| Self-Destruction Dreams by Vito Capobianco |
| I laughed under my breath when I heard Santo gag and cough stomach acid. He began fiddling with the wine bottles, a silk cloth pressed against his greasy fucking lips. I turned my back to him and began my search. Weaving through the support beams in the dark; I looked for your father. I followed the stench. I held my breath and lost the trail. On the way I saw a mound of dirt. I knelt down and dug with my hands into the loose soil. It must have taken you quite some time to dig it in the first place. Considering how hard the rest of the floor was. Once I had covered my lap in a pile of dirt I revealed a pistol wrapped in a pale blue handkerchief. I slipped it into the pocket of my khakis. I started to feel light-headed again once I did see his corpse. Your father�s body was a decaying scarecrow. It was odd to see I might say; the writhing of the maggots made his entire body seem lively, like he was doing some sort of spastic shuddering dance. His clothing mushed and sagging around his rotting flesh. You propped him against the corner of the room, hooking his arm on wine bottles. His face sagged into his chest I could see that you had shot him in the back of the head. My mind swished and throbbed. That steady beating pulse of all the nightmares past. I began slowly making my way back to Santos. He stood near the stairway; a soft light came down the stairs. He was holding a bottle of wine in both hands, the grease holding the handkerchief with ease. I could barely stretch my legs to their full extent while walking, so that it seemed that I was constantly trying to find somewhere to sit. With one leg feeling even more useless then the other, I began dragging it in a sideways loping fashion. I pulled the gun from the pants with a rubber arm and as I continued walking it collided with my leg at odd intervals. I could feel the empty stare on my face, all the skin feeling extra thick and sagging on my skull. Santo was fairly preoccupied with the polishing of the wine bottle. He didn�t see him advance, nor did he see the gun as I raised it in the air, far too high an angle to shoot from. I don�t quite remember what I was thinking but I new I wouldn�t shoot him. I do remember thinking I should say something to him before rendering him dead and unconscious. �Santo.� I stood my arm raised completely over my head. He had a puzzled look when he saw my pose, but it appeared as if I were holding onto a rafter as my hand was hidden behind one. �Yes, you wish to speak to Santo?� That was it, I couldn�t even think of what to say. The man�s atrocious self indulgence was far too much for me to endure. I swung my arm backwards in a cartwheel fashion and struck the greasy fool under his chin. He reeled back; the surreal look of a shocked cartoon character, squirting grease like the spit from a boxer who�s just taken that last hard punch. The wine bottle slipped from his hands and crashed loudly on the packed dirt. A miniature tsunami splashed my khakis. Staining them a watery purple; I knew you�d be very displeased. I leaned over; the water in my skull rushed forward and nearly offset my balance, and picked up the neck of the wine bottle. It was long and jagged, faintly reminiscent of a rats jaw. Santo teetered and rocked backwards, shock replaced by confusion turns to an animal fright. He trips on the stairs and quickly, obviously without thinking, bolts past me. I should rather say, attempted to bolt past me, as I struck him in the thigh with the butt of the gun; this causing him to nearly flip over himself, and land with a breath stealing thud. I pulled my arm back, the jagged edge of the bottle pointing down, stretching so far the muscles in my shoulder screamed with pain. Snap, the motion like that of a catapult is my arm swinging down in a flashing arc as the bottle catches the light. I rammed the broken neck of the wine bottle into his cheekbone and scraped it down into his chin, his skin peeled into a ball like it was ice cream. Soon after the blood flooded up as if I�d found some sort of well, it just all came up at once, surfacing through this painfully inflicted wound. I could see into his face, his teeth and jawbone presented in a truly grim smile that must have matched my own. It didn�t stop there. I couldn�t stop. I sat on his chest, and placed my hands softly on his bloody face. I remember muttering something along the lines of a goodbye as I slowly moved my thumbs across his face to close his eyelids. I let them rest on his closed eyes for a moment. Then with much force; I rose slightly off his chest and pushed in his eyes with all the strength of my arms and all the weight of my upper body. I gritted my teeth with fury as I forced his eyeballs back into his skull. Finally there was a quick drop into his eye sockets and again like a well, blood flooded over the sockets and there was a squishing sound like when you stick your hand in wet Play-Doh. I didn�t notice the whole time he was screaming. It seemed as if the pulse in my head, the throbbing beat, blocked all other sounds. I thought surely that would have killed him, but he was a resilient bastard. Hooking my thumbs in his head I gripped my other fingers into his ears, steadying a tight hold. I pulled him to my chest and mumbled something along the lines of an apology. I slammed his head into the packed dirt, not once, no, many times, I pulled his head to me and rushed it back into the ground, over and over. Each thrust causing my thumbs to dig deeper into his head. After a while there was a soft crack and I knew it was done. I pulled my thumbs out and felt a bit like Little Jack Horner as Santos eyelids were stuck around my thumbs. I rolled him over to inspect the damage, the back of his skull the slightest concave. I�m not sure for how long, but I sat on the bottom of the stairs; my arms, complete with eyelids like thumb rings, slumped in-between my legs. I stared at his face, reflected by the tin heating ducts in the sealing. Eyeless. The heat leaving through cracks in the ducts made the image warp and bend, ripple and fold. The mouth moved and sputtered black eye-shadow. The face like corduroy couches was reflected from Santo�s body; it spoke. Long and drawn out was its speech about how I was a mansion and you my dear were an estate. That your murderous crime was justifiable and mine was merely an act of insane furry and the malnourished mind of an unstable man. I listened merely out the respect for the dead, and because I didn�t know what to say to you how to explain it�that is a lie. I dared not move because I knew what I would do once I did. I could not bare it, a shudder was the only grief I would show, and I knew I would kill you my sweet. I believe I would have sat there listening to the endless prattle of the dead if you hadn�t come to check on us. Your light patter of step spurred me into action. I did leap up from my prone position and I dragged the greasy fool�s body deeper into the cellar. A few feet, enough for you to suspect little. You made your way quickly down the stairs and didn�t see me hiding just to your left, Dacia. I struck you; again I used the butt of the gun. You collapsed, folded straight down into a crumpled mess. I moved you to rest near his greasy body, hoping you might die of fright in waking up; it would save me the trouble of destroying the only thing that means anything. After a few moments admiration I moved away from your unconscious body. Filling in the dirt, to the hole that once housed the gun, took little time. I was off then; to my study where I now sit writing you this letter. Hoping you die when you wake. The End (for Kerri-Dawn, thanks for all the smiles) |
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