“Good morning,” Tim said conversationally. He tasted the shit on his tongue. “We don’t have too much time. Shall we get started?”
The bound man’s cheeks bulged against the duct tape across his mouth; the hinges screamed for him as Tim kicked the door shut.
It was close to one-thirty by the time Tim returned with his newly purchased spade. The dismemberment took longer than expected — the human body proved tougher to dismantle in some spots than had been the finger, even using an axe and saw after the shears did their work — and he’d needed to shower off the blood and rinse out the tub before going to make his purchase. He looked at his watch again as the key slid into the lock on the front door.
He’d have to hurry, but he should still have time before Mom finished fucking Mr. Perry. They liked to take their time about it, lay in bed together and act like a happily married couple; in love instead of trapped in shitty relationships and desperate for attention. Tim knew they did this because he’d watched them before: Mr. Perry’s bedroom was on the ground floor.
“Hi, Mom. I’m home,” he called, just-in-case. “School let out early today.”
He peeked around the corner into the living room: empty. No sounds anywhere in the house, so he took a couple of steps down the hallway, spade held behind him.
“Mom?”
No answer.
Good.
He locked the door and hurried down the hall toward the back door. On his way through the kitchen, he glanced out the window. His body carried on for two steps before what he saw rectified itself in his brain and he came to a stop, his sneaker squeaking on the linoleum floor. He stood for a second, eyes darting but looking at nothing, before he backed up the couple of steps and looked out the window again to confirm what couldn’t possibly be.
The shed door stood open.
All the blood drained out of Tim’s head leaving his cheeks flushed and his brain feeling bloated with air the way his stomach did when he ate soup too fast. He ran back through his actions from the time he finished cutting the man into pieces.
Did I close the door?
Of course he did: he’d been extra careful because of the blood on his hands and then, after his shower and before he went to buy the shovel, he’d double checked to make sure no bloody fingerprints were left behind. No, the door had definitely been closed.
Tim’s mind raced, covering off possibilities. A decade-worth of zombie movies came to mind first. He envisioned the man’s severed body parts inching their way across the uneven concrete floor toward each other, rejoining the body into a hideous parody of itself.
Not possible.
He looked at his watch again: still more than an hour before Kyle finished school and a few more before his father would be home. That left his mother, but she never went in the shed. What, then?
Maybe one of the neighbours saw him and called the cops.
He looked over his shoulder toward the front door. No, he’d have seen the cop cars parked on the street. Tim chewed the inside of his cheek with his back teeth, the muscles in his jaw flexing and releasing as he thought what to do, his weight rocking back and forth between his front foot, leaning toward the back door, and his rear foot, leaning toward the front. The pull of the shed — of the pieces of man hidden inside — won out. He rushed to the back door, stopping with his hand on the door knob as he strained to see through the white lace curtain draped across its window without moving it and alerting anyone who might be watching.
He thought he saw a figure inside the dim shed.
The lock clicked as Tim opened the door: he sucked breath in through his teeth, worried the sound would give him away. No reaction from the shed, in fact, if someone was inside, he couldn’t see them anymore. He crept across the deck and eased himself down onto the lawn, careful to avoid the dried leaves scattered across the grass in greater amounts than when he left. As he approached the doorway, the figure standing in the center of the shed, back to the door, became clear. The person was a couple of inches taller than him and wearing a faded denim jacket and black pants. Tim moved closer, the long handle of the spade banging against the door frame as he did.
Kyle turned his head to look at him.
“What the fuck?”
His brother looked back to the item which held his attention. Tim stood on his toes to look over his shoulder and follow his gaze to the blue tarp lying along the back walclass="underline" one edge had fallen or been pulled open and a hand no longer attached to an arm showed underneath, dead finger pointing in accusation. The feeling in Tim’s gut exploded through him, electrifying his limbs, threatening to spew from his mouth.
“What the fuck did you do?”
“I—”
Kyle pivoted toward him, face ashen, and Tim saw the button of his pants undone, the zipper down, and one of their father’s porno mags dangling open in his left hand. A sense of satisfaction clawed its way in amongst the fear and anger and excitement and shame jumbling through Tim.
I caught you. I caught you.
“What are you talking about?” The calmness in his voice surprised even Tim.
“What do you mean ‘what am I talking about’? I’m talking about that.” Kyle jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the tarp and Tim giggled at the appropriateness of the expression given how he’d found his brother.
“What?”
Tim took a step into the shed, stopped a few feet from his younger brother.
“The tarp, you idiot.” The pitch and volume of Kyle’s voice rose, pinching into a girlish tone. “The body. The blood.”
“Oh my God.”
“‘Don’t play stupid with me. I know what you did to the Albertsons’ dog. What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.” Still calm, maybe too calm.
“Then why do you have that?”
Tim looked at the shovel in his right hand, held it out in front of him, the spade end at eye level. “This?”
“Yes, you fucking moron, that.”
Tim shrugged. “For this.”
The flat side of the spade smashed Kyle’s nose, catching him off guard. He dropped the suddenly forgotten issue of Hustler to the floor and raised both his hands to his face. The second blow caught him in the right temple sending him sprawling to the floor on top of the spread-legged centerfold. He lay there unable to move, blood leaking out of his nose onto the concrete and flowing from the gash in the side of his head into his eye. Tim knelt beside his brother.
“Who’s the pussy now?”
Blood bubbled on Kyle’s lips, spattering across the floor. Tim stood, leaned the shovel against the wall by the rake hanging between two spikes, and went to the set of rusty shelves. He grabbed the roll of duct tape which had seen more use in the last couple of days than it had for years, and a dirty wooden stake once used to prop up a long-dead tomato plant, and went back to his brother.
Kyle’s eyes spun in their sockets, unable to find focus, as Tim tore a strip of duct tape off the roll and pressed it across his blood-covered lips. His body twitched. Tim grinned. He pulled the skin mag from under Kyle’s cheek, flipped it open to a picture of a large, erect cock, a woman kneeling before it reverentially, a look of awe on her face, and set the magazine on the floor by his brother’s face. Kyle’s eyes moved briefly toward the picture.