You carefully lay him down in the tub,
manipulating his lifeless limbs so as not to make a sound. You know your next step will take you well
into the morning. You carefully stride to the door, past bottles of Renu, and fasten the ‘do not disturb’
sign on the dull metal handle.
On your way back to the stranger in the tub, you go to your bag and draw out your saw. You
drag the bag along with you, the fibers of the bag rubbing the rug the only noise in your ears. You give
the eyelids one last look before you begin with the saw. You remove all his clothes and place them
neatly, folded, in his suitcase with the rest of his clothes. You start with the toes by pulling the hungry
teeth of the saw across the flesh over and over. The skin tears open with the first stroke. The blood
seeps out like water from a crack in a dam. The red spills up higher and higher, faster and faster,
quickly coating the tub and the skin of their legs. It all looks somewhat surreal in yellowy glow of the
bathroom light. The bone is the hardest part, but you force your way through. You were initially
concerned with the volume of the crunching bone, but it is barely audible over the bathroom fan,
certainly no louder than a toilet flushing or a shower running. You continue from the feet all the way
up the legs, up the body, transforming the stranger into thick slices of meat. A deep scar runs from his
right hip to just above his belly button. You playfully trace the raised pink flesh with your saw, only
able to imagine what must have happened. The blood covers his whole remnants, the walls of the
bathtub, and then your arms past your elbows. You continue, slicing the organs with a contained
ferocity. An unknown purple organ spurts a pale yellow juice when you just graze it with the saw. You
think of when your mother used to slice red apples for pies, and the opaque juice would squirt out of
the dark skin. You smile as the bones of his ribcage quickly crumble, one after another, because of
your saw. You slice right through the center of his biceps. Muscles that the stranger must have worked
so hard to build up are now nothing more than mush. Soon all that is left is their head. You force the
saw to tear through the tough bone of his skull until finally you feel it slide through the soft brain. You
drag the saw across his closed eyelids. They too bow to the power of your saw. Unknown juices squirt
up onto your legs as you stand over them, but you don’t care.
You reach over and turn on the shower. You watch the thick red wash off your body, revealing
your skin once again. The body was in little pieces, just as you had planned. 