The Rest Will Come

by Christina Bergling

  Looking at Deidra in the mirror, she decided she had made the right decision to invest in the wig. With her tits out and her ass hugged, he would never notice the bargain tags on her clothes. All NateDawg$ would be worried about would be introducing her to his over-documented penis in person.

  Deidra had a long drive on the dark highway to reach the southern city of Colorado Springs. She did not even turn on the radio, instead preferring the lines on the road whipping past her tires and the wind swirling against her windows. She became calm as she drew near her destination, focused and anticipant.

  She parked in an alleyway behind and down a couple blocks from the bar, an alley Emma would have avoided traveling alone in the dark. The narrow space was poorly lit and ominous. She popped the trunk and reached inside, grasped the screwdriver, and plunged it into her back tire, the impact sending a horrible ache from her palm up into her arm. She struggled hard then ripped it back out, hearing the air hiss out. She tossed the screwdriver back on the plastic lining in her trunk and sashayed on her heels into the bar.

  She sat calmly at the bar, waiting for NateDawg$. It was no surprise he was late. When he entered the bar, she spotted him immediately, tattoo art screen printed over his shirt, a flat-billed baseball cap low on his head. Deidra noticed him but pretended to be obliviously perched on the barstool.

  “Deidra?” His voice was the same forced gruff tone she imagined while reading his messages.

  Deidra smiled and remembered to answer to the name.

  “Nate?” she responded, letting seduction creep into her lips.

  “Nice to meet you.” Nate extended his hand. “Damn, girl. You are prettier than your profile.”

  “Thank you.”

  Nate drew back the stool beside her and slid himself uncomfortably close to her. Deidra discarded Emma’s disgust and moved in responsively. Nate allowed a flash of seeming victory to flash over his features. His eyes lingered in Deidra’s cleavage even as he spoke again.

  Deidra did not listen to what he was saying. She moved her head to the side and widened her eyes. She twirled the false strands of hair between her fingertips. While Nate was distracted by evaluating her body, she glanced down at his hand. A stark white line wrapped itself around his ring finger. Not the unbound finger of one never married, not the faded line of a distant divorce, the vivid mark of infidelity.

  A cheater. Deidra’s heart fluttered.

  Nate set his empty glass on the bar in front of them, licked his lips, and placed his hand on Deidra’s thigh. Emma cringed at the contact; Deidra put her hand receptively on top of his.

  “Do you want to get out of here, girl?” Nate angled his chin toward her, his eyelids lowering.

  “Sure. Walk me to my car?”

  She laughed on the inside at the wave of confusion over his face.

  Nate reached for her hand as they walked down the alley. He dragged her on her heels toward him. She pretended to waver with intoxication. His fingers groped around her waist, hooking her in close. Emma rolled her eyes behind Deidra’s welcoming grin.

  “Oh shit,” Nate said as they approached her car. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah,” Deidra said. “Why?”

  “You have a flat, girl. Man, that’s like totally flat. Look, we can take my car and come back for yours in the morning.”

  “Oh no. I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving it here overnight. You think you could change it for me?”

  Nate looked Deidra up and down once more. “Yeah. Why don’t you pop your trunk for me?”

  Deidra opened her trunk and lifted the lid.

  “Why is your trunk lined in plastic?” Nate looked back at her perplexed.

  “I work for a gardener. I have soil in my trunk all the time. It gets everywhere. Easier this way.”

  Nate accepted the lie and lifted the floor of the trunk to reveal the spare tire and tools. Deidra leaned against the cold concrete wall while he struggled to jack up the car and remove the flattened tire. She made sure to angle her body attractively for when he paused to glance back at her. Each time, she flashed him a gracious and suggestive smile, and he snapped back to work. When he turned away, she rolled her eyes or giggled silently.

  At last, he loaded the damaged tire into her trunk. As he smoothed the plastic back down, she eased up behind him and fetched the tire iron from the asphalt beside the car, her eyes sweeping the alley for witnesses.

  “Hey, I missed the tire iron,” Nate said, his head still in the trunk. “Can you give it to me?”

  He reached his hand back toward her, and Deidra raised the iron high. She took a long and deliberate breath, savoring the way time suspended as the weapon arced through the air, then slammed into his skull. The long neck of the four-pronged shape imbedded into the bone with a sickening and heavy thud. Nate’s body jerked, and Deidra had to imagine the look of unadulterated shock contorting his features. His breath stumbled and sputtered, so she tugged the tire iron back. It abandoned the wound with a strange sucking sound. When she struck him again, his body fell limp.

  Before he could completely collapse, Deidra used his own fall to guide his body into the trunk. When his shoulders contacted the plastic, she crouched down on her heels to gather up his legs and tuck them in after him. She tossed the bloodied weapon on his chest and grasped the package of bleach wipes from the corner of the trunk. Quickly, she ran the cloth over her hands and face and the outside of the trunk and bumper. Tossing the cloth in, she closed the trunk over him. She was still alone and unseen in the vacant alley.

  The smile on Emma’s face carved so deeply and relentlessly that her cheeks were fatigued from the expression. The city disappeared in her rearview mirror. She abandoned her car and the monotony of driving, allowing her body to coast on autopilot as her brain ignited and twitched over all the preparations that would need to be done when she pulled into her garage.

  The plastic was already prepared. She had hung it on the walls and spread it over the floor, even under where the car would park this time. She had weighted the plastic down on the edges to avoid any sliding or rolling. She did not want to have to bleach the concrete again. The chain hoist hung securely from the ceiling with the bucket waiting beneath it. She had a new blade for the Sawz-All.

  So consumed was she in walking through her disposal steps that she barely noticed the lights flashing behind her. The glimpses of red and blue assaulted her eyes from the rearview mirror. She squinted at them until she registered the police car behind her.

  This is it. I’m done. I am going to prison, if not getting lethal injection.

  Her heart seized in her chest and dropped like a weight into her stomach, its impact radiating up her bones. She stopped breathing as she pulled her car onto the dark shoulder of the road.

  Hold your shit together. You have to hold your shit together.

  “Good evening, Officer,” Emma said, forcing a smile at the cop at her window.

  The rotating red and blue lights painted the officer’s uniform in alternating hues. The large spotlight cast hard lines over his face otherwise obscured by the night.

  “Hello, ma’am,” he said flatly. “Do you know why I pulled you over?”

  Because I have the dead body of a creep in my trunk that I plan to dismember in my garage and bury in the mountains?

  “No, sir. Was I speeding?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The speed limit through here drops down to sixty-five. You were going seventy-six when I clocked you a few miles back. Where are you headed?”

  “Home.”

  “Where are you coming from?”

  “Honestly, I am trying to get home after an absolutely awful date. I met this guy at a bar. He told me he had never been married, but when he showed up, he had a bright wedding ring tan line on his ring finger. Not an old one, he was married. Then he tried to convince me to go home with him.”

  “That’s too bad.” The officer moved to look down at his clipboard.

  “I’ve been divorced for a few years now,�
�� Emma rambled. “I’ve tried everything. I recently resorted to online dating.”

  “That’s too bad, ma’am.” The officer raised his pen and opened his mouth to continue talking.

  “It’s just been horrible. I have probably been on a hundred first dates, and they all end the same. If I like the guy, he disappears. If I’m not into him, I can’t get rid of him. Most of them are complete liars, only pretending to be someone else.”

  “Ma’am,” the officer attempted to interrupt.

  “I thought this guy would be different. He said all the right things online. I can’t believe he was married! And I can’t believe he didn’t think I would notice that huge white line on his finger! It was probably more noticeable than the wedding ring itself.”

  “Ma’am,” the officer tried again.

  “Do men actually think women are that stupid, Officer? Are you married? Would you do that to your wife?”

  “Look, ma’am, it sounds like you have had a rough night. I am going to let you off with a warning tonight, but I want you to drive safely home and obey the posted speed limits.” The officer took a half step back with each sentence.

  “That’s very nice of you. Thank you, Officer.”

  “You’re welcome, ma’am. You have a good night and drive safe.”

  The officer disappeared back behind his glaring, flashing lights. Emma rolled up her window and sat momentarily stunned. After the police car pulled past her, she rejoined the highway. Only then did she allow a loud chuckle until the sound echoed back at her from the windshield.

  The plastic crunched and rumpled under her tires as she pulled her car into her garage, the door rumbling shut behind her. She exited the car and moved to the trunk, opened it, and stared down at Nate’s sad, crumpled body. His eyes were frozen half open, lacking any vitality, fixed dull and muted. His skin already looked flat. His body had that alarming and unnerving stillness to it that betrayed his demise.

  Emma stalled over him for several long moments. Hoisting the corpse from the trunk was her least favorite part of the process, or dragging one down her stairs and across her house. As she struggled to wrangle the inanimate flesh, she questioned if she should exchange some runs for weight training. Her muscles were unequal to the leaded weight of the dead.

  Nate collapsed into a heap on the plastic, a fall that probably would have injured him if he was alive to feel it. Emma wrapped her hands around his ankles and dragged the body across the garage, leaving a trail of smeared blood along the plastic. As his body slipped along the surface, she thought of Mark, of how much more difficult it was to move him. She was getting stronger. Perhaps, she dared fathom, she was getting better at this.

  She bound Nate’s legs with the chain and hoisted him up until his body dangled upside down from the ceiling. The corpse spun gently in its suspense while Emma gathered and positioned supplies. She placed the large bucket directly under Nate’s wobbling head, picked up the knife she had set out, and firmed her grip around it. Taking a fistful of Nate’s greasy hair, Emma wrinkled her nose and began cutting, struggling to hold the lubricated strands tightly.

  The blood came spurting and pouring from his throat, pooling in the bucket below. Emma took a step back, allowing the blood to fill the bucket and avoid the extra splatter. She kept hold of the knife and crossed her arms while the corpse drained, the rhythmic sound of the blood hitting the bucket sedating her.

  When the shower was reduced to a drip, Emma picked up the Sawz-All and buzzed it through the remainder of Nate’s neck and divorced his head from his body. She waited until the blood stopped dripping before lowering the body and continuing to segment it.

  She heaved the torso first, attempting to wrangle the smooth shape slicked in blood. She wrestled it into a garbage bag, wrapped it tightly, and wound duct tape around it. Then she set the body part aside and repeated the process with the next portion.

  Once the body parts were individually wrapped, she washed her hands and fetched her new hiking bags. She could not afford to buy a new set of backpacks after every victim without arousing suspicion, so she wrapped the pieces again in clean garbage bags, carefully packing the pieces against each other inside the backpacks. She removed the bloodied plastic from the trunk and placed all the packaged remains of Nate inside.

  After she gathered all the bloodied plastic, the tire iron, the burner phone with the battery removed, Nate’s phone with the battery removed, her costume, every scrap of evidence associated with Nate’s untimely death, she packed it efficiently into the tent bags, wrapping the bundles in clean garbage bags and taping the parcels tight.

  When Emma lifted the bucket, the ocean of blood sloshed up against the side. She held her breath and steadied her body, taking small fractional steps into her house. With forced poise, she guided the blood bucket into the bathroom and sent the contents down the bathtub drain.

  When she began the painstaking process of bleaching everything, she knew there was no way she was eradicating all the evidence left behind. No matter how much bleach chased the liters of blood down the drain, no matter how meticulously she scrubbed every visible crevice of her trunk, she would miss some microscopic trace.

  The important thing was to never draw attention to herself. If they never traced the profiles to her points of internet access, if they never found the body, they would have no cause to scrape her drain or shine the blue light into her trunk.

  Part of Emma wanted to preserve a memento of each fallen man. The keys from Mark’s face. Geoffrey’s wallet, a screen capture of Nate’s ridiculous profile or unprompted penis pictures. She wanted the trophies to remember and relive, like the serial killers in her favorite television programs. From those same programs, she knew to dismiss the urge, to bleach, bury, or burn every single thing associated with the crime, and to vary her habits and create no patterns in the trails she might leave.

  Emma crawled into bed utterly exhausted, each movement and stroke echoing on her muscles. She reeked of bleach, and she could still feel the blood on her hands.

  ***

  In the morning, Emma packed up and went for a long hike on a new trail, three extended routes into nowhere in three divergent directions.

  Her footsteps on the dirt echoed in the quiet morning. She permitted the seduction of the rhythm in her hike and the tapping of her walking stick, her mind wandering past her path.

  What am I doing? Am I simply a murderer now? Is this all what I do now?

  You do what makes you happy, another voice of hers chimed in. This is what makes you happy.

  This can’t be what makes me happy. This can’t be okay. I can’t up and decide to start killing people and burying them in the mountains. You don’t just wake up one day a killer.

  Maybe I was always a killer. Maybe I would have killed Jeremy Davies. Maybe Jeremy Davies had it coming too.

  A couple of bad dates are not enough motive for a killing spree.

  I bet a thousand women would disagree with that. I bet a thousand woman wished they were doing what I’m doing. Finally taking control. Finally being honest. Finally not getting used and discarded.

  The second voice grew louder with each step. The flimsy voice of reason, Emma’s old voice, faded into the back of her mind. The new thoughts felt at home, naturally rippling over the wrinkles in her mind. Each stride up the mountain was one further step from the sad, wounded girl she used to be.

  Chapter 19

  Emma stuck out her tongue and curled it up to lick the bottom of her nose, making Josiah giggle. Each time, he gave her a look of sheer bewilderment, which quickly transformed into a simple and honest laugh that shook his tiny frame. Emma could not witness such a chuckle without bursting into her own giggles. She stuck her tongue out again, and Josiah slapped his fat palms onto the coffee table and bounced frantically on unstable legs.

  She ran a hand over the plumes of hair jetting out from his head and pressed her lips into his warm cheek. Kissing his face was infectious, and she peppered his cheeks. Her
pocket vibrated, and she broke away.

  “You ridiculous boy.” She eased up onto the couch, holding her new prepaid smartphone to her face to evaluate “Jennifer’s” prospects. Jennifer’s picture of a saucy redhead greeted her as she launched the app and navigated to her inbox.

  TNBoy80:

  Hey gorgeous! Your profile really caught my eye. You look like such an interesting person. I bet we could have a lot of fun together. Message me back!

  “Very original, this one,” Emma told Josiah. “I’m pretty sure I’ve read this exact message before.”

  Josiah looked at her blankly, gumming her remote.

  Heavy220:

  Hey beautiful. Your profile really caught my eye. It sounds like we could have a lot in common. I really like movies. Maybe sometime we can Netflix and chill?

  “Now, see, Josiah, Jennifer’s profile clearly states that she does not own a TV and prefers to be outside. Do you think Heavy220 even read her profile? Of course not. He looked at her pictures, thought she was hot enough, and sent her this message that has absolutely nothing to do with her. And look at this. His profile picture is a shirtless selfie.” She flipped the phone toward Josiah and the child giggled. “Jesus, almost all of his pictures are shirtless selfies. He must be very impressed with his sort of six-pack. There’s one at the gym, another in the bathroom, another at the beach. We got it, dude, you’re proud of your body. Josiah, you have to promise me you are never going to be like these silly boys. You’re going to be better than them, right?”