LUMP

by Claire L. Fishback

  Morrison covered his mouth with bloodstained surgical gloves and looked at Clempta, trembling, eyes wide.

  Clempta groaned, trying to tell Morrison it was okay, that he understood proper procedure was in order after any death. Frustrated, he closed his eyes. When he opened them, Morrison lurched toward the door. Clempta’s abandoned lung squished grotesquely under Morrison’s shoe and let out a squelch of juices and air. Morrison’s foot slid out from under him. He fell to the floor. The lung shot across the room.

  Looking at his colleague, Clempta thought about tasting him. It came from nowhere and made him gag. The desire was so overwhelming. He licked his lips and moved closer. Morrison struggled on the floor, shoes sliding, slipping, unable to find purchase to propel him forward. Morrison screamed. Clempta’s torso skin swung open and shut, like the doors of a Western saloon.

  Clempta fell to his hands and knees over Morrison. He spotted his own heart dangling like a nauseating Christmas tree ornament between the branches of his rib cage. It flopped around as he tried to keep Morrison pinned to the floor. Morrson’s shattered breaths flung snot from his nose. He made a weak and pathetic sound that didn’t make it from the room. Clempta eyed the bare skin on Morrison’s neck and imagined the sinewy muscles under that tanned flesh.

  Tears leaked from Clempta’s eyes at the thought of biting Morrison, but he could not stop. He gasped with a sob as his teeth dug into Morrison’s neck.

  Footsteps echoed down the hall. Clempta licked his lips and fingers and had one last bite of Morrison before looking around and spotting the observation room. He slipped inside and watched out the window with wide eyes.

  Dr. Worthing sauntered into the room, sandwich in hand.

  “Hey, Morrison, I saved half for you, in case you were . . .” He stopped, looking at Morrison lying prone on the floor. Clempta followed Worthing’s gaze to the organs littering the floor like discarded hamburger wrappers in a college dorm room. The intestine trail ended at Morrison’s body. Worthing swallowed audibly.

  “Morrison?” he whispered. “Are you okay?”

  Clempta stifled a chortle despite the severity of the situation, then gasped and sobbed at what he’d done. Did the man not see the blood all over the floor? Worthing knelt down and scanned the room as he reached to feel for a pulse. He jerked back, eyes wide. Clempta didn’t have to see that the man’s fingers were greased with blood. Clempta retched, remembering the rubbery tear of flesh, the snapping tendons. His head hit the window on the door and Worthing jumped to a standing position, eyes locked on Clempta. A cry started from Worthing’s throat.

  The hunger drove Clempta forward. He flung the door open and moved toward Worthing. The man backed against the wall, whimpering.

  A few minutes later, Clempta stumbled down the hallway, the skin folds slapping sickly with each step. Under his arm, a surgical coat from the morgue. He paused to pull it on and fumbled with the buttons. He looked at his hand. His left thumb: Gone. Everything came back, smacking into his memory and forcing him to lean against the wall.

  The dog. 501.

  “What’s wrong girl?” He said to her in a soft voice. “Are you sick?” He rubbed her ears through the cage door.

  Rodge came in. Distracting Clempta. He took his eyes off the dog.

  The dog growled. A deep sound rumbling from her chest. She lashed out and bit off his thumb.

  “Oh my god! Gus!” Rodge cried.

  “She bit my fucking thumb off!”

  Blood. So much blood.

  “I’ll get some help,” Rodge said. He rushed away before Clempta could stop him.

  Clempta felt hot, then suddenly chilled to the core.

  Falling to his knees. Gasping, choking, unable to get a breath, unable to breathe. His vision blurred, distorted. Pain in his chest made him pant and shudder.

  Muscular spasms, lurching heart. Blackness. A thick darkness. Still conscious. Still aware.

  Consciousness fluctuating in and out like undulating waves in a calm sea. Fingers pressing his neck; someone checking for a pulse.

  Shrieks for help. Loud, piercing. Painful to his ears.

  Heels tapping out an urgent message. Awareness fuzzed and fading.

  An overwhelming desire to sleep. Voices. Muffled and distant.

  Clips of conversation spelling out an impossible story.

  Dog 501. Dead yesterday. Alive today. Bit him. Couldn’t have. Did. Clempta. Dead.

  “I’m not dead!”

  Screaming inside. Urgent. Panicked. Final darkness. The morgue.

  He gripped his head, clawed at his temples and ran down the hall, the garment flapping about his knees.

  His skin itched. A deep pulling and tugging, like his flesh would stretch and split. He scratched all over, never finding the right spot. He stopped and gripped the skin flaps hanging open like doors on a dilapidated barn. Perhaps they were the cause. He pulled and tugged hard to a pinching sensation that alleviated the itch, but only momentarily. He tried to rend the flaps from his body with little success, and finally gave up, exhausted from the effort. The itch continued.

  And the hunger. He didn’t know which was worse: The hunger, or the itch. Whenever he thought about what he did to doctors Worthing and Morrison, he wanted to gag, but also wanted to go back and have another bite.

  “Nooooo,” he moaned. He leaned against the wall, defeated. He scratched his arm, dug his nails in. The pain alleviated the itch, but only for a moment. Insane hunger, wild itchiness, Dr. Morrison—Clempta heaved and reached for his stomach. His hand slipped through the flaps and he looked down, taking a few awkward steps backward. No organs, save for his heart.

  “Heart,” he said, cradling the organ in his hand. Lifeless and still. “Dead.”

  He groaned again and started to run down the hall, banging back and forth against the hallway doors, a pinball racking up points.

  A young woman stuck her head out a door. “Are you okay?”

  Clempta stopped.

  “Nooooo,” he moaned taking two stumbling steps and turning around.

  The girl screamed. So shrill to his ears. He grabbed them and shrieked. He had to silence her. He charged forward and fell against her, on top of her. Still she screamed. She hurt his ears.

  He stared at her pale flesh, the fear in her eyes. A voice in his head told him eating her would cure the itch.

  “No!” He shouted, holding the girl’s throat with one hand and hitting himself in the side of his head with the other. “No . . .” he sagged onto her, his face close to hers. Tears leaked from his eyes. The girl’s breath came in spasmodic gasps. She whined for him to let her go, to get off her, but he couldn’t. He ached for something he did not want but could not resist. He sunk his teeth into her cheek and ripped a piece of flesh off. He gagged as the tangy, metallic taste of blood filled his mouth, but he bit her throat before he swallowed the first piece.

  Clempta crunched through her trachea. Her body squirmed against his. Her jerking knees jabbed repeatedly through the flaps and against his spine. Her choked screams became gurgling coughs. He tore at her throat again, tugged at it, feeling the sinewy snap of veins against his cheeks and chin. Her screams subsided. Everything he bit off and swallowed fell through the dangling skin flaps back onto her.

  Footsteps pounded down the hall. Someone must have heard her screams.

  Clempta jumped up and charged into a broom closet, tumbling among buckets and mops. After making sure his heart remained unscathed, he opened the door and lurched toward an emergency exit. A shrill siren sounded when he opened the door and ran outside into a cool evening.

  Making his way toward town, Clempta crossed several farmlands, ripe with corn or pluming with lettuce. At one point he stumbled across a sod farm, the soft grass tickling his feet with cool fingers, making him high-step to avoid the feeling. He scratched his arms through the thin coat and shook with a chill at the incredible and fierce itch that spread over his limbs; an itch that penetrated deeper than his skin. It made his br
ain yearn to roll in a bath of broken glass.

  He trudged across a barren field, tripped and fell forward into the dirt. The dry earth caked the splayed skin flaps with soil. A dried leaf clung to his heart. He stood and looked at his only remaining organ.

  “Heart,” he groaned, covering it with his hands. He closed the grimy flaps over it protectively and looked up. Vision blurry, he could just make out a house in the distance.

  When he reached it, he wrapped an arm around a tree trunk, finding comfort in rubbing his face against the rough bark. He watched a family load into an SUV; giggling and squealing children jumped inside. They would be tender, soft, easy to chew. He licked his lips in desperation as the car drove off. He looked at the house. Perhaps someone remained inside.

  Staggering toward the door, he heard a horse whinny and changed direction. He stopped and stared at the horse. She squealed and bucked in her corral at the sight of him, her reddish coat glistening over taut muscles in her neck, her nostrils flaring. She tossed her head, her black mane tangling and whipping with her startled movements.

  “Horse,” Clempta groaned. He clambered through the fence and fell again. The horse ran past him, squealing, unable to stand still. She bucked, and Clempta scrambled to get up, her hooves dangerously close to his head. She reared up and came down on his back. Clempta cried out at the thick snap of his backbone. He managed to get to his feet, but his body bent backward, his spine broken through.

  The horse bucked again, rearing in front of him. He covered his heart, his lifeline. Her front hooves came through the air and pummeled him to the ground.

  He reached out for something to help him to his feet as the horse galloped around. Despair pulled a tormented moan from his lips.

  The horse reared over him, her hooves pawing the air. She came down on his shoulder, dislocating it. His arm lay lifeless at his side. She galloped around the corral. Clempta cried out each time her hooves stomped his legs, arms, anything in her wild rampaging way.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Clempta knew the end had come. She reared up for the final time and came down on his head, splitting his skull like a squeezed grape.

  He was dully aware of her warm breath on his cheek, her nervous wicker graced his ears. He opened his eye, wanting with everything in him to touch her soft nose, to feel her coarse whiskers against his palm, to bite into that large and flaring nostril, so close. He twitched. The last thing he saw was her hooves rushing toward his face.

  Remembra

  Published in the 2017 Colorado Book Award winning anthology, Found, by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers

  Dedicated to my mom, May Brouhard, and my grandma, Cynthia Gibbon (rest her soul).

  MOM

  The woman in front of me seems familiar, but I can’t find her name in my mind.

  “Mom . . . do you know who I am?”

  I shake my head and close my eyes. They all think I close my eyes to block them out. I’ve heard them say that. But it’s not true. When I close my eyes, I remember.

  We, the woman who called me mom, and I, twirl in the sunshine. We pick flowers in a meadow. We laugh by a tipped-over Christmas tree while the naughty cat who tipped it watches from the couch. We bake cookies in a kitchen clouded by flour. They are good memories.

  There are also bad. The arguments of teenaged youth. But she always came back to me. She is my daughter. Her name is Cora. There are others, too, in the memories. Jamie and Ben, my twin sons. A mutt called William. And Albert. Oh, Albert. My one and only true love.

  I form the words on my lips. Yes. Yes, I know you. You are my daughter. My little Cora. My butterfly. But when I open my eyes, it all disappears.

  CORA

  Cora’s mother looks at her with dewy eyes set deep within fleshy lids. Her face, once full of a vibrant light, is now drawn and gray.

  “Do you know me?” Cora asks. Mom closes her eyes and for the briefest moment, the light returns. A youthful glow rises in her cheeks and a small smile tugs at her lips. Cora sits up a little straighter and moves to the edge of the chair. She reaches for her mother’s hands. Mom opens her eyes and it all fades. Cora grips her own knees instead.

  She hoped to catch her mom on a good day. Her heart aches as she pats her mother’s shoulder and rises to leave. She remembers a time when her mother was her best friend. A time when taking turns reading Harry Potter to each other filled the afternoon. They’d done so in the shade of a tree that was torn down last year and replaced with a sapling. A time when she and her mom sat up late at night sharing secrets. Cora could tell her anything, everything. Her mother never judged her, never told her she was wrong or being stupid, never chastised her for her bad decisions.

  You learn about life by making mistakes, she once said to a heartbroken Cora.

  Cora’s phone rings. She looks at the screen, then steps through the glass doors and onto the stone walkway outside.

  Doug. Just what she needs. She swipes her thumb across the screen.

  “Hello?” She can’t mask the weariness in her voice.

  “Hey,” Doug says. He always says that. Hey. Like he’s calling to shoot the breeze with no indication of the hell he put her through. The hell he still puts her through. “I’m at the house. I need to get into the garage to grab the last boxes.”

  Last boxes. She’d put the last boxes in there and asked him to come get them. Three weeks ago. Next, it’ll be something else. The lawnmower or some other forgotten thing he needed to claim as his own.

  “I’m not home.” Obviously. “Can you come back tomorrow?”

  “I can’t,” he says. Deep breath. He wants to share why, but at the same time he doesn’t. She has to give him a little credit for that. “The baby is getting baptized tomorrow. Full day of activities. Where are you?”

  The baby. A product of his infidelity.

  “Next week then,” Cora snaps.

  “What time will you be home?”

  “I’m up north.” That’s all she should need to say. He knows what’s up north. He picked out and helped move Mom into the home. “It could be hours with traffic.”

  He sighs the grumbling sigh he always used to get his way with her. Cora wonders if he used the same sigh on what’s-her-face to get her into bed.

  “We can wait,” Doug says.

  We. So she’s there, too. Probably the baby as well. Cora looks at the front door of the home, back at her car, up at the window where her mother’s room is.

  “I just got here,” she lies. “Mom’s having a good day.” She hangs up and heads back inside.

  Sitting with a mother who’s forgotten her is far better than seeing an ex-husband and his perfect little family parked in her driveway.

  MOM

  A woman sits in the chair next to me and sighs.

  “I wish I could talk to you about things,” she whispers, almost as if she doesn’t want me to hear. “Doug is . . . Doug.”

  I close my eyes, and everything is stormy. Black clouds eclipse Cora’s joyful happiness in dark shadow. I feel my brows crease. Cora is crying here in this dark place. I don’t like Doug.

  “He’s making me miserable,” Cora on the outside says. “He’s at my house with his new family, flaunting them. There’s always some reason to come back. I just want him to go away.”

  “Don’t,” I say, without opening my eyes. The words are difficult as I don’t speak much anymore. “Don’t let him . . . see your pain.”

  “Mom? Mama?” Cora says. “Are you here with me?”

  “He makes things dark here,” I say in a whisper. I open my eyes and for a moment I see her. The child, the teen, the young woman from the memories. “Butterfly.”

  The woman’s eyes light up.

  CORA

  As quickly as the moment comes, it vanishes. One uttered word, Cora’s nickname from her childhood and always. Mom’s eyes glisten, then fade. She’s gone again. But her whispered words stay with Cora.

  Don’t let him see your pain.

  Cora rises and p
ulls Harry Potter from her mother’s bookshelf and opens it to page one. She reads all the way to Harry’s arrival at Hogwarts. Mom listens, her misty eyes on Cora the entire time. Cora smiles at her. She smiles back. And when it is time for Cora to go, her mom asks her to keep reading.

  “I’ll come by tomorrow to read some more,” she says and pats her mother’s shoulder.

  “You are so kind, dear. Your mother raised you well,” Mom says.

  Cora lets out a cool laugh. “Yes, she did.” She kisses the top of her mother’s head and takes the long way home. The back route on a two-lane county road. It takes twice as long and she’s fine with that. Perhaps Doug and his new family will have grown tired of waiting. It has been hours since he called.

  When she pulls up, the garage is open. The light on the garage door motor illuminates the barren space. A searing hatred burns through her. There’s a note on the door leading into the house. She snatches it.

  You should change the code on the garage door – D.

  Cora rifles her phone out of her purse, hands shaking. The violation lashes at her. The boxes are gone. And that’s all. Small miracles. Instead of calling, she sends a text.

  Never contact me again.

  He replies with, OK, which irritates her even more.

  Cora calls Ben, the more rational of her two brothers, but he doesn’t answer. She leaves a message.

  “Hey, Benny. Just seeing what you’re up to.” She doesn’t know what else to say, so she hangs up and tries Jamie. Same result.

  Doug destroyed her life. He estranged her from her family. But that’s not true, is it? She chose Doug over her family, even when they tried to warn her. Family is funny like that, and love masks faults.

  Instead of going inside, she sits on the front porch, too weary to step into the time capsule of the house. The home she and Doug built. Too many memories live there. Most of them bad, dark. Even the good ones are tarnished by the pain and suffering she put up with.