Moving Day

"Have fun." She said, as she lounged on the couch and watched the idiot parade on TV. Alice barely moved her head as she wished him his farewell, enthralled as she was with the flickering altar of passive entertainment.

Inocente slapped his front pockets one last time. Keys? Check. Wallet? Check. Everything was in place. Now he could respond. "Oh, yeah, I will."

"Where are you going again?"

"I'm off to help CB from upstairs move."

"Who are you going to help again?"

"One of my ex-co-workers. He and his family are moving out of state. So I'm helping him. Good riddance."

"Why don't you like him Inocente? Was he the guy who messed up your car upholstery?"

"No, Jason was the guy who hurled in my car, my fault that was, should have known better than driving him home when he was drunk. No, the CB is the guy who hit on pretty much everyone in the office."

"Everyone?"

"Yes."

"Even you?"

"Yes. Everyone. Except the boss. We all complained about him, but the boss never did anything about it."

"Wow. Maybe he was giving your boss blow-jobs or something." An image flickered into his mind unbidden. Like the flash of a nuclear bomb at ground zero. It etched the shadow across the forefront of his brain. The kind of stain that only the likes of a well placed bullet could scour away. In that brief flash of agony and loss of innocence he relished the possibility of being clean once more.

"Maybe. That might explain the sudden promotion."

"So, why are you going to help him move Inocente?"

"He offered hard cash in exchange for my labor."

"Oh. Ok." Yes. Money, the great liberator. The one thing in the world that would make him set aside his misgivings and feelings. How mercenary was that? Any how, he was off.

"Back later. I might go out to the bar with Bill and some of the others."

"Ok, have fun. Love you!"

"Love you too."

Traffic Sunday morning was nearly non-existant. A paradox. Both a blessing and a curse. He made great time and saved a lot of gas, but he wasn't to thrilled about arriving at his destination early. Nobody else would be around. No sort of lightning rod between himself and the CB. Maybe another jog around the block before he pulled in... No, get this done with.

"Heya Inocente!" CB called out, waving like a maniac as Inocente rolled up his driveway. The man had the same as ever shit-eating grin spread across his jowls. A grin that gave Inocente the shivers every single time he encountered it. "I got some bad news for you." In the pause that followed the announcement Inocente's mind flooded with the possibilities - He's staying after all - he's broke and won't be able to pay - He didn't really need help and Inocente could just go home.

"Oh?"

"None of the others could make it. It'll just be the two of us. Though, I'll give you more money for the trouble. Hell, I'll even pay you twenty dollars more per hour. That brings it up to fifty I think." Inocente nodded and offered a half smile. More money was always good. But now he would be alone in the presence of the CB for many more hours than he had originally intended. He had really been hoping that his coworkers would be there to provide a natural defense. Like the lone herring lost in a flittering school of fish. Or chaff dropped from a fleeing jet.

Instead he was the lone tree on the plains.

"Come on, this way. Take a look at what we have here." CB said from the door, waving him along towards the interior of the house. His hands had a tendency of moving in conjunction with the man's mouth as if he were weaving the sounds with his fingers even as his mouth made them. It was a habit that many people found annoying. especially when they noticed the tendency for him to move his hands when his mouth was moving without his actually speaking.

Inocente followed, reluctantly. He did his best to appear cheerful and calm as he stepped through the threshold into what he had always imagined must be a den of iniquity. Dark, smoke filled halls, straps, whips and chains adorning the walls and sex-toys lying scattered across every horizontal surface.

What he found was an ordinary family home. It lay in the usual disarray that usually accompanied a major life change like upping one's roots and moving cross country. Walls were bare of adornment, leaving only the slightly brighter patches of paint to suggest that their lives had once been filled with glamor. The floors were covered with cardboard boxes, and their future contents strewn across the floor. Furniture in the middle of the room, wrapped in plastic and waiting to be lifted up and carried away.

The normality that he encountered in CB's home relieved Inocente, and then doubly creeped-out in the same breath. The house, the life, that the CB presented to the world seemed like a facade. A painted hero's mask of every day family normality. Everything he found made Inocente wonder about his family.

Did they see the same face as the man he knew at work? Or was he just husband and father to them?

Worse yet, which mask was his real face? Did he even have a real face?

"Hey buddy, are you awake?"

Inocente looked up from the picture that he was holding and nodded.

"Pretty girl isn't she? That's my sister. A real fox. She got all the good looks in the family let me tell you. Anyhow, back to the tour. This is the living room as you can see, we need to get the couch, and those two chairs out into the garage. Don't worry about that thing over there," He said as he motioned towards the far corner where a piano squatted, derelict, in the shadows. "We're leaving that for the buyers. Good riddance I say, the damn thing is a pain in the ass and nobody in our family even plays it."

"Then why did you get it?"

CB leaned in close and whispered "The wife wanted one. For the kids you know. We spent a fortune on the thing, and then on lessons. But none of it ever really stuck. But now it's the buyer's problem and not mine. Can't tell you how happy I am for that buddy. I'd of chopped the thing up years ago if it had been up to me. Anyhow let's finish the tour, what do you say?"

Inocente nodded and followed along. CB walked the halls, his lips and hands moving in conjunction as he delved into just about every detail that he could dredge up about the house's finer points, and just about every knick-knack housed between its eight (it was the only octagonal house in the state, fancy that) walls. The tour took over an hour, and Inocente was exhausted by the time they returned to the kitchen for what would be the first of many rest breaks and accompanying beers.

Box followed box, and then came the furniture. CB narrated every jarring, exhausting step with extensive lists of what was in each and every box, from exotic odds and ends from all around the world down to his wife's lingerie collection and how she looked in each and every garment.

Judging by the man's description of his unmentionable clad wife, and her lusty nature, Inocente couldn't begin to understand why the man behaved as he did towards the rest of the world at large.

That was how his day went, for four long hours until the house was a empty cavern with only fading memories of the departing occupants. Crayon marks and faded paint marring its interior. CB and his brood were soon to be forgotten. Inocente felt a pang of jealousy. His own memories would never fade so easily.

He leaned up against the mattress from the master bedroom, ill advised he knew after the afternoon of CB's boastful hints and implications, but then he was just too damn tired to really think clearly or care. CB crossed the garage, picking his way through the minefield of boxes to come to rest in front of Inocente, far too close for the latter's comfort. Worse yet, he didn't seem the slightest bit winded from the afternoon's labor. inocente disliked him even more. He kept his expression mild.

"Thanks a lot buddy, I really mean it. I really couldn't have done this all without your help." CB said, reaching out and taking Inocente's hand and giving it a shake.

"Yeah, no problem. Good luck with the new job." Too bad it was a promotion, but at least it's taking you the hell away from here you sleazoid. Inocente thought that he was getting pretty good at keeping his smile in place no matter what went on behind his eyes.

"Thanks again. Hey, tell you what, I have some nice wine down in the cellar, why don't we open a bottle to celebrate. Both of our good fortunes!"

"I don't know."

"Oh come on buddy, I have a excellent vintage all picked out for this kind of. "What is it?"

"Do you very extensive wine knowledge Inocente?"

"Not really. I've only ever drunk the stuff out of the box."

"Oh god, that's terrible thing to say. Here, you need to try this wine. It is a spiritual experience in and of itself. Most of the vintages I've collected are top-notch." He gestured with his free hand towards the rack, and Inocente, "though I doubt that you would know that, as a ignorant peon working in the mail room."

Inocente started to turn as the bottle exploded across his temple, shattering, the shards spraying across the room as he fell to the floor with all the speed that gravity could muster. CB smiled and dragged Inocente's inert mass away from the wine cellar.

Brightness. A lamp glowing so bright that for a moment Inocente thought he was outside looking up at the sun. For a moment. Until the light burned some of the fog away. He was in a dark damp room. Concrete floor. Dank basement smell. A clicking sound rattled around the room, somewhere out beyond the halo of light that was now Inocente's world.

CB stepped forward, blocking the light, eclipsing Inocente's sun. He leaned in close, staring directly into Inocente's eyes as he did. Inocente tried to move but couldn't get too far. He was cuffed to the chair. To scream. His mouth wouldn't open! It wouldn't open.

"Well peon, you tried to cause me all sorts of trouble around the office." His breath reeking of the wine as he spoke. "Your plans seem to have backfired on you boy-o. Still, i dislike the sentiment. Bad intentions and all that. So, i've decided to offer you up to The Mistress so that she might bless me further. I don't actually serve an ancient Goddess, nothing like that no. I made the Mistress up for the hell of it. I usually tell the unfortunates who I bring down here that they're being sacrificed to a obscure Goddess of death. I guess it cushions the blow some for most of them. Not you though Peon."

"Trouble opening your mouth? I used some super glue while you were out. I just slathered it on. Which might explain the buzz I'm feeling right now. It seemed, I don't know, an appropriate gesture considering. If the eye offends, pluck it out! But you can't really pluck out a mouth? I mean it's already an orifice. I suppose I could have cut out your tongue. But that would have been a little dangerous. You could have bled to death before I was finished. Then where would we have been hmmm?" Innocente passed out.

He woke again, CB was holding his forehead with one hand and waving the knife in front of his face. "You know what the best part of all this is Peon? It's always the quiet ones. The church going salt of the earth who never say a cross word to their neighbors. Then the police find a freezer full of chopped up hookers in their basement, because the quiet one was using the parts to manufacture some sort of sick and twisted sex doll, don't worry about that I get enough of the live pussy to satisfy my needs if not my desires. Chris from the manager's office, that one is fine piece of ass let me tell you. You know what I mean. I don't need to make a doll to fuck. Besides, I failed basic sewing, and sewing together a fuck-toy is something you need to do by yourself. Anyhow, it's always the quiet ones. Those guys a little like you. Who would ever suspect this sort of thing from a... "Blabby" I think you called it... man like my own self."

CB stepped out of Inocente's line of sight. Inocente tried to convince himself that he was having a nightmare, rolled in with the worlds worst case of sleep paralysis, and if he struggled long enough he could force one of his eyelids open.

CB appeared once more, surrounded by a golden aura as he filled Inocente's vision. He wiggled his fingers and pointed at and object that he had retrieved somewhere from the abyss beyond.

He held a knife. The blade curved inward like a raptor's beak, serrated and cruel. The knife was made to part flesh from the body. CB held the knife like it was the tool and he was a master artisan with long years experience. with the sort of familiarity that most men reserved for their wives or lovers.

With a flick of the wrist CB made his first cut.

Inocente passed out.

CB began his work in earnest. A piece here, a piece there, making a patchwork from what had been Inocente. He rehearsed as he worked. "No officer, I have no idea where he could be. He said that he'd stop by and give me a hand with the move, but he never arrived. Is there some sort of problem? No, we worked in the same office. I didn't know him very well since we worked in different departments. He looked like a wiry guy so I offered to pay him to help me move."

No mere artisan was Creepy Bastard, but a true artist.