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rainbowfic2015-04-14 03:37 am
starphotographs) wrote in rainbowfic2015-04-14 03:37 am
Clean Again 10
Name: starphotographs
Story: Corwin and Friends
Characters: Spenser (POV), the doctor only known as Dr. M.
Colors: Clean Again 10 (Totally Twisted)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas, Portrait
Word Count: 5,659
Rating: R
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: In Spenser’s line of work, you learn a lot of things. (A look in to some of what he got up to before joining the main cast.)
Note: With this story, I have completed Clean Again! :D Commentary of all flavors welcome, as always. Also, I unofficially dedicate this toshipwrecklight, comrade in snark and lover of all things red and squishy. <3
Inside Job
“Sorry if I wasn’t too clear, I haven’t, like, actually slept in a while, I’m all, you know, yeah.”
Whooshing sound, sweeping gesture. Universal language. Fascinating. Waiter is not thinking along these lines. Waiter is unimpressed. Waiter simply nods. Because he’s stupid, apparently. I dislike stupid people. I want to punch him right in his big stupid face. But my thoughts are leaping out twelve at a time, and he‘s as good a target as any. He doesn’t need a brain. He just needs ears.
“…Uh-huh.”
“And okay, last time I did sleep, I had this really weird dream… I mean, shit would fuck anyone up. Usually, only fucks people up for, like, a day, tops. But then you don’t sleep, and I think your brain just counts it as the same day or somethin‘. And doesn’t, I dunno… Reset, or whatever. So, yeah, I’ve been, like, kind of riding on that for the past few days… Say, you wanna hear about it?”
It doesn’t look like he wants to. This, too, is because he is stupid. I decide hearing what I have to say would do his sad little mind some good.
“I have to…”
I stand up in my seat. On my seat, actually. The red fake leather squishes under my boots, makes me feel like I’m about to tip over. God, I look like a jackass! I sit back down. The waiter looks uneasy about being stuck in here with me, but that makes both of us, so tough shit, pal.
“No, no, this’ll only take a second.”
I have a feeling he doubted this. Honestly, poor fucker was probably right. But, part of him seemed to realize he was trapped, and that there was nothing he could do. Good for him! Work the late shift at a diner, better get used to talking to some fuckin’ lunatics.
…A group that, when I think about it, I fall pretty well in to. I don’t always realize this, but when I do, it’s embarrassing. And hilarious. It makes me want to laugh at my own misfortune.
“…Just get started, then.”
My glasses weren’t sitting right, so he’d just have to wait a goddamn second. I took them off, bent the stems, and twisted the frames back and forth until I heard a few cracking sounds. I didn’t put them back on right away, because the hand I was about to use for that was waving them around while I worked away at making my point. I can’t see the waiter’s face too good, but I don’t give much of a shit. This was never about him, anyway.
“Alright! See, there were like, these things… Kinda person-shaped, and, like, all around the streets, looming under lights and stuff, and I was a little scared, I guess, but I remember they didn’t really bother me because they weren’t, well, real. Not like I knew I was dreaming… I really didn’t, that’s why it messed with my fuckin’ head so much… But, like, I somehow had this knowledge that reality was just screwing around with us. So, yeah, everyone was panicking and freaking out, locked inside and shit. And I remember I was pissed because I was tryin’a find the liquor store and I realized it probably wouldn’t be open, and I kept accidentally driving by the block it’s on. Fuckin’ maddening, dude. Anyway, I got bored and tried to run over one of those things, but I couldn’t, and that drove me absolutely nuts, and then I woke up, so-”
I couldn’t figure out good arm motions to convey any of this, and sitting still didn’t feel like an option, so I wasn’t sure what to do with my left hand while the right was busy slicing away at the air with my janky glasses. I settled for tapping my spoon against my coffee cup for the entire duration of the story.
“…I really…”
“No, no, I’ll just be another minute. Anyway, it was weird, because normally things that aren’t real are scarier. Like, okay, I have foil on my windows… Glass door thingies, actually, whatthefuckever… Keeps out the sun and shit. But, like, I keep catching these glimpses of my reflection all night. Scares the crap out of me. It’s like, okay, you can still see the doors, and there’s just this weird light and a fucked-up distorted shadow-man-thing out there, and you don’t know what the fuck it means, and-”
“Sir!”
I put the glasses back on my face, and they fit pretty okay. I blinked a few times, looked around the blur-free room, saw that everything was still there, and went back to the story.
“…Dude, hang on. I’m almost around to my point. Like I was saying! Things that aren’t real? Fucked the fuck up. Things that are? Fuckin’ hilarious. Like… Just how? Why is this scary? All those things with all those sightings and shit… I mean, okay, yeah. Totally not real. But people think they are. They’re supposed to be. So, like, allegedly real. Whatever. Point is, can’t take that shit seriously. Ever seen a Jersey Devil?”
Both hands free now, I picked up the fork and started playing the cup like a xylophone.
“Um-”
“Yeah, yeah, of course you haven’t. I meant, you know, not a real one. Meant, like that drawing. Everyone’s fuckin’ seen the drawing. Like, even without context. You’d know it if you fuckin’ saw it. Thing is fuckin’ stupid-lookin’, dude. For one thing, it’s top-heavy as shit. Fucker must be, like, constantly fallin’ on its face… Got some kinda farm animal head, retarded-ass jacked-up gargoyle wings… And, like… Clip-clop, motherfucker. S’got bird legs with hoofs on ‘em! Even has goddamn horseshoes, for chrissakes. Like, someone had to put those there. Who the heck fuckin’ shoed the Jersey Devil!? How’d they keep a straight face!? Saw that thing comin’ down the street, fuckin’ die laughing. Jesus!”
The mental image alone was enough to make me pitch forward and collapse on the table, laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. The waiter, obviously sick half to death of putting up with my shit, turned on his heel and walked away.
“…I have other customers.”
I whipped up in my seat and froze. Suddenly, I wasn’t laughing anymore. The waiter, being stupid, turned and left. I called after him.
“…Yeah, fuck you too, buddy!”
I seethed for about five minutes, then started trying to flick sugar packets over the back of the empty booth in front of me, eventually forgetting the entire incident. And remembering that I had a sandwich and coffee to deal with.
The coffee was okay. Even though I had good reason to assume the idiot waiter spat in it, it went down easily enough. The sandwich, I’m sure, was also okay, but actually masticating and swallowing the thing was mentally exhausting. Every time I took a bite, I felt my tongue cramming it down my throat. And I know things probably don’t move through you that quickly, but I swore I felt the rest of its journey, the foreign matter winding through me, down narrow, twisting, knotted tunnels, getting stuck and dislodged repeatedly. And, if I really concentrated, I could start to feel everything. My lungs gusting out stale, moist air. My liver, wet and red as a blood clot, scrubbing out my insides. My heart squeezing itself like a sponge, gushing fluids, barely keeping time. Inside, there’s too much going on. Too many poorly-differentiated parts, twitching and spasming, grinding slickly against each other, everything slimy and humid and suffocatingly hot. Held together so loosely that the smallest disturbance could send the whole business sliding to the floor. Inserting anything into the system felt like tempting fate. Not inserting anything made me feel like my gut was contorting violently, rubbing everything against itself until the membranes start to separate. I will myself to bite down. I feel the wad of sandwich crud pushing its way through miles of densely-packed tubing, organs doing everything they can to extrude it.
I decide I’m done.
I stare out the window.
The light in the diner is cool-white and oppressive. Burning with those lights that make you wonder if the person who installed them ever considered that, sometimes, it would be night, and this particular kind of brightness would feel unnatural and surreal. Like inside and outside are separated by something more impassible than a window. Like, if I punched the glass, it would stretch and snap back. This intrigues me. I want to punch the glass. It would be satisfying. It would prove something about the world that I’d always suspected but couldn’t articulate. It… Would not work that way. Remembering this felt oddly like the moment you realize you’re dreaming, when everything starts going all screwy because your brain can’t do its work with you watching. But, I wasn’t dreaming. Things didn’t go screwy. They stayed only as weird as they were. Outside, beyond that elastic barrier, the sky is going blue around the edges, thin dark clouds drifting around, everything shadowy and amorphous. Like my reflection in the foiled glass. And my reflection is here, too. Always with me, but different every time. An inconsistent companion I can never quite shake. Here, it’s sharp enough, but dark and see-through. I have one hand on the coffee cup handle and the other up in my grimy hair, supporting my head. I’m bouncing my legs and staring into space, thinking about a stretching window, my shadow standing crumpled at my door, poor lighting choices. Inside, things are twisting themselves up. Softening and melting together.
I wouldn’t be so aware of this, if I hadn’t been where I’d been tonight.
In my translucent reflection, I’m tired. My clothes are sweaty and splattered with blood. Streaks and splashes on my shirt, handprints on my pants, the whole sleeve covering my left forearm brown and stiff. Enough blood that it would have been disconcerting only fifteen minutes ago, but was dry enough that, by now, it looked like it could be just more coffee. Like this cup hadn’t been my first of the night. Hell, that waiter probably thought it explained a few things. And maybe it did, anyway. Maybe, if he knew where I just came from, he’d understand completely.
That I’m just a lunatic, after all.
With that job, I’d have to be.
An hour ago, I was holding a flashlight, standing over a man who’d been unzipped from neck to groin. And this wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t even the first time this week. I’ve been at this for months now. I’m a quick study. I’m very good. I know this; they’ve told me.
Even so, with all my experience, I learned something new. Like the stretching window I’d imagined, I saw something that confirmed some inexpressible truth that had always been hovering over me.
And I’ll never forget.
*****
The night started out pretty normal. At least, normal for what was becoming my normal. I was listlessly gazing out the passenger side window, the doctor in the driver’s seat. Him looking ahead, me looking to the side, watching the streetlights passing overhead. Trying to see if I could trick my brain into thinking they were moving and I was standing still. This didn’t really work all that well, and made me feel like I was going to heave. I’m not even someone who gets travel sick, but where there’s a will, there’s a way, I guess. Of course, this in itself interested me, so I kept it up, trying to see if I could actually pull one over on my stupid, gullible body and get myself to barf for no fucking reason. This ended up taking more time and effort than I thought, so I got bored and gave up. Stared at the fixed horizon until my brain got the picture again. Lights after lights, and then nothing. The nothing was where we were headed. No laws. Plenty of sleeping drifters. A vast, organic scrapyard. All those spare parts, there for the taking. Locked up in the bodies of people that wouldn’t be missed. People like I was. Like I still am. Only now, I’m at the other end of the knife.
And this is how the world works. You can only save yourself by becoming the danger.
The lights eventually recede behind us, leaving us with a whole lot of stars and nothing. I’m still staring out the window. Fixated, this time, on how the easiest way to find the line between the sky and ground was to look for the place where the stars just stopped. If I made my brain see it just right, it looked like the road was running alongside a huge stretch of nothing, where you could, with one wrong step, fall clean out of the world, space itself racing away and shrinking, a bright distant dome capping off a long tunnel. This fascinated me. I sat, transfixed, eyeing the nothingness with a thousand-yard-stare, rhythmically rubbing my right hand up and down over my sleeve, giving my left arm a good, satisfying scratch. I had flash burns ranging from two weeks to three days old, and they were starting to itch like hell. It was that usual, dull, new-scab itch, mixed with something sharper that felt like it was crawling and vibrating under the skin, nerve endings fried and unraveling, scraping the flesh. It was like I’d been absent-minded and put my clothes on in the wrong order. Zipping up my skin over my itchy new sweater. It was hellish and uncomfortable. But there was nothing quite so satisfying as scratching, so I didn’t mind. Actually, I often found myself absent-mindedly tearing at my skin when I was concentrating, the way I’d always bounced my legs and clicked my pens. I’d scratch until it started hurting enough to take my focus off both the task at hand and the satisfaction of the scratching itself. Then I’d have to deal with the results.
This time wasn’t any different. A hot, skinned-knee sort of feeling, a feeling that made me think of summer and road-rash and band-aids and laugher, snapped my mind out of the void and into my body. There was blood soaking through my sleeve and streaking my fingertips. The fun was over. And this is why I had burns that were still trying to heal, still sticking to my sleeves and ripping open, over a week later. I’d get so wrapped up in what I was doing that I’d lose track of what I was doing to myself. (Yeah, what the hell else is new?) It seemed dangerous. I remember, a long time ago, reading about this person who had brain damage or something that made it feel like the side of their head was always itching. They’d scratch until they rubbed all the skin off the bone. They’d scratch without realizing they were doing it. They’d even scratch in their sleep. Until they woke up in the middle of the night, to a hot rush of fluid.
They’d scraped a hole in their skull. Scratched right down to the brain.
Even before I developed my unfortunate habit, I understood the feeling. I, too, always felt some ferocious itch just inside my skull. Just out of reach. Mine was metaphorical and unplaceable. If only reaching it was as easy as digging a hole through the bone and getting at the brain. I had plenty of will and energy. Good pain tolerance, determination, a healthy comfort with self-destruction. Lots of time on my hands. All the power tools and screwdrivers I would need to make the job easier. But, again, it couldn’t be located. It was almost as though my Itch and I were one and the same. Not knowing just where to make the hole, I dug and scraped and tore away at everything I did, at the world, at myself. And, from this, I took the sum total of my power. I owe my Itch my impressive string of projects and creations, my self-directed ambitions, my body full of scars, my head full of blueprints and noise. The sublime chaos that governs my life. I wipe my hand on my pants. That didn’t leave it any cleaner, but at least it isn’t wet. I think, my Itch keeps me from becoming a monster. Or, at very least, a monster and a hypocrite to boot. I mean, yeah, I may have blood on my hands, but at least about half of it is my own. I don’t discriminate. I treat myself the way I treat everything else. It’s not malice. It’s just excessive drive. And I have no idea where I’d be without it to push me along. I’d be sleeping through the nights, placid, complacent, going nowhere. That slow lazy drift to annihilation that quietly swept up all the other poor assholes.
Maybe I wouldn’t spend so much time spinning my tires, but the key wouldn’t even be in the ignition. And that, to me, would be hell on Earth.
And maybe I wouldn’t be doing this for a living, but I probably wouldn’t be doing anything worthwhile at all.
That, too, is a Hell.
Just as I’m about to reach in to the glove compartment and borrow some of the doctor’s hand sanitizer, the car comes to a stop. I was so absorbed, in the sky and the ground and the Itch and the blood, that I’d almost forgotten I was going anywhere in particular, aside from endlessly forward. Just the way I’d always wanted it. But, no, I was going to work. Nowhere exciting. Normal, for what was becoming my normal. And on this normal night, we’re in the parking lot of an abandoned hotel. Half the railings broken off the walkways, flat roof cutting into the stars. A dim light in just one window. A trash fire, a flashlight, a kerosene lamp. The kind of light my sector reads by. The light they hold against the dark and everything waiting in it, ready to destroy them. Things like me. I think, sorry, whoever you are, this is just business. And it is, just barely. We’re not doing anything wrong, because we aren’t really doing anything. It’s just a matter of moving parts from one place to another. If this guy’s lungs and liver are in him or someone else, what’s the difference? Nothing is added or taken away. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. Honestly, it’s less monstrous than it is futile. Like reorganizing drawers without throwing anything away.
Or, really, everything we’ll do in our whole lives.
Just moving parts from one place to another.
But, it’s a living. It may change nothing in the scheme of things, but it’s a meal ticket, and I can’t complain. And there is beauty in the purposeless movement of matter through space, no matter how it’s accomplished. If I’m the one to accomplish it, my mind might just, for one day, be at rest. Or the closest it can get. If someone ceases to exist because I decided that, here and now, they‘re done, I can show myself that I’m really in the driver’s seat. That I can act out my choices and affect the world. If I want to, my path can even block off and destroy others. And if I’m the one who makes it so, it proves I’m not running on rails to my predetermined end. That I’m so in control I can even take charge outside my own sphere and alter, in some small way, the course of history. That there was never a course in the first place, and that it was all up to me the whole time. That free will was for real after all. Because that, alone, is what I really have to believe.
The promise of autonomy, the hard cash, the test of my handiwork, that wonderful breathless split second where it’s all up in the air and I might be the one getting overpowered tonight… All of it, waiting for me in that dimly glowing square, a bright box that I just have to open. And I’m ready. I’m on the edge of my seat. My heart is racing, my Itch needs scratching, and I’m all set to scrape, bare-handed, through this moment and to the other side. Something is waiting for me over there. Even if it’s just more of the same, there’s always the joy of crossing over, and that’s the most important part. The singular moment that makes the whole dig worth it. I can almost feel it, the dirt under my nails. The doctor tells me he’ll wait in the car. That I’ll call him when I’m done. I close the door behind me, grip the device in my pocket, and head up the dirty concrete stairs.
I slam the door. I run up the stairs. I’m making way too much noise, but I’m not worried. Speed over stealth. Confidence over caution. My approach has never failed me. I run down the walkway. The runway, I guess it would be. Me touching down, roaring to the pavement. Heading for the illuminated window, which I do not find. He, whoever he is, turned off the light. He, whoever he is, knows I’m here, and thinks this will keep me from finding him. So, obviously, he, whoever he is, doesn’t know that I’m here, specifically. This always happens. People underestimate me because they can never anticipate what a fuckhead I am. Can never imagine what I’m willing to do to finish what I’ve already gotten started. Not remembering where I’d seen the light, and assuming the locks on the doors are still working from the inside, I retrace my steps, slower this time. I’m pausing to kick in every window, glass exploding with a high deafening ring (“I should really do this more often,” I think), until I find the one where I can hear terrified footsteps on the other side. And I do. Speed over stealth! I kick out the remaining glass, carving up my shin in the process, but that isn’t really a big deal. A bleeding leg is still a leg, and both of mine send me flying through the broken window. Confidence over caution! The man in the room, obviously not knowing who he’s dealing with, tries to get in a good swing at me.
The blow doesn’t land, but dodging it sends me off-balance, and I fall down in broken glass. A crunch and a stab, the sound and the sensation impossible to separate in my mind, both lighting up white-hot behind my eyes. He makes a run for my hastily-made entryway. I reach out and grab his shoelaces, which, in turn, sends him off-balance. We struggle on the sharp floor for a while, scrabbling around in the dark, the shards cutting into us, until I can get on top and grab him by the back of the neck. He tries to throw me off, and my grip is sweaty and bloody and slick. I shift my weight forward, nearly giving myself whiplash. My left hand holds him to the floor; my right produces the device. My ol’ reliable for this sort of work. A handle, a button, two sharpened prongs, a hefty battery you sure don’t want to lick. The prongs go in where the neck segues into the back, prying apart the vertebrae, jamming the wires. The button is pressed, the muscles jerk hard enough to break bones, the force throws me off, down on my ass in the mess that used to be a window, blood and glass glinting in the starlight, everything red and silver and sharp, almost too shiny to be real, like everything is wrapped in fresh plastic, still oily to the touch, all wafting out that dizzying new-plastic smell and shit. My arm and his neck created a perfect circuit. My hand is twitching, my hair stands on end, my whole body feels, for lack of a better word, alarmed. The metal of my glasses sits hot against my face, and I’m panting, and my shirt is dark and damp with sweat, and it’s over.
The device goes back in my pocket. A hand, that still doesn’t feel quite like my own, runs through my staticky hair. The doctor steps through the window. I didn’t have to call him. Of course I didn’t. Wherever I am, my presence announces itself, the world bends around me, all things are ready for me to tear them apart. I try to catch my breath, to figure out if my heart is just pounding from hard work and adrenaline, or if I actually electrocuted myself and didn’t know it yet.
“Yeah… Done.”
I wave towards the corpse, comb through my sweaty hair again. The doctor nods.
“Didn’t I tell you to be quieter from now on?”
God, there’s just no pleasing these assholes. People, I mean. He doesn’t say anything else. Just drops the heavy metal flashlight in my waiting hand. Now the real work begins. His real work, at any rate. My work is basically over. All I have to do is keep my hand from falling asleep. Keep my hand from falling asleep, and watch what comes next.
He has his scalpels and coolers, I have my flashlight, and the scene is set. The doctor does his work, just like always. This time, the first cut doesn’t look quite so stark. The body, the container, is already smeared with blood. His or mine, I’m not sure. Probably a mix of both, like we became blood brothers the second we hit the floor. You could make it out to be something more significant than an unfortunate meeting between strangers, if significance is your thing. But, it never was mine, so I don’t. I just hold the flashlight, keep my hand from falling asleep. Watch as the blade travels downward, so sharp you could cut your eyes looking at it, straight as an arrow, clean slice, red-on-red. The cut actively bleeds only about once per minute, then once every two, then at random, in time with the faltering heart, still beating in a dead body, a lone worker in an empty factory. I’ll see it soon enough. Out come the saws and stretchers, looking heavy and noisy by comparison. The grind of serrations, the clank-clank-click of metal notches, cracking ribs. to everything, its own hard, crunching sound. Then the second silence. Somehow thicker this time. The blades are out again. And the body, from the inside, looks like every other. I don’t know what I’m always expecting, but in my heart of hearts, it’s never this. That it even could be the same every time…
(My left hand dangles loose at my side, brushes my leg, finds a rip in my pants, grazes something hard. A chunk of glass, stuck half-in, half-out of my thigh. I pluck it out, scowl at it disapprovingly, and toss it aside. Fucker. Now I probably have some kind of glass tetanus.)
…All those organs, they look like they could be stacked in any order. And if I hadn’t been told so all my life, and then seen it for myself, I wouldn’t have even guessed they were connected. It looks like a pile of slimy meat, ready to slip out all over the place. The first time I went out on one of these jobs, I sat doubled over and hugging my waist for weeks, willing my guts to stay in place, holding myself together. Now, I just think about it every other day and feel uneasy for hours.
This wasn’t what I wanted to be made of.
My brain longed to be housed in something solid, something with screws and hinges and reinforcements, good joints, welding. But then, my brain itself isn’t solid. If I wanted, I could squeeze it through my fingers. The only thing stopping me is that I‘d still need it to give the message to my hand. And the rest of me isn‘t much better. I’m just a bunch of tubes and grease sticky film, held together with its own moisture, ready to collapse. In the shower, I touch my spine and pretend the tips of the bones are bolts, twisted tight and fastening me in my sturdy casing. It makes me feel better, for about a minute. Only a minute, because I know it isn’t true. The truth is, aside from the brain, the casing is the weakest part. I’d just managed to dig through it with my bare hands. Even bone isn’t infallible. Just as I dug through my skin, that other person, whoever they were, dug through their skull, fingertips buried in the semisolid brain. If they could do it, I could do it. We’re all the same. What I’m seeing in front of me is also inside of me. As above, so below. The heart, glistening wetly under the flashlight, leaps. So does mine. We’re all the same on the inside. The doctor cuts out the liver, sits it on ice. It looks neat and tidy, a real component part. Like a fuel filter still in the box. Not a dark wedge of slime. I calm down.
I exhale. The doctor pauses.
“Shit. We can’t use the kidneys.”
“So what, they’re like, dead?”
The doctor looked at me like that was the stupidest thing anyone had ever said to him. Well, hey, I don’t know this crap! To me, it sounded plausible enough. I mean, kidneys “fail,” and I wasn’t sure what else that could mean in context.
“…Horseshoe kidney. See for yourself.”
I didn’t know what the fuck that was. And I really should have learned my lesson by now:
If it’s part of the human body, and I’ve never heard of it before, I shouldn’t look.
I look anyway. And I understand why he said “kidney,” singular. Well, mostly. Actually, it did still look like there were two kidneys, starting to melt together. I swore I felt something shift down in my guts, different parts of me colliding and merging like the contents of some hellish meat lava lamp. I felt like I was going to throw up. And, when I did, all those half-fused parts of me would fly out, veiny and twitching, unrecognizable. I swallow, stuff it all back down.
“So, okay… How did that happen?”
The doctor was working on uprooting the lungs.
“Well, it didn’t happen, exactly. It was always like that. We’re probably the first to know, actually. Most people go through their whole lives without finding out.”
“So, I could…”
He shrugged, placed the lungs in their compartment, then leaned back over the open cavity.
“It’s possible.”
God, I just wanted to go home. Go home, and never think about this again. If I finally went to sleep, maybe I’d think this was all a dream. It seemed like the kind of dream I’d have, anyway. And a dream that would really bother me, at that. So, honestly, what was even the damn difference? At this point, dreams are starting to make more sense. The world is in chaos. The body, just as I’ve always known, is untrustworthy.
Before we leave, the doctor carves out the heart. A river of blood gushes from the largest of the big tubes, flooding the empty basin of the ribcage, saturating the melting kidneys and everything else. Another day’s work done.
Normal, for what had become my normal.
*****
An hour later and miles away, having dug through to the other side, where nothing will ever be the same, I’m slouched in a booth at a diner I‘d never been to before, trying to force myself to eat.
The lights are bright, my hair is dirty, my mouth is dry, my hands are cold. I take off my glasses, screw my fists into my eye sockets, and hold that position for a few minutes, propping up my heavy head. My brain, liquid, lists to the front of my skull. I bolt upright, shake my head, and look back to the window. Without my glasses, the whole world looks like a flat, dark gradient, black running into blue. I put the glasses back on, stare at the blue light radiating up from the ground. The sun is coming. Reality will fall back into line. All I have to do is wait. I have to endure. Right here and now, behind the elastic membrane of the window, everything is shifting and falling in on itself. My guts are caving in and contorting, bits of me colliding and combining. The coffee cup is almost organically warm, the liquid dark and glistening as a fresh liver, leaving rings the color of old blood. My sleeve is sticking to my mangled arm. My body, oozing into and incorporating everything it touches. I dislodge the fabric and it hurts, like I’ve torn off a part of myself. I want to keep tearing, drive my hands in and dig until there isn’t anything left, until I can see the other side of the room through the gap between the bones, then get to work on the rest of me. Tear it all down before it can fall apart on its own accord.
Exhausted, I lay my head back down on the cool table, close my eyes against the lights.
An image surfaces in my mind, my reflection in foil, blue-grey and warped, fuzzing at the edges, crumpling in on itself, muted square of television light flickering in the background. He’s just myself in my head, the me only I can know about. That structureless being who no one else can see, right under a skin that it longs to fight its way out of.
Slowly, I get back up. I sit under the fluorescents; I watch myself flicker.
I finish my sandwich. I swallow and chew.
I endure.
starphotographsStory: Corwin and Friends
Characters: Spenser (POV), the doctor only known as Dr. M.
Colors: Clean Again 10 (Totally Twisted)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas, Portrait
Word Count: 5,659
Rating: R
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: In Spenser’s line of work, you learn a lot of things. (A look in to some of what he got up to before joining the main cast.)
Note: With this story, I have completed Clean Again! :D Commentary of all flavors welcome, as always. Also, I unofficially dedicate this to
shipwrecklight, comrade in snark and lover of all things red and squishy. <3“Sorry if I wasn’t too clear, I haven’t, like, actually slept in a while, I’m all, you know, yeah.”
Whooshing sound, sweeping gesture. Universal language. Fascinating. Waiter is not thinking along these lines. Waiter is unimpressed. Waiter simply nods. Because he’s stupid, apparently. I dislike stupid people. I want to punch him right in his big stupid face. But my thoughts are leaping out twelve at a time, and he‘s as good a target as any. He doesn’t need a brain. He just needs ears.
“…Uh-huh.”
“And okay, last time I did sleep, I had this really weird dream… I mean, shit would fuck anyone up. Usually, only fucks people up for, like, a day, tops. But then you don’t sleep, and I think your brain just counts it as the same day or somethin‘. And doesn’t, I dunno… Reset, or whatever. So, yeah, I’ve been, like, kind of riding on that for the past few days… Say, you wanna hear about it?”
It doesn’t look like he wants to. This, too, is because he is stupid. I decide hearing what I have to say would do his sad little mind some good.
“I have to…”
I stand up in my seat. On my seat, actually. The red fake leather squishes under my boots, makes me feel like I’m about to tip over. God, I look like a jackass! I sit back down. The waiter looks uneasy about being stuck in here with me, but that makes both of us, so tough shit, pal.
“No, no, this’ll only take a second.”
I have a feeling he doubted this. Honestly, poor fucker was probably right. But, part of him seemed to realize he was trapped, and that there was nothing he could do. Good for him! Work the late shift at a diner, better get used to talking to some fuckin’ lunatics.
…A group that, when I think about it, I fall pretty well in to. I don’t always realize this, but when I do, it’s embarrassing. And hilarious. It makes me want to laugh at my own misfortune.
“…Just get started, then.”
My glasses weren’t sitting right, so he’d just have to wait a goddamn second. I took them off, bent the stems, and twisted the frames back and forth until I heard a few cracking sounds. I didn’t put them back on right away, because the hand I was about to use for that was waving them around while I worked away at making my point. I can’t see the waiter’s face too good, but I don’t give much of a shit. This was never about him, anyway.
“Alright! See, there were like, these things… Kinda person-shaped, and, like, all around the streets, looming under lights and stuff, and I was a little scared, I guess, but I remember they didn’t really bother me because they weren’t, well, real. Not like I knew I was dreaming… I really didn’t, that’s why it messed with my fuckin’ head so much… But, like, I somehow had this knowledge that reality was just screwing around with us. So, yeah, everyone was panicking and freaking out, locked inside and shit. And I remember I was pissed because I was tryin’a find the liquor store and I realized it probably wouldn’t be open, and I kept accidentally driving by the block it’s on. Fuckin’ maddening, dude. Anyway, I got bored and tried to run over one of those things, but I couldn’t, and that drove me absolutely nuts, and then I woke up, so-”
I couldn’t figure out good arm motions to convey any of this, and sitting still didn’t feel like an option, so I wasn’t sure what to do with my left hand while the right was busy slicing away at the air with my janky glasses. I settled for tapping my spoon against my coffee cup for the entire duration of the story.
“…I really…”
“No, no, I’ll just be another minute. Anyway, it was weird, because normally things that aren’t real are scarier. Like, okay, I have foil on my windows… Glass door thingies, actually, whatthefuckever… Keeps out the sun and shit. But, like, I keep catching these glimpses of my reflection all night. Scares the crap out of me. It’s like, okay, you can still see the doors, and there’s just this weird light and a fucked-up distorted shadow-man-thing out there, and you don’t know what the fuck it means, and-”
“Sir!”
I put the glasses back on my face, and they fit pretty okay. I blinked a few times, looked around the blur-free room, saw that everything was still there, and went back to the story.
“…Dude, hang on. I’m almost around to my point. Like I was saying! Things that aren’t real? Fucked the fuck up. Things that are? Fuckin’ hilarious. Like… Just how? Why is this scary? All those things with all those sightings and shit… I mean, okay, yeah. Totally not real. But people think they are. They’re supposed to be. So, like, allegedly real. Whatever. Point is, can’t take that shit seriously. Ever seen a Jersey Devil?”
Both hands free now, I picked up the fork and started playing the cup like a xylophone.
“Um-”
“Yeah, yeah, of course you haven’t. I meant, you know, not a real one. Meant, like that drawing. Everyone’s fuckin’ seen the drawing. Like, even without context. You’d know it if you fuckin’ saw it. Thing is fuckin’ stupid-lookin’, dude. For one thing, it’s top-heavy as shit. Fucker must be, like, constantly fallin’ on its face… Got some kinda farm animal head, retarded-ass jacked-up gargoyle wings… And, like… Clip-clop, motherfucker. S’got bird legs with hoofs on ‘em! Even has goddamn horseshoes, for chrissakes. Like, someone had to put those there. Who the heck fuckin’ shoed the Jersey Devil!? How’d they keep a straight face!? Saw that thing comin’ down the street, fuckin’ die laughing. Jesus!”
The mental image alone was enough to make me pitch forward and collapse on the table, laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. The waiter, obviously sick half to death of putting up with my shit, turned on his heel and walked away.
“…I have other customers.”
I whipped up in my seat and froze. Suddenly, I wasn’t laughing anymore. The waiter, being stupid, turned and left. I called after him.
“…Yeah, fuck you too, buddy!”
I seethed for about five minutes, then started trying to flick sugar packets over the back of the empty booth in front of me, eventually forgetting the entire incident. And remembering that I had a sandwich and coffee to deal with.
The coffee was okay. Even though I had good reason to assume the idiot waiter spat in it, it went down easily enough. The sandwich, I’m sure, was also okay, but actually masticating and swallowing the thing was mentally exhausting. Every time I took a bite, I felt my tongue cramming it down my throat. And I know things probably don’t move through you that quickly, but I swore I felt the rest of its journey, the foreign matter winding through me, down narrow, twisting, knotted tunnels, getting stuck and dislodged repeatedly. And, if I really concentrated, I could start to feel everything. My lungs gusting out stale, moist air. My liver, wet and red as a blood clot, scrubbing out my insides. My heart squeezing itself like a sponge, gushing fluids, barely keeping time. Inside, there’s too much going on. Too many poorly-differentiated parts, twitching and spasming, grinding slickly against each other, everything slimy and humid and suffocatingly hot. Held together so loosely that the smallest disturbance could send the whole business sliding to the floor. Inserting anything into the system felt like tempting fate. Not inserting anything made me feel like my gut was contorting violently, rubbing everything against itself until the membranes start to separate. I will myself to bite down. I feel the wad of sandwich crud pushing its way through miles of densely-packed tubing, organs doing everything they can to extrude it.
I decide I’m done.
I stare out the window.
The light in the diner is cool-white and oppressive. Burning with those lights that make you wonder if the person who installed them ever considered that, sometimes, it would be night, and this particular kind of brightness would feel unnatural and surreal. Like inside and outside are separated by something more impassible than a window. Like, if I punched the glass, it would stretch and snap back. This intrigues me. I want to punch the glass. It would be satisfying. It would prove something about the world that I’d always suspected but couldn’t articulate. It… Would not work that way. Remembering this felt oddly like the moment you realize you’re dreaming, when everything starts going all screwy because your brain can’t do its work with you watching. But, I wasn’t dreaming. Things didn’t go screwy. They stayed only as weird as they were. Outside, beyond that elastic barrier, the sky is going blue around the edges, thin dark clouds drifting around, everything shadowy and amorphous. Like my reflection in the foiled glass. And my reflection is here, too. Always with me, but different every time. An inconsistent companion I can never quite shake. Here, it’s sharp enough, but dark and see-through. I have one hand on the coffee cup handle and the other up in my grimy hair, supporting my head. I’m bouncing my legs and staring into space, thinking about a stretching window, my shadow standing crumpled at my door, poor lighting choices. Inside, things are twisting themselves up. Softening and melting together.
I wouldn’t be so aware of this, if I hadn’t been where I’d been tonight.
In my translucent reflection, I’m tired. My clothes are sweaty and splattered with blood. Streaks and splashes on my shirt, handprints on my pants, the whole sleeve covering my left forearm brown and stiff. Enough blood that it would have been disconcerting only fifteen minutes ago, but was dry enough that, by now, it looked like it could be just more coffee. Like this cup hadn’t been my first of the night. Hell, that waiter probably thought it explained a few things. And maybe it did, anyway. Maybe, if he knew where I just came from, he’d understand completely.
That I’m just a lunatic, after all.
With that job, I’d have to be.
An hour ago, I was holding a flashlight, standing over a man who’d been unzipped from neck to groin. And this wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t even the first time this week. I’ve been at this for months now. I’m a quick study. I’m very good. I know this; they’ve told me.
Even so, with all my experience, I learned something new. Like the stretching window I’d imagined, I saw something that confirmed some inexpressible truth that had always been hovering over me.
And I’ll never forget.
The night started out pretty normal. At least, normal for what was becoming my normal. I was listlessly gazing out the passenger side window, the doctor in the driver’s seat. Him looking ahead, me looking to the side, watching the streetlights passing overhead. Trying to see if I could trick my brain into thinking they were moving and I was standing still. This didn’t really work all that well, and made me feel like I was going to heave. I’m not even someone who gets travel sick, but where there’s a will, there’s a way, I guess. Of course, this in itself interested me, so I kept it up, trying to see if I could actually pull one over on my stupid, gullible body and get myself to barf for no fucking reason. This ended up taking more time and effort than I thought, so I got bored and gave up. Stared at the fixed horizon until my brain got the picture again. Lights after lights, and then nothing. The nothing was where we were headed. No laws. Plenty of sleeping drifters. A vast, organic scrapyard. All those spare parts, there for the taking. Locked up in the bodies of people that wouldn’t be missed. People like I was. Like I still am. Only now, I’m at the other end of the knife.
And this is how the world works. You can only save yourself by becoming the danger.
The lights eventually recede behind us, leaving us with a whole lot of stars and nothing. I’m still staring out the window. Fixated, this time, on how the easiest way to find the line between the sky and ground was to look for the place where the stars just stopped. If I made my brain see it just right, it looked like the road was running alongside a huge stretch of nothing, where you could, with one wrong step, fall clean out of the world, space itself racing away and shrinking, a bright distant dome capping off a long tunnel. This fascinated me. I sat, transfixed, eyeing the nothingness with a thousand-yard-stare, rhythmically rubbing my right hand up and down over my sleeve, giving my left arm a good, satisfying scratch. I had flash burns ranging from two weeks to three days old, and they were starting to itch like hell. It was that usual, dull, new-scab itch, mixed with something sharper that felt like it was crawling and vibrating under the skin, nerve endings fried and unraveling, scraping the flesh. It was like I’d been absent-minded and put my clothes on in the wrong order. Zipping up my skin over my itchy new sweater. It was hellish and uncomfortable. But there was nothing quite so satisfying as scratching, so I didn’t mind. Actually, I often found myself absent-mindedly tearing at my skin when I was concentrating, the way I’d always bounced my legs and clicked my pens. I’d scratch until it started hurting enough to take my focus off both the task at hand and the satisfaction of the scratching itself. Then I’d have to deal with the results.
This time wasn’t any different. A hot, skinned-knee sort of feeling, a feeling that made me think of summer and road-rash and band-aids and laugher, snapped my mind out of the void and into my body. There was blood soaking through my sleeve and streaking my fingertips. The fun was over. And this is why I had burns that were still trying to heal, still sticking to my sleeves and ripping open, over a week later. I’d get so wrapped up in what I was doing that I’d lose track of what I was doing to myself. (Yeah, what the hell else is new?) It seemed dangerous. I remember, a long time ago, reading about this person who had brain damage or something that made it feel like the side of their head was always itching. They’d scratch until they rubbed all the skin off the bone. They’d scratch without realizing they were doing it. They’d even scratch in their sleep. Until they woke up in the middle of the night, to a hot rush of fluid.
They’d scraped a hole in their skull. Scratched right down to the brain.
Even before I developed my unfortunate habit, I understood the feeling. I, too, always felt some ferocious itch just inside my skull. Just out of reach. Mine was metaphorical and unplaceable. If only reaching it was as easy as digging a hole through the bone and getting at the brain. I had plenty of will and energy. Good pain tolerance, determination, a healthy comfort with self-destruction. Lots of time on my hands. All the power tools and screwdrivers I would need to make the job easier. But, again, it couldn’t be located. It was almost as though my Itch and I were one and the same. Not knowing just where to make the hole, I dug and scraped and tore away at everything I did, at the world, at myself. And, from this, I took the sum total of my power. I owe my Itch my impressive string of projects and creations, my self-directed ambitions, my body full of scars, my head full of blueprints and noise. The sublime chaos that governs my life. I wipe my hand on my pants. That didn’t leave it any cleaner, but at least it isn’t wet. I think, my Itch keeps me from becoming a monster. Or, at very least, a monster and a hypocrite to boot. I mean, yeah, I may have blood on my hands, but at least about half of it is my own. I don’t discriminate. I treat myself the way I treat everything else. It’s not malice. It’s just excessive drive. And I have no idea where I’d be without it to push me along. I’d be sleeping through the nights, placid, complacent, going nowhere. That slow lazy drift to annihilation that quietly swept up all the other poor assholes.
Maybe I wouldn’t spend so much time spinning my tires, but the key wouldn’t even be in the ignition. And that, to me, would be hell on Earth.
And maybe I wouldn’t be doing this for a living, but I probably wouldn’t be doing anything worthwhile at all.
That, too, is a Hell.
Just as I’m about to reach in to the glove compartment and borrow some of the doctor’s hand sanitizer, the car comes to a stop. I was so absorbed, in the sky and the ground and the Itch and the blood, that I’d almost forgotten I was going anywhere in particular, aside from endlessly forward. Just the way I’d always wanted it. But, no, I was going to work. Nowhere exciting. Normal, for what was becoming my normal. And on this normal night, we’re in the parking lot of an abandoned hotel. Half the railings broken off the walkways, flat roof cutting into the stars. A dim light in just one window. A trash fire, a flashlight, a kerosene lamp. The kind of light my sector reads by. The light they hold against the dark and everything waiting in it, ready to destroy them. Things like me. I think, sorry, whoever you are, this is just business. And it is, just barely. We’re not doing anything wrong, because we aren’t really doing anything. It’s just a matter of moving parts from one place to another. If this guy’s lungs and liver are in him or someone else, what’s the difference? Nothing is added or taken away. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. Honestly, it’s less monstrous than it is futile. Like reorganizing drawers without throwing anything away.
Or, really, everything we’ll do in our whole lives.
Just moving parts from one place to another.
But, it’s a living. It may change nothing in the scheme of things, but it’s a meal ticket, and I can’t complain. And there is beauty in the purposeless movement of matter through space, no matter how it’s accomplished. If I’m the one to accomplish it, my mind might just, for one day, be at rest. Or the closest it can get. If someone ceases to exist because I decided that, here and now, they‘re done, I can show myself that I’m really in the driver’s seat. That I can act out my choices and affect the world. If I want to, my path can even block off and destroy others. And if I’m the one who makes it so, it proves I’m not running on rails to my predetermined end. That I’m so in control I can even take charge outside my own sphere and alter, in some small way, the course of history. That there was never a course in the first place, and that it was all up to me the whole time. That free will was for real after all. Because that, alone, is what I really have to believe.
The promise of autonomy, the hard cash, the test of my handiwork, that wonderful breathless split second where it’s all up in the air and I might be the one getting overpowered tonight… All of it, waiting for me in that dimly glowing square, a bright box that I just have to open. And I’m ready. I’m on the edge of my seat. My heart is racing, my Itch needs scratching, and I’m all set to scrape, bare-handed, through this moment and to the other side. Something is waiting for me over there. Even if it’s just more of the same, there’s always the joy of crossing over, and that’s the most important part. The singular moment that makes the whole dig worth it. I can almost feel it, the dirt under my nails. The doctor tells me he’ll wait in the car. That I’ll call him when I’m done. I close the door behind me, grip the device in my pocket, and head up the dirty concrete stairs.
I slam the door. I run up the stairs. I’m making way too much noise, but I’m not worried. Speed over stealth. Confidence over caution. My approach has never failed me. I run down the walkway. The runway, I guess it would be. Me touching down, roaring to the pavement. Heading for the illuminated window, which I do not find. He, whoever he is, turned off the light. He, whoever he is, knows I’m here, and thinks this will keep me from finding him. So, obviously, he, whoever he is, doesn’t know that I’m here, specifically. This always happens. People underestimate me because they can never anticipate what a fuckhead I am. Can never imagine what I’m willing to do to finish what I’ve already gotten started. Not remembering where I’d seen the light, and assuming the locks on the doors are still working from the inside, I retrace my steps, slower this time. I’m pausing to kick in every window, glass exploding with a high deafening ring (“I should really do this more often,” I think), until I find the one where I can hear terrified footsteps on the other side. And I do. Speed over stealth! I kick out the remaining glass, carving up my shin in the process, but that isn’t really a big deal. A bleeding leg is still a leg, and both of mine send me flying through the broken window. Confidence over caution! The man in the room, obviously not knowing who he’s dealing with, tries to get in a good swing at me.
The blow doesn’t land, but dodging it sends me off-balance, and I fall down in broken glass. A crunch and a stab, the sound and the sensation impossible to separate in my mind, both lighting up white-hot behind my eyes. He makes a run for my hastily-made entryway. I reach out and grab his shoelaces, which, in turn, sends him off-balance. We struggle on the sharp floor for a while, scrabbling around in the dark, the shards cutting into us, until I can get on top and grab him by the back of the neck. He tries to throw me off, and my grip is sweaty and bloody and slick. I shift my weight forward, nearly giving myself whiplash. My left hand holds him to the floor; my right produces the device. My ol’ reliable for this sort of work. A handle, a button, two sharpened prongs, a hefty battery you sure don’t want to lick. The prongs go in where the neck segues into the back, prying apart the vertebrae, jamming the wires. The button is pressed, the muscles jerk hard enough to break bones, the force throws me off, down on my ass in the mess that used to be a window, blood and glass glinting in the starlight, everything red and silver and sharp, almost too shiny to be real, like everything is wrapped in fresh plastic, still oily to the touch, all wafting out that dizzying new-plastic smell and shit. My arm and his neck created a perfect circuit. My hand is twitching, my hair stands on end, my whole body feels, for lack of a better word, alarmed. The metal of my glasses sits hot against my face, and I’m panting, and my shirt is dark and damp with sweat, and it’s over.
The device goes back in my pocket. A hand, that still doesn’t feel quite like my own, runs through my staticky hair. The doctor steps through the window. I didn’t have to call him. Of course I didn’t. Wherever I am, my presence announces itself, the world bends around me, all things are ready for me to tear them apart. I try to catch my breath, to figure out if my heart is just pounding from hard work and adrenaline, or if I actually electrocuted myself and didn’t know it yet.
“Yeah… Done.”
I wave towards the corpse, comb through my sweaty hair again. The doctor nods.
“Didn’t I tell you to be quieter from now on?”
God, there’s just no pleasing these assholes. People, I mean. He doesn’t say anything else. Just drops the heavy metal flashlight in my waiting hand. Now the real work begins. His real work, at any rate. My work is basically over. All I have to do is keep my hand from falling asleep. Keep my hand from falling asleep, and watch what comes next.
He has his scalpels and coolers, I have my flashlight, and the scene is set. The doctor does his work, just like always. This time, the first cut doesn’t look quite so stark. The body, the container, is already smeared with blood. His or mine, I’m not sure. Probably a mix of both, like we became blood brothers the second we hit the floor. You could make it out to be something more significant than an unfortunate meeting between strangers, if significance is your thing. But, it never was mine, so I don’t. I just hold the flashlight, keep my hand from falling asleep. Watch as the blade travels downward, so sharp you could cut your eyes looking at it, straight as an arrow, clean slice, red-on-red. The cut actively bleeds only about once per minute, then once every two, then at random, in time with the faltering heart, still beating in a dead body, a lone worker in an empty factory. I’ll see it soon enough. Out come the saws and stretchers, looking heavy and noisy by comparison. The grind of serrations, the clank-clank-click of metal notches, cracking ribs. to everything, its own hard, crunching sound. Then the second silence. Somehow thicker this time. The blades are out again. And the body, from the inside, looks like every other. I don’t know what I’m always expecting, but in my heart of hearts, it’s never this. That it even could be the same every time…
(My left hand dangles loose at my side, brushes my leg, finds a rip in my pants, grazes something hard. A chunk of glass, stuck half-in, half-out of my thigh. I pluck it out, scowl at it disapprovingly, and toss it aside. Fucker. Now I probably have some kind of glass tetanus.)
…All those organs, they look like they could be stacked in any order. And if I hadn’t been told so all my life, and then seen it for myself, I wouldn’t have even guessed they were connected. It looks like a pile of slimy meat, ready to slip out all over the place. The first time I went out on one of these jobs, I sat doubled over and hugging my waist for weeks, willing my guts to stay in place, holding myself together. Now, I just think about it every other day and feel uneasy for hours.
This wasn’t what I wanted to be made of.
My brain longed to be housed in something solid, something with screws and hinges and reinforcements, good joints, welding. But then, my brain itself isn’t solid. If I wanted, I could squeeze it through my fingers. The only thing stopping me is that I‘d still need it to give the message to my hand. And the rest of me isn‘t much better. I’m just a bunch of tubes and grease sticky film, held together with its own moisture, ready to collapse. In the shower, I touch my spine and pretend the tips of the bones are bolts, twisted tight and fastening me in my sturdy casing. It makes me feel better, for about a minute. Only a minute, because I know it isn’t true. The truth is, aside from the brain, the casing is the weakest part. I’d just managed to dig through it with my bare hands. Even bone isn’t infallible. Just as I dug through my skin, that other person, whoever they were, dug through their skull, fingertips buried in the semisolid brain. If they could do it, I could do it. We’re all the same. What I’m seeing in front of me is also inside of me. As above, so below. The heart, glistening wetly under the flashlight, leaps. So does mine. We’re all the same on the inside. The doctor cuts out the liver, sits it on ice. It looks neat and tidy, a real component part. Like a fuel filter still in the box. Not a dark wedge of slime. I calm down.
I exhale. The doctor pauses.
“Shit. We can’t use the kidneys.”
“So what, they’re like, dead?”
The doctor looked at me like that was the stupidest thing anyone had ever said to him. Well, hey, I don’t know this crap! To me, it sounded plausible enough. I mean, kidneys “fail,” and I wasn’t sure what else that could mean in context.
“…Horseshoe kidney. See for yourself.”
I didn’t know what the fuck that was. And I really should have learned my lesson by now:
If it’s part of the human body, and I’ve never heard of it before, I shouldn’t look.
I look anyway. And I understand why he said “kidney,” singular. Well, mostly. Actually, it did still look like there were two kidneys, starting to melt together. I swore I felt something shift down in my guts, different parts of me colliding and merging like the contents of some hellish meat lava lamp. I felt like I was going to throw up. And, when I did, all those half-fused parts of me would fly out, veiny and twitching, unrecognizable. I swallow, stuff it all back down.
“So, okay… How did that happen?”
The doctor was working on uprooting the lungs.
“Well, it didn’t happen, exactly. It was always like that. We’re probably the first to know, actually. Most people go through their whole lives without finding out.”
“So, I could…”
He shrugged, placed the lungs in their compartment, then leaned back over the open cavity.
“It’s possible.”
God, I just wanted to go home. Go home, and never think about this again. If I finally went to sleep, maybe I’d think this was all a dream. It seemed like the kind of dream I’d have, anyway. And a dream that would really bother me, at that. So, honestly, what was even the damn difference? At this point, dreams are starting to make more sense. The world is in chaos. The body, just as I’ve always known, is untrustworthy.
Before we leave, the doctor carves out the heart. A river of blood gushes from the largest of the big tubes, flooding the empty basin of the ribcage, saturating the melting kidneys and everything else. Another day’s work done.
Normal, for what had become my normal.
*****
An hour later and miles away, having dug through to the other side, where nothing will ever be the same, I’m slouched in a booth at a diner I‘d never been to before, trying to force myself to eat.
The lights are bright, my hair is dirty, my mouth is dry, my hands are cold. I take off my glasses, screw my fists into my eye sockets, and hold that position for a few minutes, propping up my heavy head. My brain, liquid, lists to the front of my skull. I bolt upright, shake my head, and look back to the window. Without my glasses, the whole world looks like a flat, dark gradient, black running into blue. I put the glasses back on, stare at the blue light radiating up from the ground. The sun is coming. Reality will fall back into line. All I have to do is wait. I have to endure. Right here and now, behind the elastic membrane of the window, everything is shifting and falling in on itself. My guts are caving in and contorting, bits of me colliding and combining. The coffee cup is almost organically warm, the liquid dark and glistening as a fresh liver, leaving rings the color of old blood. My sleeve is sticking to my mangled arm. My body, oozing into and incorporating everything it touches. I dislodge the fabric and it hurts, like I’ve torn off a part of myself. I want to keep tearing, drive my hands in and dig until there isn’t anything left, until I can see the other side of the room through the gap between the bones, then get to work on the rest of me. Tear it all down before it can fall apart on its own accord.
Exhausted, I lay my head back down on the cool table, close my eyes against the lights.
An image surfaces in my mind, my reflection in foil, blue-grey and warped, fuzzing at the edges, crumpling in on itself, muted square of television light flickering in the background. He’s just myself in my head, the me only I can know about. That structureless being who no one else can see, right under a skin that it longs to fight its way out of.
Slowly, I get back up. I sit under the fluorescents; I watch myself flicker.
I finish my sandwich. I swallow and chew.
I endure.
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"People underestimate me because they can never anticipate what a fuckhead I am." --> I admit it, I laughed.
I love the sort of rabid sicc'd dog feeling the fight had to it. I honestly can't help but like the guy.
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And thank you! I think Spenser is like, right in the middle of a) completely detached from reality at times, b) desensitized, and c) just having kind of a jocular, takes-nothing-seriously personality to start with. So I'm always trying to convey that, and I feel like showing how he reacts to violence (or just strangeness) is a good way to do that.
The fight was some fun writing, I admit! And even though Spenser is kind of... Well, how he is... I've actually been getting a lot of comments along those lines. I guess there's just something likable about him? Which is weird, because even though I personally think he is due to my own character preferences, I don't really try to write him as likable. And even aside from him being pretty violent, I actually write him as more obnoxious than anything else. But, hey, I like him, and I'm glad a few other people do. :)
Thanks for reading! :D
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Who the heck fuckin’ shoed the Jersey Devil!? I love how this part came out and DAMNIT NOW I WANT TO KNOW.
I really like the counterpoint of Spenser thinking of his insides v. the description of the diner.
Zipping up my skin over my itchy new sweater. EEE *LOVES*.
I may have blood on my hands, but at least about half of it is my own. *ROLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLS*
Matter is neither created nor destroyed. Honestly, it’s less monstrous than it is futile. Like reorganizing drawers without throwing anything away. Yessss. Thisssss.
The way you describe the kill makes my toesies wiggle. Especially that jot of not wanting to lick the battery. That just made it even with the blood and starlight.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH the kidney! I finally got to see it in all of it's glory!
AND IT IS GLORIOUS
AND THANK YOU
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THAT... Is either based on an actual coffee-addled conversation I had with Brian in a Denny's, or inspired one because I was talking about writing it. I DON'T KNOW, IT ALL HAPPENED WITHIN THE SPACE OF A DAY.
Thanks a lot, on all those counts! You somehow always identify what I thought were The Fun Parts while I was writing.
(Sorry for the super late reply, I was just busy with writing and stuff for a while and some comments got kicked down to the bottom of my inbox. Madness!)
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...Your reaction to this character is exactly the intended one. Wow!
Thanks for noticing, and thanks for reading!
(And sorry for the late reply, ack!)
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You're good. :D