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  I held out my right hand and Walt gave me what I needed. The cleaver was heavy and un-retractable in my grip. It made for a therapeutic swing once I got the hang of it. Took off the head first and it required a surprising six tries to completely sever. I'd wanted to do this sort of work before and had on a couple occasions after a hard day, blown off some steam by letting loose on the mid section of someone I was charged with preparing. Just a few wild swings or jabs the results of which were easily concealed beneath suits or dresses that they'd wear till they rotted off. Still, it's not like I had something as gratifying as this cleaver to work with. All the instruments I had were designed for precision cutting and trimming and though I'd occasionally gone out to the garage for something a bit more savage, the best I'd come back with was a hammer and it pulverized bones - not as easily concealed as the cuts.

  After her head had finally popped off and rolled away from the hold my left hand had on her chin, pushing it back for better leverage and access, there was a euphoric wave that enveloped me. My fingertips tickled with power and the sudden erection I had was impossible to conceal. Immediately I gripped the right arm at the elbow and slammed home a beauty of a blow just beneath the shoulder and the whole thing nearly broke completely off. Hunter Malcomson repeated, "Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god." over and over as I worked. As soundtracks go, it was not bad at all.

  After her head, I saw to the other limbs in turn, each taking fewer and fewer attempts to separate. I was disappointed, truthfully when Walt insisted on taking over after that. I felt pretty damn good and it still brings back some tingly sensation in my gut, as I recall it now. Walt went to work and I took the Jameson from Hunter's hands. He was regarding me with a slack holding of his mouth and wide, unblinking fashion of eyes. He continued to ogle me for a while, but I wasn't bothered. I sat down against the wall, sweaty and exhilarated, happy to be amongst friends.

  The next drink I took was the finest of my life. There was a warmth without burn that spread through my gut and in to my extremities until I was sure I glowed. As the tough bits of flesh began to fall off and collect beneath our feet, like rubbery, dry snow, the high pitched sound of Walt's electric saw sounded like the humming of birds and I slept with that song in my ears for a week.

  If we were trying to pull this off, selling to restaurants or some fine foods line, it could be a problem, but what goes into pet food is what doesn't go in to yours. Hunter had to have a paper trail to show a supply line, but Walt had livestock and those heifers squeezed out critters like toothpaste. Who was gonna argue he was supplying more than he produced?

  Maybe it was dramatic and over reaching for me to claim we'd saved the town single handedly, but we'd taken strides toward ensuring locally owned businesses didn't go belly up. I got half of what Hunter paid Walt for the meat, which was half of what he paid for the rest. Everybody saved money, everybody made money. Syam didn't have any lay offs, Grimaldi made an extra quarter in profits, and I was saving all kinds of costs and pulling in extra cash on top.

  Of course there's some bodies that are of no use for meat. They've been embalmed or had chemo, more and more of that, these days sad to say. Still, I'm not going to get a shiny new box for each or put them into the ground. Especially not after my eyes were opened. What's no good for money, is worth ten times that in pleasure. I bought myself a good solid cleaver like Walt's and some heavy duty saws for the hell of it. If any of my wives were around to testify, they'd say I was a calmer, milder man today. I'd tell them I was in therapy.

  When Barb bailed, I just quit marriages. The more receptive I got to her voyeuristic inclusion of our "guests", the less she seemed to enjoy it, as if the whole point of their presence was my discomfort. When I went so far as to mildly suggest one time disrobing a young couple who'd bought it together taking a dangerous bend on a rainy night, she decided it wasn't her bag anymore. I wasn't sure if it was the lady victim's undeniable attractiveness making her jealous or the full extent of the trauma they'd suffered on impact made apparent once they were nude that cooled her libido, but that was the last time. That night she couldn't sleep. She said she had to leave me and it had all been a terrible mistake. She decided she'd had enough of self discovery all together.

  The note she left was designed to point an incriminating finger at me. It didn't spare any details of her own involvement and she seemed to have an undercurrent of self loathing I'd been completely unaware of, our entire relationship. She even went so far as to say she'd become involved with me on a dark whim to risk the borders she sensed I would push her beyond and I really was shocked to learn that. It was as honest an expression I'd ever heard from her.

  Had she mailed it to someone or sent out some sort of evidence somewhere, I suppose it would have been disastrous, but as her actions seemed to be spontaneously conceived and passionately executed, she just didn't think it through that far. I own a mortuary after all.

  She was high as a kite when she'd done it, but that didn't erase the admiration I felt for her conviction when I found her. Most ladies who attempt to check out with a razor blade and a bottle of sherry survive with little scratch marks, delicately placed at the base of the palms, and everybody knows that is not the way to do it. In some circles, I'm told, those little white marks are ornamental and something akin to a status symbol. Not for my Barb, though. She'd taken our best kitchen knife and made deep incisions from elbow to wrist with only a single hesitation cut that only went halfway. Then to make sure she'd finished the job, she'd drawn it straight through the fleshy bit under her first chin, tracing the outline of her jaw bone.

  She looked for all the world like a pornographic novelty pez dispenser packaged in the bathtub. The note was left on top of her dresser.

  She wasn't on to all of my practices. Obviously she knew I wasn't a straight arrow, what with her sexual proclivities so readily obliged, but the business end she was unaware of. Seems she would have mentioned them in the note had she known.

  That I had a bad track record with women was common knowledge around town, so it came as no surprise when word got around that wife number three had left. Abandoned the marriage for parts unknown and good riddance.

  I got on best I could. I got some hobbies. I found that I loved walks in the woods and I enjoyed feeding scraps from my personal stash to the dog pack out there. I was not daft enough to feed them out of my hand, but I'd leave packages and enjoy discovering their disappearance the next day. I also walked with a gun. You'd be crazy not to, like old Herb Dross.

  Barb had been the first human flesh they'd tasted as far as I know. I had lovingly carved up her breasts and portions of her buttocks and thighs and a couple other fleshy cuts, marinated them overnight, then cooked them for ten hours in the slow cooker. I'd thought it would be maybe a highly romantic gesture to eat her myself.

  It wasn't.

  That much was obvious after a few bites. I was working on what was probably her tongue, judging by the tough chewiness it retained even after so long in the pressure cooker when I gave up and mourned in a more traditional way.

  I still felt she should be eaten, or more precisely, consumed, absorbed in to another living thing. The poetic quality of the notion was not overwhelmed by the failure of practice. So over the course of the next several days, I fed her a piece at a time to the dogs in the woods. There were only a few at that time, but over the years they've grown in number and become more dangerous and even aggressive. Barb was the only one I cooked for them, but I found I enjoyed feeding the dogs too much to stop.

  The late autumn air was crisp and exhilarating, with the smell of a wood burning fire working not far off. I was reverentially silent on my walk, but inside I was singing or at least humming a spirited tune. Over the weeks, I'd replayed the dispatching of Susie Dross many times to undiminishing pleasure in my mind. It made me feel for the first time in a long while, like I'd made a real contribution.

  Over the years, the business had begun to feel like a meaningless exercise in survival,
as banal and routine as going to the grocery store. It was no longer interesting or exciting. The town looked to have pulled out of its funk and maybe I wasn't so essential to its well being any more. I'd even given thought to the possibility of selling out and travelling for a while. But dispatching Mrs. Dross was something I could feel good about myself for and maybe there were others that I could eliminate the same way and be performing a useful societal function.

  I was kidding myself if I thought I was going to be able to keep this game up long. Walt died of a massive coronary last year and Hunter had taken the opportunity and dissolved our partnership and friendship. I was just stockpiling bodies now. It was compulsive. What I was saving in burial costs, I was investing in refrigeration units and storage lockers.

  Maybe it was far fetched. I thought there were numerous uses I would stumble on to for them. But, in truth, that prospect didn't hold the same appeal to me, it once had. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed feeding the dogs. I felt more like one of them than any citizen in town, but they didn't even need me. It was not exactly what I'd call a reason to live. Pretty soon, I was going to have to start burying people or leave. If I was going to go, the idea of taking another nuisance like Susie with me deserved consideration.

  It was Mrs. Dross that I was scattering to the beasts of the field on that November afternoon. I was down to the last of her. In an attempt to give Herb a break, I was careful to put him at the opposite end of the woods. My hope and fantasy was that the dog that ate Herb would sniff out and kill the ones who got Susie. That he'd go on some savage rampage and give her the karmic butt-fucking she had coming.

  I had heard many shots echoing through the hills over the course of my stroll. It was rifle season after all. There was a particularly concentrated source of shooting south of me and I put off finishing my walk, not wanting to go into an area that heavily populated and trigger happy.

  He startled me when he spoke and I cursed out loud. "Shit. You scared me, Hal."

  "Sorry Mr. Wainscot. Shoot any dogs?"

  The question struck me as sarcastic and I answered in kind, "Oh yeah, love to shoot dogs. Don't you?"

  I was surprised at the reaction the comment had on his face. He looked slapped, but recovered a look of neutrality quickly and nodded curtly and said he would see me later, then continued walking.

  It wasn't until I came across the first dog carcass that it dawned on me he was not being sarcastic at all. The feral beast was a big one, splayed on it's back, it's right front leg nearly separated from its torso by what looked to be a shotgun blast. Many smaller wounds pocked him, his white fur making them easy to find. Poor fella probably took several minutes to bleed out, I thought. Must've been caught between a hunter and his life. Strange, too, I thought. These dogs were good at avoiding them.

  The second one was still alive, though barely. I came across him five minutes later, lying on his side on the rise of a small hill amongst the nearly bare trees. His eyes followed me, but he lacked the strength to turn his head as I passed. He was past the point of whimpering and I would have thought him dead already, but for the steam escaping between ever lengthening pauses from his nose. The ground was covered in a thick mass of leaves and I suspected were he to be picked up, the undercarriage would be very bloody, but from where I stood, there was little to recommend him as mortally wounded, save for the small hole between his ribs trickling a dark substance, not pooling beneath him, but trailing into the leaves to disappear. That and the previously discovered dead colleague. I approached him cautiously and saw he had been shot at close range and by a more precise instrument which meant that indeed someone was shooting dogs today and they were more than one.

  A panic began to rise in me with mysterious origin almost as if it were I being hunted down. My pace quickened as I walked toward home. I saw three more expired dogs on the return trip and each heightened the excitement increasingly threatening to overrule my senses. My gait widened with every sharp crack that reverberated over the hills and by the time I got back, I was in a dead run. I shut the door behind me and sank to the floor unable to pinpoint what exactly my anxiety was. After twenty minutes, I got to my feet and went to the kitchen where I splashed my face and neck with water before filling a glass from the sink and draining it down my throat three times. Then I switched to Jameson.

  That night I slept with the Winchester beside me and in the morning I took it to the kitchen where I was making my second pot of coffee when the doorbell rang.

  "Morning, Mr. Wainscot."

  "Morning Sheriff."

  He looked nonchalantly at the rifle barrel clutched in my right hand. "Going hunting?"

  I leaned the gun up against the wall and left it there. "No. I was yesterday. Just cleaning it this morning."

  "I see. Bag anything?"

  I shook my head. "Nah. I'm a lousy shot. I just like to make the loud noises."

  He laughed at that. "Happen to shoot any them dogs, maybe?"

  "Not a one, sheriff, but I sure saw a few. Seemed an awful shame to me."

  "Well, I'm just trying to get an idea on the count. See if we can get a handle on that pack. Apply some population control."

  "Really?"

  "Oh, yeah. They're a menace. You should know. You did Herb Dross's funeral, not five weeks ago. Last couple of years, they've gotten real aggressive too. Seem like they're coming for us like they've developed a taste, you know?" He was exaggerating for humor, but seemed to think the dogs were a menace that needed to be dealt with.

  "That seems a little hard to believe."

  "No, it's true. That's why I organized the hunt yesterday. That and I had a thought about Susie Dross. Passed my mind, maybe she'd been overcome and gone out to meet the same fate as her husband. You never know how grief is going to take hold of a body. I've seen stranger reactions. Anyway, it was worth a shot."

  "I didn't know about it."

  "I know. I didn't tell you. Never took you for the type, but Hal Upchurch said he saw you out there with your gun and everything..."

  "Yeah, I saw old Hal. Scared the crap out of me."

  "So. You're positive, you didn't shoot any dogs yesterday?"

  "Never shot at any, anyhow."

  "Alright then. Probably gonna have another hunt, next Saturday. Come on out, if you want."

  It was a week that dragged along in slow motion. I held a suspicion that every breath I took would be my last. I didn't sleep either, just lay down for ritual's sake every night for an hour, then got back up for practicality. There was work to do and quickly. I just had to figure out what it was.

  For reasons that didn't work themselves into my waking thoughts, I felt my own fate was tied to those dogs. We were scavengers all, picking the bones of the dead. The digestive system of this town. Should an asshole say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body? Or likewise, the hands can not say to the stomach, we don't need you. But all the members of the body work together for the good of the body, and all the shit the dogs and I rolled in and spread around the town provided fertility to the soil of the population. We, the unseemly members, did we not deserve a greater honor and to be treated with special modesty? For if one member suffers, we all suffer. These were the particular strains of thought repeating in my head. My brothers were being hunted down, and when they were gone, I would be next.

  There was rain for three days. It was cold and growing colder, but the rain at least softened the ground. People would notice fresh graves dug in the cemetery, so I had to take night trips out in to the country and find spots where I could plant a few. I knew enough to go deep. With the dogs around, I had to, to keep them from digging up the bodies. I'm not a young man now, sixty-three and the labor was taking its toll. Of course, at the cemetery I had machinery to do the digging, but out here, it was all me and the devil, and he helped out his fair share.

  I gotta give him that.

  Thanks to the cleaver and a chainsaw, I didn't have to worry about lugging around anything shaped like a person. I
economized on space and didn't fret over partials in a hole. If the right leg ended up in one spot and the left in another, it bothered me not at all.

  Wednesday morning, I got a present. The Bojanski family of six were taken from us in an auto incident along with the driver of an eighteen-wheeler from out of town with enough amphetamine in his system to keep him walking hours after he'd passed. Sent the driver back home, but the Bojanski's were all mine. I made six fresh graves Friday, the night before the burial, using my digger and going down nine feet instead of the usual six. I packed away a dozen bodies, in pieces before filling the holes back in to the usual depth. Of course, I had to buy brand new caskets, one for each family member, though I did do some calculating and found some of the children small enough, that I could do the job with three. In the end, I decided the smart thing to do, was play it straight, as there would be plenty of attention focused on this service.

  The Bojanskis provided the perfect excuse not to join the sheriff's hunting party Saturday. The service was in the morning and the burial immediately following. There were lots of friends and family from out of town in attendance. It was the largest ceremony I'd hosted in years.

  In the distance, the pop of gunfire echoed and I flinched with every one. Several family members thanked me for the beautiful service and my heartfelt work, mistaking the origins of the emotion not concealed on my face.

  Afterward I took the hearse and Winchester and went for a drive to the nearest spot the road would take me toward the dog hunt. I left the car and trudged off in to the woods to find the sheriff. They were not hard to find. I just walked toward the gunfire and figured I was getting close when I realized that I should be wearing one of those orange hunter's coats so I wouldn't get mistaken for anything else.

  There was a sudden eruption of gunfire that didn't stop, but grew louder and more intense after a few seconds. It was a terrifying sound made of at least three different guns and joined by others from opposite directions after thirty seconds. There were yelps. The whole pack must've been caught in a low place. There was an incline straight ahead of me that I figured became a gulley on the other end, the rim of which the shooters must've been atop on the opposite side.