The sky was sick. Green as stomach acid, it quivered and pulsed as thunder boomed and lightning sizzled. Any moment now, it would start vomiting.
A beautiful day for destruction.
April snuggled into her husband's side as he manned the controls of the bulldozer, watching with relish as the claw swung up from the ground and he, in his clumsy excitement, accidentally knocked it against a tree. The pine screamed as its roots were torn from the soil and it tumbled to the ground with a satisfying crash.
"Oops," Andy said, running a hand through his hair. "Sorry, babe."
"No, I love it. Do it more."
"But what about Leslie - ?"
"Leslie needs to learn to chill."
"Yeah, you're right," Andy replied, easily pleased, and with a grin he began to wave the claw around more vigorously back-and-forth.
April tried to ignore the guilt gnawing at her as she enjoyed this destruction. There was something very beautiful about endings, she decided. The ending of life…the ending of beauty…the ending of meaning…Andy's elbow accidentally knocked against hers, and the guilt creeping on the edge of her mind automatically flared into anger. The ending of marriage.
She punched Andy's arm. "Hey, doofus. Can we actually knock the stupid house down now?"
"Huh?" Andy swung the claw wildly in the air for a second, then his eyes cleared. He laughed, reddening. "Ohhh…yeah, right. 'Course babe." He shifted onto the accelerator, and the bulldozer began to crawl across the battlefield of bleeding tree corpses towards their destination. The Dungeon.
It was an old house the Pawnee government wanted knocked down as it had been deemed "unsafe and uninhabitable". April thought this might be one of the biggest mistakes any government had ever made, just behind burning witches at the stake and outlawing alcohol that one time. The house was old, creepy, and miles away from any other hint of civilization. That made it the perfect house. She and Andy had planned on buying it themselves, but then there was a sale on eggs at Food 'n Stuff for a whole week because the farmers were trying out Sweetums' new chicken feed, and the two couldn't resist the temptation of going on an egging spree. April had made Andy promise that, once they saved up enough, they'd buy a new house even better than this one. One with a moat in case anyone wanted to come visit them, and chains and a dungeon in case they succeeded.
To help earn that extra cash – and because Pawnee was short on competent government workers, as usual – they were taking this construction job for the day.
"Hmm. Okay…now…" Andy was muttering to himself, waving his fingers over the controls as though they were going to spring to life with just the power of his movements.
"You're not a magician, babe," April said, grabbing his hands.
"I know!" He said indignantly. "I'm not that stupid, babe."
April crossed her arms across her chest. "Earlier I saw you trying to text someone without actually touching the screen."
Andy sighed. "I was trying to practice for later today. I kinda accidentally told this kid Johnny Karate could do magic and sing, and they're expecting a magic show. What do I do, babe?"
"Just pretend. And then, at the last moment, reveal to them it was all a dastardly ruse. Crush their tiny, innocent dreams."
"Oh, babe, you are a genius!" Andy grabbed her shoulders and planted a thick kiss on her cheek. But then he drew back, shoulders slumped. "I'm not mean enough to do that, though."
The sincere concern on his face cracked her cynical armor, and she flashed him a rare smile. "I know," She whispered, like she was telling him a secret. "That's why I married you." She gave him a quick kiss. "We'll figure something out. But right now we have to bulldoze this house. Quick, before I change my mind about us becoming bank robbers."
"I don't know how," He admitted.
"What do you mean; you were just doing it."
"That was just waving the little claw thingy around!" Andy protested. "I don't know how to, like, actually demolish the thing."
"Weren't you supposed to take lessons for that?"
Andy burst into laughter, snorting and whooping, until he caught sight of April's face. "Oh, you weren't kidding," He said.
April sighed. "Okay, well, it can't be that hard." She shifted to sit on his lap, letting just the hint of a smirk play on her face at his delighted expression. She regarded the panel before her. Lots of buttons. Lots of levers. All unlabeled.
"They didn't teach me this stuff before I dropped out, babe," Andy was saying in her ear. "Sorry."
"They didn't teach me this stuff either, and I graduated college." April muttered.
Rain was beginning to spit down from the sky, thunking and ploshing around them. The bulldozer's sides were open to the air, and the wind, whipping ferociously back-and-forth, fired droplets onto their skin bullet-style. Andy raised his hands in a whoop, and the next thing April knew she had been thrown to the ground of the 'dozer. As she hauled herself into a sitting position, she could just make out through the thick curtain of rain a chubby figure rolling in the mud.
"C'mon, babe. It's your favorite!"
It was. She loved it when nature was just as angry at the world as she was. But they had already destroyed this field; if they didn't at least do what they were supposed to do, they'd have no excuse, and April kind of needed them to not be fired.
And, okay: She kind of wanted Leslie to know she was capable of doing something right.
So she called back, "In a minute, babe," grabbed the claw, and swung it directly into the little dilapidated house.
"I hereby pronounce you dead," She yelled over the downpour as the house crumbled inwards. "A victim of homicide by the great, the menacing– " She brought the claw down and crumbled the roof. "—Janet Snakehole." She swung the claw again. "An investigation is pending and shall be – "
All of the sudden she noticed something. A little blur of brown and white, a tiny figure, smudged beneath the debris. She screwed up her eyes and leaned closer over the steering wheel, and she could swear she saw it stirring.
April's stomach lurched into her throat. She didn't feel herself clamber out of the bulldozer and freefall to the ground, but suddenly she was running, and then, there she was, standing in front of the slab of roof pinning the poor creature to the ground. A dog.
Her stomach expanded in her throat, clogging it.
Andy jogged up behind her just in time to hear her gag, "I killed it." His protective hand clasped her shoulder but she hardly felt it. She turned robotically, eyes unfocused. "Andy, I killed that dog," She murmured into his damp sleeve.
"Oh, no, honey…"
She cringed, burying her face into him, waiting for him to yell or scream, as she rightly deserved. Or, more likely – this was Andy they were talking about - cry.
"You killed a dog…" He left her side, lumbering over to squat down next to it. April buried her hands in her face, trying not to hyperventilate. She loved death. She loved dogs. But she did not love dead dogs. Especially when she was the reason they were dead.
One, two, three, four…She breathed. One, two, three, four…
"Babe, did you hear me?" At the sound of Andy's voice, she jerked her head up, startled, tears streaking her face…to see the bastard grinning at her. For the first time in her life, she felt hatred for Andy Dwyer well up in her stomach.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Blindly she cast around for something large enough to throw at him – there, that shard of pointed rock looked good – but just as she was hauling it up to lob at him, he suddenly caught her hands.
"Babe, listen to me. Yeah, you killed a dog. A stuffed dog."
April's heart faltered, and the stone tumbled from her grasp. "W-what?"
Smothering chuckles, Andy stooped down and yanked the creature from under the roof – it was a very fluffy creature, she noticed now, with a torn hole in its side that gushed – not blood, but a soft white filling.
Stuffing.
Blood boiled underneath April's cheeks. "Oh my gosh," She mumbled, and she couldn't stop it – laughter of disbelief bubbled up from her stomach and burst into the air, nearly lost in the thunder of the rain and wind around them, but Andy heard her and caught her, his arms a wreath of warmth around her.
"That was pretty stupid of you, babe." He murmured into her ear. "But…" He smiled against her ear's soft pink shell. "Cute."
April wriggled out from his hold, throwing him her best April glare. "Now you know what it feels like to be married to you," She said, but she couldn't keep the glare up for more than half of her words; by the end, she was smiling.
"Let's celebrate!" Andy said, and she steeled herself for when he would pick her up and wrestle her to the ground in the mud like she was one of his brothers, as he always did when they were out in rainy weather. But then he tucked the stuffed spaniel under his arm and crouched down in the swamp of stucco chunks and cracked tile shards, thrusting them aside to unearth a lopsided circle of muddied ground.
"Andy. What are you doing?"
He looked up with eyes wide and earnest as a puppy's. "Digging!" He smiled down at the toy, cradled in the crook of his arm like a baby. "We gotta hold a proper funeral for this poor little thing."
In an instant April had him on the ground, arms twined around his head, the little dog flung aside. She smashed her lips to his.
When she came up for air, in the tiny space between their open mouths, she whispered, "I love you. You know just what I need to start feeling like myself again."
Andy smiled into the space, filling it. "That's my girl," He said, and they dug a hole for the funeral, not with their hands, but with their bodies, house demolition forgotten. It had been an interesting day, and would be an even more interesting morning when they had to explain to Leslie what had happened, but right now, for Andy and April, nothing was more interesting than this.