The gull flopped into the water, squawking noisomely, and I clutched at it. I got a handful of tail feathers, which came off in my fist. Then I fell in, inhaling water, snorting and choking.
I crawled in further. I even tried to swim after it. The bandage came off my stump. I began to go under. I just managed to get back to the beach, shaking with exhaustion, racked with pain, weeping and screaming, cursing the gull. It floated there for a long time, always further and further out. I seem to remember begging it to come back at one point. But when it went out over the reef, I think it was dead.
It isn’t fair.
It took me almost an hour to crawl back around to my camp. I’ve snorted a large amount of heroin, but even so I’m bitterly angry at the gull. If I wasn’t going to get it, why did it have to tease me so? Why didn’t it just fly off?
February 9
I’ve amputated my left foot and have bandaged it with my pants. Strange. All through the operation I was drooling. Drooooling. Just like when I saw the gull. Drooling helplessly. But I made myself wait until after dark. I just counted backward from 100 . . . twenty or thirty times! Ha! Ha!
Then …
I kept telling myself: cold roast beef. Cold roast beef. Cold roast beef.
11 February 11 (?)
Rain the last two days. And high winds. I managed to move some rocks from the central pile, enough to make a hole I could crawl into. Found one small spider. Pinched it between my fingers before he could get away and ate him up. Very nice. Juicy. Thought to myself that the rocks over me might fall and bury me alive. Didn’t care.
Spent the whole storm stoned. Maybe it rained three days instead of two. Or only one. But I think it got dark twice. I love to nod off. No pain or itching then. I know I’m going to survive this. It can’t be a person can go through something like this for nothing.
There was a priest at Holy Family when I was a kid, a little runty guy, and he used to love to talk about hell and mortal sins. He had a real hobbyhorse on them. You can’t get back from a mortal sin, that was his view. I dreamed about him last night, Father Hailley in his black bathrobe, and his whiskey nose, shaking his finger at me and saying, “Shame on you, Richard Pinzetti . . . a mortal sin . . . damt to hell, boy . . . damt to hell …”
I laughed at him. If this place isn’t hell, what is? And the only mortal sin is giving up.
Half of the time I’m delirious; the rest of the time my stumps itch and the dampness makes them ache horribly.
But I won’t give up. I swear. Not for nothing. Not all this for nothing.
February 12
Sun is out again, a beautiful day. I hope they’re freezing their asses off in the neighborhood.
It’s been a good day for me, as good as any day gets on this island. The fever I had while it was storming seems to have dropped. I was weak and shivering when I crawled out of my burrow, but after lying on the hot sand in the sunshine for two or three hours, I began to feel almost human again.
Crawled around to the south side and found several pieces of driftwood cast up by the storm, including several boards from my lifeboat. There was kelp and seaweed on some of the boards. I ate it. Tasted awful. Like eating a vinyl shower curtain. But I felt so much stronger this afternoon.
I pulled the wood up as far as I could so it would dry. I’ve still got a whole tube of waterproof matches. The wood will make a signal fire if someone comes soon. A cooking fire if not. I’m going to snort up now.
February 13
Found a crab. Killed it and roasted it over a small fire. Tonight I could almost believe in God again.
Feb 14
I just noticed this morning that the storm washed away most of the rocks in my HELP sign. But the storm ended . . . three days ago? Have I really been that stoned? I’ll have to watch it, cut down the dosage. What if a ship went by while I was nodding?
I made the letters again, but it took me most of the day and now I’m exhausted. Looked for a crab where I found the other, but nothing. Cut my hands on several of the rocks I used for the sign, but disinfected them promptly with iodine in spite of my weariness. Have to take care of my hands. No matter what.
Feb 15
A gull landed on the tip of the rockpile today. Flew away before I could get in range. I wished it into hell, where it could peck out Father Hailley’s bloodshot little eyes through eternity.
Ha! Ha!
Ha! Ha!
Ha
Feb 17 (?)
Took off my right leg at the knee, but lost a lot of blood. Pain excruciating in spite of heroin. Shock-trauma would have killed a lesser man. Let me answer with a question: how badly does the patient want to survive? How badly does the patient want to live?
Hands trembling. If they are betraying me, I’m through. They have no right to betray me. No right at all. I’ve taken care of them all their lives. Pampered them. They better not. Or they’ll be sorry.
At least I’m not hungry.
One of the boards from the lifeboat had split down the middle. One end came to a point. I used that. I was drooling but I made myself wait. And then I got thinking of . . . oh, barbecues we used to have. That place Will Hammersmith had on Long Island, with a barbecue pit big enough to roast a whole pig in. We’d be sitting on the porch in the dusk with big drinks in our hands, talking about surgical techniques or golf scores or something. And the breeze would pick up and drift the sweet smell of roasting pork over to us. Judas Iscariot, the sweet smell of roasting pork.
Feb?
Took the other leg at the knee. Sleepy all day. “Doctor, was this operation necessary?” Haha. Shaky hands, like an old man. Hate them. Blood under the fingernails. Scabs. Remember that model in med school with the glass belly? I feel like that. Only I don’t want to look. No way no how. I remember Dom used to say that. Waltz up to you on the street corner in his Hiway Outlaws club jacket. You’d say Dom how’d you make out with her? And Dom would say no way no how. Shee. Old Dom. I wish I’d stayed right in the neighborhood. This sucks so bad as Dom would say. haha.
But I understand, you know, that with the proper therapy, and prosthetics, I could be as good as new. I could come back here and tell people, “This. Is where it. Happened.”
Hahaha!
February 23 (?)
Found a dead fish. Rotten and stinking. Ate it anyway. Wanted to puke, wouldn’t let myself. I will survive. So lovely stoned, the sunsets.
February
Don’t dare but have to. But how can I tie off the femoral artery that high up? It’s as big as a fucking turnpike up there.
Must, somehow. I’ve marked across the top of the thigh, the part that is still meaty. I made the mark with this pencil.
I wish I could stop drooling.
Fe
You . . . deserve . . . a break today . . . sooo . . . get up and get away . . . to McDonald’s . . . two all-beef patties . . . special sauce . . . lettuce . . . pickles . . . onions . . . on a . . . sesame seed bun …
Dee . . . deedee . . . dundadee …
Febba
Looked at my face in the water today. Nothing but a skin-covered skull. Am I insane yet? I must be. I’m a monster now, a freak. Nothing left below the groin. Just a freak. A head attached to a torso dragging itself along the sand by the elbows. A crab. A stoned crab. Isn’t that what they call themselves now? Hey man I’m just a poor stoned crab can you spare me a dime.
Hahahaha
They say you are what you eat and if so I HAVEN’T CHANGED A BIT! Dear God shock-trauma shock-trauma THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SHOCK-TRAUMA
HA
Fe/40?
Dreaming about my father. When he was drunk he lost all his English. Not that he had anything worth saying anyway. Fucking dipstick. I was so glad to get out of your house Daddy your fucking greaseball dipstick nothing cipher zilcho zero. I knew I’d made it. I walked away from you, didn’t I? I walked on my hands.
But there’s nothing left for them to cut off. Yesterday I took my earlobes
left hand washes the right don’t let your left hand know what your right hands doing one potato two potato three potato four we got a refrigerator with a store-more door
hahaha.
Who cares, this hand or that, good food good meat good God let’s eat.
lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers
The Body Politic
Clive Barker
Whenever he woke, Charlie George’s hands stood still.
Perhaps he would be feeling too hot under the blankets, and have to throw a couple over to Ellen’s side of the bed. Perhaps he might even get up, still half-asleep, and pad through to the kitchen to pour himself a tumbler of iced apple-juice. Then back to bed: slipping in beside Ellen’s gentle crescent, to let sleep drift over him. They’d wait then; until his eyes had flickered closed and his breathing become regular as clockwork, and they were certain he was sound asleep. Only then, when they knew consciousness was gone, would they dare to begin their secret lives again.
For months now Charlie had been waking up with an uncomfortable ache in his wrists and hands.
“Go and see a doctor,” Ellen would tell him, unsympathetic as ever. “Why won’t you go and see a doctor?”
He hated doctors, that was why. Who in their right minds would trust someone who made a profession out of poking around in sick people?
“I’ve probably been working too hard,” he told himself.
“Some chance,” Ellen muttered.
Surely that was the likeliest explanation? He was a packager by trade; he worked with his hands all day long. They got tired. It was only natural.
“Stop fretting, Charlie,” he told his reflection one morning as he slapped some life into his face, “your hands are fit for anything.”
So, night after night, the routine was the same. It goes like this:
The Georges are asleep, side by side in their marital bed. He on his back, snoring gently; she curled up on his left-hand side. Charlie’s head is propped up on two thick pillows. His jaw is slightly ajar, and beneath the vein-shot veil of his lids his eyes scan some dreamed adventure. Maybe a fire-fighter tonight, perhaps a heroic dash into the heart of some burning brothel. He dreams contentedly, sometimes frowning, sometimes smirking.
There is a movement under the sheet. Slowly, cautiously it seems, Charlie’s hands creep up out of the warmth of the bed and into the open air. Their index fingers weave like nailed heads as they meet on his undulating abdomen. They clasp each other in greeting, like comrades-in-arms. In his sleep Charlie moans. The brothel has collapsed on him. The hands flatten themselves instantly, pretending innocence. After a moment, once the even rhythm of his breathing has resumed, they begin their debate in earnest.
A casual observer, sitting at the bottom of the Georges’ bed, might take this exchange as a sign of some mental disorder in Charlie. The way his hands twitch and pluck at each other, stroking each other now, now seeming to fight. But there’s clearly some code or sequence in their movement, however spasmodic. One might almost think that the slumbering man was deaf and dumb, and talking in his sleep. But the hands are speaking no recognizable sign-language; nor are they trying to communicate with anyone but each other. This is a clandestine meeting, held purely between Charlie’s hands. There they will stay, through the night, perched on his stomach, plotting against the body politic.
Charlie wasn’t entirely ignorant of the sedition that was simmering at his wrists. There was a fumbling suspicion in him that something in his life was not quite right. Increasingly he had the sense of being cut off from common experience: becoming more and more a spectator to the daily (and nightly) rituals of living, rather than a participator. Take, for example, his love-life.
He had never been a great lover, but neither did he feel he had anything to apologize for. Ellen seemed satisfied with his attentions. But these days he felt dislocated from the act. He would watch his hands travelling over Ellen, touching her with all the intimate skill they knew, and he would view their manoeuvres as if from a great distance, unable to enjoy the sensations of warmth and wetness. Not that his digits were any less agile. Quite the reverse. Ellen had recently taken to kissing his fingers, and telling him how clever they were. Her praise didn’t reassure him one iota. If anything, it made him feel worse, to think that his hands were giving such pleasure when he was feeling nothing.
There were other signs of his instability too. Small, irritating signs. He had become conscious of how his fingers beat out martial rhythms on the boxes he was sealing up at the factory, and the way his hands had taken to breaking pencils, snapping them into tiny pieces before he realized quite what he (they) were doing, leaving shards of wood and graphite scattered across the packing-room floor.
Most embarrassingly, he had found himself holding hands with total strangers. This had happened on three separate occasions. Once in a taxi-rank, and twice in the lift at the factory. It was, he told himself, nothing more than the primitive urge to hold on to another person in a changing world; that was the best explanation he could muster. Whatever the reason, it was damned disconcerting, especially when he found himself surreptitiously holding hands with his own foreman. Worse still, the other man’s hand had grasped Charlie’s in return, and the men had found themselves looking down their arms like two dog-owners watching their unruly pets copulating at the ends of their leashes.
Increasingly, Charlie had taken to peering at the palms of his hands, looking for hair. That was the first sign of madness, his mother had once warned him. Not the hair, the looking.
Now it became a race against time. Debating on his belly at night, his hands knew very well how critical Charlie’s state of mind had become; it could only be a matter of days before his careering imagination alighted on the truth.
So what to do? Risk an early severance, with all the possible consequences; or let Charlie’s instability take its own, unpredictable, course, with the chance of his discovering the plot on his way to madness? The debates became more heated. Left, as ever, was cautious: “What if we’re wrong,” it would rap, “and there’s no life after the body?”
“Then we will never know,” Right would reply.
Left would ponder that problem a moment. Then: “How will we do it, when the time comes?”
It was a vexing question and Left knew it troubled the leader more than any other. “How?” it would ask again, pressing the advantage. “How? How?”
“We’ll find a way,” Right would reply. “As long as it’s a clean cut.”
“Suppose he resists?”
“A man resists with his hands. His hands will be in revolution against him.”
“And which of us will it be?”
“He uses me most effectively,” Right would reply, “so I must wield the weapon. You will go.”
Left would be silent a while then. They had never been apart, all these years. It was not a comfortable thought.
“Later, you can come back for me,” Right would say.
“I will.”
“You must. I am the Messiah. Without me there will be nowhere to go. You must raise an army, then come and fetch me.”
“To the ends of the earth, if necessary.”
“Don’t be sentimental.”
Then they’d embrace, like long-lost brothers, swearing fidelity forever. Ah, such hectic nights, full of the exhilaration of planned rebellion. Even during the day, when they had sworn to stay apart, it was impossible sometimes not to creep together in an idle moment and tap each other. To say:
Soon, soon,
to say:
Again tonight: I’ll meet you on his stomach,
to say:
What will it be like, when the world is ours?
Charlie knew he was close to a nervous breakdown. He found himself glancing down at his hands on occasion, to watch them with their index fingers in the air, like the heads of long-necked beasts, sensing the horizon. He found himself staring at the hands of other people in his paranoia, becoming obsessed with the way h
ands spoke a language of their own, independent of their user’s intentions. The seductive hands of the virgin secretary, the maniacal hands of a killer he saw on the television, protesting his innocence. Hands that betrayed their owners with every gesture, contradicting anger with apology, and love with fury. They seemed to be everywhere, these signs of mutiny. Eventually he knew he had to speak to somebody before he lost his sanity.
He chose Ralph Fry from Accounting: a sober, uninspiring man, whom Charlie trusted. Ralph was very understanding.
“You get these things,” he said. “I got them when Yvonne left me. Terrible nervous fits.”
“What did you do about it?”
“Saw a headshrinker. Name of Jeudwine. You should try some therapy. You’ll be a changed man.”
Charlie turned the idea over in his mind. “Why not?” he said, after a few revolutions. “Is he expensive?”
“Yes. But he’s good. Got rid of my twitches for me: no trouble. I mean, till I went to him I thought I was your average bod with matrimonial problems. Now look at me,” Fry made an expansive gesture, “I’ve got so many suppressed libidinal urges I don’t know where to start.” He grinned like a loon. “But I’m happy as a sand-boy. Never been happier. Give him a try; he’ll soon tell you what turns you on.”
“The problem isn’t sex,” Charlie told Fry.
“Take it from me,” said Fry, with a knowing smirk. “The problem’s always sex.”
The next day Charlie rang Dr Jeudwine, without telling Ellen, and the shrink’s secretary arranged an initial session. Charlie’s palms sweated so much while he made the telephone call he thought the receiver was going to slide right out of his hand, but when he’d done it he felt better.
Ralph Fry was right: Dr Jeudwine was a good man. He didn’t laugh at any of the little fears Charlie unburdened, quite the contrary: he listened to every word with the greatest concern. It was very reassuring.
The Mammoth Book of Body Horror Page 21