MicroHorror

“How about we begin with, ‘Every day when I get home, I find a naked body in the bed’?”

“I don’t understand why we have to begin with that line. Where are you going with all these bodies? It just doesn’t make sense!”

“Look, you promised you’d help me with my novel and now you’re arguing with the very first line.” Richard’s whine suddenly turned to something harder. “The line is staying!”

“Okay, okay, don’t get pissy on me.” Peter raised his hands in a placating gesture. He knew they’d make no progress if Richard got into one of his snits. “Just tell me where you’re going with this. Help me understand.”

“I tell you it does make sense. The housekeeper comes home and finds a naked body in the bed…”

“I have no problem with one dead body. It’s the every day part that I have a problem with. Look, let’s relax for a bit. We’ll get it straightened out. You’ve just been working too hard. Come on, Dickie, sit over here with me.” He patted the sofa invitingly.

“Okay. But I’m very upset, Peter. You’re making me feel ill. I’m beginning to think you don’t care for me at all. You’re just using me.”

“Now why would you think that? Come here and tell me all about it. You know I adore you, you silly old thing.”

“I think you only want me for my book. You’re jealous of my talent.”

“But you were the one who suggested we work together…”

“But you argue with everything I say.”

“We can’t have more than one body.”

“But having only one body is too close to what really happened.”

“So?”

“I know the people involved, okay?”

“But you said you read about it in the paper.”

“I did. But I still know the people, all right?” Richard’s face was feverish now, and his whine had become a wail. “I need to be alone. You’re giving me my nervous tummy…”

“You can’t write the story alone. You said yourself you need help with the police part. I’m the one who’s the expert on crime scenes–that is why you need help, isn’t it?”

“Ooh, hoity-toity. You’re only a police photographer. You’re no expert on procedures. Hah!” Richard, expression spiteful, left the couch and pranced towards his desk.

Peter’s sigh was of the long-suffering kind. “You’re annoyed about that boy down at the gym, aren’t you, Dickie? I told you he meant nothing to me. I need a diversion sometimes is all.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“How come all of a sudden you don’t need my help? And what do you know about crime scenes? You’ve had no experience. Anyway, how about, ‘The other day when I got home there was a dead body in the bed’? Will you quit playing with that letter opener? It’s annoying!”

“No. We can’t do that.”

“But why, Dickie? We can work with that! Why do we need more than one dead body? We need to be realistic.”

Richard stabbed the letter opener viciously into the pad of paper that lay on his desktop. “I don’t want realistic…” He made a futile attempt to curb his rising hysteria.

“But why –? Hold on a minute… There’s more to this than you’re telling me, isn’t there? Who is this friend of yours, anyway…? Now wait a minute, Richard… Richard–”
But it was too late. The letter opener had found a target far more satisfying than the pad of paper.

“I said there was more than one body…”

The housekeeper was most distressed the next day when she entered the apartment. It was just too upsetting to keep finding these dead bodies in the bed.