With legs half-spread and bent over at the waist, I supported myself with my left hand on one knee. I renewed my gasping search for the air I couldn’t seem to find, all the while never taking my eyes off of Bruce’s still form. My right arm dangled, wieghed down by the sticker gun’s sturdy form, now split down its entire length; this particular decal launcher had seen its last tour of duty here at Furd Motors.
    Bruce wasn’t moving. Was… was he dead? I unstrapped the wreckage of the sticker gun and tossed it into the parts cart which presently contained slightly more than half of my friend Chuck. As I turned back to the form of my asshole foreman where it lay before me, the subtle, mini-lip driven rustle of the decal covering his brother’s tiny clown head indicated the two of them yet lived. Good. As much as it pains me to admit it even now, I never really wanted to hurt Bruce.
    I kneeled in the sticky strawberry goop which had spread from Chuck’s abdomen and I summarily ripped the anti-pot dashboard sticker from Bruce’s nose, ignoring the subtle undulation of the decal covering the tiny clown head. I was rewarded with a thin, reedy whistle as Bruce began laboriously breathing through his newly exposed nostrils, turned bright red from the trauma of the sticker’s rapacious removal. I listened to him breathe for a moment and absent-mindedly brought my fingers, wet with the viscous claret coating the floor where Chuck was bisected, to my nose and lips. Shit, it even tasted like strawberry. Was it pie filling?
    “A HAZARDOUS MATERIAL CONDITION IN AREA 194 IS STILL HAPENNING, PEOPLE! LEAVE ALREADY, AND AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS!” and then, “SI USTED ES HOMBRES VERDADEROS USTED DEJARÁ EL ÁREA 194. TIENE DESECHOS PELIGROSOS.”
    Oh yeah, the alarm. I suppose Bruce set it off to give him some murderous privacy. He was out cold now, and I had next to no time before the arrival of the hazmet team he’d indirectly summoned. With the sleeve of my jacket I wiped my lips clean of the strawberry body fluid, brushed my hands off on my thighs and then stumbled back to my feet… and back to the task at hand.
    “Hide me, buddy,” pleaded Chuck’s swollen taste buds from somewhere in the parts cart. I walked around the five tons of “Do Not Attempt to Grow Marijuana in Glove Compartment” labels wound up around the decal spool. The forklift sat, having pierced its side, a Roman soldier to the spool’s adhesive Jesus. It was still rumbling and farting as it muttered discomfort to iteself. So in passing, I distractedly reached past the tiller and turned the key. The kerosene engine fell silent with a last wheezy puff and presently I reached the far side of the spool and the resting place of Chuck’s lower body.
    This section of my friend, which started at the top of his pelvic bone and continued down to the non-skid soles of his workboots, was somehow more disturbing than the torso had been. It seemed more definitively dead, I guess. A pelvis can’t live alone, not even one with a veritable salad of misshapen black tubes and linkages erupting from the waistband of its pants.
    So it was with considerable unease that I dragged the remaining remains by the boots across the painted factory floor. I wove around the forklift and up to the parts cart, leaving a winding stripe of strawberry pie filling in my wake. Hooking one hand in the belt loop of Chuck’s slacks, I heaved his lower body in atop his torso. The mass of Chuck settled from the pressure of its own weight and his arms fell around his legs in a loose embrace; it appeared to me as if he were hugging his own thighs.
    I looked again at Bruce and considered his fate. If I left him here he would be found by the same hazmet crew I was seeking to avoid. If he awoke, he might tell them anything. And the likelihood of truth being the particular shade of anything he’d choose to relate was very small. Further, if he didn’t wake–in some coma or whatever–I might be accused of attempted murder or some crap.
    I nodded in agreement with myself.
    Bruce would have to come with me.
    Bracing myself against the spool, I rolled Bruce onto his back and then muscled him into sitting upright on the floor. From behind, I reached under his arms and around his chest, half of which was now coated with the sticky red stuff. Only after standing the both of us up did I realize I had allowed my chin to rest on the shoulder closest to the orange wigged monstrosity under Bruce’s ear. My legs were threatening to buckle beneath our combined weight, so I simply tried to put my proximity to that little clown head out of my mind. The quiet rustling of his lips against the drug-safe decal made sure I was unsuccessful. So it was with great relief that I wrestled Bruce atop the waiting cart and let him go.
    I spent some precious seconds repositioning his slumbering form so that he was laying atop Chuck, completely hiding his sectioned corpse. Bruce’s arms and legs draped out of the cart and his snoring head was tilted back, hanging off of one end. I silently apologized to Chuck; no man should have another man’s ass sitting atop his own ass while sitting on his own head.
    I know, that’s a very specific pronouncement, but I stand by it to this day.