Blood & Gristle

by Michael Louis Calvillo

  BLOOD & GRISTLE

  By Michael Louis Calvillo

  A Bad Moon Books Digital Production

  Bad Moon Digital is distributed by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition © 2011 Michael Louis Calvillo

  Copy-edited by Paulo Monteiro

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  BLOOD & GRISTLE

  “What a writer wants to do is not what he does.”

  —Jorge Luis Borges

  Contents

  Head Two

  Chekov’s Children

  The Box

  The Current

  Brimming Nobility

  Evolutionary Principles

  Gell-Us-See

  Armor

  Consumed

  The Girl with No Hands

  Spirals (Undead Design)

  Zoo Etiquette

  Hollow Meat

  Walls of Glass

  The Velvet God

  The Placebo Effect

  The Pathology of Human Sound

  The Shape of Things to Come

  Forever and a Day

  Blood & Gristle

  HEAD TWO

  At bedtime Mama shouts, “Disassemble!”

  It is like this every night, but my two brothers, Pop, the oldest, and Lodge, the youngest, still insist upon complaining. They rage and whine and throw futile fits, but Mama doesn’t even hear them anymore. She just sighs and stands in the center of the room, box in hand, waiting with an air of impatiency for the fussing to wane. I used to gripe too, but have since realized that what Mama says, goes.

  I look at her as I begin to break things down and wonder if she is smiling in her dominance or frowning at her two boys and their futile protests. It’s impossible to tell. Every night, just before bedtime, she puts on her blue head, the one with the plain, circle eyes and the blank, austere line for a mouth.

  She goes to Pop’s bed first. Begrudgingly, he grunts and groans, hems and haws, and then throws his head and legs into the box. Mama grabs his arms and then makes her way across the room to the bunk bed I share with Lodge. From the bottom, Lodge grumbles and begs for a little more time, but Mama just waits until he talks himself out. Defeated, he moans and then gives up the goods. Up above, I give Mama a goodnight smile and then do the same.

  Mama sets the box down in the center of the room, turns out the light and then leaves, trailing, “Goodnight, my little ones.”

  In the dark, the three of us fight sleep tooth and nail. I think about math and focus upon counting the stars I pretend to see through the ceiling while Pop tries to scare us with a lame ghost story. I’m not listening, but the story seems to work on Lodge. He whimpers and threatens to tell Mama, and then Pop laughs and dares him to do it, but before any action is taken, the counting, scaring, and crying, all swirl together and fade away beneath the slow-fast ebb of creeping exhaustion. Dreams ride fatigue, lumbering through our brains, savaging cognition, and one by one we are pulled down. There’s know way to be certain, my scratchy snores intermingling with Pop’s intermittent wheeze merging with Lodge’s cute-as-a-button sleep whistle, but I like to think that I am the last to go under.

  I dream of a gargantuan heart – red and pulsing and washing away the world. I climb the glowing organ and lord over my dreamscape only to see Pop and Lodge standing upon a bigger, brighter, redder heart throbbing in the distant distance.

  In the morning, the dawning sun usually wakes me with its golden kiss. I have always been extremely light sensitive, sometimes even stirring while the land outside our window teeters between purple and yellow. This has always served me well. It’s important that I get up first. But, this morning, I am startled awake by sound. I toss and turn and bat back the fog of semi-consciousness only to notice Pop scraping along the floor towards the box.

  In a pani
c I’m wide awake!

  I lunge from my bunk, but land a few feet short.

  Pop beats me.

  This rarely, rarely, rarely happens and I am live-wire livid.

  “Unfair!” I screech.

  Pop laughs as he works his way into the good head. Head Numero Uno.

  We kids rate the appendages, their condition. I always get first pick, so I always get Head Numero Uno. I get up first; I’m entitled. Pop generally gets second choice and doesn’t seem to care; Lodge always gets whatever’s left over.

  Not today.

  Today, Pop taunts me with his two, even set eyes, his perfect, symmetrical nose, his full lips and glossy, dark hair. Smiling, he dons the strong, proportionate arms and the smooth, long, ten-toed legs. With a small snort of triumphant glee he hurries out of the room.

  Lackluster, slow, I assume my place within the second, beat-up, lumpy head. One eye swells shut, the nose juts largely and the lips are pencil thin. The hair? Forget the hair; forget that oily patchwork of mismatched fur. The second ranking arms are uneven, missing pinkies. The legs are bowed with oversized, crooked feet.

  Hobbling out of the room I find a bit of solace scoffing at little Lodge. Poor, sweet Lodge, greedily sleeping away his opportunity at choice, doomed to spend yet another day in tatters.

  At breakfast, Mama wears her pink head with the big, white smile. Lodge is the last to the table and the moment he sits down he starts to cry. Normally he doesn’t mind package number three, but Pop’s victory makes him jealous.

  I don’t feel pity.

  I feel like laughing.

  I feel like mocking him.

  Pop however, seems moved by the little guy’s tears. He trades one of his good, five-fingered arms for one of Lodge’s disproportionate, mangled ones. Warmth passes between them. Lodge smiles. Suddenly, I feel awful as heat mists and tears begin fighting their way through the swollen skin of my bad eye.

  CHEKOV’S CHILDREN

  Mixing sugar into her coffee, Ivana gets lost within the dark, swirling whirlpool. The stirrer goes round and round and the liquid becomes an endless funnel; the Styrofoam cup appears to disappear. She pictures herself falling, steam and heat assisting her descent, down and down, pitching end over end, falling frightened, but free, falling, fearful, but free.

  Frightened, but free.

  It’s Natalie’s turn to talk, so Ivana redirects her attention and focuses upon the heavy-set woman. These meetings are generally the Epitome of Boring, but Natalie’s paranoid stories are always a highpoint.

  This was only Ivana’s third meeting with this particular group (she had yet to talk – unfortunately, tonight was her night), but when Natalie, or Nat, she preferred to be called Nat, opened her mouth her lower lip quivered and the flesh packed around her ample face jiggled and her frustration poured from her in blubbering swells. This made Ivana smile. She wasn’t a fattist or anything, but funny was funny.

  “Quite frankly, the pills don’t help. They just make me tired and stupid… And I still can’t drive!”

  The moderator, a lanky, sullen faced man with bad skin, reminds Nat that the process is a “slow” and “gradual” one. “These things take time. Lifetimes, even.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. I won’t be better overnight. That’s what my husband keeps telling me over and over. Over and over, while he drives and I stare out the window wondering what it would be like to reach over and grab the steering wheel. What would it be like to just swerve the car into that crowd of people waiting for that bus? I sit there wondering how it would feel to slam the accelerator and crush that traffic cop blowing his whistle, signaling for us to stop.” Nat continues on and on. She digs purple crescents into her palms as she talks and talks.

  “But the pills do work, Natalie. We all wonder these sorts of things. The pills keep us wondering. They keep us from breaking down.” The moderator gets up and walks around the circle of broken compulsives. He puts a hand on Nat’s shoulder and squeezes gently. “We are all here for each other.”

  Nat cries a little, soft, quick, and then nods. “I know.”

  “I know you know.” The moderator gives her shoulder another squeeze and then walks back to his chair at the apex of the group. He takes his seat and gestures at Ivana.

  Ivana blows on her coffee, takes a tiny sip, puts the cup by her feet and nods. “Very well,” she begins. “I’m here because I have OCD just like the rest of you. I don’t scratch and I don’t rip whole sheets of paper into tiny pieces of paper or anything.” She sighs. “Nor do I wish to run anyone down with my car. I’m here because I want to hurt children.”

  The group stares silent.

  Ivana swallows back a rising lump. “I want to kill babies. I… One day, a few weeks after my son was born, I was in the kitchen making dinner. My husband was on his way home from work and I wanted to surprise him. I hadn’t been cooking much lately…” She trails off and then resumes. “Anyway, my little boy was asleep in his crib. Out of nowhere I started feeling strange. These feelings just…gripped me. I pictured myself rushing to Anton’s room, snatching him from his crib and shoving him headfirst into the garbage disposal.

  “That happened about a year ago. Since then it’s been the same for me as the rest of you. The doctors tell me I’m unbalanced, my brain is imbalanced, so I take my meds and feel less alive.”

  The baton is passed and the group spouts off, one awkward story after the next, until eventually the meeting concludes. In the parking lot Ivana notices Nat waiting alone. She walks up and taps her on the shoulder. Their breath comes out thick, animated by the cold. “Horrible, huh?”

  Nat shakes her head and smiles weakly.

  “It’s okay, I know it’s horrible. Child killer. By far the worse. I’d trade spots with the door knob lady in a heartbeat.” Ivana smiles wide.

  Nat’s smile improves.

  “So, you waiting for a ride?

  “Bus.”

  “Your husband–”

  “Working.”

  “Ah. You want a lift?”

  Nat frowns.

  “Us obsessive compulsives gotta stick together, right?” Ivana gestures toward her BMW.

  “Thanks. That’d be great.”

  The two women walk across the parking lot and stop at Ivana’s car. Before they get in Ivana holds her car keys aloft and jingles them at Nat. “Wanna drive?”

  Nat lowers her eyes.

  “You’ll never get better unless you try.”

  Nat clutches the steering wheel, white knuckling it all the way. Her eyes glisten, glued to the dark road speeding beneath them. She talks absently. “The bus ride was such a nightmare. Target after target after target.”

  Ivana empathizes. “I totally understand. After all, the world is filled with small children.”

  The women share a chuckle and wheel down a residential street near a busy park. Kids play soccer and football and basketball. Mirth dries up. Ivana holds her breath and stares at the dashboard. Nat squeezes the steering wheel tighter.

  Coming to a stop beneath a stoplight they find themselves bathed in red. Nat breaks the uneasy silence and thanks Ivana for the chance. “It means a lot.”

  “It’s nothing.” Ivana’s voice sounds far away. She takes a breath and puts a hand on Nat’s shoulder. “Don’t you get sick of fighting it? Don’t you get sick of being sick, sick of being told that you’re sick and there is absolutely nothing you can do but get medicated and live life half aware? Half in, half out. I’m so fucking sick of fighting, you know?”

  Nat nods and grips the steering wheel even tighter.

  Just then a soccer ball rolls out into the middle of the street. A little boy of seven, wispy blonde hair and fat, pink lips, ambles out to claim his lost prize. Clutching the ball close, something compels him to look over his shoulder into the windshield of the car idling at the stoplight. The two women inside are smiling.

  THE BOX

  Thunder shook the house. In the tumult, no one heard the doorbell or the three curt
knocks the delivery man rapt upon the front door. Lightening cut the darkened sky and illuminated the land in a searing flash. Timmy caught a glimpse of the delivery man’s outline while crossing the front entryway in search of a highly caffeinated soda. He was addicted to the energy and wanted more, more, more. By the time he got to the kitchen, grabbed a Mega Dew Power Gulp, and then returned to the door to open it, the courier was gone. In his place sat a box.

  Timmy leaned out of the front door. It was cold, colder than it had been in months (years?) and he was barefoot, in sweats and a thin t-shirt, and he shivered in time with the icy air that infiltrated the front hall when he opened the door. He leaned out a little further and squinted into the wintery gloom.

  It was sunny yesterday and this morning. But now? Now, he could barely see the ancient elms hulking on their front lawn. He caught the briefest glimpse of the courier’s silhouette, a black shadow carved into the blacker storm dark, before it disappeared all together into the dense gloom.

  Timmy contemplated the box. It was about twelve inches by twelve inches, wrapped in plain, brown butcher paper. Rain pittered and pattered just beyond the foyer and the occasional rogue drop darkened the beige wrapping to a deep brown, riddling the box with wet spatters. Timmy immediately thought of the latest and greatest video game, GOREHOUND, some violent orgy of big guns, endless bad guys and the most realistic grue this side of a snuff film. Like in the game, too many bullet holes meant death, so Timmy figured he better retrieve the box before the rain ruined whatever it contained.

  As he was barefoot, and it was cold and rainy, Timmy merely leaned and down and tried to secure the box with a hooked arm, but it was way too heavy to get a handle on. He sighed, put his Mega Dew down on the hardwood entry floor, and then leaned into the frigid cold, wrapped both hands around the package and heaved.