God's Gonna Cut You Down

“Miss Jones you are making this far more difficult than it should be.” The detective sighed, throwing his pen on the desk before him, while leaning back in his chair. He rubbed his hands over his face with a groan that spoke of his frustrations. Smoothing out his mustache he studied the young girl wearing overalls and star-shaped hair clips, with ladybug-painted nails, in front of him.

The young girl, who was called Tili Jones, simply stared back at him, chewing on the side of her cheek. She could taste a little blood from the constant gnawing of her flesh, yet still didn’t stop. Tili lifted her shaky hands to adjust her large glasses slipping down her nose, before dropping them back into her lap to fidget with the sleeve of her purple and slightly paint-stained flannel tied around her waist.

The detective, picked up the file in front of him again. He flipped the same page back and forth as if it had miraculously changed with new information that hadn’t been there for the past hour–no, no it’ll be an hour and a half now. Yet it still had all of the same information:

Tiliana Lee Jones

F | Height: 5’3 | Weight: 155 lb | Eye: Hazel | Hair: Blonde | Birthdate: June 12, 2008 | Address: 12727 S 435 E Rawlins, Wyoming 82301

A few moments of silence passed with only the hum of the air conditioning unit filling the space. Even with the AC, the room was terribly warm. It was midsummer July and a new heat wave had swept over the west of America.

Tili leaned forward and finally spoke in her soft, pleading voice, “Please sir. I don’t have any knowledge of this. I- I didn’t even know Joe that well. He just had a few classes with me- and he- he-” Her voice broke off and she took a shaky breath looking away to blink away her tears. “Please- please I never get in trouble! I- I don’t drink- I mean ex-except for communion wine in church, I guess. I don’t do drugs- I don't even know where to FIND drugs! The worst thing I’ve ever done is cheat on my final AP history exam and take 50 dollars from my nans' purse!” She covered her eyes under her large glasses frames, sliding them to be crooked on her face. She released a harsh snotty sob and wailed out, “And- and I also lied to my mom and told her that I put grandpa's ashes in the urn on the mantle but I actually accidentally dropped the ashes on the sidewalk downtown, so I put black pepper in the urn instead! So all these years my family has been crying over some over-glorified seasoning in an urn instead of Papaw!”

The detective closed his eyes and held up his hand, “Tili, you don’t have to-”

“And when I was ten I threw a baseball through old Mr. Matthew's window but I told him that it was my friend who couldn’t speak English so she couldn’t tell Mr. Matthews that I lied and it was actually me.” She was confessing like a sinner in church.

“Tili-”

“But I did lie earlier too! I have had alcohol! I took a sip of my uncle's beer last summer but I hated the taste and spit it out! But- but I didn’t know my baby cousin was on the porch below and I accidentally spit it right on his little baby face! I’m sorry! Please don’t make me go to jail! P-plea-”

“For God’s sake Tili! I know ya ain’t a bad kid!” The detective’s voice rose to cut off the frantic confessing teenager in front of him.

Tili sniffed and finally (Thank God) shut up.

“Listen, hun, you and my daughter have been best friends since- hell I don’t even know how long.” He placed a comforting hand on Tili’s, trying to ignore the fact hers was covered in her tears and a little bit of snot. “I know ya. This is just a thorough way of covering all the bases. We have to interrogate everyone who was in the school gym last week when the evidence was found. Okay? Just standard procedure.”

With a little nod, Tili once again adjusted her glasses that had fogged up from her tears. “So can I please go home?” her voice was a shaky, pleading, pathetic whisper.

The detective nodded with a twitch of a smile, “Yeah kid. I’ll get ya home.” He stood and straightened out the papers in front of him before nodding for Tili to follow him. Tili jumped up and hugged him tightly around the waist. Just like she had always done growing up.

“Thank you, Mr. Foster!” She started crying again into his chest.

Detective Foster sighed exasperated but patted Tili on the back with that reluctant affection of his, “Alright. Alright kid. That- that’s enough now.” He slowly unraveled Tili's arms from around him before holding her shoulders and bending to look into her eyes sternly.

“Now listen here. I know you ain’t got nothin’ to do with any of this but there is still a mad killer on the loose. What happened to Joe Graham was brutal and quite frankly the most disturbing murder I have witnessed in my whole career. Hell- we are still looking for the rest of his body. We don’t know why the killer did it or if they plan on killin’ someone else.” He held up a stern finger to Tili’s face. “So you stay outta trouble and be smart. Ya hear me, Miss Jones? No walking alone at night. No helpin’ hitchhikers'. Nothing like that.”

Tili nodded frantically, “Yes sir! I don’t think I will be leaving my house for nothin’ but school and working at the diner! I promise!”

Detective Foster breathed out a laugh through his nose and ruffled her mane of coiled blonde hair, “Alright kid.” He patted her back and led her out of the interrogation room and to his desk to get her released as just a “Person of Interest.”

***

The lavender purple bike with yellow sunflowers leaned against the side of the house as Tili finally got home. She shook out her curly hair that had been cramped into her helmet and incredible puffy in the humidity, before typing in the code to the garage door: 007.

With a few quick beeps, the door groaned and lifted for her, revealing a little art studio inside. It looked like something right out of an old 90s romcom or something you’d see on a Pinterest board. It was perfect. Well, despite the constant flies that lingered and that odd smell that all garages seemed to have mixed with something heavier in the muggy air.

A soft little melody hummed from Tili as she wheeled her bike inside. It was an old Johnny Cash song she heard on the radio at the police station today. She made quick work of closing the garage door, but gave one last paranoid glance around the rainy woods to make sure no one was around her house.

The bike was rolled up to lean on Tili's old wooden chest box, filled with a mix of all sorts of things. X-rays, maps, blank canvases, biology books, a few of her dads hunting knives, oil pastels, an old football.

With a exhausted huff she flicked on her desk light and looked over her sketches from yesterday. Tili’s art usually consisted of flowers, mountains, rivers, and trees–the usual Wyoming hippie stuff. Yet sometimes she likes to draw bones and themes of mortality. She always thought it was a beautiful balance. The life of nature mixed with the inevitable death of humans.

Picking up an oil painting she hadn’t yet finished of her sister and moving it back onto her easel, she got out all the supplies she needed. The right paint colors, linseed, paint thinner, brushes, water, a rag.

She had just picked up her painting pallet, dipping her brush into a dark brown when she spotted something in the corner of her eye lying in the back corner of her desk.

“Oh no.” She huffed, “How could I forget to put that back.”

She wheeled her chair over to it and grabbed it gently.

Joe Graham's hand.

It was cold and pale. Its nails had been painted orange with little sun designs on them by Tili. Slowly and curiously she intertwined her fingers with the severed hands while tilting her head with immense interest. Blood dripped a bit from its wrist and onto the jean material of her overalls.

“Oh dear, I can’t waste it.” She muttered and moved the hand to bleed out onto the paint pallet.

“There. That there is the best way to get an all-natural rusty red-brown.” She talked to herself and smiled cheerfully, proud of her previous discovery. After the hand bled out the last drop onto her paints she mixed it in with the brown and lifted the brush to continue a few more details in painting the hair of her sister's portrait.

Once satisfied with the shade she grabbed the drained-out hand and rolled out her chair again.

The "windchimes" over her desk clanked together at the movement- and by "windchimes" it's really Joe's radius, ulna, and tibia bones tied together to dangle with some twine and vines.

Moving quickly to kick the rug off the wood floor Tili revealed a small hatch door. Easily, she lifted it open with her foot and carefully squeezed in, descending the narrow ladder.

Once she landed on the ground below with an “oof” she turned with a cheerful smile. “Evening Joe.” She beamed in greeting and tossed the hand into a bin as she moseyed over to stare at the jar of Joe's blue eyes.

“Saw Detective Foster today.” Her voice bounced off the cellar walls as she picked up a few of his teeth that had been left out. Fidgeting with it in her hands. His molars, it looked to be.

The air was humid and moist, smelling far too much like a corpse for Tili’s liking. She had lit a pumpkin whiskey apple candle down here to try and cover it but even cinnamon can’t cover the smell of internal organs. Even spraying her Jasmine and honey perfume did little to help.

“He was asking about you. Everyone has.” Her boots squished as she walked over the bloody floor, coming right up to where Joe's skull rested on his letterman jacket neatly folded on a wooden chair. She picked it up and looked it over with a bored expression. The skull had little yellow flowers and vines painted on it from the forehead to the back of the head, like he was wearing a flower crown.

“Don’t know why.” Dipping the teeth in a bit of glue she shoved the molars back into their proper place in his skull. “You ain’t worth nothing no mo’...You never really were,” she whispered as if he could hear her. She knew he couldn’t. She had cut his ears off herself.

“I’m making much better use of your body in death than you ever did in life. See. I use it for art…and all you ever used it for was to be a pervert.”

He had offered her everything.

“Please Tili,” he had whimpered, as he hung by his wrists in front of her. “Let me go. Please. Please. I’ll not tell anyone just-just please…” his voice faded with a pathetic squeak.

Tili stepped forward, “offer me money.”

“Any amount.”

“Offer me your service.”

“I‘ll-I’ll do whatever you ask.”

“Tell me you’ll give me whatever I want.”

“I’ll give you anything you want!” He blubbered through tears that fell to the barbed wire she wrapped around his neck. “Please. Please. PLEASE!-“

Tili grabbed him by his hair and pulled him right up to her face. Her pupils blown and a deep snarl on her face, “I want my sister back, you sick son of bitch.” She growled before stabbing a knife in his mouth and down his throat.

Her eyes burned into the knife that still rested in the skull’s jaw, like a sick cigar.

A moment ticked by before she turned and went back up the ladder once again humming that good ol’ Johnny Cash song: “God’s gonna cut you down.”