Chapter 16 "Gruesome Buddah"

It was the body of a man. I ran to her side and she was still screaming half huddled and with her hands to her face directly in front of him. She had some how moved into the part of the long kitchen that we hadn't explored. The light from the hallway had illuminated the body, sitting in the lotus position, or Indian style, sort of. He was illuminated by a skylight that cut all the way through the attic that let in some meager blue light from the moon, but he was mostly lit by the sickly yellow incandescent light from the hallway. The man was completely naked except for the blood soaked headband tied around his head.

I was completely freaked. All my adrenalin was used and I dumbly put my arms around her but was still transfixed by this Buddha body of a human that was obviously completely dead in front of me. There is something about seeing a human body that you never forget. You first look upon a dead body, and if you haven't yet, you will at some point in your life, you will recognize that some sort of soul or life essence has left the extremities, the face. The smell was obvious now. It was hidden by weed and animal, but as I stood embracing a still screaming and cowering Jaime the smell of human decay was more apparent than ever. I was feeling scientific. I had no flight or fight response left. I turned to Jaime and grabbed the nape of her neck and held her close to me, extending her body from that slight crouched position and pushed her into my chest. She started saying, "No, no, no, no, no!"

"Shhhhhh." I was staring at this perfectly posed body. Nobody dies like this, not naturally. I squinted into this beautiful contrast of blue and sickly yellow and tried to make out the horror that the lighting betrayed. There was a chain attached to the body's neck that was attached to the ceiling. It held his body erect, in this horrifically peaceful Buddha position, but there was further nastiness. From his head to groin there were large circular wounds on the front of his body that ran parallel to his spine. His genitals were completely cut out, and there were similar wounds that were placed vertically up the body in a straight line ending in his face and the top of the head. The first facial wound was circular in nature and was about the size of the bottom of a pint glass. It demolished his nose and eye area. It looked like it was gouged out by a landscaping auger. There was a large gruesome wound on the top of his head of similar nature.

There was also a menagerie of shit underneath him. I reached a hand back behind me and slapped a push button light switch. I have no idea how I knew it was there. It lit the whole scene via blinding track lights above Jaime and I. She screamed even louder and buried her head further into my chest and pushed the top of her head into my neck so hard it gagged me for a second. The gagging could actually have been a combination of the force of her and the utter slaughter that I was so transfixed by.

On the ground underneath the body was a small piece of blood soaked fabric and candles and pieces of human stuff mostly spread around the body in tiny metal bowls. Bits of person. Some of the bits were obviously lit on fire and had candle wax on them. Iguana bits. Chunks o' man. Iguanas will eat whatever they want when they are hungry, I surmised. There were scrawls of black charcoal runes on the floor.

Really?!

Fuck.

I thought of all the things I could be doing right now. Nothing is worth this shit. Not even fine ass Jaime.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her lightly. She stared up into my eyes. I pushed her up against the wall, and took her right hand in mine. Her hand still had my biker boy red handkerchief doo-rag in it. I darted my eyes over to the light switch I had just slapped and looked at her with an urgent look. She was sheet white. I mean, whiter than her normal gothic white, at least, normally, she always carried a little flush to her cheek. She was in shock. "Keep on it. Did you forget anything? Wipe it off. DO IT NOW!" I turned her shoulders towards the light switch. It took her a second, but she took to having a direct mission and she started wiping things down like it was her business not to look at this dead and mutilated thing before us.

She doesn't have much time. I know shock. I know your adrenaline reserves leave you dead and bereft. They leave you killed and destroyed. I returned my gaze to the man. He had these amazing circular wounds that went down his body like buttons of a shirt. His neck and tongue were fat with bloat and his eyes were sunken holes that flanked a cone of gore. The chain was just under his jaw, suspending him perfectly, but his jaw was not easily recognizable because of the bloat...At the time I thought to myself that it seemed like some sort of ritual suicide, but really, it was the only thing I could amass in my head as an explanation. He was cored out in at least six places! How does one do that? At the time, I didn't even care. It was time to go. I wished a million times that I never…but here I was.

I got closer to the body and looked at the destroyed head. The headband was green or blue at some point. It was now brown with dried blood. I looked closely at the headband since it was the only thing he was wearing. The best parts of his birthday suit were now chunks o' iguana bits in several bowls around me. I looked at the floor and we hadn't disturbed the crazy runes and lines on the floor. The headband had a chevron on it. Tiny and hand stitched. It looked familiar. I yelled out, "Where are you!?"
"I'm fuckin ready, Red!"

"Let's roll, babe!" I took my shirt in my hand and pushed off the light. I met Jaime in the door; she had pulled on a pair of vinyl gloves from our job and held a pair to my face. She pulled them from her tiny handbag. I nodded to her and grabbed them and started to pull them on, thinking it might be good to push the screen door closed with the gloves when the weirdest thing happened....

We got outside the house, and Jaime turned to me and grabbed me by the shoulders. She pulled me around as I clattered the heavy screen door closed. I scanned the street...empty, and then I met her eyes.

"I know what that is!" She hadn't even bothered to whisper. I winced at her and darted my eyes about. She proceeded with a pleading whisper, "You never kill anyone like that! Unless, you want their power." She was almost hyperventilating. "You kill them one chakra at a...." Her eyes went glassy and she had a perceptible tremor to her body and to her hand. It was like watching palsy. Then she screwed up her face really bad. It was so odd to watch beautiful Jaime lose control of her facial features like this; it made her look like the drunken animal of her normal composure. And then she wailed and fell over into my arms. Jaime was as white as a sheet and as rigid as tree trunk.

I stared at her hands as we went slowly to the ground. The vinyl gloves had been caught on some of the rings of her fingers and she had curled her fingers so fiercely that her finger nails had pierced the tips of the gloves. Her guttural wail had subsided and she now began clutching at her chest, tugging the neck of her shirt almost impossibly. Even though she was wearing a bra, she had practically pulled her whole tit out. As I lied her down on the porch I tried to struggle with that hand, to pull it from her shirt and bra, but it was incredibly strong. I set her down and cradled her head in my lap, and then she began seizing.

I recognized now what I was witnessing. She was having a seizure. I held her loosely in my lap and she flopped around rhythmically. As she progressed through it every jerk got further and further apart. The horrible rhythm was ritarding. I breathed in. I blew out. I look around to see if I could get anything for her to keep her from biting her tongue off. Nothing. Blood and spit were frothing out of her mouth. Her breathing was only with every jerk, if at all. I started weeping. Quietly weeping. Her hands were still curled into manic looking claws and her back was arching enough to break her spine. I was imagining that this would be the tragic ending to my own life. I imagine this beautiful chance in my life, Jaime, dying in my arms. I imagined her gone, and me getting arrested and thrown in jail. I imagined myself getting murdered. I thought about my mom. My beautiful mom. How disappointed she would be in me, but that she would love me forever. How sad and proud and amazing that kind of love is. I was weeping as I thought these little selfish thoughts, while Jaime could be technically dying in my arms, the strain of tonight, too much to bear. I thought ironically that it was too much for me as well. I am losing it.

She seized one last time and exhaled and belched. I thought she could be dead. My perception of time was really messed up, and it felt like she had been at it forever. I had no more tears left, but then she started snoring these big log sawing breaths. She was alive! I squeezed my eyelids together and crushed out the tears and stared out towards the street. The porch was mostly enclosed in a thick brick half wall and so I heaved and moved my ass over, lugging her sleeping body to give us a little cover from the street. I took her face, upside down in my hands, and lightly blew on her forehead. I caressed her cheek and her neck just slightly.

"Jaime?"

It's strange, feeling her heart pounding through her ribcage on my legs. She groaned, so tired, and she tried to roll over. I steadied her, and kept her on her on her back. Jaime reached up and grabbed my forearm and hugged it to her chest like a Teddy Bear. I chuckled to spite myself. She moaned pleasurably and stretched and began snoring again. I scanned the street again. A car pulled up to the apartment building across the street. I felt the darkness around us and the cover that we were fortunate enough to be behind, and yet, I gotta wear this flashy ass shirt. Hilarious.

I began to wonder why my thoughts were so linked to my own suffering as I was watching Jaime suffer so incredibly. I wondered why I wept for myself as much as I was weeping for her. Maybe I am incapable of love or emotion without first relating it to my own well being. Maybe I was just sad. It's possible that I was in a waking dream. It's possible that I had just had enough for today.

I started to feel my own heart beating, and I rubbed her forearms and said, "Jaime. Wake up."

"Jazzy?"

"Jazzy? What's a Jazzy?" Huh? No, baby..." I said as she snapped open her eyes, and yelped.

"Wuh?" She said. She looked seriously out of it. It reminded me of when my friend Johnny got knocked out by some redneck shit kicker at the bar. "Ohhhhh it's you....you were gooooood."

"Jaime...listen."

"Where are we? This is weird. Are we outside? Kinky...I love you, are we gonna fuck?" She groaned and pulled on my arm, hugging it tighter to her chest. I'm thinking that I'm always in the wrong place at the right time or vice versa.

"Jaime. Look at me."

"What the fuck, dude? Where are we? I gotta go!" With that she started to get up. I grabbed her by the back of her arms and pulled her further into the shadows behind the porch wall. She tensed against me and I pulled her down with her back facing me against the wall of the house. "What the FUCK, Red? I'll get your ass fired! Dean hates you!"

"Shhhhhh. Jaime. We are in danger. You had a seizure and we are in deep shit." I was hissing into her ear. This seemed to calm her down a bit.

"Red, I like you, but..."

"I know this is hard to understand, but you just had a seizure. We could get in real trouble right now if we don't figure out how to act normal..."

"Wuh," She returned to a whisper and wiped the spit and blood off her face by ducking into my shirt. "Did you fuckin drug me? Did you fuckin drug me and fuck me? What the hell?" She was staring at her gloves, then she turned to look at me. I gave her a face as if there is obviously more to the story.

"Do you feel fucked?" I said. She considered for a second and reached down and felt her crotch.

"No."

"Believe me, I fuck you...you stay fucked for a little while." She kinda purred and sunk deeper into me.

"Is that so?" She laughed, and grabbed the back of my neck and tugged on my earlobe. "Red? Where are we?" Tiny shivers, all over my body.

"1238 Humboldt St. We came here, and now we might be in danger. Can you walk? And stop calling me Red."

"Ohhhh you're so cute, my Norseman." I let out an exasperated breath.

"Norse nomenclature, um, completely wrong, but can you walk?"

"Of course!" She sprung up from my lap and did a little spin move and picked up her purse in one motion. It was that little purse with back straps that I would come to know so well. It had a Vision Street Wear logo on it.

"Good...FFFFFuck." I got up and we left.

We walked straight out the front gate, and in my estimation, avoided any prying eyes. We sped down the block and into the park, Jaime speed walking ahead of me. At one point she pulled the gloves off of her hands and tossed them over her shoulder at me. I caught them both, pulled off my own, and stuffed them into my pocket.

At one point through the park, she stopped and let me catch up with her. I was amazed about now of how fast she could move those little short crotch legs of hers. She asked where we were, and I knew, of course, but she asked me where she lived. I had to remind her that she had a seizure and the whole conversation about who I was, and what we were doing was enacted again. She was aware of who I was, but needed to be reminded, like I was an old friend she had just reacquainted with. She seemed to be moving in and out of the situation rather transiently. We got her license out of her purse and she seemed to agree that the information on the license about her address was correct.

While we were walking to her home, near our King Soopers, she asked me what had happened several times. Each time I became more descriptive of what we had done, and where we had been, and what we had seen. She became more and more agreeable with each telling of the story, gravely agreeing with each new gruesome detail. She was remembering. We got to her house and we laid down on her bed. By that time I was telling the end of what had happened for the fifth or sixth time in gruesome and graphic detail. She was soaking it in like a sponge and the she said simply, "Jesus. I'm so tired."

I'm not sure who fell asleep first, her or I, but I woke up with a start, with her in my arms at five twelve AM and realized that I had left that cola of weed wrapped up in Mylar with my fingerprints all over it somewhere in that horrific house...FUCK!