You’re My Kid, This My Job

“Hey Dad, do mind coming over tonight? Or, like, right now? I have a little bit of an emergency. Please bring your truck. Thanks!”

Johannes sighs, shutting his flip phone after listening to his daughter’s message. “Well, it seems I have a longer night that I thought I was gonna. Ana has another emergency.” Johannes says with a laugh, using air quotes around ‘emergency’.

Jameson, Johannes’ boss, seems to agree with him. “Your girl has an ‘emergency’ every other week. Why do you still go? Why not wait till the morning? You and I have spent all day fixin’ cars and now you’re gonna go do what? Fix her closet or change her oil or something?” Jameson says. His tone resembles something akin to bitterness.

“Well,” Johannes starts, “I don’t want her to be a boy that cried wolf, you know? Plus, she’s my kid. It’s my job to help her out with things.” Jameson can see that this is not a fight he will win, so chooses not to comment. Johannes packs up his things, clocks out, and heads to Ana’s apartment in his truck.

When he gets to her apartment, he opens an unlocked door to an empty living room, but an incredibly messy one. Her stuff is all over As soon as he walks into the apartment, a disgusting smell hits him. “Ana? I’m here with my truck! Where are you kiddo?”

“Can you come to the bathroom? My problem’s in here. And please make sure the door’s shut.”

He shuts and locks her front door while plugging his nose, then goes to the bathroom. When he opens the bathroom door, the smell increases tenfold. Inside, the first thing he sees is his daughter wearing a surgical mask and yellow rubber dish-washing gloves, with her long blond hair in a hairnet. The second thing he sees is the dead body in the tub.

“Ana? Please tell me that’s a Halloween decoration,” says Johannes meekly, knowing full well it is the middle of July. “A very realistic Halloween decoration. That’s full of bullet holes.”

“Dad, you’re starting to panic. Do you need to believe that this is a decoration?”

“I’d rather know why my twenty-year-old daughter has a dead adult male in her bathtub. You’re a bartender at a movie theatre for God’s sake! Since when do you even own a gun?”

Ana had the gall to look offended. She pulled the mask down to her neck and then put the rubber gloves on the bathroom counter. When Johannes saw they were tinted red he had to look away. Ana had put her hands on her hip and was borderline glaring at him.

“I don’t own a gun. I thought he,” Ana started while gesturing to the dead man, “was just the delivery guy when I opened the door. He came in and tried to attack me.” Ana touches a small cut on her temple, one Johannes hadn’t previously noticed. When he starts to really look her over, he notices more defensive wounds. She has a bruise on her wrist and another cut on her collarbone.

“Why did he attack you? And why haven’t you just called the police?”

She averts her eyes and scratches the back of her head. “I, ah, may have thrown him out of the theatre? And it’s possible I poured a glass of scotch over his head. And maybe accidentally made his boyfriend dump him. I also stole his car and sold it for parts.”

Johannes lets out a deep sigh. The smell has given him a headache and frankly, he’s starting to pretend the body just isn’t there. He runs his hand through his white blonde hair. “Why the hell did you steal his car? Plus, that doesn’t explain the bullet holes.”

“I’ve been a little stripped for money and so have you. I just wanted to help out a little. Plus, his door wasn’t locked and the keys were in it. If you’re that dumb, you deserve to have your car stolen.” Ana shrugged, as if that made it her crime okay. “Anyway, he came in and attacked me, right? I saw the gun in his belt and I went for it. He also grabbed the gun, and when a little bit of tug of war started to happen, the gun went off and he got shot. Then I may have shot him a couple more times. Just to make sure.”

“Four more times? Really?”

“He scared me!”

Johannes rubs his hands over his eyes. He should really take some Tylenol. “What did you do with the gun?”

She simply points to the tub. When he actually looks into it, he sees a small handgun in there with the man. There seems to be a silencer on it. “Why haven’t your neighbor called the cops? Silencers don’t work that well.”

"They all think I was playing around with firecrackers. That, I actually did do a couple of weeks ago. But can we get back to the body? Questions later?”

“Fine, alright, okay. Step one, how are we going to get him to my truck? You’re on the third floor.”

“Service elevator. People use it all the time.” Ana takes the mask all the way off of her neck and leaves the bathroom, Johannes following her. She grabs a rug and they’re able to manhandle the body onto it. Johannes rolls it up and they seal it with packing tape, barely saying a word the whole time. He has nothing but questions for her.

“I guess I’ll just have to deal with the rest of this later,” says Ana as they hoist the rug onto their shoulders and head to the elevator, locking the door behind her. When they get to the elevator, there is already someone in it.

“How are you, Ricky?”

“Pretty good Ana. What are you doing?”

“Getting rid of a body, of course.”

Rickey snorts. “Ain’t that a trope. I can’t think of a more obvious way to transport a body. But it fits though, with how rank that rug is.”

Ana laughs while Johannes has to pretend he’s not halfway to a heart attack. “I know right? Plus, that would be so dumb.”

Johannes decides he really does believe in God when the elevator dings and Ana confirms it’s their stop. They get the rug along with its occupant to his truck easily. He pulls the cover over the back of the pickup just in case. “Where to now, kiddo?”

“Funeral home, cremation thingy under the hospital, or the river?”

Ana agrees with him, and they’re off. Johannes continues to hold his tongue, knowing that this is not the time. Now that he has the time, he can see that Ana is shaking, if only a little. Her skin, though normally quite pale, looks lighter than usual. For how calm she was after killing a man, she seems to be breaking now.

“You alright kiddo?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’ll be okay. How ‘bout you? You are far more composed than I thought you’d be. I’m kinda surprised at how on board you are with this whole ‘hide the body’ thing.”

“You’re my kid. This my job. I’d do anything for you.”

Ana doesn’t respond to him, but instead just looks at him. Her eyes are wet. “Thanks Dad,” she whispers. He just ruffles her hair. That is when they here the sirens.

Johannes can see a cop pull out behind him with sirens on and lights flashing. He pulls over carefully, his palms already sweating. He can see the cop get out of his car and approach him as he rolls down his window. Ana has gone dead silent. “How can I help you officer?”

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”

"No sir. I was going the limit and all my headlight are in working order, sir.” Johannes did his absolute best to sound confident, but respectful, despite the fact that he knew he was about to be out of breath. The air seemed much thinner all of a sudden.

“Your tags are expired. License and registration please.” The cop took his information and gave Johannes a ticket. Johannes barely glances at it. The cop looked at both of them a minute longer. Then he turned to Ana and said, “You alright there kid? You look mighty nervous for someone who’s done nothing wrong.”

Johannes responds before his daughter can. “She’s a shy kid. Authority figures intimidate her.”

The officer seems to accept that answer, but hesitates again. He sniffs the air, looking a lot like a canine. “Would you like to explain the smell coming from the back of your truck?”

“Meat, it’s rotting meat. We’re on our way to the dump now,” replies Johannes, almost too quickly. The officer, whether he believes them or not, appears to have decided that the answer is good enough, so he goes back to his cruiser and drives off. Johannes waits until he can no longer see the police car before letting out a huge breath, one he hadn’t even known he’d been holding. “I hated every second of that.”

“Ditto. And your ticket is 75 bucks.”

“Ana, that is the least of my problems right now.” Johannes grabs the steering wheel with hand that are almost wet and gets back on the road, heading towards the river again.

“Where do you think the best place to dump him would be?” Ana asks, fiddling with the ticket in her hand.

“My boss, Jameson, fishes at this pretty secluded bay area. I think we can get him close enough for the current to take him without being seen. It’s twenty minutes away.” They drive the rest of the way in a tense silence. When Johannes pulls into the secluded bay, he’s suddenly hit with how surreal this is. He’s about to dump a dead body in the river.

“Dad, come on. I can’t get him alone.”

“Alright, alright.” He joins her behind the truck and undoes the cover, then they hoist him onto their shoulders once more. The duo makes the short walk to the bay and over to where the current looks the strongest. Then, they just drop the rug, as well as the man within it, into the water.

Johannes looks at the rug floating down the river. “That feels rather…”

“Unsatisfying? Anticlimactic? Like, way too easy?” Ana fills in.

“All of the above, I think. Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth though. We should wipe down your apartment and—,” he breaks off.

“And what?”

Johannes face looks stricken. “We forgot the gun.”

Ana’s eyes widen for a moment, but then she breathes a sigh of relief. “I didn’t, actually. I remembered to stick it in the rug before you taped it up.”

“Oh thank the Lord. Then we really should go and deal with your place.”

Ana objects quickly. “Dad, you’ve helped me deal with this for the last, like, seven hours. Drop me off and go home. You still have to work tomorrow.”

Johannes goes to object, but he finds himself quickly realizing how exhausted he is. The sky above him is dark. “Alright. I’ll come buy again after work tomorrow, how does that sound?”

Ana agrees and they’re off. The ride home is quiet and he finds he cares far less about the answers to his questions now than he did before. Johannes drops her off, and heads to his place. He barely remembers to lock his door, and he falls asleep before his head hits the pillow.

The next day, he walks into the shop dead tired. He finds that it isn’t all that hard to pretend the day before was just a dream. “Good mornin’ boss.”

Jameson barely spare him a glance before returning to his work. “Mornin’ Johannes. What did your kid need yesterday? You look dead on your feet.”

Johannes can’t help but chuckle at the wording. “She had some pest disposal she needed help with. I’m going back over to help her clean the place up today.”

Jameson shakes his head to himself. “You must really care about her.”

Johannes clocked in and unpacked his things. “She’s my kid. It’s my job.”