American Nocturne

by Hank Schwaeble

  “Philo… Philo! Listen to me, don’t—”

  Philo pinched a broad section of his shoulder and stabbed the needle into it, thumbing down the plunger. Then he withdrew the needle and retrieved a cotton ball from one of the pockets in his smock. He pressed the cotton against the spot.

  “Before I do this, would you care to admit I’m right?”

  The thudding in Seth’s chest was deafening, and the high anxiety of panic surging from the pit of his stomach had drained him of energy, but Seth‘s mind was surprisingly focused. Racing, but focused. That same grim certainty gripped him. There would be no reasoning with Philo. He was too far gone now, beyond the reach of reason or mercy. It was clear that Philo had given himself no choice. He planned it so there would be no turning back, no option other than to kill him. But the fact he hadn’t yet, the fact Philo had gone through such trouble to set up whatever it was he was planning meant killing Seth was apparently not enough. Seth assumed that meant Philo wanted to break him first, torture him until he begged for forgiveness and admitted his sins and bared his soul all in recognition that Philo had been right. He’d be damned if he’d give the son of a bitch the satisfaction.

  “No. You’re wrong. You can kill me, torture me, do anything you want. You’ll still be wrong.”

  Philo clucked his tongue several times, gave a disapproving shake of his head. “Seth, I’m a scientist, not a murderer. Sacrifices are often made in the quest for knowledge. You sacrificed me, my reputation, my career, in the name of science, didn’t you? Think of this as merely the dispassionate pursuit of truth. There’s no anger here. I don’t want you to feel any unnecessary pain. If I did, I wouldn’t have used the anesthetic.”

  Philo set the syringe down on the table and snapped on a pair of rubber gloves. The gloves were the thin, tight surgical kind. Seth’s vision was restricted, his eyes twisting almost out of there sockets, but he was able to see Philo reach for the scalpel. He also saw Philo pick up the instrument that he had previously thought were scissors, but that he now recognized as a surgical clamp.

  Oh God oh God oh God. Seth’s mind was firing as fast as his pulse. Images were snapping through his mind in rapid succession. Some were of his wife, of the children they were planning to have, and some of his childhood, which meant his father. Fleeting snapshots that summed up chapters of his life flipped into one another. He remembered a rainy night he and his wife had made love on the porch of their house, the day after they had moved in. He remembered getting his Ph.D., and how proud his mother was to call him “Doctor”. He remembered getting into a fistfight in school with a kid who made fun of his father’s illness. And he remembered his father, fighting until the end. Always brave, never showing weakness, always setting the proper example. Seth wondered if he had ever measured up, whether he had it in him.

  Philo moved in close and leaned forward, filling the triangle between Seth’s arm and his body. Seth eyed the scalpel as it flashed past him, unable to turn his head to follow it. The silvery blade pressed against the skin just beneath his shoulder, and everything ceased to exist beyond what Seth could see from the lower corner of his right eye. He felt some pressure but little else as he watched Philo drag the scalpel down, the yellow rubber of Philo’s gloved finger pointed along the top of the blade, Seth’s flesh cleaving in its wake.

  The wound gaped open. Blood pumped out. Philo wasted no time wedging the clamp into the slit, jabbing a rubber-encased finger and thumb along with it, digging and probing, looking off to the side as he groped around for what he wanted, and squeezing the clamp shut when he found it.

  Seth’s arm began to tingle and grew cold. Seth tried to speak, but his throat seized up and he coughed weakly instead. Before he could try again, Philo reached down and picked up the circular saw. It was the heavy-duty, carpenter’s kind. He slid the safety goggles on with his free hand, then reached over and pulled back the blade guard. A quick squeeze of the trigger sent the blade whispering into a spin. It was still spinning when Philo held the trigger down. The saw’s motor jumped to a loud whine. With no apparent hesitation, Philo pressed the spinning blade against Seth’s arm a few inches below the clamp.

  Seth screamed, gasped for air, screamed again. Blood splattered in a pinwheel motion, spraying outward in multiple directions, raining down on his face. The pain seared through him, an insane, singeing pain, a blistering burn, drenched in acid, scraped with sandpaper. He felt the blade tear away his flesh, the steel serrations ripping chunks in a frenzy, hacking at muscle and skin and vein a hundred times a second. The motor dropped in pitch as it met the resistance of the bone. The metal sawed its way through, sending wisps of white, wet smoke curling up. Eventually, Seth’s nose sensed it as well. The aroma of meat on a griddle. The moist, burning smell that rises from the mouth as a dentist’s drill bores a hole in a tooth. Then the pitch of the motor leaped, revving higher, and Seth saw yellow specks of sawdust shooting out with the blood.

  Philo pulled the saw back and disengaged the trigger. He let the blade-guard snap back into place and set the saw on the floor. The blade was spinning freely, in no hurry to stop.

  Seth was having a hard time catching his breath. He saw the grizzled, crimson gap of flesh below his shoulder, a violent gash in the edge of his vision, but he could still feel his arm. It was on fire, screaming at his nerve-endings, but definitely there.

  Maybe Philo was just trying to inflict some pain, he thought, trying still to twist his head for a better look. An urgent conversation was taking place in his head. Maybe Philo changed his mind, said a voice. Maybe after all his blustering he couldn’t go through with it. Yes, he concluded. That must be it. Philo just wanted to make him feel something equivalent to what he felt. Maybe he’d have a deep scar and some nerve damage, but other than that it’ll be good as new. Boy, that was a close one. Maybe—

  Seth became aware that Philo was removing the straps from his arm. He could see him slide the leather from the buckle of one, then the other. Before Seth was able to move it, though, before he could flex it, stretch it, or rotate it, he saw Philo carry it away.

  Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh God oh God…

  This isn’t happening, Seth assured himself. He could still feel his arm, still feel tightness of the strap, still feel the throbbing of his hand where he slammed it against the floor when he fell. His breathing was rapid, shallow, and he felt disoriented, detached from his body. He was freezing and sweating and suddenly very dizzy. Before he lost consciousness, he strained to see his arm – his real arm – out of the corner of his eye, but all he was able to make out was the blood dappled silver of the scissor-clamp protruding from a bright crimson stump.

  * * *

  When Seth woke for the second time, he was aware of nothing beyond his thirst. His mouth felt dry to the point of cracking; the walls of his throat seemed as abrasive as steel wool. He needed water, but was still completely unable to move. His head was throbbing and so was his right arm. He started to drift away again then felt something being pressed between his lips. Circular. Hollow. Small.

  “Drink up, Seth.”

  Seth gagged as he sucked up the water through the straw, trying to swallow as much as he could take in. He coughed, his throat on fire, and he inhaled even more of it. The coughing lasted for several minutes. As soon as he could breathe normally, Philo put the straw in his mouth again.

  “A little more careful this time,” Philo said.

  Seth guzzled the water again, but managed not to choke on it. He was certain he had never before been so thirsty.

  “You lost a lot of blood, Seth. You need to replace your fluids.”

  Seth’s mind tried to orient itself. He recalled Philo driving him from the park, recalled being tied down. His arm – his mind seized on the memory of his arm and a sense of relief flooded over him as he could feel it. A portion of it below his shoulder ached, but he felt the fingers at the end of it, the pulsing pain in his right hand, the reassuring weight of its mass stretched out to the
side. It itched severely, pleading to be scratched. He shifted his eyes as far as they would go so he could see it, tried to roll them further. Something wasn’t right.

  “It’s called ‘phantom limb’ syndrome, Seth. Because your brain is suddenly not receiving any signals from your arm, it is scrambling to fill the void, replaying from memory the signals it thinks it should be getting.”

  Seth blocked out what Philo said, certain it was another mind game. But he still couldn’t see his right arm. Protruding from his shoulder was a large white bandage. The end of it looked like it had been dipped in red paint. It was cinched tight with a thin belt.

  Then Seth remembered seeing Philo carry his arm away, holding it out in front of him like an offering. He remembered how strange it looked. So familiar, yet so alien when seen from another angle like that, separated from his body, no longer a part of him. His heart started to spasm at the thought. He scanned the edges of his vision again and again, but it simply wasn’t there. It seemed like he could feel it, but he couldn’t really make a fist, or pull it toward him.

  Disbelief loosened its grip. His right arm was gone. It wasn’t coming back.

  “But… why?” Seth asked, his voice cracking.

  “Science, Seth. Science.”

  Seth closed his eyes, felt a tear roll down his cheek. “You’re insane.”

  “That’s the best you can do, Seth? Call me names? Seriously, it’s only a matter of time before you see that I’m right.”

  “Well you’re wrong, you sick fuck.”

  “We shall see. Anyway, if you feel like you can keep it down, I have something nutritious for you. You need to keep up your strength.”

  Philo opened a can of a liquid meal-replacement drink and transferred the straw to it, held the straw up to Seth’s mouth. After a few sips, Seth pushed the straw away with his tongue and shut his mouth. It didn’t matter how hungry he was, he wasn’t going to accept false-kindness from his tormentor. He shut his eyes, this time planning to keep them shut until he lost consciousness. Or died. He didn’t much care which.

  “You know, if I really wanted to be cruel, I could tell you a joke that seeing you like this brings to mind. What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs?”

  Seth bit his lower lip. He wished he could make everything go away. Being alive seemed like a distant memory. This was something else.

  “I’ll tell you the punch line when you’re in a better position to appreciate it.” Philo said. “I wouldn’t want to waste a good one.” He patted Seth congenially on the thigh and left the room without saying anything else.

  In his exhausted state, it didn’t take Seth long to fall asleep, but it wasn’t a restful sleep and it didn’t stop his mind from jerking him awake every several minutes in a rush of anxiety. To make matters worse, juvenile jokes about amputees involuntarily began to pop into his head, the way a tongue keeps involuntarily returning to an abscessed tooth.

  What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs being pulled by a motorboat?

  Skip.

  He drifted in an out for two days. Sometimes when he emerged the brightness of daylight shone through the window, other times whatever lay beyond the window seemed submerged in oil, blacker than space. Most of the time that he was awake, he wished he was asleep, and not just because of the pain.

  Philo spent a good portion of the daylight hours, and some of the after-dark ones lecturing Seth on the history of behavioral science, on how genetic theories such as Seth’s were inspired by racism and sexism and class-ism and various other isms Philo peppered throughout his monologue, excoriating Seth about how downright un-American it was not to believe in the founding principle that all men were created equal.

  Once he was finished pointing out the suspect motives behind Seth’s view of human nature, Philo moved on to detailing the seminal work of behaviorists like Pavlov and Skinner, among others, extolling the scientific pedigree of operant conditioning. He followed that with detailed case studies of persons who escaped generational poverty, who overcame stigmas and went on to greatness, or who squandered boundless opportunities despite being born to privilege. The lectures seemed to have been divided into ten or fifteen-minute increments to allow Seth his sleep. Seth tried to shut him out most of the time, sealing off his eyes, trying to ignore what was being said, but Philo persisted, asking questions, varying his tone and volume, and snapping his fingers or clapping his hands if Seth started to drift off too quickly. Seth said nothing the entire time. Philo continued to make his points until he seemed satisfied he had said his piece.

  On the third day, he cut-off Seth’s left arm.

  The procedure was virtually identical, although Philo had clearly learned from the previous experience. The tourniquet was applied much more tightly, the local was administered in numerous places around the shoulder, more towels were kept close by. Seth yelled and shook and unleashed a stream of obscenities, but Philo made the incision, dug his fingers in, applied the clamp, and used the circular saw on him anyway.

  Seth screamed and yelled again and again and again. When he couldn’t scream anymore, he passed out.

  He dreamed about his father. In the dream, Seth tried to embrace him, but couldn’t. His arms tugged at his shoulders uselessly, hanging like dead weight, and wouldn’t lift. His father merely smiled, telling Seth not to worry about it. They were bound by ties much deeper than that, he said.

  Then his father said, “What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs being thrown out the window?

  “Chuck.”

  He dreamed about his wife. She told him she was pregnant, but that the baby had no arms. So they bought some baby arms at a department store. The salesperson was a young girl who complimented them on the choice, but questioned why they hadn’t considered an abortion, since no one would want to be born without arms.

  He dreamed about his mother. Though Seth was a child in the dream, she had the short, silvery hair of advanced age and was cooking breakfast. Every time Seth tried to eat it his mother warned him not to put his elbows on the table. What would your father think? she asked. But Mom, he told her, I don’t have elbows. She informed him that was beside the point. People without arms still needed to have manners. Everyone with any kind of breeding knows that.

  The last dream, the one from which he finally woke, was about nothing in particular that he could tell, a mish-mash of scenes, one merging seamlessly into the next. He was swimming, but not moving, first in the ocean, which somehow at one point was no longer the ocean, but a pool. He climbed out of the pool, and walked down a street until he found his house. Inside the house, he sensed there was no one home. So he headed back to the ocean, thinking in dream-logic that they may be there. But he couldn’t find them, and he still didn‘t move when he swam. Emerging from the water again, he found himself in a classroom. The teacher, who looked like Philo but was someone completely different, was explaining how all knowledge was false unless proven false in which case it was true, and the only truth incapable of being proven false was that there was no truth. Seth objected, opining that science didn’t discover falsehoods. The teacher chastised him for being so hidebound. That was all science was good for, he said. He asked Seth, if science didn’t discover falsehoods, then why couldn’t Seth hold the truth in his hands. Seth answered that he used to be able to. The teacher asked him what to call a guy with no arms and no legs floating in the ocean. Bob, the teacher said. Then the teacher poked him in the mouth with a ruler, slipping it between his lips.

  Before he was fully awake, he started to drink, a straw rather than a ruler in his mouth. It was a warm nutrition shake. Chocolate.

  “You’ve been out for almost two days now. You have to have some nutrients,” Philo said. He pulled the can away when Seth was finished, then opened another and transferred the straw.

  Seth’s head lolled to one side and he realized it was no longer secured to a block. A pillow was stuffed behind it, jammed down to his shoulders. He could move his head freely, even th
ough it was stiff and a pain shot through his neck and upper back when he tried. He looked over to where his left arm should be. A bandaged stump, crimson on the end, was all that was left. And right.

  A voice in his head said, what do you call a guy with no arms and no legs lying in front of a door?

  Matt.

  “Why don’t you just kill me?” Seth said. His voice was weak, and the words seemed to die before they left his throat.

  “Now, Seth, haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? This is about proving something. Persuading you, a man of science, that your tightly-held beliefs are wrong, horribly, perniciously, wrong. I regret that you have to suffer for this to happen, but you’ll recall how I had to suffer when you were trying to prove a point. And suffer dearly, at that.”

  “I didn’t… want—”

  “Yes you did. Or, even worse, you just didn’t care. You didn’t even know me at the time, so that makes it even more malicious.” For a fraction of a second, something flooded across Philo’s face. The totality of his sentiment, compacted into one expression, more intense than anger. But in an instant it was gone and Seth wished it hadn’t left because what replaced it, the matter-of-fact, patiently business-like look Philo had maintained from the beginning, was far more disturbing. “But look, I really don’t hold it against you, personally. I just couldn’t allow you to go on without showing you the error of your views.”

  Philo lifted the straw to Seth’s lips again. Seth tried to resist, but the hunger was too great.

  “I really owe you a debt of gratitude, in a way. In a sense, you were right. Not about my conclusions, but my methods. I was scared to really test my theories, fearful the results would give the wrong impression. I lacked the courage of my convictions, you could say. What I needed was to be truly brave, truly daring. Hitting rock bottom is a wonderful way to gain courage. With little left to lose, I simply set my mind to proving my theory. Not to the general public – it was too late for that. But to myself. And, of course, to you.”