I saw him.
You place the severed parts into a suitcase.
“How dull,” I say.
“The work we do?” you ask.
“The blade.”
His blood sprays across my face.
“Gimme a hand.”
“OK.”
I snap his ulna, slide off his wedding band and toss the hand your way.
(The gold might fetch a price on eBay.)
You fit his separated hand snuggly in, between upper arm and chunk of thigh. “Do you wonder why he died?”
“I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“I know.”
“You do?”
I say:
He made a faithful woman fall for him.
Fifteenth-storey—
Splat.
Insurance scam.
“Must have made an impression.”
“Had to scrape her broken heart off the Pavement records the hipster she crushed was carrying.”
“Planned to look like suicide?”
“Yes. Except the investigator wasn’t duped, and neither was the father.”
“Smart man.”
“Indeed.”
“A Catholic?”
I nod.
“The seminary doesn’t turn out fools.”
I say the priest took revenge.
“What, in God’s name?”
“No, his own.”
“Personally?”
“That’s the wickedness,” I whisper, breaking several ribs. “He made her children do it. Turns out he’d been raising them in secret.”
You gasp. “A necromancer?”
“What? No.”
“Oh.”
“An enchanter.”
“Spellcaster?”
“C-A-S-T-E-R.”
The suitcase is beginning to leak fluid onto the floor. “He put her children under his spell and commanded them to take revenge?” you ask.
“That’s what I heard,” I say.
“From who?”
“Hu’s dead.”
You raise an eyebrow. “The man whose body we’re cutting up into manageable bits.”
“I don’t understand—but wipe,” I say, pointing at the floor.
“Don’t call me a butt wipe!”
I shake my head.
You growl.
The suitcase continues to leak. How I wish I was still working with Hu. We got along so well, and Hu always neatly wrapped his bloody flesh in plastic before stuffing it somewhere. I butcher on nostalgically. “What happened to the kids?” you ask, ending the awkward silence.
“No idea.”
You shrug and pack more dead body.
“What a mess,” I mutter.
“What’s that?”
“I believe it’s the semitendinosus,” I say, attempting to slice a particularly tough muscle.
“No. What did you say?”
“I said, What a mess.”
You look around. “I don’t see anything special about it. Then again, I haven’t been on many military bases.”
I sigh.
The sun is almost up by the time we’re finished and the dead man is wholly inside the suitcase, surrounded by a puddle of his own mammalsquish.
You grab a suitcase handle. “You gonna help me or what?”
“You gonna mop that up?”
“Mop what up?”
“That.”
You roll your eyes.
“We’re hired to clean, so we clean. Take pride in your work.”
You roll your eyes over and over until they’re spinning in your head, your mouth opens and you start to drool—
“The fu—”
A flash of cassock.
Giggling.
You dash suddenly at me as if possessed!
I evade, run—
slipping on your goddamn puddle, losing my balance, smashing my head on the floor, hearing:
“Prey, my children.”