by Charles Bennett
It was a strange day for Bran and I; I kept finding dead
bodies. I suppose the fact that they were dead wasn’t very strange.
It was the fact that I kept finding them that was so bizarre. I recall
noticing the first body. It’s pale, emaciated remains were haphazardly
stuffed into the freezer in the back room of Bran’s uncle’s house.
I don’t know what it was, exactly, that possessed me to open it.
Curiosity? Bad luck, perhaps? I still have nightmares about it’s
sunken eyes rolled back in it’s head, and that open mouth full of icicles
like fangs. I remember calling for Bran and slamming the freezer
shut, my continuing shrieks leading him to me. He seemed concerned
so I obliged him by showing him (with shaking arms) the dead man.
He said, “My God,” and then,
“How did that get there?” I told him that we shouldn’t do anything.
(Bran’s uncle starting yelling from the other room, asking what was
taking so long with the scissors.) I told him that we should get what we
were looking for and think no more about it, and that his uncle seemed
to be getting irate. I believe that was when Bran placed the scissors
in my hand and said, “You first.”
It was puzzling at first;
his reaction to the situation was hardly what I had grown accustom to.
Even with the knowledge of the corpse in the freezer and the general queerness
of our current situation, there was no element of surprise on his face,
as though you had just told him the color of his hair or that his mail
had arrived on time. There was almost an air of amusement about him
that chilled me. The gravity in his voice was stunning when he again
said, “You first,” and motioned for me to hurry out of the room.
Not wanting to anger him, of course, I nodded dumbly and staggered out
into the hall, unsure.
Again, his uncle screamed,
asking about the scissors. I answered, saying that I was bringing
them to him and then almost let slip what I had found in the freezer, thinking
at the last minute that telling him would surely not bring about anything
remotely good. Instead, I feigned a cough and began walking toward
the sewing room, where Bran’s uncle was waiting. I began telling
myself to calm down and to not let anything out of the ordinary show, until
I heard from Bran, that is. At that instant, a small electric whine
began to emanate from the back room followed by a sickening crack, reminiscent
of the sound of a tree branch yielding to the wind or the sound my brother’s
arm made the year before when it twisted and snapped under Bran’s weight.
I remember being suddenly
frightened and for a moment could think only of the acts that Bran might
be performing in that back room. I stilled and called back to Bran,
asking if he was all right. He replied from the back room, “Don’t
come in,” and then quickly, “I’m fine.” I was startled by hands on
the back of my neck and yelped like a whipped puppy, turning to stab with
the scissors.
Bran’s uncle laughed and took the scissors from my hand, saying that
if I had stabbed him I would have been very sorry later. I
laughed, too, and told him that I had not meant it. At this point,
Bran’s uncle led me away, into the kitchen where he began pouring me a
glass of wine. He began telling me old tales of Bran in his younger
years, about how he used to kill cats and try to feed them to the stray
dogs that would wander the neighborhood way back then. We laughed
at how he used to stab himself.
After a time, we had finished
the entire bottle of wine and were giggling like mad at each other’s drunkenness,
howling about who was more intoxicated. We had just broken into another
bottle when Bran came into the room and insisted that his uncle help him
finish what he had started.
I paid no mind and continued
pouring my drink, waving as Bran and his uncle left the kitchen.
I am not sure if it was due to my drunken stupor, or if it was ill fate
(or just old fashioned hunger), but something urged me to search through
the pantry for something to snack on. That’s where I found another
one. You can understand my surprise at stumbling across two dead
bodies in the same house (and within twenty minutes of each other).
This one, however, was not as well preserved as the last, withered down
so that identifying whether it was male or female was a considerable chore
at first glance. It was strung up by it’s neck, dangling from what
I perceived as an extension cord that ran up and around a sturdy hook fastened
to the ceiling of the pantry. (How long it may have been there, quietly
swaying, while I carried about my daily activities, gives me a sense of
smallness I would rather not try to describe.) For reasons still unclear
to me, someone had placed a red bow (at this point faded to a dull pink)
square on it’s forehead, as if it were a party favor or a gift.
With a muffled shriek, I
slammed the pantry door and spilled what appetite I had on the floor of
the kitchen. I staggered and realized that I had forced my eyes closed,
only to witness sudden drunken flashes of what I had just seen. The
noise from the back room started again. You may be wondering why
I had not chosen to leave the house right then and there, taking my grim
findings to the authorities and exposing the rather macabre living conditions
of my best friend’s uncle. This is a point I, too, often look back
on and question, for as I stood there, intoxicated and frightened, I still
felt a sense of close friendship to Bran (though only God may know what
he and his uncle were doing in the back room). Besides, I came to
visit and it would have been very poor manners to leave without saying
anything.
Thinking back, I believe
that this was the exact moment that I made the connection between the body
in the freezer and the body in the pantry. I would rather not say
it out in the open, but you may very well know by thinking a bit.
Horror flooded me when I
remembered all of the times I had previously had dinner with these people,
happily and hungrily eating every morsel. I’m still shaken to this
day to think about how good it was.
The End
