Black rubber gloves hatchet and craftsman power saw. Duct tape black garbage bags drop cloth bucket sponge and mop. Twin gallon jugs of bleach and acetone. Cowboy drifts around the chapel annex gathering gear he might need. The red suitcase lies flat in the center of the shop. Near the drain in floor. Zippered shut. He makes another loop around the shop sure there is some essential tool he neglected. A stretch of blank time passes and he finds himself digging through a drawer for a particular pair of bolt cutters with black and yellow rubber grips he doesn’t expect to use. Less he needs to take off her thumbs. He slams the drawer shut. Turns to face the suitcase. Drags a metal stool over to give it a proper think. To smoke and ponder the gravity of the act before him. What sort of person will he be after he’s done this. He can visualize it. He can spin the image of himself using saw and hatchet to sever the arms from torso. He knows where to make each cut. Where the soft places are between joint and sinew. He knows the mechanics of ball and socket. He watches himself buzzsaw the arms in two and remove the hands in a blinding slash of light behind his mind’s eye. Now watches self repeat the process with her legs and feet. Then removing the head. He watches himself crack the ribcage apart and zip her open to scoop out the vitals and soft tissue. He can smell it. He reckons if he can see it in his head he can do it. What he cannot summon to the slip of light behind his eye is any reality or timeline where performing such an act does not forever leave him altered.
To stop his mind needless grinding he reviews the dismemberment plan once more checking the soft spots and looking for holes in scheme. No need to crack her ribs and unload her internals less he wants to store the body and keep her around for some unspeakable purpose, and he does not. Cowboy is not a freak. But he has killed and gutted enough animals and assholes to know it’s the internals that are quickest to stink. Never done a chop down on a woman odd as that sounds even in his own head. Old folks who live alone and died alone and never talk to anybody in between, that’s how their neighbors know they are belly up. Their guts start to rot and all the poison bacteria and bodily sewage rise to the surface. But decomp is not his lookout. His only business is sparing Polly a murder charge for dispatching the evil hag folded in that red roller suitcase. How soon the body commences gathering flies is irrelevant if he makes sure the stink doesn’t lead back to him or Polly or brother Fred. His only concern is breaking her down into small compact pieces with the weight evenly distributed so he might easily transport, dump and disappear the bitch where she won’t be found. Where her odds of being eaten by fish and carrion birds are highest. He isn’t sure how much gore to expect with no heart pumping because it varies. Depends on body mass and time of death and general gut health of subject before the killing. Regardless there’s bound to be some awful seepage when he cuts her limbs off.
A shimmer of yellow straylight catches his ear and eye and now the rustle of wings that are not wings.
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