Page 90 of Jar of Hearts
“We’ve come this far,” Geo said. “Do you want to finish it, or not?”
He unwrapped the body, rolling it out of the comforter, grunting with the effort. They were both startled when they saw Angela’s skin. Though she hadn’t been dead long, her color had paled, with a grayish cast that hadn’t been there before. There was a slackness to her face, a heaviness in the way her arms and legs flopped, and a dullness in her eyes, which were still open.
She didn’t look like she was sleeping. She didn’t look unconscious. She looked dead.
Calvin bent over her with the saw, his face contorted in a grimace. He looked up at Geo one last time. She nodded, then began to dig, starting a fresh hole about two feet away from the others.
“I can’t,” he said, his voice weak.
She ignored him. Continued to dig, ramming her shovel into the dirt. Push, scoop, toss. Push, scoop, toss.
A few seconds later, he said again, “I don’t know where to start.”
She looked up, annoyed. He was soaked in his own sweat, his damp hair plastered to his forehead, his face still knotted in disgust and revulsion. It was a version of him she’d never seen before. He looked ugly. Weak. In that moment, she couldn’t remember why she’d fallen in love with him at all.
“Start in the middle,” she said, resuming her digging.
The sound of flesh tearing isn’t like other sounds. It’s not staccato, like cutting into wood. It’s not silent, like slicing into dough. It’s deeper somehow, wetter, slightly resistant, but ultimately yielding. Back and forth and back again, the saw tore her best friend open. She heard the moment when the saw hit bone. It made a scraping sound.
She looked up when he gagged, just in time to see him vomit all over himself. Tears streamed down his face. Angela lay in the dirt, her leg almost detached from her hip, but not all the way.
“I can’t…,” he said, choking.
Geo gripped the shovel tighter. She could smell his vomit, a curdling blend of pizza and beer and gastric juices, almost identical to what hers had smelled like when she’d vomited inside his house earlier. She had never seen Calvin vulnerable before, and in that moment she had no doubt she could walk over, hit him over the head with the shovel as hard as she could, as many times as it took, until he was dead, too. Maybe the fog would stick around long enough for her to dig holes for both of them.
But she wasn’t a killer. She didn’t know who the hell she was, but she wasn’t that.
“Come here and take the shovel,” she said.
They changed places.
Geo took the saw in her hands, the wood handle feeling warm from Calvin’s grasp even through the gloves she was wearing. Her dad was an emergency-room doctor, had discussed his work with her many times, had even given her details about the surgical rotation he’d done during medical school. She had some knowledge of how to cutat the joint for minimal resistance. Hadn’t she done this with chicken wings for dinner the other night? She couldn’t remember now. Maybe it was last week. Or last month.
She kneeled over Angela, whose eyes were still open. Brushed a hand over her best friend’s face. Now they were closed.
Don’t look, my love. Don’t look.
She lifted the saw, gritted her teeth, and finished what Calvin started, the teeth of the blade ripping into her best friend, desecrating Angela’s human body.
Desecrating Geo’s soul.
When she was finished, they both placed Angela’s body parts in the graves wherever they would fit, packing the dirt on top of them and pressing it down firmly. They left the woods covered in blood and vomit sometime after fourA.M.By then, the fog had lifted a little.
And still, nobody saw.
Calvin rinsed the shovels and the saw in the backyard with the hose, the water rinsing red into the grass and then disappearing altogether. They walked back to the front of the house. Calvin tried to speak to Geo before getting into his car, but she did not reply. He drove away. It would be days before she would see him again, before he would show up at her bedroom window in the middle of the night, duffel bag in hand, to say good-bye and take what little was left of her, by force.
Assuming they weren’t caught by then, of course. In the movies, it seemed the bad guys never got away.
For now, though, it was finished. Geo did the only thing left to do.
She went home.
33
Dominic is still on top of her, the weight of him becoming unbearable. He’s fumbling, and he’s furious, because what he came here to do isn’t working. And if he can’t do it, he’ll simply kill her.
Which would be Geo’s preference. Though the legal system may disagree, there are worse things than murder. She knows that now. Rape isn’t about sex. It’s about dominance and control. It’s about taking the best parts of a person and leaving the empty shell behind.
