by Bryan Hall
Bowman fled to the front door.
The sounds of Jim’s thrashing and the whirring from the hand stopped behind her.
The doctor froze, her hand on the door knob. She peered over her shoulder.
Jim lay back on the sofa, his body still. His head had tilted back, revealing the carnage beneath his chin. Blood trickled down his front from pulsating tissue, which hung from his throat like glistening candy shoelaces. The remains of a crushed, mangled tube poked out of the pulpy mess.
The hand had vanished.
“Oh shit,” said Bowman, and covered her mouth. The carpet seemed to tilt, and her vision blurred. She blinked the patient suite back into focus.
“No,” she cried. “Oh no!”
She yanked the door handle.
The hand dropped from the ceiling and onto her arm. Bowman jumped away from the door and beat at the prosthetic. It clung on like a metal tarantula, crawling for her shoulder. The blades had retracted.
Bowman tripped on a rug and toppled onto her knees. Her leg cracked, and the fake limb came free. It hung loose within her trousers.
The hand crept along her collarbone, impartial to her thrashing.
She screamed and grabbed it. The metal throbbed within her grasp.
“No!” she yelled, prying it free.
It held onto her blouse, refusing to budge. Bowman’s fingers slipped, and the metal hand darted to her face.
She snatched it with both hands and pulled.
A finger, containing tiny pistons and wires, hooked toward her mouth. The tip brushed her lips.
“Get ... the fuck ... off me!”
The hand emitted a loud click and fell away. Bowman threw it across the room just as the detached finger slipped into her mouth. She clenched her teeth, clamping the loose digit that squirmed like a swollen maggot. It curled, and the tail end flicked against her nose.
Bowman fell forward and coughed. She pressed against the probing finger with her tongue. It pushed further in, metal squeaking against her teeth. Bolts of pain shot through her tight jaws. She grabbed for the probing digit.
It slipped all the way inside and jabbed the back of her throat.
Bowman gagged and wailed.
The finger seemed to grow, and a sharp point pressed into the roof of her mouth.
The blade!
Realization fueled her panic, and she hooked the metal with her fingertips. They slid over the saliva-slick intruder and failed to find purchase.
The flesh at the back of her throat parted, and the finger dug up toward her brain.
Bowman managed a final cry and fell forward, twitching on the carpet. Her left leg jerked and kicked the hanging prosthetic.
Laura studied the mangled flesh of her elbow for the thousandth time.
You ruined everything!
She squeezed her missing hand into a fist and almost felt the fingers close. The limb remained in her mind. It gave her hope the hospital was right about Dr. Bowman’s prosthetics that responded to muscle contractions. Laura knew she’d never play the guitar again, but to be able to lift a cup to her lips, or to pick a flower, the thought carried her.
And if it looked real enough, to stop the stares and whispers. That would be amazing.
She breathed in the sweet scents of hospital garden. The sun winked through hanging canopies, creating a dancing pattern of light and shadow on the path. Further along, a man in a dressing gown occupied a weatherworn bench. Laura pressed on, sure the prosthetic center lay at the end of the path.
She greeted the man as she passed. He threw biscuit crumbs on the path for the birds.
“Good afternoon,” he said, returning her smile. His gaze lowered to her left arm, and his lip twitched.
Laura hurried past, her good mood evaporating. She hid her arm as best she could.
Why can’t people stop staring? I’m not a freak!
She rounded a sweeping bend in the path, leaving the man behind and out of sight. She checked her watch.
One minute till two. Think that’s pretty punctual.
Laura headed down the remainder of the path to the hospital building. A sign on the door read:
Dr. S. Bowman and Mr. S. Bennet
Prosthetic Center
Bloom Memorial Hospital
Laura knocked on the door.
A thump sounded from the inside, and Laura leaned forward, her ear close to the wood.
What was that?
It sounded again, closer, like someone had dropped a sack full of clothes.
Laura knocked once more. The door swung open, and she stepped back.
On the threshold stood a woman of around thirty in black trousers and a white blouse. Dark hair cascaded around her shoulders in thick waves. She coughed, covering her mouth.
“Yes?” the woman said. She seemed to check the contents of her hand before lowering it. “Can I help you?” She studied Laura with deep, brown eyes.
“I have an appointment with Dr. Bowman?” said Laura. “Is this the right place?”
The woman stared past her for a moment and seemed to snap her attention back.
“I’m Dr. Bowman. Laura, isn’t it? Two’ o’clock?”
Laura nodded.
“Step inside,” said Bowman, smiling and holding the door open. “I was just cleaning up.”
Laura entered, pleased by the warm, light room. It contrasted to the sterile, bleak corridors of the rest of the hospital.
“Nice place. Not what I expected.”
Bowman closed the door and stared toward the rear of the room. Another door stood open.
“The treatment can be a challenge at the best of times. We like everyone to be as relaxed as possible.” The doctor remained frozen, attention held by the far door. “Take a seat,” she said.
Laura walked around a rug, which was rolled up and left in the middle of the room. A throw draped a sofa. Laura sat, sinking on the plush cushions beneath.
“I’ll just be a moment,” said Bowman, not looking in Laura’s direction. “Make yourself comfortable. Today might change your life.”
The girl sighed.
I hope so.
She glanced down at her stump.
Bowman, unblinking, crossed the room and vanished through the rear door.
Laura exhaled and settled back, listening to the gentle tick of the wall clock.
She seems nice enough. A little distracted, though.
Hope she’s as good as her reputation.
Minutes passed, and Laura’s attention wandered from her stump to the window, to her stump to the clock, and back to her stump. She knew her arm would never grow back, save for some miracle breakthrough. Even the thought of having a guy’s arm grafted on appealed. She’d be more of a freak, but at least she could play the guitar.
Back to the clock. Ten minutes had gone by.
Ten minutes! What the hell is she doing? Should I check on her?
Bowman entered the room.
“I’m sorry about that,” said the doctor, out of breath. “I was conferring with my engineer about your new arm. May I see?” Bowman sat on the sofa and smiled, holding out her hands.
Laura offered her disfigurement and looked away. Bowman’s fingers rubbed and stroked the smooth, pink ball of skin at the end.
“Mmm ... good. Muscle tone largely intact. Yessss ...”
Laura glanced back. Something had crackled in Bowman’s voice, like a short blast of electrical static.
“Should make an upgrade easy ...”
“Doctor?”
Bowman peered up. Her left eye shimmered emerald.
Laura blinked. “Wow.”
The doctor frowned.
“Your eye,” said Laura, and studied the wall. Her cheeks burned. “I guess I didn’t notice earlier.”
Bowman released Laura’s arm.
“I’ll go get your new attachment. Then we can begin.”
The doctor rose in silence and strode out of the room.
Laura grinned.
Attachment? Makes me sou
nd like a vacuum cleaner.
Heat flashed in her face once again. She realized how she’d been transfixed by the doctor’s eye.
Must be human nature to stare. Damn it! I’m a fucking hypocrite!
The hands of the clock crept around.
Laura tapped her foot. A few magazines on a coffee table in the corner seemed the way to go.
She glanced at the clock. The time had reached twenty past.
“A third of my hour gone and nothing. Forget the magazines,” Laura hissed. She stood. “Dr. Bowman?”
Silence and darkness lurked beyond the open door.
“Dr. Bowman?” Laura called.
She crossed the suite.
I shouldn’t be doing this. Might be off limits to patients.
Hell. It’s my time she’s wasting!
Laura reached the door and peered inside. The deep, wide room, lit by hanging bulbs along the far side, lay cluttered with shelves and boxes. Her eyes adjusted to the murk, and a maze of plastic limbs emerged.
“Jesus,” she said, studying the hanging arms. A box of protruding legs looked like crazy modern art.
“Dr. Bowman?”
She ventured further.
From the other side of the room, something clattered on the floor.
Laura stopped behind a rack of synthetic arms fitted with hooks.
“Thank you,” the doctor said. Her voice echoed in the cold room. “Let us begin.”
Laura opened her mouth, ready to call out, but paused. The doctor’s voice had regained the strange static sound. The girl gazed around the rack.
At the far wall, the doctor stood before a sink, staring at her reflection in a grimy mirror. Bowman lifted her hand and examined the contents.
Laura crept forward, keeping close to the rack of arms. She crouched behind a workbench and peered around the side.
Bowman still studied the object she held. It appeared to be a small lightbulb, the size of a large marble. She turned it in her fingers for a second and placed it beside the sink. A leather bag sat beside, and the doctor reached in.
What is she doing?
Bowman removed a scalpel from the bag. The blade glistened between her face and reflection. She stared at the instrument, moving it closer and closer, the point heading for her eye.
Laura opened her mouth, a scream trapped in her throat.
Bowman plunged the scalpel deep into her pupil. It made a sound like squashing a grape.
Hands clamped over her mouth, Laura froze behind the workbench, transfixed by the doctor’s reflection.
Bowman’s eye, now a punched, sagging membrane, slid down her cheek in a slug’s crawl. She sliced the attaching scarlet fibers with a flick of the blade. Her eye plopped on the floor.
Laura’s throat tightened. She held her breath, fighting the gag.
The doctor tucked the flaccid tissue back into her empty socket, ignoring the blood and aqueous humour pouring down her cheek. She picked up the tiny bulb.
Blue worms, needle-thin, emerged from the metal plug and wiggled in the air.
Laura gasped.
Bowman neared the bulb to her empty socket. The tendrils took hold of her eyelids, and the bulb eased itself inside. She blinked once, twice, and opened wide. Her new eye glowed a radiant green.
“I know she’s here,” the doctor buzzed, her lips barely moving. “Leave it to me.”
Laura sprang and burst into a run for the door. A protruding false leg tripped her, and she fell forward, landing hard on her hand and knees. Keeping her momentum, she jumped back up, legs pumping.
Dr. Bowman blocked her escape.
“Leaving so soon? I thought you wanted your new arm?”
Laura backed up, aware Bowman still held the scalpel. The doctor smiled and inched forward.
“You’ve gone quiet. Maybe a new tongue is also in order?”
“Stay away,” said Laura. She swept up a hammer from a nearby shelf. “Don’t come near me!”
“But isn’t that why you’re here? So I can touch you ... rebuild you?”
“You’re ... what you just did ...”
“What I just did was amazing!” said Bowman. “I mean, look at me!” She, too. approached the shelves and selected a dusty saw. She pressed the teeth against her hip. “Think of the endless possibilities ...”
Laura turned and ran, darting between boxes and workbenches into the shadowed depths.
Under a bulb, framed in a stark halo of light, sat a polished, metal chair.
“Stop her!” Bowman screamed.
Laura ducked to the side.
The chair hummed.
Laura dashed past more shelves and cried out as she flew upward, held her up by the waist. She thrashed in the grip and pulled at the squeezing noose around her middle. A glance down revealed a shiny, thick cable. The metallic tentacle eased her backward. She kicked in the air.
“Bind her ...” said Bowman.
Laura crashed into the chair. Intimate snakes of metal laced around her limbs.
“No!” she wailed.
Snap!
Something clamped around her waist and punched the air from her lungs.
Snap snap snap!
Leather straps flew from the chair and bound her tight.
Bowman approached. Blood gushed from her hip from beneath the saw blade.
Laura screeched.
“Quiet down. You should be grateful. Look at you, such a freak. I was a freak once, but I upgraded. Look at me now ...”
“Please. Please just let me go!”
“But you came here for treatment. You want a new arm, don’t you?”
“I just want to go. Please! I won’t tell anyone.”
Bowman held up the bloody saw.
“You’ll tell the world. You would even write a song about this, if you could still play. You didn’t think I knew about that.”
Laura wailed. “Please don’t kill me.”
“We don’t want to kill you.” Bowman walked over. “We only want to help.” She touched Laura’s stump. “How many years? How many stares and comments? You could be more than any of them.”
Laura howled at the tightening straps.
The doctor began to unbuttoned her own trousers.
“No,” screamed Laura. “Please!”
Ignoring her pleas, Bowman slid the garment down her legs.
Laura stared. “You’re ...?”
“Yes,” said Bowman, caressing the joint of her prosthetic leg. “Just like you, but more.” She popped the leg free. Metal winked. Pulling the plastic free, the doctor revealed a second leg hidden beneath. “Incredible, isn’t it?”
She pulled the false leg away, and the new spidery limb slid further from her torso. It glinted with the metal chrome of the chair. The double-jointed leg pounded the floor with a sharp point. Blood tricked from the haggard stump where metal met flesh and bone.
“You can have all this and more. Think of the potential. You can be like me.”
Laura fought the chair. Her own stump pounded the shiny top.
“Think about it,” Bowman said. “The world lies in your palm.”
She walked to one of the workbenches, bent over and slid a door open. An arm flopped out from the dark and hit the floor with a splat. Most of the fingers were missing from the hand.
“And don’t worry. We have lots of spare parts!” The doctor approached the throbbing chair, her new leg clunking on the floor with each step. “Now,” she said, leaning in close. “Shall we begin?”
AFTER DARQUE
BY M.L. ROOS
I’m half the man I used to be. Literally. When I was twenty-eight, I was six foot five and weighed two hundred pounds. Now, six years later, I’ve lost three feet and seventy pounds. Well, two feet ... ok, two legs. And you want to know how. Get yourself a coffee and pull up a seat. It’s going to take some time to go through it. I could give you the condensed version, but that would do the story injustice. You need the nuances, the subtleties, and the intricacies of what was goi
ng on in my head at the time. Without it, this becomes a sad story about a meaningless man and his even sadder obsessions.
Six years ago, my life was pretty normal. I had a great job doing what I loved. In Winnipeg, I was one of the youngest investigators in Violent Crimes, and we were working on this major case involving human trafficking. It was a special project that sprang up overnight because of media attention. You know how that goes. The vilest crap can be happening in the world, but unless the media or politicians pick up on it, it won’t see the light of day.
With this piece, a journalist happened to discover a story about a young girl who had been sold as a prostitute several times to different people. She ended up being bought by a minister and his wife, who used her as an indentured servant and sex slave. She was a thirteen-year-old then. Because the minister also happened to be embezzling funds and running a scam in his church, he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and “Lucy” became the charity case du jour. Project Eve was created, and I was selected to work on the task force.
I had girlfriends. I dated. That part of my life was fine. I had several great friends both on and off the force. Being single, I had lots of time on my hands to do research into the sex industry and human trafficking. Eventually, this led me to several people including judges, lawyers, politicians, even a few actors. We can write the laws, enforce them—but damn, can we follow them? Select people will always feel entitled, whether it is to church funds or sex with a thirteen-year-old. Don’t matter. Some men are ruled by their genitals and their hands; whatever they can grab with either, it’s theirs.
Another road led through Organized Crime, including a huge syndicate in Toronto and another in Vancouver with connections in Winnipeg. Aboriginal girls were being sold as quickly as they were picked up, and sold across the country. But the most interesting and dangerous connections were the clubs. They were in every city all across Canada, probably all across the world. These were connected to Organized Crime and the porn industry as well, and if I told you who was involved in them, you wouldn’t believe me. Let’s just say there are some doctors in this city I wouldn’t want touching my testicles, knowing where their hands have been.
Anyway, one day in September, I ran across a note in a file about a club called After Darque. I had heard references to this place. You see, I visited these clubs on weekends trying to make connections with people and seeing if I could make some inroads. I needed to find the girls—who they were, where they came from, and where they ended up. To do that, I had to fit in. So, I had to act the part. I dressed the part; I interacted with the clients and, before you ask, I did participate in the events. I had to make them believe I was a part of them. I had to gain their trust and, without engaging in the sex, I would have been suspect. Besides, it was all legal. No drugs were involved and there was nothing to do with children in these clubs. Just sex. Sex like you cannot imagine.