I closed the overhead door to the garage so I could do the rest of my activities in privacy. I opened the door to the house and trudged up the stairs with Delilah dancing around my feet, half jumping and half bounding, taking the stairs quickly only to stop and pause at the landing above. I thought it was odd, but with every step I began understanding why she was acting unusual.
Once when I was younger I remember eating a potpie with my cousin and my father for dinner. The three of us sat around the brown, laminated kitchen table on the brown vinyl covered seat cushions. With our utensils we dug into the circular aluminum foil turkey/beef filled crust-encased $1 meal. I can’t believe these things were ever invented and that people actually ate them. For a man with no idea how to cook, my father thought they were a staple in my dietary growth and that of anyone else he needed to feed.
As I brought my fork to my mouth about three-quarters of the way into devouring my tasteless generic bite, I remember seeing a one-inch cylindrical shape. It was a slightly darker color than anything else in the cream-filled wasteland of my plate. I held it out in the middle of the table, and my cousin instantly labeled my current find, screaming, “Oh gross, a worm!” In reality it was only a portion of meat product that had not completely been ground up and was compressed into something that was labeled beef. It must have escaped the processing cycle enough to remain in some semblance of its original shape.
I stared at the lifeless, two-inch worm-shaped object and felt a rumbling in my stomach. I thought about what else I had just begun to digest. The rumbling very quickly rose to a frightening level, and I knew that I was going to be in trouble. I dropped my fork instantly, covered my mouth with both hands, and bolted through the living room. I aimed for the bedroom and the bathroom that was beyond. Unfortunately my 10-year-old body was not quick enough. Midway through the living room the creamy, non-digested substance sprayed through the fingers that covered my mouth in a multi-tiered fountain. I left a trail through both rooms all the way to the bathroom.
By the time I reached the toilet and raised the lid, everything had already evacuated my body. I simply heaved a couple of last gasps. My father, who was disgusted with my inability to contain myself, screamed that my stupidity was beyond childish. He stated that I would be required to clean up every drop of undigested pea, corn, and creamy substance off the walls, floors, and furniture.
There are some memories that remain with you for your entire life. They are formed like hardened concrete into your psyche, and once there, are forever embedded into your foundation as immovable as the concrete forms of a football stadium. The smell from this episode in my childhood was one of those memories. It took me two hours to clean the sprayed chunky mess that was seemingly everywhere. With every wipe and dab, my nostrils filled with the putrid smell of the partially digested remains.
This is what I smelled as I moved upward. With each step, the smell intensified until it was overwhelmingly the only odor that I could consciously recognize: the putrid, decaying smell of rotting death. I opened the closet door and walked through the hidden entrance in the wall in the back, and the gust of rot knocked me to my knees. All of this did nothing to prepare me for the sight that lay on the metal bed.
I have been to funerals and have seen the death of older people. The wrinkled soulless shell of what had once been a person. Nothing I had ever been through could have prepared me for what I saw. I did not even attempt to hold my mouth, as everything I had eaten for the last two days violently spewed into the room and surrounded what at one point I had called Jill. I didn’t stop to be thankful in the moment, but in retrospect I continue to think how lucky I was, yet, again that nobody had rented the house in the last few weeks. How could I have ever explained this smell emanating from inside the walls?
This entire episode took a few short minutes, and I remembered the blonde. As disgusted as I was, I knew I still had to act quickly. I surprisingly felt little remorse. Possibly because the thing I saw held such little resemblance to a person. I filled a bucket with water, kicked Jill’s blackish purple body off the table, and watched it bounce down to the floor like a helium-filled balloon that had lost its ability to maintain flight. I threw the bucket of water on the bed, washing the remaining residue of Jill’s body from the rubber mattress. I then went to retrieve the blonde from the back seat of my SUV.
I threw her over my shoulder and easily carried her up the stairs. I gently placed her on the bed, and fastened her hands and feet in the same fashion as Jill’s. What an improvement the new model was compared to the last. Even in the moment, I felt aroused by the beauty of this girl.
Now I had to address the overinflated monstrosity that was once Jill and how to purge the smell and memory of her current state from this room forever. I luckily remembered that over the summer I had moved eight gallons of muriatic acid that had been at my now ex-wife’s house in El Granada. We had a pool at that house; and when we made our original purchase, the previous owners had left much of their cleaning equipment and supplies behind as part of our house closing gifts. Since I had not needed it for cleaning the pool, I had decided to bring it to Twain Harte. I had thought I might be able to use it to remove the stains off the garage floor from some bad car experience that must have leaked out over the years.
I went down to the garage and retrieved a large plastic bucket. After a couple of trips I also lugged up four gallons of the acid. I carefully poured all four gallons into the orange Home Depot all-purpose bucket and then turned to Jill. Since my house was surrounded by trees—like a mini-forest in the middle of my small town—I had a nice serrated hand-saw for cutting limbs. This seemed logically like a good tool to start dismantling Jill to a size that would fit in the bucket. I did not want to try and move her in this condition, and I was definitely scared to touch her. She seemed like she might burst with any prodding.
I went down to the garage yet again for what seemed like my 20th trip and retrieved the saw. I, then, began the dismantling, cleaning, and slow disintegration of Jill. The initial cut was quite interesting as a fountain of yellowish puss squirted from her body in a never-ending spray. I literally saw her start to shrink as the liquid pooled around her and headed in a rippling stream down the drain in the middle of the room.
I carefully removed parts of her body by cutting the joints as you would when you carve a baked chicken, yet this was easier as the sections were barely fastened together. I felt like a surgeon must feel, but instead of trying to configure pieces, I was the maker of the puzzle deciding where and how to cut each slice. Creation comes in many forms, and I honestly felt whole for the first time in a long while. After placing each apportionment in the muriatic acid and watching the skin dissolve, I realized I would not have enough to do the entire body. I did feel I could get it down to a manageable level.
About halfway through the process, I went down below to the fireplace and stoked an inferno from the wood set off to the side. Next, I prepared to place what was left of Jill (which would not dissolve in my container) into the fire. I attempted to break her down into an even smaller pile of remains.
It took me around five hours to stuff the entire contents of Jill into the fireplace, and then I started the painstaking task of cleaning the room. Her bones were burning rather quickly as the few weeks of deterioration and the acid seemed to have softened them, making them more susceptible to the flames. I used a gallon of bleach trying to remove the smell of my past meals and the leftovers of Jill. They had mixed together in different spots, forming a bond of pools throughout the room. Through all of this, my new addition had remained still, slowly breathing in broken gasps but not moving nor showing any signs of realization to her new situation.
After everything was completed, I shut off the light, closed the door, letting the last trickle of evidence sift down the receptacle in the center of the room and went to shower off. The glass enclosure was a relaxing solitude where my thoughts seemed to drift away, and as always I felt calm and secure. I toweled off and fell into the large king-sized bed and was asleep in less than five minutes.
Nothing during the day had gone as planned, and my mental instability seemed to be growing with every 24 hour interval that clicked like the timer on a bomb, waiting to explode. I was confused and unsure of what I was becoming. I wondered in half conscious, half subconscious thought if this is how a caterpillar must feel. It wraps itself tightly into a cocoon and drifts off to sleep, not fully aware that when it awakens it will be to an entirely new world. Its life will have forever changed. How can you begin to understand with a rational mind the transformation of turning into a creature that can fly after having a simple, relaxing slumber? It’s like waking up as if you’ve just been born as a new being who can now, and forever will, see the world from an entirely new perspective. I felt as if this would be my last night as a caterpillar. Tomorrow would be the awakening of a butterfly that would have the abilities, both mental and physical, to conquer this world.