My Little Dump by Christopher Ananias (Adult Content)

I am slipping again. All of my thoughts are filthy and negative, and the dishes are stacking up. The TV is a blurb of sounds and flashing light in the cramped clutter of my living room. An occasional face draws me into the moment, reminding me of the past.

I dwell on the past a lot. Eric’s face flashes across the TV screen. His voice is in a commercial selling condoms, big ones like Magnums. Then he’s on a horse in the fading sunlight. A regular ole-hero. Now he is serving drinks in the dark bar. That’s more like him. “Oh look, he’s in a casket.” I say to no one. 

It’s that time again—party time. My alcoholism lives in the back of my throat like a great yowling maw. Like one of those funny boxes inside a box, but mine works the other way. It gets bigger—way bigger than me and what’s good for me.

I set the mood with my old Hi Fi JVC stereo that I’ve owned since my twenties. Big clunky knobs for drunken fingers. Giant speakers circle the living room like Stonehenge. The bass can shift tectonic plates. A regular ole music pit, that screams wild thumping, “FUCK YOUS” to my neighbors all night long! 

It has a turntable, a mono FM tuner, double cassette deck, and a bank of complicated buttons and sliding bars I stay away from. I pop in an old mix-tape. The tape probably still has traces of blood in the crevices of the little white plastic gears. Scrub a dub, dub, but that ole blood—you know. Eric and I made the tape. Recording songs off the radio on that last night thirty years ago. When I became who I really am, defined by an act of drunken lunacy. 

I listen to the tape. It’s about ready for the trashcan. Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean” warbles out. All the songs melt into a techno beat and I’m getting shit faced on Kessler’s Whisky. Pretty soon the sun drops off the hazy edge, like a bloated tangerine. Darkness abides.

The neighbors pound on the wall like muffled bongos! I’m leering into the whiskey-infused night on social media, face lit up like a billion other drunken trolls. I rear up reading a string of electronic threats. My chair, stained with tomato seeds and other seeds, is listing toward the wall like I’m on a dark ocean.

I attack people I once knew. A minor rampage ends with another whiskey glass shattering on the wall, but I’m careful not to rupture my precious JVC. Eric would love it if I did.

I wish Eric’s face would go away, but that is not how it works. Eric’s face is still crystal clear. If I forget him, I can refer to that decrepit billboard. Where he still leers over the freeway by Love’s Truck-stop. “WHO KILLED ERIC? $10,000 REWARD.” I think his family of dipshits would renege.

I hate that Crime Stoppers dog McGruff. He is one of my personal enemies. Just when I feel good about whatever little morsel of life I’m feeding on—an eBay sale, the neighbor’s big tit, or a hunk of discounted round steak in my mouth, he comes on…Dragging Eric’s murder back into the light. He growls, “TAKE A BITE OUT OF CRIME!” I’d like to put him to sleep.

Sometimes I convince myself that we are still friends and that night never occurred. There are days when I don’t think of Eric at all. Then the rotting corpse of his memory is bleeding again, so much blood!

Eric lives on in my dreams, and I wake, shaking in fear. The police are always in my nightmares. The plainclothes devils that pursue me, down dark twisting highways, and sunny sidewalks with their DNA swabs.

It’s the witching hour, so gloomy and full of sinister possibilities. A time when a heartbeat might stop and the burning clang of hell’s door bolts open. Eric’s ghost is at the height of his power, bidding me to pull the trigger, slash the wrist, he even whispers the morning train schedule. I think about calling Dr. Marlin, but I’m not that drunk.

Dr. Marlin suggested I journal my thoughts. Of course, I never told him the truth. Otherwise, being a mandated reporter, he would certainly call the flashing lights on me. I suspect I am journaling right now. The journal scared me and I felt very close to doing it again—to murder—possibly myself.

I tried everything under the sun to ease my guilt: eating, screwing, gambling, Bible study, and of course drinking. I even learned wood carving, but a knife in my hands?—Nothing works. 

I could solve this guilt. All I would have to do is mosey down to the police station and admit my crime. Maybe I will go now and won’t that be a hoot, in THE BOX with the detectives storming around me? Calling me Mutt and high-fiving in the hallway when I fold.  

No. I don’t have the guts for that, to lose the comforts of my little dump and Burger King Whoppers. No way! I can hear Eric’s giddy laughter winding up into hilarity. I laugh too.

I blubber in the mirror about how I’m just a poor sinner, like the lustful monk, crying out, “I am only a man!” While scaling the monastery wall to visit the prostitutes again and again until his dick falls off…

I say to no one, “You deserved it, Eric. I would do it again. You lousy mother…” His screeching laughter comes from everywhere in my mind that no amount of pills, alcohol, doctors, wet mouths, hairy crotches, or wood carving classes can silence.  

Why did I do it? The ageless question. How could an argument about a song (whatever it was, maybe Toto, “Head over Heels”) on the stereo lead to murder? Alcohol of course—bottoms up—blackout “Stonewall Jackson” drinking.

Loud words: “Get your hands off my stereo, Eric!”

“Fuck you.” he says dismissing me.

I stand over him. Eric jerks straight up—he’s tall and wiry. There’s something crazy in his eyes. His knuckles turn white by his sides. A taunt spring of muscles. All the motors, lubricated on Kessler’s Whiskey, are revving. It’s fight or flight, and long overdue.

A shove, a punch, wrestling, upending the coffee table—cheese and crackers flying. The whiskey glugs on the floor. You know it’s bad when the whiskey drowns the carpet without a life jacket.

“Fuck you, you fuckin’, fuck, I’ll fuckin’ fuck you up!” He’s strong as rebar and wiry, and fast—pounding my face like a speed bag. I had no idea he was so tough! Then I’m on my back, all of his weight is crushing my shoulders, knees pinning me down.

His fist glances off my dodging face, striking so hard he’s thudding the green carpet. The son of a bitch is trying to beat my head through the floor. Then he starts landing them. Stars burst inside my cranium. His long black hair sashays across his face, only showing the merciless blade of his nose, slit mouth, and those hammers.

He stops and swipes his long hair out of his face. His sweat hits my mangled senses. Blood trickles down my throat. A game show host grin leers down at me. Like, “Come on down! You’re the first contestant on The Price’s Right!” (Johnny Olsen).

Something primal and pleasurable in his brown eyes like the satisfaction of pumping a hot stream of his manhood into my destruction.

“You had enough pussy boy? Pussy… goanna cry?” Then that shrill laughter and he lets me up—even helps me by the elbow. (Sometimes, I think about that little act of kindness.) Never let them up, Eric. Stomp their guts out their asses. Never let them up. NEVER!

I relive the moment in all its slashing horror. Really giving it to myself, pouring a bucket full of his blood into my brain. That act I put on—like I wasn’t even mad… The staggering part wasn’t an act; he almost killed me and I was drunk. I even said, “Badass, dude,” on the way to the kitchen.  

Eric doesn’t possess the politeness to excuse himself from my domicile after handing me my ass. He sneers like I have myself, when some twerp I beat on sniveled up to me like a whipped dog. But this dog isn’t done—not by a long shot—I have a coffin to build.

I put a sour dish rag on my face, sopping blood. My split lower lip puffs out like I got a ten-ounce shot of Botox.

I pull out the cabinet drawer. There it is, a razor sharp Victorinox in a black plastic sheath with a tiny white cross. The Swiss know how to make shit. It’s one of my prized possessions, and clatters as it slips the plastic sheath, flashing and alive like some kind of kinetic death wish.

I go back into the living room stepping over the upside down coffee table, legs sticking up. The knife behind my back, like a surprise. He’s right back on my stereo.

“Stupid fuckin’ thing,” he’s says, twisting the dial on my Hi-Fi JVC like an Etch A Sketch. He cranks the volume knob to ten. Then he spins the red dial line back and forth from crackling amp blowing radio station to station! That’s not good for the speakers. It will blow the voice coil. Good thing the next-door neighbors are gone, but the ones upstairs, weren’t.

I raise the knife over his unprotected back aiming to the left of the knobs sticking out in his tight black shirt. (The blackguard.) I stab so hard, my hand slips onto the blade and slices my palm. (Mental note: when murdering, use a hilted knife). He lets out a gasp and says, “OH-Oh, I’m hurt, bad!” 

“You fuckin right you are,” He just wilts—it shocks me. I thought he’d tear around like a cyclone. I must have cut his heart wide open. I stab him about thirty more times—you know how that goes—stabbin’ like a mother fucker… Sometimes I say it was a hundred times then it’s a couple, like it was a paper cut. It’s all bullshit. I stabbed him thirty times. I counted the holes—even jabbed him another one in the forehead to round it out.

Now I’m the one blowing my load. It is a fascinating thing to have complete power over another person’s dead body. I wasn’t quite sure what I was up to. I get like this—get weird. Still drunk, too. I blame half my life on drinking and the other half on my parents.

This is the part I rarely think about and it disgusts me to the point of suicide. But I’m in the mood to bear it all…If you’re still with me? 

Decisions, decisions… I pull the wood saw out of the “Hope” chest where I keep my tools. The saw teeth sat right above Eric’s Adam’s apple, about where his own voice coil is. I think the plan was to cut off the head and hands then distribute them separately. But I forgot the trash-man only comes once a week.

How do you start such an act? Pretend it’s a “two by four” and get to it. The rusty steel teeth sink into soft skin—I pull back, a red slice opens up like a wet chalk line. Saw-saw—BIND—jerk it loose, saw-saw… What’s more ugly a headless corpse or a head?

I look around at the destruction of my living room—a crime scene. I see the cheese and Ritz crackers scattered on the green carpet… I always made us some little treats when Eric came over, he laughed about that, calling me “Betty Crackhead,” but he gobbled them up—more than his share. The blue china platter is in two pieces. This infuriates me! “I showed you, you fuck.” 

I had a plan for why I cut his head off, then I didn’t. This is how drinking goes. You get tired and lazy when you’re beaten half to death and drunk. His two pieces laid on my carpet already drawing corpse flies that winked into existence.

The real work comes getting rid of his long bony ass. Luckily, the garbage truck is coming tomorrow or today I guess.

A red slick blob around his body is changing the green carpet to a reddish brown. I catch his awful coppery stink and shit. I get the mop and bucket—looking at the clock, almost 2:00 AM or something late—too late. A blurry feeling of being overwhelmed, lathers sweat under my arms, like a crazy fool horse running twenty miles.

The green Ajax soap bubbles turned pink in the yellow bucket, bubbling into my cut hand. I’m down on my hands and knees, scrubbing with a kitchen sponge. Later my cut hand will get terribly infected. The stain gets bigger, so I abandon the mop and bucket.

I drag my furniture, mattress, “Hope” chest, stereo, and speakers into the kitchen. There are only three rooms. This is like reinventing the wheel, but being drunk and now scared, I went a little apeshit.

I yank the carpet, nearly pulling my back muscles out and hurting my hand even worse, and rip the nasty foam underlayment off the rusty tack strips that laid around the edge. His headless corpse is constantly in my way, having to roll him around, leaking and smearing blood. I can’t drag him to the kitchen—then I’d have to tear it up too. It’s a bitch, like he weighs five hundred pounds. I go nuts again, crying, and start kicking him in the side, hurting my foot.

A plastic sheath  traps the leakage. I roll him onto it and kick his head and it bangs off the gray wall, leaving a red hairy blotch. It helps—getting my feelings out—Dr. Marlin says that’s important. I should torch the place along with my upstairs neighbors, kids, and their little yapper.

I roll his ass up into the carpet, and duct tape it. Then about four in the morning I drag him through the gravel to the dumpster looking up at the dark upstairs window. The silver moon throws too much cool light creating shadows. Finally, I get him to the big stinking, blue dumpster.

Lifting a dead body roughly your own weight, and in a dirty carpet, from the ground is an esophageal hernia in the making. Of course his head falls out of the carpet. Stupid move, but hey, at least it’s something I got to do… I mean how many times do you get to cut someone’s head off?

At 7:00 AM I watch old “Garbage Can Stan” roaring down the street hanging over the steering wheel like he doesn’t have a spine (I don’t know his real name, it might be something lofty like Barron or Sinclair). The rusty blue garbage truck backs in clanking and stinking. The loud hydraulic forks moan, like it found Eric’s dead weight too heavy. I glimpse the rolled up carpet, striped in gray duct tape and full of Eric. His head falls out again, dropping onto bags of garbage. I genuflect and mutter, “Dust to dust.”

I study my hands, my horrible hands, which seem benign enough, petting a dog, but they can’t be trusted. They remember grasping the large kitchen knife, feeling its heft, and stabbing Eric. I still cut up whole chickens with it.

Christopher Ananias

Image by Bruno from Pixabay – a complicated sound sytem with tape decks and speakers.