Boy Troubles

He’s taking forever to get the blood off. If I were a betting woman, I would say there would be a female president before he would get that shit to come off his hands. Just like the now darkening brown stain that was steeped into the carpet. He was always taking too long to finish things—getting his car registered, throwing out expired food, getting the blood stains off his calloused hands. You know, the important things one doesn’t want to let fall to the wayside. Like his psyche, that carpet was never going to be the same.

“Are you going to just stand there?”  His graveled voice, choked with years of smoking, was muffled by the sound of water splashing porcelain. Even though I had been around that voice for three years, it still had the ability to set my teeth on edge. How many times had I heard that condescending tone? How many orders had he barked at me? I snort. Well, he can’t act all high and mighty to me now—not after what he’d done.

I wander around what was once our clean tiny living room, sidestepping the broken coffee table, the rustic overturned chair I think we bought at some IKEA sale, and took extra special care avoiding the body at the foot of the now body fluid covered couch.

Damn. I turn up my nose. Yeah, that smell will probably be even harder to get rid of. I would have laughed at the entire situation if it hadn’t been such a bummer that it had happened at all. I really liked this small space. Being with him was the living nightmare, but I had managed to make a small oasis here and now that was all over.

Mr. Procrastination finally turned off the water. Steven, my amazing boyfriend, appeared from the bathroom. His dark hair that used to hang into his eyes in such a way I had thought it was charming, now stood up from blood splatter blow back in a sticky, tangled sort of crown around his pinched face. Sometime in the mortal struggle he found himself in the early afternoon, he had gotten his favorite Abercrombie and Fitch polo ripped, the tattered remnants flowing behind him like a sort of macabre streamer parade. I feel a sick sort of pride when I noticed I had been right about the blood staining his hands.

He’s wringing them together, his brown eyes lost behind over dilated pupils. He’s frantic—and it’s hilarious.

“Are you fucking deaf?” His voice cracks and I almost lose it. “Help me with the damn body.”

He’s so skittish, like a new puppy that had just pissed on the carpet and is waiting for the owner to appear with the rolled up newspaper. His eyes dart to the body, then the door, then the phone as though each were going to become something other than what they really were. At any moment the phone would ring with someone wondering where the poor soul on the floor had gone. A thunderous pounding at the door would surely be the police answering a strange call about weird noises coming from the home.

Steve’s dancing around the body, doing his best not to get the mess on his brand new vans. “Come on, man!”

He punches Brent, my awesomest boyfriend’s stupid older brother. Poor thing, he didn’t do this, but like anyone who was in Steve’s life, you do what he tells you or suffer the consequences. Brow slick with sweat, Brent looks ready to vomit as he attempts, for the third time, to get the body’s arm to stay inside the makeshift body bag he had made out of Glad kitchen bags. He hadn’t accounted for rigor mortis to have already set in—time management had never been Steve’s strong suit.

I’m struck with girlish giggles as Brent forces a limb too hard and the sound of a bone breaking sends his clownish feet stumbling backward. He upchucks on his Chucks, right there. Right next to the body.

I laugh more. Nice way to leave evidence, dumbass.

Steve isn’t any more impressed than I am. “Bro! You’re such a fucking moron!”

As far as I see it, there were two morons in the room.

“Stop being a pussy and help me tape this damn thing up.”

I get one last glance at the poor body, wrapped in a plastic blanket of Force-Flex kitchen accessories, knowing that her final destination was going to be a half assed burial at the bottom of the lake we all used to summer at as kids.

Blonde hair now stained a deep red, thanks to all that blood, (really, it’s surprising how much a body holds) a small, but shapely body—now chewed up by the serrated hunting knife wielded by a wanna-be tough guy. Her face that had been described as “cute” by many and was even asked to be painted by the professor at the art college, was now swollen with bruises and trapped gasses that I’ve heard try to escape a dead body after only one day. Wouldn’t that be hilarious? What I wouldn’t give to see Brent’s face if the body started moaning.

As Steve finally gets the bag closed, Brent finally gets his shit together, I’m suddenly very aware of the situation. They’re having a hell of a time getting their cargo out the front door.

My hands start to twitch. I find myself wanting to shout out to them, scream at them that they weren’t going to get away with what they had done.

But I know it will fall on deaf ears. They won’t be able to hear me. No one will ever be able to hear me again.

I’m stuck, standing there as they blunder down the rickety steps from our apartment. As I watch them load the body into the truck, I could only think that at least Steven could have done was make sure I was going too buried in my favorite dress.

What a total A-hole.