by Robert T. Tuohey
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”
Sonnet 18
That Maureen was a moron had never been a question for me. From the very moment, now some years past, when I had first taken her on – what with her off-centered, optimistic glint of eye, the vast quantities of drugs that she freely dumped into her blood-thin veins, her predilection for an attire of Pippi Longstocking green, and so on – my discerning inner eye had divined that the poor creature was as cracked as the Liberty Bell.
Rather, for me, the particular riddle of her existence was metaphysical: What was the essence, the true form, of this masterwork of inanity?
For what reason I know not, but this question nagged at me, hounded me, demanding an answer.
It was the sheer idiocy of this woman that excited me!
As it turned out, the only way I solved it was by killing her.
Not that I knew that the answer lay in her death (ah, what genius that would have been!). Instead I was driven to this by utter despair and weariness. In short, I needed to get rid of this bitch.
She was propped up in bed, strung deep on the Devil-knew-what, her dull, glassy orbs fast-glued to the flickering, blathering boob-tube. Set within the room's background of black and lightly bathed in the TV's pale blue glow, Maureen's open-mouthed stare achieved a kind of imbecilic perfection. My aesthetic sense told me now was the time.
Standing calmly by the side of the bed, I raised the .45 and pointed it at her empty head.
“Maureen, say goodnight.”
A moment of lag-time elapsed as my words drifted though the fog of her consciousness seeking some point of contact. At last, she blinked and looked up at me, her pale skin, flaming red hair, and green eyes almost as angelic as the dust that befouled her brain.
“Huh?”
I squeezed the trigger.
Blam!!!
The blast, shockingly loud within the enclosed space, hammered into my eardrums, leaving me for several seconds with a ringing deafness.
I dare say she enjoyed her death. I mean it must have been a relief to feel something, anything, after being so long among the walking dead.
The look in her eyes when the bullet hit – it was tasty.
My initial plan for the disposal of the remains involved the path of least-resistance (and observation): I'd simply cut the body into manageable pieces, and then stuff the mess into garbage bags labeled “TOXIC”. The entire load could then be covertly dropped at the city's “Recycling Center”. Little danger of discovery there, as weekly the entire lot was shipped off to India or China to be burned or buried.
With sheet as sack, I carried bird-light Maureen down to the basement. I fired up the buzz-saw, and in a jiffy she was nicely sliced.
My intention to put capitalism, greed, and stupidity to some laudable use was, however, thwarted by a stabbing thought: Had I reckoned with the great number of surveillance cameras recently sprouted from every bush? Indeed, a cultural low-point when the government's massive crimes lie undetected, and yet an honest man can't even take out the trash unnoticed.
No matter, my fundamental faith in humanity remains.
Thus, with my Maureen, now in seven major sections, lain on the barely bloodied bed sheet (she would have made a poor meal for a vampire), I was about to take pickaxe in hand and have a crack at the foundation.
All at once, like tidal wave, the epiphany swept over me. The sudden shock of it nearly knocked me to the floor.
I rushed to the body-parts and quickly reassembled them into the correct order. Then, as if in a dream, I took up the head, setting it aside, and took her ass and placed it squarely on her shoulders… and then the head, face forward, I stuffed between her legs…
Holding my breath, in awe, I stood and gazed down.
This was Maureen. The true Maureen.
I broke into a wild fit of laughter. The laughter of joyous recognition. The laughter of truth.
With her ass on her shoulders and her face between her legs, Maureen stared up at me.
Another gale of hilarity overtook me. I fell to my knees, my sides aching with mirth, my eyes streaming ecstatic tears.
My god, yes! Maureen – revealed! Why, if she weren't dead, I'd have jumped her bones right then and there on the hard, concrete floor.
As may well be imagined, it took quite some time to recover from this Dionysian state-of-bliss.
I'm now faced with the problem of trying to preserve this work of art. I don't know the first thing about bronzing. I can't sculpt or paint. I suppose I could photograph her ~ but that somehow seems to cheapen the effect.
Indeed, my art, my only art, is the finding of the true, Platonic form of a thing.
I suppose I'll have to bury her.
My soul's consolation lies in the intuition that although worldly beauty is ephemeral, artistic truth eternally remains.
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