Knife
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"It's you, it's all for you, everything I do, and I tell you all the time that Heaven is a place on Earth where you tell me all the things you want to do." –Lana Del Rey, Video Games
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Stupid kids had the audacity to kill themselves off Howard's product. Not that he blamed them, of course, but overdosing seemed like a remarkably convenient way for them to get out of paying him back for the moonshine and the uppers. Convenient for them, not so much for him. Given the gradual corrosion of his goodwill recently, he was willing to believe this particular drug addict, an eleven year-old named Gemma, had overdosed specifically to spite him, rather than by accident.
Howard wasn't a fan of dead bodies, but if he was going to arrive on a debt collection run only to find a still-warm corpse at his client's house, he wasn't going to leave everything as he found it. He went through her pockets, first, pulling a necklace and a handful of 'Bertos from her jacket. Not enough to pay him, not by nearly half, so he shook his head and kept looking for something to make this trip worthwhile.
He picked a razor out from the pocket of her shorts, noting the thin scars along her wrists, stark and straight like nicks on a windowpane. All the scars were old; this Gemma had replaced her previous coping mechanism with Howard's booze and drugs. He shook his head. "Not my problem you couldn't hold your liquor, kid."
He wrapped his hand in a towel and pushed her on her side. A flat knife was tucked into the waistband of her shorts. He extracted it, twisting his wrist so as to touch her bony lower back as little as possible. It was one thing to touch clothing; it was another thing to actually feel the dry, taut skin on a dead body. He weighed the knife, bit the tip of it, wiped it on his jeans, and tucked it through his belt loop.
Finally, he went through her cabinets, under her bed and through her closets. The search didn't yield much, just a mostly empty jar of jam and a two boxy plastic barbeque dipping sauce packets from Arby's. Howard opened one of the packets and with painstaking carefulness, scooped the sauce onto his finger and into his mouth. He ate slowly, reminding himself that this could be the last time he ever tasted barbeque sauce, and when he was done he cut the packet up with the knife so he could lick every centimeter of the interior.
"We're even," he told the body in the middle of the kitchen, slipping the second packet into his pocket. As he left, he used a fat red sharpie to mark a large X on the front door of the house. Someone else would investigate and dispose of the body eventually.
It was getting dark by the time he made it back to the house he and Orc shared. The block was empty, although this particular street usually was. No one else had the guts to live here. Even from a hundred yards away Howard could hear the screams from his basement.
"That zombie's really killing the real estate market," he said out loud, then attempted to force a chuckle at his own wit. It was no good. The wails from his house were already marching up his spine, leaving goose-bumps all the way up to his neck.
He frowned when he found that Orc wasn't in the living room or the bedroom. Typically Orc didn't deviate far from the couch to the pile of mattresses to the waste trench Howard had dug outside, but a peek out the window told Howard Orc wasn't there. Gritting his teeth, Howard grabbed a bottle of gin from the pantry and stormed out.
Orc was sitting on the back of an abandoned pickup a few doors down, just out of earshot of all but the loudest of Brittney's cries. It took Howard a whole ten minutes to find him.
"What the hell are you thinking leaving that thing alone in there?" Howard stomped up, although he was careful to stay outside of Orc's reach.
Orc didn't even look up. He seemed to be trying to dent his name into the bed of the pickup by jabbing it with his fingers.
"I said, what the hell are you-"
"I heard you, Howard."
Howard stopped for a second to process the unbelievable fact that Orc's voice was clear and sober. He hadn't remembered what that sounded like. It had been months.
"And?"
Orc heaved a sigh that seemed to rumble up from the base of his lungs. "I couldn't do it no more. Listening to that. Couldn't do it."
"Sure you can. You just need a little sauce to numb you up some."
Orc lifted his mammoth head to look at Howard. His one good eye was teary and red. Some kind of infection had left gunky discharge smeared to the bridge of his nose. "You don't get it, Howard. You get to leave the house. You go out on your runs and big meetings and all and I'm stuck listening to that. All day."
Howard barely restrained himself from sneering. "But that's your job. That's what the Council pays you for. That's what I pay you for."
Howard jumped back as Orc gripped the side of the pickup bed and ripped a hunk of metal off. Orc threw it, way into the air, and Howard couldn't keep track of how far it went before it disappeared. Maybe it went as far as the wall. He couldn't tell.
"I'm a kid," Orc yelled. "I'm thirteen fucking years old! I'm not supposed to have no job, and not a job listening to Brittney beg me to kill her, neither!"
"You're fourteen," Howard said quietly, as if that made even the remotest difference. His voice was silky now, the kind of affect one would take when talking to a wild dog. "And okay, okay. I get it. You're in a bad mood. Let's talk about that."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"You mean you don't want me to convince you I'm right."
Orc crunched the other side of the pickup in his fist, then sighed. "You're better at talking. I don't want to talk."
"Okay, so we don't talk." Howard took a few careful steps up to the pickup, like a deer to water, and climbed up to sit on the edge next to Orc. He held the gin out by the neck. "You want some to take the bite off? I unscrewed the top for you and everything."
"Don't want a drink."
"That's new."
"I thought you said we wasn't going to talk."
"Okay." Howard pulled a strip of fabric from his pocket, twisted it up and sucked on it. It was something Orsay had taught them all, before her death. Serious hikers did it. Moving your mouth over something would trick your stomach out of hunger. Didn't matter what it was, bubblegum or leather or another person's mouth. Sucking and chewing would keep the hunger pains dull and tolerable.
It also helped Howard think. He handed another piece of cloth to Orc, and for several minutes they sat in silence, each mulling fabric between their teeth and staring out at an evening sky they knew to be fake.
Howard flicked his finger over the knife in his belt loop. It was a good weapon. Not long, but if it was slipped between someone's ribs and twisted, or drawn across someone's throat, deadly enough.
"Maybe tomorrow we should visit Bette's grave," he said, sounding casual. "Pay our respects and all. It's been a while since you been."
Orc didn't respond, but a few minutes later, he took the bottle of gin and downed it in silence. Howard said nothing to that, but relaxed a fraction.
"Let's go home," Howard said.
Orc nodded.
Howard hopped off the pickup truck. He rummaged through his pockets and placed the barbeque sauce packet in Orc's palm. "I brought you something."
Without a word, Orc followed Howard back to the house and the screaming.
