Beautiful Sorrows (7 page)

AXES

She seemed like such a nice girl, so the whole “being an axe murderer” thing was pretty hard to handle. She was so squeamish. She didn’t even like to touch raw meat. Naturally I was pretty surprised when I ran down the cellar steps and saw her dismembering the cat lady from next door with an axe.

“Whoa,” I said. That was my first mistake.

Jill whirled around, her huge axe shining in the dim light.

“Cripes, Jill, it’s me! Don’t mow me down!” I ducked to one side, holding an oversized package of pork loins in front of my face as a shield. Jill’s axe dropped a bit, hovered, and then dropped a bit more.

“What are you doing down here?” she asked me. She had blood smeared across the front of her party dress and above her upper lip. I politely tried not to stare.

“Not much,” I said, feigning calmness. “I’m just here to stick this meat in the freezer. We’ll never get to it before it turns.”

“No!” she said, and held out her hand, but I had already yanked the freezer door open.

That was my second mistake.

I shrieked and slammed the heavy door down again, but it was too late. I had already seen bits and pieces of random people tossed casually inside.

“Was that the creepy guy from the video store?” I turned to Jill, but all I saw was the subtle shine as something came swinging my way.

—

She clocked me with the flat of the axe. Just like that. I woke up to find myself sitting ingloriously on my butt, my back against the freezer and my arms chained awkwardly.

“Feeling better?” Jill asked me with genuine concern.

“Sure, thanks.”

“No problem.”

Jill was still hacking away at the cat lady. She seemed to be having a hard time pulling the joints apart. Something kept sticking.

“Is that tendon?” I asked her, curious.

“I’m not sure. It’s something, though.” She started using the axe like a crowbar, and threw her weight against it. I bit my lip.

“It’s not coming apart very neatly, is it?”

“Stop criticizing me!” Jill leaned on the axe and glared at me.

“I’m not criticizing, Jilly! I’m just trying to be...” I dunno. Helpful. My mama had taught me right.

“The others weren’t this much trouble,” she confided, and popped her back. Her beautiful blonde hair was falling out of its careful chignon.

Some girls have all the luck. And apparently that girl wasn’t me.

“I’m going to have to kill you now,” Jill told me.

“Why?” I fairly wailed. I couldn’t help it. She was really wrecking my day.

“Well, now you know. That I kill people. Mostly on the weekends, originally, but now I’ve learned how to fit it into my schedule better. Organization is such a pain.”

This was totally absurd. I mean, she couldn’t shake season salt on raw
chicken
, for crying out loud, but she could manage to dismember people? And more to the point, she could manage to dismember
me
?

“I thought we were friends,” I burbled. Tears were squeezing themselves out of my eyes. And my skirt was riding up, big time. I was wearing yellow monkey underwear, and this was how they were going to find me. I tried to wipe my nose on my shoulder.

“Man, you’re pathetic,” she said. This really ticked me off.

“What, somehow you’d manage to be all stoic? You’re one sick puppy, Jill, do you know that?” I lunged toward her a few times, but the chains held fast.

“I’m sorry about this,” she said. “I really am. I like you.” Jill shrugged. “But you know how it goes.”

I struggled against the chains again. “No, I do not know how it goes! Jeez, Jill! Let me go.”

Jill shook her head. “I can’t. You’ll get me in trouble, and my mom would kill me. Goodbye college fund, goodbye new car.”

I couldn’t help it. I goggled. “You are so selfish.”

Oops. Wrong thing to say. Jill’s brown eyes narrowed.

“You were always such a brat. I could have killed you a million times over by now.” She took a mighty swing with her axe and the cat lady’s legs severed neatly from her hips. “Finally. It’s about time something goes my way.”

Her phone rang. Jill automatically reached for it, but her eyes clashed with mine.

“I’ll get this upstairs,” she said, and scurried up and out of the basement. I heard the door slam above me.

This was my chance. I tried to ignore the decapitated heads and sloppily butchered body parts that littered the cellar. I couldn’t believe that girl! Making me slice and stuff all of the pork chops because they felt slimy to her. What about that head over there? Didn’t that freak her out? I wriggled and shimmied and tried to extricate myself from the chains that were holding me to the freezer. Stupid freezer. I wish I’d never seen the thing.

“Sucks to be you,” said a voice out of the darkness.

I jumped so hard that I slammed the back of my head against the freezer. The pupils of my eyes felt like stars, and I ran my tongue over my teeth to make sure that they hadn’t been rattled out.

“Hmm. Can’t say that wasn’t satisfying.”

I blinked a few times, and turned my head toward the familiar voice.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. I really didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Why, my love, what a silly question. I’m here...for you.”

He drifted my way, his black cloak spilling around him like fog. His hood was pulled low over his face, but I could still see the glitter of his eyes. He stretched out his arm and pointed at me with fingers of exposed bone.

“I have come to take you home,” Death said. And smiled.

“Knock it off, Death. Get me out of here!” I rattled my chains at him, and his smile widened.

“I don’t wanna,” he said, and sat down next to me. He looked around the room and whistled. “Jill’s some piece of work. Bet you’re regretting kicking me out of the house now, aren’t you?” He picked up a severed arm and examined it.

“This so isn’t the time to talk about this, Death! Release me before she comes back!” I gave him my most commanding glare, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Poor me, booted out of my home and forced to find new lodgings elsewhere. And you, you shack up with a psycho killer.
Qu’est-ce que c’est
?” He started to hum, and patted me on the shoulder with the detached hand.

“Please,” I said, giving up. “I don’t want to die.”

Death lowered his head and looked at me from under the hood. “You’re going to have to, you know. Everybody does.”

I went cold. “Now?”

Death stared at me for a long time, and I stared back in horror. Finally he sighed. “No, not now. I guess. Man, I am such a softie.” He stood up, and tossed the arm into the corner. It landed with a wet thump. “But we have to establish some rules.”

“Like what?”

Death paced around the cellar room, ticking the rules off on his fingers. “Number one, I get to move back in. I hate my new roommate. He’s such a dweeb.”

“I...okay. But you can’t leave your beetles and things around the living room. It’s so disconcerting,” I pointed out, when he turned to glare at me.

“I don’t think you have much room to negotiate, pretty girl.”

He was right. We’d talk about this later. “Anything else?”

“Rule number two. You know that twenty bucks that I owe you?”

I nodded my head. “Yeah.”

“Debt forgiven. Got it?”

I nodded again. My life for twenty bucks? Freakin’ steal, I say! Suddenly I heard the basement door open, and my mouth went dry.

“Death, hurry! She’s on her way down!”

“One more thing,” he said, and I began to panic. I scrabbled at the chains and heard a strange mewling sound. It took a second to realize that it was coming from me.

“Calm down!” he ordered, and the authority in his voice shut me up. For the first time I saw Death as somebody to fear instead of the gangly sack of bones who ate all of my Cheetos and saved over my games on the Playstation. I stared at him with wide eyes.

“What else do you want?” I whispered.

Death looked at me and grinned, his skull shining in the dim light. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

I scowled and he shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet. But I’ll let you know when I do. Now hush.”

And hush I did. Jill had descended the stairs and stood staring at us.

“So, you’re Death,” she said. She sounded strangely unfazed. That’s because she’s totally a creepy psycho weirdo, I decided. I have the worst luck in roommates.

“I am,” Death said. His cloak was swaying around him in an extra ghostly way. Sometimes that guy knows how to work the ambiance.

“Funny. I never saw you when I killed anybody else.” Jill looked equally excited and annoyed.

Death shrugged. “I show myself to whomever I choose.” Man, he was being suave today. Jill looked ready to pounce on him and drag him off to the Tunnel of Love.

“And you choose to show yourself to me?” Jill batted her eyes.

I turned to her in surprise. “You’re so flirting with him! You’re flirting with Death! My gosh, woman!”

Jilly grabbed the axe from the ground and pointed it at me. “Shut up!” She swung it high over her head, but Death gently took it from her. He set it back on the ground, blade up. Jill looked confused.

“I thought that you were here because I was going to kill her,” she said.

“That’s why I came, yes,” Death told her. He took both of her hands in his. She didn’t flinch at the feel of cold bone.

“So why won’t you let me?” she asked.

Death shook his head almost angrily. “It would happen this way.”

I felt my nerves start up again. What, he was going to let me die just because Jilly was
crushing
on him?! This was so unfair!

I was just about to launch into an angry tirade voicing my opinion when Death stood perfectly straight and still. Darkness flowed into the room, and creepy little things chittered and scampered in the corners.

“Wow,” breathed Jill, looking around.

“Yeah, wow,” Death said, and then he touched Jill right between the eyes with his skeletal finger. Jill jerked and fell backwards.

Onto the axe.

“Well, there you go,” Death said cheerfully. The darkness subsided and he gave me a little wink. “I’ll start moving my stuff in.”

I fought the chains. “But you can’t leave me here!” Dead cat lady. Dead Jilly. Dead creepy video store guy. And those were just the ones I knew about.

“Take me with you!” I screamed.

Death started for the stairs. “As much as I love to hear you say that, it’s not practical. What are you going to say? That Death unchained you? Come on. Scream until somebody finds you and then tell them that you kicked your roomie onto the axe. You’ll be fine.”

“Death, you get back here right now!” I yelled. I could have killed him. Seriously.

“That’s good. Keep that up, love. See you when the police find you,” he said, and then Death was gone.

The bodies, however, weren’t.

So I took his advice. I kept screaming.

THE QUIET PLACES WHERE YOUR BODY GROWS

Azhar’s little girl was found slowly, laboriously, in pieces.

Her feet were flashing like diamonds in the creek. Tiny hands were strung from the stubby branch of the Crying Trees. Her head, eyes dark and her black pigtails shorn, was left in a field where curious wildflowers bent into her mouth. The torso was never discovered.

Azhar had terrible dreams about what happened to his daughter’s young, dusky body, of what became of her heart. In the dreams, he stood playing a flashlight over the corpse of his sweet Sada while lightning splintered on the bleak horizon. Sometimes there was a monster. Sometimes there was a man. Sometimes he himself knelt down and ripped out his own daughter’s organs with his teeth. He was a man who had become a monster.

He hoped they were only dreams.

This was normal, his best friend at home said. Transference of guilt. Agony of a father who couldn’t protect his little one when she needed him most.

“I told her that monsters didn’t exist,” Azhar explained to his friend over the phone. “I lied.”

“Everybody tells their children that monsters don’t exist.” His friend’s voice was kind. They had known each other since they were infants. They had kicked a red ball in the dirt until it was stained and worn so thin that it had no choice but to deflate. His daughter had also been used until her skin could no longer contain her insides.

“I lied,” Azhar repeated. He hung up the phone and never dialed that number again.

America was a large land, a land where one could get lost. He lost his native dress, he lost his heart to a beautiful American woman, and he lost the hard edges of his accent. But he could never lose the memories of Sada’s white, milk-fed teeth and strong, coltish legs.

He wondered if his baby’s killer thought the same thing.

“He was very handsome,” Sada told him in his dreams that evening. She was standing in a rain so cold that he would be able to see her breath if she had been breathing. “He looked like a prince, not a butcher. Have you ever seen a prince, Daddy?”

He had not.

“Maybe princes aren’t real,” Sada said. Her eyes were crafty and sad at the same time. “But monsters are.” She opened her mouth wide and showed Azhar the wildflowers sitting on her tongue.

The Handsome Butcher liked stealing little girls and boys. They were found hanging from trees and tucked into suitcases like tiny gifts. One child, at first, and then two. A dozen. Two dozen. The community became aware that children don’t line up neatly like toy soldiers when you call them; they dart like rabbits through burrows. They fly like starlings through the air. They dance like wisps of paper in a flame and then they flutter away, pieces of darling ash, and they land where whimsy takes them. If you are lucky, that means they will gently settle into their beds at night, faces washed and teeth brushed. If you are unlucky, they will land in the fingers of bad men. These fingers twist and pluck and slice. These fingers hurt.

Azhar didn’t want to ask Sada what happened. He didn’t want to know. But she told him, her delicate, piano-note voice hitting ugly chords while she talked.

“No more,” he begged. Tears made his lashes even darker. “I can’t hear anymore.”

Sada sighed, looked at the sky. “I miss my dolly. And I’m always hungry.”

Two towns over, another little girl went missing. She, too, was stolen from her bed. She also had pigtails like banners. The police had no suspects at this time, they said, but Azhar knew it was The Handsome Butcher. He and this frantic mother shared something. Loss. The grief. Perhaps their girls could be friends on the other side.

“I won’t give up hope,” the mother said firmly into television cameras. There was something scary in her eyes, that same determination that Azhar had worn until pieces of Sada were found. “I’ll find her and then I’ll kill whoever stole her from me.”

Azhar understood. He spent long hours sitting in the field where Sada’s beautiful face once rested. The wind, the wildflowers. How could a place of beauty survive such loss? Greenery growing over the horrors. Misery soaked up by grasses.

He took a picture one day. Of the meadow. Of the creek and the terrible Crying Trees. They were perfect on film. Places of peace. When Azhar saw the pictures, he was haunted by Sada, but he was the only one. Others thought they were beautiful. Others who didn’t know.

These,
he silently told his daughter,
these are the quiet places where your body grows.

He tucked the pictures into his wallet. He would show the mother from two towns over. Show her that there is a semblance of life After. When her little one turns up in pieces like his did, she’ll collapse and that will be okay. But After, she’ll be able to see the beauty in the land again. If she just looks hard enough. If she just keeps the dreams at bay.

“I love you, Daddy,” Sada whispered that night. She was forced to whisper because her throat was rotting out. Azhar turned on his side and looked at his pictures of peace.

“We’ll make it through this,” he said. He wasn’t quite certain who he was talking to, but the words seemed exactly right.