Kill the Cherry Page 14
After getting that out of their system, Spencer and Holly saw that it was still dark with at least two more hours left 'til sunrise and that it was wise to get a move on things now and reminisce later.
On instinct, Holly beckoned Spencer to follow her into the cellar to retrieve the items hidden by Kirsten, and Spencer's reply was another laugh. She looked at him abashed, baffled, and waved him off to go by herself. It took her some time to find the door to the basement; once she sought it, she flicked on the lights, went downstairs, and immediately went for the door installed in the wall mounted on the side of the staircase. Inside the closet were stacks of cardboard boxes, a broom, shelves of uninteresting objects, empty jars, jars filled with rusted nails, plastic grocery bags all crumpled into one, and resting on the floor stashed in the shadowed corner underneath the bottom shelf was a gym bag that looked occupied with an assortment of things. Holly reached down to pick it up, minimally straining from the weight, where she heard the instruments clink together and the liquid chemicals splosh inside. She unzipped it and took a peek inside where there were two hacksaws, two bottles of Drano, a huge box of Hefty trash bags, and wrapped in a plastic grocery bag were the clothes. Nothing too flashy, just sandals, sweatshirts and sweatpants—it was important they were light and didn't take up too much space in the bag. She then remembered another object she needed that took part in the body-removal process which was an eight-foot metal pole with a pedal-like object welded to one end of it; she went to see if she had almost overlooked it by peeking her head around the corner and sure enough there it was. Kirsten explained to her what this was for and she still had it down in her mind how to use it. She returned upstairs with her gym back just in time to find Spencer with his own gym bag. Holly finally got the joke and shared him in another laugh. He took notice of the long pole she was holding and nodded to it.
“What the hell is that for?” he said.
“Later,” she said.
They made it a quick one, of course, as they quickly got their attention and focus straight back to the business at hand. The job itself was only a task that needed accomplishing, the real challenge was not to think; not to engage in conversation; keep the cogs in motion and make sure they don't stop for anything. They dashed upstairs and Spencer lifted Willy's body to take into the bathroom, he instructed Holly to clean the room up as much as possible with her Drano, and if she ran out, he had some hydrogen peroxide she could use. Spencer borrowed Holly's hacksaw because it looked stronger. He plopped the corpse into the bathtub and let the cold water run.
Spencer began with the arm, and amazingly it worked faster than he had anticipated. He remembered the instructions Willy had obtained from a website about butchering the human carcass: cut into the armpit straight to the shoulder, and remove the arm bone, the humerus, from the collar bone and shoulder blade. He repeated the process with the other arm, the two legs, his head, slicing the muscle and ligament around the neck, making it easy to twist his head around leaving the connection between the skull and spinal cord to be hacksawed. Willy had now been in five pieces; he looked like a life-size Ken doll after being experimented on by a bored child.
He was luckily able to stuff him all into one single bag, reinforced with five others. He checked his phone to find that it was a quarter to five now. Fuck!
Spencer hauled the two-hundred pound bag down the stairs, heaving it over his shoulder making it his best effort to move fast and efficiently out the front door and throw the bag into the back of the Ford with the trunk already open. He threw it over his shoulder with a loud annoyed grunt, feeling the soreness the weight created there, and slammed down the trunk door.
When he returned up to the room where Holly had been, he was struck with absolute dazzling amazement, a fresh cool feeling of hope filled his heart—she was scrubbing the last of the mess right now and not a drop was spotted anywhere. She was a fucking natural. He threw a joke at her asking if it was experience in the maid service, she replied asking how the process was coming along. Spencer slapped himself across the face figuratively and sprinted into the room where Kirsten was, then Holly called at him to stop, that they were going to take turns now. One of them cleans up their own mess, the other disposes of their own victim.