The odor was even more intoxicating when we returned to his apartment. I wondered if it was affecting my judgment. Maybe the stench had manifested as a barrier that intercepted alert signals from my brain telling my legs to run. It kept my arms stiff by my side when I should have snatched up the phone and dialed 9-1-1 with hands not yet soiled by the dirt we would bury her body under.
“How’re we doing this?” he asked as I took each suitcase out of the other and lined them up in front of the bed.
“We’re gonna pack her body up in the big one,” I said.
“Can she even fit?”
“We’ll make her fit.”
“Wouldn’t it just be easier to chop off her arms and legs?” he said, measuring the width of the suitcase with his forearms.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, placing my hands on my hips. “Do you have a machete packed in your trunk? Because I don’t.”
He turned his back and sighed audibly.
“It’s extremely hard to dismember a human body,” I continued. “You’re cutting through bone, and you can’t do that with a regular old kitchen knife.”
He didn’t answer, only shook his head. Maybe he was finally starting to realize how deep into the sludge we were headed.
“Fine,” he said scratching the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t have made it this far without you, so I’ll follow your lead.”
My stomach lurched in an unsettling reminder that I hadn’t eaten since earlier that evening, and with the devil’s hour quickly approaching, our surroundings seemed to grow darker. The lights in the hall were dim. The curtains were drawn. Outside, the clouds and trees blocked illumination from the moon and distant stars, setting the tone for sinister activity to take place.
How quickly had he shifted the responsibility to me, as if I were the one to smother his ex and he only followed along, fearful that he would be next if he didn’t cooperate. My decisions were digging a deeper grave for myself. The shovel of my tongue was knocking on the gates of Hell, and despite my fear of a face-to-face meeting with Satan, I couldn’t compel myself to stop.
“Take the shower curtain from the bathroom,” I instruct him. “We’ll line the suitcase with it. Hopefully, the plastic will catch any body fluids that seep through her clothes.
He left the room, and I removed the sheets from the body, taking the corners and folding them across the bed, avoiding any areas that might have touched her and absorbed her sweat, her blood, her urine, her tears. Holding them away from me like dirty underwear, I threw them into the smallest suitcase, quickly zipped it up, and wiped my hands on the front of my jeans. I would have to remember to toss them too as soon as we were done.
He returned with the shower curtain he’d ripped from the rings and pressed it into the largest suitcase as if lining a foil sheet in a baking pan. Then I kicked the suitcase forward, closer to the foot of the bed.
“Just pull her feet and drag her in,” I directed.
“You won’t help me?”
“Hell no! I’m not touching her!” I declared, as if avoiding physical contact with the deceased would clear me of any wrongdoing.
He smiled, which sickened me further. Did he think this was a joke? A dream we could wake up from? A movie we could turn off?
The body slid down the bed, pulling the fitted sheet off the mattress. I turned away as he pulled her closer, not wanting to see her eyes begging me “Why?” Then came the solid thump when she fell into the suitcase. He balled the sheet and tossed it over her face, relieving me of the pull of her stare. Her neck bowed in front of the end of the suitcase, and the crown of her head stuck out above the zipper.
“Can you like . . . push it down?” I asked, but instead of nudging her head down, he pushed all of his weight into it as if tightly packing clothes, and then I heard a crack.
“Oh my god!” I turned and squeezed my shoulders to my ears.
“She’s already dead,” he said flatly.
“Just . . . fix her legs,” I said over my shoulder.
He picked up her legs, which were hanging over the edge of the suitcase, and bent them forward, folding them like an accordion so that she lay inside the suitcase in the fetal position.
“Zip it up,” I said, and the zipper made a low, deep buzz as he pulled it around the suitcase.
I looked up at the bare mattress. From what I could see through the dim light, it was a creamy white, but I could just make out the faint stain at its center in the shape of a body like the chalk outlines crime scene investigators draw around a homicide victim.
“We have to get rid of the whole bed,” I said.
“I agree. It still stinks in here,” he said. I was relieved to know that he had not gotten accustomed to the smell. Even now, it still made me dizzy.
“I could take it downstairs to the dumpster. That wouldn’t be too suspicious, right?” he asked.
I shrugged. “We can say you had bed bugs.”
“Oh, nice.” He rolled his neck and proceeded to lift the twin mattress. “Not too heavy,” he said, balancing it above his head.
“Just don’t drop it,” I said. As he turned sideways to fit the mattress through the doorway, I added, “We should pack some clothes too. Make it look like we’re going on a trip and not moving something fishy out of the apartment in the middle of the night.”
“Your call,” he said and continued down the hall toward the front door.
I quickly scooted out of my jeans and put them in the suitcase with the sheets. Then taking the mid-sized suitcase, I went across the hall into his room, opened his drawers, and threw the first articles of clothing I could see—white t-shirts, sweatpants, plaid boxers, socks.
As I zipped the suitcase, I heard a faint whine. At first, I thought it was him opening the front door, coming back for the box spring. A terrifying thought quickly ran across my mind that maybe his ex wasn’t dead. Maybe she was gasping for air through her plastic cocoon, trying to claw her way out of the suitcase. However, as I approached the sound, it came from someplace past her room, closer to the front of the apartment, behind a door I’d assumed was a second bathroom, though I’d never been inside. I pressed my ear against the wood, and the sound sharpened into a cry. A baby’s cry.
His son had been there the whole time.
© 2016-2023 Nortina Simmons
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Motherhood (link will work when post goes live March 24)
Catch up on previous installments:
Drive
To Live
Murderer
Odor
Ringer
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