Shattered

By Stephanie Reddoch

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21:00

Broken glass crunched under the coroner’s boots as he entered the apartment. The scent of a doused fire. Acrid. Humid. Next, the stench of ignited plastics and paint and synthetic chair upholstery. It was the unmistakable sickly sweet smell of burnt flesh that drew the coroner’s attention. The deceased was charred beyond recognition in the living room. He had melted into the easy chair. Muscles contracted in a pugilistic pose. According to police, two suspects escaped with only minor burns.

17:30

Carl and Jumpy leaned over their work. Jumpy poured the sticky liquid into a glass dish and set it atop a pot of boiling water. Bubbles began to rise, the butane evaporating. Carl leaned in. “Yo, next Top Chef!” Within minutes, chemical fumes filled the apartment and Jumpy’s eyes began to water. “Do you remember how long we’re supposed to cook it?” Coughs and hacking erupted in the living room. “Jayssuschrist, open a goddamn window!” Jumpy’s father shouted. His last words, just before he struck a match to light his Marlborough.

17:08

Stacks of half-eaten takeout and opened cans of pop littered the kitchen counter and stovetop. Carl waved away the flies coming out of containers of garlic spareribs, fried rice and moo goo gai pan as Jumpy rearranged them into new pyramids making room for them to cook. They ignored Jumpy’s old man asleep in the La-Z-Boy, a near-empty bottle of Jack sitting next to him on the coffee table. Jeopardy’s think music played from the flat screen while Carl filtered the butane-steeped weed through a paper filter.

17:00

Jumpy entered his father’s apartment, above what he called the Chin Buff Win Hi, the Chinese Buffet Wing Hing, whose illuminated sign always has the same burnt-out letters. When he saw his father asleep, Jumpy went to the window and knuckle-tapped on it to get Carl’s attention below and motioned to bring the supplies upstairs. Jumpy’s father would not bother them. He’d been like that since the cab company fired him after his accident with the school bus, which he swore wasn’t his fault, swore that a bee flew in and distracted him. And that the cops lied about the breathalyzer results. When his father lost his license, his mother moved out, and Jumpy followed.

15:15

Carl and Jumpy pulled out of the Walmart parking lot in Carl’s 1996 Impala which doubled as his “office” when his girlfriend Amy kicked him out of her bed. They were stocked with the three things Vince said they’d need: pyrex dish, canister of butane and coffee filters. Carl’s right hand rested over the steering wheel, and his left hand adjusted his ball cap so that its flat bill pointed to ten o’clock, and its foil visor sticker flashed in the afternoon sun. “Can already see the guap rolling in, bro,” Carl said over the thrum of the subwoofer. “Factory job my ass!”

11:30

Outside the bacon processing plant, Vince darted his eyes left then right, scanning for eavesdroppers during their shift’s break. “Shatter¾concentrated weed¾looks like peanut brittle. Easy to make.” Carl took a drag of his cigarette, thinking about his maxed-out credit cards and unopened bills that littered the floor of his car. He needed money. Fast. He figured it would solve his problems with Amy, too. As the gears turned noisily in his head, Carl stared blankly past the tin can ashtray at his feet, past the pavement speckled with crushed butts, and flicked his lit cigarette into the tall grass in front of him. “Oh yeah? How?” Jumpy then stepped closer to hear Vince whisper the recipe. Jumpy knew the perfect place to pull this off. No one would suspect a thing.