Lisa Comes Tapping

Lisa came tapping at my bedroom window tonight. Just as she has done for the last four nights; her dirt encrusted nails pecking out a staccato rhythm as she beckoned me to come outside or to let her in. Several of those nails would be jagged from her clawing, the flesh of her hands like ground beef, raw and red.

I don't want to imagine her face.

I lay, huddled in the bed we once shared. Covers to my chin; eyes closed tight; thoughts trying to drown out the constant tap, tap, tapping at the window. The room temperature has dropped... I can see my breath billowing out in a fog-like cloud and I can't stop my shivering or the teeth chattering. Three blankets are not enough... the furnace set to eighty-five cannot permeate the frigid wall that seems to enclose me. It's as if cold tendrils of some Lovecraft-like beast is slowly draining the life from my body, willing me to be as dead as Lisa.

And she is dead.

Despite the fact she stands outside my bedroom window, Lisa is (no matter what the National Enquirer might like people to think) as dead as Elvis. I should know. I'm the one who killed her. I'm the one who strangled the life from her and buried her deep in the woods behind the house. She loved those woods. And now, by all rights, she should be moldering in an unmarked grave, nothing more than food for the worms. Except she's not. She's standing outside my window and she's driving me fucking crazy.

I could leave but I'm certain the house is being watched. I can't see them, but I know they're there... Waiting in their unmarked cars, walking by the house in their non-descriptive ways. Perhaps they were alerted by the wife of a certain lawyer who hasn't been seen for nearly a week. Perhaps he has been tapping on his own bedroom window, wanting to explain what it was that made him climb into the bed of another woman... My Lisa.

Tap, tap, tapping.

They had been clever at the deception at first- Lisa and this certain lawyer. I didn't have a clue to what was going on around me. But over time, their routine became familiar to them. And with familiarity comes carelessness. A slip of a word here, a misplaced receipt there and the pieces of the puzzle began to come together.

Of course I was devastated, unable to grasp the simple notion of infidelity. I tried reason; was there something I did or didn't do? Was I somehow to blame? But I couldn't come up with the catalyst for Lisa's betrayal. I worshiped her. She was my reason for being. She never moved far from my thoughts during my waking hours and she was always with me in my dreams.

And she was fucking someone else.

How thin is the line between love and hate? The thinnest imaginable barrier exists and I crossed it easily. First came her lover which was easy enough. An e-mail signed by Lisa, telling him to meet her at a spot chosen for it's seclusion. He no doubt believed he was going to get a quick hump or a hurried blow-job. I image his cock was already hard when I slammed the knife into his stomach and up under the sternum.

The blood ran quick and hot as I went about my work. Again and again, the blade sank deep into his flesh, finding little to slow it's path. The muscles in my arms began to ache from the jarring as the blade occasionally scrapped against bone, but I didn't stop until his heart had stopped pumping and his limbs ceased their helter-skelter dance. I stood over him, drenched in crimson, grinning hysterically as I bent to the next task... I had purchased the meat cleaver only that morning and it's edge was fine and sharp. It would have to be as I began to methodically dismember the body.

The sounds of the woods faded to be replaced by the wet chopping as muscle and bone parted. The legs of the coveralls I had also purchased looked as though they had been dipped in a vat of gore. I doubt they would ever see clean again. No problem, I didn't plan on wearing them after this day anyway.

I placed the body parts into some garbage bags I had brought along... and loaded them into the trunk of my car. I knew it would be messy work and had placed a large piece of plastic on the floorboard to catch any blood that might leak. But thank God and modern innovation... those Hefty trash bags really work.

Next I peeled off the coveralls and stuffed them into another bag along with the instruments of my crime. I made numerous stops on the way home, keeping to the backroads I knew so well.. I paused along the river bank and tossed a couple of bags into the muddy water after weighing them down with rocks and poking some holes so the air would leak out. Some bags went into abandoned landfills, no doubt to be picked over later that night by stray dogs or the giant rats that infested the sites. I scattered that lawyer to the four winds and over a large portion of the county. And when I was finally through I went home to shower.

And to Lisa.

There would be no blood. I would take Lisa's life with my bare hands- the same hands that used to caress her- the same hands that had slipped on her finger the wedding ring that came to mean nothing to her. She seemed anxious when I arrived home, but perhaps it was my imagination. And when she agreed to accompany me on a walk in the woods, I knew that she suspected nothing.

We made small talk as we walked along the path, deeper into the woods until we reached the spot. She asked why we were stopping. I smiled reassuringly and taking her hands, leaned forward as if to kiss her. Instead I whispered two words.

" I know. "

At first she seemed puzzled but then realization sunk in and I saw the first hint of fear in her eyes. She tried to explain, taking a step backwards, but I held her hands in a tight grip. She tried to break free and run but I was on her, hands wrapped around her thin neck, already tightening, cutting off her air... crushing her larynx. Oh, how she struggled to live; Her eyes bulging as her lungs begged for breath; Her hands beating helplessly against my chest; Her once fair skin turning black as she began that descent into darkness.

And in a matter of minutes it was over. She lay, with a look of scared wonder on her face, eyes focused on something beyond this world. I left her body and returned to the house for the shovel and a cold beer. I was back with her in less then thirty minutes and began digging. The ground was soft and easily moved, not yet having been baked by the summer heat. After placing her in the grave, I covered her, heaping the dirt in a slight mound before covering that with some brush over. I had dug the hole deep and didn't think a wild animal would find her there. Nothing too good for my Lisa.

And there I left her, returning to the house for a early dinner and to perhaps catch some baseball on ESPN. I hadn't thought about how I would explain her disappearance, but I wasn't worried. I was smart enough, I would figure something out.

And later that night, I thought about her laying in the dirt. Still able to smell her scent on the bedsheets, I imagined the bugs crawling into her mouth and her eyes caked with moist dirt. That's when the tapping began.

I looked to the window and could see nothing... but the tapping continued. My heart began to beat harder and I strained to see what it was that was making that sound. Was that a form outside the window? It was hard to tell with the shifting shadows as the wind blew clouds across the moon. And as I stared, a tiny flicker of new thought entered my mind. Soon that flicker became a bonfire and then a raging inferno. I knew that it was Lisa. Somehow, someway she had escaped the grave and followed me home. My rational mind tried to tell me that was so much shit but the other side was having no part of it. Lisa was on the outside trying to get in.

And she has been trying ever since.

Every night I lie awake, listening to her tapping. In the daytime, I think about sneaking out to the car and going away. But they're out there waiting for me. A couple of times they've even rung my bell but I fooled them into thinking I wasn't at home. The phone rings but I let the machine pick it up. That way I can listen to Lisa's voice telling the caller that we can't come to the phone right now. Sometimes it's my boss asking me why I haven't been in to work. Another time it's Lisa's mother, telling her little girl that she 's worried about her and for Lisa to call her.

Sorry, mom, but Lisa won't be making any more phone calls. If you want I could send her on over but I don't know how much of a conversationalist she is these days. You see, she doesn't talk to me anymore. Just taps on the window.

By the fourth night, I feel like I'm the one buried in an unmarked grave.

I can't eat... I don't dare leave the bedroom because those non-descriptive fellows are in the house now, prowling and crawling. One of them tips over a lamp; I hear it crash to the floor. That's followed by whispering outside my door. I hear the knob turn slowly as they test the lock I leave the bed long enough to get my. 38 from the shelf in the closet. It now lays on the nightstand beside the bed. The first one through that door is in for a hell of a surprise.

But they don't come in. When night falls they go away. The night is primetime and it belongs only to Lisa. I begin to tremble and shake even before she begins. My mouth is dry and tastes of dirt. My thoughts are nothing but a dull buzz of white noise.

How fine is the line between sanity and madness? Doesn't matter. I suppose I tore down that wall a long time ago. The revolver on the nightstand beckons me. It makes promises that even a sane man could understand and I reach for it. Even as Lisa begins to tap, I am placing the barrel in my mouth. And to her repetitious accompaniment I pull the trigger....

*************

Several days later, the police discover the body lying in a pool of half dried blood and brain matter. A quick search of the house turns up nothing else and they idly wonder what became of the man's wife. The dogs that arrive later that day solve that part of the mystery.

And while they are shocked at the scene , they are not surprised. They see this sort of thing every now and then and have become numb to it. But one thing is different about this case and gives them a good laugh. While the folks from the crime lab is going over the bedroom, one of them nearly pees in his pants when he hears tapping coming from the window. Figuring that one of the cops is having a laugh on his account, he walks to the window and fling the curtains open.

"Well? " he's asked

" Nothing," he shrugs. "Guy should have trimmed his trees. " Outside, moved by the night's breeze, a lone tree branch taps against the window, like a skeleton finger pointing the way to the guilty.