My Eyes Are Nailed But Still I See

by Wilson, David Niall

  “It’s all right here,” Morgan said stiffly. “I need to read the entrails to be certain, of course—it is very clear about that. But she will be coming back soon.”

  Johnson squirmed just a bit, trying to get the edge of the book to flip down to his chin, where it was itching horribly. He managed, at last, to do it without causing his innards to flop out of the Jell-O. But the second he did, Morgan lifted the book to Johnson’s eyes, pressing it so close that it was hard to focus.

  Johnson read. His eyes watered. He blinked and read some more, skin clammy now. One word was clear. He laughed. It was a mistake, but he felt it slipping up through his throat before he could stop it.

  On the shelf, Pig stared down at him. Pig’s mind screamed warnings, curses. His stuffed mouth, stitched tightly shut, said nothing. Morgan did it to him. Every time. Pig screamed silently, and Johnson heard nothing.

  Johnson’s gaze flicked up to the shelf, but the only thing moving was the spider, and the only one speaking was Morgan, and the laughter was bubbling out... shaking Johnson’s form and threatening to spill his intestines, Jell-O and all, onto the floor. Morgan didn’t care. Intestines were intestines—he could read them on the floor.

  Johnson forced more words up through his throat. Two words. Important words.

  “Says ‘chicken’.”

  Morgan looked up, annoyed.

  “Huh?”

  “Book... says ‘chicken’.”

  Morgan stared at him, eyes accusing, blaming the words on Johnson. He glared at the book, concentrating.

  “Damn!” he spat in disgust, slamming the book closed. The gust of air washed over Johnson’s guts and he groaned at the sensation.

  Johnson allowed himself another slight chuckle. Pig did not chuckle with him.

  “What did you think it said, you dumb shit?” Johnson taunted, knowing he was playing with his life, but not caring. His mind was whirling, fever taking over where thought left off, the drugs Morgan kept dosing him with driving soft lumps of fuzz between synapses. In that instant, the only thing he cared about was kicking his illiterate brother where he knew it would hurt.

  “I—” Morgan faltered, wiping away the sweat that had suddenly broken out on his forehead, “I... know what it says, you little fuck.” His resolve had strengthened, now; the moment had passed. “I know it says ‘chicken.’ I know...”

  Morgan’s eyes glazed; his eyebrows bunched up, knitted together over his aquiline nose, eyes boring into his helpless brother’s. “What made you think I didn’t know what it said? Huh?”

  The spider had caught a fly. Pig watched as the insect tried twisting about, fluttering its wings to escape its impending doom.

  No good, Pig thought, and averted his eyes as the spider descended from a jar that contained two floating, ice-blue eyeballs. It’s no good. He’s going to get you...

  “Nothing, Morgan,” Johnson whispered, realizing now that he’d pushed his brother too far. “Nothing. Look, I’m sorry, okay?”

  Morgan opened the leather-bound book in his hands again and looked down at it, his eyes scanning back and forth, reading nothing, understanding nothing.

  Johnson could only wait, his breath held, his heart pounding in his ears.

  The spider had nearly reached its quarry. Said quarry exhibiting only minor attempts at escape now—a twist here, a buzz there, a final flutter, marking its resignation.

  Told ya, Pig thought. Told ya he was gonna get ya.

  Morgan glanced up at where the spider had begun munching on the fly in its trap. His eyes cleared and his face unscrunched itself, smoothing out into a placid, vapid lake of sweating skin. He closed the book again, this time ever-so-gently, put it under his arm, turned abruptly and, without another word, walked clumsily up the stairs.

  “Oh, fuck,” Johnson whispered.

  Oh fuck, is right, Pig piped up. You’ve done it now, dumbass. You know what he’s gonna do, don’tcha? You never learn.

  Johnson couldn’t be bothered to argue with Pig. His heart was pounding, the thoughts in his head spinning out of control, bile rising in his dry gullet. He heard Morgan upstairs, noisily going through the cupboards. Johnson knew what he was looking for.

  The spider had devoured the fly now and was busily making its way across Pig’s back again, laying more eggs. Pig knew the spider was laughing, that if Pig had eyes in the back of his head, he’d see the insect chuckling madly with glee at his predicament.

  Pig felt a little like the fly.

  Johnson had his heart under control, but was still fighting with the urge to vomit, when he heard Morgan coming back down the stairs.

  Morgan carried a box of toothpicks.

  Despite his own predicament, Pig couldn’t help laughing at Johnson’s. It was his own fault, after all. He always pushed Morgan too far, even though he knew about the toothpicks. While Pig tittered to himself, the spider lumbered up the back of Pig’s stuffed head.

  “Morgan, come on, man—” Johnson pleaded, but Morgan shot him a look that caught the words in his throat.

  Johnson swallowed, tasting black bile.

  “You never learn, do you?” Morgan said. “Even though you know about the toothpicks.”

  Pig tittered again.

  The spider settled in for what it knew to be a good show.

  Johnson couldn’t find any words, nor the strength to speak them if he’d had any. All he could do was wait, and concentrate on saving himself the embarrassment of puking all over himself.

  As he fiddled absent-mindedly with the box of toothpicks, Morgan glanced at the framed picture of his mother, set firmly into the flesh of the decomposing, headless torso of his father, propped up in the far corner of the room. The picture frame was embedded in the neck, where the head should have been. Morgan liked it better this way. His father had been such an ugly man; his mother, the antithesis—all curving, delicate, and sensual, with the crispest ice-blue eyes he’d ever seen.

  When Morgan shifted his gaze from the photo to the eyeballs, bobbing about in the glass jar, they seemed to be looking back at him, and he imagined they were hers. He grew hard again.

  Pig knew the way Morgan felt about his mother and had forgiven him a long time ago. She was, after all, a stunningly beautiful woman... Pig felt tears threatening again and tried to concentrate on something else. Anything else.

  The room was so quiet that Pig thought he heard the spider’s eggs hatching in his ears.

  Morgan walked slowly over to the table where his brother lay sweating, his eyes looking anywhere but at the box of toothpicks in Morgan’s hand.

  Morgan stopped in front of the green baggie, pulled a toothpick out of the box and held it up for Johnson to see. He pushed his glasses back up his nose, and pointed the toothpick at his brother.

  “Now lay still and don’t fuss, ya little pussy. It’ll only hurt for a minute. And someone’s gotta teach you what’s what now that mom and dad are gone.”

  Johnson’s eyes bugged in his skull. He watched, unable to do anything but scream in his mind.

  Pig heard those screams and shook his head, chuckling softly.

  Morgan slid his free hand into the opening of the green baggie and gently coiled his hand around a loop of intestine. He moved his hand up and down its length and felt his engorged penis twitch against his belt. He let out a long, slow sigh... and squeezed his brother’s innards.

  Johnson tried to wail, but nothing came out. He simply arched his back and flung his mouth open wide, waiting for sound that never came. Anything, he thought—screams, wails, pleadings, vomit, blood, anything.

  Nothing. Morgan squeezed a little more. He felt the gelatin squishing between his fingers, the soft tissue of the intestine yielding to the pressure, the contents of the tube moving beneath his fingers, creating bulbous lumps to either side of his hand.

  And that’s when he shoved in his other hand abruptly, toothpick at the ready, and popped one of the ballooned sections he’d just created, finally wrenching an ear-piercing scre
am from his little brother. Johnson bucked and stars—hell, whole planetary systems—exploded behind his eyes, little white darts of the sheerest pain that melted his consciousness and mercifully pulled him into the blackness...

  Morgan removed both his hands from the baggie. They were covered in blood, shit, and green Jell-O. He smiled lovingly down at his unconscious brother and, again, pushed his glasses back up on his face. When he brought his index finger past his nose, he caught a whiff of what was smeared all over his hands. It set his mood sour once again, as if a tiny bit of what he’d just done to his only brother had actually registered in his mind.

  Wiping his hands on his shirt, he sat down in the chair beside the metal table.

  And waited for Johnson to wake up.

  • • •

  Pig and the spider had both gone to sleep once the show was over. They’d both seen it plenty of times and there was nothing really new about this performance. A little more shit and body fluids spurted from the baggie, but other than that...

  Besides, Pig was always tired these days. Sometimes he wished the boys’ mother would just come home. Just to see what would change. Just to see if he was real or not.

  When Johnson finally came to, it was with a spastic twitch and a painful jerk. Morgan had decided not to wait till his brother was awake to sew him back up, but was having some pity on him and had started when he was still out cold. Father would not have been so understanding, and the thought of being better than Father was a good one. Morgan thought that Johnson should at least appreciate that.

  Johnson moaned and ghosts of the galaxies he’d seen danced in his mind, superimposed over the backs of his eyes as he opened them to the glare of the light bulb swinging overhead. Soon, the numbing cold reaches of his inner space and time gave way to the reality of the basement... and the white-hot pain of the last stitch going into his ruptured intestine.

  “There,” Morgan said, chipper as can be, as his brother hissed through his teeth and bit his bottom lip, drawing coppery tasting blood, “all fixed.”

  Morgan stowed the mini sewing kit in his front pants pocket and walked toward the stairs.

  Johnson struggled to moisten his mouth.

  “Morgan—” he croaked, licking his parched lips and bracing himself to try again, to try to bring enough air into his lungs, despite the nails still sticking into his ribs.

  Morgan stopped at the bottom of the stairs, his back turned. He hoped his little brother wasn’t going to say something else to get him angry. He didn’t have the time or the energy for a second performance.

  “Morgan, where you going?” Johnson squeaked, his voice so soft it sounded like sheets of paper caught in a light wind, rustling gently.

  Morgan turned slowly, and Johnson thanked whatever gods there were that Pig was asleep, else he’d have most certainly been giggling away by now.

  “What do you mean, where am I going? I’m going to make supper. It’s six o’clock, retard. We always have supper at six o’clock. We always have.”

  Johnson heard his brother’s voice rising in anger already, and he hadn’t even gotten to the thing that he wanted to ask yet.

  “Why?” Morgan continued, sarcastically, “Don’t you want any?”

  “Sure, Morgan... sure I want some, but—” Johnson’s nerves faltered. He’d just endured enough pain to last anyone a lifetime, and here he was gambling again.

  “But what? You afraid I’m not gonna put you back together, is that it? Have I ever let you down, Johnson? Have I?”

  “No... that’s not it, Morgan. Not at all. You always sew me up so I can eat, but...”

  Morgan just waited, glaring at Johnson. After a moment, when his little brother didn’t look like he was going to be able to spit it out—his mouth opening and closing, emitting unintelligible peeping noises-Morgan spun around and stomped up the stairs, feeling unappreciated and bitter.

  Johnson finally spoke when Morgan was almost to the thin, wood door that gave onto the kitchen.

  “It’s Pig,” he said... and waited.

  After a harrowing moment of silence, Johnson heard his brother descend two or three steps into view.

  “What about Pig?” He spat the word out, like it was stringy, half-chewed pork fat.

  “Well, Pig says that... well, that Mom ain’t comin’ back... and, and that even if she does, it ain’t gonna be for me. She’s only comin’ back for you. That’s what he says. Pig. That’s what... Pig said.” Johnson was babbling now, fresh sweat running down his cheeks in rivulets, cutting new paths through the old dirt/sweat sheen.

  “Is that what Pig said?” Morgan finally answered.

  Johnson just waited. Pig stirred in Johnson’s mind, as if awakening to his name.

  “Yeah... that’s what he said.”

  Morgan shot a glance at Pig on the shelf and tilted his head to one side, squinting through the brightness of the intervening light bulb. Then he looked back to Johnson.

  A slow smile spread across his face, lifting first one corner of his mouth, then the other. It was the most sickening thing Johnson had ever seen.

  “But Pig isn’t real, brother,” Morgan said, his voice laden with patronage. “He’s just a stuffed toy with nails in his eyes.” Morgan’s grin widened some more, and he laughed—a snorting little pig’s laugh.

  And in the darkest corner of Johnson’s young mind, Pig laughed along with him.

  Morgan went back upstairs to make supper, leaving Johnson to fall into a fitful sleep, full of spiders, pigs, nails, Jell-O, and expanding galaxies.

  • • •

  Morgan mumbled to himself as he turned up the heat on the stove, placing hot water to boil and reaching up for the last package of noodles and beef. He’d been meaning to get to the store, but things had been strange since Mother left. He knew there was money, or that there should be money, but he couldn’t remember where. It had been in a can... or had she been carrying a can when she left? There was nothing left now but the noodles and a package of dog biscuits. Pig biscuits, mother had called them.

  Pig.

  Damned Pig says this, Pig says fucking that. If Pig had kept his mouth shut, she’d still be home. There would be no leather pig in the basement. Morgan would not be lowered to reading his brothers entrails for guidance... or a chicken’s. He wouldn’t be stirring pig biscuits into the soup. He would be able to think.

  The more Morgan stirred, the more he thought of Pig; the more he thought of Pig, the madder he got. So STUPID! All Pig had to do was keep the jars—the eyes, the livers, etc.—each in its own solution, categorized, “canned” for the winter. Mother had been strict, but not unreasonable. She had a way each thing was to be done, and Pig had been a slob. Granted, the little operations his mother had performed, the practice, and the “improvements,” had not always worked out. Pig had been a bit bent and gaunt near the end, but still, such an easy fucking job. If Morgan could have read the instructions, he would have done it. Johnson was, as usual, no help—too dumb to see what was happening. Fucking little weasel. And now he didn’t have the good sense to contribute usable entrails to the recovery effort.

  Morgan wiped the sweat from his forehead, and smelled Johnson on his fingers again, nearly retching into their dinner. His anger bubbled up. Fucking Johnson. Fucking Pig. With a growl he grabbed the toothpicks, forgetting the fire, forgetting the soup. He snatched a handful of pig biscuits and started down the stairs so quickly he nearly tumbled headlong.

  • • •

  Pig heard Morgan barreling down the stairs and squealed in terror. The spider lay still, not noticing its host’s trembling. Johnson heard the sounds from very far away. This time, for some reason, he found it difficult to swim back to the surface of his mind. It was cold—very, very cold, but quiet. Pleasant. No Morgan. No toothpicks. No fucking Pig chuckling in his head.

  Wake up, you fucking moron, Pig squealed, he’s coming!

  Johnson’s eyes rolled lazily, but did not focus. Fuck fuck fuck, Pig cursed. Inside he was b
ouncing up and down on the shelf, wanting to dump the jars and vials so carefully packed and labeled in a shattered heap of viscous fluid and dead organs. Of course, in the real world, the shelf stayed intact, and Pig was a wreck.

  Morgan didn’t even glance at Pig when he entered. He went straight for Johnson.

  “Fucking Pig says, huh!?” Morgan screamed. “You always were the fucking Pig Lover. Always down here, fucking with him, making him screw up. You made him hate her, you little bastard.” Morgan’s eyes were tearing now, his face livid with fury. “You made her leave.”

  Pig tried to scream again, but nothing. Nothing. You killed mel Pig wanted to scream at Morgan. He didn’t kill me, you did. You never loved me!

  Morgan’s eyes shifted up. His gaze locked onto Pig and his eyes bulged oddly.

  Pig stared, horrified.

  “You needed killing. You were fucking up,” Morgan grated slowly, reaching down as he spoke, cramming the pig biscuits into Johnson’s mouth. “Fucking eyeballs in the liver serum, nothing on any row over the third, no matter how many times she fucking told you. Christ, you always said I was the fucking idiot.”

  As he spoke, Morgan continued crushing the biscuits into Johnson’s mouth. Johnson’s body, if not his mind, had decided to rejoin the party for its last dance. It arched, writhing against the nails, shivering, head tossing back and forth. And way down deep, Johnson watched as if from very, very far away.

  “She showed you,” Morgan gritted his teeth and spat the words at Pig. “She showed you how to be useful.” Morgan’s gaze shifted to the rotting torso in the corner, and he grinned. Releasing Johnson’s jaw distractedly, as if forgetting the choking, dying thing that had been his brother, he moved across to the picture and gazed at Mother intently. Then he reached down suddenly and ripped open the tattered shirt that covered their father’s chest.

  There was a large, gaping hole, roughly the pattern size of a stuffed pig, missing from the body cavity. Morgan reached out to touch it, then pulled back at the last second, touching himself again, captured by the image of his mother’s gaze. His eyes calmed, his face grew slack. The feeble sounds of Johnson’s lungs trying to breathe biscuit crumbs filtered into Morgan’s thoughts. But he ignored it. He knew what to do.