MACHETE OVERPASS
by Gabe Onofre
Ben told me about this guy he found. After I couldn’t make up my mind about dinner. Ben told me while we were still in Portland, after Ben agreed to help me get south. Only the both of us hadn’t eaten in who knows when. Ben and I hadn’t eaten, and our bellies were rumbling, and soon. Soon, Ben told me, soon we’d start to cough.
Ben told me, sooner than in just one second, sooner than right now we needed to make a decision.
So Ben made it for me.
Ben told me to hang tight while he got everything together. For dinner.
First Ben dragged down this big trash bag full of clothes stolen from Target store dumpsters. Stacks of identical black tops with stringy things that go over the shoulders. Everything pulled out of a dumpster behind a Target store, everything stained with that smell like a trashcan explosion. Like something dragged from the bottom of the ocean.
So many stinky pairs of white socks, ankle socks, everything we could shove into a trash bag.
Boxer briefs in different shades of black and blue and white and red.
Ben left me the trash bag. Then Ben hiked back up the hill with the streetlight.
And hanging tight, I waited in that spot under the overpass. The edge of town. That spot where two sets of train tracks run parallel. One track was the main line, stretching forever. And another track ran off from the first one, following. This kick out connected back to the main line way far ahead.
And to get under that overpass, Ben and I waited for crosswalks over single lane highways. We passed under streetlight glows, hiking downhill with our feet sideways. And your shadow, he was already downhill, your shadow waiting under this overpass with the cars rolling over.
Ben carried the trash bag like he was Santa Clause.
And what Ben told me, all we had to do was wait there under the overpass. Just wait and a freight train would slide up, easy and simple. A freight train would just stop there before it kept on going.
All we had to do was hang tight.
And I hang tight. Just lay down. My head down, crunching against my trash bag pillow, where when I tossed and turned, the insides squished and poked me.
Like this was a trash bag from our basement. Back home.
Back home, all the trash bags in our basement. Rattling full of warm, living things.
Tails tied together.
I was waiting until this shadow, two shadows, these stepping shadows who block out the streetlight at the top of the hill. Shadows that stepped down with their feet sideways. One of the shadows who swung around this weird axe. This shadow of an axe head in the dark, the blades that jut out from the handle, axe blades so long you could cut someone off by their abdomen.
Two shadows, the one in the back swung this axe all around, then the front shadow. The front shadow who stepped down until he was Ben, Ben who was just there looking down at me as he stepped up.
Ben with this New guy.
New guy who flopped around on soggy toes. Reeked like piss.
New guy who sat down and stuck the axe head of his wooden axe into his arm pit. One hand around the handle, New guy strummed on all these strings that stretched across the
whole handle. With his fingerprints, New guy strummed until his axe became a guitar.
And Ben, from his pockets, Ben dug out a nine-volt battery. A ball of steel wool. Ben made a flame by just pressing the battery and the steel wool together. Fast-food take-out bags, paper to get the fire along.
Ben punched a hole through the trash bag.
Ben punched into the warm, squirming bag, and Ben pulled out all these polo shirts and pairs of torn jeans. Ben pulled out each stack of socks and set the socks ablaze.
And I asked Ben what we should do about dinner, how the hell we were gonna’ get enough money for a decent meal.
That everything, this dark at night, everything was closed besides gas stations. Besides fast food.
I asked Ben, “You sure we can’t get a car?” And Ben said to call the new guy Owen.
Owen strummed his guitar.
The fire between the group of us.
Owen strummed away lightly. Strummed with dirty fingerprints. Owen said to me, “So you’re pretty green yourself?”
Ben clapped his hands over the fire, “Genie says teach him guitar.” And Owen smiled, leaning forward, “Great!”
And Owen, he stuck out the neck of his guitar, for me to grab. All these tiny twisty pegs. He leaned over, this Owen, and picked up my fingers.
Owen stuck my fingers in a spot on the strings, “That’s an E chord.” Owen said, “E minor.” Owen moved my fingers, “That’s an A minor.”
And what I guess are called frets, where I put my fingers had to be beneath those metal lines that cut down along the neck all the way to the tiny twisty pegs. My fingers in the right spot for those chords to not sound shitty.
Brown chalky gunk, you could scrape the stuff off the wood with just your fingernail. The strings were coated in the stuff. Smelt like belly button lint, ear lobe dead skin cells.
Ben pulled at a buckle on his hip. The long leather thing that hung there. Ben had to move the thing off to the side before he sat down.
Owen leaned forward, like to open his mouth. Only Ben beat him to it.
“Keep playing those chords,” Ben said, “One after the other. Strum one of them for a while, long as you want.” Ben said, “Then switch whenever you want. Try to keep a beat.”
Ben snapped his fingers, “One, two, three, four.” Then again, “One, two.”
Ben kept going.
And I was supposed to strum whenever Ben said a number. So I’m strumming E, strumming E until Ben counts four.
Then strumming A.
Counting.
“Good,” Ben said, “Keep playing.” Then Ben turned to Owen, asked him, Where’s your family?
Strumming E.
Owen leaned back, he spiked down the question with his fingers.
Ben punched the trash bag I’m still sitting on. Ben with his fist dug out another polo shirt from the trash bag, Ben pulled it towards the flames and caught the collar on fire.
Owen shook his head, “I just ran away a long time ago, man. You know, never looked back sort of thing?” Owen said, “Yeah.”
And I’m strumming E, strumming A.
Ben said, “So how long have you been homeless?”
Grimy fingernail dirt, dug into Owen’s pockets. With fingerprints that Owen could paint to any surface ready to go. Owen dug and dug this little vape to his lips, that glowed as his shoulders shrugged.
Owen’s head tilted up. The tiny twisty hairs dangling along his jaw. Owen showed us his throat.
Mango vapor.
And Owen said, “Ran away when I was twelve. So now I think I’m,” Owen looked up again, the vein in his neck pulsating.
Strumming E, strumming A.
Ben slid the blade from a sheath hooked to his belt.
One eye closed, “Twenty-two,” Owen bobbed his head and smiled, “I’m twenty-two.”
And Ben popped his teeth over his bottom lip. Finger pointed at the guitar I’m playing. Ben said, “And how long?”
Owen sucked his lips, eyes up, “Learned it at fourteen?”
And Ben made it a big deal. Ben said how that’s so great. So great to learn something like that so young. As Ben hid the blade there behind his leg, he said, “So how’d you get by?”
Owen reached for the guitar.
“Ah,” Ben waved at him, “You busked?”
Ben told Owen that I should keep the guitar, at least for now. Ben said how much of a natural I am. How easily I followed directions.
Strumming E.
Ben raised his fist high.
Strumming A.
Ben’s fist with that machete. I stopped playing.
Ben yanked his hand back, and hid the machete behind his leg, “Why’d you stop?” Owen said, “You can keep playing, man.” Owen laughed, “I can wait my turn.” I’m strumming E, strumming A.
Strumming, strumming.
Owen sank down to get comfortable. Owen laid his head back for that neck to pulse and pulse. Owen’s vein, “I’m really glad to get going.” Owen said, “You know, away from here.”
Ben took a breath with his whole body.
And Owens said, “This place, man. Just isn’t what it’s supposed to be.” Owen said, “Doesn’t seem to be getting better.”
And Owen told us about his friends who lost their lives, only they still had their bodies. Owen said frozen zombie people, who bend and stretch themselves like they’re limbo champions.
Trapped there.
“Some folks might say I’m no good.” Owen said, “But at least I never touched that stuff, well…” Owen tilted his chin back and forth, “Not in a while.”
And Ben reached over with his fist and stuck his fist right in Owen’s neck.
That suction sound, of the meat and juice smacking against itself, trying to bubble out and breathe. Ben yanked the machete handle, the blade stuck in tight between tendons and veins and bone splinters. A big red bubble bath.
Ben kicked with his boot. Ben kicked on Owen’s chest as he yanked the machete handle. And Ben told me, “Please keep playing.”
Strumming E, strumming.
Ben told me to open my eyes. He said I have to see this.
Ben took the machete, and he cut around the red spewing neck. Ben cut the neck like an avocado, a seed inside. Ben, he raised the whole thing, blade stuck inside, and Ben smacked down on the blade, smack, into the dirt.
With just a hand, Ben stuck Owen into the ground so it looked like he grew there. This Owen fruit, ready for picking. Ben spun the hair ball in the dirt.
Until the thing faced away.
And I strummed until the strings on Owen’s guitar rang out. The strings rang out as I leapt up to my feet. As I bashed the body of Owen’s guitar like an axe down into the fire. Swinging and swinging with cinders spat up as little singed bits of polo, of denim jeans. Boxer briefs and ankle socks.
Until that guitar was just splinters and strings. Ben didn’t even look up.
Him with that machete, Ben stood before he looked at me. Ben squeezed the machete handle so bad, his hand shook. Watching me.
The guitar neck. Tiny twisty pegs, the neck of Owen’s guitar hit the dirt. My hands reached for my elbows.
And Ben sat down. “This would’ve been a whole lot easier,” Ben said, “If only you hadn’t done what you just did.” Ben cut along Owen’s hoodie.
With that machete, Ben cut off Owen’s hoodie and Ben cut Owen’s jeans. And Ben slipped off Owen’s shoes and slipped off Owen’s socks. Until Owen just looked like a mannequin. A headless mannequin that just fell out of a truck driving above us, the overpass.
Fell in some paint.
Ben sectioned out the arms and cut at the legs with that same avocado method. Set them aside.
Ben turned to just the abdomen, a little dick and balls dangling.
Like what they yank from some just cleared mud hut in Afghanistan. What they cover in American flags.
This looked like that.
And Ben cut his machete down along chest hair, cut through skin so easy like birthday cake. As Ben cut, I told him about the time I fell asleep in English class.
Ben cut through milky white heat. Melted butter.
And I speak before I know it. Telling Ben how once I leaned back in English class, leaned back in a chair so far, I fell backwards.
Everyone laughed.
Teacher too.
I told Ben as he cut into the chest cavity. Septic tank smell.
I pinched my nose with two fingers and told Ben how once I stole my Dad’s Mellow Yellows before a sleepover. How I came back home to a dog gone.
Ben cut these flaps that opened up from the center line. Ben pulled up on one of the flaps, and ran the machete along the bottom, cutting more.
And as Ben swung down on bones, I told him how once I asked some girl I was sitting next to in Biology class. I asked her if she would go to homecoming with me. I asked her and she was smiling and I just ran, ran away. I told Ben how I was just so shaky with her teeth so smiling, I just ran away.
Never talked to her again.
Ben smacked down on the sternum, and the ribs shot down and stabbed to leak red into everything else.
Never went to homecoming, not prom, not anything like that. Can’t remember the last time I danced.
And Ben picked and tossed the broken claws of bone. Set them aside.
With his fingers, Ben curled and twisted his hands through wet smacking slime. Ben dug until he found these tubes that ran down from the neck and cut everything out.
I told Ben about the piss on my clothes. How that wasn’t Owen before.
I told Ben how just before he got here, before that I went out to piss in some bush. Pulled my pants up over the stream as it was still petering out.
And Ben reached down, Ben squished and smacked his hands through the hairy chest without any arms or legs, and without a head. That chest with just a belly button that split up the
whole middle, laying in the dirt. Ben reached inside and yanked out the Red Fist to the top of the pile, Ben yanked as he cut and cut so much still beating butter fat, all along the side of it.
And I told Ben about how once I stole my little cousin’s Lego figurine. His favorite one. My favorite one.
As Ben cut at the fat like a watermelon from the rind, an orange from its peel. Ben went digging through these pale slimy folds that slunk around the lower part of the chest cavity.
It was a little Lego Boba Fett, mine now.
And Ben just kept cutting and cutting and cutting through all this fat to pull up a big purple mass. As wide as the whole belly. Like a massive, giant slug.
I told Ben about how once I went into the woods with my family. To roast marshmallows and play cornhole. I went to the woods to look up at the sky without all the streetlights to fuck up the stars. And in the woods I dropped my pants.
But not to dig a hole, not with toilet paper.
Once I snuck off into the woods with one of my school notebooks. Third period, Biology class. A blue pen. And in the woods, I drew two circles with my head lamp. Two circles that looked like big eyeballs.
Only the circles had a long hair head hovering above them, and tight eyes outlined in thick pen.
I drew her with thick legs.
And Ben laughed so hard he stuck the machete in the dirt. Ben wiped his eyes dirtier and slapped his knee. Ben reached over for the hairy ball.
Owen.
And Ben jammed his finger into the front, squishing. Until Ben’s hand came back with something inside. Ben laid out his hand, and an eyeball rolled to his fingerprints.
An eyeball still watching, still green, still bloodshot. Ben handed me this eyeball and said, “Eat.” Gumball size. Tofu texture.
Slimy. Chewy.
Ben threw his head back, hand over his teeth. Eyes squinted. I said, “What?”
Ben picked up an arm that twisted as he swung it around. The wrist loose, the elbow loose.
Ben swung the arm like a sock puppet. “Nothing,” Ben smiled, “I just usually like my food cooked.”
My whole stomach leapt.
Gabe Onofre writes horror stories about downtrodden characters. Currently working on his first novel. This is his first publication.
