by Pete Kahle
Really, Andy’s disappearance was the best thing that could have ever happened to either one of us boys as far as popularity with our schoolmates went. Suddenly, everyone was talking to me, asking me questions, wanting to know what happened; I became, well, not popular, but un-invisible.
Andy, on the other hand, was one of those kids you wouldn’t recognize at the ten-year reunion. You could run into a classmate twenty years later, swapping old stories, and he’d tell of the prank he pulled on little Andy Bellis and you would have no recollection of whom he was talking about. Andy was not memorable, nor would he have ever been if he hadn’t disappeared so mysteriously in fifth grade. Now, forever, the class of 1993 would remember the name of Andy Bellis.
This newfound social status of mine offered me some good opportunities to get Buddy’s food supply. Kids in my class, but especially the kids a few grade levels down, had a morbid curiosity and wanted to see where Andy had disappeared. I’d lead them down to the creek on our bikes and we’d walk by the creek bank. My story of Andy’s final hours was always different; I just made it up as I went along. Finally, we’d reach Andy’s last known location – my Grandma’s backyard. I’d point to the fruit cellar where Andy and I were playing; the tourist and I would creep up into the grass and open the lock. A quick shove down the stairs, a slam of the doors and Buddy and I had an extra thirty minutes to play each night for the next week.
I can hear Heather’s car door slam. I’m sitting in my easy chair again, trying to figure out what I was going to do when this moment inevitably arrived. I meet her at the door, opening it to a still-puffy, red-faced woman who looks like she’s had a rough day. She holds a wrinkled tissue in her hand.
“Hey. How is she?” I ask as Heather comes inside.
“It’s not good.” Heather and I make our way over to the couch where I put my arm around her and she leans into me for support. “It took over a hundred stitches on her face. They’re pretty sure she’ll never wake up from the coma. Her parents are trying to decide right now if they should pull the plug.”
“Awww, Honey.” I pull her tight, “That’s awful. Really awful. How are you holding up?”
“Oh…” She wipes her red nose with her tissue, “I just want to lie down and rest.”
“Ok.” I reply while already clearing the couch of pillows. “C’mon, let’s lie down.”
Unlike most serial killers – I guess you could call me that, although I didn’t actually do the killing – my problem wasn’t getting rid of the bodies, mine was getting rid of the bicycles. I’d walk his latest victim’s bike down to my hideout and use the tool set Dad had given me to dismantle it into their smallest possible pieces. Everything could be deposited in a coffee can and buried or scattered around town without drawing attention. Everything, that is, except for the bike frames. These required late-night trips down to the town’s junkyard for Buddy and me. Although it, ironically, took away from our playing time, at least we were together.
I wasn’t kidnapping one child per week – I was smarter than that – but the sheer number of disappearing kids was causing quite a stir in our little town. The police were on a rampage looking for the bastard who was taking them. Parents were telling us kids not to get any rides from people we didn’t know, not to accept any candy. McGruff the Crime Dog even made a special appearance in our town to educate us about “stranger danger”.
When the police weren’t coming up with any leads, every unmarried man over the age of twenty-five was brought in for questioning; the small-town mentality of “There must be something wrong with him if he’s not married by now” was their justification. It was a witch-hunt not seen in our town since the McCarthy era.
My kidnappings continued for the next four years, but by then the heat had grown too strong. Eighteen children had disappeared in that time and families had either moved away or had their kids on such short leashes that my opportunities had waned to nothing. Buddy ate rodents until I was sixteen.
It was that year Dad bought me a beater of a pickup truck off Old Man Williams down the road. It was dark green and rusted – mainly rusted – had no muffler, and ran on diesel. I loved it. Now, Buddy and I would ride around at night, his head stuck out the window just like any other dog would, but also his tentacles flapping in the wind, unlike any other dog could.
The truck didn’t help my standing on the social ladder. The spoiled jocks that drove their flashy S-10’s and used hot rods laughed at my rusty girl, but I didn’t mind; I’d grown used to being “uncool”. I did try to fix her up a little – put on a new muffler and tried to do some bodywork to repair some of the holes – but it didn’t really help her much. My truck was what she was and that was fine by me.
The truck allowed Buddy a much wider hunting ground when we could drive out to secluded woods ten, fifteen miles away. Buddy ate like a king on rabbits and even the occasional deer, helping him grow even larger. I’m not sure why, but Buddy matured much slower than most dogs. Whereas normal dogs have reached their potential in two or three years, Buddy had been with me for six now and he still wasn’t full-size. This made me wonder how long he’d live and if the standard “dog years” even applied to him.
Of course, having the truck also upped our hunting radius for Buddy’s favorite delicacy. I’d travel to surrounding towns; most were small farming communities like my hometown, but far enough away the parents hadn’t worked up into a frenzy about a kidnapper on the loose. It was much easier pickings and, since I was mobile now, I rarely ever took from the same town twice in a year; this kept the pressure off a bit. It wasn’t always easy to get little kids into my scary, old truck, but you’d be amazed at what the lure of junk food and a chance to play the latest Super Nintendo game would do to their better judgments.
“Hey, where’s John?” Heather asks as I lay behind her on the couch, my free arm draping around her belly.
“He’s in his hideout playing Nintendo.”
“Was he good?”
“Yeah, he was fine. We played Street Fighter for a while.“
“So he kicked your butt, huh?” Heather gives out a little laugh.
“I let him win!” I laugh along with her and squeeze around her mid-section tighter.
Finally, at the age of twenty, I moved out of my parents’ house and got my own place in the city. My Mom cried when she helped me pack up my truck. Dad shook my hand and told me he was proud; I could see he was fighting back tears as well. I told them I was going to stop and say good-bye to Grandma before I left, who was now into her nineties, and drove off down the lane with almost all my worldly belongings in the truck.
Grandma barely knew who I was. The poor lady had gone almost completely senile, but I said good-bye and hugged her before I left out the back. It was late in the afternoon when I went to get Buddy, but because of his aversion to sunlight, had brought a blanket to cover him up as we made the one-hour drive to my new place. By then the sun would be on its way down and it would be easier to bring him inside the small, two-bedroom house I was renting.
It was great living freely with Buddy. At night after work, he and I would sit in the living room and watch television. He had gotten so large that he would lie in front of my chair and I’d prop my feet up on his massive back like a footstool. He had to have been two hundred pounds, if not more.
Sadly, this meant that eating one person wouldn’t hold him for a week anymore and stray dogs and cats had become little more than appetizers.
Luckily, we lived in a rough neighborhood and there were plenty of bums, winos, drug addicts, and miscreants around, that Buddy could eat quite well two or three times a week. Like a good owner, I always had Buddy on a leash as he wrapped his tentacles around a drunk passed out next to the Dumpster behind some greasy spoon. I had become quite bored to the sight of intestines as Buddy would finish his meal; sometimes helping him locate parts that had been scattered during his manic feedings.
Buddy’s main courses were the throwaways of society; no one really m
issed them when they were gone. The police might half-heartedly investigate the disappearance of a vagrant who hadn’t shown up at his regular barstool for a week, but they never dug too deep. No one cared and that made Buddy’s life, and mine, much easier. We were truly happy for the first time.
After two years of solitary “bum hunting”, as Buddy and I called it, my years as an inexperienced bachelor had come to a close. I met Heather Gardner, a co-worker at the factory, and we seemed to hit it off. She wasn’t Cindy Crawford or anything, but she was attractive. We had a similar background – grew up in a small town, and were ostracized from our peers at an early age thanks to some superficial difference (she’d had a lazy eye that had since been corrected). We were both awkward and strange around each other, but for some reason we were fine with that. I guess as long as we were both uncomfortable it made us both comfortable.
“Ya know… I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, Heather.”
“I know. Me neither. Not even John’s father.”
“It’s like we were together in a past life. The way we seem to know each other so well.”
Heather smiles. “I think we’re meant to be together, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Heather pauses before asking, “Should we make it official?”
“Get married?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought I was supposed to propose.”
“Welllll…” Her voice rises as though I should take the hint.
We had developed our relationship slowly, starting out as acquaintances at the break room table, working our way to lunch hours at the coffee shop, and then the occasional dinner and a movie. After four months, I got to meet little John, her then four-year old son.
John had never had a male figure around, but rather than be scared of me, he was fascinated; he watched me do everything. I taught him the rules of the sports we’d watch together in Heather’s living room, him sitting on my lap. I steered him towards baseball, the sport I always most enjoyed as a youngster. I was forever destined to play right field with all the rest of the little league losers, but he took to second base like a fish to water.
For his fifth birthday, I bought him his own glove and we played catch in the front yard while Heather sat in the shade of an elm tree with a smile on her face. I could see the glimmer in her eye as she watched her son have a father for the first time. That night was my first time to ever make love to a woman.
Heather and John would make the trip over to my place sometimes and I’d have to lock Buddy downstairs; I had purposefully found a house to rent with a basement for when guests stopped by. He wasn’t thrilled to be down there and always stood at the foot of the stairs watching me, whimpering with his strange, wheezy little whine, as I ascended to the house above. I felt bad about having to do it, but I couldn’t let anyone see him. They wouldn’t understand. I couldn’t live without Buddy.
“I have a confession to make.” I said.
“What?” Heather asks with whimsy.
“John’s not in his hideout playing Nintendo.”
“He’s not? Where is he?”
“He’s in the basement playing with the puppy I bought for him.”
Heather sits up with a start. I thought I had done something wrong.
“You bought him a dog?”
“Yeah, but it can stay here with me.”
She collapses on top of me, kissing my face and hugging me. “Oh, you’re the greatest. John’s wanted a dog, but we can’t have one at the apartment.” We kiss passionately before Heather pulls away. “I want to marry you. I don’t care if you’re supposed to ask me or I’m supposed to ask you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and John and I want to be with you. I want us to be a family.”
I look deeply into her eyes, “I do, too.” She kisses me again before falling limply with her head on my chest, my arm cradling her. We lay in blissful silence for a few minutes.
She’s playing with a button on my shirt when she asks, “What kind is it? The dog, I mean.”
“Mutt. You wanna see him?”
She lifts her head, “Yeah.”
Heather grows concerned when John doesn’t answer her calls as she descends the dark stairs.
“Why are the lights off down here?” She looks back at me to ask.
I don’t answer her.
When she’s halfway down, I push her the rest of the way, run back into the kitchen and slam the door behind me, making sure it’s locked.
It never occurs to me that Buddy wouldn’t be hungry after eating John. It’s been the most agonizing two days of my life to hear Heather begging me to let her out. She says she broke her ankle when I pushed her and she’s dragged herself up the stairs to the door, but it’s locked. It’s dark, and she has a feeling that something is down there with her; she keeps hearing strange breathing from the dark recesses.
She begs me to let her out. She begs me to tell her where John is. But I can’t leave in case Heather should figure some way out of the hole. Perhaps it’s a form of justice that I’m forced to stay and listen to her.
I can’t be angry with Buddy. It’s my fault John found his way into the basement. I should have put a lock on the door. It was my fault I’d left Buddy alone. It was my fault for feeding Buddy the way I did for all those years. Buddy was simply acting the way he had been trained. To him, children were nothing more than food.
Finally, on the second morning after I’d thrown Heather, quite literally, to the wolf, the basement is silent. I stay home from work just in case, but later in the day I can hear Buddy scratching on the door with his six-inch claws, making his whining wheeze sound. He’s ready to leave and I cautiously open the door. Buddy comes bounding out, jumping up and down, happier than I’d seen him in years. I walk downstairs to the basement below and find no sign of Heather; Buddy had grown hungry in the night.
I pack up some things – my clothes, my knick-knack memories, and my old Super Nintendo – and pile them into the truck. Buddy and I drive west, not exactly sure where we’re going. I just have to put as much distance between myself and that house as I can.
I’ll miss Heather and John and the life I could have had. But, I just can’t live without my Buddy.
Rob Lammle is a full-time cartographer and part-time writer out of St. Louis. When he's not working, he's watching movies and TV shows, reading books, podcasting about pop culture, and spending time with his family. You can follow his online adventures over at www.spacemonkeyx.com.
This is his first published story, but hopefully not his last…
INSECT
by Marc Lyth
I can’t wake up. Light burns my eyes. It feels like I’m dragging myself out of a deep pit. I’m so fucking tired. I need to sleep again. I close my eyes and roll over.
My hand lands in something... squidgy. It’s vile. What the hell is it? I tell myself to wake up now, you fool. Don’t be such a lazy bastard. The sergeant will put you on latrine duty if you don’t make a fucking effort now.
I open my eyes and slowly they adjust to the light. The mess I’ve stuck my hand in is what’s left of a body. Who the... Oh my God it’s Tom. What the fuck?
Tom’s chest is a gaping mass of holes, his arms are covered in what appear to be defensive wounds and his head has been almost severed by the knife which is still stuck in the middle of what’s left of his torso. His blood is all over me.
I can’t clear my fucking head. I need to get this stupid brain of mine in gear. Quick. I look around. Private Tom Gillott’s isn’t the only body here. Why can’t I remember what happened? I can count eight bodies in the clearing we stopped to camp in last night. There’s someone missing, but I don’t want to check these corpses to see who it might be. He might be dead somewhere else for all I know. I can’t remember a fucking thing.
I take a deep breath and try not to vomit. I need to do this. The bodies are fresh but there’s still a stench of spilled guts and internal organs. The flies
are already having a field day.
Three of the bodies are covered by jackets. Laid out all nice and respectful. I move the coats so I can see who they are. It’s Sergeant Kelly and privates Tyson and Campbell. I can only tell Tyson’s body from his tags and the tattoo on his upper arm. His face is missing, replaced by a mess of burnt tissue.
Now I know who all these bodies are I know that the missing person is Moseley. I should have known. None of the corpses are ginger, although it’s difficult to tell with a couple of them because of massive head wounds.
Could Moseley have done all of this? He’s a big lad, and he’s good in a fight - we all are, it’s in the job description - but still, he’s one of the nicest lads in the squad. He wouldn’t turn on us all like this.
Fuck! Why can’t I remember what happened? Last thing I remember we... we were heading back to base camp after that waste of time recon exercise and...
I look round for any usable gear. First thing I find is a molten lump in the remains of the fire that appears to be the radio.
None of us were carrying mobile phones. They made sure of that before we left base camp. This means I can’t call for help. I’ll have to walk back to base camp. My skin crawls at the thought of the trek in this heat.
Which way were we headed? I think east. There’s a stream in the valley over there, if I’m right. My memory seems to have swiss-cheesed itself. Holes everywhere.
I need to do something. I’ll head for the stream; follow that to the river, then to the road and from there to base.
I debate on whether to take another gun with me. There’s no ammunition so they’re only good as blunt instruments. I decide to leave them all behind. I take the knife from Tom’s chest just in case I run into whoever or whatever did this.
The small amount of food still in the ration bag is inedible, coated in blood. The map is also buried under a bleeding corpse and unusable.
