(This short story was written 2015, Sophomore Year at Ohio University)
A brittle moonlight excelled above the horizon, pinning the silhouette of a shrouded figure against the dimness of the apartment’s back alleyway. With each advancing step, beads of sweat pounded profusely from the pores of my brow. A menacing ache slithered through my ribs and into my gut. I rapidly shifted my wrist into view, and darted my attention away from the second floor window. The hands of the wristwatch ticked nefariously against the solitude of night: Two Forty-Five AM. He was on time. He was always on time. However, he was never alone. The silhouette trudged with great physical force, towing a black hefty bag along the cement sidewalk. I continued peering from the second floor, until the shroud approached the first floor entrance. Its grasp slipped from the hefty bag, allowing the black plastic wrap to sit stagnant against the whirls of a cool autumn breeze. The figure dove his hands into the pit of a coat pocket, removing a sling of assorted keys. My eyes probed the movement of his fingers, as they delicately folded various shards of metal hypnotically around a metallic loop. I stood paralyzed, anchored in fear. The black hefty bag remained torpid, disguising the artistry of nature’s most vile beast.
The figure retrieved the key to the townhouse complex, slipping the sharp cusp into the gold-shimmering lock. With a hasty coil of the wrist, the door slid from its frame, constructing a nether worldly portal into a diseased imagination. The figure shifted the keys back into the coat pocket, seized the black hefty bag, and motioned toward the doorway – halting after its fourth step. The figure paused ominously, glaring into the depths of its townhouse. What is he doing? The figure lingered, before twisting its head in the direction of my second floor window. The anchor of fear had developed into a gravitational pull, grasping at my ankles, yanking my body into the figure’s depraved dungeon– into the blistering caverns of hell. The figures eye’s blazed a hole into my consciousness, as the moon reflected the beast’s crooked smile.
Exposed.
* * *
His name was Calowaski: first-class methamphetamine distributor by day, deranged mass-murderer by night. He occupied the first floor of the two-story townhouse complex, utilizing the back entrance for distribution, and stealthily dismembering the poor souls who fit conveniently within the confines of a black Hefty bag. Goddamn psychopath. I haven’t slept since Calowaski’s arrival, three months ago. How can I possibly sleep with those noises that emit from his torture fort? How can I function when I’m stranded – caged inside the belly of the beast? I maneuver my apartment robotically, digging my fingernails into the rugged palms of a fist, listening diligently to the horrors below.
Calowaski conducted his duties within the restrains of a cautiously determined routine. Methamphetamine was groomed from six in the morning until twelve in the afternoon. From twelve thirty to eight thirty, the apartment operated as a fully functional ‘traphouse’, fulfilling the emptiness of meth addicts all over the east coast – Such a humanitarian. From nine to twelve thirty in the morning, Calowaski systematically patrolled the city streets and suburbs, rifling for a victim that would amputate the persistent itch that crawled within the tissues of his brain. At 2:45, Calowaski would park his Ford F150 in the back alleyway, remove the black hefty bag from the bed of the truck, and tow the body to his cavern of anguish. At three o’clock the noises would seep through the floorboards.
He would begin by crushing the bones with a cinderblock to allow for a smooth trim of the limbs from the torso. If the victims were still alive, they would squeal with whatever consciousness still remained. He would let the cry stream through his eardrum like a tender melody, before continuing with his labor. He would then rattle through various slicing instruments, like a child in Toys R Us – overwhelmed with gleeful possibilities. Hacking. Carving. Shredding – Smirking, as the veins and arteries spewed with life, with love, with passion. Poor Bastards. If they weren’t dead yet, they would bleed out within seconds, or asphyxiate from the volcanic blood that emerged like magma from their gasping mouths. After severing the body into sixteen pieces, he would shave the head, and wrench the teeth that drowned in a sanguine sea. In his final act, Calowaski would hoist the pieces into an incinerator, bag the ashes, and scatter what remained of a living, breathing being. A being who felt pleasure and sorrow. A being who loved and hated. A being with goals and ambitions. A being who ceased to exist. The intrusion of such a thought flipped a switch in my stomach, as the bagel from this morning ejected from my mouth and onto the slender floorboards beneath my feet.
This time was different. He had seen me. My fingernails gouged into the palms of my hands, transporting a sting that was severely overwhelmed by impending disaster. He will come for me. He knows what I’ve seen, he knows that I know. He’ll smash my bones with cinderblocks, amputate my arms and legs, cut me into sixteen pieces, and scorch my being from existence. This is it. My twenty- three-year-old life, boiled down to ash. The cops? No. Calowaski had every cop within a three hundred-radius swimming in bathtubs of unlaundered meth money. Why would they sacrifice the college funds for their kids, the swimming pools for their yards, or the caffeine for their stakeouts? They would surely ignore my plea, throw me in a cell, place a bullet through my head, or hand me over to the beast himself. Fuck, do I run, where would I go and with what money? Droplets of crimson blood ran like a river across my wrists. A tremble developed in my knees that shook like a metronome with the weight at the base. The crunch of a cinderblock shattered the silence. I know what I must do.
Thoughts frenzied through my dome like a sparkler on the 4th of July, radiating through my nerves, splashing against the solid structure of my skull. I was positioned by the entrance of the cave – Calowaski’s front door. The moon gleamed behind a film of pallid cumulous clouds, which managed to illuminate the watch attached to my bloodied wrist: Four thirty AM. He would depart with the ash-filled Hefty bag at any moment. There was no turning back. He would emerge from the door, and I would stand in his path. I would eradicate the beast, like David eradicated Goliath. I would squash the chaos and evil with Biblical proportions. The metallic-gold knob began to shudder.
The door creaked at a funeral pace, as the figure patiently unsealed the gates to a perverted nightmare. Calowaski emerged from the darkness, black hefty bag clutched between coarse, leather black gloves – an unmanaged beard soldered to his flesh, a charcoal hoodie plastered to his chest. My presence caught the monster in a vulnerable transition. The advantage was mine. I jammed my crimson hand into the waist of my trousers, reaching for the frigid polymer grip. My palm wrapped around the base of the machine, as I hauled the Glock 19 into the brisk autumn morning. My arm extended beneath the observant moon, as I engaged the sights between the eyes of Calowaski. My index finger slithered like a snake around the trigger. I exhaled, darting my eyes of the gremlin. Misery smoldered in the hollows of his pupils, as the devil himself stared into my depths. A smirk flounced across his shaggy façade. I squeezed the trigger. The muzzle snarled and quaked, shattering the serenity of the moonlit, autumn morning. The bullet raged intensely, demolishing the meat and flesh of Calowaski’s bushy expression, tunneling through a mind bursting with vile lunacy. The rear of the beast’s head shattered into fragments of brain and bone splinters that disappeared into the blackness of the cave. Calowaski’s knees buckled as the bullet interrupted his final breath.
* * *
A harsh winter gust flurries against the second floor window of the two-story townhouse. A dull moonlight tiptoes through the blinds, casting contorted shadows against the slender floorboards beneath my feet. Three months have passed since the death of Calowaski. The case remains unsolved. However, three months have passed and two newly weds moved into the first floor townhouse, and I swear they are psychopaths.
THE BADBOOB 