Flesh Puzzle

In the beginning it was enough . I’d be wide-eyed , quietly watching her through the windows . Limbs and torso like a slender tree ; bowing in wind and always shooting up toward the sun . She’d wear summer skin in the middle of winter with freckles spoiling her shoulders and cheekbones . Her birthmark was a dull red stain at her collarbone and she had a mole beneath her left breast . She was thirteen and I thirty , but my , oh my , did I ache to see her insides !

The house next door ... they called it the sea house because it was two stories of cerulean blue . Through my bedroom window I could see naught but an empty bedroom . But late September the Parler family moved in . The Father was a tree of a man who was always working and the mother was a blonde lady named Annie with long legs . She brought around a tray of brownies for me ... " Pathetic bitch ! " I thought as I fed them to the Cooper , my dog . I took him for a walk in the early morning mist ...

It was late afternoon when I first saw their daughter , the sun was just dipping into honey and smearing it above the horizon , and there she was , skipping tirelessly with burnt blonde hair mid-air and utter determination caressing her features . And God ! Did I want to caress them too . I imagined feeding her soft hair through my fingers and gently unbuttoning her school uniform , holding those willowy bones to the cement and entering her with a knife . The sound would be heavenly ... Elastic skin splitting then bursting open with the colour of fire , passion , death . Such a wonderful colour she’d be !

But in that moment of shut-eyed daydream she had vanished , without as much as a skipping rope to mark her angelic existence . I sighed , bowed my head and shuffled toward home . Only to have a fire alight inside of me and a grin carve its way into my face later , when I saw through two layers of glass right into her darling bedroom . I thanked the lord profusely ...

But the first night her bed was vacant . So instead I let my imagination meander ; silently dissatisfied . My fantasies of the child that night were immoral and they stirred up the dark , sadistic part of me . So I let my eyes glaze over and my hands wander .

Annie loved to garden . I often saw her about , swathing herself in irises , tulips and roses . I wanted to rip them from their beds in the soil and clump the dirty weeds together to shove into her mouth ( so I wouldn’t have to listen to that whining voice of hers any longer ) . But alas , I was dying to know what her daughters name was . And so I opened my mouth and made sounds , which formed into dull words and then blunt sentences . I hadn’t shaved in several months . I didn’t like the feel of speaking , prickling my neck with my own beard .

“ So how are you enjoying the neighbourhood ? ”

She paused before she replied , as though her brain took a little longer to process conversation than it should . I wanted to take the hose from the grass behind her , turn the tap to full blast , hold her nose and fill and fill until her lungs inflated with non-air and her chest exploded . But instead , I waited ...

“ Oh it’s quite nice thank you . I have been feeling a bit funny though , do you know if there’s anything wrong with the tap water ? It doesn’t taste ... “

“ I don’t think you’ve introduced me to your family ” I interrupted ; I haven’t had practice in this , this conversing , this politeness . She looked almost startled .
“ Oh well , I’m so sorry . Mark , well , he’s out working . But I can introduce you to my daughter Lucy if you like ? ”

Lucy , I tasted it on my tongue , I almost said it aloud to hear if it sounded just as pretty as it did in my head . Lucy ... I nodded to Annie and said it again several different ways in my mind before she came out to the front yard to stand by her mother . She was just as tall and she wore the same blue-green giraffe eyes . I wanted to stroke her , carry her away on my shoulder back to the basement , where God would meet us and we’d drown in all the colours of his rainbow . But somehow , I resisted .

Mother nudged daughter . She blurted out a “ Hello . ” in a sweet candy voice and I suddenly wanted to hear her scream , to cry and to sob violently until her little figure was a shaking leaf and I , the sadistic wind . I was nervous . “ Hello , I’m Mike , your neighbour . ” I held out my monster palm and it engulfed hers , I held it a moment too long but her mother simply regarded me curiously .

You like affection don’t you ; I thought to her loudly in my mind . I wanted to give her a special kind of affection , one that lasted onwards to heaven . But not yet , I told myself , narrowly refusing temptation .

One week later I sat by my window with greedy eyes . She flowed into the room like music and lifted her arms , bringing her shirt high above her head . Her bra was a faded red . Her fingers reached to unclasp it and when it released I stifled an audible groan . Oh my ... her breasts were so slightly ; lovely blooms with nipples the colour of piglet skin . Tender flesh and tissue ; I decided I’d cut from her chest first , savouring the way it’d lift up from her mutilated , young body . Separate parts .... Pieces ... Lucy would be my puzzle and I’d mix her up and put her together again . I always did like puzzles .

It was agony seeing her bare skinned from the stomach and upward . Seeing her delicious blank canvas so close . Devising the way I would pluck her from her family home and lay her across the 1950’s operating table in my basement . I could have done it that night , you know . But you always enjoy things more when you have to wait for them . Something momma taught me , before daddy and I forced an electric sander to her warm skin . Afterwards hugging her blood to us , laughing and collapsing in red playing happy family .

Dad and I were close . He taught me everything I know . Later I would use it all against him and skin him alive with the electric carving knife I bought him for Father’s day in ‘87 . He would be so proud to see the jars alongside my basement wall . Suspended organs in jars just like momma’s . Like father like son they say .
My dreams were agonisingly lucid the night after I saw her naked . Bones bursting through skin , like flowers from the earth in spring . Fingers snapping like feeble twigs in autumn wind . The skin remaining on her battered body winter pale from shock as a separate piece lies beside her on the cement , still summer golden and freckled .

I woke at 4 a.m. sweating lust and choking on dust , feeling that throbbing ache all over . Oh I want to see your innards , darling . I sang softly . Even though this was a song I had never heard before . I shook the sleep from my body and I fell down onto my knees habitually , bounding my fingers and sinking my head in prayer .

Oh dear Lord ,
I will not wait any longer . She tempts me God , oh how she tempts me . I fear I am not strong enough . Give me enough strength to do what I must with her infantile body . Give me strength to do what I will with this gift of life . I pray forgiveness God , but this is something I cannot stop .
Amen !

Oh yes , that day I would do it . I would bathe in the blood of little Lucy Parler . Her shrilled screams still reverberating in my newly crimsoned basement . I would paint the walls with her dismembered limbs and stroke the flaps of flesh after I’d cut each from her . Then later that night I’d clean it all up and Lucy Parler would just be a collection of organs in jars .

But Lucy Parler was gone . Through my window once again I saw a vacant room . My breath had seemed to have disappeared with her . I hammered the brick wall in my living room with my fists and the blood from my knuckles mocked me . Eventually I ran outside to have the sun beat down on me , hearing neighbours talk from across the road .

“ Oh well that isn’t very good then , is it ? ” The man said . “ I know ! I hope our tap water is okay , I wouldn’t want to spend the holidays in hospital , poor Annie ... They were such nice people too . Such a shame , and that Lucy kid too ! “

My heart sped in response to her name . Serves the dumb bitch right , I thought about the mother . But Lucy ... Oh Lucy ! How could God do this to us ? We would have had such fun . You would have become an angel and I would have experienced heaven for a little while . Oh beautiful Lucy , you left me no choice ...

My dog Cooper didn’t look nearly as wonderful as you would had without flesh ...