Apocrypha Sequence: Deviance

by Shane Jiraiya Cummings

  Gary shook his head, timidly at first, but more fervently as the doctor's grin darkened to a snarl. He tried to back away but his limbs tingled with energy, a sudden desire to violence.

  Punch me, knock me out! Or you're fired! The doctor's voice was out of sync, built of raw menace. You incompetent fuck! Diener! If you don't punch me in the face right now, I'm gonna gut you next.

  The threat cut to Gary's core, spurring him into action. The tingling in his limbs hit critical mass.

  Gary lunged, grabbed Parrish by the wrist, and wrenched at the scalpel. It was freed from the woman's abdomen with a slick sound.

  "What are you—" Parrish stammered. All trace of the harpy's voice was gone. The doctor appeared dazed in the heartbeat before Gary's fist slammed into his face.

  The bloodied scalpel clattered to the floor as Parrish crumpled. The crunch of bone and cartilage ghosted the room before fading away.

  "Gary."

  Confused, he looked down at the woman. Blood spilled from the incomplete incision spanning her torso. Her breasts were still propped up and within reach, their bareness enticing. He wanted to move but her eyes—her open, lightning-streaked eyes—held him in thrall. His thoughts were trapped in the blue-white zigzags. The tingle surged through his extremities; his skin itched and burned.

  "Pick up the scalpel," she commanded. The lilt of her voice was intoxicating. Compelling.

  He picked up the scalpel.

  "Finish the incision." The woman's eyes swirled with electric fire as she raised her head to study him.

  Gary hesitated.

  The corpse gripped the edges of the table and pulled her legs up, spreading them suggestively.

  "Finish the cut, Gary," she commanded. Her voice was insistent, echoing through his mind a fraction of a second after it reached his ears. "But do it slower, deeper. With care."

  Wavering, Gary fought the suggestion and the incessant energy under his skin.

  The woman writhed on the autopsy table, arching her head back, breasts and hips forward, in an entrancing rhythm. More blood, crimson shading to black, spilled from her wound and was smeared across the slab by her gyrating buttocks.

  Gary struggled against the betrayal of his groin. Sweat banded across his forehead and along his back. His skin crackled with latent energy; his scrubs were saturated—damp plastic chafing his skin.

  Finish the incision, diener! She screamed without opening her mouth. The words lingered in his mind; a wave of nausea in his gut.

  The moment he stepped forward, scalpel raised, the nausea and heat diminished. Everywhere except his throbbing crotch.

  He wiped his brow and blinked the excess sweat out of his eye. He'd already positioned the scalpel over the woman's stomach.

  The woman stilled. They both watched the blade slide into her abdomen. The upward thrust of the scalpel forced out a breathless gasp from her.

  With a mix of delicacy and clumsiness, he started the upward cut toward her left breast. He pressed his groin into the side of the table; the cool metal was a mixed blessing. Static electricity discharged up the front of his scrubs.

  The woman renewed her gyrating, soon filling the examination room with moans of pained delight. Gibberish punctured her moans; a chant that was both familiar and foreign.

  The scalpel blade was greedy despite his awkward hand. Urged on by the corpse's desire, it sliced through her flesh and soft organs. Blood and intestinal fluids spilled from the incision as he arced up the side of her abdomen and further. The smell was fetid yet tinged with saccharine sweetness, as though he were dissecting a mouldy gingerbread woman.

  He scraped across her ribs. Every scoring of bone wrenched stuttering whimpers from her. Gary lifted her breast with his free hand and tentatively ran the blade beneath its curve—generating whimpers, followed by a shuddering moan as the scalpel circled her breast and finished at her shoulder. White skin disappeared beneath her fluids as the incision wept.

  Gary pulled the scalpel free. His erection diminished as the press of cool metal took effect and the electricity abated. The clamminess remained, along with an intense headache pounding at the base of his skull.

  The lightning-eyed woman continued to writhe, exulting in the expanding pool of blood. The table was awash with it; gravity and motion eased it down the blood grooves, burgundy thinning to silver.

  After long moments of revelling in the pain and the blood, she petered off. She then fixed Gary with a predatory smile, running her fingers along the incision. In their wake, the cut healed over, leaving only a bloody smudge.

  "Diener," she purred, sliding from the slab and stepping over the fallen form of Dr. Parrish. "You have executed your task well."

  She paused to examine the surgical tools, testing the weight of each item. She seemed especially fond of Parrish's knife, fingering it with the appreciation of a true fetishist. Blood coursed down her legs and pooled at her feet. Appearing to grow bored with the tools, she abandoned them and crossed the room for the door, spattering a bloody trail across the floor.

  Two snowy figures with matching pairs of zigzag eyes hovered outside the door, pressing their faces against the tiny inset window. The woman paused before the door, turning from her kind to fix Gary with one last stare.

  "We may meet again, diener." She smoothed a palm over her hip; her gaze lingered on the bloodied scalpel in Gary's hand.

  Gary shuddered, dropping the surgical blade. Unsure what to do, what to touch, he held his hands up, palms open, like a pre-op surgeon. His heart and skull thumped in unison.

  "Remember, diener." The woman pointed to the plaque above the door. She uttered the phrase in imitation of Dr. Parrish, perverting it. She paused to blow him a kiss before slipping through the door. Joining her companions in the corridor, she disappeared from view, leaving a bloody smear on the door handle and her translated words lingering on Gary's conscience:

  "This is the place where the living help to delight death."

  * * *

  Interlude, With Lavender

  The world spun. Grey lines of swirling chaos formed at the edge of vision as he opened his eyes. Like the jarring stop of an amusement ride, the room came into sudden, sharp focus.

  Greyness—stainless steel and concrete—pervaded the room. A metal table rose in front of him, shrouded with a white cloth. The cloth concealed lumpiness in a vague, albeit hefty, human shape.

  "Hey there," a man's voice called.

  He turned at the sound of the voice. A humanoid silhouette, swirling with mist, black and ethereal, extended an arm-like appendage toward him.

  He recoiled.

  "Oh," the voice said, coming from the mist. "I forgot."

  "What are you?" He tried to hold the quiver from his voice.

  "The name's Blake. What's yours?"

  "Daniel. Daniel Caruthers."

  "Pleased to meet you."

  "You too," he answered without thinking.

  Daniel kept a wary distance while he studied the shape named Blake.

  After moments, Blake broke the silence, "Umm, Dan, you might want to move."

  "Why? What are you going to do?"

  "Nothin' mate. It's just that ..." Blake pointed toward Daniel's legs.

  He dreaded looking down but couldn't resist the urge. What passed for his hips disappeared through a white sheet identical to the one on the other table—yet he didn't feel a thing. His arms, legs, and body were as vague and ethereal as Blake's. He flinched and the world spun again, a crazy whirligig of greyness, to find himself in the centre of the room under the light of an overhanging lamp.

  "How'd you do that?" Blake asked.

  "What?"

  "You blinked out for a sec."

  Daniel fixated on the swirls that replaced his absent flesh. "What's happened to me?"

  Blake glided forward across the concrete. "Well, the last thing I remember was eating dinner. Something was caught in my throat, and then ... and then I was here. You?"

  "I ... was in the car. T
here was a light, just a flash really. I don't remember anything else." He studied the slab with which he'd just been merged. Small drying patches of brown saturated through its covering cloth. The shape beneath looked human, vaguely so, but he couldn't tell.

  He grabbed for the cloth with a shadowy hand, only to pass through it, groping at nothingness.

  "It's no good, mate. I tried that already," Blake said. "It's a safe bet that's us under those sheets though."

  Despite a yearning to throw up or to shout to the heavens, Daniel felt nothing—except an itch. Like the feeling an amputee experiences after losing a limb, he struggled against a palpable loss. The absence of the physical ached, but only in his thoughts. That was all he had left.

  From beyond the door, Daniel heard muffled voices approaching. "Someone's coming," he whispered, feeling strangely exposed.

  "What do you want me to do, mate? Hide under the table?"

  A face, dark with stubble and suntan, appeared in the glass window inset into the door. A second later, the door swung open, admitting the man and another trailing behind. Both men wore the aqua-coloured garb of hospital staff.

  "I thought you said you heard voices," the stubbled man said.

  His blonde-haired companion nodded. "Yeah, I swear I did."

  "We're right here!" Daniel stepped in front of them and waved his arms.

  They didn't react.

  "Sorry, maybe it came from room four," said the blonde man. "You know the weird stuff that's gone down in there,"

  "Yeah," the other replied, walking up to the table housing Daniel's body. "When did this one come in? There's no tag."

  "Less than an hour ago," the blonde said, "paperwork's still upstairs."

  "Hey, I'm right here!" Daniel moved to the other side of the slab and floated inches in front of the darker man's face.

  "Save your breath, Dan. They won't hear us." Blake coasted around the room. "We're dead."

  The man pulled back the sheet. Daniel's sheet. "Hey!" Daniel protested.

  His face, his flesh and blood face, was crumpled. He wore a look of surprise, nearly lost amid the carnage inflicted by the metal and glass of the car accident.

  The sense of finality overwhelmed him.

  The room swirled again as he reeled from the table. Only the details of his ruined and very dead face remained constant as the world wavered.

  "Sorry you had to see that, mate." Blake hovered close by.

  "Oh God. I have a wife and kids. What's gonna happen to Sarah now I'm ..." Daniel trailed off into silence.

  "Jeez," said the stubble-faced examiner. "That can't have been fun."

  The blonde man nodded but said nothing.

  At his shoulders, Daniel and Blake looked on as the examiner covered Daniel's corpse.

  Suddenly sniffing, the blonde man raised his nose and looked around the room.

  "What is it?" the other examiner asked.

  "I can smell something. Something sweet."

  "Yeah sure. You only get disinfectants and death down here," the darker man said. "I can't smell anything, except maybe porky over there." He pointed to Blake's remains.

  "Hey! Screw you, dirtbag," said Blake.

  "Come on, it's always cold in here. I hate this room," the blonde man said.

  The other examiner nodded, then turned for the door.

  The lights flicked off, followed by the door closing with a thud, which echoed through the room and into the corridor beyond. As the sound of footsteps retreated, a gentle draft wafted through the room, carrying the fragrances of lavender and roses.

  "You smell that?" said Blake, a disembodied voice in the darkness.

  "Flowers, a whole bouquet of them. Like the ones I brought home to Sarah last Valentines Day. She loved roses. Lavender too. The florist put a sprig in the bouquet for me."

  "More like Eucalyptus to me. My ex used to burn it in those little oil burner things around the house. I loved that smell." Blake paused. "When things were bad between us, that smell was sometimes the only reason I'd come home."

  "I'll miss Sarah—and the kids. It's going to break my heart to not see them grow up."

  "I'll miss the Colonel's Three-Piece Feed, but what are you gonna do?" Blake laughed. "That's why I'm here in the first place."

  "What do we do now, do you reckon?" asked Daniel.

  "We wait for the light, I guess. Isn't that how it works?"

  Together, they waited in the darkness as a breeze swirled through the room. An interlude between death and something else, bearing lavender, eucalyptus, and aromas of lives left behind.

  * * *

  Dark Heart Alley (An Urban Fable)

  I - Blood and Neon

  "This place is killing me, Joe." Tears welled in Miri's eyes. Blood spattered her top, which had been partially shredded. A handprint was smeared across her left breast.

  Joe reached out to comfort her, but Miri turned from him and wiped her eyes. Joe's outstretched fingers brushed her clothes as she hurried past him and out the door. In the seconds it took the door to close, he could hear Miri's footfalls on the pavement increase to a run. The gate leading from St Mary's Church to the world beyond squeaked on its hinges as Miri pushed it open, and Joe was sure he heard her sob as she did so.

  Joe closed his eyes, listening for the sounds of Exeter Street outside, feeling Miri's despondency and fear recede and be subsumed by the throngs of the Strip.

  Joe knew what lay ahead, and for the first time in a very long time, he shuddered against the chill.

  "This place is killing both of us, Miri," he whispered.

  #

  The geography of the Strip was like a hooker at her work—a clutch of alleys astride Exeter Street, pumping into it, sliding from it. The Strip festered with drugs, sex, and menace. The stench of garbage and cigarette smoke wafted through its alleys. The Strip's boundaries were unofficially marked by the glow of neon signs, and to the north and east, the grey wall of the Federal Interchange, an expressway that connected the central business district to the suburbs. To the south and west, where the neon light gave way to the darkness, the Strip merged into the Fringe.

  The Fringe was the bruising around the cancerous Strip and home to the bruised. It was a tangled industrial no man's land of alleys, tunnels, deserted factories and terraces, and dark, untamed paths. The Fringe was the stomping ground of derroes, crazies, the poor souls who couldn't make it on the Strip, and something darker altogether.

  Business was generally kept in the Strip. That's how it had been for generations. The CBD and the suburban ring of respectability ensured it remained so. But like all rats' nests, eventually the rats overcrowd, turning their teeth on each other, casting out or devouring the weak.

  Exeter Street was fast becoming known as the Bloody X, Execution Street, due to the handiwork of a madman dubbed Mr X. The Strip's blood-stained edges threatened to seep into other neighbourhoods, a spreading wound the city could no longer ignore.

  #

  "Miri! Wait up!" Joe called.

  Joe chased her through knots of men strolling the Strip. The raucousness and garish lights of Exeter Street receded into a vortex of sound and colour—a noisy blur of pink, red, and white swirling around the slender figure of Miri.

  Miri bustled into a clump of sweaty men as they ogled a topless peepshow dancer through a dusty window. She tried to squeeze her way through but she was grabbed by a fat, olive-skinned man. He pulled her in close against his chest and sagging belly, both visible when his unbuttoned shirt flapped open. Miri fought and stumbled, crashing into the man's twin brother as she pulled away.

  "Hey, baby," the greasy brother purred.

  The encounter became a tangle of arms as she fended him off until he caught her wrist with lucky reflexes. He held her tight, twisting her arm behind her. With his advantage, he squeezed her breast with his free hand, although his smile faded when he felt the sticky blood on her clothes. Miri grimaced and squirmed beneath his fingers.

  "Leave her alone!" Joe s
houted as he approached.

  The man tossed Miri towards his brother. Fuelled by testosterone and cheap spirits, he faced off against Joe, sizing him up while rubbing his hand on his jeans. His mates closed ranks, a wall of flesh pressing in beside him.

  Joe was dwarfed by the men but stood his ground. The gang edged toward him, their eyes hungry, their fists balled.

  Rage curled the corner of Joe's mouth.

  The lights on the block dimmed: the street lights, the fluorescent and neon in the windows of Tania's Sex-A-Rama, Minion's, and The Peep Hole, and even the headlights of the cars as they cruised along Exeter street.

  With her tormentor's attention elsewhere, Miri pulled her strap over her shoulder and slunk off into the gathering crowd.

  #

  Miri huddled on a doorstep in the first alley that led her from the lights of Exeter Street. She cupped her head in her hands and fought back tears. Goosebumps covered her arms and legs. Her miniskirt, blouse, and fishnet stockings offered no protection from the draft funnelled through the streets. The cold was unrelenting. She curled into a tighter ball as defence against the wind. The soles of her feet were freezing, the consequence of abandoning her high heels as she ran.

  A dark silhouette loomed at the top of the alley, framed by the light of the streetlamp at its back.

  "Piss off, creep," Miri sniffled.

  The silhouette drew closer. Every step echoed down the hill and into the valley of darkness beyond.

  Hugging herself even tighter, she turned her face into the splintered wood of the door. Too much had happened tonight without this, another attack, another set of hands. A sob wracked her as the man drew closer.

  "Miriel."

  "Joe?" She squinted up at him through tears.

  The light was still at his back, but the silhouette took on a calming familiarity.

  "Come back with me to the centre."

  Miri sobbed again and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm. Filth slicked her legs but the cold numbed her to the worst of it.