101 Mystery Stories

93 Inside Out Barry N. Malzberg

I’ve got to start stacking them in the bedroom, now. The corpses, that is.

The living room, alas, is full. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Still, it is a shock to realize that the day of inevitability has come. There is simply no room anymore. Floor to ceiling, ceiling to floor, in four rows the bodies are stacked except for that little space in the corner I have left for my footrest and chair. Even the television set is gone. It was hard to sacrifice that but business is business. I put it at the foot of the bed, dreading the time when I would have to start putting the bodies where I slept. But I must face reality and the living room is finished. Fini. Kaput and terminus. Cheerlessly I accept my fate. If I am to go on murdering I will have to bring the bodies, as the abbess said to the bishop, into the boudoir. And I am, of course, going to go on murdering.

You betcha.

When I do away with Brown, the superintendent, tonight then, his corpse will go in the far corner, beside the dresser. Virgin territory so to speak... not that there is sexual undertone to this matter. None whatsoever. It is what it is. It is not a metaphor. It is not a symbol. It is the pure sad business of murder.

Brown rolls the emptied garbage cans across the lobby, filling my rooms with sounds from hell. He also refuses to clean the steps more than once a week. Time and again, I have asked him to desist from the one and perform the other, but the man is obdurate. He pretends not to learn English. He pretends not to hear and points to his left ear. He indicates other responsibilities. This morning I saw four disgusting orange peels on the third-floor landing, already turned brown. There is no way that a man of my disposition can deal with this anymore, but I am not able to move. For one thing, what would I do with the bodies? It would be such a job to transport them all.

Accordingly, Brown or what is left of him will repose in the bedroom tonight. Au boudoir il couche.

The murders are imaginary, of course. I am not actually a mass murderer. These are fictive murders, illusory corpses that have slowly filled these quarters since I began my difficult adjustment about a year ago. Abusive peddlers, disgusting street persons, noxious fellow employees in the Division. In my mind I act out intricate murders, in body I pantomime the matter of conveying the corpses, in my heart all of the dead dwell with me, mild and stoic in their condition. It is a fantasy that enables me to go on, just barely, in this disgusting urban existence: if I could not banish those who offend I would be unable to function. It is of course a perilous business, this fantasy, since I might plunge over the fine line someday and actually believe I have done away with these people, but it is the only way I can continue in circumstantial balance.

Giving the fantasy credence, however, demands discipline and a lot of so-called scut work. It is with regret that I have yielded all my living room but for chair and footrest, but also out of simple respect for will. If I were not to make reasonable sacrifices in order to propitiate this accord it would be meaningless. One cannot play the violin well (I do not, incidentally) without years of painful work with wrists and fingers, acquiring technique. One cannot be a proper employee of the Division (I am, I am) without careful study of its dismal and destructive procedures. One cannot be an imaginary mass murderer without taking responsibility for imaginary dead.

The derelict who wipes my windshield with a dirty rag at the bridge exit still is there, of course, although I murdered him six months ago. This morning he cursed me when I gave him only fifteen cents through a cautiously opened window. His rag hardly infiltrated my vision, his curses fell upon benign and smiling coutenance. How could I tell him after all, “Sir, you no longer exist. Since I did away with you half a year ago your real activities in the real world have made no impression upon me. Your rag is a blur, your curses song. I drove a sharp knife between your sixth and seventh ribs in this very street before witnesses, threw your body into the trunk, and conveyed it bloodless to my apartment where it now reposes. The essential you lies sandwiched in my apartment between the waitress from the Forum Diner who spilled a glass of ice water in my lap and the medical social workers from the Division who said I had no grasp whatsoever of the nature of schizoid disassociation. You’re finished, right?”

No. Wrong. I do not think he would understand. This miserable creature, along with the waitress, the medical social workers, and so many others, cannot appreciate the metaphysics of the situation.

I did away with Brown in his apartment two hours ago. “Mr. Brown,” I said when he opened the door, “I can’t take this anymore. You’re totally irresponsible. It’s not only the orange peels, the hide-and-seek when the toilet will not flush, and the terrible smells of disinfectant when you occasionally wash the lobby. That would be enough, but it is your insolence that degrades my spirit. You do not accept the fact that I am a human being who has a right to simple services. By ignoring my needs, you have denied my humanity.”

Ah, well. Then I shot him in the left temple with the delicate point twenty-two I use for such extreme cases. The radio was playing the Symphony Number One Hundred and One in D Major of Franz Joseph Haydn loudly as I dragged him out of here, closing the door firmly behind. I would not have suspected that he had a taste for classical music, but this does not mitigate the situation. Besides, the second violin parts in the Haydn symphonies are monstrous, lacking melody or reason. No wonder I gave up the second violin years ago. Now Brown lies at the foot of my bed. Intermittently he appears to sigh in the perfectitude of his perfect peace.

The medical social worker commented today during conference upon my abstracted attitude and twice tapped me on the hand to make me attentive. I know she feels something has reduced my caseworker’s efficacy but how could I possibly explain that the reason my attention lapses is that she was smothered many weeks ago and has not drawn a breath, even in pantomime, since?

Brown’s corpse is curiously odorous. Here is a new phenomenon. I am a committed housekeeper and cannot abide smells of any kind in my apartment (other than pipe or rosin) and my corpses are aseptic. Brown’s, however, is not. It is increasingly foul. My sleep was disturbed last night. Heavy sprays of the popular kitchen disinfectant do not work. The apartment was even worse when I came home tonight.

I knew it was a mistake starting disposal in the bedroom but what were my choices? There is simply no room left outside of here and I will not have corpses in the bathroom. I will absolutely not put them there. There are limits. I will just have to do the best I can. After a while I’ll either get used to this or the smell will dissipate on its own.

I should get rid of Brown’s body — the smell is impossible — but I am reluctant to do so. It would set a dangerous precedent, it would break a pattern. If I were to dispose of his body he would not then be symbolically dead and if I did it with him might I not be then tempted to do it with one of the others? Or with succeeding victims? My project would become totally self-defeating and I would have accomplished nothing.

It has of course occurred to me to call the real Brown to help me dispose of the imaginary Brown but I am not going to do that either. It would be a pretty irony but one he would not understand. I will have to do the job myself or hold on.

Anyway, I haven’t seen him around in days.

It is all too much. Too much, too much. I could not deal with it anymore and accordingly dragged Brown’s body to the landing for pickup tomorrow morning. That should solve the problem, although I am concerned at the rupture of my pattern and also by the curious weight of his body as I lumbered with it, fireman-carry fashion, into the stairwell. He is the most unusually corporeal of all my victims. Even in imaginary death this lover of Haydn seems capable, typically, of making me miserable.

Two policemen at the door demand entrance to my apartment. Behind them I can see a circle of tenants.

There seems to be a problem.

At the first opportunity during this interview I intend to distract the police and kill them, thus putting an end to the harassment, but I have a feeling that won’t work.

I should never have abandoned the living room as a mausoleum. That was my only mistake. I should have begun disposing of old corpses as they were replaced by the new. It would have been sufficient. It would have been good enough.

But it’s too late now, the police say.

I think they’re right.