Chapter Text
Dennis gives the body one last kick, but it's been over for a while now. There's blood everywhere: shining on the dark wood of the bar and pooling on the floor. It's on his hands, his face; seeping into his pant cuffs. All over the man who had, moments ago, made him so angry he thought his head would split from the pressure. But now he's nothing. Meat.
It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Dennis had thought about it—a thousand times, he'd thought about it. Every fucking time he'd see a murder on TV or in a movie, he'd critique it, imagine how he could and would do so much better; in the same way Mac would talk about the fight scenes. Looks like neither one of them could measure up.
He knew the safest way to do it would be to kill a vulnerable stranger, Jack the Ripper style. Someone who could never be traced back to him. For the biggest thrill, he would have killed someone close to him. But the guy Dennis actually had killed was somewhere in the middle: some degenerate alcoholic who'd frequented Paddy's for years, but whose name Dennis didn't even know. And the guy is dead inside the bar. His bar! That definitely wasn't part of the murder plan.
Oh god. He has no clue how to do this.
Walk away, say his instincts. Sleep on it. Forget about it.
That's what he's always done, for every failed plan in that mile-long rope of failed plans, the one that is now wrapping itself around his throat and starting to squeeze—no. He can't just walk away from a murder.
He needs help.
Dennis pulls out his phone. The wet blood on his hands beads against the touch screen, making it difficult to unlock. Without thinking, he wipes the screen off on his shirt and leaves a bright stain across his stomach. His contact list is thick with the names of women he slept with years, even decades ago—but there are only three names of any consequence.
Dee is the first person he considers. She's his constant, his twin; a relic from another time, a tie to his childhood emotions. In his own way, he really does love Dee.
He doesn't trust Dee. If they'd killed the man together, she'd be a great asset to Dennis. But she's not complicit in this. She has no reason not to betray Dennis, and she'd surely rat him out at the first opportunity, that bitch.
Now Mac, he could trust. Mac would do whatever he asked and never betray him. He'd be glad to have some shared secret, a thing to bring him closer to Dennis. The only problem with Mac is, he's such a goddamn incompetent idiot that even with his good intentions, he'd only get in Dennis' way, and probably get him caught. Mac could never pull this off; Dennis can't believe he ever thought otherwise.
And because there's no way in hell he's calling Frank, that leaves Charlie. Unpredictable, uncontrollable Charlie. On the surface, he's a terrible choice—but who else does Dennis have? Besides, there are benefits to this plan. Charlie, who hangs out under bridges and in sewers, knows the seedy underbelly of Philly like no one else. He's seen all the dark corners, all the dirty, forgotten people. Sure, he doesn't have much for brains, but Dennis knows that as soon as he comes up with his own plan, Charlie will be the perfect grunt to carry it out. And he's certain the plan is forming in his mind. It will come to him. It will all come.
Dennis presses call. The echoing ring on the other end is the only sound in the darkened bar. It rings again. What's taking so long? Goddamn it, Charlie—pick up already.
He hears a click as the call connects. Charlie tries to start in with some sort of greeting, but Dennis is faster, words pouring out of his mouth, “Hey Charlie, buddy, Char-lie! You gotta come down to the bar really quick, okay? I need you at the bar. Come to the bar.”
There's a pause. Dennis can hear Frank's unconscious grunting through the phone.
“Dennis, what the fuck? It's three AM.”
“Yeah, that's the time, thanks for telling me the time, like I didn't already know the f—” he takes a deep breath. “Uh, my bad, but I really need your help down here at the bar,” he grimaces, glad Charlie can't see him through the phone, and spits out, “You're the only one who can help me.”
The worst part is, he's not even flattering Charlie: it's just the truth. And it still doesn't work.
“Look, if someone threw up or whatever, I'll clean it up in the morning, all right? You don't need to disturb me in my house, in my bed, when I'm trying to sleep, dude!”
“It's not vomit,” Dennis says, looking again at the body beside his feet.
“What is it, then? Shit? Rats? Piles of rat shit?”
“Can—”
“Maybe rats made out of shit? Coming to life, crawling out of the toilets, sneaking into the bar and like, getting shit everywhere—”
“Can you just fucking come down here? It's important,” he grits his teeth again and forces himself to say, “Please, Charlie.”
The desperation must be enough to mask his contempt this time, because Charlie sighs loudly and relents. “All right, fine. But this better not be bullshit.”
Dennis hangs up the phone. Charlie's on his way—it's all good. Dennis is cool. He's going to be fine. But god, if Charlie fucks around and takes too long to get to the bar, Dennis is going to kill him.
His eyes flit downwards instinctively. Well, no, he wouldn't kill Charlie like that. Probably. Dennis' hands shake slightly as he reaches down to the body. He ghosts over the carnage, landing on a protruding bit of skin below the man's crushed eye socket. It isn't very nice skin, all greasy and uneven, but it still makes Dennis' breath hitch.
Maybe he should stash the body somewhere else; it's in sight of the bar's front door, and Dennis figures Charlie is going to scream as soon as he sees it. God, he's already regretting calling Charlie. The kid's going to be completely useless. Dennis wants to call him back, tell him not to come—and Dennis would, but he's really struggling to come up with an alternative plan. The bar's freezer isn't big enough to fit a man. In his fantasies, Dennis always has a secluded cabin somewhere, with industrial appliances and soundproof walls.
He has to do something, anyway. Dennis gets behind the corpse, yanks it up by its armpits, and looks around.
After he's dealt with the body, but before he can fully decide how he's going to break things to Charlie, Dennis hears the scratch of keys at the door. For one horrible second, he thinks it might be one of the others, coming back at the worst possible time, like they always do. But no, it's Charlie. He can tell by how many times the key gets turned around in the lock. Even after more than a decade, Charlie still tries the wrong keys.
Dennis just hopes he hid the body well enough that he can explain things a little before Charlie's inevitable freak out.
“All right, goddamn it, what's the problem?” Charlie yells through the finally-open door. He stops short as Dennis runs into him, blocking his way.
“Charlie,” Dennis says warmly. He puts one arm around Charlie's shoulders and another against his chest as he draws Charlie off to the less-bloody side of the bar. “Say, you're great at cleaning things up, right? The best.”
Charlie shrugs and shifts his eyes.
“Goddamn right you are. That's why it's called Charlie work. Now look, there's a little bit of a mess in the bar, no big deal, but I kind of—”
“So who'd you kill?”
“Kill? Why'd you say—kill?” Dennis forces a laugh, high and fragile.
“'Cause you're drenched in blood, and there's a dead body covered in towels on the other side of the bar,” says Charlie, as he maneuvers past a disoriented Dennis. “Those were good towels, too, dude. I don't know what you were covering him up for, but you coulda at least used the rags.”
On the other side of the bar, Charlie kneels down and draws back the blood-soaked towels from what was, even Dennis has to admit now, his pretty pathetic attempt to conceal the body. The corpse underneath is a sickening mess of blood and brains, with its skull caved in.
“Well, I guess we don't have to worry about anyone identifying the body,” Charlie says. His tone is light and amused—not at all the horrified panic Dennis was expecting. Somehow, it both pisses him off and calms him down.
“Like you'd understand the intricacies of a good murder,” he says, his voice still small.
“You didn't answer me before: who is this guy?”
“I don't know. But I think he's been to the bar a few times.”
Charlie claws into the dead guy's stained jeans pocket and brings out a phone and a velcro wallet. He opens the latter and nabs a few bills before bringing out a driver's license. “Oh shit, you killed Radoslaw Niemczyk?”
“If that's the guy's name and not just some sounds you're making, then yeah, probably.”
“Shit, dude. Radoslaw's a great customer. And he used to be an exterminator; really helped me keep the rats down in here.” Charlie is looking at Dennis reproachfully.
“If he's your fucking best friend, why didn't you recognize him?”
“Well, I never saw him without his face before!”
“Oh, I'm Charlie,” says Dennis in a high, mocking tone. “I'm too good to look at a crushed skull, even though I roll around in human shit all day!”
“I'm just saying, there are a lot of other customers you could have killed. Maybe next time you can check with me, and I'll tell you the ones I don't like.”
“I wasn't—”
“Although I gotta say, good on you for actually committing to it,” Charlie says as he wipes off his hands and rises. He walks past Dennis and over to the bathroom, but keeps talking. His voice is muffled, echoing off the tiles. “I didn't think you actually had it in you.”
“What do you mean?” asks Dennis. He's not sure whether he should be offended that Charlie never thought of him as a murderer.
“Oh, you know. Mac thinks he's badass and Dee thinks she's an actress, and you think you're Ted Bundy or something, but it's all bullshit,” Charlie returns with a few garbage bags and a bunch of cleaning supplies, whose existence would be a surprise to anyone who's ever been inside Paddy's. “But hey, you got one step closer to the dream tonight. That's like, self-actualization. Good work, dude.”
“Ted Bundy wishes he was me.”
“Probably, because he's in prison and dead, and you've got me to keep that from happening,” Charlie says, with a little finger-gun gesture that really sells his credibility. He dumps the supplies on the floor, and in an instant, his shirt follows. Then, he grabs the zipper of his pants.
Dennis interrupts, “What are you doing?”
“Uh, I don't want blood all over me, Dennis,” he says, holding his arms out like he can't believe the stupidity of the question.
“Yeah, okay,” says Dennis grudgingly. “Leave your underwear on, though.”
Charlie groans. “Suddenly seeing my dick is the worst thing in the world. Don't you and Mac jerk off together?”
“No, that's—I just don't think you should be naked around the body.”
“Radoslaw doesn't give a shit; he's dead!”
“I know he's dead, he's my kill! I watched the life drain from his eyes. If anyone's going to be naked around his dead body, it should be me.”
“Then you can get naked, too. In fact, I encourage it, because things are only gonna get bloodier from here.”
“Oh, goddamn it! Keep your underwear on,” Dennis says. His clothes are already ruined, but he removes his shirt while Charlie lays down a blanket of trash bags. Dennis watches as Charlie bends over, in his briefs that look like they're over Pennsylvania's age of consent: riddled with holes and faded to a patchy gray-brown.
Charlie makes an exasperated huff and sidles past as Dennis starts unlacing his shoes. He grabs the dead guy's phone off the ground and throws it into the bar's seldom-used cocktail blender. Like its owner, it fights death—as the blades whir to action, it jerks and twists before its frame finally pops apart, and it dissolves into black dust.
Dennis wets his mouth. “That doesn't seem food-safe.”
Charlie raises his eyebrows as if to say, No shit.
Abruptly, Charlie drops the blender and rounds on the body again. “Okay, you grab the shoulders, I'll get the feet. Let's move him into the bathroom.”
The corpse is heavier than it looks, now that he's actually having to lift it, not just drag it around the bar. The liquid oozing from the man's crushed skull also makes it tough to get a firm grip. Dennis' hands keep slipping; he wishes he'd killed someone skinnier, but it's not too far to the men's room. They dump the body next to the floor drain while the sickly lights flicker overhead. Charlie has left a few gallons of bleach around the floor, along with a hacksaw and some uselessly small knives from behind the bar.
Chopping up bodies definitely counts as Charlie work. Dennis exhales through his nose. “Is this really necessary?”
“Look, I know a guy who can handle this sort of thing. He's a fisherman. Dumps little pieces of people out, lets the fish go nuts. But he only accepts body parts that are already bite-sized.”
“I meant, is it necessary for me to do it.”
Charlie responds by rolling his eyes with painful-looking vehemence. “You can dice the guy up, or you can clean the rest of the bar. Take your pick.”
Dennis immediately drops his bare knees onto the sticky bathroom tiles. He grabs one of the paring knives and looks at it for a moment, then glances up over the sink and catches his own reflection. His sickly-pale skin doesn't look so pale now, side-by-side with a bloodless corpse. He smooths his ruffled hair down with one hand, then brings the knife across the body, cutting away the dead man's bloody shirt to reveal a flabby and pathetically middle-aged torso. The normalcy of it is almost shocking after looking for so long at the guy's shattered cranium.
Charlie hums an acknowledgment and leaves while Dennis reaches for the saw. Its blade is thin and flexible as a zip tie. It looks delicate, but when Dennis presses it to the shoulder joint, it cuts through with surprising ease.
Still, the work is tedious. It's exactly the sort of mindless manual labor he's always been too good for. Dennis listens to the squelching noise the saw makes on soft tissue and starts to zone out, like he's having a guided meditation. When he repositions the newly-severed arm, Dennis notices how the flickering bathroom lights catch on the dead hand. It's full of minuscule shards of glass, countless numbers of them, lighting up the skin like glitter.
Dennis remembers the dead man smashing his half-full beer bottle against the bar, shouting curses. It had been a bad night; Frank blustering excuses as to why he shouldn't have to work, Dee still angry with Dennis over something he'd forgotten, Mac screaming at the customers when they complained of being mugged outside Paddy's. Charlie had left early with Frank, and Mac and Dee had followed at their own pace, not even wasting their time to explain why. Dennis was left alone to clear out the bar.
Usually, it was sort of fun to throw out the blind drunks after last call, but because this evening was an absolute nightmare, one of the drunks refused to listen. Instead of heading for the door like everyone else had, this guy smashed his bottle and screamed and pissed all over the floor, and Dennis had started to think about how, since Charlie was gone, he was the one who was going to have to clean that shit up. He remembers staring at the little pieces of glass covering the bar and floor, and after that, he thinks the guy must have said something insulting, because he remembers getting absolutely furious. He remembers, but in a distorted, underwater way, remembers wrapping his hands around the man's throat and squeezing it like a stress ball. He remembers picking up the broken bottle with one hand and jamming it into the guy's fat neck. And as the choking, gasping man fell, Dennis remembers kicking him—first all over his body, but then just his head—and kicking and kicking until the stupid look fell off his face, along with his nose and lips.
“Dennis? Hey, Dennis?”
“Yeah?” Dennis realizes he's finished. The body in front of him is completely sliced into small, jagged jigsaw pieces. His hands are sore, he's suddenly aware. He drops the saw and looks up at Charlie, who's standing in front of him with an armload of bloody rags.
“You okay, dude?”
“I,” Dennis almost brushes the question off, but he's just so tired. “I don't know.”
Charlie offers his hand and Dennis accepts it, pulling himself to his feet quickly. Too quickly. His ears buzz and he thinks he's about to fall over, so he grabs hold of Charlie's bare waist to steady himself. Charlie has no reaction to this, and the steady meter of his breathing soothes Dennis. He tries to alter his own to match.
After a moment, Charlie turns his gaze downward and says, “Well, the body looks good. I think we're ready.”
“What are we gonna do now?”
“We gotta get to my guy,” says Charlie, as he finally moves out of Dennis' embrace. He shakes out one of his garbage bags and unceremoniously shoves the load of chopped Radoslaw inside. “Help me carry this out to your car.”
“Wait, we're taking my car? Won't that leave trace evidence and shit? Incriminate me?” Dennis has calmed down enough to start getting angry again.
“What else are we gonna do? Call a cab and have some Pakistani guy drive you from your crime scene to your dump site?”
Dennis frowns. “Why do you assume the driver's Pakistani?”
“I don't care if he's from Mars, there's no way he's going to let you load a dead guy into his trunk!”
Running a hand over the back of his neck, Dennis says, “I just don't want to introduce a racist element into this. It's bad enough that I killed a foreigner.”
“Radoslaw wasn't foreign, he was Polish-American—now who's being racist.”
“No, no, we're the same race, it's not racist. You're still the racist one.”
“Fine, and you're just an off-brand asshole,” says Charlie. “Can we get this guy to the car?”
Dennis considers for a few more seconds and then grimaces. “All right, whatever. Double bag that shit, though. I don't want any blood on my interior.”
As they heave the bag out the door, Dennis glances back at the bar and sees that it's been completely reset. It isn't clean, per se—Paddy's has never been clean—but it is back to normal. A completely average dive bar. The only thing out of place here is him.
They throw the body bag in the back of the Range Rover, along with the blood-soiled rags. Then they head back inside and scrub themselves clean at the bar sink. It's just like any number of other early mornings; it's their usual routine when any one of them gets kicked to the curb by a fed-up one night stand. But this time, the drain isn't clogging with sweat and semen: the red-brown stains on their skin come off pink in the water, and then the water goes clear. When he's clean, Charlie starts putting his clothes back on and throws Dennis a spare set.
“You keep clothes in here?” Dennis asks once he's examined the printed tee in his hands. The front is covered with the NASCAR logo—which is about as low-class as it gets—and it's obviously not going to fit him. “You really gotta stop sleeping in the bar, man. It's not healthy.”
“Hmm? Oh, I mostly keep clothes here so I change after I get covered in rat blood,” Charlie thinks for a second. “But actually, the back office is a pretty nice place to sleep. Nicer than a bed with three other people, anyway.”
Dennis huffs and, seeing that they're both fully clothed, moves towards the door. “Let's just get going and get this over with.”
“Okay. I know the way—give me the keys.”
“No way are you driving my car.”
“What? I help you get rid of a fucking body,” he mouths the last part rather than saying it, “And you won't even let me drive your car?”
“Charlie, you don't know how to drive!” says Dennis smugly, as he opens the driver's side.
With a small whine of annoyance, Charlie gets in the passenger's side and slams the door. Dennis clicks his seat belt over his exposed midriff. God, these clothes are ridiculous. At least it's dark out, so no one they pass will be able to see him.
They get moving. Charlie fucks with the radio, changing stations back and forth while he tells Dennis when to turn.
One time, Dennis takes a corner too sharply and the bag in back slides around. Charlie turns his head to look at it, considering for a moment.
“We're hanging Radoslaw's picture in the bar,” he decides.
“Jesus, Charlie, how fucking moronic are you? Why don't we just build a shrine out of his bones and cover it with pictures of him, and keep his head in the freezer, and treat his skin with salt and washing soda so we can keep it soft enough to be workable, and send coded letters to the police,” he takes a deep breath, “If you want to get caught so badly.”
“I'm not gonna hang it up right away, but it's getting hung up.”
The route is long and time consuming, even without traffic. Charlie directs the car down curvy side streets and one-ways until Dennis loses all sense of direction. He's starting to think Charlie doesn't really know where he's going and is just calling out turns at random when suddenly, they pull up to a dilapidated marina. When did they get to the coast?
Charlie jiggles the door handle impatiently as Dennis parks, and he leaps out of the car as soon as the lock opens, running off. Dennis steps out too, but stays next to the car, with the engine still running. The headlights are the only light source around: there's no moon overhead in the cloudy sky. The pristine car windows reflect his face, but make his eyes into dark pits.
It's not more than a minute before Charlie returns and throws open the back car door. “All right, we gotta be quick.”
“What's going on?”
“Well, I told the guy why I came, and he said he'd take the bag, but then I mentioned I came here with you, and he didn't like that so much. So now he's prepping his boat to leave, and if we don't get this out to him before he does—”
“Fuck. Come on, lift the thing then!”
“I am lifting! Maybe you should lift!”
“You're the one who shoved the whole body—I mean, the whole thing into one bag, you stupid dumbass!”
They barely make down the dock before the boat pulls away. Charlie's contact—a grizzled old man who reminds Dennis a little of Rickety Cricket—grudgingly accepts their cargo. He looks them over with piercing, milky-blue eyes, which makes Dennis shift a little and wish he'd disguised himself. He doesn't feel like much of a criminal in his tiny shirt and high-water pants.
He must seem shaken up, because on the way back to the car, Charlie pats him on the back and says, “Don't worry, bro: no body, no case. And if you do get caught, I'll represent you—no charge.”
“For the last time, Charlie, you're not a lawyer.”
“I'm a great lawyer! I could get you off for murder. I got Mac off!”
“No, you didn't, because Mac didn't go to trail, because Mac didn't really kill anyone! You were just stupid enough to think he did. My situation is completely different.”
“There didn't even need to be a trial, that's how good I am,” Charlie cuffs Dennis on the shoulder. “Admit it, dude: I got Mac off faster and harder than anyone's ever gotten off in their life.”
Dennis rolls down his window and puts the car in reverse. He hopes Charlie has the way back memorized, because he sure doesn't know it. But everything seems okay. He drives, and as he watches the coastal road turn back into a city one, the night replays in his head. God, this whole thing is so strange.
“So that's... it?” he asks Charlie, breaking the silence after a few miles.
“Maybe,” Charlie shrugs. “You didn't take any creepy murder-trophies, did you?”
“Ah shit, you're right! I completely forgot to do that,” Dennis says, with mock disappointment. Charlie snorts, and he continues, “Whatever. The guy's stuff was shit anyway.”
The radio is crackling as they move in and out of range—making ghostly, distorted sounds—so Dennis switches it off. The silence in the car isn't uncomfortable, but Dennis is too wired to stay quiet for long.
“We've got a good thing going here, and I don't want to fuck it up,” he says, glancing his eyes between Charlie and the empty road, “But why do you know so much about getting rid of bodies?”
Charlie plays with his seat belt, pulling too much out and then letting it contract. He mumbles, “Frank introduced me to the guy.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured. But why did Frank have to do something like that?”
“Sometimes, I just get so, so angry,” says Charlie, after a moment. His hands are twisted in his shirt and he's staring out the window, even though it's still pitch dark outside.
Clearly, he doesn't want to talk. Dennis decides to let it go; they're both exhausted. He drives a few more miles in silence before feeling like he has to say, “Sometimes I get so angry, I feel like I'm not even there.”
Charlie's head doesn't turn, but he reaches one hand out and clasps it over Dennis' shoulder. The hand moves up and down, up and down, as Dennis watches the headlights on the road.
By the time they get to Charlie's apartment, the sky is yellow-gray with predawn light. They don't say anything else, but Charlie gives Dennis a friendly wave from the front steps of his building. Dennis drives back home and goes straight for the shower. He throws the NASCAR shirt in the trash; if Charlie wants, Dennis can buy him a new one. The guy really does need new clothes. Dennis turns the water temperature all the way on hot and lets it beat into his skin. Dee and Mac are in the next room, but they both can and have slept through fire alarms. And even if he does wake them, whatever. It's not like he's never come home late before. After a night on the town, with a supple young conquest—
Dennis slides one hand downward and tries to work off some of the day's tension. Yeah, he thinks, some half-drunk bar girl with a great ass and the type of huge, perky tits that could only be made of silicon. He imagines laying her down, holding her arms. She says, Choke me. He grabs her soft neck. Squeezes it. Jabs it with the broken bottle. Lets the pulsing arterial blood hit him in the face, pour over him in jets. The girl wipes the blood away from his eyes—no, it's not the girl. It's Charlie. Charlie strokes his fingertips along Dennis' cheekbone, letting his hands pick up the blood. He leans in, and his beard is rough against Dennis' face.
Charlie says into his ear, “I'll get you off.”
Then Dennis sees white. When he opens his eyes again, he thinks, well, that was... new.