Flesh

Consider it a challenge.

Right.

He looked down at himself. His naked body was crimson and flecked with gore.

A challenge.

He was no longer cold, but he felt shivery inside as if he might start to cry.

If anybody sees me like this…

I’ll figure out something.

Oh God, how could I have fallen asleep? How could I have slept till morning?

He rubbed his sticky face, let out a trembling sigh, and stepped to the kitchen’s bat-wing doors. Before opening them, he scanned the dining area. He listened. Satisfied that he was alone in the restaurant, he pushed through the doors.

Near the front, along with the stepladder, vacuum cleaner, toolbox and cans of cleaning fluids, he found several rags and old towels. The few rags were filthy, but two of the towels seemed reasonably clean. He took them with him.

He stepped to a window and looked out. His heart gave a sick lurch when he saw the car in the parking lot.

Just Jason’s car.

He turned away from the window. His shirt, pants, and handcuffs were on the floor near the rumpled blanket. Celia’s neatly folded gown lay on top of the bar counter.

Roland picked up his T-shirt. It was one of his favorites, orange with the slogan, “Trust me,” printed beneath a colorful, monstrous face. It was stiff with dried blood. He was about to throw it down when an idea came to him.

Why not wear his bloody clothes? He could probably walk right up to his dorm room in them. With his reputation, anyone seeing him would just assume it was another gag.

But he might be seen on the way back to campus. Townies didn’t know about his reputation for bizarre behavior.

Muttering, “Shit,” he threw the shirt down.

He knew that he could wash the blood from his hair and body. No problem, there. But he needed clothes. Jason’s, he knew, were even worse off than his. Only Celia’s gown was bloodless. No way, he thought. Talk about conspicuous.

If he’d had any brains, he would’ve stripped before he opened up Jason.

He felt trapped.

There must be a way out. Think!

Where there is a problem, there is a solution. There has to be.

Problem. I can’t leave here in bloody clothes. I can’t leave here naked. I can’t wear Celia’s gown.

Why is it a problem? Because if I’m seen by the wrong people, I might get arrested.

Solution?

Obvious. Don’t get seen. Stay here. Until say three o’clock in the morning.

Somebody might come. Like that guy yesterday.

Roland shuddered.

That guy yesterday.

That guy knew.

Roland had been inside the restaurant no more than ten minutes when he heard a car and rushed to the window. Out of the car stepped a man in boots and leather clothes, a man wearing a gun on his belt and carrying a machete. The sight of him sent an icy surge along Roland’s spine. Memories filled his mind of other men, in other times, dressed in protective gar ments and carrying sharp weapons: axes, scythes, sabers, longbladed knives. Other men who knew, just as this one did.

Confused and terrified, Roland had fled out the rear door and hidden in the field behind the restaurant. Lying in the weeds, he had waited until his panic subsided. Then he had crept through the field, keeping low, working his way around the restaurant until he could see the parking lot.

Who was this man?

A cortez.

What the hell is a cortez? Roland wondered, and his mind suddenly reeled with images of carnage: bearded soldiers with swords and battle-axes slaughtering Indians beneath a blood-red sky. In the background stood a strange pyramid. As quickly as the images had come, they were gone.

That Cortez, Roland thought. My God. He remembered reading an article in National Geographic a few years ago. His parents had a subscription, and he always used to look through the magazines for bare-breasted natives. But this article had caught his attention, and he’d read it. All about the Aztecs, how they not only offered the hearts of their victims as sacrifices to the sun god, but also how they ate the captured warriors. The greatest delicacy was the brain, and it always went to the high priests.

The writer of the article theorized that primitive cultures such as the Aztecs turned to cannibalism because they required protein and had no cattle. He was wrong, Roland realized, and grinned. Boy, was he wrong. The Aztecs had friends up their necks.

And Cortez, with his conquistadors, made mincemeat out of them.

So that’s why this guy who went into the restaurant with the machete is a cortez. One who knows, and therefore threatens the existence of my friend—and me.

Lying in the field, Roland understood why he feared the man so much. The man should be killed, but he felt no urge to attempt it. Better to remain hidden.

After the man finally left, Roland entered the restaurant. He climbed down the cellar steps. Finding a gooey smear on the concrete behind the stairway, he trembled with rage and sorrow at what the cortez had done.

I’ll get him, he thought.

No, he’s too dangerous. Better to get far away from one who knows. Leave town.

Not tonight, though. Stay tonight for Celia.

What about her girlfriend? I want that one, too.

We’ll see.

She would be worth a little risk, he thought. He remembered how she had looked when he saw her at the mall—that lovely, innocent face, that jumpsuit with the zipper down the front, the way the fabric hugged the mounds of her breasts.

His friend gave him a quick surge of pleasure.

Roland came out of his reverie and found himself standing over the blanket and bloody clothes. His penis was stiff, but it shrank quickly as he once again confronted his plight.

If he stayed here to wait for dark, he would be risking a return of the cortez.

I’ll think of something, he told himself.

He straightened the blanket, tossed his T-shirt and jeans and Celia’s gown into its center, rolled it up and carried it into the rest room. The air in the rest room was heavy with odors of blood and feces. He shook open the blanket, the clothes falling out; and spread it over Jason’s corpse.

The sink had a mirror above it. Except for pale skin around his eyes, as if he had worn goggles last night, Roland’s face was painted with blood that had dried and turned a shade of red-brown. Locks of hair were glued to his forehead. A bit of something clung to one eyebrow. He picked it off, but it adhered to his finger. He flicked it with his thumbnail and watched it stick to the wall under the mirror.

He turned the faucet on, bent over the sink, and began to clean himself, using one of the towels as a washcloth. He didn’t like the noise of the splashing water. It deafened him to other sounds. A car could drive into the parking lot, someone could sneak up behind him…He shut the water off. As he listened, he straightened enough to see himself in the mirror. His face and neck were clean.

He turned the faucet on again and resumed washing himself, this time standing back from the sink, flooding the towel with warm water and slopping it against himself. The water spilled down his body, sluicing off blood. He rubbed his skin vigorously, wrung the pink residue from the towel, wetted the towel again and repeated the process. Soon, he was standing in a shallow pool of water and blood but the front of his body was almost spotless.