Charley Mitchell the Bar Stool {Part 9}
by phill
While Dave pottered
around and generally tried to avoid looking at the body on the floor, Charley thought. There was very little chance of there being a garden nearby that they could use to discreetly bury the body. Dave’s apartment was on the fifth floor of a block of flats populated by the kind of gentle folk that would snitch you in a second to curry favour with the local fuzz. Even nightfall wasn’t a guarantee of anonymity, with the midnight visitors and dodgy dealings that went on around them. As he considered their situation, Dave’s continual shifting around of pots and pans grated at him.
After some minutes had passed, Charley let out an exasperated sigh ‘I can’t think properly with you dithering about. Do me a service, would you?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Sit on me.’
Dave blanched at Charley’s request. ‘Sit on you? I couldn’t possibly! It’d be, well, strange.’
‘Oh come on, you’ve done several hundreds of times before, and sadly I’m not exaggerating in that figure. What’s your problem now?’
Dave thought about it some more, shrugged and shifted his bulk from the kitchen table over to sit on stool. As he got comfortable, Charley breathed a more satisfied sigh. ‘Ah, that’s better. Nothing like a good, firm weight bearing down on you to really concentrate your thoughts. Or even a slack, wobbly weight such as yours,’ he added.
This last comment served only to make Dave sit down harder on Charley, all pretense of attempting to support his own weight gone. Charley only laughed. ‘You can’t hurt me, Dave. No nerves in dead wood, you know.’ Dave huffed at this and reached for a newspaper on the counter to occupy himself while Charley continued to ponder.
They’d need some kind of disguise, he concluded. Something that would enable the easy movement of the body to a more convenient location without arousing the suspicions of the neighbours. The problem with this was funds. He was fairly sure that Dave had none, but out of curiosity he inquired as to Dave’s financial status.
‘Flat broke until Thursday,’ replied Dave, not lifting his eyes from their appraisal of page three.
‘Darn,’ said Charley. That meant they’d need to use only what was in their immediate surrounds in their subterfuge. A prospect that filled Charley with a frustrated despair as he looked around the bare apartment. The living room contained almost no furnishings; only a small wooden-panelled television set and two lounge chairs populated its meagre expanse. One of the chairs look so low and worn that it was difficult to tell if there was any internal structure remaining in it at all. The second chair, on the other hand, was in near-perfect condition. In its centre lay a bright yellow cushion, a hopeful beacon placed as if to try and encourage visitors past the threshold and into its embrace. No help there, thought Charley.
The slice of the bedroom he could spy through the doorway was equally barren. The long-suffering mattress was the centrepiece of the room. The only other furnishings were that of a bedside table with a well-worn Hustler magazine sprawled across its top, and a dresser with underwear and shirts lolling from its drawers. Charley was beginning to lose all hope for a solution. Until, that is, his focus shifted to the kitchen and he beheld their salvation in the form of a large, white coffin.
‘David,’ he asked in a sly tone. ‘How much would you say you really needed your refrigerator?’
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