The derelict who wipes my windshield with a dirty rag at the bridge exit is still there, of course, although I murdered him six months ago. This morning he cursed me when I gave him only fifteen cents through the cautiously opened window. His rag hardly infiltrated my vision, his cursing fell upon a benign and smiling countenance. How could I tell him, after all, “You no longer exist. Since I did away with you half a year ago your real activities in the real world have made no impression upon me. Your rag is a blur, your curses a song. I drove a sharp knife between your sixth and seventh ribs in this very street before witnesses, threw your body into the trunk, and conveyed it bloodless to my apartment where it now reposes. The essential you lies sandwiched in my apartment between the waitress from the Forum Diner who spilt a glass of ice water in my lap and the medical social worker from the Division who said I had no grasp at all of schizophrenia. I possess you, do you understand that?”
No, I don’t think he would understand that. This miserable creature, along with the waitress, the medical social worker, and many others, cannot appreciate the metaphysics of the situation.
I did away with Brown in his apartment two hours ago. “Mr. Brown,” I said when he opened the door, “I can’t take this any more. You’re totally irresponsible. It’s not only the orange peels, the hide-and-seek when the toilet will not flush, and the terrible smells of disinfectant when you occasionally wash the lobby. That would be enough, but it’s your insolence that degrades my spirit. You do not accept the fact that I am a human being who has a right to simple services. By ignoring my needs you ignore humanity.” I shot him in the left temple with the delicate .22 I use for extreme cases. The radio was playing Haydn’s Symphony 101 in D Major loudly as I dragged him out of there, closing the door firmly behind. I would not have suspected that he had a taste for classical music, but this doesn’t mitigate his situation. He now lies at the foot of my bed. Now and then he seems to sigh in the perfectitude of his perfect peace.
The medical social worker commented today during a conference upon my abstracted attitude and twice she tapped me on the hand to bring me back to attention. I know she feels I’m exceedingly neurotic and not a diligent caseworker, but how could I possibly explain to her that the reason my attention lapses during these conferences is that she was smothered several weeks ago and has not drawn a breath, even in my apartment, since?
Brown’s corpse is curiously odorous. This is a new phenomenon. I am a committed housekeeper and can’t abide smells of any kind in my apartment (other than pipe and coffee, of course), and my corpses are aseptic. Brown’s, however, is not. It is progressively foul and disturbed my sleep last night. Heavy sprays of household antiseptics don’t seem to work. The apartment was even worse when I came home tonight.
I knew it was a mistake opening up the bedroom for disposal, but what choice did I have? There is simply no room left outside of here and I refuse to have corpses in the bathroom. There are, after all, limits. I’ll just have to do the best I can. After a while either I’ll get used to it or the smell will go away.
I should get rid of Brown’s body — the smell is impossible now — but I am reluctant to do so. It would set a dangerous precedent, it would break a pattern. If I were to dispose of his body he would not then be symbolically dead, and if I did it with him might I not then be tempted to do it with one of the others? Or with succeeding victims? My project would become totally self-defeating — I would have accomplished nothing.
It has of course occurred to me to call the real Brown to help me dispose of the body of the imaginary Brown, but I won’t do that either. It would be a nice irony but one he would not understand. I will either have to do the job myself or hold on.
Besides, I have not seen the foul man here in days...
It’s all too much. I couldn’t deal with it any more and accordingly dragged Brown’s body to the landing for pickup tomorrow morning. That should solve the problem, although I’m concerned at the rupture of my pattern and also by the curious weight of his body as I lumbered with it, fireman-carry fashion, to the stairwell. He’s the most unusually corporeal of all my victims. Even in imaginary death he seems capable, typically, of giving me real difficulties.
Two policemen at the door in full uniform, with grim expressions, demand entrance to the apartment. Behind them I can see a circle of some tenants from the building.
I seem to be in some kind of difficulty.
At my very first opportunity during this interview I intend to distract the police and kill them — put an end to this harassment — but I have a feeling that won’t work.
I should never have abandoned the living room as a disposal unit. That was my only mistake. I should have begun disposing of old corpses as they were replaced by the new. It would have been sufficient.
But it’s too late now, the police say.
The Bell
by Isak Romun
I’m standing here on the stairwell, waiting. He comes by here every evening, usually the last one out of the office. He takes this stairwell because it lets him out into that part of the parking lot where his car stands alone.
Not tonight, though. He’ll never make it to the lot. The steps are sharp, angular. And hard, made of unyielding metal. When he comes down, I’ll be waiting, a hello on my lips, an arm raised in greeting. A strong arm, an arm that will send him bouncing and bruising down the stairs. If that doesn’t kill him, I’ll simply finish the job by smashing his head against the angle of a step. An accident. That’s what it will look like. Something that could happen to anyone hurrying down these stairs.
It started early this morning with the forlorn shape of Yuddic — an old Gaelic name, he told me one time — with Yuddic McGill slouching against my desk. Mac isn’t a pushy sort, and it took me a few moments to become aware of his presence and a few more to note the worried look on his face.
“Talmage, I’ve got bad news.”
“Bad news?” I remarked unconcernedly. Mac was always blowing things out of proportion, so I rather pointedly kept on with my job of sorting and posting vouchers.
“Yes. Stromberg just fired me.”
Now, this gave me a turn, caused me to look up, perhaps feel a twinge of fear — you know, don’t ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee, and that sort of thing. Always believed in it. Well, I thought, who diminishes old Yuddic diminishes me. If Stromberg could get away with this arbitrary action, then the old domino theory might come into play and who knew who’d topple next?
Besides, the figure Mac cut was one to invite compassion. He was a diminutive, retiring, almost ridiculous man. Atop his sloping shoulders resided a head on which was impressed a face of such undistinguished features as to foster the belief that the die of character had been applied too lightly, or had been nudged at the precise moment of contact. Around this was arranged a head of listless, squirrel-gray hair allowed, mod fashion, to grow to his jawline, intimating a spirit to which the remaining cut of his Establishment jib lent the lie.
Mac’s news, matched with the sympathy that the image of Mac himself always evoked, goaded me. I jumped from my seat and said to him earnestly, “He can’t do that to you, Mac! You’re one of the key men in this outfit. Have you gotten the formal notice?”
“I’ll get written notice later today. The old pink slip. He called me into his office for a little oral preview so I wouldn’t faint dead away later on.”
“Well, that’s good. It’s not official until you receive the slip. You can’t let him get away with it, Mac. You’ve got to do something.”