The Task
At the sight of Patrick's body, Kevin's heart was gripped with grief. No, he thought. I must maintain my composure until my task is complete. Kevin paused a moment to collect himself. Finally, he was ready.
Snapping latex gloves onto his hands, Kevin somberly trod to the steel table. Picking up a silver scalpel, he held it up, where it glinted in the light of the bare bulb dangling directly above the center of the table. "So much has been done," he exclaimed, enunciating every word with utmost care. "More, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation!"
With that, Kevin bent down to cut the stitches that held together the corpse's chest from his previous incisions. Kevin then pulled apart the sides of the rib cage like the bascules of a drawbridge, the corpse's sternum having been delicately sawed in half. Inside Patrick's chest cavity, a collection of electrical wires intertwined with the blood vessels and sinews, the result of Kevin's three years of labor. Several of the wires originated at either of two points on opposite sides of the heart, corresponding to the places where the two pads of a defibrillator are placed. From there, the wires branched throughout Patrick's body, down his arms and legs to the tips of his fingers and toes. Scars all along his body verified their presence. However, Kevin's greatest task was yet to come: Reinvigorating Patrick's brain. Kevin knew that drowning deprived the brain of oxygen, the real cause of Patrick's death. Cardiac arrest was a secondary effect. His years as a lifeguard had taught him that much. After one final inspection to ensure that the wires were properly secured, Kevin refolded Patrick's rib cage and began to sew up his chest again, delicately lacing the stitches from the corpse's navel to the space between its collarbones.
Now that the corpse's chest had been sewn up, Kevin was ready to start on the spinal cord. But first, he needed coffee. Lots of it. It was going to be a long night.
Doffing the gloves, Kevin cracked open the door of apartment 981, surveying the corridor for signs of human life. Seeing none, he slipped out into the hallway and locked the door behind him. He sprinted down the stairs, out the front door of Washington Heights, and down the street to the coffee/convenience store, not wanting to lose any time that could be directed toward his precious task. He ordered an extra large black coffee with a double shot of espresso from the red blouse-clad cashier, whose stunning looks Kevin was too busy to notice. Upon receiving it, dashed back to room 981 as quickly as he had come.
Kevin gently set the coffee down and locked the door behind him. Turning to face Patrick's body, he was filled with a tingling sensation: he knew the day was drawing near when he would have Patrick back. Taking a sip of the coffee (slightly burnt as usual), he felt his veins surging with caffeine, amplifying the feeling of excitement. Kevin wondered if this is how Patrick would feel once the lifeblood began to flow through his veins again.
But never mind that. He had to get back to work. Kevin gently rotated the corpse so that it lay flat on its chest. Having once again donned a pair of gloves, Kevin cut two slits in Patrick's back, one on either side of the spinal cord. He then began to dexterously thread a wire through Patrick's vertebrae, starting near the pelvis and working his way up toward the base of the skull. It was a long and tedious process. Kevin alternated each vertebra with a sip of coffee.
Several hours passed, and Kevin had only inserted a wire on one side of the spinal cord. He would have to save the other side for the next night. Taking some surgical tape that he had pilfered from the free clinic down the street, he temporarily closed the incisions. Peeling off the gloves, he turned to the door. At the door, he paused to steal one last glance at Patrick for the night and to whisper, "Good night." Then, a glistening tear rolling down his cheek, he slipped into the hallway.
Walking through the corridor to his apartment next door, Kevin was brought back to reality by a faint whimpering. He froze. Maria was sitting in front of her door, sobbing. Kevin panicked. No one was allowed to know that he had been in apartment 981. No one. No one should have the opportunity to come close to suspecting that he was up to something. Kevin hoped that she was too caught up in her tears to notice that the apartment he had come from was not his own. He sat down beside her and waited for her crying to subside.
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I leaned haphazardly across the sidewalk so that I could reach the door of the bakery. As I knocked urgently, the glass panes in the window rattled and shook. My umbrella was out of my purse this time, attempting to shield me from the torential rains that were currently falling from the sky. The water flowing into a nearby drain was up to my ankles as I stood on the edge of the road, avoiding the dreaded sidewalks. Some things just had to be given up for safety. However, I didn't like how my feet felt as they squished around in my soggy shoes. It reminded me of stepping on slugs in the summer, of stepping on slug after slug after slug after slug. Squishy slugs. Juicy slugs. I shuddered.
A man, the baker, came to the door and opened it. He stood in the doorway for a moment, eyeing me as I stood in the pouring rain before stepping aside. I hurried inside, quickly hopping from the street to the doorstep and into the relative safety of the bakery. The rain followed me, making a puddle on the floor and dripping down the window panes. The man stared at me, seeming perpetually angry. I felt awkward as I realized that he was taking in my darker skin, assuming immediately that I was an immigrant, or worse. "I'm here for the job," I said, skipping all pleasantries, not that he seemed the kind of person accustomed to such niceties. He continued to stare, so I glanced around the little room. It was relatively clean except for a powdering of flour, but what bothered me most, and immediately, was the lack of organization. The loaves of bread were crooked in their racks and the counter had fingerprints all over it. I itched to pull out my hand sanitizer and remove them. I stepped sideways towards the counter while saying, "I saw your sign." I took another step towards those annoying smudges.
"Do you have any German in you?" he asked.
He himself was obviously so, tall, blond, blue eyes. Very Aryan. I shrugged. "Sure, can I have the job?" He didn't answer, so I spoke again. "Your sign fell while I was outside but I didn't pick it up." He continued to glare in my general direction, but I prefered to think that that was his normal expression as opposed to a response to me.
"Damn commies," he muttered.
Not that he would understand, but I felt the need to explain why I hadn't picked up the sign, so I continued, "Your sign was on the sidewalk. I don't like sidewalks." He didn't seem to be listening, so I turned around, took out my hand sanitizer, and began to clean the counter with a spare napkin I had. The fingerprints began to disappear nicely as I worked. I had cleaned my own mirror the same way just this morning. The whole apartment was old and dingy, but at least now the mirror was shiny, well, shiny-er at least.
"Yes, you get the job," he said suddenly. "You start today. There's an apron on the hook behind the counter. I make the dough, you bake it, you sell it, yes?" He waited for me to nod, then turned around and stomped into the back room and out of sight. I stared after him, just another weird fanatic in this crazy upside-down town. I wondered how it was possible for so many oddities to end up in the same place.
I stepped behind the slightly cleaner counter and put on the apron I'd been assigned. I ran my hands down the rough fabric, brushing off the flour, but my hands didn't slide smoothly at all. They were sticky. It was sticky. My breathing began to quicken and I looked around in fright. "I hate sticky," I said aloud, trying to contain myself. I took a deep breath and leaned up against the counter. "Calm down, Maria, you really can't freak out now." The counter was sticky. I looked around and saw the cash register was sticky, the floor was sticky, the walls were sticky. Everything was sticky.
I looked around me hurredly for the freezer. The sticky was beginning to overwhelm me, and I needed that freezer. I stumbled into the back room and spun around, searching. "There," I muttered, as I ran towards it. My fingers were sticky and stuck together. To be sticky forever. Stuck together, no fingers, no toes, no arms, no legs, no eyes, no mouth. Killed by the very food that sustained me. Sticky bread! "Sticky, everything is sticky, sticky," I murmered over and over again. I wrenched the freezer door open and plunged my hands into the icebox, pulling back with a handfull of frozen cubes. I leaned against the wall and cupped the icecubes in my fingers, concentrating on how cold they were.
"Cold, cold, cold, cold," I repeated to myself slowly. "Cold and not sticky. Cold and concentrating, cold and breathing, cold and steady, cold and calm." I stood there until the ice had melted in my hands and created yet another puddle on the floor. I sighed. Just another diverted crisis.
Just then the bell on the door jingled as someone entered the bakery. I hurried out to greet the young woman who smiled at me so happy and carefree. She told me that she adored me long luxurious hair, bought a loaf of white bread, commented on how absolutely fresh it seemed, smiled brightly at me once more, and departed. She was soon followed by Kevin, who slipped in asking for a croissant, then a blueberry muffin, then a plain bagel as I denied each of his requests for a lack of anything but bread in the bakery. He smiled his quiet smile as I handed him his slightly stale bagel.
As he walked out of the bakery, wrapping himself in an oversized raincoat, I wondered why such a dark and dreary day suddenly seemed a little bit brighter.
Water dripped from the 13th floor's fire escape onto Clio's head. Droplets rolled down the side of her face as she stared down through the metal at the street below her. As she watched, a young man stuck his head out of a window only a few floors below her. He quinted up at her through the rain; he looked tired. Without even waving, he puled his head back inside his window and shut it. She wasn't sure what his name was. This didn't surprise her. She wasn't actually sure what many of her neighbors were called. They all seemed a bit strange and poor. The only person in her building she associated with was her brother, and he even seemed a bit too much like these people for her taste. She would probably look must saner if she had something to be smoking while sitting out here. It would give her a reason to be sitting in the rain; people understood that smoking inside would make one's apartment smell. Or perhaps just an umbrella would do. Normally at this time of day she would be at work. After the other night, however, she had decided to take a little break from work to catch up on her painting. A gallery had looked at some of her work a few weeks ago and was thinking about having her as part of an exhibit about young artists in the city. The break in had given her the perfect excuse to close down for a week without anyone getting mad at her for falling having to cancel their orders. It was all a lie, of course. Nothing had actually been stolen. The shop had only been ransacked. Everything was torn apart and sifted through, but none of it had taken more than a day to clean up. The police weren't sure why the perpetrator had bothered to break in in the first place. They figured that he or she had probably been interrupted in the middle of the act and had had to leave before taking anything. The thing that had seemed oddest to her, though, was that whoever it was hadn't even touched the cash register, but the contents of her filing cabinet were spread across the shop floor. She dismissed this thought. It was clearly paranoid. The popsicle she was eating tasted like rain. Mm, blue raspberry and water... She sucked the last of the ice off of the wooden stick and dropped it straight down through the metal grille of the fire escape before climbing back into her apartment through the window. She shook water onto her carpet and left wet footprints in the shag fibers as the crossed the room to check on the drying status of her painting.
The End Begins
Victoria on the scarred hardwood floor of apartment 27 surveys the day's catch -- three chipmunks, two sparrows and an enormous black rat. It's not a bad haul.
She needs to get to skinning before the hides stiffen up. She starts with the rat -- slits it open from tail to sternum and commences to wriggling the flabby carcass from its skin. Her movements are mechanically smooth; not a drop of blood strays onto the hardwood.
She is an exceptional rat-skinner, and it's no wonder. She's had so much practice. Rats have infested every city and each wilderness she's ever visited -- they are a wandering taxidermist's mainstay.
And oh, how Victoria has wandered.
. . .
As the cruel wind howled through Chicago's neatly gridded glass-and-steel canyons, Victoria huddled on the bus-stop bench. Hunched over her opossum, shielding him with her body from the gawking, chicly upholstered philistines on the sidewalk, she poured the strong-smelling liquid down his plaster gullet as directed. Then she cupped her hand to her ear and listened.
"You're not far enough gone, girl," came the faint, rasping reply. "Not near far enough gone, but must keep running. Run, run to the ends of the earth, for the thing you seek waits there."
She sighed at this familiar refrain, then wrapped him up and put him back in her bag. She heard the equally familiar hiss of the bus's breaks and lurched to her feet. Must keep running.
In the woods along the northern Pacific coast, she paused again to consult her oracle, hoping that he did not instruct her to clamber down to the shore and strike out for Japan. She set him down on the damp pine needles, plied him with his favorite drink and waited for her answer.
He seemed to sniff the air with his pink-painted nose before finally croaking, "You need to turn around."
"Could have told me that before I started walking," she muttered as she dutifully put him away and started back towards Seattle.
Victoria tarried a while in Phoenix -- it seemed a reasonably likely candidate for the glorious title "ends of the earth." She waited to confer with the opossum on that point, however, being well aware of the tremendous regional market for jackelopes. When she finally allowed her marsupial helpmeet a drink, he shrieked at her, "Time is running out! Go now, go now -- that man in the blue pick-up is heading for the place where you should already be!"
And so it was that several days later, Victoria found herself in Baltimore. She caught the bus that the oppossum recommended, and sure enough noted a sign reading "Think twice" as the bus turned onto a street off of which there was no exit back onto the highway.
"The ends of the earth."
Victoria stepped off of the bus, and a tall, uncompromising box of a brick building met her gaze. "It'll do," she announced to no one particularly.
. . .
Victoria tans the rat's hide with lighning speed, having already mixed her plaster. She's something of a virtuoso -- most taxidermists need months to complete a single specimen, but Victoria has almost halfway finished her task some 20 minutes into the work.
Grandmother taught her well.
"Although what she saddled me with you for is anyone's guess," Victoria remarks to the vulture. She brought him back up to her apartment after closing the stand -- she doesn't like the way that drunken would-be gambler looks at him. "Your furred counterpart may occasionally change his mind about things, but at least he attempts to fill his allotted role."
Silence.
No surprise there. He had kept his beak shut similarly tight when that malicious Chicagoan child had very nearly pushed her into Lake Michigan's frigid maw. And when she had been almost brained by a falling tree branch in the north woods. And as she had narrowly avoided a rattlesnake in Phoenix (she made the reptile rue the day, but still). The vulture hadn't even warned her about the blue pick-up driver, whose intent had proved vicious even if his execution was lacking.
"Useless," Victoria grumbles as she commences to modeling the rat's skinned carcass.
Only to nearly jump out of her own skin when the vulture lets loose a blood-curdling screech.
. . .
And so into the dully dripping night Victoria runs. Past the cat lady who was always throwing her dirty looks, past the young man out fetching coffee. There was that scream, and then, through the window, something . . . she didn't know what. But it was why she was here, whatever it was. And it was headed for her empty lot.
She sees something now, a big, dark shape that stinks of fish, spoiled vegetable matter and some other element that she doesn't recognize. For all its enormity, the thing moves with an odd delicacy. She sees a hand, a mouth. A hand going to a mouth -- it's eating, after the fashion of an aged lady picking at her salad. Then she steps closer and sees.
It's a raccoon the size of a city bus.
And it's eating . . . what is it eating? Victoria squints. Her eyes must be playing tricks on her -- she has the impression of a little black rip in the fabric of existence, a tiny patch of void which widens with the beast's nibbling.
And then it looks at her, and she could swear that it grins a ghastly grin, that its dead white eyes gleam with recognition.
"What are you?" she whispers, and its grin widens.
"I am the end."
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