Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

Apart Is Better

“Apart, that is better,” Shaun says with a wicked smile.

“Why is apart better?”

“No, not a part, you silly fucking twit. Apart, as in separating into two or three pieces.”

“Ah, okay, that makes better sense. So, how many pieces?”

“How many do we need to cut it into?”

He looks down and studies it, then glances back up at Shaun. “Seven, maybe?”

“How the fucking hell do you get seven?”

He shrugs his shoulders and pulls a twisted smile. “Fucked if I know, man. I just took a random guess. I mean, seven would work?” he says, looking back down.

“Nah, there’s no way seven would be enough. I’d go closer to twelve, at least.”

“TWELVE? That’s overkill, man! Nine at the most, motherfucker. Any more, and you’re playing with too many pieces.”

“But the more you have, and the smaller they are, the easier they are to dispose of. If we leave them too big, we might back ourselves into a corner where we have to adjust mid-game. I’m not ready to have to turn on a dial at a minute’s notice because we underprepared. I see how you came up with your nine, but I think you’ve misjudged this,” Shaun says, rolling it over and pointing to a large flabby piece.

His eyes widen with surprise, and his mouth drops open. “Holy shit! I did not know that was there,” he says, looking back up at Shaun. “Okay, I get where you’re coming from, but that ain’t worth three—maybe one, two at the most.”

“Get fucked! It’s so worth three, just on its own. Did you look at it properly?” Shaun says, picking it up and holding it out towards him.

He looks at it closely and puckers his lips, trying to calculate how many pieces it would evenly distribute into. His tongue twists its way out of his mouth, flicks around his lips, then sticks out straight as he looks up at Shaun. “Five,” he says proudly.

Shaun furrows his eyebrows and squints at him. “For the whole lot?”

“Yup, five!” he says proudly again.

“How the fuck did we go from twelve to five? There’s no fucking way five will be manageable!”

“Nope, five is the magic number. Trust me,” he says with a broad smile on his face.

Shaun lets out a sigh and drops it back onto the floor. “Okay, Rain Man, tell me how you’re gonna cut it.”

“I don’t get the Rain Man reference.”

Shaun rolls his eyes and sighs once more. “You know, the film with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise?”

“I know the film, I just don’t get the reference. Are you saying I’m autistic?”

“NO! NO, I’M NOT CALLING YOU AUTISTIC! I’M JUST REFERENCING IT—the card-counting part!” Shaun quickly cries. “NOW, JUST SHOW ME HOW YOU THINK FIVE PIECES WILL WORK OUT BETTER THAN TWELVE, BECAUSE I’M NOT SEEING IT!”

He gives Shaun a wink, then starts making chainsaw noises with his mouth, pretending to chop it up.

“Fuck me! How could I not see it!” Shaun says, his words laced with sarcasm. “You are a fucking savant retard!” he adds, looking up at him and winking again as he continues pretending to saw the body up.