The Tears Devourer

XX

     Michael delicately embedded the blade in the tear duct, sinking it until he felt the empty hollow of the socket, and gently pushed the eyeball upwards, being careful not to damage it with some sudden movement. He knelt in the contour, cutting and withdrawing the upper eyelid, and then digging in again at the edges, severing the muscles that keep the eye glued to the face. He slowly withdrew the watery sphere, and finally, he broke the optic nerve that linked it and decoded Ariana's surroundings when she could still catch the light of day.

     The body didn't have much blood left, so the procedure was fairly clean and straightforward. He repeated it again, and with the same subtlety on the other side. Once both eyes were removed, he placed them in a completely black plastic bag, which he kept in a box that he conserved out of sight inside the room, inside one of the shelves whose door still worked. That box was always stored humid, despite the climate in which the enclosure is located.

     "Now you're happy... Ariana. You're happy now,” Patton recited in a firm, patient voice in front of the corpse.

     Finally, only the hardest thing to date was missing: disappearing the evidence. And by evidence, Michael always meant the body. He never left a loose end, he never had witnesses. The best corpse that exists is the one that in reality everyone thinks is not dead. That was his philosophy, and it had served him well to date.

     When a person disappears, protocol dictates that they have to wait two days before starting to search, but authorities quickly archive cases in which the disappeared are suddenly not so missing.

     A letter, a message, a last goodbye. A rebel, a libertine, a persecutor of fame, or her favorite group. Demons! A lovesick i***t. They were all excuses that he made over and over, and over and over he was right. And it's the fact that the society is so corrupt, that families prefer not to be ashamed of a misplaced and ungrateful daughter than to try to look for her despite going to the end of the world.

     That was why Michael also studied parents, the environment. He couldn't afford to cajole around randomly. No. His mother would not have allowed it. Because thanks to the deep hatred she had for him, she would have wanted Michael to get the worst s**t in society. To that girl who desperately seeks attention, and who doesn't feel like she fits in anywhere. Because what is badly done meets what is badly done, and that was Michael, someone too badly done to live.

     Back in Brooklyn, it had served him well to bury everything and to leave subtle evidence along the way. Always a blouse, a skirt, a pair of panties were enough to keep unrequited noses away. But this time it was different. He had already been caught burying, so he couldn't risk using the same technique back at Dells.

     Michael knows a little about Hunt, that i***t who became obsessed with his works, and who has haunted him since that incident with Mathew. But that will not happen again. This time he'll do better. He must do better. Otherwise, Patton doesn't think he can bear the weight of revenge on his conscience.

     A couple of weeks ago he planned how he would do it. He had easily accessible procedures in mind, but none of them convinced him completely.

     His first option was the simplest: toss it in the garbage can, after breaking the bones and making it a mess of chipped meat and bone mass. But as he usually does, he is always one step ahead of any adversity. The plan was simple, and it was simple for everything to go wrong. A curious collector, fragile bags, cracked boxes, a malfunction in the machine, a failure in the formaldehyde... Too many risk factors.

     He discarded the sketch and concentrated on a second concept. Cremate the corpse. It sounded better, although the smoke it'd make would attract too much attention. He had to do it with delicacy, that only delicacy he could give to Ariana's body, was after death.

    He stripped off the damp gloves he was wearing and tossed them into a small cardboard box that sat on the side of the door. He pulled out his phone and texted Mathew, his father. It wasn't that he cared, just caution. Just in case he watered something on the first try. He put the phone in his backpack, staring at it from the ground. He put the scalpel and mask in the drawer where they usually slept and waited.

     He waited for the sun to set, and for the moon to give him the signal, that signal that would indicate him and no one else would prowl around the place.

     He lifted Ariana's frozen body in his arms and carried it a few feet away from the shed. He accommodated her among the undergrowth, in the shade and care of the forest, completely covering her for what nature offered them. So, the poor girl was left smeared with twigs, leaves, and tinder, so that Patton didn't need any flammable chemicals for the operation.

     He sat next to his sculpture and pondered for a moment what he was about to do. He glared at that bundle of herbs on the ground, that hideous human resting peacefully beside him.

     Michael smiled widely as he realized how far he had come, and how many opportunities he had with her, to see his mother's face again steeped in memory. He was proud of himself... Or so he thought.

     Michael stopped feeling when his mother died. Michael started pretending when his mother died. Now, the only thing that remained within his humanity was the desire to repeat that moment as many times as he felt.

     Then, he woke up thanks to the saliva that ran all over his face. He sat up abruptly, spitting out all the remains of the hound's mouth fluids above him. He never liked animals. Patton saw the existence of a pet as unnecessary. He simply didn't notice a reason for existing in a family. That retriever was no exception. He kept him close, stroking his tender fur, and taking him with him to his personal storeroom.

     He took the backpack from the helpless room where he schemed with Ariana, and carried it to his car, opened the trunk, pulled a fire piston from the backpack, and then tossed it to the bottom. He led the dog into the shed, and locked it up, replacing the padlock on the lock.

     Patton looked away suddenly. He heard footsteps through the bushes, but when he noticed a small white spotted-tailed rabbit cowardly escape from the scene, he lost care about what was happening around him.

     Michael headed back to the place of his feat. She meekly waited for him lying down, posing naked like Eve for the moon and the stars covered only by leaves and branches. He, gallant and handsome, had a gift in his hands. A gift that would light up the atmosphere in the blink of an eye.

     So it happened. Michael crouched at the feet of his lady, and with the lighter lit the vine that he assembled between those pale and lean fingers. His ankles were already beginning to take color, when he made out beyond the barking of a small pack that hurriedly approached, and accompanying the thunderous hustle, the "Hey! Who's there ?!", of at least two more men among dogs.

     Michael, far from feeling fear, became uncomfortable, since he couldn't finish the task he had set himself. He never sensed that someone would distinguish smoke at that time of night. The darkness in Dells is dense, as dense as sailing on the high seas, lacking, for long stretches, artificial light, and only the moon can discover what you are doing in the shadows.

     "Hey boy! What are you doing here?!" The fellow, holding two dogs in both hands, was trying to make out Patton's face, but amidst the branches and darkness, it was an impossible deed. "This area is private! Get the f**k out of here!"

     Patton had already smothered the flames with dirt and mud by the time the man yelled at him through the trees. He picked up the corpse on his shoulders, and carried her to his car, walking in zigzag to confuse the dogs.

     He hid the body in the trunk and hurried to the warehouse, where the retriever was still barking desperately. He opened the padlock, putting it in his right pocket, and released the hound, which darted at his leg to sniff and continue to lick everything in front of its wet nose. Michael hit the little dog in the face, making it moan in pain and flee in fear, and then carefully close the enclosure so that it seems really abandoned, replacing the lock that he kept with the original, broken and useless one, which he always kept in the front compartment to the passenger seat.

     He started the car, purring too loud in the stillness, and started toward the path from which he came, completely losing his blind pursuers.

     An icy breeze blew through the open window, skimming his lips and bristling his lashes. Michael sighed, tired, disappointed. Suddenly, his eyes widened and his mouth tightened. He looked against the movement of the wind, which rippled his thick hair and made him water with cold, and thought. Patton realized that it was Christmas Eve, that the weather would get colder and colder, that the snow would soon fall and everything around him would turn white. "The river", he muttered with a big smile that peeled off his teeth.

     The river reached twenty or thirty degrees below zero in mid-December. The river was perfect. Ariana would be carried away by the current and dismembered by the blows on the steep road to the open sea, or at any rate, eternally frozen among the rocks deep in the icy waters. Her body would be preserved, which would make it even more difficult to calculate the exact date of death.

     Both were good options, both now, guiding their hands on the wheel towards the Washington Bridge, directing them to the last destination that Ariana's body had: Lake Delton.