by John Everson
“She could never get enough,” he said. “That’s why she came to me. There wasn’t anything that could satisfy her.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver vibrator.
“Still, I try for her,” he whispered. A low hum filled the room and I turned away.
“Why do you want to die?” he asked.
“I just can’t stand to live anymore,” I answered. In my mind I was picturing Caitlin’s frozen look of surprise as she fell backwards from the landing. I’d been violently angry, we’d been punching and screaming at each other, but I’d never meant to kill her.
“Certainly that will pass,” Arthur murmured.
“No.” I said, equally quiet. “It certainly will not.”
“Why not take your own life, if you cannot stand it so much?”
My hands grew damp instantly at the suggestion. I thought of the thin blade jutting crookedly from Caitlin’s side, and the amazing spray of blood. In the heat of the moment, after she’d kicked me in the thigh, I had grabbed the steak knife off the counter to force her to back off. But she was already in motion, and the knife slid into the new scabbard of her flesh with almost no resistance. She might have survived the wound if she hadn’t jerked away and stumbled backwards over the low banister. I could still hear her neck snap when she hit the tile foyer below.
“I just… can’t.”
Benny Goodman had ended; the needle was rubbing against the record label in a comforting, rhythmic fuzz. The humming abruptly stopped, and Arthur turned off the Victrola.
“Come with me,” he said, and we left the dollhouse behind.
He took me to a long steel table on the other side of the basement and switched on a fluorescent ceiling lamp.
“Take off your clothes and lie down.”
My stomach twisted at the thought of getting naked in front of this man, but I chided myself once more. It’s like dropping your pants for the physical, I thought. And it certainly didn’t matter at this point.
“How will you do it?” I asked, stepping out of my jeans.
Arthur pulled a machine out from a cabinet. It resembled the one in the dollhouse.
“Well, we need to drain your blood, but we don’t want anything to clot up and sink, do we? We also don’t want any unsightly gashes to mar the body. So, I’ll just pop this IV tube into your arm like so…”
I winced as the needle pricked into my skin.
He nodded. “It will be uncomfortable at first, but soon you’ll just get sleepy. Don’t fight it.”
Holding the end of the tube shut with his thumb, he walked over to a sink behind me. I heard something flop inside, and felt a tugging sensation as my blood started to gush through the tube.
He’s funneling away my life, I thought, somewhat incredulously, but with relief, not fear. Soon it would be over. The nightmare, ended. If they found Caitlin, they would certainly not find me. Who would think to look in a taxidermist’s basement?
“Now after we get rid of most of this blood, I’ll be flushing you with this solution,” Arthur said, dragging the machine around to my unencumbered arm.
I was starting to feel uncomfortable and cold. I could hear my heart pumping. It seemed to be getting louder. Struggling maybe, to keep up the pressure. Good luck, I thought, and smiled.
“Will you miss anything?” He seemed to be talking from very far away.
“Rachmaninoff,” I mumbled. “I’ll miss playing Rachmaninoff.”
“You are a pianist?” he asked, leaning over the table to stare into my eyes.
“Uh huh. Could’ve been… uh… concert class. But… Caitlin… Uh, needed money, not music.”
I giggled.
Now she didn’t need either. And neither would I in a few more seconds.
“We both… lose,” I said.
Arthur’s face looked pained. “She may come back, you know.”
I had told him upstairs that my wife had simply disappeared one day. “No, she won’t,” I gasped.
The room was getting hard to see, and my legs started thrashing.
Arthur clipped a belt across my legs, and then cinched down both of my arms to the table. “I think it’s time,” he said.
I felt the needle enter my other arm. The pump kicked on and I was blinded with cold. It shot up my arm like a white hot icicle. My fists were clenching, pounding the table. My head rocked from side to side as the bitter stream raced through my body. I could feel it travel. Inch by inch, my body was tingling with its touch.
I closed my eyes and silently said goodbye. At last.
So you can imagine my surprise when it dawned on me that I could hear Rachmaninoff playing. It was scratchy, but without a doubt the glorious allegro to his Symphony #2 in C minor. Was there really life after death, I wondered?
But I still felt frozen. Could Dante have been correct? Did I really warrant the ninth circle?
“Good morning everyone.”
It was the gentle voice of Arthur! Certainly Arthur was not the devil. Devil’s advocate, maybe.
Somewhere a pump accelerated in pitch.
How. How could I be hearing this? I’m dead!!! I wanted to scream. I mean, I really wanted to scream.
Suddenly the haze in front of my eyes lifted. I was in the dollhouse, sitting on a bench. My hands were poised on the keys of a Steinway baby grand. Arthur was making his rounds.
“I’m so sorry about your lover,” I heard him say. He was running his hands across the chest and pelvis of a skinny blonde kid who looked like a frat boy.
“Does this feel better?”
I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t turn my head, close my eyes, scream – nothing. Except see straight ahead. Arthur stepped towards me. I was like looking at someone through a photographer’s fisheye lens. His face grew grotesquely large and distorted as his lips brushed my forehead. I realized with increasing horror that, while I couldn’t move, I could feel. His kiss left a faint, but noticeable, tingle.
“I hope you like the piano, Richard. I know you can’t play, but perhaps just sitting at it, and hearing Rachmaninoff…” his voice trailed off.
Behind me a low hum started up.
That’s when she walked across my line of vision. A sad looking wisp of a girl, all in black.
“Touch her breast,” I heard him say familiarly. “She likes that.”
“But she’s dead,” the girl answered him. “You killed her.”
She sounded awed.
“I never kill,” he replied firmly.
“I only preserve.”
~*~
HARD HEART
Tricia tugged at the heart on her sleeve. Her face wrinkled in complaint, but after awhile, it came loose, ripping from her arm with a sound like Velcro separated under water. She held the heart with pincer fingers, avoiding its clumsy pulsing attempts to reattach itself.
“Would you take this?” she asked the boy sitting at the other end of the bench from her. “I don’t want it anymore.”
His name was Mark Fisher, and his sleeve was not marred by any such organic accoutrement.
Mark scratched the back of his head. “It’s kind of gross,” he said quietly. “But it’s also kind of cool. Sure, I’ll take it…”
Tricia surrendered the drippy organ to the soft-spoken boy.
She’d seen him sulking around school a lot, and earlier had decided he’d be just the kind of sucker who’d accept the harness of a heart.
Let him, she thought, watching him toy with the steadily throbbing muscle. It climbed up his arm, a centimeter at a time, coming to rest just above the elbow.
She felt a strange hollow pain her chest and throat when a smile crossed Mark’s face. Determined to enjoy her new freedom however, Tricia skipped away, leaving her heart in the hands of the grinning boy.
Tricia thought she’d be ecstatic about getting free of the heart on her sleeve, but the farther she got from the bench where she’d left it, the slower her steps became. It had been a burden, s
he reminded herself – always announcing to people it was there, making it difficult to blend into a crowd, getting her into trouble in school and with her parents because of its compulsions – she was much better off without it. But as she answered the bell to return to class, her face hung listless, her arms dangled limp as muslin drapes in a house with no windows.
“Hey Trish – you wanna come over today after school?” a voice called from down the hall. Sally Ketchal, the most annoying kid in class. Tricia had found excuses for not going home with Sally a hundred times this year, but now she found her mouth dry of words. She shrugged and nodded.
“You will?” Sally squeaked. Tricia winced inside, but said nothing. “Great! We can play Barbies and maybe my sister will make brownies and…” Sally chattered beside her all the way to class, but Tricia didn’t hear a word.
In Tricia’s head, over and over, she listened to the slurping, tearing, horrible sound of the heart leaving her sleeve – and wondered why it had taken her will with it.
Math class seemed to drag on forever. Until something strange happened: Mark Fisher actually raised his hand and answered a question. She couldn’t remember ever hearing him speak in class before. But now, as he did, she saw her heart – now his heart – beat faster in satisfaction.
That night, Tricia tried to remember why she had wanted to give away her heart. From the moment it had left her arm, she’d felt empty – and bad things kept happening to her.
Mrs. Engelbright had called on her in class and she hadn’t been able to spit out the answer. Everyone around her smirked and whispered. Then she’d had to endure the inane prattling of Sally all afternoon because she couldn’t seem to open her mouth and change the subject, say shutup or anything. It was not a problem anyone would have ascribed to her before. And then, to top it off, she’d gotten grounded for being late to dinner. Instead of wheedling her way out of it as usual, she’d glumly accepted her punishment (as her parents passed each other sideways glances of shocked surprise).
Mom had lectured her over and over about not speaking her mind to any and everyone, but Tricia had now come to the conclusion that letting her heart rule her head was tons better than having no heart at all.
Lying in bed with tears dampening her pillow, Tricia decided she had to get back her heart, loud obnoxious ornament that it was. Without it, she felt as free as a lion in a cage.
* * * * *
“Hi Tom!”
Tom Harris looked up from the comics rack in surprise. It was that dweeby quiet kid – Mark. What could he want?
“Have you seen those Anne Rice comics they’ve got about that vampire? They’re really cool.”
“Yeah,” Tom grunted. “I’ve got ’em all.”
“No way!” Mark gushed, oblivious to Tom’s leave-me-alone stare. But Mark’s newfound enthusiasm was infectious, and the Anne Rice series was one of Tom’s favorites. Soon they were interrupting each other in excitement. By the end of the day, they were fast friends.
* * * * *
The following day during lunch recess, it was Mark who found Tricia, sitting silent on the bench outside. Their positions weren’t totally reversed – he was not there to trade away his newfound heart.
“How ya doing?” he asked, with a cheer Tricia remembered once being her own. “Okay,” she replied, but her eyes seemed far away. Trapped inside her ribs a voice was yelling, “I’m horrible, I want to scream, I want to cry and I can’t open my mouth! Please, please help me!”
But she only smiled sadly.
“Are you still glad you gave this to me?” he asked a little guiltily, pointing at the bright blob on his arm. He didn’t want to give it back, but he knew it must be pretty valuable. It was a very forward question for Mark, but he felt good asking it.
Tricia nodded, but Mark noticed the gleam in her eyes. She looked away, but not before he saw the tear tracing a slick path down her cheek.
He wanted to turn and run. His heart skipped a beat. She did want it back. He wanted to shut his mouth and walk away. But he couldn’t hide from what he saw – not with this heart on his sleeve. It seemed to push him at the girl.
Instead of retreating, he sat down next to her.
“You want this back, don’t you?” he said quietly. She shook her head again, but he pressed on. “Without it, you’re just like I was, aren’t you? You can’t say anything, can’t do anything – nobody sees you.”
She looked at him with a funny expression. “Yes,” she said, her voice trembling.
“I don’t ever want to be like that again,” Mark declared, thinking of all the times his face had reddened as he fled in angry impotence from the taunts and jeers of the other kids. Of all the times his parents had stood behind him nudging him forward, forcing him to stand in the middle of groups of people when he only wanted to run and hide. Of all the times he’d heard adults say things that he knew were just flat wrong, but his mouth had remained locked shut.
And then he smiled as a possibility came to him. It risked everything he’d gained in these short twenty-four hours, but if it worked…
“Maybe… Maybe we could share it,” he suggested.
Tricia looked puzzled. Mark slid closer to her on the bench, and then closer still, until their arms touched.
Her eyes widened and she moved away. She huddled in the corner like a trapped possum, pinned in by the armrest at the end of the bench.
“What?” she whispered.
And then Mark mushed his shoulder against hers, and she felt a familiar tug on her arm. Fingers of warmth and energy flowed into her, spreading through her body. She had felt dead, empty. Now she felt alive again. The scared lines vanished from her face and were replaced by a sparkle in her eye. Tricia felt her tongue loosen, her limbs lighten.
With the joy came a shadow of compassion; she didn’t want to sentence this boy to live in the deadly-quiet pit forever.
She saw his face darken, his lips clench, as the heart began tearing away from his arm. She realized what taking back her heart would mean to the boy. She couldn’t do this to him… not even if it meant her own imprisonment. She placed her hand on his skinny chest, closed her eyes and shoved.
* * * * *
When he pushed his shoulder against hers, Mark felt the vibrance and energy draining from his arm. Suddenly, he was afraid.
He didn’t want to give up the heart; he didn’t want to be the cowed, quiet loser that everyone ignored, a boy trapped within himself.
He desperately wanted to pull free of the girl, keep the heart to himself. But he reminded himself that the heart was hers, and if it wanted to go back to her, then he couldn’t keep it prisoner on his own arm. He understood the feeling of being trapped too well, and he saw in her face that the heart was even now keying open Tricia’s inner lock.
Mark felt his tongue tightening and inwardly cried, “No, don’t take away my voice again!”
Then Tricia’s hand was on his body, pushing him backwards, separating their heart-joined arms. With a rush of indrawn air, he felt their connection cut, and the playground spun dizzily before his eyes. He blinked, twice, trying to slow the divebomb attack on his senses.
Mark shook his head to clear the cobwebs and saw Tricia doing the same.
At the same moment, eyes wide, mouths open in surprise, each raised a finger to point at the other’s arm.
There, above each of their elbows, throbbing contentedly, perched a glowing, red, beating heart. They were smaller by far than the single heart the boy and girl had passed between them, but that didn’t matter.
Mark felt his tongue was tighter perhaps than it had been an hour ago, but certainly more free than before he had taken the quivering heart Tricia had offered him yesterday.
Tricia was smiling. Reaching slowly across Mark’s lap, she took his hand. The heart on his arm beat faster. Hers quickened visibly in response.
“Maybe I won’t get in so much trouble now that it’s smaller,” she mused.
“Maybe they’ll grow,” he an
swered, and they stood.
Hand in hand, neither yelling nor sulking, they answered the bell signalling the end of recess.
~*~
FROST
When the fog turned to frost, David’s life, for an eternal second, froze. And then, like an icicle slapped from a gutter to smash onto the whitened asphalt below, David’s life fractured. And reformed in a forever altered pattern.
* * * * *
“Look, Dad,” David tugged at his father’s shirtsleeve. “There are snowflakes on the plane window!”
Merle Currier nodded with disinterest at his son’s discovery of the physical effects of altitude.
“It’s just the humidity on the window that’s turning to ice,” he mumbled, eyes barely leaving his paper. “When we left Dallas, it was hot and muggy. It’s freezing in Minneapolis, so we must be getting close.”
David looked up at his father with a less-than-appreciative eye. “Looks like snowflakes,” he grumbled.
Merle didn’t answer, but instead turned to the next page of the Wall Street Journal.
David began to hum. Tunelessly. In just the way that he knew would get a reaction. It didn’t take long.
A large paw released the edge of the newspaper for a moment and cuffed the boy firmly on the head.
“Cool it, David,” his father growled.
The boy huffed to himself. The whole trip had been like this. For brief moments, his father would condescend to stoop to David’s eight-year-old level and play. But then just as quickly, the older man would disappear into the reams of newsprint that seemed to carpet his bachelor’s apartment, or pick up the phone and speak in clipped, hushed terms to whoever was on the other end. And David was expected to sit still on the couch and watch TV. And not make any noise. Or he’d be going to bed early.
David went to bed early a lot.
Last night was a good case in point. After a quiet (boring) dinner of warm-it-up-in-the-oven-from-a-box chicken and canned beans, father and son had moved into the living room. David toyed with his TW-4 truck, revving and crashing the silver and blue metal cab into the base of the television stand. It made a satisfying thud.