Elizabeth ducked just in time to avoid the clump of spaghetti that flew through the air. Passing over her head, it hit the wall with a wet splat and stuck in place. Susie squealed in delight from her high-chair, it was an amusing sound to a baby. Elizabeth had only turned away for a second to grab the bottle of milk from the fridge and evidently this was long enough for her daughter to turn her plastic spoon into a catapult.
“Susie, you know you’re not supposed to make a mess,” Elizabeth said. She aimed to strike a balance between stern and mean. “Are you going to help me clean this up?”
Susie gurgled in her seat. Of course she wasn’t.
Elizabeth grabbed the roll of paper towels off the counter while her daughter amused herself eating bits of mushed up spaghetti with her bare hands. She tore a piece off and wiped the pasta strands from the wall. She held another piece under the tap to dampen it in an attempt to soak the sauce that splattered across the light-blue wall. The resulting orange stain caused her to stand there with a furrowed brow as the phone started ringing.
Not the phone on the wall, but the other one she kept in a non-descript box inside a drawer underneath the microwave. She pulled the phone from its hiding spot and flipped it open.
“Go,” she said.
“Behind the dollar store at Kent and Duchess. One hour. It’s forty-five degrees outside,” the voice told her. His slight accent still broke through on the vowels, despite his attempts at concealment.
“Confirmed.”
Elizabeth closed the phone and placed it in her pocket. Turning around, she found her daughter draping long strands of spaghetti across her head, a makeshift pasta wig to cover up a hairline that was still growing in. Elizabeth picked Susie up and out of her high-chair, pasta locks included, and headed down the hall to the stairs.
“Mark,” she said as she climbed to the second story of their house to locate her husband. Elizabeth found him in the baby’s room underneath the change table that had recently broken with only his lower half visible.
“Almost done.” The sound of a screwdriver breaking through particle board carried with his voice.
She couldn’t wait for him to be done. “I have to go to work. You need to look after Susie.”
Mark sat up from the floor, small wood shavings falling off of him. He hesitated for a second when he spotted their daughter’s pasta and sauce hairdo, but they had both moved through the stage where they were taken aback by how weird babies could be.
“Alright, alright,” he said. Mark stood up and took Susie into his arms. “Hey, wanna hang out with Daddy? Wanna play with me when Mommy goes to work?”
Elizabeth was planning to wait another month before instigating a discussion about cutting out the amount of baby talk. It wasn’t good for Susie’s long-term cognitive development, but Elizabeth could just be silently annoyed for a few more weeks. In the meantime, she leaned in for a quick kiss from Mark.
“I’ll be right back. And you better be in bed by then.” She lightly rubbed the baby’s nose, which made her giggle.
“Be safe,” Mark said to her, before he lifted up one of Susie’s chubby arms. “Wave goodbye to Mommy.”
Elizabeth smiled and waved back. It was time to go. She made a quick stop in the bedroom to change into some dark clothes from her work bag in the back of the closet. A minute later, she was sitting in the car reversing out of the driveway. She kept her eyes open for kids playing in the cul de sac before driving away.
Elizabeth made sure to turn off the GPS in the car. She didn’t have to worry about her work phone, burners don’t come equipped with those. She knew where she was going. She merged onto the highway just as the last glimpse of the sun faded away. By the time she pulled off at the right exit, it was completely dark.
The strip mall was empty. It was composed of a group of barely-operating stores and restaurants in a crummy part of town, so it was always empty. She parked in front of one of the restaurants so that anyone passing-by would assume she was there to satisfy a late-night poutine craving.
Elizabeth waited patiently at the stop lights until the walk sign lit up. She crossed over into the adjacent parking lot and walked around to the dollar store. There was a prominent security camera pointed directly at her from the top of the wall, but she knew it had been deactivated years ago. It hung there now as an empty threat.
Rounding the back corner, she found two middle-aged men standing in front of a parked older-model sedan. Greg and Ras were expecting her. She wasn’t supposed to know their names but she would have been very bad at her job if she was unable to gather that information. They wore matching dark pin-striped suits that had gone out of fashion years ago, with the lapels pointed into the shadows. She had never seen them wear anything else, and she liked to imagine they even had identical striped closets.
The wind picked up as the two men moved towards her. The leaves were going to start turning soon. The scent of hair gel and too-much cologne reached her nostrils.
“Excuse me, miss. Do you know what the temperature is?” Greg asked her.
“It’s forty-five degrees outside.”
His thick face briefly twisted turned into something might have been a smile. “Indeed it is.”
Greg reached into his pocket, the smaller one, not the inside pocket with the gun-shaped bulge. He pulled out a set of car keys and held them out for her. Elizabeth grabbed them with one gloved hand and headed for the trunk of the parked car. It was time to survey the damage and see how much of a scrape job this was going to be.
She opened the truck and instead of the mess she was expecting, all she found was a medium size plastic garbage bag. The bag was semi-transparent, especially in the bottom where it all had settled into an indistinguishable darkened wet mass.
Elizabeth was confused, but was sure not to show it. “Where’s the rest?” she asked.
“That is all that is left,” Greg told her.
Elizabeth had seen a lot of things on the job. Normally there was just more to see.
“You have something else for me?” she asked. She didn’t hesitate in case they had decided to test her for weakness for some reason. They didn’t need to worry.
The two men glanced at each other and nodded. Apparently she had passed the test. It was Ras’ turn to reach into his pocket, this time to remove a thick envelope to hand over to her. Elizabeth placed it inside her jacket without opening it to count. She wanted to, but these guys looked at that sort of thing as a sign of disrespect. Besides, the weight indicated that it was close enough to the right amount.
Elizabeth walked between the two men to get to the drivers’ side door of the car. “Don’t follow me,” she said. Climbing inside the sedan, she noticed the harsh bleach smell that still lingered. She closed the door and started the car, listening to the old engine struggle to turn over. Greg and Ras kept their eyes on her as she pulled out of the parking lot and left them standing in the dark.
The silence in the vehicle became a comfort to Elizabeth. At home, silence meant that something was wrong, that the baby could be in trouble. Out on the road, silence meant everything was going fine. It felt like she was wearing a favourite sweater again.
Her route made no sense, filled with extra turns, reversals and frequent street changes for no apparent reason. All to avoid any possible followers. She didn’t mind the added time and mileage. It’s not like she was paying for the gas. Greg and Ras probably hadn’t paid for it either.
Elizabeth would have claimed that it was just a coincidence that her route took her near the school she wanted Susie to attend, but in truth she just liked to scope the place out from time to time. Not private, but in the upper tier of public schools. Nice but not too nice. She wasn’t raising her kid to be an asshole.
She drove to the junkyard out by a nearly forgotten highway exit, one that couldn’t handle the traffic when it expanded to eight lanes and now was there mostly to confuse lost drivers. Elizabeth wasn’t lost.
The junkyard was blocked off with a rusty old gate that had been left unlocked. It was always unlocked for Elizabeth, and she wondered if it was like that all the time. The sedan crept slowly toward the very back of the yard where all the heavy machinery had been lined up. A makeshift metal wall between the scrap heap and the clearing behind it.
She reached the machines and pointed the front of the car towards what looked like a giant metal box. Elizabeth gently drove over the edge and parked the car inside, like a toy being returned to its packaging.
Any other junkyard would have had a million safety features in place to prevent her from driving directly into a hydraulic crusher. The fact that these had all been disabled and removed meant that the nominal owners of this place had to know her pin-striped acquaintances.
Elizabeth left the keys in the ignition and climbed out of the car. She stopped at the trunk and popped it open to grab the bag. Holding it casually, she exited the crusher and walked to the control panel that stood in front of the industrial-sized piece of equipment.
A machine this big looked complicated but its appearance was deceiving. These things were designed to be idiot proof, so all it took to power it up was turning a conveniently left behind key and pushing a button. The machine rumbled to life as the pistons fired and began to push the walls together. She heard metal snap and glass break as the sedan folded inwards like an accordion.
Elizabeth walked away with the machine running, having heard this part enough times before and knowing that it would be disposed of the next day through another secret arrangement Greg and Ras had made.
She slipped through the line of machinery and stood on the edge of the clearing that bordered the junkyard. Once a landfill, it had been turned into a large field as the first stage of a land reclamation project launched by the city. Elizabeth was glad that she and her husband had chosen to settle in a community that cared about the future.
The next phase had already begun, and the clearing was dotted with dozens of recently planted trees, framed by a tool shed and tree nursery near where she stood.
This would all be a beautiful park soon. One where they could bring Susie to play. She could stack her blocks in the sun while Mommy and Daddy watched and tried to get enough exercise to stave-off middle age for another few months.
The city workers had left all their tools in the shed, secured with a lock that was too easy to pick. Elizabeth helped herself to a shovel and canister of gas that was used to fill up the landscaping tools. She headed for the point in the clearing where the latest trees had been planted, marked with a large steel barrel that the workers used for garbage and cigarette butts.
Elizabeth dropped the bag into the opening and it disappeared into the darkness. A wet plop signaled its arrival at the bottom. She opened the canister and poured gasoline on top of it. The smell still tickled her nostrils and she made sure not to breathe in any of the carcinogenic fumes. Reaching inside her jacket, she pulled a small pack of matches. Removing a single one to use as a fuse, she struck it and placed the burning match back between the thin cardboard facing out from the rest of the pack. The flame was small but it would be enough. She dropped the entire pack into the garbage barrel.
The flames shot up in an instant casting long shadows behind all the new trees. Daggers stretching across the earth. The smell of petrochemicals and burnt plastic only lasted a moment before being replaced by the gentle aroma of smoke.
It was easy to envision her family enjoying a campfire in the park, snacking on toasted marshmallows after playing hide and seek among the trees. They could even invite a few of Susie’s school friends along. Hopefully friends from the nicer school. Elizabeth knew how important it was to socialize children and she had every intention that Susie would have the skills she needed to be comfortable and, more importantly, confident among her peers. If she could just get Mark to ease off on the baby talk.
Once the flames shrunk down and grew faint, Elizabeth used the shovel to break up any remaining pieces. She stabbed at the bottom of the barrel and each thrust sent a small gasp of embers into the air, along with the occasional blackened shard.
Satisfied, she walked to the last row of trees and used her soot-covered shovel to dig a shallow hole. It didn’t have to be very deep this time. She gently dragged the barrel over to the hole and could feel the residual heat along the metal rim through her gloves. She tipped the barrel onto its side and let the new ashes fall into the hole. With the light from the sun gone they were indistinguishable from the dirt.
After a quick trip to the tree nursery, Elizabeth returned to the hole with a small sapling. Despite its modest size it had strong broad leaves that could survive a storm. Full of potential. She placed it gently into the hole so that the roots would sink deep into the ashes. She filled the hole back up with dirt and when she was finished it looked just like every other tree in the row but Elizabeth walked away knowing that she had given it an advantage over the others.
Matt Dodge is a Toronto-based author of short stories. Educated at the University of Ottawa, he is currently working on novel while slowly paying off his student debt. His work was most recently featured in the Cold Creek Review.