Episode 3 – Finale, Part 2

HOW IN THE HECK CAN YOU WASH YER NECK?

OR

YOU BETTER STOP YOUR METHIN’ AROUND

 

Murray was smoking.

Lowell was smoking.

They smoked in the manner wistfully nostalgic men do, men who really do miss the old days of tobacco, the glory days when over seventy five percent of all adults smoked, and smoked unabashedly.

They smoked, at this moment, as if they had both lived right through that era, knowing that, at this point in their existence, puffing relentlessly like this wasn’t going to make much of a difference. If either of them were going to die of a sudden heart attack, it would have happened a long time ago.

They continued. A nurse walked past them.

“Guys, it’s fine if you smoke, most of us do, but, you can’t smoke right in front of the emergency room entrance. Looks bad you know?” She walked twenty feet and turned right at the corner of the hospital. They could see her smoke curling around the building, beckoningly.

They continued smoking under the red “ER” sign.

“At least she was able to go home,” said Murray. He blinked. “I think she’ll be fine.”

“She ate the man’s mouth,” countered Lowell.

“Well,” said Murray, his light eyes twinkling in the starlight, “I don’t think she would have done it. Ordinarily.”

“Ordinarily? Of course she wouldn’t have done it ordinarily Murray!” Lowell said in disgust. “Really Murray, you of all people should know better than to try to placate me!” He threw his cigarette down at the sidewalk. Sparks flew from it, nicotine butterflies freed from their filtered prison.

Murray put his arm on Lowell, his palm breathing calmness into his friend’s shoulder. “Look pal, I’m sorry. No more placating. Promise. Look, your cousin is on her way home after a rough couple of days. She’ll be fine. Really. Everyone knows it was the meth. The meth and whatever else they gave her in the hospital. No one thinks she’s a…killer.”

…

Chandler pulled his car into the parking space accorded him at the converted house he rented for his insurance company. It was always strange to him that half of “main street” (as all the local yokels called it) once had regular houses on it rather than business establishments. Over the years, one by one, most of these houses had been demolished, paved under either for parking or for green spaces or for auto part stores. He rented one of the few family houses still standing on main street. He liked the building. It was comfortable and renovated just enough to combine the practical needs of a businessman like himself with the cozy, welcoming atmosphere of a family home. This, Chandler felt, was essential in his sworn vocation of selling insurance: He wanted people to feel as relaxed as possible as he signed them up for coverage that, God willing, would never pay out a single cent to them.

It was also close to Belle’s place of employment, close to the gas station, close to a regular flow of customers for his other job: Buying, trading, procuring, and smoking…meth. For Chandler, having what amounted to two full time jobs, location was of the essence! “Location! Location! Location!” he sneered. He was not a pleasant man. Not nearly as pleasant as his realtor father was–and this suited Chandler just fine.

He hated his father.

Taking out a cigarette and lighting it, he got out of his stylish convertible and glanced over at the gas station across the street. It wasn’t like Belle not to be outside, waving crazily at him. That crazy chic–how he loved her! He remembered that he had just been busy hating his father, hating everything about him, hating that he had to pay that pompous jerk rent, rent plus utilities!

His father was considered by all who knew him to be a genuinely kind and considerate, immensely generous man; Indeed, he had forgone selling the property his hopelessly addicted son rented from him (and selling it for a handsome price at that!) in order to provide Chandler with a cheap place to rent, wishing against wish that he still might turn his life around.

A little buzzed, a little too focused on his father, Chandler smacked his head right into a low hanging branch. “Christ!” he yelled, swatting the branch away in a sort of mad frenzy. Having hit the sturdy branch away from himself, Chandler was struck right in the face again as it returned to its point of origin. “Christ!” he yelled again, bringing the hand with his cigarette in it up to his face, which in turn, burned him. “Christ!”

He looked across the street. Belle was still not out, and this was good. He had been trying to get her to stop swearing so much. These local yokels–sailors had nothing on them, thought Chandler. He wondered what age they started teaching their kids curse words and he figured it was probably about the time they started teaching them to read and write: About eighth grade. He cackled. He was from the university town of River Falls, had grown up there, and had lived there all of his life so these hicks from the sticks, they might as well have been from the Ozarks as far as he was concerned. It didn’t matter that he had lived in Hayward for over twenty years, it didn’t matter that he had moved up to the area to keep an eye on his father’s assorted properties (and to start his insurance business). It didn’t matter because he was still considered an outsider by those who had grown up in the area–even after twenty years.

And Chandler knew it was the same exact way in all of these little podunk towns and villages and cities. Cities! There really weren’t many “true” cities around here that Chandler could name. There were the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul–which everyone just referred to as “The Cities,” and there was Eau Claire, a city of 50,000. As for Madison and Milwaukee, they didn’t count to anyone up in these parts. To the people of northern Wisconsin, Madison and Milwaukee might as well have been in China.

“Christ!” Chandler said again. He was bleeding. He really needed to focus and pretend to go to his office and then leisurely walk over to the Liberty Super like he was just another ordinary fella, buying a pop and some smokes. If you had told him that every single person in town knew that he was cheating on his wife with Belle Reinfield and that every single person in town knew that he and Belle were complete meth heads, he would not have believed it.

He jaunted up the steps of his rental office house and flew through the entry way, took a right and went up the stairs, turned on the lights to his second floor office, turned around and went down the hallway and out the back door and down the back stairwell and, crossing in the side yard between the house and the Piggy Co-op Bank, skipped across the street, blood edging his upper lip.

He moved well for a meth head, he looked fairly healthy too. It pained him to think of Belle’s missing teeth, her stringy hair, and her facial and body sores. She looked a bit ragged. Along with the swearing, he was really trying to get her to take a little bit better care of herself, it was hurting business.

But only a little.

The first time he had sold her out for meth or money, it had been out of desperation. But, now, eighteen months later (had it really been that long?), neither of them really cared. “Anything for the team!” Belle would say cheerfully. They had come to understand that certain men, certain clientele, didn’t really care what she looked like or what she smelled like or who she was attached to–as long as money or meth was acceptable as a form of currency. And if sometimes he, Chandler, had to be the currency, that was on the table too.

“Anything for the team,” he said, crossing under a street light. Bounding through the space between two gasoline pumps, he looked into the station trying to see his Belle. He was looking with such intent (using what he liked to refer to as his “meth ray vision”) that he almost ran into the second row of pumps. “Christ!” he yelled.

In between the space of the second row of pumps and the station entrance, Chandler thought about the word “Christ” and how it wasn’t really a curse word unless you believed in Jesus Christ or rather, believed that Jesus was The Christ, or unless you believed in apocalyptic, monotheistic, patriarchal, desert based religions. He himself did not. So, Chandler thought to himself, if Belle did hear me yelling “Christ!” over and over, he’d have a decent argument for clemency.

“Belle baby!” he shouted as he burst through the station doors. Using his meth ray vision, he quickly scanned all the aisles and the walls and the ceilings but did not see her anywhere. He half jumped over the squared in service counter thinking she might be hiding behind it (she’d done that before) but no, she wasn’t there either.

He spied the storage room door, slightly ajar.

“Belle baby!” he yelled again, making his way with not a little excitement, still feeling quite buzzed. He pushed open the door further and looked down to see…Belle. Or at least, parts of her.

“Holy fucking Christ!” he screamed, now fully believing in both Christ and swearing. “Holy fucking Mother of God Christ!” screamed Chandler.

Turning around with the intention of getting out of the station as fast as possible, back to his office, back to his own home–his real home, the one he shared with his miserable wife, Chandler was stunned to find himself face to face with Bethany Ward. He didn’t really know Bethany Ward, he just knew of her. She was the lady who was always walking, walking and picking up trash. She’s looked better, he thought.

As Chandler stood there, somewhat buzzed, somewhat in shock, Bethany Ward opened her mouth. Chandler could see shards of Belle’s meth pipe broken off and implanted in Bethany’s mouth. She had eaten the rest! She smelled like a combination of meth and blood and…sex?

Chandler was very, very confused.

And, it was his confusion which sealed his fate as Bethany Ward, her wings still intact, her glorious trip through space and time still revealing itself to her, her ravenous hunger ever so prevalent, leaned in towards Chandler sharply, teeth first.

It is hard to imagine what one would do should someone bite into one’s face with the full force of a meth high. What Chandler did was scream and this was the wrong thing to do. For his breath betrayed that, he too, held that secret elixir which Bethany so craved. “Boyfriend!” she screeched, realizing who he was, and what it meant, what he had brought–brought for her!

“I’m sorry, but I’m already taken!” he pled, misunderstandingly.

It was the last thing he ever misunderstood.

…

Johnson was a bread delivery man, had been for almost forty years. It was almost time for him to retire and this made him very glad. He remembered the good ol’ days when there were two kinds of bread: White bread, and white bread with the crusts cut off by your mother. Nowadays…well, you couldn’t keep track! Gluten free bread, rice bread, 13 grain, whole seed bread, naan bread–he half ways expected that very soon he would be delivering bread-free bread!

His feet hurt. His back hurt. He had drank a little too much (again) last night and so his dehydrated head hurt.

He’d been a bit surprised to enter the Liberty Gas Station without the usual excited greeting from his pal Belle. Did that girl ever sleep? He didn’t know. She was a peach though, he knew that. A bit on the skinny side but a hard worker. He always marveled at how sharp looking she kept her shelves. “You must drink a lot of coffee!” he liked to say to her, “Or something!”

“Or something!” Belle would always snap back, laughing that crazy laugh. He called out her name but heard nothing. He scanned the aisles and saw she wasn’t down any. He went to the bathroom door and knocked. “Belle honey, it’s Johnson with your bread!”

Nothing.

He saw the ajar door and went to it. Even before entering he could smell something fiercely pungent. He saw the door at the back of the stockroom was also ajar. Maybe Belle was out back smoking, not like her to do so, but, where else would she be? He stepped into the darkness of the storage room with the intention of walking towards the light coming in from the back door.

He didn’t make it.

With an almost comical yelp, Johnson crashed to the floor having tripped over something, something stiff, something slimy. Reaching out with his hand to brace himself to stand up again, his grip slipped on something wet. His other hand instinctively clutched for something to hold onto and found it–also something wet! Johnson yelled as he managed to stand up. Racing in a panic towards the light of the back door, he shoved against it, flinging it open. Looking into his left hand he saw that it held a fairly good piece of his pal Belle’s skinny face. Looking at his other hand, he started screaming as he realized he was holding onto something resembling the remains of a tongue.

Twirling and yelling and screaming was how the police responding to several calls from neighboring houses found Johnson when they arrived.

When the police found the remains of Belle and Chandler, they began twirling and yelling and screaming too.

 

WHAT’S BETTER THAN A TWO PART FINALE? THAT’S RIGHT–A THREE PART FINALE CALLED: HAVE YOU SEEN THE METHOD MAN, THE METHOD MAN, THE METHOD MAN?