin’s eight-pound, barking appendage.

  “This is a terrible idea,” Pearl said as the engine sputtered to a halt. “Worse than visiting that psychiatrist. It’s even worse than those ear necklaces you used to make.”

  “Toe necklaces,” Burklin corrected. “This is a temporary solution. I can’t leave the woman in the trunk.”

  “Oh, of course not. You’re bringing her home instead. Brilliant. Won’t that break our lease agreement?”

  “Pearl, every day a dachshund relieves herself on my patio while singing Bonnie Tyler songs. If that doesn’t break the lease, why would this?”

  “That’s because the other tenants think they’re sharing the same LSD trip. So what’s your plan? Airlift her through the roof?”

  He examined the stairwell door. “I think I can carry her up without anyone noticing. I’ll come back for you after.”

  Burklin stepped out of the car and hurried to the trunk. He knocked once. “I’m opening the lid now,” he said to the license plate. “Please don’t whack me with the wrench again.”

  The shifting and banging came to a stop. Burklin opened the trunk. He winced, expecting the woman to lunge at him and devour his brains. Instead, she lay shivering, hugging herself, her body slathered in dark blood.

  Burklin went to work. He blanketed the Asian woman in plastic bags. When he finished, she twitched and writhed like a black larva ready to burst. He slung her over his shoulder and walked to the stairwell.

  The claustrophobic ascent proved difficult. The woman’s head bounced along the handrail in a three-count rhythm. Burklin emerged from the stairwell and bumped into a round Hispanic woman leaving the laundry room. She spun around to look at him, her arms filled with linens, and nodded at Burklin’s five-foot bag.

  “Dry cleaning,” Burklin explained.

  She pointed to the liquid leaking through the plastic.

  Burklin laughed uncomfortably. “Oh, yeah. Wet, huh? I dropped my laundry in a … scummy pond. Yuck.”

  He hurried to his apartment and fumbled the key in the lock. After dropping the body on the linoleum, he dashed down the stairs to retrieve Pearl.

  * * * *

  Burklin set the dog’s crate next to the gruesome cocoon.

  Pearl scratched at the bars of her portable prison. “Let me out,” she said. “I have to stretch my legs.”

  Burklin knelt and unlatched the crate. The grille swung free, and Pearl emerged from the toweled confines. She dashed toward the dead woman, teeth bared.

  Burklin reached for her. “No.” The dachshund moved lightning fast. “Off, Pearl. No.”

  “Suck me, Hitler.” She bit into the black bags and tore plastic from the woman’s torso.

  “Off!”

  “Let me taste her.”

  During complicated corpse retrievals, Burklin sometimes left the dog unsupervised. Consequently, she had developed a taste for human flesh. Things had started innocently enough—Pearl mistaking a dismembered ear for a dog biscuit, or licking a bit of blood spatter on her paw—but the dog’s hankerings eventually turned to human cuisine. Nowadays, if he left her anywhere near a corpse, he risked losing it to her digestive system.

  “Don’t you dare eat her,” he said.

  “Just a nibble. I promise.”

  Burklin picked up Pearl’s Naughty Juice: a squirt bottle containing seventy-five percent water and twenty-five percent lemon. He sprayed her face twice.

  “Ow!” She snorted and rubbed her nose on the carpet, blinking rapidly. “That stings.”

  “Good. Get back in your crate.” Burklin’s eyes stung as well, and he wiped them with the back of his hand.

  The dog retreated to her crate, tail tucked. “I’ll get you for that. I’ll pee on your pillow, first chance I get.”

  Burklin closed the metal grille and latched it. “Stay. I need to change my clothes.”

  He peeled off his sweatsuit and tossed it into the bathroom. After changing into a pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt with the words Max, Inc. on the front, a gag gift from Garrick, he finished the ensemble with a stained apron.

  “Why are you wearing that?” Pearl asked, one eye still closed.

  Burklin tied the apron strings around his waist. He rummaged through the kitchen, opening drawers and cabinets, and picked up a dull butcher knife from the sink. He held it up to the light and nodded. Yes, it would do fine.

  He returned to the dead woman. Burklin positioned the twitching body between his legs and brought the blade down. The knife pierced the thick garbage bags and ripped through. He peeled away the plastic and flattened it around her, creating a pair of shredded black wings.

  The woman’s eyes opened. Saliva bubbled along her lips. A vein bulged below the dramatic gash in her neck, pumping fluids over her collarbone in timed spurts. It created a glistening pool between her breasts. Her vinegar-scented blood had become a black, chunky mess.

  “Can you hear me?” Burklin said.

  The woman stared at him. She started to speak, but instead of sound, she produced a mouthful of hot fudge.

  Burklin shushed her. “I’m sorry about the plastic. Don’t move. I’m going to use these bags as a sled.”

  He grabbed the ends and pulled the woman along the carpet. The muscles in her arms and legs twitched. He let go of the plastic and wiped sweat from his forehead. “This is tougher than it looks.”

  Burklin kicked a pile of clothes aside and resumed pulling. After several excruciating tugs, he made it to the bathroom and pulled her onto the white tile. The stacks of racecar magazines and the filthy toilet left little room for her.

  “I’m going to clean you up,” he said.

  She mouthed, “No.”

  “Come on. You’re covered in blood and goo. You smell awful, not like other dead people, but awful in a yucky way. I need to use the bathtub. I can’t hose you off on the patio. That would be too conspicuous.”

  Burklin lifted her like a groom set to carry a butter-soaked bride over the threshold. He placed one arm under her knees and the other behind her shoulders. Gravity peeled the plastic away from the flesh with a wet suctioning sound.

  Burklin struggled to lift the woman over the bathtub. His back couldn’t handle the load; his knees buckled and he dropped her. The woman’s head caught the faucet on the way down, gashing her scalp. She landed with a th
ump against the mildewed porcelain. Fluids seeped from the new opening.

  Burklin pulled the remaining bags free and flipped her over. She lay shivering in the tub, still dressed in the floral skirt and nothing else. “C-cold,” she managed.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. But you’re … you know?”

  “I’m what?”

  Burklin turned on the faucet, careful not to make the water too hot. It roared as it slammed against the porcelain, filling the tub around her. He sat on the toilet and watched the woman contort and spasm, her eyes fixed on his. Burklin took several deep breaths. The psychiatrist had told him to do this. Breathe. Breathing good. He had everything under control.

  “Please,” she said. The water blackened in florets around her neck and the gashes in her back.

  “Shh.” Burklin grabbed a bottle of economy-sized shampoo and emptied it into the tub. He swirled it and produced thousands of bubbles. “See? Clean.”

  The water’s consistency changed as it enveloped her shoulders: a mess of pea soup and chum. He rubbed her arms with a bar of soap and worked up a lather.

  Pearl called from her crate, “Hey, pervert, are you trying to bathe her or feel her up?”

  “Quiet.”

  “I can read your mind, remember? You’re expending a lot of energy on her left nipple. Don’t you think it’s clean by now?”

  Burklin stopped lathering the breast. He stood and slammed the bathroom door shut, cutting the dog off before she could say anything else.

  “I’m as confused as you are,” he said to the woman. “You’re supposed to be … you’re supposed to be clean. So let me finish scrubbing you. Bath good.” He slipped into his Pearl-bath dialect. “Good girl. Good girl get a treat if—”

  “Oh, God. Why are you— why are you talking that way?” She splashed Burklin. “Is this a—is this a rape room?”

  “I don’t think so. Not since I’ve been a tenant, anyway. I think it’s just a bathroom.”