TotenFolio

“Snatch.”

“Snatch?”

“Snatch. You heard it just right. They call me Edgar Snatch.” Snatch shouldered the sledgehammer. “What do they call you?”

The woman looked into Snatch’s gray eyes and pursed her lips. “I’m not sure I’m going to tell you.” The woman pushed one hand through her blonde hair. “There’s blood on that hammer.”
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“You’ve been bad, Edgar Snatch.”

Snatch leaned up from the hay bale with his elbows as wedges to hold his weight. He searched the night for the source of the voice, but his gray eyes couldn’t cut through the darkness. The brewing storm overhead blocked the moon and the stars.

“Snatch,” the voice came again, rolling like thunder from the approaching storm. “A fascinating name. Not such a fascinating person.”
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Edgar Snatch pushed the door to the small farmhouse open just as the bottom fell out from the sky, pounding the metal roof with thousands of furious water drops. He looked up at the ceiling and sneered, swinging the door closed.

Mother called his name, the name sounding somehow more vulgar when it passed her flabby lips and rode along on the shrill sound of her voice.
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Edgar Snatch waited until morning to leave the farmhouse with the dead mouse cupped in hands.

The previous night’s rain left a misty gray haze hanging over the small fields and the surrounding swampland, but Snatch moved through the standing fog with precision. He knew exactly where he needed to go. His steps carried him to the work shed and he threw the door open with one hand as he shoved the dead mouse into the pocket of his overalls. The interior of the work shed smelled like mold and rust.
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Edgar Snatch woke up surrounded by trees.

To his left, his sledgehammer pressed into the wet forest ground. To his right, nothing but trees. He sat up and looked up into the sky, staring at the daylight filtering through the thick upper canopy of the trees.

“Mother?” he called. He never ventured into the woods without Mother. She did not answer his call.
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Edgar Snatch blinked twice and shook his head to clear the talking mouse out of his mind. When his eyes opened, the mouse, a macabre sight, sat upturned in the shallow grave. The mouse’s teeth were exposed and the tiny, dead black eyes stared without purpose.

“You can’t talk,” Snatch said to the dead rodent. His voice moved through the air clumsily, like an obese child shouldering his way to a vending machine.

The mouse did not respond. Not right away.
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Edgar Snatch wrapped the dead Sheriff in a sheet of plastic meant to protect furniture from dust, paint and other common hazards. The plastic sheets cost little enough that he could wrap liberally and Mother would never miss them. After the plastic sheets, he rolled the Sheriff in a brown shag carpet that he’d ripped from the living room of the farmhouse a year ago. For a year, the shag carpet sat outside in the elements, surviving storm after storm, braving dry rot on the hot days and dirty mold on the wet days. The shag looked like the fur on a mangy mutt, spotted and smooth in areas, scraggly everywhere else.

But it met Snatch’s requirements. It stunk like death itself, so the carpet wouldn’t mind being wrapped up tight and snug around a fat, oozing corpse. As he rolled the Sheriff into the carpet, he slapped the corpse’s chest to be sure the mouse had not miraculously appeared again in the man’s shirt pocket.

“I’m sorry, Sheriff,” Snatch said to the body. He kicked the last flap of shag carpet into place, stood straight and wiped his hands. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
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Edgar Snatch listened to Mother in the den, where she sat propped on her back on the couch like a paralyzed walrus. Mother guzzled Vodka from a bottle. Snatch knew without seeing her that the bottle contained Vodka. The sound of each hissing breath confirmed the sharp intake of breath Mother used to counteract the sting of the alcohol burning her throat.

He looked at the polished gun on the kitchen table. He’d taken the gun from the Sheriff before he shoved the dead body into the cruiser. The cruiser now sat in its new home, a small running body of water, too small to be a river and too big to be a creek. Hunters used the body of running water as a graveyard for animal parts. He used it as a graveyard for the Sheriff.
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Edgar Snatch walked into the kitchen and opened the cupboard to find a bottle of rum. He breathed through his clenched teeth and gripped the cupboard handles until his knuckles turned bright white. If he kept his grip on the gun when the barrel bumped the arm of the couch, he would not be fetching a drink now. He would be outside, searching for a sheet of plastic and another old carpet to roll Mother in. His heart pounded.

Uncertainty showed clearly in his eyes as he swallowed hard and loud. The lump in his throat felt like a stone. Even if his grip had remained true on the gun, he may have not carried the deed through to conclusion, he knew. He searched the cabinet for the drink and grabbed a half-empty bottle of rum. He turned and came face to face with the old farmer – the man who called himself the Reaper.

“You know you’re hanging on by your fingernails, Snatch.”
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Snatch stepped out of the farmhouse and swung the sledgehammer up to shoulder it. He searched the immediate area for any sign of the old farmer, the Reaper, but found nothing. He stood alone.

He pressed his temple with the heel of his palm. He felt a headache swelling behind his temples in the form of increased bloodflow. His blood pressure climbed and his brain pulsed in his skull with the extra flow of blood. With a grimace, he walked toward the woods.

For the second time now, the Reaper denied the existence of Danielle, but Snatch knew she existed. He remembered all too well how her head split like a watermelon under a cinder block. He remembered the look on her face when she fell; he remembered the way her eyes stayed open and her features bore the look of surprise and shock.
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