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wood chips

Ben M. Svigals

    It’s inescapable. Drills pound, saws whine, and the building across the street gets another floor. If I close the windows, though, I’ll suffocate. Drops of water strike the air conditioner. Someone’s apartment upstairs is a lot cooler than mine. The AC broke five days ago and I’m waiting for the super to come by and fix it. When I found the corpse in my living room I was worried about the smell. But the fridge is still humming and luckily the last tenants left me a big icebox.
    It’s an absolute shit job, living in this lackey’s flat. Errand boy for the big boys, who are just errand boys themselves.
    Last night a woman, tall, spectral, with a dress buttoned all the way up and around her neck, came in like a sacristan. She wanted to know where the body was.
    Ghost. Haunt. I shouted and launched some dead light bulbs at her. She laughed and went to look in the freezer. I held a knife on her and then a gun, but her lack of fear made me wary of harming her. She might belong to the higher-ups, or maybe she’s one of them. She pulled out the stainless steel drawer and stared. Her eyes were like a vast gray awning.
    I was sweeping up pieces of tungsten and glass. I didn’t notice her slide past me, past the door, swaying like a reed bowing in the shivers of a marsh, until she said, in what should have been a whisper—
    “Good job.”
    I didn’t even kill the guy. I’m just cleanup.
    I grunted, a little embarrassed by threatening her, and when I looked up, she was gone.
    We watch television, the body and I. He’s in so many parts. The legs are on top of each other—I like the way they taper down to the ankles. You can stack them in a sort of tessellated pattern.
    The best company’s no company. I could put the head next to me, but it’d drip all over the suede and make my job ten times worse. Once it gets cold, I’ll go on a night drive, past the electrical plant on the outskirts of town. I’ll stop at the roadside, making sure it’s been at least a mile since the last mailbox, and climb into the forest. The duffel bag always drags, scraping frost off the dirt. Then I’ll get back in the car, drive another ten miles, and get rid of the body. The first bag’s full of wood chips. It’s not as easy as it used to be, what with cameras and speed traps and this whole damn country getting overpopulated.

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