Chapter Forty-Three
Marisa
“Alien”- Bush
It takes6.5 hours to dismember a human body and flush it down a toilet. You can’t find that on Google. Justin’s face is a grayish-green and he’s slumped against the wall by the bathroom sink. He’s thrown up twice. I’ve only vomited once. I chuck the last wad of remains in the toilet and I flush, watching the grisly sludge circle the drain before it vanishes, never to be seen of again. Goodbye Amy Smith, plain-fucking-Jane. Goodbye. Ed keeps texting me about meeting up with him.Fuck you, Ed. I’m in the middle of the climax here, I don’t have time for coffee with you and your ginger hair.
“Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath as I push to my feet. “Now, we have to clean the rest of the apartment, the tub and the toilet, and then we need to drive somewhere, to an ocean. Toss the clothes and,” I bend and pick up the grimy hacksaw, “this. After we clean it, of course.”
Justin stares through me, his head slightly bobbing back and forth. I’m a little worried this may have been too much for him. I mean, it hasn’t been a walk in the fucking park for me, but at least I know it’s for the greater good. Justin, he just thinks he’s a cold-blooded killer. Bless him. “Babe, it’s okay. Things happen and if you can’t remember anything, well, what’s to say she didn’t attack you first?” A little bit of hope dances across his face when he looks up at me. “I mean, you aren’t violent or angry. You aren’t a killer. You just write about them and manage to sprinkle a little love in there, too.” I open the vanity and grab a garbage bag. One of those vanilla scented ones that smell so nice.
“No. It doesn’t make any sense... ”
“People snap. You’ve been under stress,” I say as I ball her clothes up and toss them into the little white bag. “We just, you know, move forward.”
“I don’t even know what to say to you, you... ” He shakes his head. “You should have never gotten involved in this.”
I shrug as I tie a knot in the plastic bag. “Every love story needs a grand gesture of love.”
He smiles. For the first time since#HavingAGreatTimeWIthAmyturned into#HacksawingAGreatTimeWithAmy, he smiles.
“Come here,” he says, and I do. I drop the bag to the floor and walk to him, sinking to my knees. His fingers skim over my jaw, brushing up so sweetly into my hair that I’m certain has blood in it. I watch his ocean blue eyes narrow, I see them swirling with an epiphany, a moment. The tension mounts, my heart thrums.Yes, Justin. This is it. It’s right no matter how wrong it feels...
“I love you,” he whispers with such emotion I feel the earth shift beneath me. That static electricity buzzes and snaps, swelling until I’m certain it consumes half of Manhattan, and then, he kisses me with the reverence of a priest saying his last rite. Because this is love. This is a passage. This is our story, fucked up and twisted and perfect.
“I love you, too, Justin.” I inhale his breath. “I love you, too, now give me her phone.”
* * *
Smiling, I stand by the Hudson river and type out a post.Sometimes you just want to run away from your problems. Poof. Vanish into thin air.The breeze ripples across the water and I take in a deep breath of salty air. The things is, they’ll look at her Facebook posts. They’ll see she posted from NYC at 4:46:43 on Tuesday, March 13th. They’ll see that she texted Justin last night, but they’ll see his texts from this morning asking what happened to her. And it’s not like they’ll ever find her.
I dig through my purse and take out a hand wipe, carefully cleaning her phone before I chuck it into the river.Splash. And that’s the end of that.I’m proud of myself for covering our tracks, Justin. I really am.You see, this is where having the creative mind of an author really comes in handy. When you write the depraved stuff like I do, it’s not out of the ordinary to have a search history that includes things such as:The quickest way to poison someone. Hacksaws. How to cover up a murder. How to clean blood from grout.What sound does a knife slicing through skin make.I almost want to make a Facebook post about it, laughing as I type out:#AuthorLife #AllTheDarkWords #ByeFeliciaBetterKnownAsHavingAGreatTimeWithAmy.
Life is great. It really is. The weather is perfect. There’s not a cloud in the sky, and I am Justin Wild’s one and only. I am his confident. The keeper of his secrets. I am the envy of every woman in our little book world. My phone beeps. Ed again, insisting we have coffee. This time he’s saying he knows which coffee shop I always check into and he’ll stalk me if he must.Well, Ed, you are quiet the romantic, aren’t you? But woo me you cannot, because you aren’t my soulmate. I’m not bound to you by blood, Ed, I’m not.I’m bound to Justin.
