Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

I stare up at the ceiling. It is sagging slightly in the middle. I try talking to my doctor, but I’m not really sure what I’m saying. Is this all a dream? Am I operating on myself?

I don’t know how much time passes, but when I look up again, the doctor is gone. I am all alone, just as my testicle is now all alone. I start to reach down my body, but then think better of it. I’m too scared to see what the damage could be. I close my eyes. Open them again. The doctor is in. I close them. The doctor is out.

What is happening to me?

Am I dying?

I stare at the ceiling and hope that I am.

Sally sits on the couch and stares at the goldfish bowl. When she reaches out and sprinkles in some food, the two fish inside quickly head toward the surface and begin eating.

The surgery, if she can call it that, has gone well. She suspects the chances of infection are slim. She has neatly removed the damage done by the pliers, and used dissolvable stitches internally and normal stitches externally. Of course only time will tell. Now that she’s finished, she’s hung the crucifix back around her neck.

She had figured Joe needed it more during that time.

She’s decided that as much as she wants to call the police, she won’t do it. She wants Joe to be healed professionally, and she wants the people who did this to be caught and convicted, but she’ll wait until she can discuss it with him. There isn’t room out on the streets for people who can commit such an evil act. She thinks about the Christchurch Carver, about the hell he’s been putting women through. It’s true that the devil can walk among us.

Joe’s life is different enough, and she doesn’t blame him for not wanting to be the mentally challenged man who was deprived of his money and his dignity. She respects Joe’s right to not be known as the man who has lost a testicle. When he is capable, when he is fully aware, she will help him understand that the right path will be to involve others who can help him.

She thinks about the scars on his chest. What sort of life has he had? Who abused him? Is this why he never speaks of his parents?

Joe is unconscious, so she rolls him onto one side, then the other, maneuvering the bloody sheets from beneath him. She wraps the pieces of flesh she has cut away in the plastic sheet and places it in a plastic bag, then throws the bedsheets, jeans, underwear, and shirt into the washing machine and sets the cycle going. She finds a second plastic shopping bag and begins filling it with all the rubbish from the surgery. She wraps the scalpel blade securely to ensure it can never hurt anybody. She takes off her latex gloves and drops them in the bag too.

She puts on another pair, then starts tidying and cleaning the apartment. The dishes piled up in the sink haven’t even been rinsed. The food stains on the countertop match the food stains on the table. When she finds a vacuum cleaner, she decides to run it briefly over the floors. None of the noises wake Joe. When the washing machine is finished, she bundles the items into the dryer and sets it going. The paperbacks on the couch are all romance novels. Martin never read anything like this; he only ever read comic books. She finds it odd at first, but encouraging that Joe would read something with more of a story. As she picks up the folders next to the books, the contents of one spill.

“What are you doing, Joe?” she whispers to herself. She recognizes the photograph of one of the dead women. She scoops them up, flicks through them, then puts them back into the folder before moving on to the next. Joe has the complete set-the Christchurch Carver’s victims. He also has information on the detectives investigating the case. She looks through them, trying to figure out why Joe would have these here. Does he know the women in these pictures are dead?

Joe wouldn’t bring these things home unless there was a good reason, and she’s sure he wouldn’t be doing it for money. Either somebody’s threatening him, or he’s got them for himself. But why? Does it have something to do with his attack?

When she looks over at Joe, she sees another folder, this one on the small bedside table. It’s a psychological profile of the Christchurch Carver. No way in the world could Joe possibly understand any of this. So why have it? And why have it next to his bed, as if he had recently been reading it? Outside, the streetlights have come on. The road is empty except for a few parked cars and for the first time it’s starting to feel like autumn. She closes the window.

She empties the bucket in the sink and rinses it out, then fills it a quarter of the way with water and sets it next to Joe’s bed. She imagines he’ll use it to urinate into-he won’t be able to walk for a few days. She checks the dressing on his wound. No signs of blood. When the dryer stops its cycle, she pulls out the sheets, rolls Joe to one side, then the other, tugging one sheet beneath him. She tucks the second sheet over him, but it’s still too warm in here for a blanket. His briefcase, which is heavier than she thought, she puts within reach of his bed in case he needs it. She spends a few seconds thinking that she should open it, that perhaps there are answers in there, then decides against it. Joe trusted she would come and help him, not to go through his belongings.

She checks that everything is tidied away, picks up his keys, her first-aid kit, and heads back out to her car.

Sunday. Not in the morning, or even in the afternoon, but late in the evening. I have slept for over a day. My internal clock tells me nothing. I am somewhere between hell and the torment of life. I pass in and out of consciousness, hardly aware of the fact that I am even alive. I look at my alarm clock. It’s nine forty.

When I toss aside the blankets I’m relieved to see little in the way of blood. A white dressing around my crotch has been methodically applied. It is mostly dry. I try to focus on what happened after I managed to get home yesterday morning, but come up with nothing except a headache.

I have nothing to get up for. My fish need feeding. But my fish can wait. I don’t know how long they can survive without food, but we all might be finding out. The bucket, which looks relatively clean considering I’ve filled it with water and antiseptic, I now piss into. My urine stings and comes in short spurts. When I finish, my room smells worse than normal.

I close my eyes. I can see a woman standing over me with a mask over her face and a scalpel in her hand. She shimmers, the mask disappears, the scalpel becomes a pair of pliers, my bedroom ceiling becomes a purple sky with dying stars, and the stranger becomes Melissa. Melissa did this to me. Melissa ripped away my testicle.

And it was Melissa who came to help me. Had to have been.

“Goddamn her,” I say, opening my eyes. I pull the covers over my body and lean back into the pillow. I need rest, but I’m not tired. I need to think about something other than Melissa, if only for a few minutes. I reach out to my bedside table and grab the folder.

A loner. Caucasian, as crimes like these seldom cross racial lines and all the women are white. Early thirties. Killings are all at night, suggesting he has a job, but it will be something menial. He feels the job is beneath him, that he is far too good for what he is doing. He lives with a woman who is domineering, perhaps a mother or an aunt.

I remember Melissa asking me about the domineering mother figure. She believes the same bullshit as whoever wrote this.

He does not have the ability to stand up to this woman and, through transference, he gets back at her by killing different women. It is not the sex he wants, but the domineering power. He uses sex as a weapon. It is highly probable he has a previous police record. Peeping and peering-voyeurism-would be a good guess. Burglary just as likely.