[Chayden]

Inspired by the illustration called "Under the Rug" by Harris Burdick.

Arin - Lucy
He loved her very much. He loved her enough to want to keep her forever.
So that’s exactly what he tried to do.
       Arin and Lucy had gotten married straight out of high school, dizzy with young love. Their only problem was the lack of knowledge between them; they’d known each other for barely three months. But what kind of barrier was that against true love?
       “True love” held a very different meaning for Lucy than it did for Arin. To her, it meant looking past flaws, overcoming obstacles, and growing old with a lover. To Arin, it meant murder.
       In his sense of the word, Arin had been “in love” with five different things throughout his life, but none had lasted so long as Lucy. With her, he wanted to draw things out, and savor the pleasure of the end. The rest had been quick.
       The first had been his mother, Lynne. Arin was eight years old and very clingy, but it had always been that way. He loved his mother, and he always wanted to be able to reach out his hand and feel that she was there. Arin would follow her about the apartment, sneak after her when he walked to work, and even sit against the bathroom door when she took a shower. He behaved like dog, a second shadow.
       So she bought him one. It was a little white dog with a short tail and a happy bark. It made Arin think that she was trying to replace him like he had replaced his father. When he was born, his father left; now that this dog had forced its way into the family, it was someone else’s turn to leave. It wouldn’t be him.
It would be his mother.

[Chayden]

On the day that it happened, he wanted her to be happy. He did everything that she desired of him, as per usual. He tied her shoes, fluffed her pillows. He walked the new dog. But this time, when he went out, he went to the bad side of town. It was only about 9:00, but he figured that there would be at least one usable addict there. Arin stepped brazenly into the noisiest club with his little, nonthreatening dog and confronted the closest man.
       “Do you do this for fun?”
The man, roaring drunk, looked down and said, “Hey, li’l man, I’d do anything for fun.”

[Chayden]

When his mother came home, everything was perfect. The tablecloth had been smoothed, there were two elegant place settings arranged, and a low, warm glow emitted from the fireplace.
       “Welcome home, Mother. Sit down, relax.”
Arin hurried over to pull out his mother’s chair, helping her to sit comfortably. “I know that you’ve worked very hard, so I’ve prepared a nice dinner.”
       He walked slowly into the kitchen, smiling over his shoulder. The man from the bar appeared, holding a pan of noodles and grimacing like he was being bitten. Arin had instructed him to look happy and inviting; this was the junky’s best shot.
       The stranger settled himself down into his seat, serving some of the food before pouring tall glasses of wine. Arin had already slunk away to his room. He was curled up under the covers, holding the dog to his chest as he listened for the gurgle and sigh of a dagger passing through alcohol-numbed flesh.

[Chayden]

When the boy finally went back to the kitchen, he was pleased.  That man hadn’t left much of a mess at all. He was slumped face down on the tiles, holding the broken bottle and dagger loosely against his side. Arin’s mother was still in her chair, leaning only slightly although blood seeped through the white linen of her shirt and onto the floor. The new orphan’s smile mirrored the one on the face of his dead mother.

       He had never seen her more beautiful than she was as her body hugged lifelessly the branch on which he had put her.
“Nobody will find her there, nobody will find her.”

[Chayden]

The next one to be taken from the picture was the little dog. He was replaced rather quickly by the raccoon that lived in the cellar.
“Listen, dog,” Arin hissed as he stroked its fur calmingly. “You run too much. Now you’re going to run right into the ground. Okay?”
       The words which might have sounded figurative to a stranger were perfect realism to the boy. His mind worked in such a way that there must only be two in a family, and that any extras must be put in a place that he could always return to in order to see them. It was not that he wanted to restrain them; he only wished to have those who he loved stay in one spot so that he would never lose them.
If they were dead, they couldn’t leave, could they?

[Chayden]

Arin took a hold of the dog’s collar, leading it to the back of the house that had become slightly overgrown after months of increasing neglect. The raccoon skittered behind, chattering. It had tunneled into the ground with the orphan. The hole had started out small, barely a pothole, but had enlarged as boy and beast worried it with their hands. In the end, the thing was about five feet deep, but it was deep enough for the dog.
Carelessly, the child threw a scrap of meat down and watched as the puppy hastened after it. His face didn’t flicker as he scraped dirt, handful after handful, back in, filling the hole. He was as if deaf, choosing to remember the thing’s high-pitched barks instead of reacting to them. The raccoon’s beady eyes were the only other moving object in the yard on that day, as Arin set definitely the place for the dog to belong.

[Chayden]

Years passed in a blur. Arin grew without marking the change. He did not move from his mother’s house. He did not find a job. He went to school, but only negligently; if he awoke and found nowhere else to go, that was where he headed. Suitable parents were fabricated in order for his solitude to escape notice.
As a child, Arin accumulated and recycled his extras quickly. But as he aged, his “cycle” slowed. There were only two things after the raccoon, which ended up in the septic tank: a sparrow which he tangled lovingly into telephone wires and a small autistic child. The child had left before the family had been overfilled, dying of its own accord. Arin had frowned at the syringe for some time, trying to match its tip to the skinny gash just underneath the jaw. After a while he had given up, lifting up the boards on the first stair leading up to the porch and setting the body into it, fetal position. That was the only one that he had no smile for, no sense of fulfillment. It was what it was and no more: an end.
       He was about to meet his own.

[Chayden]

The interests of Lucy were trifle to him. He could have cared less about the things that she obsessed over. Magazines and television held no interest, so she, too, would be pushed out. Arin found it soothing, strangely, to be alone. It was like cutting the string on a balloon; he was free to float until he was caught or popped. There was a sense of peace in it that he enjoyed.
There was also peace in the planning of this last murder.

[Chayden]

Arin sat up late every night for weeks, lounging on the couch, running over in his mind all of the scenarios possible. He could put her through the washer, or the drier… He could find out what it looked like to be splat against railroad tracks, but that didn’t sound permanent enough. But something struck him one day after listening to the woman blabber on about the romantic effect the passing on of a mother’s ring and dress carried. He would stop her with the same knife that man had used on his mother years ago! Silently, Arin breathed thanks to the man who had fatally overdosed next to his dining table. Arin’s plan grew ever closer to fruition…

[Chayden]

He didn’t speak at all as he did it. Breath barely stirred in his lungs, so complete was his concentration. He could see it plainly, the first cut, the line below the jaw that had been made by the quiet, distant one…
Arin moved the blade quickly, not bothering to stop the watering of his mouth at the tearing of her flesh. He sliced all the way through her neck first so that the expression on her face wouldn’t be too horrid. Lucy really didn’t have too much in the way of beauty. Then he chopped off her hand above the wrist, only ‘chopped’ does not do the action justice. It was too graceful, the way he put the knife down, leaning his entire body into the movement, too calm the way the thing plopped, muted, onto the white sheets. He did the same to the other hand, to the feet and to the knees. Arin found himself disliking the way her blood stained the bed. It was too dark. It looked… unnatural. He did not want that to be on the bed where he slept forever…

[Chayden]

He may have rushed the separation of her ribs, but it was only a small matter. It was enchanting, the way that they split: like resistant putty they bent, waiting until the last moment to snap apart.
He assured them mentally that they would still be together, still be a part of the family, only distanced.
       In an unexpected rush of inspiration, Arin folded the pieces into all of the layers of bedding that had been colored with blood. There were quite a few, but it was alright as long as it ensured her comfort.
The man walked outside, carrying his bundle without worry. There was nothing to be concerned about, after all; he was just putting her away.

[Chayden]

The different sections had each been given their place under the lawn. Arin had thought about it every night for thirty years, traced the map of their position with drowsy eyes. It was his way of saying good night to the woman who the government still thought was alive. According to them, she had never died.
How sweet.

[Chayden]

Arin dragged himself out to the sitting room of the house he had erected above her remains. There was his good armchair, resting on the edge of the shag carpet that Lucy had been so partial to. He eased himself into it, feeling pain in his spine. He had been planning on relaxing for a while, but a scratching, gnawing noise prevented him from doing so. Intrigued, he placed his ear against the floorboards, trying to identify it. A hand broke through the boards, shriveled and purple, and slapped him in the face. The old man just sat, flopped to the floor and sat. That was not supposed to happen. Then it dawned on him: it was Lucy’s hand! He was enraged.
“You are not supposed to move! You get back down there!”

[Chayden]

And he picked up a wooden chair with which to smack the hand back down. “Stay.”
Two weeks later, it happened again.
Another hand came up and struck out against him. Again Arin forced it into its place, displeased. Women were supposed to be obedient. They were supposed to listen well to the husbands who were kind enough to give them a place to belong. This insubordinate behavior was ungrateful, and he didn’t like it.

[Chayden]

Two weeks later came the first foot. Two weeks after that was the second foot. Another two weeks saw the knees, both at once.
Ten weeks after the first attack, Arin died violently.
Once again, he was in his chair. It was foolish, probably, for him to go back there, but he couldn’t resist. There was nothing else for him to do beside sit, and this was the most comfortable place to do so.
“I bet you thought that the bed was pretty comfortable, too,” the voice murmured.
Arin didn’t reply. He wasn’t going to give Lucy any attention.