What We Kill

by Howard Odentz

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he keeps saying for dropping his missing phone into the toilet. “I’ll pay for another one.” That last statement elicits another barrage of verbal sewage from the other end of the phone. Myers has no money of his own. He doesn’t work. None of us do. Most kids in Meadowfield don’t work during high school. We’re too busy with after-school activities or donating our free time to the less fortunate, even though the four of us currently feel like the least fortunate people on the planet. “I will,” he says as he wipes sweat from his brow. I don’t think he can take his mother being his mother for another minute.

  Finally he hangs up, hangs his head, and says, “I can’t wait to go to college. Anywhere.”

  “Amen,” I whisper. I totally get what he means.

  Marcy is sitting on the granite kitchen island, cross-legged, peeling an orange as sunlight kisses her all over. I know we all feel like crap, but even crap looks good on Marcy. Beautiful people can spin silk out of shit. Marcy’s like that. I think peeling that orange is her way of trying to act normal for herself and for the rest of us. It makes me feel almost like nothing is happening to us and to Meadowfield, and this is only another hangout day.

  She looks up at Anders. He has his arms folded on the granite and his head cradled in them. A dark cloud passes over her face then disappears.

  Myers says, “Sorry,” to all of us. He’s been apologizing for his mother since forever. We’re all used to it. Marcy shrugs and so do I. “I’m staying. I can’t go home. If either of my parents find out that I’ve lost my eye again, I’ll be wishing I was one of those bodies coming out of Dr. Pavlovich’s house. They probably had an easier death than I’ll have.”

  “That’s not funny,” says Marcy. It’s not. It’s a little weird and sick. Who knows what happened to all those dead people? Who knows what kind of terror they went through before they finally breathed their last breath?

  Anders finally picks his head up off the table. He still refuses to look at Marcy or the rest of us. “That girl,” he says. He doesn’t say anything else. He repeats the two words again. “That girl.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but she freaked the crap out of me.”

  Marcy nods her head as she continues digging her nails into the orange peel, flaying it in front of us like we’re in the middle of the Inquisition and she’s sort of enjoying its murder. “What was with the dotted lines?”

  “Who knows?” says Myers. “Fashion statement?”

  “Not likely. Do you know anyone from Meadowfield who would ink themselves like that?”

  Anders snorts ever so slightly, which makes me think that there’s someone alive in there, slowly tearing away at the walls of a cocoon. “Looks like FunTowne trash.”

  FunTowne is the arcade in downtown Springfield. We’ve all been there before. It’s another hangout for the popular crowd, like The Stumps. Kids from rival towns go there, too. Even gangs from the north end of Springfield hang at FunTowne. The place is neutral territory. Everyone has silently agreed that if you’re there, you’re not looking for trouble. You only want to chill, spend mega amounts of quarters, and maybe find some weed.

  Since none of us party, FunTowne has always been about getting a sugar buzz with ridiculous amounts of candy, but I don’t partake in candy anymore.

  Myers picks up the television remote and points it at the TV on the wall in the kitchen. The Coles are a little television obsessed. There are at least seven of them that I can count in their house, and maybe eight, if Mr. Cole keeps one in his bathroom so he can shit and watch the news at the same time.

  Beryl only has one television in her bedroom and one in mine. There isn’t a third one in the house where the two of us can sit and watch TV together. Why would there be?

  As Myers flips channels, Marcy says, “Did she look familiar to you guys?” A chill runs down my back and I close my eyes. Thankfully, no images are waiting behind my eyelids to fill in the void. I’m sure they’ll pop up soon enough.

  The three of us answer at the same time, and we all lie. “No,” we say in unison. Then two seconds later we all take a deep breath.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “I’m not sure,” says Myers.

  We wait for Anders to recant his lie, too. All he does is lift his head from the table again, rub his eyes with his hands, and run his fingers through his hair. We all stare at him, waiting for him to come clean, because we’ve all known each other long enough to be able to ferret out what’s true and what’s not.

  Finally, he licks his lips and says, “I’d do her, though,” like he’s talking trash to the other jocks in the locker room at school. “Crazy can be hot.”

  22

  WE ALL TAKE showers, even Anders. I take mine in Marcy’s parents’ bathroom. As I scrub myself with handmade oatmeal soap from one of the vendors at the Farmer’s Market held in the shopping center parking lot every Wednesday afternoon, I momentarily hear the sheep cry again. This time their mournful wails are triggered by nothing more than the thought of fresh produce grown at one of the farms over the border in Connecticut, or a lady mixing vats of oils on her country kitchen stove, to cool into fancy soaps for privileged folks in rich, suburban Meadowfield.

  The thing is, Meadowfield isn’t privileged anymore, unless you want to single us out as one of the few towns across America that is home to a murder house. We’re all damaged now, and a crazy girl that survived some sort of horror inside that house, and whose screams I can’t scrub away no matter how hard I try, is the most damaged of us all.

  Suddenly, the soap makes me feel sick.

  Lifetimes ago, during World War II, the Nazis had homemade soap, too. Supposedly, that soap was made out of the melted down tallow of concentration camp victims. It was formed and molded by bits and pieces of grandmothers and grandfathers, parents and children, who were murdered by the biggest and most prolific mass murderer of all times.

  Jewish kids don’t even say his name. I guess we’re taught not to in Hebrew School. We no more say his name than Hogwarts kids say Voldemort’s name out loud. To breathe either is almost like inviting evil in for a cup of coffee and a nice scone.

  Blasphemy.

  After I finish showering and get dressed, Myers showers, too. Anders and Marcy are already cleaned up by the time we all come back into the kitchen. The hot, soapy water has invigorated us, if only a little. Anders still looks like shit, but he’s a cleaner, neater version of what he was only a few hours ago.

  The television is on and a reporter is talking about the newest scourge on our society.

  Dr. Viktor Pavlovich.

  Marcy switches the channel but several of the stations are running live feeds from the crime scene. Reporters are talking. Neighbors are talking. When things get slightly boring, snippets of what can be gleaned about Dr. Viktor Pavlovich’s life are plastered onto the screen.

  He looks nothing like I imagine. Marcy says something wildly out of character the first time they show a full picture of Pavlovich’s face. Part of me thinks she says it because Anders is right there and Anders has been acting so much like the definition of a douchebag this morning, she wants to hurt him.

  I’m not sure it works.

  “Wow. I’d do him,” she murmurs, totally echoing Anders’ words from before. “Crazy can be hot.”

  “Really?” says Myers, staring at Marcy opened mouth. She’s trying hard to be foul but foul won’t ever look good on her.

  “What?” Marcy says. “Well he is.”

  “Don’t be gross,” I tell her.

  The images of the man they keep flashing on the screen, serial murderer or not, are far from what I pictured. He’s not the sinister Viktor that I conjured in my head. There isn’t a scar on his face and he doesn’t have a gold tooth or dark, menacing eyes that give you the willies just by
looking at them. The guy on the screen is smiling and looks completely normal.

  As a matter of fact, this piece of human filth is going to unseat that Ted guy as the new poster boy for mass murderers. He has dark hair and a perpetual five o’clock shadow that seems studied and neat. His eyes are an electric blue without a hint of madness behind them. His smile is infectious. Girls are going to swoon all over his picture, and guys who may or may not think about other guys in that way won’t be able to stop fantasizing about Dr. Viktor Pavlovich.

  I guess you’d say he looks like a movie star.

  Suddenly Marcy gasps, and her eyes grow wide. “Oh my god, you guys. Do you know who that is?”

  None of us say anything. Anders, barely in the here and now, only shrugs like he couldn’t give a shit either way.

  “That’s Running Man,” she announces, and immediately I know she’s right.

  Running Man appears on Primrose Lane every morning, right as we’re leaving for school. He’s a permanent part of our daily routine because Running Man is precise. He’s so perfectly timed that we usually wait for him to prance by at 7:30, his body covered in designer running gear and his feet slapping the ground in more of a dance than a jog, before we set off for school. He’s elegant in his exercise, not like some people who are sloppy when they sweat. Running Man looks more like a cheetah or another creature that is born to gracefully run.

  That’s the best word I can think of to describe him. He’s graceful.

  Now Running Man is on TV for the whole world to see.

  Precious few details have been released so far about the bodies that are coming out of his house on Covington Circle, but phrases like ‘human remains’ and ‘dismembered with surgical precision’ have been hastily uttered before station managers quickly cut and move to something less gory to talk about.

  “I can’t believe we know him,” says Myers, which isn’t exactly true. We’ve never talked to Running Man before. Marcy has blushed a couple of times when he’s flashed a wicked grin in her direction while we’ve been waiting at the bottom of the driveway of one of our houses so we can all walk to school together.

  “Hey there,” Running Man said to her once, as he floated by on feet that barely touched the ground.

  “Um, hi,” Marcy said back, then turned to watch him go. When he was out of ear shot, Marcy said, “Nice ass.”

  I remember that day, not so long ago. It was the first time that Anders seemed a little pissed at Marcy for no good reason. Now I’m starting to realize that there may have been a reason after all and there’s no more hiding it. First thing this morning when no one could calm Anders down but Marcy, he lay practically naked at the edge of Turner Pond with his head in her lap. She was there for him. She’s always been there for him.

  What’s worse, all he’s doing is shitting on her for it.

  I get it.

  I don’t get it.

  It’s complicated.

  23

  IT’S 11:15 AND MRS. Cole’s work phone has been ringing non-stop. Every time it goes off, we all stare at the caller ID to see who it is. More often than not there are messages and the messages are frightening.

  We listen as the answering machine picks them up, time and time again, with hysterical women and a few men on the other end, all desperately trying to make sense of what is going on in Meadowfield. They all keep talking about how they can’t cope. The very idea of a monster like Dr. Viktor Pavlovich doing what he did, right under their noses, is rattling their senses.

  A few of them ask if they should up their prescriptions. I don’t know why they’re asking Marcy’s mom about pills. She’s a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. One shrinks the brain. The other medicates it.

  Marcy’s mom isn’t a dispensary.

  None of them, not a single one, say anything about the poor dead people being brought out of the house on Covington Circle. Nobody is concerned with the nightmare these peoples’ families will have to endure once the bodies are identified.

  Everyone is so self-absorbed that I want to pick up one of those phone calls and scream into the receiver about how shitty they sound. They aren’t the only people in the world. Their lives aren’t the only ones that matter.

  I want to screw up my face and tell one of them, any one of them, to go fuck off. I want to point them in the direction of the nearest designer knife block sitting in their designer kitchens on their designer granite and tell them to either cut their wrists deep or go get a fucking grip.

  Christ, there are other things happening right now that are more important than how the murder house and its store of corpses makes them ‘feel.’

  I rub the triangle on my arm with my thumb. It hurts. Sitting here, waiting for our heads to clear, listening to Mrs. Cole’s clients prattle on and on, is somehow making the pain worse.

  Finally, the house phone rings twice, then stops.

  “That’s my mom,” Marcy says nervously.

  “Huh?” says Myers. “How do you know?”

  “Two rings then nothing, means it’s her. She’s going to call again,” and right when she says that, the phone rings a second time, and Marcy immediately snatches it up.

  “Mom?” she whispers into the phone. “Mommy?” Marcy walks out of the kitchen but doesn’t go far. We can hear her conversation anyway.

  Marcy’s close with her parents. Like I said before, she really lucked out with her mom and dad. They’re the cool ones.

  “I bet the Coles are coming home,” whispers Myers. He bites on his lip and nods his oversized head with the patch on it.

  “How do you know?”

  “They’re coming home because of Running Man,” he says. “My parents would.”

  “Your parents are bizarre,” I remind him, which isn’t even a stone’s throw away from the truth. Marcy’s home and safe. There’s no difference if her parents are at the casino or at home with her. They know she’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.

  “Anders?” Marcy asks as she walks back into the kitchen and stares directly at him.

  Anders is now sitting in a chair, leaning back, with one leg dangling over the arm of the seat. He looks like he is going to start playing with himself and couldn’t care less if any of us watch. He doesn’t respond to her. In fact, he doesn’t even move.

  After a moment, Marcy turns away from him. “Um, he’s here, but . . . he’s in the bathroom,” she whispers into the phone. Mrs. Cole says something on the other end of the line. Marcy nods and hands the phone to me.

  “What?” I mouth to her.

  “My mom wanted to talk to Anders but . . . well . . . you know,” she says and tilts her head in his direction. “So she wants to talk to you.”

  A little knot forms in the pit of my stomach. I’m going to have to lie again. I lied to Myers’ mother this morning, and I lied to Anders’ mother, too. Now I’m going to have to lie to Mrs. Cole. I don’t know what I’m going to say, but I’m going to have to be smart. Mrs. Cole is a psychologist. She’ll know I’m lying if I don’t do it right. She’ll know, and she’ll come home. That’s the last thing any of us want. We’re not ready for parents yet.

  None of us.

  “Hello?” I breathe into the phone when Marcy hands it to me.

  “Weston, hi,” I hear Marcy’s mother say. In the background there are whistles and bells. She’s at the Indian Casino down in the part of Connecticut that no one ever visits. “I wanted to make sure you guys are okay.”

  “We are,” I lie. “What do you mean?” Oh, crap. I sound like I’m a psychopath just like Viktor Pavlovich. Something hideous is happening in town, but I have to go and say ‘what do you mean,’ like I’m not totally freaked out.

  “I . . .” she begins, but I cut her off.

  “It’s scary,” I tell her, because that’s the truth. I can run with t
hat. “But we have each other, and we’re not going to leave Marcy by herself. We’ll stay with her tonight.” I don’t know if that’s true, but as the words come out of my mouth they sound true. Where else would we possibly go? The four of us are experiencing a different kind of hell than the rest of Meadowfield. Our kind of hell dictates safety in numbers.

  “I left money for Marcy,” she says. “Order sushi or maybe go grab some salads at the salad bar over at Fresh Acres.” I have to smile when she says that. Only in Meadowfield would parents be telling their kids to eat fish and greens.

  “Okay,” I tell her.

  “Do you want me to call Beryl and let her know you’re at my house?” Mrs. Cole asks. That’s a big thing. Mrs. Cole and Beryl are like oil and water. Beryl floats on the surface of everything, her mind barely skimming the top of reality. The Coles are fluid and easy.

  “That’s okay,” I say. “She doesn’t mind,” which is the total truth.

  “Thanks, West,” she says. I guess I’m a poor second to Anders. If it were Anders talking to Marcy’s mom instead of me, she would be telling him that he’s the strong one and needs to protect us all. Nipping at the heels of that thought, Mrs. Cole says, “Is Anders out of the bathroom yet?”

  I look over at him. His GQ face is slightly defiant, like he’s waging an inner battle with whatever demons are inside his head, but he knows he’s going to win.

  “No,” I say and then punctuate that definitive word with a statement that isn’t supposed to be funny but comes out funny anyway. “He’s still full of crap.”

  24

  A HALF HOUR LATER, this is what we’ve learned about Running Man.

  Dr. Viktor Pavlovich was born in Moscow but moved to the states when he was a toddler. He doesn’t have any family here. His parents both died in a car accident and there are no other relatives.

  He’s good looking, like really good looking, but that hasn’t always been the case. His picture from his high school yearbook shows someone who is more akin to his namesake than perfect, prancing Running Man, with his winning smile and cheetah stride.