Richard didn’t have to feel guilt for being a friend.

Stepping out of the car, he couldn’t believe how wet he was. Growing up in Goblin had taught him something about rain, but tonight’s felt somehow more meaningful. Everything did.

Inside, he checked the mail then climbed the stairs and dried himself off in the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, he saw his face didn’t look as troubled as he thought it might.

A priest isn’t guilty of the crimes confessed to him. And neither is a friend.

Back downstairs, he sat down on the couch to watch television, but each show felt too violent, too full of anger.

He turned it off.

And heard movement upstairs.

Richard rose and started up the carpeted steps.

“Hello?” he called, one hand on the railing.

He stood long in the upstairs hall, but no second sound came.

In his bedroom he felt twice as tired as he did downstairs. He lay down on his bed and heard a voice from inside the closed closet.

“potts…”

Richard sat up.

“potts…”

Richard lifted the closest thing to him, a hardback book on his nightstand, and swung his legs over the side of the mattress.

He swung the closet open violently, raising the book above his head.

Behind him, the word again.

“Parts, Richard. I’m just short a few parts.”

Charles stood on the other side of his bed.

“Charles…are you holding scissors?”

“It’s your duty, see? I need you because I have nobody else.”

Before Richard could respond, his friend was upon him. They tumbled onto the bed.

Charles struck and he swung until the sound of Richard’s screams became one with the rain against the apartment…the windows…the street outside.

Blood splashed up onto the headboard and the wall behind it.

“You’ve always been there for me, Richard. She’ll never tell your parts from mine.”

Soon Charles sat hunched over his friend, greedily shoving his parts into small plastic bags…parts he would save…parts he would send…and parts he would thank Richard for forever.

And Richard…scattered about on the comforter…a body in pieces…a man in parts…a man in slices…

A friend.

Kamp

1

Walter Kamp sat up in bed, his enormous body trembling. A plump hand went straight to his chest. He was out of breath from the single sudden movement.

“What the hell was that?”

Since he’d long removed the interior walls in his apartment (now piles of drywall and dust on the wood floorboards) he had a view of his entire space. And from his bed to the kitchen, the strung-up holiday lights showed him nobody was there.

And yet…something woke him up.