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She’d seen his mother. Buddy set Dil on his mother’s bed, which she hadn’t used since he’d slipped a plastic bag over her head while she was watching an old Sean Connery movie twenty months before. She had only been living with him for six weeks then, but it had been six weeks too long. When he’d agreed to care for her, he’d had no idea what he was taking on. He’d figured a bit more cooking, cleaning, ironing, that kind of stuff. The reality was she pissed her bed every night, which meant he had to wash her linens and shower her each morning. Then he’d get home from work only to find she’d pissed herself again, often shitting herself too. Another shower, more laundry. Come dinner he didn’t get a break because the stroke, which had paralyzed much of her body, prevented her from feeding herself. So he’d have to pound her dinner into mush and spoon it into her mouth. In the evening she might signal she needed to use the bathroom instead of letting loose in her diaper. Nevertheless, getting her undressed, on the toilet, cleaning her up—fuck, it was easier to let her soil herself and hose her down in the shower. Needless to say, caring for her simply became too much. But killing her wasn’t the answer. Buddy knew that right after she took her last, agonized breath. Flooded with guilt at what he’d done, he began talking to her, apologizing to her, changing her, bathing her, all the old routines. When her stench became overpowering, he removed her lungs, stomach, liver, intestines, heart, and brain, and treated her body with salt for forty days until no moisture remained. Then he filled the cavities with sawdust from a local
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