Flash Fiction

Tundra

Photo by Laura Kae on Unsplash

Ned found Nadine sitting on the bed next to Sam’s lifeless body.

She adjusted the plastic bag over Sam’s head, the canister of helium on the floor, the book Final Exit on the bedside table. No note, because that wouldn’t have been Sam’s style.

Ned studied her movements, impressed with how she conducted herself. The dead body didn’t bother him. He’d seen plenty over the years, and he certainly didn’t give a shit about Sam, considering the little prick had been using Ned’s legit furniture business to mule drugs.

“Have fun last night?” Ned asked Nadine.

She stood and stretched, her little black nightie leaving nothing to the imagination.

“Last night was delicious,” she said. “Thank you.”

Ned winced at the meaning behind her words, but quickly shook it off. He learned long ago not to be jealous.

The first time Ned saw Nadine was a couple of days after he got out of the joint — ten years for armed robbery. He spotted her sitting in the corner of a bar, and the attraction, for him anyway, was immediate. “Lust at first sight,” she would later tease, but it was more than lust. Maybe not love, but a pull.

He tried buying her a drink, but she declined because she was meeting someone, and when that someone walked in, Ned watched from afar. The guy had a married-out-of-towner look written all over him, given his wedding ring, suit, and tie. But Ned knew it wasn’t an affair. The smiles Nadine offered the guy didn’t reach her eyes.

When they left, he followed in the beater his cousin had lent him to a sleazy motel and waited in the parking lot, not exactly sure why. Maybe he wanted a piece of the action, thirsty for it after his state-imposed exile. Or maybe he wanted a piece of her.

When she emerged alone from room 105 shortly after midnight, Ned suspected that somewhere on her person was the guy’s wallet and watch.

Ned lowered his window and inched the car forward, blocking her path.

She slammed her hand on the hood. “What the fuck?” she said. Then, recognition. “It’s you.”

“It’s me.”

“You followed me?”

“I did.”

“You a cop?”

He laughed.

“Did I say something funny?”

“If you knew where I’d been the last ten years, then yeah, you’d think it was funny. I’m not a cop. Just an admirer.”

“That’s creepy, dude.”

“Well, let me make it up to you. How ‘bout I buy you a non-creepy breakfast?”

She considered him for a long moment. “You should get out of here.”

“We should get out of here.” He patted the passenger seat. “Hop in.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

Ned gestured toward room 105. “Worried your friend will be jealous? I promise I’ll bring you somewhere your gentleman caller won’t find you.”

She smiled, and this time, it reached her eyes. “My gentleman caller won’t be looking for me.”

Something about the way she said it, the finality.

Did she mean the guy was—

She held his gaze, and the answer was in those dark brown eyes. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.

He could have driven off.

He should have driven off.

Instead, he gave a tight nod: “What can I do to help?”

“Didn’t ask for any help.”

“I know. But I’m offering just the same.”

She considered him again. “You sure you’re up for this?”

“Probably not. But I’m in anyway.”

Nine years and twelve bodies now. That was how long he’d been in this thing with Nadine.

“Get on the bed,” he said as she fussed over Sam. It wouldn’t be the first time they fucked with a corpse in the room, but they’d never done it with a body in the bed.

“There’s no time for that,” she said. “Housekeeping will be here soon, and we still need to get Clyde.”

Right. Clyde. Her first. The fiancé from twenty years ago. A weird fucker into erotic sex that went awry one night. Or so Nadine claimed. She was worried that if she called the cops, they would think she killed him, so she put Clyde into a chest freezer that went with her — and now them — wherever they lived.

Sometimes, he’d find her in the basement or the garage or wherever they managed to keep the thing plugged in, the top open, Nadine talking to Clyde as if talking to your frozen, dead fiancé was the most natural thing in the world.

“Well, that’s everything,” Nadine said, as they stood in front of the ramshackle house they’d rented for the last three years. They didn’t need to leave, of course. Sam’s death would look like suicide, not murder. But Nadine was nothing if not careful.

Ned slammed the U-Haul door shut, the freezer safely inside. Nadine had waited to unplug the unit until the last possible moment, given they had a long drive to their new place somewhere in Maine. Not that it would matter today, a frigid January morning, the world covered in ice.

“Let’s go,” she said as she slid into their pickup. Ned would follow her in the U-Haul, just like he followed her that first night.

She was dangerous, far more dangerous than him, and as they drove north, he wondered, not for the first time, if he’d make it out of this relationship alive. And if he didn’t, would she keep him packed away in the freezer with Clyde? Would she talk to him every time she reached for a frozen pizza or Lean Cuisine?

It had become a joke, whenever they found a good deal on ice cream or tater tots or Impossible Burgers, no room in the kitchen’s regular freezer.

“Put ’em with Clyde,” she’d always say, and he would, dumping the contents in without looking, scared that this life with Nadine might be a dream or purgatory, and that if he peered too closely, he might see his own frozen face staring back at him.

The story behind the story . . .

This flash fiction is based on an entry into Margaret Atwood’s “Freeze Dried Fiction” contest on Wattpad in 2014. She’d posted one of her short stories (“The Freeze-Dried Groom”) from a recent collection. (It’s a great read. That link will bring you to it.) The story had a deliciously open ending, and people were invited to keep going with it. My original entry was way longer at 2800 words (I didn’t win), but I was always kind of intrigued by the characters, so I decided to revise and tighten. This new piece is around 1000 words.