THE BREAKDOWN

by Ritch Duncan  —

Peterson didn’t consider himself a murderer.

He’d only killed the one woman, after all.

He glanced down at his wife’s corpse, which was sprawled face down over the workbench of the gardener’s shed. They didn’t have a full time grounds-keeper, but had the shed built just in case. It sat in the shadow of a small grassy bluff, all the way out on the edge of the 17-acre Vermont estate they lived on together after her father passed. A breeze blew over the nearby manicured pond, chilling the late autumn air. Peterson looked out the window of the shed, where the silhouette of Mount Tabor could be seen in the moonlight. The beech trees beyond the estate swayed and groaned. The wind was picking up.

 A chill ran up Peterson’s spine, but just from the cold, or so he told himself. The windowsill of the shed was lined with a row of terracotta flowerpots. A half-full bag of potting soil sat under the workbench, slumped over on itself next to a widening pool of blood, which had been collecting in a steady drips from above.

"Murderer"

Was that her ? No. it was nothing. Wind.

“I’m not a murderer” Peterson muttered aloud, wiping the sweat off his brow. “I’m going to put her in the ground too, but that doesn’t make me a landscaper.” He chuckled at his little joke, and refocused on the job at hand. He’d managed to saw Diane’s left arm off at the elbow, which was only the beginning of what needed to be done. He’d been digging holes around the property all month. He figured he’d tell her he was taking “soil samples” if she asked, but she didn’t ask. She never asked him about anything.

The plan had been to break down the body at night, and get the pieces into the holes before morning, but it was slow going. He’d felt a real sense of accomplishment when he finally got her left forearm off. It had made a satisfying thunk sound when he underhanded it into the wheelbarrow. His arms were starting to ache. What little he’d already accomplished had taken a lot longer than anticipated, and those legs were going to be a bitch. But, true to form, Peterson was less interested in quickly completing work that was right in front of him than he was with thinking about his place in the world, and how he deserved better.

About 7 hours earlier, he’d crushed up about a dozen Ambien tablets and stirred them into Diane’s second after-dinner bourbon, after she’d already polished off her nightly bottle and a half of Merlot. He left her to it in front of the TV, and by the time he’d come back from feeding Scraps, she was pretty well gonzo on the couch. Just to make sure, he’d kept the pillow pressed to her face for over five minutes. She’d barely struggled. After she was dead, or maybe while she was dying, her Netflix show ended, and the next one started automatically. It was about cake.

“That word... murderer,” Peterson said aloud in the shed, gesturing in the air with his pruning saw like a professor in front of a dry erase board. “It suggests the plural, doesn’t it? I’m not a murderer. Murderers are dangerous people, who should be in jail, because they go around murdering people. I only murdered you, Diane. Nobody else.” Diane was dead. She had nothing to contribute to the conversation.

Bizarrely emboldened by her lack of dissent, Peterson elaborated. “I’m...an opportunist. An entrepreneur. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to further my financial standing, and I took advantage of it.” Pleased with his own unimpeachable logic, he dug the teeth of the garden tool into the joint behind Diane’s right elbow and stared out the window at the mountain, sawing vigorously. It made a wet, crunching sound that he didn’t care for. He’d realized the butchery went a little quicker if he wasn’t looking directly at it, but the unpleasant sound couldn’t be helped. The blade got stuck on something, and stopped abruptly. His wrist twisted, sending sparks of hot pain up his forearm. “Christ!” he yelled, releasing the saw in pain and frustration. “If I wanted to work this hard, I wouldn’t have married you in the first place!”

Rubbing his arm, he stepped out of the shed and picked up the Poland Spring bottle he’d left out there for that very purpose, pleased at himself for being so clever. Peterson had left it outside the shed around 3PM that afternoon. Knowing he might want a cool drink in exactly the location where he’d be breaking down a body 12 hours later was just another one of his great ideas, along with getting the holes dug early. “Davey, old boy” he said aloud- “you are a criminal mastermin-…” He stopped short, realizing he was congratulating himself out loud. He’d been doing a lot of mumbling since he killed his wife, what- some 5 hours ago- and he’d felt... mostly good about his sanity since. Acknowledging that he had been mumbling, which on its own, might be crazy behavior, but then stopping, out of a genuine desire to not be crazy, made him feel, frankly, pretty reasonable! This made him feel much better even about his previous crazed ramblings, which had probably just been a healthy reaction to a stressful situation, like deep breathing, or tai chi or something. Knowing that about himself, recognizing what he was doing and stopping the behavior, well, boom- ipso facto, ergo sum, Q.E.D, that proved it- he was not crazy. Whew! Well, that was a positive development. His high opinion of himself restored, Peterson took a long drink from the water bottle. It tasted great.

 Of course, when he had been mumbling, he hadn’t been worried about being crazy, he’d been worried that the whole “Murdering Diane” thing could mean he was now a murderer, forever. That was a bit of a downer, and he’d said so, out loud. Lucky for him though, he settled that issue. He couldn’t possibly be a murderer, because murderers murder lots of people, and he’d only killed Diane. He’d played billiards once or twice, but that didn’t make him some kind of pool hustler. Plus, she’d had it coming , and was basically drinking herself to death anyway, so he was less of a murderer, and more of an agent of efficiency, just moving her a little quicker towards her unpleasant but inevitable end. Looking at it that way, what he’d done was merciful, really. So, problem solved! “Thank goodness!” he said out loud. “Shit.” He said. “I’m mumbling again, aren’t I? Am I crazy? No, that’s crazy. It’s crazy to think I’m crazy. I just need to stop talking to no one- ” He heard a twig snap and froze. Someone was approaching on the path.

Wait. Were they? Who was that?! Was someone there? Fear paralyzed him. He listened intently. Yes. Something was there. It was closer now. How had he been so stupid?! He put down the pruning saw, and placed his hand on the holstered pistol he had in the back waistband of his pickleball warmups. He’d taken the gun out of storage after he left Diane in front of the TV with the drugged bourbon, in case she realized something was up. He might have had to use it on her in self defense. Or maybe even... use it on himself? He didn’t know what he planned to do with the gun. He’d wanted it because he was afraid.

But after he’d  finished the business with the pillow, and the next episode of the cake show just rolled right on, everything seemed... normal. He’d felt exhilarated. Free. But he’d still kept the Glock on him while he dragged the body to the sun porch, and threw it over the railing to the wheelbarrow. Just to be safe. And as he heard the steps get closer, he was glad he had it. He unsnapped the holster, and curled his finger around the trigger. The metal was ice cold. Like death. He held his breath...and his dog barked.

Scraps! Thank God! Little Scrappy! Of course Scraps was still around and about. Why wouldn’t she be? “Scrappy?” called Peterson. “That you?” A chubby little white Beagle/Dachshund mix with a few chocolate splotches waddled around the corner. Scraps was overweight, but that was because Diane spoiled her terribly, idiot that she was. A sense of relief washed over Peterson as effectively as if he’d swallowed an oxycodone, something he decided on the spot he was going to do the moment he got back to the house. “Hey Scraps,” he said to the dog, who was sniffing around the outside of the shed. “Do YOU think I’m crazy?”

Peterson looked down at himself. He didn’t look not-crazy, that was for sure. “Well,” he said, addressing the dog, “I’m wearing a blueberry Armani pickleball tracksuit spattered with my ex-wife’s blood, and have my finger on the trigger of a loaded Glock. And I’m talking to a dog.” Scraps, unimpressed with the quality of conversation, turned the corner into the shed. Peterson’s mind was racing. Why WAS he wearing the Armani? Why not some crappy pair of slacks and a T-shirt he could bury with the body?  Armani was expensive! But wait...he was rich! And it was finally all HIS money!  Who cares how expensive Armani pickleball outfits were? He was fine. It was his ex-wife who wasn’t fine. Wait, was she technically his ex-wife? She was certainly an ex-person. He’d murdered her. Not that he was a murderer of course, he’d only killed the one person, Diane, who was his ex-wife. Or current wife? Ex-wife means you’ve gotten separated, not “you’ve separated her limbs from her body.” Heh heh. That was funny. He should write that down, he thought. “WAIT, NO! That would be crazy!” Wait. Was his ex-wife making him crazy? Was she technically his ex-wife?

“I’m going around in circles!” Peterson cried out. “Goddamnit. Are you crazy?” he asked, pointing the gun at his reflection in the shed window. “No. Well, yes. Yes, there was a time when you, I rather- might have been crazy. But look at what you’ve done! You’re the sole heir to the Parc-Mart fortune. Yes, you’re crazy...crazy like a fox- No! No- do you know what you are?” He holstered the weapon and snapped it shut. “You’re... eccentric! ” An ugly smile unfolded across his face and he barked out an erratic laugh. “Ha! Hahaha! Heh heh. WoooOOOooo! Wow! OK, then. Back to it.”

He looked up at the stars. His wrist still hurt. He hoped it wouldn’t mess up his golf game. Honestly, there was no reason he needed to finish breaking down her body immediately. Diane wasn’t going anywhere. They lived in the middle of nowhere, and he was exhausted. He threw a tarp over the body, pulled the chain on the light switch and walked back to the guest house, Scrappy shuffling along behind as he went. He got in through the front door, which was unlocked, dry swallowed an oxy he found in the medicine cabinet, collapsed on the day bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Around 9 AM, he awoke to the sound of barking. “Why the hell hadn’t Diane fed that goddamn dog?” he thought. “OH. Right.” The warped smile returned. She was gone... almost.  His sheets had blood and some dirt on them, as he’d slept in his clothes, so he peeled off his bloody outfit, stripped the bed, and showered. He wadded the laundry into a ball, threw on some clothes, and strolled back out to the shed. Diane was still under the tarp. Where else would she be? It was cold. She’d be fine there. He chucked the laundry on top of the puddle of blood and walked back to the garage.

The drive to Home Depot was terrific. He rolled down the window and let the cool breeze blow his thinning hair. He laughed out loud several times at the SmartLess podcast. Those fellas were a hoot. It felt good to have pals like that. He walked around Home Depot for a while, browsing, before getting to the Garden aisle, where he picked out a small chainsaw. “Perfect” he said, to no one. He spotted a leaf blower that looked cool, so he grabbed one. Shopping was fun! He was pushing his cart towards checkout when he saw the power-washers. One nice thing about being as smart as he was, Peterson thought, was his ability to improve upon a plan even while executing it perfectly! He put a powerwasher in his cart.

Back in the shed with the chainsaw, the rest of the breakdown went quickly. Two lower legs, two thighs, sheared clean from the hips, the head, two upper arms, and that just left the torso. The thunks in the wheelbarrow were louder than last night, as the pieces were bigger, but they were coming faster, and were no less satisfying. Peterson ripped the laundry into strips, wrapped the body parts in them and loaded up the wheelbarrow again. Diane was in all the different holes around the property in time for a late lunch. He wrapped up the last piece, her right forearm, and dropped it in the last hole, right on top of her head. He covered it with potting soil, the better to feed the plants with, replaced the original dirt, and patted it smooth with his spade. He rolled the now empty wheelbarrow back to the shed and blasted the whole area with the powerwasher. Deeply satisfied by a job well done, he glanced around the pond, the grassy bluff, the edge of the forest, and all the rest of his impromptu gravesites, nine in total. “Nine holes” he muttered. “Perfect.” He looked at his watch. “Come to think of it, I might have time for nine holes before dinner.” He did in fact, and shot a 4 over par, which he felt was more than respectable, given the circumstances. 

He had dinner by himself at the country club, and watched the sun setting behind Mount Tabor while he finished his New York Strip. His left wrist ached. “Need anything else, Mr Peterson?” the waiter asked. “No, I don’t think so, Jeff- just the check.” Peterson had never seen that waiter before, but his name tag said Jeff, so Jeff was what he called him. Jeff picked up Peterson’s plate. “No dessert or coffee?” Peterson was still staring out the window at the mountain. He’d been staring at the mountain through the whole dinner, even when he was cutting through his steak. Especially when he was cutting through his steak.

“No thanks” Peterson said.

“Very good, sir. I’ll be back with the check for you to sign.”

Jeff walked away.

“Actually, Jeff, hold up a second” Diane said.

Peterson snapped his head around. His dead wife, parts of her sliding slowly apart along the lines he’d cut earlier, was sitting in the chair opposite him, trying to signal the waiter, which was difficult without her left forearm. The jagged end of her humerus bone was poking out of where her elbow should be, and was dripping blood onto the white tablecloth. Peterson whipped his head back around to Jeff. Had he heard her? He looked around in a panic. No one in the restaurant seemed alarmed. He looked back at Diane. One of her eyeballs was glazed over white, and there was blood running from a jagged wound across her neck, which he remembered making with the chainsaw, while removing her head from her shoulders.“I thinnnnnk I’d like some caaaaaake Jeffpthffff” Diane gargled. Her head fell onto the table with a thunk. It sounded a lot like the wheelbarrow. “Orrrrr Mayyyyybeeee a Bourrrrrrbon?” It was hard to understand her, head chopped off the way it was, face down on the tablecloth. Her mouth was full of potting soil.

Peterson screamed. He fell backwards in his chair, which smashed to pieces on the floor. A small army of restaurant staff rushed to his aid. They helped him up, apologized profusely, and even comped his meal, which Peterson didn’t think they had to do, but he graciously accepted. He made a mental note to remember Jeff at Christmas time. He looked back at Diane.

She was gone. None of them had seen her. Nobody could see her but him.

Every other day or so for the next week, Peterson kept seeing Diane. Or parts of her, at least. Her head appeared in his sock drawer one morning. “Good morning, murderer” the head snapped at him. “I’m not a murderer!” he shouted into the drawer. She had vanished, but he could hear her laughing. He tried to remember the last time he'd heard her laugh, but he couldn't.

One afternoon, he took one of his sport coats out of his closet, and found her limbless torso inside. A pile of intestines slid out the bottom, landing in a sloppy pile at his feet. It was a mess. He dropped the coat, fell to the floor and clamped his hands over his eyes. He counted to ten and did some deep breathing. When he opened his eyes, she was gone. So were her steaming innards. No harm, no foul.

He found her right forearm on top of the liquor cabinet one evening, her blood-streaked hand grasping her favorite highball glass. Once, almost all of her pieces turned up, at once, fully assembled, in bed with him, minus her left forearm. She was nude, and asked him to make love to her, so he knew right away THAT wasn’t real. They hadn’t been intimate in over a year. He rolled over in bed and didn’t speak to her. She laughed again, the wet earth rattling in her throat. He didn’t sleep much that night. The next day, he saw her severed thigh wrapped in cellophane behind glass at the meat counter at D’Ellio’s. The tiny plastic sign next to it read “Leg of Diane Peterson. $35/pound.” That seemed pricey to him.

On Wednesday, Peterson was out on the dock reading a golf magazine when Diane’s left thigh bobbed to the surface with a splash. He heard another similar splash, and sure enough, her right thigh was floating on the other side of the dock. He started back in shock, and squinted across the pond. Was that...? Yes. Her lower legs, feet still attached, had also emerged at the opposite ends of the water. The chunks of her legs started hissing along the glasslike surface of the pond, slithering fast, like eels, or water moccasins. They scissored their way towards the center of the pond, where her torso rose from the water, triumphantly, her legs and thighs connecting to it, to form a ghastly, armless, headless figure, hovering above the surface of the water, like a Hellenistic statue in a European museum. It dripped with water and gore, oozing blood along its cutpoints. It glowed like an angel. Peterson stared at it impassively. The corpse held together for a few moments and then slid apart again, the pieces splashing back into the water, one by one, where they sank to the bottom.

These were trauma visions, Peterson decided. He tried to shrug them off, with limited success. One way he learned they weren’t real, was the dog didn’t react. Scraps always got excited when alive-Diane had come around. But with these visions, Peterson might see Diane, like he did one night at dinner, using her right hand to juggle her head and two chunks of her legs, manically laughing as she threw parts of her body through the air. Scraps never flinched.

Peterson insisted out loud that none of this was bothering him, but what did bother him was that he kept saying it out loud. Who was he speaking to? He started keeping the gun with him at all times. He’d accepted that it wasn’t real, but would it ever stop? Life was starting to get even more unbearable than it had been with alive-Diane, and that was unthinkable. But he soldiered on, through vision after vision. Once the police and insurance investigations were complete, the money would come in, and the visions would stop. He hoped. It was just suppressed anxiety. Or something. Wasn’t it?

A week and a half later, around four in the afternoon, two uniformed police officers were sitting on the couch he’d killed Diane on. It was part of the official investigation, but they clearly didn’t have a clue, which cheered Peterson considerably. The first cop was a stocky middle age fella with a thick black mustache. His partner was a solidly built Asian woman. If Peterson had to guess, he’d say she was Korean, but he was far from confident enough to confirm it with her.

“So, you haven’t seen your wife, you said, in a month?” She asked.

“No, I haven’t. It’s not uncommon for me to not see her for a couple weeks or so, easy. We have a number of homes, and both lead separate lives.” She nodded, and wrote something on her pad. “I’d assumed she’d gone to Seattle,” Peterson continued. “Honestly? She may have just left me. It’s embarrassing, but on the other hand, we weren’t exactly... close.” The mustachioed cop nodded, attempting sympathy. When it was clear he wasn’t going to be able to pull it off, he started craning his neck to look around the house, as though that had been the plan the whole time. “Can I get you some coffee?” Peterson asked, breaking the moment. The lady cop smiled. “Only if it’s no trouble.” “Black is fine,” said the cop with the mustache.

Peterson got up.

“No trouble at all. It’s a Keurig.”

When Peterson got back to the kitchen and opened the cabinet by the coffee maker, he didn’t even flinch when he saw Diane’s head inside. He was used to her by now.

“I’ll take a coffee, you murderer.” Diane said. “Milk and sugar.” Peterson ignored her. He’d gotten better at ignoring her, almost as good as he had been when she was alive. If he didn’t talk back, by his logic, that meant he wasn’t crazy. And he needed to not be crazy right now. The police were in the next room, for Christ’s sake.

“Pour some bourbon in it.” said Diane’s head. “The only way I can drink bourbon these days is in coffee. Every other way puts me right to sleep.” She winked at him. Peterson glanced at the drawer under the coffee mugs. That was where the gun was. “Go ahead” said Diane’s head. “Pick it up. You know you want to.” Peterson walked briskly from the kitchen.

“Coffee’s up” said Peterson, arriving with two steaming mugs. The officers were both on their feet.

Mustache cop spoke first. “Tell me Mr Peterson, did your wife have... a diamond wedding ring?”

“Yes, she did” Peterson replied. “Why?”

The cops stepped to the side, to reveal Scraps on the living room couch. The ragged remains of Diane’s left forearm was in the dog’s mouth, a wedding ring gleaming on her decaying ring finger.

“Oh” Peterson said. He looked back at the cops. “You can... see that, right?”

They could definitely see that.

Oh, no. Did he not bury the other forearm? The first one he’d cut off? He quickly tried to cover, but it didn’t help.

“She’s uhh, really not supposed to be on the couch. Bad dog!”

The Asian cop reached for her service pistol. She was fast, but Peterson was faster. He threw the hot coffee directly in her face. She screamed, and Mustache went for his weapon. “STOP! NOW!” He shouted. Peterson ran for the kitchen and came back with the Glock, firing wildly. The male cop went down. Peterson felt like he’d been punched in the shoulder and got spun around. He felt a kick in the stomach. It wasn’t a kick. He touched the front of his shirt. It was warm and wet. Everything went black.

“Wake up, Daaaaaaavey.”

Diane’s voice sounded worn out, rasping. Like she was underwater.

“WAKE UP… YOU MURDERER.”

Wait.

That second voice was new.

Peterson opened his eyes, and tried to rub them. His arm stopped short, and he heard a clanking sound. He was handcuffed to a hospital bed. He looked over to his right. Inches from his face, Diane’s severed head leered at him from the pillow. She was pretty torn up. “Looks like you’ve killed more than just me now, haven’t ya lover?” “Shhhhhhhhh” came another voice. This one to his left. He turned his head the other way, and the bloodied face of the cop was on the other side of his pillow. His mustache was soaked with blood, and a large chunk of the back of his head was missing. Peterson was about to ask if he’d been the one who did that, but the cop shushed him again. “Don’t talkkkkkk” slurred Mustache. “You rememmmmmmberrrr? You talk, to no onnnne, or people might think you’re... craaaaaaaaaazy. You murderer. Ha. Ha. Hahahah.” Peterson slammed his eyes shut and drove his chin to his chest.

Diane’s shrill laughter joined the police officer’s, and their howls went straight into his ears, filling the room, filling his soul, drowning out all of his thoughts as their horrible screams of laughter continued. He tried to picture the mountain, but he couldn’t remember what it looked like.  “Murderer! Murrrrrrrdererrrrrrrr!” they shrieked, between laughs, as though it was the funniest joke in the world. Peterson kept his eyes clamped shut, praying their screaming, nightmarish laughter would stop.

It didn’t.

And follow us into the depths of madness...on Instagram!