Cold Cuts
by Jim Veary
I wake slowly, stumbling up from a sleep punctuated by nightmares. It's dark and very cold. I can feel the hard seat of a chair beneath my ass, my hands and ankles tightly bound to the heavy wood. A feeble shaft of light glistens through a partially opened doorway, yellowed and so dim that it illuminates nothing of my surroundings. But through the opening I can hear voices mumbling, soft, sibilant, conspiratorial. One of them belongs to my wife.
Somewhere nearby, a chainsaw rumbles to life, whines up through several of octaves of mechanical clamor and begins to rattle as it cuts through something hard. Moments later, the door opens wide and an overhead light bulb, harsh and bare, flickers to life, flooding the room with a light that sears my eyes. I blink back the sudden tears and watch as Jillian walks in holding a canvas bag and carrying a bucket. "Ahh, you're awake." she says through clouds of frosty mist.
"Jillian?"
"Shhh," she puts the bucket down and holds her finger to her lips. "Let me say this first. " She reaches out and slaps me hard across the face. "You bastard! Deedee?" She sneers. " Deedee? Jim, she's your daughter's age. And she doesn't even have a proper woman's name!"
I am muddled and cold and my face stings. " Where… where am I? what's…"
"This is Roger's hunting lodge. You like it? Roger, by the way, is my lover. See, you took a mistress so I took a lover. Only fair, wouldn't you say?"
"Jillian, I don't… I don't know what you are talking about."
The chain saw rattles into silence and a bigger motor coughs and screeches to life outside. The whine and clatter of a woodchipper is unmistakable.
"God! you are such an asshole, sweetie!" She smiles a mirthless grimace. " Roger and his buddies do a lot of hunting - Deer and stuff. This is their walk-in freezer for keeping the meat. You look cold?"
"Yyyyes." I shiver, realizing that I am bound to this chair completely naked.
"Good! I got something for you." She reaches into the bag, grabs hold of something inside, then lets the bag fall away from her hand.
Deedee's head, neatly severed from her neck is hanging there, her long golden hair laced through Jillian's fingers. The face is ghostly white and single tear lies frozen to her cheek like a diamond piercing.
I start to gag.
Jillian waits for my retching to pass. "Roger says the body parts go through the woodchipper a lot easier when they are frozen. Deedee's parts are going into the pond as we speak. The fish get a great meal and we get rid of the body. Neat, huh?"
"Jillian!" I plead.
"Yeah, I know! Life's a bitch," she says, then picks up the bucket from the floor and pours ice cold water over me. Life's a Bitch, Jim. Then you die!"
Jillian turns and exits the freezer, Deedee's head swinging at her side. The door slams shut and the light clicks off. The cold settles in.
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I am a retired Fire Chief from Bridgeport Connecticut, now living in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. My hobbies include writing (of course), flying ( both the heavy iron and model R/C airplanes), and writing ( did I mention that?) My first published fiction appears in Long Story short, May 2010 edition. Contact Jim.
