#and then when nancy ends up in the pool memory/nightmare i was like 'ah so vecna likes jonathan more too' lmao

[reineyday]

just finished stranger things s4 (vol 1 lol) and like, a big hand to jamie campbell bower good job bro 👏👏👏

[storytimewithtara-blog]

Nancy and The Artist

Fuck IPAs.

Not my typical first thought coming out of a blackout, it was normally regretting the aftertaste of whatever kind of vodka or tequila was on sale. They were more efficient when wanting to get drunk. Though the one thing I knew right now was hops were everywhere. I was dealing with limited other information on how I’d ended up downing so many beers. My eyes were hazy, ears ringing, and every limb felt numb, but my sense of smell had come back in a flash. Bad beer filled the air, along with burnt popcorn and something metallic.

Blurry shapes moved in front of my eyes. Pins and needles started to crawl through my feet and fingers, but everything still felt sluggish. I could feel pressure from the chair beneath my ass, some sign of improvement.  Ringing was getting lower. I managed to pick out words like crazy, deserved, cleaning, and a few fucks from the noise around me. Several people were talking, but none of their voices seemed aimed at me.

I started blinking hard, but the vision wasn’t working itself out. Limbs were coming alive, I managed to shake my head. Flexed my hands and legs, no pain. Seemed to be physically fine. My clothes felt slick, they stuck to my body as if I’d gone for a long run in July. that metallic scent was strong, might be what was blurring my eyes.

“Swear to fuck, every time I get the floors done some asshole loses their shit in here, “ a woman said.

Chairs were being shoved around, someone was angry. I hear wood snap. How did I end up in a bar? The gallery I planned to attend was in the downtown area, surrounded by restaurants and boutiques. No bars for at least three blocks. And that showing’s crowd was not one to frequent dives. I wouldn’t have joined if they had been in the rare mood anyway.

“Hey, I think her snack is still kicking,” a man said.

“No shit?! Thought she scooped them clean at the end,” another man slurred.

“Probably didn’t have enough time to chew on him. Who knows what he’s got left in there.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time she left her food for someone, me specifically, to clean up,” the woman’s voice came back in.

Were they talking about me? Why was I food? Whatever, more important things to focus on. Like finally getting full motion back. I rubbed my eyes, an act I instantly regretted as it seemed my hands were covered in the same stuff as my clothes. The action worked to clear my vision. The slick on my hands were red. Blood.

“Fuck,” I said.

“Ah, well, we know Snack Boy still has one word rolling around in there.” The slurring man was laughing.

Blood was splattered over me and the floor by my feet. Broken glass and foamy beer mixed with the pool gathered at my feet, guess that explained the hops. I followed a short trail across the floor to the stiletto heeled pale feet of a woman. She was wearing a tight blue cocktail dress, that looked marbled with the amount of blood on it, and had long straight red hair stuck to her. The hair almost covered the chunk of her neck that was missing.

“Fuck!” Me again, a bit louder.

“Hey, Nancy! You’re about to have another asshole losing its shit,” a woman called out from behind me.

“Literally this time!” The slurring man was having a blast with this.

“Someone cut Joe off. He is having far too much fun right now,” the first woman from earlier said. Apparently she was on the same brainwave as I was. She stepped in between me and the dead woman. This blocked the dead body, but her more casual jeans and t-shirt were covered in as much blood as I was. “I swear, Snack Boy, if you add vomit to my list of things to clean up tonight I will rip your throat out too.”

There’s that food name again. I didn’t feel like throwing up. My stomach was holding on to its contents, whatever that was other than bad beer. The body had been a shock, but I was steady. Confused as shit as to how this situation had come about, but steady. My memory was a blank, a bad omen when a dead body was involved. “What the hell is going on?”

“This may be a surprise, but you got lucky tonight.” She flipped back a long black curl of hair to look at the dead woman again. “If she hadn’t flipped her lid, you would have been the one turning cold tonight.”

“Her throat is-”

“Here!” the man holding up the body said. He shrugged the body over to one arm and waved over to me with his now free hand, a large chunk of meat gripped tight.

There was a lurch in my stomach. I thought it was the beginning of a gag, but realized it was too light for that. It’d been the start of a laugh, dare I say a giggle. That should be concerning. Maybe I was in shock. That would be reasonable. Isn’t a main part of being in shock, not knowing you are in shock through? I’d have to look it up later.

“Frank, you’re a dick.” The woman grabbed my arm and pulled me up from the chair. She looked back to the man still holding the throat up. She flicked a hand his way and it the same moment there was a bone sticking out of his arm.

“God damnit, Nancy!” He dropped the body to the floor, her head smacked against the edge of a table on the way down. A corner actually bent from the impact, but the guy was only focused on his now broken arm.

“You deserved it,” she sang back to him as she pulled me toward the door. “Now you just scurry on home and take a shower. Get drunk. Tomorrow you’ll have a bad hangover and convince yourself this was a nightmare.”

I stopped her from pushing me outside, an act that took more force that I thought it should have. She was a good five inches shorter than me and trim, but this woman was near heaving me out the door. “I just go home? After a fucking murder? Covered in blood? After I have no clue as to what the hell happened to me tonight?”

“It’s because of the no memory thing that I’m letting you out of this one. Also, I’ve got enough to do without adding another body to that list. Her, we can do away with until her people come for her. You might have people come poke around. I don’t know and don’t care to check it out. And it’s not like any cops you go yapping to will find anything.” She gave another nudge toward the door. “But the cop thing is a bad idea. You know that right? Looks very bad for you.”

I hadn’t thought to go to the police. That should have been something I wanted to do, right? “I don’t even know-”

“We could make it look very bad for you if we had to,” she had continued, not even listening to me. “But if you force us to put more effort into this, we will be very annoyed. I will be very annoyed. And you don’t want this crowd holding a grudge. You’ll probably end up dead. We can clean this up and, as a one-time courtesy, you walk out free as a bird.”

I looked past her into the bar. Waxed up wood floor, if you ignored the area filled with a crime scene. The tables and chairs were some dark wood that looked good other than the cracking vinyl cushions. Pinup girls printed on tin sheets hung throughout the walls. Stain glass lighting hanging down over tables and the bar. In the 50s this place might have been a nice gentlemen’s bar, but no one had bothered to update since then. And it had aged about as well as I’m sure the actual pinup girls had by 2005.

While most people were standing around the body, a few patrons remained in their seats. Drinking their beers as if this were a typical night. A couple at the bar were carrying on with a conversation about what do have for dinner after their drinks. “You seem rather casual about this disposing of a body thing.”

She pushed me through the doorway into the chilled night air. “You seem rather ungrateful about this walking away from a murder scot-free thing.”

“What the fuck kind of place is this?” I turned around to face her again and took in the front of the building this time. A rusted tin building, with a neon sign that spelled out “HEATHENS”. Though it only had the two h’s and e’s working. The outside looked no bigger than a 20 by 30 box, something a crew had slapped together in a day. But there had been at least twice the room inside. And the decor inside, even as dated as it was, did not match the exterior. There wasn’t any paved parking, just packed dirt from being parked on repeatedly over the years. The gravel road behind us stretched out with other decaying buildings dropped along, this seemed to be the only one with a still functioning business inside. But I knew we weren’t too far on the outskirts of the city. I could see the lights of downtown over the top of the building, seemed like a completely different world just a short drive away.

“A place you probably won’t ever find again. Night!” She turned back into the bar.

“Hey! How the hell do I get back home exactly?”

“I could call you a cab,” she glanced back at my clothes, “but on second thought maybe not.” Leaning farther into the door, I heard her call something to a person inside.

I watched her a hand and caught the sound of a thud hitting her hand. Then she pushed back to be on two feet. The woman walked down the short line of vehicles and stopped at a sleek, black Audi.

She laid back over the hood and pointed back to me. “To go along with your grand prize of staying alive, you get a brand new car!”

I didn’t move.

She rolled her eyes and pushed herself up to now be sitting on the hood. We stared at each other until she sighed and raised a hand at me. My feet moved, but I wasn’t the one telling them too. Each step was a hard crunch and once close enough she forced a set of keys into my hand. There was a keychain of a glittery martini glas attached to the key fob with the Audi logo. “Don’t be a pain now, Snack Boy. You are so close to being clear of this.”

I tried to give the keys back. “I don’t think stealing a car will add any good karma to my night.”

“It’s Trine’s car.” She saw my blank look and sighed again. “The dead woman inside. The one who was chewing on your brain bits. Her car. She won’t be using it. Probably stole it herself initially, but I’m sure she’s gotten that all cleared up on her own. No one would be looking for it anymore. I’ll tell her people it was fair game and they will understand. Tell people you had some old aunt die and leave you a car. Or just get home and ditch it tomorrow. I don’t really care. My business with you ends once you leave my property.” She moved off the hood and around me to go back toward the doorway.

I turned with her. “This cannot just end with me going home.”

The woman flickered from being five feet away from me to in my face with a hand gripping the back of my neck, fingers dug into my hair. There had been no steps between, no turning back to face me. I’d been staring more at her ass before and then right into her face.

Her eyes looked dark before, but were now full black with what appeared to be embers floating through them. “I am about out of patience with you, Snack Boy. Take my very kind offer of a car and go. If I do not hear you leave in the next five minutes, I will scalp you and use it to mop up what Trine spilled on my floor tonight.”

I blinked and she was in the doorway, back turned to me again. There was still a hand shaped spot of heat on my neck. My feet moved to their orders, this time under my own control, toward the driver’s side of the car she claimed I could take as my own if I wished. I fell into the low seat and adjusted the chair so my legs would fit. My clothes made a squish sound from the blood and beer in them. I’d have to clean this seat no matter if I kept the car or not. As I pulled out from the bar, I kept shifting in the seat unable to find a comfortable position. It seemed odd since I could tell the leather seats were top of the line. But a flash of that black eyed bartender laid over the hood went through my mind and a lightbulb came on upstairs, to match the one that had been turned on downstairs.

Shit. Guess it would be a cold shower to get all this gore off me.

“I’m not talking like a thick layer of sawdust, just a dusting, “ I said to Wendy, my ever faithful blonde and butch barmaid, as we cleaned glasses behind the bar. “As much as different liquids get spilled around here. I’d help soak some up. That blood took two hours hours to get off of everything last night. Not including my shower afterwards.”

“But then it’ll smell extra super woodsy in here all the time. You’ll start getting more of the nymph-type folk and they are just odd.”

George shook his head, straw hair rustling, from a table covered in broken chair parts nearby. “Fuck you too.”

Wendy flinched while looking down at the sink, but called out, “Not sorry, George. Your people are freaky.”

“No. No, this stops now,” I cut in. “I demand boring, I earned boring.” I took the last glass from her hand to dry. “You ever going to watch your mouth? It’s what got you killed in the first place.”

“No, because it was cursing the men of my village as they burned me at the stake. Oh! Which I just checked in on them last week and they’re down to only the last two bloodlines. I may pop in and shake them up a bit.”

“Just get someone to cover your shifts. But for now go wiggle your nose at the condiments and get them filled for the night.”

“Now that is offensive.” Wendy vanished into the back storeroom to continue prep.

I popped open a PBR and took it to George. “Please do not let my big-mouthed worker effect your fine on fixing up my chairs.”

George took a swig of the beer and smiled, “ Eh, she’s right. Why do you think I hang around here so much? Dances, rituals, sacrifices, or some other ceremony what feels like every damn night. Too much to keep up with.”

I was personally thankful he was anti-social with his own kind. Because of that I could just give George cheap beer and get any handiwork done for free. Worked out great when someone goes psycho in your bar and breaks five chairs and two tables, one post mortem. “Oh, speaking of rituals. Taco night. I have you down for those jalapeno pinwheels again, that good?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He rubbed his fingers down the side of a cracked chair leg. The wood splintered itself back together to form a whole piece.

“Awesome! I will leave you to your work, good sir.” I wanted to give the tabletops another wipe down before any early birds rolled in. Mostly the Trine Ground Zero, to make sure none of the sticky residue from the blood or the cleanup chemicals remained. I had fans running all morning, but the bleach smell was stuck in the air.l Maybe I could spill a few beers around on purpose to cover the smell, but then it’d be sticky again. And i’d be back to square one. After that bit of fun was inventory, my least favorite thing in this world or the next. Stuck in the back for hours, counting. Just counting. Damn. It. All.

As a person who had been in literal hell, you think it would be impossible to find something worse. But that spreadsheet, holy shit was it awful. Sometimes it made me wonder if I’d ended my walk through hell or had been sidetracked in some bizarre bit of torture and never realized. If I had made it back, and ever ended up there again, I knew that spreadsheet would be waiting for me.

The front door banged open, rattling the Bud Light neon sign nearby. Out of habit of being a bartender I turned my head toward the sound to see who might be coming in. And the longer habit of being an asshole had me ready to tear them a new one for being shitty to my door. My insult caught in my throat cause it wasn’t a regular coming in, but Snack Boy. How’d he manage to get back here? Most normal people would go past this place and never realize it was here. That’s what I paid Wendy’s damn cousin for anyway. He must have put a lot of thought into finding the bar.

He looked a lot better without the blood, but still a bit frizzled out. His hair had looked brown with all the much before, but it was actually blonde. Trine had dressed him up in a generic three-piece suit, but now he was in jeans and plain t-shirt. This fit him better. Wonder if his ass looked better than it had last night too.

“You gotta fucking help me,” Snack Boy said.

“Do I now?” There was a short list this could be. Trine spent all his money. He’d been MIA too long from work and was out of a job. He’d contracted some horrible disease. Maybe she had-

“There’s a fucking body in my studio,” his statement cut off my train of thought.

George snorted behind Snack Boy. “Join the club.”

That had not been on my list. “It’s there now? Trine leave her last boy toy meal at your place?”

“It’s a woman. She’s tied to a chair in my studio out in the backyard. She’s got cuts all over. The floor beneath her is covered in blood.” He was one of those ‘talk with their hands’ types, but even given the topic his gestures were not frantic. More like a good fishing trip of gestures.

I wonder if the blood pool will get bigger each time he tells the story?

“It’s a woman,” I repeated. That seemed odd. Trine and I had not been friends, but from what I heard of her, she didn’t swing that way. Her meals were men and never bloody. From what I knew her type of ‘feeding’ was pretty clean, more a mental thing. Sucking away at the brains of those she was with.

“And she is cut up and dead in my studio,” he said slowly, apparently thinking I wasn’t grasping the direness of the situation. An edge of anger growing in his voice.

“Let’s not get rude now. Doesn’t seem like her usual thing. But she was going a bit off there at end, maybe she got violent before coming here.” It had almost been a shock to see her arrive at the bar. She didn’t come unless her cliche decided to go out for an ‘old timey’ night. Or she was kissing ass with some higher up who was holding a meeting here. And she certainly had not been around since our last conversation.

“So much for this all being a damn nightmare by this morning.” Now he was being snippy, throwing that back at me.

“Yeah, kinda sucks, dude. Sorry.” I stepped back to the table I’d been about to wipe off before being interrupted. If he was going to throw a tantrum, I wasn’t going to play that game.

“What do I do now? How do I get a body out of my studio? You made the other one disappear, what did you do? How do I clean up all the blood? You’re going to help me right?”

Dear fuck, he’s not going away. I didn’t stop wiping down my table. “There’s a lot of ways to get the body out. The easiest, I’d say, would be cutting her up a bit so you’re not seen walking out with what is clearly a body. Put her in bags or wrapped in something. Tell the neighbors you’re doing some spring cleaning if they’re nosy. Drop her somewhere. Several somewheres. I’m not telling you what we did with Trine, because it’s not a service I can offer to you. For the blood, bleach is a thing. Just air out the space and buy lots of Febreeze for afterward.”

“Cut her up? What kind of sick-”

“You said she was already cut up a bit right? Just follow the lines. Right at the joints would be the neatest. If you catch the rigor mortis just right, maybe you can break her apart.” I snuck a glance at him hoping for a good reaction.

Snack Boy dropped into a chair, but didn’t go pale like I’d hoped. The same one Trine had propped him up in the other night when he was following her around like a dog wanting a treat. “This shit is all so mundane to you.”

I kept up with the tables, very disappointed in the lack of reaction, but didn’t say more. The bleach was starting to bug my nose again. Should follow my own advice and go get some Febreeze.

“What kind of place is this, really?” he asked as he stared over at the bar tabs.

Oh wow, he managed a thought that wasn’t about himself. You didn’t see that a lot with the civilian types that got caught in these situations. I gave him some honesty and a smile,”My bar is a little hell on earth. Filled with monsters you know of, but are in no way ready to have exist.”

“What kind of monster are you?” he turned to look back to me, those dark green eyes hitting me.

“A basic hellfire bitch,” Wendy called out from the bar. She’d come back out with the condiments stacked on a couple trays.

“Still your boss. It would be a shame if you had to redo all of that hard work.” I reached out mentally and rattled the bottom tray as a warning.

“Can you please help me?” Snack Boy asked.

“It’s asking a lot to come in here and expect me to drop my work for a stranger.” I mean, given that it was a Wednesday night, the crowd wasn’t likely to be wild. But I had thought that about Tuesday night. Then I was cleaning Trine blood for two hours. On top of that I had inventory. Which I hated. And he was giving me an out.

Wait a second.

“I don’t think I can do this alone. Please.” He was rubbing his thighs with his palms, starting to get nervous I’d really turn him down.

Gotta play this right. Make it sincere. Well, as close as I could get. Moving to another table I started wiping it down like I hadn’t been listening to him, but slowed my hand before stopping. I gave him a little look over. He was a pretty solid guy; those jeans were pulled tight right now. He looked exhausted, hard to sleep when you had a dead body lying around. Well, for most people. One little reluctant toss of the rag onto the table and then I said, “Alright. You get one more favor from me.”

He perked up. “Seriously? Thank Christ.”

“Wrong crowd man,” Wendy said. She stepped around the bar. “And while you’re out doing community service, I will be here alone?”

“Call Jake in early. He’s been looking for extra cash. He can run the ar and you can work on inventory for me.”

Wendy threw her arms into the air. “There it is. I knew it. Fucking inventory bullshit.”

“Just bibbidy bobbidy it to count itself,” George said as he took a drink.

Wendy turned on him. “You know, there has been enough crude witch humor already tonight. Don’t you need to lure some virgin into a pond or something right now?”

“Children, “I cut in before George came back with a response, “I don’t imagine I’ll be gone for too long. Should be back in time to finish it up with you. So behave.”

Snack Boy stood back up, he was smiling. “Thank you. Thanks so much for this. I really didn’t know what I was going to do.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re driving. Let’s do this.”

Wendy was glaring as we passed, but she pulled out her phone to call Jake. George was turning over a chair, running fingers over a crack to fill it in as he went. They’d be bickering again as soon as I left. If the chairs got fixed and at least three-fourths of the racks counted when I got back, they could finally do the nasty on the bar in their spare time for all I cared.

Outside, Snack Boy led me towards Trine’s car. The one he’d been keen on not taking.

“You’re still using this?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You said it should be fine. And I didn’t know what else to do with it yet either.”

I tilted my head as I waited for him to pop the door lock. “You like it.”

“It’s a car.” He unlocked his door and dropped himself in.

I heard the thunk of the lock going up and I swung into the passenger seat. The ever familiar smell of disinfectant hit my nose. “Had there been a mess in here too?”

“Just my side,” he said pulling out from the bar. “Blood from my clothes got on the seat. Cleaned it as soon as I got home.”

“Cause you’d fallen in love with the car by then.”

He pushed the gas and we sped down the gravel road heading toward the highway. Snack Boy was smiling again, “It may be the silver lining to this situation.”

It was strange how level he was. Given my occupation, I didn’t interact with a large amount of normal civilian/human type people. The few I’d been around tended to be far more unbalanced. The normal behavior was spinning in circles over whatever dark corner of the world they’d found themselves in. There is more crying and ranting. Begging and pleading. General whining about how unfair it was that ‘life’ did this to them. Snack Boy was tapping the steering wheel to the beat of the song playing on the radio. Maybe it was shock, he’d still not realized what happened to him yet. A second dead body within 24 hours could do that.

“You get your memory back yet?” I asked.

“Nope. I figured out I was supposed to go to a friend’s gallery showing on Sunday. I remember getting ready for that and then my memory jumps to your bar.”

“Are you an artist too?”

“Yeah. I do landscapes. Canvas and acrylic. I’ve gotten into some small pottery and sculpting work too lately.” He had this mixed tone of pride and embarrassment.

“Makes sense. You fit into her picky appetite.” That could also, maybe, explain his attitude right now. He’d Bob Ross’d his way to some peaceful state. Or got really high. Plenty of opportunities to purchase some new vice. Especially in this city.

Snack Boy looked confused, “You keep referring to me as a food.”

“It’s what she does, did, as far as I know. She’s one of those brain sucker types. But she’s this gross snob version that only eats artistic minds. Feeds on that talent first, I guess, and then feeds on the rest. Not a bad way to go, in comparison to the way other people I know eat people.”

“The woman left at my place is in my work studio out back, this shed I had converted. So that goes along with her art thing. But her brain looks like the one part of her that was left alone.” He pushed on the break as we came to the end of the gravel road where it met the highway.

I made a cannibal reference and he doesn’t flinch. Starting to lean towards the ‘on drugs’ theory, probably shouldn’t have let him drive me. “Maybe she was trying something new, sex wise. Which explains why a woman. It’s the blood that throws me off the most. Trine’s style is pretty clean.”

“You did say she went a bit crazy.” He turned left onto the highway, heading away from the city.

My bar was close to being on the outside of the city already, as it existed now. Not much more beyond a trailer park, a gas station, and a bait shop out this way. Business, and people, moved the other direction decades ago while I was dead, or living elsewhere.

“True. True. I’ll have to get a look at her. Maybe it’ll make sense then.” Maybe this guy would make sense then too. Or he could sell me some of whatever he was on.

After a few minutes, Snack Boy turned left to a newer looking side road. He drove for another ten minutes before turning right at a sign that read “Serenity Grove”. Coming around a line of trees opened up a view of a gated community of houses that must have only started to be built out here a few years ago. Only a few seemed to be currently lived in, all spread out from each other. The kind of people who could afford these places probably were probably using them for “summer” or “weekend” homes. Being ten minutes outside of the city probably seemed rather county to them. Snack Boy followed the road to the right and passed six empty looking homes before pulling in the driveway at his own. A standard kind of two story cookie cutter that could have been plucked from a suburb and dropped out here.

“So you’re not a starving artist is seems,” I said as we waited for the garage door to open.

His face turned a little red, “My dad built the place. He’s letting me stay here for super cheap.”

“Hey, no shame in that. You gotta save that money somewhere. And if you can do that here and not on his couch, good for you.”

“He likes to use it as a sample to show interested buyers for other developments. He’s gotten a few others out here from having this house set up. Have to keep the place nearly sterile since they come by anytime. But I’ve got my own work hanging up all over the place. Sold about twenty pieces that way so far.” He inched the car forward to park it next to a shitty looking Honda. Yeah, the Audi was staying here.

“See! There you go. Work that system. You make dad’s money work for you.”

Snack Boy just nodded and turned the car off. We both climbed out and he jogged over to be able to swing the door leading into the kitchen open for me. Walking in, I saw he really did mean sterile. The place didn’t look lived in. More like a set house made to be viewed, but not touched. Peeking into the living room I was hit by deja vu and I had to wonder if I might have hooked up with this guy myself at some point and forgot. I moved farther into the room for a longer look and it hit me, I’d seen this exact living room in a magazine Wendy had thrown out on the counter a couple months ago. Back then I’d made the comment the couch was too thin and frilly to be useful and my opinion still stood as I looked at the gaudy golden thing now.

“What part of the house do you actually live in?” I asked.

He laughed. Body in his backyard, but i got him to chuckle as he came into the room behind m. “In the studio. I sleep on top of the bed covers to be safe, but I also have a fold out sofa in the studio. A bit of time in the kitchen. But I bother to make food  it takes about twice as long to clean up because I have to make it spotless. Or else my dad will kill me.”

“Not your mom?” Real forward thinking there, Nancy. You’re 1940s were showing.

“If her ghost could manage it, she would. But Dad has picked it up since she passed away a couple years ago and he doesn’t rather well.”

There was a whisper of a ‘tsk’ that came from the kitchen. I chose to not seek it out. His possible ghost was not my issue.

“Well, never know. After what you’ve been dealing with lately,” I wanted to nudge the coaster on the coffee table an inch to anger the spirit of his mother. Maybe she’d hiss at me and move it back. “You didn’t pick any of this decor out did you?”

“Is it that obvious? Dad gets stuff switched out every few months to keep up with trends.” He pushed on the creme overstuffed recliner chair near him. “I like this chair. Going to ask him if I can buy it next time he wants to swap out.”

“So, there’s a body somewhere in this Stepford home of yours?”

He tensed up again, face pulled tight into what looked like anger. “Yeah, in the one space here that’s actually mine. Studio is out back.”

We stepped back into the kitchen. He walked through to the sliding patio door and flipped a switch for the light outside. String lights lined a dark wooden deck and about 15 feet from the end of the stairs was a large shed tucked away in the back corner of the yard. I was distracted by the shine the lights caused on the fridge. God, I wanted to smear my fingerprints all over it. Piss off that ghost I was pretending I didn’t catch flicker into the hall.

“Your dad built a studio with the house?” I asked.

“Dad’s clients are usually well off, if you couldn’t tell. I pitched that adding the studio could showcase how much you can do with the space out back and not feel cramped. The rich housewives he sucks up to always have some new hobby too, so he could use it was proof that he can design spaces for them to express themselves in.” He stepped out to the deck and started to move across into the yard.

I moved through the kitchen and to his side without moving my feet. In a blink, from one space to the next. Managed to get a small jump out of him, at last. “Must be a high quality studio you got then.”

“And there’s blood all over it,” he sounded disgusted. “After all the work I put in to convince my father to make the thing.”

“At least he supports the artist thing.” The yard, even in the dark, felt annoyingly well maintained. I dug my feet in with each step toward the shed. Trying to make sure I had some dirt to track back into the house.

“More so I convinced him it was a good investment.” He grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door open, waiting for me to go in first.

“You did say you’d sold pieces to his clients.” I stepped into the open doorway, consequently this was also a step into decay filled air. I backed up again. “That is a decaying body alright. “This thing sealed that smell in good.”

“Only the best from Dad. He was convinced the fumes from whatever I was doing would leak out and ruin the property value. If my art is a true money pit, he wants it to be a big one. But whatever, I got my studio. That’s why I’d like to get her out of it.”

He continued to stand holding the door open. Silently insisting me to go first. My nose had not come fully around to the rotting smell, but it was adjusting. Hindsight had me thankful that the bleach has jacked up my nose a bit earlier. Fresh bodies were no big deal. Annoying, but manageable. You let them sit for awhile, even just a day, and things could get nasty. Fast. I leaned back for one last breath of clean air and went in.

His studio was an open space. Directly left of the door was a little utility sink, mini fridge, and two cabinets with a countertop. To the right were stacks of canvas, many of them looked like completed pieces. A couple plastic shelving unit sof supplies across the way. HIs sleeper couch tucked in between those. The right corner was filled with what looked like a large black metal box with a door, but it was built partially into the wall. Positioned near center in the room was a desk and easel. Scraps of paper were scattered across the desktop, likely bits of ideas for pieces. There was a canvas on the easel, but I couldn’t see it from here due to the angle.

Given the sparse amount of bulk items in the room, it wasn’l like the body was hidden away somewhere. A solitary chair sat in the far left corner and she was tied to it. A mix of zip-ties and rope keeping her in place. Odd, seeing as how Trine normally filled her victim’s heads with happy drugs and they stayed on their own. Maybe she wanted to hear a scream for once. There were long cuts down her arms. One on her left arm looked jagged, when I got closer I saw a bunch of smaller horizontal cuts across the longer one. Someone had put a happy little tree into this woman’s skin. There was what looked like a crude mountain etched into her left leg too.

“Did you look her over at all before coming to the bar?” I asked.

“I got to the desk and couldn’t get any closer.”

I turned back to him, he was standing with his back against the wall between two stacks of canvas. “She was tortured. Trine cut stuff into her.”

“You said she liked the artsy stuff.”

I turned back to the body. The dried blood under my shoes flaked off as I moved around. More good stuff to track back inside. Trine had appeared drunk when she arrived with Snack Boy last night. But no one had thought twice about her until she shoved Carin into the jukebox and was ranting about cutting her flesh into stripes that imitate waves and an ocean of blood tinted paint. Snack Boy had been in his seat smiling the whole time.

This woman was dressed far below Trine’s standard. Even if she was experimenting with females, I figured there would have been a hard rule of black tie attire. The jean shorts and graphic tee this woman sported would not fit the bill. I tilted the woman’s head back, no makeup. Her hair didn’t look like it had fallen out of any styled do, but had been laying limp the whole time.

I stood up from the body and turned back toward the whole room. Maybe something about this space flipped a switch in Trine. “You think Trine would come out here instead of her own little posh condo in town? Especially if she picked you, and possibly this girl, up in the downtown area.”

“I’m closer to the bar. If she had been wanting to end up there, it would have been the shorter drive.”

But to go all the way in town and come farther out than she needed? Odd. I crossed the room toward the canvas stacks, pointing to the desk as I passed and said, “Can you go through that stuff for me? You’ll be able to tell what is yours and what might be some scribbles from a Trine gone mad.”

He gave a glance towards the body, not eager to step closer, but straightened his back and moved. “I thought we were just getting rid of the body.”

“It just doesn’t make sense. She’s had sloppy kills before, but nothing like this. No one really will fight over her being dead, there were plenty of people to vouch she was off her rocker and had it coming, but a couple will have questions. Like me. And I need to have the answers for her people so that I can get them out of my hair quickly when they come for her. So dig.”

Tipping the paintings forward one by one, I took in some of Snack Boys work. He hadn’t lied. Lots of landscapes. There were your typical forests, lakes, rivers, mountains, and plains that you could find littering the walls of all your doctor’s offices and boring relatives. Though some of them had interesting color choices, darker than your expectation for a visual that was usually bright. One piece displaying a cliffside so muted and depressed that I could hear the person falling to the rocks below while looking at it.

“Nothing seems out of the ordinary here,” Snack Boy said. “I mean, to a normal person my chicken scratch might look insane, but it’s all me.”

“It was a long shot,” I said setting the stack to its leaning position and turned back to the body. From here I could see the currently in progress piece. There were currently mostly faint penciled lines across the canvas. Mountains and one significantly tall tree were the bits that stood out in darker drawn lines on the canvas. I pointed toward it. “Did Trine do that?”

Snack Boy turned to the pad and seemed to be taking it in for the first time as well. HIs eyebrows scrunched together. “Maybe? I don’t remember starting it myself. But you said she fed off the artistic stuff first, right? Maybe she was copying my style?”

What came first, the body or the sketch? I moved toward the large door in the wall. “What’s this big thing?”

“A kiln. For the pottery and sculpting I mentioned before. Real authentic setup. Gives the pieces this older feel. It was the hardest thing to convince Dad to put in. He wanted to get an electric one, but they don’t come out the same.”

I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about. “So it’s a big oven. Fire and everything?”

“Fire and everything.”

“Well that makes this super easy. We burn her! Still need to break her up into bits and it’ll probably take a couple rounds to burn her all up, but no need to even take her out of the shed.” I grabbed the door handle and pulled. A few metal racks were set inside; they were adjustable to accommodate for different sized pieces. The kiln was empty, except for a long piece on the bottom rack. It was a dark black and didn’t appear to have any of the normal ‘pottery’ traits on first glance. Being nosy, I pulled it out. Maybe his sculpting is as off as his landscapes.

Not an oddly skinny vase. Not a sculpture of a twig or some pretentious shit. Not a blob of clay he’d pass off as modern art representing the human condition. Though, the human part was a hit. A femur to be exact.

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “Shit, and it looks like she won’t be along in there.”

“What do you mean?” Snack Boy came around the desk to get a closer look at what I had.

I pointed the bone right at his face. “You’re a goddamn psychopath.”

He blinked. “I’mma what?”

The gears were clicking together. I felt like an idiot for taking so long to get there. “Trine didn’t kill this lady, you did. You cut her up and were starting in on your little trophy painting when you had to leave for your friend’s gallery showing. You probably didn’t think much of it because you assumed you’d only be gone for a couple hours and she would have been fine for that long.”

Snack Boy was white knuckling the edge of the desk. “That cannot be right. I’m not-”

I cut him off because I was on a roll. “Then Trine grabbed you and did her mind tricks. She started feeding on your art, not realizing it was tied to your crazy. Which then drove her crazy. Talk about biting off more then you can chew. She went off the deep end at my bar because she couldn’t handle your twisted head.”

He backed  up to sit on the stool at the desk. His face had gone the sheet white I’d been expecting to see much earlier than this.

I swung the femur over to the stacks. “Are each of those darker ones a body? Because if they are you have been hard at work, my friend. I counted like ten that seemed off. You said you’ve sold some pieces, did you sell any dark ones? At this rate, you may just blow those other big hitter serial killers out of the water.”

His face was turning blue. He was taking long, hard blinks at the stacks.

I came up beside him and hit the desk with the bone. “Breath, Snack Boy. You gotta breath, man.”

He didn’t jump from the sound, but took a long breath in and on the exhale and said, “My name is Pete.”

I didn’t really care about that, but I guess it was good to know his actual name for when the papers and police caught on to this and his name was plastered everywhere. Maybe I should grab a quick picture with him to prove I knew him for a minute. “Cool, Pete the Killer. This has got to be a unique situation we have, huh? Not many times a serial killer has forgotten they were a killer. I bet.”

Pete was keeping up with the long breaths. It’d been awhile since I’d seen one, but I think this was a form of panic attack happening. “I do suppose this is rather novel.”

“I mean, think about how well you’ve been taking a lot of this stuff so far though. It was a bit strange, I gotta say. Thought you were on some strong ass weed or something. Makes sense that finding out you’re a serial killer would be tipping point for an already unstable brain.”

“Can you stop calling me a serial killer for thirty seconds? Please.” He was slowly bending over towards the desk. His forehead resting on the wooden top. “The room is spinning a bit.”

I rubbed his back with the nub of the bone. “There, there. It’ll all come back to you. I assume. I bet in no time your memories will come back and you’ll be your old, uh, eccentric hobbyist self.

“Joy.”

“Okay, well, how long before this little fit can wrap up? We got some barbecue to do.” I was not about to do all of this myself and have to listen to him hyperventilate on top of that.

“Can you give me a minute here?”

“Sure. Sure. Woosaa, dude. Woosaa.” I went back to the body. Poked her a couple times with the end of the bone. She shifted a bit in the seat with each jab. “You know it’s too bad Trine had you gone so long. No easy breaks on this body anymore. She’s come back around to floppy.”

He groaned into the desk. His breathing was evening out.

I tossed the bone across the flood, back towards the kiln. It was going to need to finish burning. Breaking zip-ties and ropes wasn’t a hard task. Thank you, telekinetic powers from hell. No longer tied to the chair, the body tipped to the left and fell. I watched her face smack the concrete, could have bruised if most of her blood wasn’t already on the floor.

The stool scraped against the floor, Pete was standing again. He was leaning heavily on the desk, but standing. His eyes zeroed in on the stacks of paintings, the pile of potential victims.

“Hey,” I broke him of his self-induced trance. “How about you get that fire going for us?”

His movement was stiff, auto-pilot functioning, but he did what I asked. There was some control panel I’d not paid attention to next to the door. He punched a few buttons and I heard the machine hidden within the wall kick on. Small crackles of fire came a minute later.

On my end of the room, I had the body broken up in a few bits by the time the fire was popping. Arms and legs divided up the joints. Neck broken off closer to the collar bone. The torso was still a considerable chunk, no real clean place to break that one up more without spilling some guts around. It was a pretty tidy job, I thought. Though I wondered how he did it on his own. No special mind powers on his end, that I knew of. Or hell, that he knew of either.

Pete was fidgeting with a dial on the wall. Waiting on the fire to pick up. I stepped over to the sink/fridge area and continued being nosy. Maybe there was another body in here somewhere. A skull on a shelf. An organ in the icebox.

The cabinets held more art supplies. Paint thinner, cartons filled with half used paint tubes, and the like. Under the sink there was a large amount of bleach, to be expected given that this room was really for. I pulled a bottle out and the bucket also stowed away there. The fridge was empty, I realized it wasn’t even running when I pulled the door open and no light came on.

“Your fridge is busted.”

“Bad outlet,” he replied in a flat voice. “Gotta get an electrician out here.”

Before closing the door, I noticed the bottom of the fridge had pulled out from the force of the door opening. So the fridge was really, really busted. How’d his father let a crapped out fridge like this get in there? Leaning down, I pulled the loose plastic out and found another fun surprise. The edges of the piece were clean, they’d been cut. With that able to be pulled out, it made a space of a couple inches below the fridge where three meat cleavers and a sharpening stone were hidden away. So that’s how he did the bodies. I slid the plastic back into place, deciding to let him discover that one on his own.

“Kiln is almost warmed up. Should get her in there before it’s too hot to have the door open,” he said.

“Sounds good. Grab some and toss her in.” I stacked a pile of pieces in my arms. Watched enough Rachel Ray over the years to know how to balance an awkward amount of stuff.

Pete stood over the body for a moment, looking over the pieces one by one. I was tossing my arm load on a rack by the time he bent over to pick up two chunks of her right leg. He was slow going, but did a part of the body moving at least. The head had been left for me to roll into the bottom rack, but he snapped the door shut and punched the temperature up one last time.

“Now you just let that bake for about twenty minutes,” I said. “Maybe give it a turn to make sure everything cooks evenly.”

Pete stepped around me and went back to the sketch pad on the easel.”You think I could stop?”

“Being a killer? Wanting to kill? That could be a hard one.”

“But I don’t understand how I could do this. How could I be such a monster? I don’t feel like killing anyone now.” His fingers traced the lines of the tree.

“Because your head is still recovering from Trine. She was feeding on that part of you, it’s probably tapped out. Give it time, I bet whatever trigger you get to kill will come back.”

“What if I don’t want it? What if I fight it?”

God  damn, I agreed to body removal. Not therapy. Deep breath. Help the sad, human killer. It’s still better than inventory. “Uh, well, I’d suggest finding a damn good hobby. Something to fill those idle hands. Not much can match up with murder.”

Pete sat on the stool and picked up a pencil from the lip of the easel. He shaded in a peak of a mountain. “What if I just focus on the work? You think that’d be enough?”

“No. Not even close.” From what I’d gathered, it was focusing on the work that drove him to cutting it into woman. I felt a tiny bit bad when his pencil dropped for a second. “But, I mean, really I know fuck all about you. Maybe that’d work.”

“Maybe.” He kept working on his lines. Another peak coming to life bit by bit.

My eyes flickered over to the stain of blood and gunk still on the floor around the chair. If he was going to fully zone out on me now, I was out. A phantom ache in my lower back reminded me of all the time I’d spent mopping just the night before. “So I figure you can clean that last bit up on your own. Now that we have the hard stuff out of the way.”

He leaned over to look at the dried blood pool. His hand idly matching the shape on the canvas as a pond. “Yeah, I can get that. Thanks for your help.”

I passed him to get to the door, but stopped before going out. “Hey, I mean nothing says you have to be a killer. I guess. You can give the normal guy thing to try. But if that doesn’t work, if you decide you want to dive back into that dark part of yourself, come by the bar sometime. I think you’ll be surprised at how much company you’ll be in. Monsters are a matter of perspective, you’d be surprised by how many you actually like.”

I was a businesswoman first. Asshole second. Some days anyway. Anything to sell a couple more beers. And maybe something to do with those bits of humanity still rolling around in my head.

I was halfway through the yard before I heard him call out, “You need a ride back?”

“No, I can take a shortcut.” Thank you again supernatural powers from hell. “You just keep doing that.”

I didn’t need to go back in the house, but I hadn’t stepped in all that gunk for nothing. Since it seemed he’d be out here for awhile, I should probably shut off the lights for him anyway. Stepping back into the sterile kitchen was unsettling. Two very different worlds in such a small space, but I suppose that was the point. I pulled open the large fridge door and found tidy shelves filled with organic foods. Cans of beverages and neatly stacked containers of leftovers ready to be viewed by the nosy potential buyers, or the nosy demon bartender. For my time, I snatched a can of pop.

“Not yours, Young Lady,” a chill voice echoed through the room.

I licked my palm and ran it over the freezer door. “Fuck you, ghost mother.”

With a thought I flicked off the lights and then snapped myself from the house to the front door of Heathens. I popped the tab of the can, it sprayed up into the air and partly in my face. One goddamn day I was going to remember that shit happened.

A week later, I was still telling patrons about Snack Boy/Pete the Serial Killer.He was a hit around the bar. People were nagging me for his address, wanting to see his deadly art studio for themselves. They were begging for a peak at the kiln filled with ashes of who knows how many bodies. But I never gave it out. As far as I knew, he wasn’t killing anymore. I would check for missing women, but that was kind of a needle in a haystack situation in this city. Letting him try to make the normal thing work was the one good deed I had going. I liked to have one of those from time to time. For shits and giggles. Also it pissed off the Divine folk when you could throw a good dead you’d done in their face.

I was facing the bottles in the cooler when I heard the scrape of a barstool against the floor. Wendy was running tables, so I turned around to help whoever had arrived.

Pete. Blonde hair styled, a little floof of volume on top of his head. A green bottom up and a thin canvas jacket. All that around a smile that only pulled up one corner of his mouth. Green eyes brighter that I”d remember them being.

“Hey there!” he said, in a lighter tone than I’d heard from him before. “It was Nancy, right?”

Hot damn he was…damn hot. Had i not been looking at him in good light before? “Uh, yeah. Nancy. That’s me. I’m surprised to see you Sna…Pete.”

“I have something I wanted to show you.” He pulled a couple folded pictures from a pocket and laid them out on the bar in my direction. The top one was the drawing he’d been doing when I left him, but finished as a full painting. Looming mountains, a dark pond, and that tall tree you could tell was waiting for a body to hang from it.

“Wow. That’s awesome. No shit, you’re actually really good.”

“Glad you think so. Though I had to find a little extra inspiration since my original dried up.” The other side of his mouth pulled up, reacting to a joke only he got. Pete, out of instinct I figured, looked around him before swapping to the second picture. Another woman tied to the same chair. Cut with jagged lines over any visible skin. “The mountains were given me trouble. I needed a different medium to help get the lines right.”

Now I was smiling too. “Normal life wasn’t too exciting was it?”

“Not at all.”

I pulled two bottles of beer at random from the ice chest below me, handing him one. “We’ll put this first one on the house to celebrate your return to the dark side. Welcome to Heathens.”

“Thanks,” he said and took a long pull from the beer. “By the way, did you lick my fridge?”