Stern face, fists clenched, piercing gaze. That unmistakeable crown of horns. Warmth seemed to leave my body out of the absolute fear that I was drowning in. Or was being suffocated by, or just overwhelmed.
There he stood.
Marwood.
Not at all satisfied with the scene in front of him: corpse and all that. It's bound to make one upset (at the very least), among other less happy-go-lucky things.
The look on his face and the way he breathed deliberately only supported this thereby making whatever baseless assumptions I had, get base. Time probably stood still for what seemed to be eternities. If I blinked, it was very slow. Every time my eyelids shut, there was a faint prayer that Marwood would disappear and everything would be normal, or as normal as things were before Donald kicked the bucket. Or before the frying pan hit Donald. My eyes and hope betrayed me because I was unable to look away from Marwood. I wanted to look away but every time I thought about looking away, my eyes snapped to the same crowned figure of sternness that was our basement-dwelling repairman.
He never moved from when I closed my eyes and opened them again. He only shook his head in disappointment every now and then but neither of us actually said anything. I was too scared to move, and he- well, I don't know what his deal was.
I wanted to scream or make stupid noises, just to break the silence. I wished he would say something, a cryptic joke, a dirty limerick, his variation of a recipe for some Peruvian dish, anything! Instead, there was silence for at least 4 eternities. Well, 3 and a half.
Finally, he cleared his throat, and I began to tremble. I was partially glad for it but more terrified than anything. Silence was broken but it did feel like that cliche of a calm before a storm. Sure, things were quiet but now that he was about to speak it seemed like shit would really hit the fan.
He cleared his throat a few more times and sniffed before finally speaking. He seemed to relish the moment before speaking, as evidenced by a slight but noticeable smirk he wore for a brief second.
"You call this a clean murder?" was the first thing he said when he finally finished clearing his throat.
I was baffled; I thought he would have said anything else. Asked about the weather, asked if I was having any problems, anything else at all! Who critiques a murder like if it was some sort of term paper?
"For starters, look at all this blood! Anything so damned messy cannot be considered clean. Logic, boy!" He walked around, as if to inspect the place for loose ends and flaws. Critiquing my form and execution. Baffling! He should have at least asked why there was a dead man in my home! I wanted him to ask so I could have a reason to legitimately panic.
"Are you listening? Get something to clean this bungled operation with! This will not do! Not at all!" He paced around this time, as if thinking and judging. Somehow, I made my way through the baffled ocean of bewilderment I was in and managed to get in a word.
"Marwood, this man is dead." I croaked and stood once more, in fear. Knees shaking, bladder on the verge of losing control.
"And the sky is blue and water is wet. Thank you for stating the obvious! Is this the rest of your plan? To keep telling me what I already know?"
I know I've used "baffled" a lot already, and it must be somewhat painful to read the same word over and over and over and over and not have the context change. As such, I will use a different word to convey what is essentially the same thing I felt. Qronfuzzelleworpified!
"Are you just going to stand there and let this corpse decompose or are you going to restore the sanitary standard of living for this unit? We aren't a graveyard or some mortuary, you know. We can't have corpses everywhere."
And he repeated this same thing in four different languages. Each time, I understood that I really needed to open my mouth and say something else. Anything. Well, not my love of chunky peanut butter or anti-jokes, something more relevant. So I did, after summoning courage and collecting my head as best I could. At the top of my lungs, I shouted:
"Enough is enough! Marwood, this man is dead! Bereft of life! I didn't do it! I just want to get him out of here and away from me. The longer he stays the bigger the problem becomes! I know this is stating the obvious but goddamn it, I'm terrified of your presence! Especially at this very tense point in time! Your crown of thorns scares the hell out of me!"
I wished he would have slapped me or something. I almost longed for another eternity of silence. Things did not go as I wanted them. Instead, he applauded and smiled. He went to my bathroom and closed the door. The next sound I remember hearing was running water and a tub being filled up. In the meantime, I stared at Donald's body. There would be no more strife from this cad.
But where would I be without his zany antics? With less gray hairs and a horrible habit of looking over my shoulder every few minutes. Fear, mostly, and checking out my ass. For wet paint or other hilarious pranks Donald tried to pull on me.
Mary was also making a ruckus of some sort which put me on edge. She had made her way to the kitchen, to hide, presumably. She wasn't in the mood for cooking, to my dismay. She was probably just as scared of Marwood as I was. And with good reason, this time: she apparently believed he was the devil incarnate and asked if it was too late to go back to England on the Mayflower. I'll admit that this isn't a very good reason but I would imagine that it would be for a 17th century pilgrim having just landed in a "new world".
"Mary," I began, "snap out of it or I'll slap you out of-"
"Out of what?" she said, straightening up defiantly. She had returned.
"Nothing. Never mind." I said, relieved that she had returned to her comparatively normal self, but dreading the next words that would come out of her mouth.
"If you lay a hand on me, I will feed both of your hands to the garbage disposal." She was serious. Not that she had done it to me personally but having thrown me to the wolves was more than enough proof to know that she was crazy.
But why be with her if she was crazy? We all need someone. You don't really get to choose who you fall for. You meet a person, they make an impression and it begins. You find yourself enthralled by the way they play with their hair or by their little smirk and the way they lower their head and look at you. Eyes shining brighter than an overused cliche. Soon you become rapt with a desire to be around them even though their first impression was less than spectacular and more clumsy and ordinary than anything. And then you find yourself wondering why. Why she had to go and clobber a man with a frying pan.
"Are you listening?" she asked. I wanted to say yes but I really couldn't because I wasn't even in the room, figuratively speaking. My mind was elsewhere looking for solutions out of this mess. And still trapped by memories of our first meetings, when we were much younger and still stupid. Well, we remained pretty stupid since meeting but less so. Marginally.
"Boy! Have you stripped the corpse of his clothing?" said Marwood through the closed door and running water. "I know I should have said something about that but I figured you wouldn't be able to think correctly so I let you talk to the woman so you could regain some normalcy. She seems to have that effect on you."
He was wise. Sure, she made me go crazy and wracked me with guilt and all sorts of non-groovy feelings but at the end of the day she did help me. I felt responsible, at peace, not alone, and to some degree normal. She was an anchor of sorts. Or a foil.
Realizing this, I had no choice but to agree with Marwood and relieve Donald of his clothing. Though Marwood failed to give me any reasons as to why I should do such a thing. But I didn't want to question his motives and actions because he seemed to know what he was doing. Still, I couldn't help but feel wrong about this. Sure, Donald tried to kill me on several occasions but something about reducing his dignity, especially in death, seemed wrong. I tried not to think about it as I pulled his shoes and his socks but-
"Hurry, boy! The portal won't hold for very long!" roared Marwood. A sense of urgency underlining his quivering roar.
"Portal?!" Mary shrieked.
"Yes, a portal. We're getting rid of the dead by way of portal. It's the safest alternative. Anything else would-"
"Son of a bitch!" I shrieked this time.
Donald's feet were scaly hooves! Marwood rushed over and stomped on Donald's face repeatedly. The fact that Donald's feet were actually hooves froze me in shock long enough to not notice that Marwood collapsed Donald's face in with such aggressive force that there were cracks in the floor now. Marwood stomped enough to make himself sweat and pant. He leaned against a wall and slid down to the floor. My eyes jumped from Marwood to what used to be Donald's face and back. I couldn't understand what the hell was happening anymore.
"You're wondering now." Marwood said, after taking a deep breath. "Mary, a lot of water, please." He wiped the sweat off his brow and quickly gulped down the pitcher of water Mary gave him. He closed his eyes and took another deep breath before sitting up and finally starting an explanation.
"Donald isn't human, as you can already tell by now. To be honest, I don't know how to classify him. He can be a number of things. He has hooves, scales, and a tail, among other things. He could be a satyr, a merman, a freak, or something else entirely. Maybe even all those things. The point is, he isn't human."
And this made sense. What human could survive-
"... that fall made me skeptical. I didn't think he was human after that. I initially thought he was just very lucky but it made no sense for him to be human. All that hatred he carried, it didn't seem natural or normal. Or 'human'. Whatever that really means. Not being one myself, I can't really say. I can only assume."
When he spoke, he seemed to be more human than anyone in the room. Mary, was indeed human, and so was I. But neither of us ever took the time to be human or reach out or do anything worthwhile or substantial. We were just really caught up in our own bullshit most of the time. We never did anything to help anyone, in any significant manner. Sure, we gave change to beggars but never offered more help or volunteered at soup kitchens or anything. We were content in a rose colored bubble we called "us". Our neighbors seemed to be more human than us and they were squids or just cardboard boxes. But they got involved in things that I never did. Not because I never had time but because I never saw the point.
"... so much cynicism for one human. Its high concentration is what led me to investigate and ask questions and generally fear for everything and everyone in the building. If Donald was around, who's to say there weren't more? I had to get to the bottom of it somehow but I couldn't. My crown of horns doesn't allow for easy communication with anyone, you know."
Thinking that something was possibly wrong with me, I took off my shoes and discovered
"You're human, boy. Just because you're a bit of a fuck-up every now and then only makes you human. Your hissy fit over Donald only proves it. Any other creature would have eaten his corpse or done something equally awful like eat his soul, if he had one."
Marwood stood up and dragged the body out of its clothing and into the bathroom.
The door slammed shut and things got quiet again. I walked up to Mary, hoping she would bring me some normalcy. She sensed this and hugged me. She didn't say anything. She probably didn't have to. It was the strangest thing to have her hold me like this. I wanted to sob uncontrollably but I also wanted to scream and bash my head against a wall to end whatever suffering I thought I was enduring. Her sighing as she placed her head on my chest sounded like an apology because of the slight whimper she gave. She was really truly sorry for the things she had caused me. It was strange for her to apologize without saying anything. But if we both knew, then it was probably the best form of apology. One skips the usual shame that comes in an apology. I've never been one for shaming others into X, Y, or Z, or any letter of the alphabet for that matter. She looked up and the twinkle in her eye made me melt. I hated her for doing this but I knew she was being genuine in her unspoken apology. I forgave her.
We just stood there, in the kitchen, holding each other. We panicked and held each other tighter. We didn't know why we were panicking but it just seemed like the thing to do. Mainly because of the ruckus Marwood was causing in the bathroom. Shouting in various languages, some that were not of this Earth or were gone or would exist much much later in the universe's lifetime. The sound of blood splattering made us jumpy and the unearthly howling and growling and snarling made us tremble much more.
"I don't know anything but I promise you we'll be all right, Mary."
I couldn't believe myself. Talking without knowing (like some kind of moron) but I had to reassure her somehow lest she switch time-personalities so quickly that her real self would be trapped and I would only get fragments of her every infrequent now and then. I would never see her again.
She could only whimper as the surreal sounds of nightmares incarnate seemed to climax and- silence. So much silence, we could feel ourselves become deaf with every beat of our hearts. Faster and faster and getting slower as we breathed. Sounds of bones cracking as we squeezed ourselves tighter and slowly relaxed our grips. Finally, we were calm and collected as possible though still cautious enough not to let ourselves fall into a false sense of relaxation and thus be vuln-
Bleeding Marwood stumbling out of the bathroom! Bleeding everywhere!
"I guess I've been more handsome, eh?" he said. He explained that he managed to send Donald away but it obviously cost him most of his own life. Something about not being human and being so damned evil that it took too much energy. I wasn't really paying attention because I knew he was dying but I couldn't make myself calm or rational, even with Mary holding my hand to give me strength and support. We just knelt as he slumped to the floor, explaining how everything would be all right. Saying that his time was done. As he said this, I smelled something foul. Something far worse than anything I could think of. Death, rotting, decomposing bodies, rotting fruit, shit, unwashed reproductive organs, etc. Enough to make anyone vomit. Marwood chuckled and said to listen and not smell.
The sound of stampeding crowds and shrieks were clear as day outside in the hall.
I don't remember too much after watching him stand, saying that everyone was leaving the building because of the smell of his blood. Something about it releasing a foul smell because he was dying. Under normal circumstances, cinnamon. He stood up and told us to leave the building as soon as we could. I get fuzzy on the details because the smell was overwhelming but I have visions of him smiling and falling to the floor followed by a large crack as if someone had torn the sky open. Followed by repeated sounds of thudding so loud one would think the sky was collapsing until the entire building in its tattered majesty imploded into itself. Jaggedly folding into a memory of bloodshed, baked goods, concern, and a crown of horns that wanted nothing more than help people for over a century. Reminders of what makes us human, reminders of souls, frying pans, and poor story-telling.
A gentle wind blew on my face as Mary held me again. She was another ray of sunshine. I say another because the light from the sun was getting stronger. She rubbed my shoulder and led me away from the sight of humans, squids, chickens, and boxes were crying and bemoaning the loss of a building they never bothered to care about in the first place.
She reassured me that we were better off and convinced me by telling me that as long as we were together, we would always find a way out of any jam. "Mostly because you always think of some sort of escape plan. They just come to you. It's always, 'I have a plan!' when I'm all 'What are we gonna do?' And-"
I kissed her just to shut her up. I smirked and looked back at the rubble and chuckled to myself as a little plan began to unfold, thanks to Marwood. Who I'll never forget even if I tried.
The last thing I do remember clearly was asking him: "What happens to the soul after we die?" because I figured I had to ask something and that was the only thing I could think of. I could have just asked about the meaning of life but I suppose I wanted to be different and because his soul talk really stuck to me. And because Donald's lack of soul still struck a chord with me. How one can be so empty that they are full of hatred and evil and all that stuff. How sometimes we can be so self-absorbed and empty that something else will fill us up. An emptiness to fill a void? That sometimes being human is more than having opposable thumbs. Perhaps it means doing something and contributing to something greater than the self and thinking beyond the next minute or day. Thinking about things on a greater scale. Striving for more but not so much that you and your house of cards collapse into each other in a foul-smelling spectacle of jagged pieces of a broken yesterday barely held together by-
Marwood's response was very cryptic but it probably made sense somehow. I just had to think about it. "What happens to the soul after we die, Marwood?"
It becomes daylight.
Fin
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