What do you get if you put a mime in a blender?

I don't know, but it would probably look something like this.  Reuben really went to town on her.  She's not just dead, she's decimated.

"Reuben," I ask complacently, "do you ever think anything through?"  He rubs his hand over his shorn head, the speckles of blood black freckles in the moonlight.

"How do you mean?"

Only Reuben could be irked by that question now.  Another crazy axe-murderer might answer me, spitting reasons into the night, telling me he had thought this through, telling me why it was justified.  Maybe just killing me for my doubts.  Reuben just stood there, pissed off that I might be right.  I usually am, when it's me and him.  I'm not going to ask 'why', I'm not going to be that person, the stupid sniffling blonde in those movies.  Reuben might actually kill me for becoming that, or at least hurt me.  I just stand there, his mirror image, like I couldn't care less.

It gets to him eventually.
"You know that story?"  Now that knocked me for six.  Story?  But silence seems to be working so far.  He'll tell me.  He always does.
"That story that I wrote, that might be published in that paper?"  Typical Reuben.  He knows that getting published in a national paper is big stuff, but he couldn't tell you the name.  But I know what he means now.  His face is in blackness.  His outline burns magnesium white.  Don't say a word, darling.
"Everyone loves that story.  Like, they love it.  Before that I was an average writer, but that one... Well, you know, you've read it.  I mean, nothing even happens in it, really.  She leaves town, big whoop.  The climax is weak, supposed to be more realistic that way, they said. We kiss and she falls asleep, end of.  But the description, you know?  Of her."  He's not looking at me, his face is in profile, solid black.  I want to cut the image out of the night and hang it on a necklace that I'll wear always.

Reuben stands in diplomatic silence, as though waiting for me.  But it's ok.  He's used to waiting for me.

The story is about this incredible girl, this really interesting young woman.
Reuben says interesting is a fall-back word.  "Say what you mean, you assholes!  By 'interesting point' do you mean 'intellectually stimulating'?  By 'interesting interpretation' do you mean 'wrong'?  By 'interesting coffee' do you mean 'this tastes like shit'?"
But this girl is actually interesting, in the sense that she arouses interest.  She's so perfectly herself, and when she gives an indication of trying to be so it's with that same calm manner of hers that makes us lesser beings feel we're struggling to be seen as something other than ourselves.
In the story Reuben falls in love with the idea of her. "She was my August.  She didn't burst into my life like a trumpet fanfare; she found the back door key."  Her name, in the story, is Tracy Dolen.  "She was too lazy to make breakfast when she was hungry, but she could spend two hours in her room before pulling on what she wore yesterday."  Brilliant story, better than anything else Reuben had ever written.  Everyone in the class had read and loved it.  Almost everyone in the school.

What the hell.  I needed to know.
"Reuben, call me stupid, but what does that have to do with -"  I gesture towards the post-person to my right, "with this shit?"  And he laughs, the joker, he honest to god laughs.
"Ever heard of joining the dots?" He's stumbling, laughing.  As the joke subsides, he looks at me, points at what's left of the body.  "It's Tracy Dolen!  Tracy Dolen."  He giggles.
"The fictional character?"  I'm too incredulous to be silent.  "Your fictional character?"  The bloody body parts back me up.  If they could have an expression, it would be 'you, Reuben, are truly a moron'.  He points at them on their plastic bed again.
"Does that look fictional to you?"

It doesn't.  I'm grateful that the night hides the details, but the moon makes the blood and whatever shine in places, like ripples on a frozen sea.  We have to get rid of it, now.  There'll be time for questions later, I hope.

"Come on Reuben."  I bend down and grasp the edge of the plastic.  It's like jumping off the pier.  Don't think, just do.  He picks up the other side, but clearly he's a step behind me here.  I don't want to hear him ask, so I just tell him.  "What, you think there are no advantages to the countryside?  Pollution is everywhere.  Some farmers are too cheap for fallen animal services.  There's bound to be a pile of decomposing ruminant around here."

And there is.  We find it easily.  Walking awkwardly like this, feeling the dead weight slosh between our bodies, it's like I'm dreaming, or trying to.  Maybe I am.  It doesn't particularly bother me.  Don't think, just do.

Sometimes Reuben freaks me out a bit.  He doesn't do things randomly.  Reuben's a planner.  He's action, I'm reaction.  So I can't really understand him - and I don't really try to.

Like one time, he was on antibiotics for something (he never knew and I can't remember what) and we went out drinking.  He insisted on it, despite my silent protests.  I kept an eye on him, mostly.  But he disappeared at one point.  I found him under a bridge, their silhouettes merging.  His eyes managed to shine, or glint maybe, without any light source that I could see.  He giggled.  He vomited.  He fainted.  He almost died.  The next day he'd told me he'd taken ecstasy and chased it with vodka he'd brought in his coat pocket.  He said that he'd never done it before so why not now?
But that wasn't it.  He could have done it anytime.  The weekend after.  The weekend before.  But he waited until he absolutely should not, until the effects would be most dramatic.  He may be an attention seeker, but he knows what he's doing.

And this... you had to hand it to him.  He had engineered her destruction with genius.  House party in the country.  Farmer father, clearly with tools enough for destruction.  Goes off into a field and says he's meeting a girl there - as if anyone would argue with that!  The plastic sheet he made himself, so there would be no remains in the field.  And I was there, so he knew I'd help him fix it, like always.  He knew I lived in constant surprise that I hadn't already been involved in a murder.  He plans.  I daydream.

Afterwards we wash in turns in the shower at the house.  Anyone left awake is too drunk to question our late return.  Nobody knows what the story is with our relationship, and we don't tell anyone.  We could have been doing anything.  I pick up a packet of cigarettes from the kitchen table.  I step over someone's unconcious best friend, spread-eagled on a floor, and take pyjamas and boxers from a chest of drawers which is probably pink, but in the dull light everything is grey, tinted orange.  I watch Reuben meticulously wash the plastic sheet, with a calm but brisk scrubbing motion.  The lather of water, soap, and blood is dark grey around his wrists.  He rinses the sombre freckles from the backs of his hands.  We complete the routine without speaking: I use a blowdryer to get rid of the water droplets; he folds it into itself and slots it into the second pocket of his rucksack.

We sit down in our newly acquired clothes on the front step and gaze vacantly at the boring driveway.  Gravel path, grass lawn, broken plastic swing set.  All grey tones.  It's like the night is revealing the truth to us.  How original can anyone's life be, eventually?
"Why do people have a step before their front door?  Like, it's a bungalow."  Today, I'm the ten ton polar bear.  I break the ice.  Reuben laces his fingers, hands behind his neck like he doesn't have the energy to keep it up himself.
"I have no idea."  He's never too tired to give a witty response, but maybe, as with me, the grey sameness of this place gets to him.
"I'll smoke to that," I reply wearily.  I light up, fingers clumsy in the chill air.  The silence and the smoke embrace each other.  It seems I could watch and listen forever. Reuben stirs in his shadowy corner, like cobwebs in a breeze.

"Those things'll kill you."
A smile tugs at the ends of my mouth, as though they're attached to balloon strings.
"Ah, chill out Reuben.  I don't smoke that often."
"Well it must have got pretty often if you've started buying them."  I peer at the half-empty box in my hand.  Everything's fuzzy. I can't even make out the brand.  I grin cheekily at him over my shoulder.

"Who said I'd started buying them?"

His chuckle echoes back from the front door alcove, defying the grey surroundings.  Reuben gets up and holds his hand out to me.  This could be a dream.  But it's not.  We race to the grass.

"So. Tracy Dolen?"
"Real name Amanda Somebody.  She left, like I said."  He shrugs.  "She came back."
"And?"
"Well... It just proves my writing is mediocre, doesn't it?  I couldn't invent someone like that.  As it was, with her away, it could be excused as unintentional similarity.  But with her here, and it about to maybe be published - I'm fed up of being just okay at stuff.  You know?"

I do know.  But he's still an idiot.

"Reuben, it's not Tracy, Amanda, whatever, that makes the story good.  It's your description of her.  Real person or not, it's your words that make it what it is.  So why kill her?"  I know he's thought of this before.

I can't see his eyes but I know he's looking at me.  His expression says:

You're right.  But it's too late now.



Let it go.  It is too late.  And it's not like I care, not yet anyway.  It's 3 am.  No time for logic.  A time for physical comedy, maybe.

"What do you get when you put a mime in a blender?"  Don't think.  Just do.

We stretch our hands out and adopt expressions of mock terror.  We pound the imaginary glass before us.  And we spin, spin, spin, until we fall over with laughter.  We laugh until we cry.