the horrors want me carnally

Lottie had been complaining about their mailman for a long time. Every day when Nat got home from working at the bike shop, it was the first thing she had to hear about. 

“He yelled at Flower again,” Lottie would say, meaning their two-year-old chihuahua, whom Nat refused to call Flower and had named Spike instead. 

The dog’s name was only one of many long-standing disagreements between them. Lottie also believed that Pearl Jam had been better than Nirvana, that they for some reason needed a thousand useless decorative pillows on their bed, and that burning sage would rid the house of “bad energy.” Lottie believed a lot of things, in fact, that Nat could only shake her head at. Lately, it had been about the mailman. 

“I’ve tried to keep her in the house when he comes around,” Lottie would say next, lowering her chin in that way that said she meant business. “But I swear that man is varying his route on purpose just to terrorize our dog.”

And every day, Nat would try not to roll her eyes, because she was almost sure Lottie had been exaggerating. They had lived in the same house for almost five years, and she had never once had an issue with Mr. Kowalczyk. He had always seemed like a nice enough man to her. 

That only changed once she came back from her annual weekend trip to the motorcycle mechanics convention, and she finally saw proof with her own eyes. She sat her helmet down in its usual spot beside their front door and immediately saw Spike, looking pathetic in her fluffy purple dog bed. A tiny little chihuahua-sized cast covered one of her legs, and her pouty eyes shot up at Nat as she walked in the door as if to say, “Where the fuck have you been, Mom? Lookit what they did to me!”

“Lottie!” she called out, panic rising in her chest. She could smell something cooking from inside the kitchen, and the scent somehow seemed both familiar and not familiar at the same time. Definitely not one of her wife’s usual dishes. 

The kitchen door then swung open, and out walked Lottie, wiping her hands on an apron decorated by tiny moons. She smiled at Nat and said, “Hi, baby,” but her smile quickly faded as her eyes fell down on Spike. “I told you our mailman was a menace,” she said next, shaking her head. 

“Jesus fucking christ, Lottie! Is she okay? Why didn’t you call me? Did you at least call the police or something?” 

Nat didn’t even notice she was swinging her arms around like a maniac until Lottie calmly crossed the room and took her hands, stilling her motions. “Natalie…” she said. 

“Natalie…” was all she ever had to say, in that silky-smooth voice that sounded like the slow-drip of honey, and Nat immediately felt her limbs go a little weak. She looked up and found Lottie with a soft smile on her face, eyes full of tenderness and compassion. 

“I promise you, Flower is fine,” assured Lottie. 

“You mean Spike,” corrected Nat, with a half-smile back at her. 

Lottie let out a little huff, almost imperceptible, along with the quick eye-roll that ever-so-briefly gave away her true feelings regarding their on-going battle over the dog’s name. But as quickly as all that had appeared, her expression shifted back to monk-like status, and she was all kindness and patience again. 

“Our dog is fine,” said Lottie, giving her hands a squeeze before dropping them. “The vet said she’ll heal quickly. I didn’t call you because I saw no reason to worry you when you were that far away from home. I didn’t call the police because… well… since when have they helped anyone? Let’s be honest.”

“So, what?” asked Nat, furrowing her brow. “He’s just going to get away with it? What did he do to her anyway? Did you see it happen?”

Lottie seemed to cringe inwardly at the question, like just thinking about it made her angry all over again. “Don’t worry,” she then said, cracking her neck reflexively. “I took care of it.” 

And something in her eyes changed. Something sparked behind them, like fireworks had gone off. Her voice deepened. Her smile went crooked. 

Not a lot about her wife surprised her anymore. Shit, they had both seen each other at their best and their worst more times than she could count. But she hadn’t seen Lottie get that look in her eyes for so long, it literally gave her chills for a second. 

“What do you mean you ‘took care of it’?” asked Nat, not even bothering to mask her suspicion. 

Lottie shrugged, feigning innocence and doing a terrible job at it. “You really don’t need to worry about it, I promise. Our dog just needs to rest, and we…” Taking Nat’’s hands again, she flashed a softer smile and started tugging her toward the kitchen. “We need to eat. You must be famished after such a long flight… and that ride home. C’mon.”

Nat had failed to notice before— she’d been too distracted by the sight of their dog in his tiny cast to even care. But, once Lottie turned around to open the kitchen door, her eyes were immediately drawn to the bareness of her wife’s ass, covered only by apron strings and a purple lace thong. Nat heard herself breathe out, “Holy fucking christ” and dragged a wide-eyed gaze up her muscular back. The band of a matching purple lace bra was the only thing obstructing her view from the naturally tanned skin she had just spent three long days missing in agony. 

“Nice to come home to?” asked Lottie, who nonchalantly moved to the stovetop to stir some vegetables, knowing full well the answer to that question by now. 

In the meantime, Nat sat down at their kitchen table, never once taking her eyes off her wife. “Three days is a long time to be away from you,” she agreed, smiling slyly. “But you don’t usually greet me dressed quite like… this… unless you’re trying to distract me from finding out about something you’d rather me not know.”

Lottie made a noise at that and turned to shoot her a look of disbelief. “I would never do such a thing. Name one time…”

“Two years ago,” interrupted Nat, clearing her throat. “I came home from the shop, if you will recall, and you had set up a candlelight dinner ‘for no reason at all’. Sound familiar?”

With a warmer smile, Lottie leaned against the stove and said, “Ah yes. The day I brought Flower home,” with enough nostalgia in her voice to power a period piece. 

“You mean Spike,” corrected Nat, trying to hide her amusement. 

Another quick eyeroll followed from Lottie, but she turned back to the stove before Nat could see the rest of her expression. “Whatever,” she said. “So I may have used my feminine wiles that one time…”

Nat chortled at that, interrupting her once again. “Feminine wiles? Really? That’s what we’re calling it?”

She was trying to rile Lottie up on purpose, of course. It was an on-brand part of their relationship that stretched much farther back than just their marriage. But it wasn’t working as well this time. Lottie stiffened a little, but she otherwise appeared unbothered by the barb. 

In fact, she even let out a smug little huff of laughter and said, “Call it what you will. Whatever you choose to call it will not change the effectiveness of the ploy.”

“So, you admit it’s a ploy,” said Nat. She reached for an apple from the fruit bowl in the center of the table. As her arm stretched out, she noticed a small card. A recipe card. 

Since when had Lottie collected recipe cards? She usually clipped them out of magazines, piled them in the junk drawer, and promptly forgot about them. 

“Maybe I was just trying to make sure you had something to look forward to,” offered Lottie, still keeping watch over her pot of steaming vegetables. “I knew I would have to tell you about Flower’s injury as soon as you came home, and I knew how much it would upset you. But I also knew we had nothing to worry about— that she would be fine in a few weeks— so… why not provide a distraction? What harm could it do?” 

And then she turned back around to face Nat with one eyebrow seductively raised and said, in a voice that sounded as smooth as expensive whiskey, “Are you saying the ploy doesn’t work anymore?”

Now it was Nat’s turn to let out a huff of laughter, because— Lottie had her on that one. 

It worked every fucking time, and Nat already knew it would probably work this time too, but that wasn’t the point. 

“Lottie,” said Nat, her smile still twitching in amusement. “What did you mean when you said you ‘took care’ of the mailman?”

“Oh, are we still talking about that?” said Lottie, eyes widening in feigned surprise. 

Nat let out another laugh and shook her head. She had two fingers on the recipe card. In one swift motion, she picked it up and showed it to Lottie. “What’s this?” she asked. 

“A recipe card,” Lottie replied, looking at Nat like this fact should be obvious, even though Nat could see her trembling a little beneath the facade. 

“This isn’t your handwriting,” Nat pointed out, glancing at it for dramatic effect before looking back at her. “It’s way too chicken scratch. You write with big loops. And I have never once seen you with a card like this. This is like… some serious housewife shit, Lot.”

“Am I not a housewife?” asked Lottie, who looked a little offended. 

Nat tried not to laugh at that, shaking her head instead. “You are a wife who spends time in the house. I’ll give you that much.”

Lottie grabbed the nearest towel and snapped her on the arm, saying, “Oh, you!” But they both ended up laughing, even though Nat was still rubbing at the sting on her arm a few minutes later. 

“I borrowed the recipe from Shauna,” Lottie then confessed, after their giggling subsided. “I… had never cooked a roast before.”

Nat’s eyes shot up in surprise. “Shauna? And… since when do you roast meat? I thought you said grilling was the only healthy solution to eating meat.”

“Well, I…”

“Was Shauna over here?” asked Nat next, still fiddling with the card. 

Lottie nodded, but she looked increasingly uneasy about this line of questioning. “Yes, Shauna and Misty both came over to help me.”

“Wait, Misty was here too?”

Another uncomfortable nod from Lottie followed. “Yes,” she said, trying to play it off like it wasn’t a big deal. “We had a… girl’s night.”

“You had a girl’s night.” 

“Yes.”

“With Shipman and Quigley.”

“Yes, why should that come as such a surprise?” asked Lottie, rolling her eyes a little. “We see them all the time.”

“By choice?” retorted Nat. 

“Very funny,” said Lottie. But she did not look the least bit amused at this point. 

“Lottie,” said Nat, as she stood up from the table with a sigh. “How soon after I left for my trip did Mr. Kowalczyk break Flower’s leg?”

As Nat crossed the small space to their refrigerator, she saw Lottie swallow a lump in her throat. She put her fingers around the handle to the freezer, but didn’t open right away. She was waiting for Lottie to answer first. 

“It happened Saturday, right after you left,” Lottie told her. It was obvious she was being honest. She might occasionally use her so-called ‘feminine wiles’ to distract Nat from the truth on a temporary basis, but neither of them could keep a lie from each other for long, and Lottie had a particular face she made when all her pretenses fell away. 

She was wearing that face right now. That hangdog expression that made her eyes a deeper shade of brown and caused her lower lip to push out and tremble a little. 

“And when did Shauna and Misty come over?” Nat asked next, still flexing her fingers around the freezer handle. 

“That night,” admitted Lottie. “Saturday night.”

Nat opened the freezer, and her eyes met with exactly what she had feared. Stacks and stacks of neatly wrapped meat. It looked like Lottie had merely splurged at the deli, but Nat had a strong hunch this haul had not been store-bought. 

She was pretty sure she was staring at Mr. Kowalczyk. Or, at least, parts of him. For a brief second, she wondered if Misty and Shauna had taken portions home with them to lighten Lottie’s load. It made the most sense, but she could only really deal with one horror show at a time. Whatever Shauna and Misty did in their own homes, she decided, was their business. This was her home, however. The one she shared with Lottie. 

There was no way in hell she could just… let this drop without at least getting a few fucking things straight. Was there? 

She shut the freezer door and spun around, but she didn’t look at Lottie right away. She needed to be able to think without looking at that face. Lottie may have thought that standing half-naked in an apron would do Nat in, but she had to know that the sad-deer look was twice as powerful and even harder to resist. 

“Is that our fucking mailman, Lottie?” she asked, flaring her nostrils. 

Lottie hesitated. But after a few long seconds ticked by, and Nat still hadn’t looked up at her, she finally said, “Do you really want to know?”

“Jesus, please do not do that answering a question with a question bullshit right now,” groaned Nat, still avoiding her eyes. “Are you literally roasting our mailman in the same oven we bake pot brownies in?”

Lottie took a step away from the oven, closing the gap between them a little. “If you really want to know,” she said, voice sounding solemn, “I will tell you whatever you want. You’re my wife. I wouldn’t keep that from you.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” said Nat, and she either made the mistake of looking up or made the brilliant choice to look up, depending on one’s point of view. 

Lottie smiled at her, and it was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud after weeks of rain. It really wasn’t fucking fair, that someone capable of cannibalism could pull that kind of reaction out of people.

“If you want to know, I will tell you,” Lottie said again. “But you should know you also have the option of not knowing.”

“Did you at least consider calling the police? Or his… fucking boss maybe?”

Lottie nodded without hesitation. “Of course,” she promised. “But when I looked into what that would entail, it became very clear what little effect any of that would have. At best, the postal service would have fired him, while the police did nothing. At worst, he would’ve kept his job, while the police still did nothing. Could you really have expected someone like me— someone like the wife you’ve known all these years— to sit on my hands while this man… no, this lunatic… was allowed to continue to roam the streets and traumatize other people’s pets?”

With each new level of passion she reached in her monologue, she took another step closer to Nat, until finally, she towered over her like a ten-foot goddess. Looking up into her earnest eyes, in fact, it was hard not to see flashes of Lottie’s former self. Flashes of other times she had towered over her— both in the decades before they had crossed paths again— and in the years since. 

Nat had always found herself swallowing hard under that gaze. But she had also never allowed Lottie to get away with bullshit either, so she squared her jaw and gave her wife her best do-not-fuck-with-me look. “So, you’re telling me, it was either this or no jail time for the creep who broke our baby’s leg?”

“That was the consensus I came to with Shauna and Misty, yes,” said Lottie, with a simple but brazen nod. 

Nat backed up a little, eyes wide. She pointed to the oven door. “Were you going to let me eat that, without even telling me…”

“Oh, no, baby, no!” Lottie promised, shaking her head. She took hold of Nat’s arms and locked eyes with her. “The steamed veggies are for you. I thought they would cleanse you after your trip. We both know you eat more sugars and starches when you travel.”

“Okay, so… more Mr. Kowalczyk for you then? That was your plan? Lottie, do you realize how much meat is crammed into that freezer? It would take you months…”

“It’s just that… it’s evidence, obviously,” interrupted Lottie. “And it’s not like I haven’t done this before. It’s not like I’m excited to do it again, but…”

“But it would take you months,” Nat repeated, flaring her nostrils. 

“So what if it does?” said Lottie with a shrug, having clearly resigned herself to this fate long before Nat had ever arrived home. “Even if it takes me all year, it will have been worth it to me to rid the world of that man. It was justice for Spike.” And with her last words, she raised her chin up to indicate how little she regretted her weekend choices. 

“You mean Flower,” corrected Nat, smiling sheepishly. “Or whatever. She can have two names. But, jesus christ, Lot… you’re not the only one in this marriage who’s done this before, you know? You don’t have to do this alone. I’m your fucking wife, even if you do piss me off sometimes, and I wouldn’t have exchanged fucking vows with you if I wasn’t prepared to, you know… never let you suffer alone.”

And, as her eyes moved to the oven door, Nat did make a face of disgust. But she still meant every word. Who was even to say she wouldn’t have done the same thing in Lottie’s place? She tried to imagine how she might have reacted, seeing someone hurt their precious dog, and it just kept turning out exactly the same as it had for Lottie: with a dead man hidden somewhere. 

Nat would have just buried him, of course, but… 

Lottie had taken a different route, and now there was at least fifteen pounds of mailman meat in their freezer. There was really no easy path backwards at this point. 

Nat nodded, indicating she had made up her mind, and she started shrugging out of her leather jacket. She draped it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “We’re going to need wine,” she said. “I love you, but I am not doing this sober.”

“You don’t have to do this at all,” reminded Lottie.

But Nat could only shake her head and smile. “Have you not been listening to a fucking word I’ve been saying, Lot? Next time you want to kill someone, please come find me first. I don’t care if I’m on a trip to Miami or on the goddamn fucking moon, you call me and get my advice before you call Shauna or Misty. I mean… are you fucking serious?”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. You’re right. I should have called you.”

“Or at least call Taissa or Van instead of Shauna or Misty. Jesus, Lot… I just…”

“All right!” laughed Lottie, throwing her hands up. “I get it. Perhaps this could have been handled with a little more… forethought.” 

“Well, it wasn’t,” said Nat, with a resigned sigh. But she was still smiling, despite it all. 

She was still smiling and shaking her head as she said, “Just… get the fucking wine and be ready to take that apron off. You’re going to owe me. Big time.”

But Lottie merely laughed at that. “Is that a threat of punishment or reward?” she asked, reaching into the cabinets for the wine. 

Both.