Beneath the Mask of Sanity

by Mark Phillips

  However, all these implements paled in comparison to the last thing that Bentley removed from his bag. It was a small container. The container looked like metal but wasn’t. It was Teflon.

  The substance inside wasn’t something that he’d stolen from the hospital. He had stolen this from an aluminum treatment plant that he’d stopped at on his way out of Chicago.

  The substance was Hydrofluoric acid. An acid of such harsh constitution that it dissolved glass and metal, thus the Teflon container. Bentley had never used the acid before and was curious to see how it would operate.

  He knew that it supposedly didn’t damage the other tissue of the body, which was exactly what he wanted.

  Bentley removed the top, careful not to inhale the fumes or spill any on his own skin.

  He tilted the flask over Brenda’s arm and watched as liquid sunk into her skin. It was as if the acid consisted of burrowing bugs that sought a meal. Bentley capped the flask and set it down on the grass, a few feet away.

  As he waited for the acid to do its work, Bentley took a blade, which resembled a saw, and cut into Brenda’s neck. There was a little blood, but no rushing torrents like he was used to. There was no reason to jump back and watch that you didn’t get hit. Brenda’s heart had stopped forcing the blood around in her veins long ago.

  The cutting was hard. The flesh had grown tough, like a piece of chicken that had been left on the grill too long. Yet, Bentley smiled as he went about his work. He rarely got an opportunity to perform such tasks to a body and he found it soothing.

  The saw succeeded in separating the flesh and muscles but was unequal to the task of cutting through the spinal cord. Bentley looked over at the left arm, where he’d poured the acid. It looked bloated, like a sausage that was about to burst through its casing.

  He looked down at his hands. The gloves were on, but he didn’t know what kind of protection they could offer him from the acid. When he’d stolen the canister, he had neglected to steal the safety manual as well, so he had no idea the exact properties of it. Only what he’d read on the internet at a library.

  Bentley grabbed one of the longer scalpels and plunged into the flesh. It slid in easily. He pulled it out and glanced at the blade. There were tiny holes in it, so small that you couldn’t even see them unless you were looking for them.

  I’m not ruining my knife on this bitch, he thought.

  Looking over his collection of blades, he selected the bone saw. He raised it over the body the hesitated. He glanced at the blade, wide with a razor edge. With a pang in his heart, Bentley brought the knife down. It sliced easily. He cut into the shoulder and the arm sloughed off.

  With it separated from the bitch’s body, Bentley cut it into three segments that were roughly equal. Then he used the knife to push them into the bag.

  That done, he looked at the open cavity that revealed the spine. It probably would have been more advisable to add the acid before he’d cut into the skin; there was no way of telling what it could do if it were open to the air.

  So, Bentley took the bone saw and, hoping that it still held some of its former sharpness, cut into the neck.

  It took nearly twenty minutes, but Bentley was able to remove the head. He grabbed it by the hair and tossed it into the bag.

  The rest was fairly simple. He cut off the parts that he could with his assortment of medical supplies, the others he poured acid on and waited for them to dissolve to a state where he could remove them.

  When he was done, the bone saw looked like it had gone through a centuries worth of aging. The blade was badly twisted out of shape and the metal was swiss-cheesed with holes.

  He tossed it into the bag with the meat and tied the top in a knot. That done, Bentley stuffed the bag into his backpack. It was a tight squeeze and it made the backpack bulge like a snake that had swallowed a small dog.

  Bentley made sure that the top was secure on the acid and then he placed it on top of the plastic bag. The knifes, he deposited into the pocket on the side that was reserved for the pens. Then, he hoisted the heavy back over his shoulder and walked out of the backyard. There was still a little more work to be done tonight.

  72.

  Dunham sat on the hospital chair with his feet up. The officer outside had given him a cross glance when the overhead announced that visiting hours were over and Dunham didn’t leave.

  That’s right, nothing you can say about it, Dunham had thought.

  Now he was dozing lightly. Real sleep was impossible, not with so much on his mind. He kept fading in and out in a kind of half-wakefulness that was like drowning. Nothing around you seemed real, it was an alien world, and yet it was all actually happening.

  Once, he thought he’d seen Frank’s eyes open. He sat up, really awake and stared at the eyelids. Then he realized that they were only moving.

  “He’s dreaming,” Dunham whispered. “I hope it’s a good one.”

  73.

  Frank was at the cabin. He felt the bullets drive into his back and cursed himself for not pulling on a flak jacket before he’d come out here.

  He kept expecting the darkness to swallow him, but he remained stubbornly awake. He tasted dirt in his mouth. His chest struggled to draw in breaths. His insides burned like someone had set off a match in there.

  A hand grabbed his shoulder and turned him over. The bald asshole that shot him filled his vision.

  “I’ve been working on my aim,” the bald guy said. “It looks like it paid off. You’re still alive.”

  Frank wanted to scream, wanted to spit on the bastard’s face. If he could do that, Frank thought that maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad, but he was unable to do anything. All he could do was lie on the ground and feel the blood pour out of his body.

  “With proper medical treatment, you’d survive all those wounds,” the bald man said. “Of course, you’re not going to get medical treatment. Instead, you’re going to lay there and feel yourself die. My only wish is that you could talk to me. Tell me what its like to die. Maybe I’ll ask Katie, I intend to keep that little bitch alive for a long time.”

  The bald guy held out the knife for Frank to see. From the ground it looked like a sword. His killer kneeled down and the knife regained its normal properties. It was still large and Frank was afraid of what the guy was going to do with it.

  “You’re not going to tell anyone anything ever again.”

  Baldy’s hand moved to Frank’s face. He tried to turn his head, but it seemed as if his nerves had gone on strike. They weren’t going to cooperate. Frank could hardly blame them; his mismanagement had got them into this mess in the first place.

  Frank felt his mouth forced open. Then the bald guy leaned forward and grabbed something inside. Frank wasn’t sure what he was doing, until the knife came forward. Then he felt a horrible warmness. Horrible, because Frank felt no pain. Distantly, his mind informed him that he had gone into shock where all his sensations would be muted.

  There was a soft purring sound, like someone pulling open a Velcro strip. Then the bald man was standing over him again. The knife was in his left hand. In his right, dripping down blood and still seeming to throb with a pulse, was Frank’s tongue.

  “Unnecessary I know,” Baldy said. “But it’s fun.”

  The bald man threw the tongue into a corner.

  “I think I’ll kill the little bitch first,” Baldy said. Frank’s dream faded, and part of his mind (a part that was not ready to acknowledge that he had, in fact, not been killed) knew that this was where he’d passed out.

  Now, Frank was on a beach. The cool breeze blew through his hair. The Pacific looked calm enough, but he knew that if he walked out there the water would be cold.

  Julie was there. Her blonde hair acted as a wind sock, blowing with the breeze. She was smiling, Julie was always smiling, that was one of the things that he’d fallen in love with.

  They were sitting on two folding chairs, the kind with the plastic backs that made lines in your flesh. A pelic
an walked across the edge of the beach, perhaps tired from his life of constant flight.

  Julie pointed at it and said something. In his dream Frank couldn’t hear it, he couldn’t hear anything actually, for the purposes of his dream he had become deaf, but he knew what she had said anyway.

  Buffet must be closed for the day.

  Frank laughed, he saw himself do it. His body had been trimmer then and when he laughed the muscles in his stomach waved up and down.

  Julie turned to look at him and then her eyes were black. More than black, though. They looked like space itself. No longer eyes but two huge voids that threatened to pull him in and drown him.

  Frank saw his arms go out, trying to grab Julie before it was too late, but he couldn’t help it, the dream changed.

  74.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Dunham asked.

  The nurse glanced over. His eyes flashed annoyance. It was clear that she didn’t like some visitor around so late at night. When they were supposed to be able to cut loose, and maybe cut corners.

  “His heart rate’s elevated a little, that’s all,” she said. The nurse glanced down at Frank’s closed eyes. “If I had to guess, I’d say he was having a nightmare, he’ll be fine.”

  She turned and walked out the door. Dunham sat back down and watched Frank.

  “Wake up asshole,” he muttered. “Just wake up, you’re having a nightmare anyway.”

  Maybe life is a worse nightmare, Dunham thought. A shiver ran down his back and he knew he wouldn’t be getting any more sleep that night.

  75.

  Katie lay in her bed and looked up at the ceiling. The tree outside of her window cast a shadow like long fingers above her. Her thoughts turned to Brandon.

  She had never even come close to doing it with a guy in her life. There had been two boyfriends. The first one in the sixth grade and the last one a year ago. Both of them had only been interested in one thing.

  Kyle, her sixth grade boyfriend, had at least been coy about it.

  “Come on,” he’d said. “I just want to see what your stuff is like and you can see mine. It doesn’t have to be any more than that.”

  But Katie had resisted. Every time she thought about taking her clothes off with Kyle, her father’s face would swim into her mind.

  Only it wasn’t the kind face that she had grown up knowing. It wasn’t even a mad face that she sometimes saw, it was a hurt face. A face that wanted to spill tears, but had enough restraint to hold on.

  Evan, her last boyfriend, had been much more direct.

  “If we ain’t gonna fuck then what’s the point?”

  Katie didn’t have an answer for him. She didn’t even try to come up with something. When he had left, she felt more relief than anything.

  Then the next day at school a boy whom she’d never even spoken to walked up to her.

  “Hey, Katie. What do you think about going out with me on Saturday?”

  Katie had declined, but she was puzzled. Then, Brenda had come up to her.

  “You and Evan finally did it?”

  “No.”

  “Well that’s what he’s telling everyone. He’s telling them that you gave it up and then he dumped you so he could move on to someone else.”

  Katie had been furious. She confronted Evan the first time she saw him. He denied it, but the rumors persisted. It had taken a full summer vacation for the kids in her school to move on to something else.

  Now, here was Brandon. He didn’t know anything about those things. Not only that, he didn’t seem to want what the other boys did. Katie had seen the eyes of the boy that had asked her out when he thought Katie was easy. They were hungry eyes, predator’s eyes.

  Brandon’s eyes were different. When he looked at Katie they seemed so intent, so piercing. Yet, it was different somehow. He wanted something different from Katie than the other boys.

  “Be my prince,” she whispered to herself. “Please be my prince, if I ever needed one it’s now.”

  Katie’s eyes grew heavy and she let the dream world rip her away, far away from the place where her Mom was an adulterer. Far away from the place where her Dad was dead.

  76.

  Bentley didn’t dare go back to the woods. The cops would either still be there or watching it. This business required a new location, so Bentley chose the only other one that he knew, the playground at the end of the block.

  There was a soccer field at the far end of the playground. Two tall metal posts, painted white, faced off against each other. The field wasn’t very large, but after his surgery on the body, he wouldn’t need much room.

  He had already walked through the fence when he realized that he’d left his shovel in the woods.

  “Fuck.” He kept his voice soft, but the venom in it was still potent.

  Bentley hesitated for a second and then walked up the play structure. He placed his backpack on the little landing in front of the alphabet. Then, he turned around and walked back down the street, looking for a house with a garage.

  The first two houses, had only driveways that led to large backyards, but the third house had a car in the driveway and a small white garage in front of it.

  Bentley walked up the driveway, expecting a motion sensor to go off and illuminate the front of the house, there was none. There was a door on the side of the garage. Bentley reached out with his gloved hand and tried the handle, it was unlocked.

  No one seemed interested in protecting their tools. Leaving their television unguarded was viewed as a sin, but the implements that kept your yard clean and your house in running order, hell take those, just don’t take my ability to watch Desperate Housewives.

  The garage was dark and smelled of oil and dirt. Bentley liked it immediately. He saw what he wanted at once. It was on the wall, hung next to the rake and a musty old weedwacker.

  Once he got back to the park, he grabbed his backpack and headed for the soccer field.

  First, Bentley took the stolen shovel and cut out a block of grass and set it aside. The hole was easy enough to dig. The ground in the middle of the soccer field was no more than a loose collection of dirt that had been sodded over. The soil had probably been shipped over to construct this fun-time oasis for the little kiddies in the neighborhood, and how did they repay all the work that had gone into it? They scribbled graffiti about who would suck you off for a dollar, or what kid was too fat to fit down the covered slide.

  Bentley dug the hole deep. When he was finished there was a large mound of black soil next to it. Worms struggled in and out, trying to find the underneath again.

  “You’ll have a meal soon enough,” Bentley said. “Pray to your worm gods that it doesn’t kill you.”

  He threw the bag in. Through the translucent plastic he could barely make out the shape of arms and legs. One hand, with the fingernails painted a deep red, pressed against the top of the bag. It looked like a cast off collection of life-sized Barbie Doll parts. Bentley threw dirt over the bags until they were covered.

  When that was done, he moved the grass that he’d cut out back over the dirt. Bentley got down on his knees and smoothed out the edges. Then, he stood up and admired his work. To the untrained eye, you wouldn’t even know that someone had broken ground.

  Bentley picked up his pack and walked back to the street. It was time to leave. School would be starting soon, and there was still the question of where he would be able to get some rest.

  77.

  Katie flung up to a seated position. Her mother was standing over her with worry spread across her face. The white cordless phone was clutched in her hands.

  “Do you know where Brenda is?” She asked.

  Katie blinked twice, and then raised her hand to wipe the crusted sleep out of her eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “Brenda’s Mom is on the phone,” Sheila said. “They just got home from their date night and Brenda’s not there.”

  Katie shifted on her bed; her eyes were wide open now. “She
told me she was going home to study.”

  Sheila lifted the receiver to her ear. “Katie says that she should be home.” A pause. “Yes of course.” Sheila held the phone out. “They want to talk to you.”

  Katie took the phone and held it to her ear.

  “Mrs. Abrams, Brenda walked home from school with me, but when we got to my house she told me she was going home.”

  “She didn’t say anything about any parties or anything?” Mrs. Abrams’s voice seemed to have fallen over the cliff of panic. “You can tell me, it’ll be okay, she won’t be in trouble.”

  “No, I swear. When we got to my house, she said she was going home. If she had been going to a party or something she would have told me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. You don’t think something happened to her do you?” Katie glanced over at her mother. She was standing beside the bed with a pensive look on her face. Her hands were clasped in front of her.”

  “Oh Katie, I don’t know what to think.” Mrs. Abrams began sobbing on the other end of the line.

  “I’m sure she’ll call soon. Maybe, she decided to go to a late movie or something. What time is it?”

  “Midnight.” It was barely audible through the sniffles.

  “She couldn’t have gone too far.”

  Sheila began to pace, her hands were moving in a weird kind of rhythm, it was as if she were dictating to an invisible secretary.

  “Do you know anyone else that she might be out with?”

  “We went to a party at Jimmy Sparks’s house the other night. I suppose she might have gone over there, but I would think she would have called me.”

  “Do you know his number?”

  “No. But I bet he’s listed.”

  “Jimmy Sparks?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank you so much Katie.”