Make Something Up (18 page)

Her voice dropped to a purr. A teasing murmur. And she said, “Ludlow?” She said, “I'll make you a deal.”

He echoed, “A deal,” unsure he'd heard correctly.

“If you'll come home,” she offered, “I'll stop killing your people.”

Rainbow Bright was instantly wide awake. He hadn't told her. Strawberry Shortcake didn't have her number. Nobody but him had this number.

She whispered, “A throwing star to the back of a stupid Mud Man's head…does that ring any bells?”

Everyone here used fake names. So many wore masks. Was Sloane capable? Yes, once she'd been a savage, smeared in crud. When they'd first met, she'd been the throwing half of a knife-throwing act. But now she was a mommy who chauffeured kids to soccer practice.

The voice over the phone asked, “Who do you think told your television friend about ‘Code Spearmint'?”

He asked, “Where are Lisa and Benny?”

“With their grandma Roberts.”

Ludlow Roberts asked, “While Mommy slaughters burners?”

Today, she'd been the clown who'd given him the evil eye. The sad clown in the audience. Tonight, she'd allowed them to execute an innocent man, and she'd danced among the furbies and the zombies and sweating, disguised revelers. A real monster among the make-believe ones.

Listening, he felt heavier and heavier as if, instead of his purple sleeping bag, he lay in a bathtub as the warm water ran out from around him. No longer buoyant, he could feel the full weight of his bones and flesh. A burden suddenly too heavy to budge. The inert bulk of someone dead.

The voice on the phone dictated, “Tomorrow, you'll make up some excuse, and you'll come home before I go after another.” She paused. “You decide.” And she hung up.

The wind, the wind made people crazy. In the dense, blowing sand, she might be a few feet away. The tent city was filled with drunks and drugged-out kids, and if the dead ninja was to be believed, she'd stolen his arsenal of pointed, honed, and razor-bladed weaponry. She knew that if he called the police, the party was over. Finished forever because he'd neglected his husbandly duties. If he didn't fold his tent, more people would die.

At best, he'd go home to a ruthless killer.

His fingertip rooted around in his navel, searching, rummaging, and plucked out the hundred-milligram Luminal tablet. People took their leave of the tent city every day. Others arrived. There was no keeping track. At worst, every night would cost the life of another person. He pictured Strawberry Shortcake dead. Tinky-Wink. Sun Baby. He could call her bluff. Maybe, if he got the word out, they could catch her. Do damage control.

One burner per night, that penciled out to seventeen more dead. Every year a kid or two left a party, staggering into the windblown sand, and was never heard from again. The desert consumed them as a sacrifice. As tribute. Somewhere in the thousand square miles of wasteland, the storm buried each of them where they fell.

Build it. Burn it. Build it. Burn it. Worship and destroy.

He'd need the Luminal, tonight. Even as he fell asleep, he felt the excitement growing in his chest. A worthy game was afoot. If he caught her, then what? Knowing the truth, could he drug her? Would he roast his wife, alive, within the head of a gargantuan Sandra Bernhard? Now that he knew how great and glorious-grand was his wife's devotion?

In light of recent property damage at 475
Battlinghamshire
Court, the homeowners board would like to reiterate association policy on both dog ownership and the proper disposition of biohazardous organic materials. As per association regulations, all domestic dogs must be tethered or fenced within the property lines of the owner. At no time may a dog be allowed to roam unattended.

As for human remains, county health regulations require that they be relinquished to the acting authorities for sanitary disposal. Under no circumstances is burial at home permitted.

Compliance with either of the aforementioned regulations would have precluded the recent wide range of property damage. It is now possible, by creating a timeline of destruction, to chart the course of the medically hazardous material in question and to implicate the animals involved. The first reported incident took place on May 17, between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. The partially decomposed remains were apparently disinterred from an unknown location by a dog. In this initial case, the apparent culprit was “Buttons.” Once exhumed, the family beagle relocated the remains to the formerly white, shag-carpeted master bedroom at 475
Battlinghamshire
Court, where they were cavorted upon for an unknown period before being interred in the backyard of that property.

By mapping the path of damage from 475 to 565, 785, 900, 1050, 1075, and 1100
Battlinghamshire
Court, it's possible to trace the unhappy progress of the thoughtlessly discarded human viscera as it was discovered and relocated by a series of both domestic animals and indigenous vermin, namely rats or raccoons, all of whom lay claim to the increasingly decayed item, abused it, and interred it at a new location. Similar property damage to carpets, upholstered furniture, and bedding suggests the contraband found its way, next, to Surreydaledown Mews. Significant evidence of it follows in several households along
Knightsbridgeton
Close and
Regentrosetudor
Crescent. Owing to the increasingly unstable qualities typical of degrading tissue, each subsequent visitation created a more detrimental and lasting effect on the soft furnishings of each home.

A special assessment has been proposed to cover the expense of draining and cleaning area swimming pools. In addition, residents are encouraged to review their vaccination histories; most notably those bathers who encountered the item, failed to recognize its nature, and mistook it for a sad, purple, deflated beach ball. In at least once instance, flinging it at one another in oblivious delight.

This, this abomination was the waterlogged, alien horror that the youngest Sanchez daughter innocently retrieved from that household's swimming pool. Using a pair of barbecue tongs, she lobbed it over a hedge, landing it in the DiMarcos' pool. There it was discovered by that family's oldest son, Danny, who eschewed taking any noble and decent action. Instead, he pitched it up, onto the roof next door at 8871 Ivy High Street. There, it was feasted upon by crows, one of whom eventually carried the sodden carrion aloft, high into the blue summer sky, losing purchase of it directly above the chaise lounge occupied by Ada Louise Cullen. At this point, the journey of the nuisance ceased abruptly.

Regrettably, several Internet news outlets have already carried the story, headlined “Recklessly Discarded Dead Flesh Brains Nude Sunbather.” The story went viral after it became fodder for nationally syndicated talk radio pundits.

At the time of its recovery, the nuisance had lost much of its original volume. Law enforcement officials were summoned. After debate, paramedics on the scene attempted to determine the nature of the organic mass, estimating its final weight at twenty-two ounces. They treated Ms. Cullen for shock, nausea, a possible concussion, and soft-tissue trauma to her cervical disks.

After extensive discussion, the majority opinion held that the mass of flesh in question was not the result of any act of violence. It appeared to have been shed naturally. The first determination was that it was human in origin.

While many might beg to differ, such shed tissue structures do, indeed, legally qualify as medical waste and therefore constitute a threat to public health, not to mention the resale value of the homes to which said waste was exposed by subsequent domestic animals which it appears disinterred the mass and continually relocated it over the course of three long, highly temperatured days.

Under forensic examination, the matter in question proved to be the not-too-recently expelled uterine lining and associated blood-engorged tissue structures resultant from the delivery of a newborn. The superfluous leavings of the human birth process.

A number of households in
Corningmarblerock
Estates have celebrated the arrival of a new member, but this is not to say the medical waste in question might not have been transported from outside the subdivision, delivered here for a ritual tree planting or some similar celebration. A quick review of applications for permanent landscape alteration submitted over the past three months reveals permission to plant five rosebushes, a lilac, three mock oranges, a weeping cypress, fourteen boxwoods, and a pin oak. Any of these might have marked the original resting place of the expelled matter.

It is not beyond the realm of possibility that a far-ranging animal, say, a coyote, one of those four-legged vultures, might've acquired the nuisance remains from a community other than our own. Mockingbird Farms, for example. Or Belle Lakeside Villas, where the cavalier tossing aside of sloughed-off natal leftovers is, in all probability, a less frowned-upon practice.

Frankly, the board wouldn't put it past half the residents at Heron Cove to pull this kind of hippy-dippy stunt, but what can one do? Run a classified ad under Lost and Found?
Found: one bedraggled placenta, partially decomposed. Gnawed on by every curious animal within a two-mile radius. Call to claim.
Whatever action the board takes, there will be no satisfying some alternative-everything types who feel that Heaven and Earth should be moved in order to return the nuisance to its originator.

The board will not entertain debate over either the spiritual or ritual value of these dispositions of surplus reproductive tissue; however, this incident makes it clear that a policy is needed to address future occurrences.

Not only were furnishings soiled. No small number of domestic animals ingested portions of the nuisance. As a result, the Siamese belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Heywood Marshall-Simon regurgitated the same into Mrs. Marshall-Simon's lap. As did the Scotch terrier, Buttons, onto the heated leather backseat of Mr. Clayton Farmer's new Jaguar XJR LWB.

The homeowners board is not without empathy for our neighbors who have suffered. Save for Ms. Cullen, none are sans blame. From the party who so laxly interred the nuisance to the pet owners who blatantly disregarded off-leash protocols, everyone directly affected is implicated. Among those whose property was damaged, some advocate for genetic testing in order to determine ownership and pursue financial compensation to offset restoration costs. The board, however, maintains that such measures would be legally difficult both to justify and to execute.

It's not difficult to picture a new father finding a hole crudely pawed in his backyard, and knowing of the recent ruckus, not coming forward to claim
responsibility.
In lieu of an immediate solution which will satisfy all concerned, the board has elected to take a long-term stance on the episode. Namely, that such are the shared disasters that stitch neighbors together across time. In our current society, where homes are sold and families relocated on an average of once every seven years, this saga will serve as a more lasting remembrance of our fleeting time as friends and acquaintances.

The facts will warp in the retelling. People whose lives weren't directly involved will claim that they were. Those who might've suffered the loss of a rug will claim their entire homes had to be abandoned. The events of recent will expand to become the mythology of our community. Long after our pets are dead, we, ourselves, will resurrect the memory in order to savor it and carry it forth into the world. We will fling it at one another for laughs. Distort it. We will toss the story into the air at parties and howl over its ripeness. Degraded as it was, we will degrade it further. Make it more swollen. We shall render it impossibly awful, making of it the mythology of ourselves. A comfort. Proof of the trials we've survived.

Our continued prayers go out on behalf of Ms. Cullen, who reports repeated nightmares following the incident.

In light of no better options, the remains have been surrendered to the Shaysaw County medical examiner's office where they will be warehoused for two months after which time they will be respectfully incinerated.