It did not move its legs. It barely moved its head, but it screamed and shrieked and wailed. The guests cheered. People hooted and clapped and drank to its suffering.
“My brakes!” Johnny Boy cried out. “Oh, my god, the truck, the fucking truck!”
The crowd cheered again.
Charlie handed the ax to Ryan, and he cut off the other arm in a quick, clean stroke. Johnny Boy still screamed, sometimes just noise, sometimes about the impending head-on collision with the truck. Its stumps continued to produce their black blood, like a kitchen faucet left running just a little. Then the ax was handed to another friend, and he cut off one leg. The body tumbled over, but this didn’t slow the screaming. It seemed not to know or care what was happening now, but the past, its death, was vivid and real and immediate. The crowd loved it.
I stood there feeling nauseated and horrified while the last leg was cut off and the crowd gathered around to laugh and point and cheer on the dismembered torso. I could not have held my breath all that time, but if anyone had asked, I would have sworn I didn’t breathe between the time they started hacking up the reanimate until the time they finally put the pieces on the fire and burned them into stillness and silence.
The party began to clear out after that, but it was still too early and I was too shaken to go home. I wanted to make sure Tori was asleep when I got there, so I wouldn’t have to deal with her. I went to a bar and drank too much, but I’d learned my lesson. Even though I now drove a car with headlights that went on automatically, I still checked them before driving home at almost 1:00 a.m.
The lights were out, so I thought I was safe, but when I walked through the door, she was waiting for me, sitting in the dark.
“What is going on, Walter?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “I wanted to hang out with some friends. Christ, you are the only wife in America that doesn’t want to let her husband out of the house once in a while.”
“You got a call while you were out,” she said.
“A call! Oh, my God, a fucking call! No wonder you are so upset.” I stumbled past her.
“I don’t know who it was. It was a woman. She sounded, I don’t know, retarded or something. I think she was saying your name, but I couldn’t understand the rest.”
“Jesus Christ, Tori,” I shouted. “A wrong number? You are giving me shit about a wrong number? Have you lost your mind?” I stormed upstairs, and she didn’t follow. After fifteen or twenty minutes, I figured she was going to sleep on the couch. Just as well. It gave me time to figure out what the hell I was doing to do with Maisie, who was now calling my house. She must have done it during sex or right after sex or while stabbing herself or something. The point was that someone might have seen her do it. This someone might not have understood this time, but what about the next time or the one after?
Two days later I went to the Pine Box and paid for Maisie. I brought her over to the apartment, and I left her there. Everything was fine for about two months. Then it fell apart.
After the incident with the flowers, I decided I needed to visit more regularly. The next time I went over, she had newer flowers, and on the mantel she’d placed a goldfish bowl with two fish. There was a little tube of fish food next to it. Maisie herself was still and lifeless, as she usually was when I walked in.
“Maisie,” I said, “do you want something? Do you need something? Is there anything I can get you that will make you happy?”
She didn’t answer.
“I like your fish,” I tried.
Nothing.
“Maisie, I order you not to leave this apartment.”
Her head moved, just a little. Nothing else, but I knew that deep down she was laughing at me. This dead thing was laughing at me, and she meant to fuck up my life any way she could. Christ, the flowers, the fish—she was toying with me, torturing me. She could ruin me any damn time she wanted to, but she wanted to draw it out. She wanted revenge.
The next day at work was a nightmare. Crap from my boss, fatigue from lack of sleep. As soon as I got out I drove over to Maisie’s apartment. Nothing new happened. Maisie seemed like any ordinary reanimate, and I began to think that maybe I had panicked for nothing. Maybe it was a bad patch and now everything had blown over.
Then, on Tuesday, everything changed.
I was halfway through another crappy day when the receptionist rang. “Um, Walter, you need to get out here. There is someone here for you.”
“Who is it?”
“Christ, Walter, just get out here.”
I went to the reception area, and there was Maisie, uniform on, mask off, her hair and eyes wild. She stood in front of the receptionist’s desk, one palm out, raw and bloodied. The other hand held a piece of glass. She brought the glass down into her palm. Around her were the receptionist, one of the agency creatives, and a guy from the mail room. They were just staring.
“Ahh,” she cried. “Walter. Walter Molson. Walter Molson.” Now here was Xander, my boss.
“What the hell is this, Walter?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”
“Get that thing out of here,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re into, but take your perverted, illegal shit somewhere else.”
I managed to get her into the elevator—empty, thank God—and into my car. I shoved her in the back and drove her to her apartment.
I put her in the bedroom, and I called a locksmith to change the locks to the kind that had to be opened with a key even from the inside. I wasn’t supposed to change the locks on these doors, but I didn’t give much of a shit at this point. We were into the endgame now. I knew it. I had to get rid of Maisie, and I knew just how to do it.
Once the locks were taken care of, I called Ryan to get the number, and then I called Charlie.
“Hey,” I said to him. “How often do you have those little parties?” I could hear cloth scraping as he shrugged against the phone.
“Two or three times a year, I guess.”
“The thing is,” I said, “I have a unit—” I didn’t want to talk about reanimates over the phone. You never knew who might be listening. “I need to get rid of it.”
“Maisie, huh?” I could practically hear the grin in his voice. “I wondered if things weren’t going to come to this. Now, we don’t need a full-blown party to have a good time. Something more casual can be whipped up pretty easily. You bring her over Saturday night; we’ll fix things up for you.”
I didn’t go into work for the rest of the week. I didn’t call the office, and the office didn’t call me. I guessed that job was done. On Saturday night I went out, and Tori didn’t bother to argue. Things had never been the same since that fight we’d had after Charlie’s last party. They would get better, I knew. Things would improve once I’d dealt with Maisie. Everything would be patched up very, very soon.
I picked up Maisie and brought her to Charlie’s house. I was expecting just a half dozen guys or less, but there were twenty-five or thirty people there—almost as big as the last party. I brought Maisie out of the car and led her inside.
“Christ,” said Charlie. “You sure you want to get rid of it? It’s pretty sweet.”
“Trust me,” I said. “It’s gone haywire. You don’t want it.”
That was good enough for him. We ordered Maisie to stand in the middle of the living room, and we all got beers from a big bucket in the kitchen. A couple of the guys, including Ryan, said they wanted to taste her before the end, and I knew it would be ungracious to refuse. I just nodded and let them take her into the bedroom. There were probably eight guys in all who went with her. I was worried she would speak, but these were not exactly the sort of people who go to the police with their suspicions.