I’m sitting in my truck with bloody shears. The sirens are getting closer

Wire cutters always pinch the web of your thumb if you buy the cheap ones. That’s what I’m thinking about right now while I sit here staring at the steering wheel of my truck. Not the mess I just made. Just my stupid, blistered thumb.

I’m 34. I work for the county parks department. Drive a white F-150 with a yellow flashing light on top, emptying trash cans, trimming hedges, putting down mulch. Nobody looks twice at me.

It’s the perfect cover because I get the master keys to all the maintenance gates. My thing… my real work… is that I take people who are boring and I make them impossible to ignore. I arrange them. I weave them into the park architecture.

A trellis, a gazebo, a wrought iron fence. I use heavy-gauge floral wire and zip ties to pose them. Any dumbass can pull a trigger or swing a knife in an alley. This takes vision. It takes hours to get the angles right so they look like they are blooming right out of the wood when the sun comes up.

Tonight was supposed to be it man. My masterpiece. Out at Centennial Park, there’s this massive white wooden pergola covered in climbing roses right in the center.

I’ve been watching this guy for weeks to prep for this. He works at a dive bar downtown and walks home the exact same way through the park at 2:15 AM every Tuesday. Doesn’t own a car. Always staring at his phone. Total sheep.

I spent three nights prepping the pergola before tonight. Sanding down the splinters on the crossbeams so my wire would slide clean. Measuring the gaps between the lattice.

I had the whole thing mapped out in my head. I wanted a crucifixion-style spread, but angled, like he was reaching for the sky.

When he walked past the oak trees, I stepped out and clipped him behind the ear with a heavy steel maglite. He went down like a sack of wet mulch. I dragged him into the center of the pergola.

The smell of the roses mixed with the wet dirt… it’s the best smell in the world. Grounds you. I started my work. You have to strip them first, obviously. Then you start from the feet and work your way up.

I had his ankles crossed and wired tight to the base pillars. I was threading the heavy green wire through his left wrist, pulling the arm taut against the wood so the muscles would flex. He was starting to wake up, groaning a little bit.

That’s actually good. When they tense up, the pose looks more rigid, more desperate. But man… I got too confident. I didnt hit him hard enough.

I was leaning in close, reaching over his chest to wire his neck to the center beam.

I had my heavy pruning shears in my back pocket. Suddenly he jerks his right arm—the one I hadn’t secured yet—and punches me right in the throat. Holy shit, I couldn’t breathe. I gagged and fell backward into the dirt.

He rips his left arm hard enough that the copper wire slices deep into his wrist, and he just starts screaming.

Not a yell. A high-pitched, tearing shriek that cut through the whole fucking park. Holy fuck, I just froze. Across the street, maybe a hundred yards away, two porch lights flicked on.

Someone yelled “Hey!” from a second-story window. My entire vision went red. The art was ruined. The pose was gone. I just grabbed the heavy pruning shears from my pocket and lunged at him. I didn’t care about the look anymore.

I just hacked at his neck over and over to make the noise stop. It was so messy. Arterial spray hit my face, the white wood of the pergola, the pink roses. Completely ruined the whole setup. It looked like a slaughterhouse, not a gallery.

He slumped over, hanging by his ankles and one shredded wrist. It looked pathetic. A dog started barking like crazy from the houses across the street. I didn’t even grab my wire spool.

I just bolted for my truck, hopped the maintenance gate, and sped off with the headlights off until I was three blocks away.

I’m sitting in my driveway right now typing this on my phone. My hands are coated in dirt and sticky dried shit. I keep hearing sirens downtown. They found him. Fuck man, I think my fingerprints are on that wire spool. I’m so fucked.

Every time a car drives past my house, my stomach drops. I still have the bloody shears in my lap.

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