The Last of Artie

by Che Gilson

It was just my luck I looked exactly like Artie Pennington. It was my even better luck that we met.

U.C.L.A. campus, gold and green and sprawling in the sunshine, had accepted me as a scholarship student. I meant to do right by it too. Alpha Theta Pi was looking for a few good men. It was Rush Week, so what the hell.

The Alpha’s were like clones, each one cut out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. But they liked a hardluck story, and I had one for them.

Born Lyle Hewitt in bass-ackward Missoula, Montana, I had quite a climb. My status as a charity case gave the Alpha’s great P.R. Enough to coast on for a year or more before they had to accept another poor kid.

The rocking of the yacht wasn’t something I was used to and it made my job now harder than it should have been. Cutting up a body is a lot more difficult than they show it on TV. The trick is to cut along the joints, like butchering a chicken.

Artie Pennington was one year ahead of me and enjoyed the fact that I looked like him. As if I planned the coincidence just to flatter him.

“You know what, Mini Me?” he said and punched my shoulder. “I’m sending you to my poly-sci class. I’d better get an “A” on the mid-term too.”

“No problem, Artie.”

“Awesome. I’m gonna go get wasted.”

I got him that “A,” too. After that, I was golden, Artie’s new best friend. I even got to be his roommate.

He was a strange mix: rich and lonely. His parents had died in a plane crash when their private jet went down on the way back from Jamaica.

The Channel Islands are a little hunk of rock off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. They’re a National Park and as pristine a marine environment as could be hoped for.

With Artie for a friend, my world opened up. He liked to take me places and show me off.

He bought us matching clothes from Versace and Sean John, making it easy to swap places. I went to his classes and took his tests. I didn’t mind so much. It gave me a chance to study him.

For a rich guy, Artie wasn’t too careful. I jimmied the lock on his filing cabinet in less than ten minutes. His bank statements were everything I hoped for and a few million over.

The cold waters off the coast of California create a rich ocean world. Kelp forests, seals, otters, whales and the Great White Shark. The Channel Islands provide an ideal habitat for this apex predator. Deep waters, rocky coasts and seal-breeding grounds draw the sharks in.

One night, when Artie was drunk, stoned and dead to the world, I burned off his fingerprints with acid. I’d done mine two weeks before. He never even noticed.

Going out on the yacht was my idea.

“Can I borrow the boat over Spring Break?” I asked.

“First off, it’s not a ‘boat’.” He made sarcastic quote marks in the air. “Secondly, you’re not a sailor.”

“Look, I need some extra credit for your Marine Biology class. Come with me.”

“Yeah, okay, but you better make it worth it, Lyle.”

“I’ll spring for the Ecstasy,” I promised. We loaded the Carver Voyager with a week’s worth of booze and drugs.
Santa Barbara isn’t the worst place to spend Spring Break. And killing Artie was painfully easy. All I had to do was knock him over the head with a bottle of Kristal.

It took most of the night to chop Artie into pieces. I did the chore on the deck and washed the blood into the Pacific.

Six gray fins circled the boat long before I threw in the first chunk.

Three massive sharks went for the right arm, which I tossed in first. They fought and tore at it, turning the water to foam.

The next arm I threw in disappeared whole, down the cavernous throat of a shark that was at least eighteen feet long. By four a.m., I had thrown the last of Artie to the Great Whites.

I scrubbed the deck to a mirror shine and then radioed the Coast Guard.

I had to report Lyle Hewitt missing.