Flowers in a Dumpster by Mark Allan Gunnells

myself out and collapsed on the other end of the sofa. Dirk looked at me for a minute then spoke for the first time since I’d gotten home. He told me he was leaving.
    I told him he couldn’t leave me. I’d created him for Christ’s sake. Everything he had, I had given to him. If not for me, Dirk Vandercock wouldn’t even exist. He was mine.
    Dirk said he belonged to no man and that he didn’t know why he’d allowed me to keep him prisoner for so many years. That’s what he said, that I’d ‘kept him a prisoner’. He told me he was finally breaking free, and he didn’t give two fucks if I liked it or not.
    He left me there in the living room to pack. At that point, I was too stunned to really react. I mean, this wasn’t the Dirk I had known and loved all these years, this wasn’t him at all.
    Then I realized it wasn’t Dirk.
    Insane as it seemed even to me, I suddenly knew what had happened, why Dirk had changed so drastically in such a short period of time. He wasn’t himself anymore, he was something else entirely. Something dark and evil.
    The ritual in the film had been real, and it had worked. I had allowed a demon to take possession of Dirk’s soul when we were filming The Devil’s Pitchfork . What else could it be? It would explain why he’d become so cruel and vicious and ungrateful. I had opened a doorway to Hell. The sweet, devoted man I’d molded into a star was no more, He’d been replaced by a wicked imposter.
    Maybe, though, it wasn’t too late to get Dirk back.
    I didn’t have an iota of doubt, which is how I knew it was the right course of action. Conviction is always a sure sign of righteousness. I went into the bedroom where Dirk was at the closet, pulling out the expensive clothes I’d bought him and tossing them into the suitcase I’d also bought. I picked up one of the four—soon to be joined by a fifth—golden phallic statues sitting on a table by the doorway, and used it to bash Dirk in the back of the head. He was down but not out. I had to hit him two more times before he lost consciousness.
    I dragged him across the room, tied him to the bed and stuffed a pair of red silk boxer shorts in his mouth, putting duct tape over that. Then I got online and did a little research on exorcisms.
    Turns out, there’s a hell of a lot of conflicting information on the subject. There seems to be no one accepted method of casting a demon out of someone, so I decided I’d try them all. Holy water, which isn’t as easy to come by as Buffy would have you believe, didn’t work. Neither did bleeding, burning, or the ever-popular gospel recitation. Nothing seemed to work. Dirk thrashed around on the bed like . . . well, like he was possessed. When I took his gag out, I endured the foul curses he spit my way. Exactly like Linda Blair, only minus the projectile vomiting and head spin. Luckily my neighbors were used to hearing shouting and obscenities from our apartment.
    Finally, not knowing what else to do, I decided I’d try to starve the demon out of him. I left him tied and gagged for nearly a week without food, occasionally removing the gag to let him suck water through a straw. The thrashing gradually became weaker until it practically stopped altogether. His body, which had once inspired such desire in me, seemed to be shriveling up. His skin took on an ashen look. His eyes glazed over like smudged glass.
    The last time I took his gag out, he told me in a hoarse croak that he hated me and he would make me suffer if it was the last thing he ever did. And that’s when I knew. Dirk was gone for good. There was no getting him back.
    That left me with only one option.
    The butcher knife left a clean cut across his throat.
    It was easier than I’d thought it would be, because I knew I was probably setting his soul free with this one selfless act.
    And that’s what happened. Honest to God, hand me a Bible and I’ll swear on it. I ain’t making excuses or nothing. I’m telling it like it