Random Acts

by Franklin Horton

  He bent over and put a hand on the hatchet, hoping another blow would end it. Despite his involuntary seizing and jerking, Stanley threw up a hand and closed it around Victor’s wrist. Victor recoiled in fear and disgust.

  “Shit!”

  He looked around, trying to find something else he might use to end this. He could not tolerate the jerking body, the accusing eye. He saw a concrete planter and went to it. Full of dirt, he could not guess how much it weighed, but it took all of his strength to bring it to his chest. He staggered across the porch with it, stopping above Stanley’s head.

  The man was arching and twisting at his feet, perhaps sensing where this was going. A hand reached for Victor’s ankle, stirring another wave of revulsion. In response, Victor heaved the planter as high as he could and dropped it on Stanley’s head.

  The sound was something Victor would remember for his entire life. It reminded him of the wet crack of a watermelon rolling out of the car and cracking on the driveway. Unable to remain balanced on Stanley’s head, the planter rolled to the side.

  A deformed and flattened face stared back up at Victor. Blood had sprayed in several directions, creating a morbidly floral pattern as it surrounded Stanley’s head like a halo. Like an oozing crimson aura.

  Stanley’s body arched violently then slowly relaxed into death. Overcome with all that had happened, Victor staggered backward, missing the edge of the patio and falling on his back in the yard.

  He lay there on the grass, still wet from Stanley’s hose, and stared at the sky. Part of his mind looked for clouds shaped like animals. Part of it replayed the events of the day. Another part of it coldly calculated that his life would be different from this point forward and he better get fucking control of things really quickly.

  He asked himself what happened. He asked himself how this had happened.

  But he knew.

  It was the night Stanley locked him in the basement. It was the night the DeathMerchant rose to the surface like an alligator rising in the swamp to eat a duck. No matter how much Victor pressed back, the DeathMerchant would not submerge. He was here and he intended to stay.

  27

  Victor wasn’t sure if he fell asleep, passed out, or went into shock, but when he sat up he felt like some time had passed. Stanley still lay dead about a dozen feet from him so Victor knew it wasn’t all a bad dream. He’d hoped it was.

  His head felt different and he touched it, finding his hair gone and a crust of blood on one side. Yet another reminder this was all real. He needed to do something with Stanley. He was just lucky someone hadn’t come by during the time he couldn’t account for.

  He got to his feet and started toward Stanley. Then he realized he probably needed to find a location for the body before he moved it. No use dragging the thing all over the yard with him like a kid with his favorite toy. Unlike the movies, he saw no conveniently located well or pre-dug hole in which to dispose of the body. There were woods behind the house but he didn’t know how long it would take him to dig a hole, nor was he even certain he had the stamina to do so.

  There was an old garage behind the house. While it had a modern twist handle for unlocking it, the door was not segmented like a newer door. When Victor raised it, the entire door swung up in a single piece and retracted overhead. The garage held an old Snapper riding mower and an assortment of tools.

  The whir of an electric motor kicking in got Victor’s attention. He spotted a rusty chest freezer against a far wall. He threw open the lid and found it about half-full of home-packed venison and discounted trays of ground beef. There was a yellow wheelbarrow in the garage and Victor moved it closer to the freezer. The gathered armfuls of the meat and dumped it into the wheelbarrow. The packages were cold against his arms and chest but Victor was so focused he barely noticed.

  When he had the freezer emptied, he moved the wheelbarrow out of the way and returned to the patio. Stanley’s squashed head was surrounded by thickening blood, the edges crusting. It might have looked like Stanley passed out drunk in a puddle of merlot were it not for the condition of his cranium. The hatchet blow, while not a killing strike in itself, had introduced a fault into an otherwise perfectly strong and serviceable skull, a normally resilient structure. Under the pressure introduced by the dropped concrete planter, the area weakened by the hatchet blow became a port through which some of the contents of the skull had been forced out.

  Thus the merlot-colored halo.

  Thus the oozing brain matter extruded from the jagged hole.

  Victor forced himself to look at the man. He had killed thousands of people over years of online gameplay. He had seen the gruesome pixilated images of dead, dying, and disfigured players. He could see now that it was different in real life. There was an emotional quality associated with viewing the dead that was not present in a video game. On some level, he understood that his desire to look away from this real death was a weakness on his part. He needed to take it in. He needed look it straight in the eye. The DeathMerchant would have.

  The DeathMerchant would relish it because it was the fruit of his victory.

  Indeed, this was a new moment for Victor. He had entered into the martial arena and won. He had killed what was obviously a lesser man.

  “Stanley, you are one hideous son-of-a-bitch,” Victor said. He didn’t find it natural talking so brazenly to a corpse but he thought it sounded appropriate in his new role. His new reality.

  Deciding he couldn’t move the man without covering himself in gore, Victor went back to the garage and found a blue tarp precisely folded and stored on a shelf. He took it to the patio, laid it out beside Stanley’s body, and slipped a pair of the dead man’s work gloves on his hands. He tipped the body onto the tarp, surprised at how easily the stout little man moved.

  Carefully stepping to avoid the puddle of fluids, Victor grabbed the corners of the tarp and tugged Stanley off the patio.

  “Oops. Bump,” Victor said with a smile when Stanley dropped the foot in height from the patio to the ground level, his head rebounding wetly from a paving stone.

  Victor backed up, dragging the tarp. The back of his thighs began to twitch in exhaustion, unused to the motion of pulling a weight backward. He was also breathing hard from the exertion, which in itself was not part of his usual routine. When they reached the freezer, Victor took a break, allowing his breathing to slow down. While he was recovering, he scanned the garage for duct tape, feeling like he should tape the body and the tarp up in a neat package. Like the venison he’d removed.

  When he didn’t find any tape he decided to heave the body into the freezer. It was not as easy as he imagined. With the body being a little longer than the freezer, Victor had to twist Stanley into some semblance of a yoga position to make him fit. When the work was complete, Victor tried to think of some final verbal jab to throw at the man but words failed him. He shut the lid with a thump and closed the garage door as he left.

  The surge and decline of adrenaline had left him tired and shaky. He was intent on sitting on the back patio for a moment and getting his head together but as soon as he saw the condition of the flagstones he knew he had work to do first. He had not spent a lot of time cleaning in his life but common sense told him he needed to get all the spilled Stanley off the patio before it dried or he would be on his hands and knees scrubbing it off.

  He found the water hose Stanley had blasted him with and used it to wash away the bodily fluids. Even the blood that was beginning to thicken and crust over had not adhered to the porch enough that it could resist the hose. In just a few minutes, all traces of what had transpired here were erased.

  Except for the bloody hatchet.

  His first thought was to bury it or throw it in a river somewhere but he decided it was pointless. Anyone who searched this property right now would find Stanley’s body and he would be the only suspect so there was no need to take any great pains hiding the weapon. He went back to the garage and tossed it into the freezer with the body
. He would deal with them later.

  When he got back to the patio this time Victor made sure he hosed all traces of blood off his own body and clothing. He would have preferred to change clothes but he didn’t have any and there was no way he was squeezing into one of Stanley’s spare jumpsuits. The sun was hot enough now it might dry his clothing if he took it off and spread it out on the patio furniture. He did so, removing every stitch until he was standing naked on Stanley’s patio.

  It felt a little strange and he prayed there would be no unexpected visitors. He only knew Stanley in terms of his own mother and their relationship. He didn’t know what kind of other visitors the old man might have during the course of a normal day. There had been a refrigerator in the garage holding several dozen cans of Budweiser beer. Victor didn’t imagine all of the beer was just for Stanley’s consumption. The old man looked like the kind of guy who people stopped by to have a beer with.

  That very idea, the concern that someone may stop to visit, made Victor realize he needed to take charge of this situation. He needed to move Stanley’s truck into the garage so it appeared he wasn’t home. Perhaps it would discourage anyone from stopping by. Doing so required a truck key and Victor hoped to God he wasn’t going to have to get back in the freezer and root around through Stanley’s pockets. Maybe the old man had put his stuff down in the house.

  Victor looked at the patio door, knowing it was open because he’d seen Stanley come and go through it, but to him that door represented an almost impenetrable barricade. Going through it meant entering Stanley’s world.

  It wasn’t Stanley’s world anymore though. Stanley was dead.

  Victor had killed him.

  Had conquered him.

  Just as in his computer games, to the Victor went the spoils. The house was his now for as long as he needed it and for as long as he could keep it. He walked to the glass slider as boldly as a four hundred pound naked man could and slid the door open. He smelled cigarette smoke, old man, and the stale air of a house where the windows were not opened often enough.

  The floor was covered in thick olive green carpet, the walls original 1960s paneling covered in pictures of what must have been Stanley’s life up to this point. Victor tried not to look at them closely, not wanting the eyes to accuse him of what he was already fully aware he had done. In his tentative glances at them, he saw several black and white photographs of a sailor in uniform on the deck of a ship. It had to be Stanley since the word Navy came out in every sentence the old man said. Used to say.

  There were other pictures of a friendly smiling woman with poufy gray hair. Other pictures showed her with a smiling Stanley. It must have been his wife. There were no pictures of any children or grandchildren, which was a relief. There were a few pictures of a Jack Russell terrier which made Victor scan the room looking for evidence of a dog but he found none. No dog beds and no dog toys.

  Separating the den from the nearby kitchen was a low countertop of woodgrain Formica. On the countertop sat a set of truck keys and Stanley’s phone. Victor rushed over and picked up the phone. It was not the same operating system as the phone Stanley chopped up, but it was a late model smart phone that was capable of doing all of the things his old phone had done.

  He pushed a button and stared expectantly at the screen. A message came up instructing him to put in his pass code or touch his thumb to the biometric sensor integrated into the button he’d pushed.

  “Shit!” Victor said, ready to smash the phone against the wall.

  He caught himself. He could fix this. Stanley’s thumb would still unlock this phone. Then it was just a matter of turning the security features off so Stanley’s information wouldn’t be needed anymore. On a morbid note, he also realized there was a limited window of opportunity in which to do this. Should the thumb become bloated, desiccated or otherwise misshapen, it would not work.

  With the keys and phone in hand, Victor returned to the back porch and put his wet clothes back on. He went to the garage and shifted everything out of the way that would prevent him from pulling the small truck inside. He went back around the house, making sure no traffic was coming and trying to be as inconspicuous as someone of his size could be while skulking around in swishing wet clothes.

  After adjusting the seat back as far as it would go, he pulled the truck around the house and carefully eased it into the garage. He decided to leave the keys in the truck for now in case he needed to make a quick escape. He had to start thinking that way since he was now an outlaw.

  At the freezer, Victor borrowed Stanley’s cool thumb and was thrilled to see it unlock the phone. Standing in the garage, Victor turned off the phone’s lock screens and security features just in case he needed more thumb scans to accomplish this. He briefly considered locating some pruning shears and taking the thumb with him but that was a level to which he was reluctant to advance right now.

  He was clearly a murderer, a video game thief, an inciter of mayhem and rioting, and a disturber of the peace, but he was not a desecrator of corpses.

  Yet.

  28

  Back inside Stanley’s house, Victor peeled off his damp clothes and wasted no time downloading the apps he needed to install on Stanley’s phone. While they downloaded, he deleted a bunch of stupid apps that he didn’t want to see on the screen, such as an app that told you when the fish were biting, one that listed daily meal discounts for senior citizens, and another that would tell you a dirty joke every day. Victor could just imagine the old bastard sitting there cackling hysterically while his phone told him dirty limericks.

  He also added his own email accounts to the phone, pleased he was able to recall his passwords. When everything was installed, he logged into his primary social media account to see if CamaroChick19 had messaged him. She had. Numerous times.

  “What’s up, dude?”

  A few hours later there was another.

  “Dude, you usually get back to me pretty quick. You seem to live online, just like me. What’s up?”

  Of course Victor had not responded because he’d probably been in jail at the time. Another came sometime that night.

  “Getting a little worried, man. You didn’t do anything stupid did you? Please tell me you didn’t.”

  Victor frowned. That one irked him a little. He was a grown man. He didn’t need someone judging what he did and implying he was stupid. He had enough of that in his life already. Of course, he now had a little less of that in his life with the aggravating little troll Stanley dead in the deep freeze.

  There was another message after that.

  “I’m sorry I said you might have done something stupid. I’m just a little worried. I thought we had a connection. I’m just freaking out a little here.”

  The final message had come sometime last night.

  “I’m guessing you need some time to think about things. I hope I hear from you.”

  She had him now. The fact she’d apologized for implying he was stupid and the fact she appeared to miss him had completely snared his stunted emotional self. Instead of immediately replying, he decided to stalk CamaroChick19’s social media accounts. Her real accounts. The Amanda Castle accounts. He wanted to see her again. The real her.

  He searched for her account on his favorite site first. He looked at the newest pictures, working on a construction site with her dad, buying a new bike with some dude, and just hanging out. One of the photo descriptions said something about a new life and it made him curious. It made him scan back through her older posts. Something he’d not yet had the opportunity to do.

  Going back several weeks he hit something interesting. There was a post with tons of responses. There was a picture of her crying with the description saying it was the worst day of her life. Victor started reading the comments and found that Amanda’s mother had died. Despite his mixed feelings about his own mother, he felt an ache for Amanda and what she was going through.

  Actually, the more he thought about it, his feelings about his mothe
r were not mixed at all. He hated her. Plain and simple.

  He was scared to admit it. As unreasonable as it was, he was afraid she would get inside his head and figure it out. He was afraid that somehow she might sense his hate and do something bad to him.

  Yet what could she do to him at this point? His life was already about as upside-down as it could get. He didn’t have a lot left to lose. He should just admit it.

  “I hate you, Mother,” he said out loud.

  It felt odd to say those words in this strange house. It also filled him with fear, as if she might pop from behind a corner and began clouting him in the head with her purse.

  “I hate your fucking guts, Clara,” he spat, not even giving her the respect of naming their relationship this time.

  It felt good. Freeing.

  Amanda’s posts gave him an idea. He returned to the messaging app through which he’d been communicating with CamaroChick19, clicked on her messages, and began a reply.

  “Sorry I’ve been out of touch. We had a death in the family.”

  That was something she could relate to, something she might sympathize with. Then with a smile, he added more.

  “Not really family. My mom’s boyfriend but he was like family.”

  That part was actually true since Victor hadn’t liked Stanley any more than he liked his family.

  “I’m back online now. I decided not to do the knockout game. You were right, it might get me in trouble and I don’t need that. I’d like to hear more of your ideas for videos. I’m around to chat anytime.”

  The idea of chatting with a girl had an element of excitement to it. He had chatted with girls on gaming servers while playing, but that was different. They weren’t real girls, they were gamers. Chatting with them usually consisted of hurling verbal insults at them as they shot at each other. Never had he exchanged messages with a girl in this manner. Pathetic as it was, it was intimate on a level he’d never experienced before.