The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death - Charlie Huston [1]
—And you're still clinging to some hope that a girl asking you to come clean something is some kind of booty call code, right?
I rubbed the top of my head. But I didn't say anything. Not feeling like saying no and lying to her so early in our relationship. There would be time for that kind of thing later. There's always time for lying.
She inhaled, let it out slow.
—OK.
The door closed. I heard the chain unhook. The door opened and I walked in, my feet crunching on something hard.
—This the asshole?
I looked at the young dude standing at the bathroom door with a meticulously crafted fauxhawk. I looked at bleached teeth and handcrafted tan. I looked at the bloodstains on his designer-distressed jeans and his artfully faded reproduction Rolling Stones concert T from a show that took place well before he was conceived. Then I looked at much larger bloodstains on the sheets of the queen-size bed and the flecks of blood spattered on the wall. I looked at the floor to see what I'd crushed underfoot, half expecting cockroaches, and found dozens of scattered almonds instead. I listened as the door closed behind me and locked. I watched as Soledad walked toward the bathroom and the dude snagged her by the hand before she could go in.
—I asked, Is this the asshole?
I pointed at myself.
—Honestly, in most circumstances, in any given room on any given day, I'd say Yeah, I'm the asshole here. But in this particular scenario, and I know we just met and all, but in this room here?
I pointed at him.
—I'm more than willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you're the asshole.
He looked at Soledad.
—So, yeah, he's the asshole then?
She twisted her hand free and went into the bathroom.
—He's the guy I told you about.
She closed the door behind her.
He looked at me.
—Yeah, you're the asshole alright.
I held up a hand.
—Hey look, if you're gonna insist, I can only accept the title. But seriously, don't sell yourself short. You got the asshole thing locked up if you want it.
He came down the room in a loose strut I imagine had been meticulously assembled from endless repeat viewings of Tom Cruise's greatest hits.
—Yeah, I can tell by the way you're talking. You're the one fucked with her today. Made jokes about her dad killing himself. You're the asshole alright.
The toilet flushed, Soledad yelled over it.
—He didn't make jokes!
The dude looked at the closed door.
—You said he made jokes.
He looked at me.
—Asshole. Fucking go in someone's home, there's been a tragedy, go in and try to make money off that. Fucking vulture. Fucking ghoul. Who does that, who comes up with that for a job? That your dream job, man? Cleaning up dead people? Other kids were hoping to grow up to be movie stars and you were having fantasies about scooping people's guts off the floor?
I shifted, crushing a few more almonds.
—Truth is, mostly I had fantasies about doing your mom.
He slipped a lozenge of perforated steel from his back pocket, flicked his wrist and thumb in an elaborate show of coordination, and displayed the open butterfly knife resting on his palm.
—Say what, asshole?
Say nothing, actually. Except say that maybe he was right and I was the asshole in the room. Certainly being an asshole was how I came to be there in the first place.
JEALOUS, BITTER, CYNICAL, HOSTILE AND PRETENTIOUS
Chev was getting in my ass.
—Give me a hand here.
—Just a sec, I wanna finish this.
—A sec my ass, get the fuck over here and give me a hand.
I got up and walked across the shop, the copy of Fangoria folded open to an article about a new wave of bootleg Eastern European ultrahorror DVDs.
—Put that down and hold this.
I lowered the magazine, looked at the girl lying frozen on the table, her shirt pulled up, one tit untucked from her bra, tension in every muscle of her body, a thin stream of tears running from her eyes, flipped him off and took hold of the Glover Bulldog clamp locked on the tip of the girl's nipple, stretching it taut for the needle.
The girl banged