by Jeff Strand
“All right,” said Missy. “Under those circumstances, I’ll let you get rid of the body.”
* * *
Unfortunately, it wasn’t as if Missy could just walk into another room. They didn’t have an iPod to block out the noise, so it was either lie in bed with a pillow over her head singing “LA LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR THE SOUNDS OF MUTILATION!” or climb to the top of the ladder.
She helped him drag the body bag into the middle of the floor, then climbed the ladder.
Extremely Useful Item #1 That They Did Not Have In The Shelter: A chainsaw.
Extremely Useful Item #2 That They Did Not Have In The Shelter: An electric carving knife.
Extremely Useful Item #3 That They Did Not Have In The Shelter: A bone saw.
Extremely Useful Item #4 That They Did Not Have In The Shelter: Any kind of saw.
They did have a butcher knife, and that was what Kevin would be using to chop an entire human body into pieces small enough to toss into the incinerator. Missy did not think the process would be without its challenges.
“Dammit!” said Kevin from below.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just cut myself.”
“Already?”
“Can you not talk, please?”
“I won’t say another word.”
There were some really ghastly sounds coming from down there, but most of them were drowned out by Kevin’s constant stream of profanity. It reminded Missy of Kevin trying to assemble a shelf or a grill. “The instructions say that it’s going to take twenty minutes,” Kevin would announce, “but I’ll show them! It’ll take me three hours!”
Missy squeezed her eyes shut as she heard a particularly unpleasant sound. She wanted to cover her ears, but then she’d fall off the ladder, probably landing on something unpleasant.
She began to sing. Metallica seemed like the best choice to drown out the sounds of carnage, so she started with “Enter Sandman.” Kevin had never praised her singing ability (quite understandably, since it did not exist) but he didn’t complain now.
An album’s worth of songs later, she called down: “How’s it going?”
“Stop rushing me!”
“I wasn’t rushing you! I was just asking how it’s going!”
“You try doing this! You think he just comes apart like taffy?”
“It was just a question. I won’t say another word.”
“However bad you’re imagining this to be, it’s worse.”
“I wasn’t saying it wasn’t bad.”
“It’s awful. It is the most awful thing I have ever done in my entire life.”
“I believe you.”
“I’m not exaggerating.”
“I know you’re not exaggerating! I one hundred percent believe that it’s the most awful thing you’ve ever done.”
“In my life.”
“I know!”
“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be a whiner, it’s just…it’s so bad. There is literally nothing positive about this experience.”
“Do you want me to come down and help?”
“No! It will scar you forever!”
“I saw him shoot himself.”
“That doesn’t matter! This is way worse! If I told you what I was looking at right now, you wouldn’t even believe me. You’d call me a liar, because nobody could ever believe the grossness of what’s right in front of my face! Remember that one time when we were kids and we found that dead squirrel?”
“No.”
“We were about ten.”
“I don’t remember finding a dead squirrel.”
“Yeah, you do. That dead squirrel in the park.”
“You mean the cat?”
“We never found a dead cat.”
“Yes, we did. When we were about ten. We found a dead cat in the park.”
“Are you sure?” Kevin asked.
“Yes. It was that mean orange one.”
“Okay, right. It was a cat. I don’t remember him being mean, but that doesn’t matter. Do you remember how disgusting it was? Do you remember how you made gagging noises and wouldn’t even touch it with a stick?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this is like fifty dead cats piled on top of each other. That’s how bad this is. Even after I get over it, I won’t be able to completely describe how awful this is.”
“Could you please quit comparing it to cats? I love cats.”
“I love cats, too. That’s my point.”
“I’m coming down.”
“No! Do not come down! Are you getting tired from being on the ladder?”
“No, you just sound like you need help.”
“I’m fine. I just don’t want you to be forever haunted. Sing some more, please.”
* * *
It most likely did not really take Kevin eighty-nine hours to dispose of Uncle Jake’s body, but it felt that way. Missy could barely move by the time he gave her the all clear and let her climb down the ladder without insisting that she would suffer irreparable emotional damage.
He’d done a remarkable job cleaning up. There was no evidence of butchery.
“He all went into the incinerator?” Missy asked.
“Most of him.”
“That thing can’t really burn bones, can it?”
“No. It cannot.”
“So…?”
“So the body bag now has some charred bones and other things in it. But it won’t smell bad anymore. And I washed out his radiation suit, just in case we need it later.”
“Well…thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Do you need a hug?”
“Hell yes.”
Missy gave Kevin a tight hug. “Is there anything else I can do?”
Kevin shook his head. “I’m not horny right now. Not even a little.”
“That’s not at all what I meant. I meant, could I get you something to…” Missy started to offer to get him something to eat, but he was unlikely to want that, either. “How about I just hug you for a while?”
“That would be nice.”
* * *
So that had not been a great day.
The other sacrifices weren’t all that bad. There was no shower down here, but they did have a microwave, so at least they didn’t have to bathe with cold water. Uncle Jake had three spare changes of clothes, which Kevin wore happily and which Missy wore less happily.
They had the treadmill, so their muscles weren’t going to atrophy. And Kevin looked surprisingly good with a beard.
When they weren’t having sex, eating, or washing clothes, they made up word games, told stories, and performed wacky comedy skits. They stacked empty cans in a pyramid and made their own carnival toss game. They drew on the walls and floor. They praised each other for not regressing into savagery.
* * *
0-1-0-2.
INCORRECT.
They’d been down in the shelter for two months. Missy was nowhere close to having used all of the potential combinations, but for some reason she felt convinced this was the day she’d get lucky. She punched in the next number in the sequence.
0-1-0-3.
INCORRECT.
One more chance for today. This next one was going to be the magic number. 0-1-0-4 had some kind of significance for Uncle Jake; she could feel it. It would unlock the hatch, she and Kevin would climb out, and the rest of the world would say, “Hey, we’ve been up here creating Utopia; where’ve you been?”
She was starting to think like Kevin now.
Nothing wrong with that. Kevin was a pretty happy guy.
0-1-0-
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Had something above just walked over the hatch?
CHAPTER FIVE
The footsteps startled Missy so badly that she almost slipped off the ladder. Fortunately, she maintained her grip and did not create the moment of amusing irony where she fell and broke her neck just as salvation arrived. “Hello?” she called out. “Is somebody up th
ere?”
Nothing.
Missy began to vigorously pound on the hatch. “Kevin, come here!” she shouted, though when she looked down Kevin was already at the bottom of the ladder.
“Is somebody up there?” he asked.
“I’m not sure!” She stopped pounding for a moment. “Hello? Who’s up there? We need help!”
No response.
“We’re trapped down here! Can you hear me? It would really make our day if you can hear me!”
Missy continued to shout and pound on the lid for another ten minutes, until Kevin informed her that she was starting to sound a little scary. She punched in the last 4.
INCORRECT. TOO MANY ATTEMPTS.
She was too flustered to think of the perfect swear word, so she just climbed down the ladder. “Did you hear it?”
“Yeah. What do you think it was?”
“I have no idea. Why would somebody walk over the lid but then not say anything?”
Kevin held up a hammer. “I don’t know, but I’ll take the next shift, in case they’re still around.”
Kevin went to the top and began pounding on the lid. He quit after about half an hour. Missy took another shift, but she’d already given up on the idea of anybody responding.
“Maybe they went to get help,” Kevin said.
“Maybe.”
“It would be locked from their side, too, so they could be on the way right now to find a welding torch or some dynamite.”
“It could also have been kids that we scared shitless. We may have just created a local legend. We may have frightened people away from Uncle Jake’s house for decades.”
Kevin sighed. “This bites.”
“Yeah.”
“It still could be people on their way for dynamite, though. Don’t get bummed out.”
* * *
If there were indeed people up above going to get dynamite, they had not taken the most expeditious route. After about three days, Missy accepted that they weren’t coming back.
* * *
INCORRECT. TOO MANY ATTEMPTS.
“Motherfucking son of a shitty bitch,” said Missy, as she did every morning.
She climbed down the ladder. Early in their imprisonment Kevin would greet her with “Did it work?” but she’d cured him of that habit. They’d been down here for almost four months, and it was important that they get on each other’s nerves as little as possible.
This was the thinnest she’d been in her entire adult life, which would have been nice except that she looked like crap. Her hair looked like crap, her skin looked like crap, and her nails looked like crap. She was not a vain, appearance-obsessed woman, but she didn’t enjoy looking like crap.
“Do you want me to open up a can of inedible disgusting shit?” asked Kevin. “Inedible disgusting shit” was their name for beans. Missy hadn’t thought it was possible to grow to loathe a food to the point where she wished death upon those who harvested it, but she really, really, really hated beans.
Saturday nights were Pasta Night, assuming they still had their days of the week correct, but they didn’t have much other respite from canned food.
“Maybe we should just eat nothing and starve to death instead,” said Missy. This was her standard response to Kevin asking if he wanted her to open up a can of inedible disgusting shit. He would either chuckle and say “I wish,” or say “At least it’s keeping us alive.”
Kevin chuckled. “I wish.”
He made significantly fewer optimistic comments these days. They spent most of their time in bed, though not in the good way. It was difficult to summon much enthusiasm for anything except those few seconds each day spent punching in numbers.
“We should get married,” said Kevin.
“Why would we do that?”
“So that when our bodies are found in a few centuries it’s less sad.”
“They won’t know we’re married unless you put a ring on it. Do you have a ring?”
“No.”
“Then I have to decline.”
“I wasn’t proposing. I was just mentioning the idea of proposing. I actually didn’t realize I’d said it out loud until you said something back.”
“Oh. The answer is still no.”
* * *
“I wish I had a legacy,” said Kevin.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, something better than ‘He was born, he lived for a while, then he died in a pit.'”
“This isn’t a pit.”
“Hellhole, then.”
“You’ve got a legacy.”
“I wish I had a good legacy. When it’s time to rebuild society, nobody is going to say ‘Let’s model a city after Kevin Jerrod, a man who was perfectly adequate.'”
“Society doesn’t need to be rebuilt,” said Missy, who was becoming used to their occasional reversal of optimist/pessimist roles. “Society is perfectly fine up there. We’re missing great new movies every weekend.”
“Or maybe society has crumbled to the point where any movie is a precious commodity.” He pointed upward. “Up there, a whole new society could worship Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo.”
Missy had kind of liked Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo, but this wasn’t the time for discussion of cinema.
“Your legacy is fine,” Missy said. “You saved my life, remember?”
“When? Recently?”
“You picked me up at work on the motorcycle when this all first started.”
“Oh, yeah. That wasn’t really saving your life. That was a chauffeur service.”
“You saved my life.”
Kevin shrugged. “I guess so. But that only counts if you go on to achieve greatness. I don’t really have a legacy if you just die in a hellhole with me.”
“Are you trying to be a jerk?”
“What, so now I’m being a jerk for wanting a legacy? Did you think Benjamin Franklin was a jerk, too? Oh, that Thomas Edison, what a frickin’ douche!”
“I’m not talking to you until you calm down,” Missy said, turning away.
“Oh, really? How are you going to give me the silent treatment? We live in three square inches of space!”
Missy ignored him.
“Don’t ignore me! I have to listen to you chew on your fingernails all day long, so the least you could do is listen to me when I’m saying stuff to you!”
“What are you even talking about?”
Kevin gestured to Missy’s fingernails. “You chew those things eighty-five hours a day! It’s the only sound I ever get to hear. Nom nom nom.” He mimed a particularly disgusting and sloppy session of fingernail devouring.
“I bite my nails when I get nervous. And I’ve never done it like that.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t gnawed off the first or second digits. I fear for my own fingers when I close my eyes to go to sleep. Last night I dreamt that I woke up screaming because you were eating my toenails with a fork and knife.”
“You dreamt that you woke up screaming?”
“Don’t judge me.”
“Maybe you should take some quiet time to yourself at the top of the ladder.”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Very much.”
“Well, if you don’t want to have a simple conversation with me, like a mature adult, I guess I’ll just have to talk to Uncle Jake.” Kevin knelt down and began to remove cans of food from the bottom shelf.
“Kevin, do not take out that body bag.”
Kevin continued to remove cans.
“Kevin, I’m serious. You’re taking this too far.”
“He’s been cooped up in that bag all this time. Doesn’t he deserve some fresh air? He’s the one who’s got a legacy. This shelter will be here until the earth is consumed by the sun!” Kevin dragged the body bag off the shelf.
“Kevin, I’m asking you very nicely not to unzip that bag. If you do, I will be forced to take drastic measures.”
“I’ll put him back when I’m done ta
lking.”
“No.”
“Just one jawbone.”
“Don’t unzip it, Kevin.”
“There was still meat on the bones when I burned them. We could’ve been having jerky all this time.” He pinched the zipper between his thumb and index finger.
“Don’t make me go for the gun.”
Kevin looked over at her, and then very slowly stood up. “You’re going to pull the gun on me?”
“Not if I don’t have to.”
“That gun was supposed to be for our suicide pact.”
“We don’t have a suicide pact. You wouldn’t let us form one.”
“Right! Because suicide pacts are a downer!”
They stared at each other for a few moments. Missy had no idea if she actually intended to go for the gun. Probably not if he just opened the bag, but if he suddenly posed a physical threat…
Kevin looked down at the bag. “I think I’ve behaved badly for the past couple of minutes.”
“Yes, you have. You really have.”
“I’m going to put this away now.” Kevin crouched down and shoved the body bag back onto the shelf. He carefully began to replace the cans.
“Are you all right?” Missy asked.
“I think that maybe I’m not as immune to madness as I thought I was.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not that okay. I sincerely apologize for that. That was one of the most uncool things I’ve ever done.”
“Agreed.”
“But I wouldn’t have actually done anything. The second I opened that bag I would’ve thrown up and it would’ve been over. I wouldn’t have done a puppet show with the skeleton parts.”
“I appreciate that.”
“And your fingernails? Doesn’t bother me at all when you chew them. The sound is actually kind of sexy. Well, not sexy. Soothing, though. Like a mother’s heartbeat.”
“You’re overcompensating.”
“No, it’s true! There is no sound I’d rather fall asleep to than the sound of you chewing your nails. And honestly, if you ever do want to chew my nails, finger or toe, just give me a bit of advance notice and they’re yours.”
