The Graveyard Shift (17 page)

His knees popped when he stood, as did his lower back. But George ignored them. He retrieved the tiny rectangular sanding block, feeling more confident with its familiar shape in his hand. The thing’s rough grit was a welcome sensation between his fingers. Walking to the stained mattress and back to the door was doubly profitable. Getting his circulation moving again had helped George’s mental state immensely.

Without hesitation he turned the tarnished brass knob. He stepped into the room, welcomed by a familiar, but silent, crowd. The lovelies all stood in their row of proud display, even Rosa. Her chin was still painted with crimson dribbles and that caused a pang of distaste to roil George’s stomach. He took a deep breath, reassured by the unbroken silence, and approached the room’s newest (and loveliest) inhabitant.

With the coarse sanding sponge held like an unopened deck of cards, he raised his hand toward Rosa’s face. He squinted his eyes, looked carefully at every contoured angle. He rotated slowly around her front side, examining the frozen curves of her chin and lips for the offending edge. But he could see nothing out of place. Everything was as it should have been.

George wrinkled his brow. And then he paused to listen.

Someone had called his name. It was faint, but he was sure of it. At once, his heart quickened, picturing someone standing at his front door. But who could that possibly be at this hour? Sunrise was still over two hours away. He licked his lips, wondering whether or not to climb the stairs and investigate.

And then he heard it again. It was a whisper, but it was undoubtedly speaking directly to him. It was saying his name.

George turned toward the door. He squeezed the sanding block, which pooted out a cumulus cloud of dust in protest.

George
.

This time, George dropped the sponge. His breathing had unconsciously slowed to a halt as he listened. He recognized that voice, its hollow, nasal whimper. It was a voice that had pleaded with him in drained whispers for almost five weeks. And it was
not coming from the upstairs. Nor was it drifting to him from the bedroom on the other side of the door. No, it had come from the direction of the water heater closet on the far side of the room.

“But—that can’t
be,” George said.

And yet he heard her, the dead girl whom had lent her namesake and physical l
ikeness for his latest creation. She called his name once more. George felt the corner of his lip twitch. And at once, both the heated throb of his mangled finger and the wound on his other arm began to itch fiercely. He tried to scratch at the terrycloth covering with his teeth, which actually did help. Maybe it helped
too
much, because he found that while the sides were crusted and dry with blood, the middlemost part was wet. The gouges given to him by the dead woman were bleeding again.

“You’re dead,” George warne
d. “So you just shut your filthy mouth.”

George
.

George stared at the
doorless opening to the water heater closet, transfixed. He laughed. He was losing his mind. It had finally happened. The stress and pressure he had placed upon himself while working on his masterpiece had finally become too much to bear. And because of it his imagination was now revolting, giving him clear warning that his body and mind needed rest. Looking down at the wounds he had allowed to be inflicted upon himself in the last twelve hours, the fact could not have been any clearer. He needed rest. This project, his Rosa, had been unequivocally rewarding and satisfying, but it had taken its toll on him. He was no longer a young man. Things were no longer as easy as they had been with Carmelita.

George knew that his wounds needed to be cleaned and properly dressed. Something involving more soap and
scrubbing, and less sweat and dirty rags. He sighed, dropped his eyes beyond the horizon of his modest, hairy gut and down to the floor.

Yes, he would rest. There would be no more tinkering with his masterpiece until his body and mind had recuperated. He’d done enough damage already. God knew he couldn’t afford to have any more accidents that evening.

But first, George lifted his gaze again to the closet. There was one last thing that needed to be done. The girl had to be disposed of before she started to stink. And he had long ago promised to himself never to let that particular unpleasantness happen again.

*

Ten minutes later, George had returned to the basement carrying a plastic blue tarp under his arm. Folded up in it was a roll each of duct tape and paper towels. He had not bothered to put on a new shirt since there was no sense in dirtying another. He crossed the middle of the mannequin room, casting a quick glance at his lovelies as he passed by. He stopped at the closet entrance, exhaled deeply, and walked through.

Aside from the water heater, the confined space was barely big enough to hold the occupancy of two human bodies along with the spread of an unfolded tarp. But George made do. The tarp crinkled as he ripped open the packaging
and spread its membrane across the floor. With his breath held, he daubed at the floor beneath Rosa’s dress with wad after wad of paper towels. After a few foul minutes of this, he put the lid on the shit bucket and shoved it into the mannequin room behind him.

He tried his hardest not to look at her when he untied her wrists from the water pipe. And he managed to do a fairly good job of it, until her head slumped to the side as he lifted her, landing with a gooey
thud
against his left forearm. When that happened he let out a disgusted grunt and dropped her to the floor. She didn’t seem to mind as much as George did.

George dragged the sticky smear across his pants, shuddering away the brief urge to vomit as he did so.

“With the best, comes the worst,” George said, in an unusual burst of philosophy.

And then she spoke his name again.

At this point he allowed himself a glance at the girl’s body. She still wore the grimy red sundress, torn beneath one arm, and at the bottom edge. Her once tan skin was now sickly white, the only color lent to them from dirt streaks and bruises. She was, without question, dead as a doornail.

“There will be no more talking,” George said. “Not from you. Not from anyone.” With that, he took the roll of duct tape and tore off a strip. And just as he leaned forward to apply it, he was halted by horrible fascination. Both corners of Rosa’s mouth were stained with lines of blood. And it was wet. She had been dead for the better part of
eight hours and had remained unmoved. Except for when George had borrowed her scalp. But, at that time, he knew that the blood had not been present because he had studied her face, had even stroked it fondly during the process. Where then, had it come from? When he’d just dropped her to the concrete?

The thought disturbe
d him. It bothered him enough that all he wanted to do was apply the tape and be done with it. But he couldn’t do it. Not yet. Because there was something else on her lips besides gore. It was a solid whitish clump, wetted by the blood. George prodded at Rosa’s jaw with his bandaged hand, feeling his stomach lurch at the same time. He depressed her chin. It took a fair amount of pressure, but her jaw eventually unhinged. Yes, there was definitely something bound up in there.

George tacked the strip of tape to the surface of the water heater and used his good hand to reach down and into Rosa’s mouth. He pinched the soft object between his fingers and tugged it free. There,
under the dismal light of the closet’s single light bulb, George sat, mouth set in the wide ‘o’ of a silent scream.

He was not looking at the remnants of the woman’s breakfast, caught fast in her lips as she died. Nor was he seeing the chewed up remains of a tongue, bitten fr
ee during a death seizure. What George Sandoval had removed from the dead girl’s mouth was the ragged, nail-less stump of his own middle finger. Bone protruded from one end of the inch long digit. The other end was whole, and relatively unscathed, with the exception of the missing fingernail, which George knew was still attached and wadded up in the makeshift bandage on his left hand.

George stared silently at the severed chunk. There was no doubt that it was his. And that terrified him, made his bare, sweating torso quiver. He could hardly breathe, his lungs pulling air in short chuffs. His hand trembled, letting the finger fall between his knees in the dirt.

“How?” George said. A tingle ran up the flesh of his neck, pulsing in his scalp. He itched his forearm absently with his swaddled hand. Rosa stared up at him with rheumy red eyes, her involuntarily bald head cocked at an unnatural angle. George stared back, aware only of the chill that had overcome his bare skin. He listed to one side, unbalanced, and nearly toppled. He was unaware of it but he had begun to hyperventilate. In his chest, his heart beat steadily faster, keeping rhythm with the deadly melody of George’s panicky brain.

And then he swooned once more. This time, George was unable to catch himself. He put out his good arm as he rocked, but the elbow simply folded when his palm met the floor. In the next instant George’s head met concrete and he collapsed on top of the open tarp.

*

When George awoke, he found himself supine, staring up at the rust-patched eggshell cylinder of the water heater. The bare cement walls were at once familiar to him. He blinked his eyes and licked his lips, both very much in drought. He took a deep breath, which filled his nose with fine dust, and caused him to erupt in a coughing fit. This stirred more dust beneath his face. His coughing intensified, until at last, he doubled himself into an upright position, leaning against the water heater. In the cool room, its warm surface was a welcome sensation on the skin of his back.

George flexed his stiff jaw, finding that both his cheekbone and that side of his skull tingled with radiant pain. He remembered falling, but had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. And there, still lying beside him, was the reason for his fainting.

Aside from the bloody lips, Rosa looked even paler yet, approaching the bleached color of her doppelganger in the other room. George spotted the severed fingertip again and put the first knuckle of his clenched fist between his teeth. He bit down hard enough to temper the anxiety of looking at his own severed body part—albeit a small one—and the action served to help get him thinking, instead of going into a panic.

There was a perfectly logical explanation for this. In fact, it was so simple that it took almost no time at all to figure out. The little bitch had bitten off the fingertip that very evening, at the same time she’d clawed his arm, before he left for work. In his currently stressed state—the one that had led to him hearing a dead girl’s whispers—he had also repressed the fact that he was missing part of his finger, something that had no doubt been bandaged all the while he was at work. Yes, that made perfect sense.

Except that it didn’t. Not at all. How in the hell would he have simply
forgotten
that a piece of his anatomy had been amputated and gone on about his evening at work without a second thought?

George
. Rosa’s blue lips gave not a twitch when her voice danced in George’s ears.

“No,” he said, scrambling backward and around the edge of the water heater. “No, no, no.”

I’m here
, Rosa whispered.
Here with you now
.

“No, you’re not my Rosa,” George said warily. His back was against the hard wall now.

I’m yours. You are mine.

“No,” he whispered. He stared at the lifeless husk of her contorted body, and at once became enraged. “No!”

George stood up, stomped over to her, yelling all the way.

“No! You’re dead, do you hear me? You are nothing,
have always
been
nothing but an empty, pretty shell! Like an Easter egg whore! You are an Easter egg whore! You are not my Rosa!”

George kicked her limp form as spittle flew from his lips. He bent down, not allowing himself to listen to her whispers, and dragged her forcibly over
the crinkly surface of the tarp.

You’re mine
.

George barked a laugh. He rolled the girl’s stiff body up like a grisly cigar, until there were four layers of plastic between her and the floor. He then used the duct tape to seal the death shroud permanently. All the while, her voice drifted out to him, clear as day, but George just shook his head and shouted obscenities loud enough to drown out her soft noise. When she was done, wrapped in her cocoon of eternal sleep, George grabbed Rosa by the feet and hauled her out of the closet.

Grunting, he pulled her through the mannequin room, moving quickly so that his lovelies would not have to witness this repulsive act. He saw fallen drops of blood, his blood, that were now brown blobs in the dirt and could not help from stealing at glance up at Rosa,
his
Rosa.

The gravelly crunch of weighted plastic on dirt came to a stop. George dropped the corpse’s feet, but still stood hunched.

She was gone. Rosa was gone. He had left her standing right there, at the front of the line, standing sentry over his fallen blood droplets. And now…

George straightened his spine with great effort. His age defied his will but eventually he stood erect. He scanned the room with terrified confusion. The most magnificent of his mannequins was nowhere to be found.