Trigger Warning: The content may not be suitable for children or those with a fragile psyche

A Furnace in the Woods

I wasn’t sure what to do with the body. I had a large freezer I was keeping it in that I used to store cases of Polish vodka. My dad had been living with me for ten years. My mother was dead. I had no siblings or friends. My dad had never remarried. He had no acquaintances nor old buddies from the war. He spent his time reading obscure histories of the Nazi invasion written in German. He had self-published a few books detailing the goings on of small Polish towns in the 1940s that no one had heard of.

I started one, but I couldn’t get more than thirty pages in.

My dad died a week ago from heart failure. He had a bad heart and refused to see the doctor. He didn’t like doctors, with their rubber gloves and white offices and clipboards. I found him lying in his bed. I was making coffee downstairs and called his name to see if he wanted a cup. When he didn’t answer, I went upstairs.

I didn’t call the police. I didn’t want the police inside our home, sporting badges, carrying holstered guns and tasers under their oversized stomachs. I didn’t want them patting my back and offering condolences while men with plastic covered shoes carried out my dad’s body.

I took all the vodka out of the freezer, carried him down the stairs, and placed him inside.

At Home Depot I purchased 200 concrete bricks, dry firewood, and a piece of sheet metal. I parked my truck in the garage. I dragged the freezer onto my truck, along with the bricks, wood, and steel.

I packed a gallon of water, an old newspaper, a lighter, a book of matches, and a ceramic teapot my mother had made.

I drove toward Eastern Washington, searching for a logging road.

After a while, I found what I was looking for. I turned down a winding, pot-holed, road sinking deeper into the thick old growth forest. I had to stop a few times to remove large branches that were obstructing my path. I drove slowly. I didn’t want my truck to break down with the dead body of my father inside it.

I found a secluded spot. I parked and removed all the necessary items. I dragged them some twenty yards to a peaceful clearing devoid of evergreens. I had plenty of wood, but I spent another hour collecting small branches and chunks of forgotten felled trees until I had a nice pile of fuel.

I began to build the furnace. I built it as a large rectangle. Then I started with the newspaper, the store-bought wood, and the wood of the Washington forest.

Soon the fire was bright and full of the sound of crackling as the wood died its way towards nothing. I took the corpse out of the freezer and placed it on the fire. The fire began to hiss as my dad’s body warmed. I threw the rest of the wood in the furnace. I put the steel on top to act as a roof, leaving a small opening for the smoke to escape.

It was after dawn when the body was ready. Inside the furnace were small fragments of charred bones and black bits of carbon. I collected the remains and put them in the teapot. I took the furnace apart and loaded it into my truck. I put the teapot on the passenger seat.

I decided to stop at a shelter and get a dog when I got back to Seattle. Hopefully, I could find an old dog who was blind in one eye and didn’t like going on walks.

END

The Chicken

It was time for the chicken to die. The chicken was at that particular age when it was ripe to be killed, when it was tender and fat and juicy. It would probably fetch ten dollars if it were sold to a butcher.

The boy was fond of the chicken. He liked to sit and read in the pasture while the chicken searched for worms and beetles.

 His father decided that the boy would kill the chicken. He thought the death of the chicken would act as a loss of virginity for his son. Cutting the head off the chicken, that the boy cared for so much, would change him from a child to a man. The mother was going to bake the chicken with potatoes and lemon and fennel and garlic. The chicken would be enough for the three of them to have for dinner.

The boy did not want to disappoint his father. His father was a hard man to please. He thought the boy was weak and feminine because he read too much and spoke in a quiet voice.

The boy stood in front of the blood-stained wooden block. He held the head of the chicken against the block with one hand, and with the other he held a small hatchet.

He ate the chicken in silence. He did not look up from his plate. He chewed the chicken thoroughly. He made sure not to leave any flesh on the bones.

After his parents were asleep, the boy searched through the indoor and outdoor trash cans and collected all the chicken bones.

With a pair of tweezers, he removed as much meat and cartilage as he could, and then carefully cleaned the collection with a paper towel dipped in denatured alcohol.

He put the bones in an empty shoebox

in his closet

so that he could talk to them

any time

he felt alone

END