by Ezra Blake
Ding! Ding! Ding!
He has a half-dozen texts from an unknown number. Before he can mark them as spam, a preview catches his attention:
Vic sent me your file. I sincerely regret—
His brow dips as he opens the conversation. Who else knows Vic?
—how your surgery ended. If I had known you were seeking gender affirmation, I would not have allowed this. To apologize, I have paid your outstanding medical bills.
If you are interested, I also can offer employment to you. 5000USD for one day of work.
Please call and discuss.
Pain stabs through his chest. These flashes were heart attacks in his first year, when they studied heart attacks, and pericarditis in his second, when inflammation was the hot topic. Now that he’s cured of his medical students’ disease, he sees them for what they are: episodes of precordial catch syndrome. A benign pain, triggered by stress.
He rolls onto his back and glares at the ceiling. There’s a brown spot from the leak which their landlord has been “about to fix” for six months. It makes his room smell like wet gym shorts.
“Hello, this is Elliot Alvarez,” he says. “I got a text from this number?”
“Your call is being screened. Please state your name and your reason for calling.”
“Elliot Alvarez,” he repeats impatiently. “You guys texted me about a job.”
Silence.
He’s about to hang up when a stern, male voice says, “Yes?”
“Yeah, uh, you texted me?”
“Thank you for contacting me.” He has a mild accent, either Russian or German. Typical supervillain shit. Elliot almost hangs up the phone then and there, but then he thinks about Cathy, and the way she says ain’t when she talks to him even though she lives in Manayunk and rents a boat at Penn’s Landing.
“I’m interested,” he says. “Can I get details, please? What’s the company?”
“We are a large, international organization. You may call me Herr Latzke.”
“And the job—”
“Our client rejected your kidney.”
His grip on the phone loosens. “What?”
“Our client took issue with our method of obtaining the organ. He claims it was removed improperly.”
A wave of cold dread washes through him. He digs his nails into his palm. Vic is an absolute scumbag and she ruined his life, but she’s only one woman, and Elliot can keep his guard up against one woman. The mafia is a different story.
“You don’t need to worry about me. I’m not going to—”
“Listen carefully,” Latzke says, and the words die in his throat. “We aim to correct our mistake. In addition to the hospital bill, we can offer a large lump sum if you choose to work with us. We need a replacement.”
“A replacement?” He asks. “You want me to do that to someone else?”
“For generous compensation. We take care of our affiliates.”
Elliot opens and closes his mouth. He grips the phone so tightly that his fingers go numb.
“Her last two organs were rejected, so we are searching for new talent. She would assist you, but I would expect you to perform the operation.”
He thinks for a long moment—not in language or images, but in a dendritic web of broad concepts. Risk, reward, notoriety, anxiety—his mother’s gentle smile, withered legs, and a motorized chair rolling down the flattest trails at Fairmount Park. Bile and urine and latex gloves.
“I…I don’t know if—”
“I am approaching this diplomatically, Mr. Alvarez, and I highly recommend you do the same. Meet in room 104 of the USA Motor Inn at midnight tonight.” Latzke lets out a puff of air into the receiver. It could be a laugh. “Welcome to the team.”
“What if—”
The line goes dead.
At five in the afternoon, Elliot takes half an Adderall, intending to learn from a textbook what he missed in person at the hospital. Amphetamine breaks down muscle tissue, which forces the kidneys to work overtime, but how else is he supposed to focus?
At seven, he checks his bank balance and rearranges funds in his budget spreadsheet. No matter how he moves and manipulates the numbers, they can’t cover the unexpected bill. It’s not the end of the world if the school sends it to collections.
At seven-thirty, he makes himself an omelette and doesn’t eat it. He sets it on his mother’s bedside table. She’s napping.
At eight, he tries to study but touches himself instead, imagining the rush of opening somebody’s abdomen while they’re awake. Everybody fantasizes about hurting people. By getting this out of the way, he’s giving himself space to be compassionate and gentle later.
At nine, he searches his school’s journal archive: “kidney removal for transplant.” He reads two dozen articles, takes notes, watches videos and commits them to memory.
At ten, he takes the other half of his Adderall and lies face-down on his bed for half an hour, feet twitching, mind racing. Every few minutes he turns his head to the side for an unobstructed breath.
At ten-thirty, he braids his mother’s hair with shaking hands and tells her how much he loves her.
Chapter 9
After Ivan ruins his feet with heat lamps and pins and a radio antenna, Chris realizes that what he’s doing—screaming, begging Ivan to stop, begging Ivan to fuck him instead—isn’t working. He needs to try something else.
He’s not a great actor, but he’s read about masochism, at least, and he has plenty of time to practice—so when Ivan flexes the first pin under this thumbnail, and Chris moans and cries and pops a semi, it’s a decent imitation of the real thing. It works. Ivan doesn’t pry his fingernails completely off, so that must mean it’s working.
The problem, though, is that it’s a lot like smiling when you’re sad: eventually psychology follows physiology, and you stop being sad. And Ivan’s cruelty becomes more passionate as things progress.
Christopher’s face is buried in a massage pillow and he thinks, at first, that this is one of the tender moments. Ivan is heavy and warm on his back. They’ve soaked in hot water scented with jasmine and chamomile, and Ivan’s hands are slipping up and down his back, kneading, stroking. That’s how it starts: gently, with coconut oil. The light touch doesn’t last.
Ivan jams his knuckles into the point where Christopher’s jaw meets his earlobe. The pain forces all the air from his lungs and he can’t draw it back in.
What, he mouths. Coughs. “Doctor, what—”
“Dokku. A pressure point often exploited in martial arts. It can be useful in relieving tension, if struck gently. This is hichu.” The next jab is light and precise, just below his adam’s apple.
He gags. His arms curl reflexively toward his stomach, but Ivan catches him with two knuckles in the vulnerable crooks of his elbows.
“Kote,” he says.
Chris bucks blindly, trying to throw him off, but only succeeds in rubbing himself against Ivan’s crotch. They’re separated by one pair of underwear. He isn’t allowed to wear clothes.
The next strike hits his ankle; Ivan arches like a gymnast and digs his knuckles in and doesn’t bother naming the point in Japanese, or whatever. His legs seize. He writhes and whines, though he knows it won’t change anything.
And suddenly, it changes something.
Ivan flashes his sharp teeth and rocks back against him. “Is that good, darling?”
“No,” Chris spits. It earns him another jab in the same spot. His legs spasm and Ivan’s hand is there to adjust his erection, and the agony drags their hard cocks together through the cotton. His chest flexes as he leans back with a hand braced on each of Christopher’s ankles, indolent but ready to strike. Copper hair falls elegantly over his brow. He would be sexy if he weren’t the devil incarnate.
“This takes absolutely no effort on my part. I could prod you until you pass out.”
“Stop,” Chris hisses. He’s far too loose to move voluntarily, but his hips are grinding slow circles without
his consent.
Ivan squeezes his ankles, not hard enough to hurt, yet. “Beg me.”
“Fucking make me.”
It feels good to say. That’s no consolation when Ivan breaks his jaw, crushes his trachea, cracks his head at the temples. His whole body is dull pain and wasted breath, throbbing with it, too limp to do more than shudder. All the while, Ivan is slowly rocking their hips together. Chris looks down to see himself leaking against his belly. He’s sure he’ll never be allowed another orgasm, and Ivan will eventually cut off his dick and feed it to him, but still, it’s human to be hard. Human is good.
Ivan never hides how much he enjoys the process, perhaps because he knows Chris finds his arousal disgusting. How dare he think about sex while Chris is suffering? Except, Chris is thinking about suffering, is living it, and yet here they are. Rocking together. Ivan digs his thumbs into the soft spot behind Chris’s ears again. This time he doesn’t let up.
“Fuck, stop stopstopstop please!”
He holds it a moment longer, filling his head with sickening pressure. “Are you sure? You seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“Ple-ea-ease,” Chris sobs. “Oh my god, p-please st-stop!”
Finally, Ivan sits back on his hips. “There’s something very wrong with you,” he says, and gently cups Christopher’s hard cock. “You’re lucky there’s something wrong with me as well.” Then he braces his weight on his arms and smashes his knee into Christopher’s groin.
He screams. Crushing pain radiates through his abdomen; he’s instantly soft. Somehow, he’s made it this far in life without ever getting kicked in the balls. Another first which Ivan has claimed for his own.
Chris lies there, crying, unable to curl in on himself. Ivan rolls off and tugs his pants on, erection tucked into the waistband of his briefs. “You’re welcome,” he says.
His head pounds. His body feels like it’s been flattened by a steamroller. He climbs out of bed, forgets his leg again, fumbles with the straps. Ivan is gone, but he’s left a note on the kitchen counter. Even trivialities merit cold-press floral stationery and thin, tight calligraphy. How does he get anything done?
Christopher,
I hope you feel better. Please wash the sheets today. It will likely be afternoon by the time you read this. In case you’re interested in lunch, I’ve left cucumber soup in the fridge. Don’t try to heat it up; it’s intended to be eaten cold, with toast and chèvre. The pre-ground coffee is in the canister next to the carafe if you’d rather not grind it yourself.
I’m certain you’re still ruminating, but as a favor to me, please forgive yourself. You weren’t in your right mind last night. Understand that I rejected only your timing and approach. It was not a rejection of you.
I should be back around five-thirty this evening.
Best wishes,
Ivan
He crumples the note and tosses it in the trash. He makes coffee and fries himself a few eggs, peppering them with eggshells in the process. He strips the sheets from the bed. Ivan is right on both counts: it’s one in the afternoon and he is ruminating.
It comes to him in fragments. He’s fumbling with his own tie, which is looped through the cut-out in the headboard and tied in a sloppy knot on one wrist. He’s biting furious marks into his own lip, whimpering, hit me, fuck my mouth, I wanna vomit blood on your cock. No matter how he degrades himself, Ivan won’t call him any names but Christopher and darling.
He curses as he eats his crunchy eggs. It wasn’t an unreasonable request—impractical, maybe, but Ivan is an expert and he could make something work. He hasn’t attempted to make anything work since the cheese grater incident last month, and even then, his eyes drifted toward the ceiling on the pauses between strokes. He was elsewhere.
Chris is halfway through his coffee when he realizes that he’s elsewhere, too.
He sloshes the remainder into a travel mug and tops it off from the pot; he snatches a croissant from the cupboard, pulls on some sweatpants, and jogs to the lake. Sweet-smelling smoke wafts up the hill. Joy is cooking two vegetable skewers over the campfire, her one-person tent in a heap on the bank.
“I’m sorry. Sorry. I slept really badly and I—”
“Afternoon,” she says with a brilliant smile. Her teeth are all messed up, but it’s brilliant anyway. “I’m glad you came. Thanks for the coffee.” She gently takes the cup from his hand, and that’s it. That’s the discussion.
“I brought you a croissant. Uh, I thought about bacon or something but then I thought no, I bet she’s vegetarian.”
“What made you think that? Is it because I talk to plants?”
“Just a hunch.”
“Good hunch.” She laughs. “One of these skewers is for you, by the way. Tomatoes and courgettes, fresh from the garden.” She pinches a skewer with a pair of tongs, plates it, and passes it over. Chris tries to take a bite of tomato, only to drop the piping hot metal back on the plate with a loud clatter.
“I didn’t think I had to tell you it was hot.”
“Ugh, no, I wasn’t thinking. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me, you twat. Here, one sec.” She springs to her feet and runs to the tent to fetch a clean, wet cloth. “Wrap her up.”
“It’s not that bad, seriously.”
“Wrap her up.”
“Okay, okay.” He takes the cloth. She sits down to devour her croissant.
“So,” she says, mouth half-stuffed with pastry, “tell me about you. What’re you passionate about?”
Nobody has ever asked him that before. It’s an inappropriate conversation starter, but Joy is hell-bent on ignoring all the rules he’s spent most of his life learning.
“Uh, I don’t know,” he says.
She shakes her head, a blur of frizzy hair. “Nuh-uh. Everybody loves something. What can you talk about without taking a breath?”
“I don’t know,” Chris insists. “I don’t do much. Just lie around and talk to Ivan.”
“About what?”
He frowns. What do they talk about? Ephemera, mostly. Ivan is a creature of whim, and Chris often suspects he cultivates the illusion of intellectual depth by cataloguing and regurgitating only the most morbid facets of a broad range of subjects.
“I used to breed insects,” he says, ignoring the question.
“Ooh, my mortal enemy. What kind?”
“Beetles.” And this part is precarious. He’s brought them up before, and it’s a fifty-fifty split as to whether his colony will be met with interest or revulsion. “They were dermestids. They use them in museums because they like to eat—”
“Flesh!” Joy crows. She grabs her knees and rocks backward before planting her butt in the dirt again. “I’ve heard of those! I spent most of my time in Paris at the Jardin de Plantes and I knew this woman, Aveline, who worked at the museum and apparently they used dermestids but I never got to see them in action, that’s crazy that you have them! Could I see?”
“Sorry, uh, I don’t have them anymore.”
“Where are they?”
Chris looks at the ground. “I moved in with Ivan because my house burned down,” he says. It’s not a total lie.
“Oh. Oh, God, I’m sorry.” She places a hand on his forearm. “That was insensitive. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you.” And she’s not just being polite—the deep, desolate hurt is reflected back in her eyes. It’s so unnerving that he has to look away.
“It’s fine.” He picks up his skewer with the cloth and eats one sweet, juicy chunk of tomato, gazing out over the water.
“Okay, so that’s a bad one. What about before all that? What’d you do for a living?”
“I was an assistant pathologist.”
“A doctor?”
“No, uh. I did autopsies.”
When Chris tells people what he does, they tend to shift their weight so their feet point toward the door. The armchair psychiatrists set down their coffee cups and face him with squared shoulders, and that’s his
cue to keep it brief, lest the questions become too personal. Joy’s posture doesn’t change in the slightest.
“You know I’m gonna make you tell me all about it.”
She rises and dumps the dregs of her coffee on a nearby tree. Chris douses the fire and stacks the dishes. Even in college, when they were all studying the same thing, nobody wanted to talk to him about it. Nobody except María, for one glorious month before everything went to hell.
But Joy wants to hear about his research. Joy wants to hear his stories, his dreams, his problems—she even listens to him ramble off the superficial details of the Butcher case, but she never asks for more than he’s willing to disclose. She’s not digging for dirt or getting off on violating his psyche. She just gives a fuck. It’s unreal.
They take short breaks so she can whisper to the seeds she’s planting, and Chris borrows her pocket knife to whittle away at a piece of wood. It’s been a long time since he sat on his father’s boat and carved his first driftwood animal—a malformed bullfrog—but the muscle memory is still there. Ivan couldn’t wipe that out.
“Working with nature, not against it. That’s smart.” Joy nods at his crude dog, whose legs are already half-present in the knobs of the branch.
“Thanks. Reminds me of something Ivan said, about chipping away the excess to get to the form.”
“I think that was Michelangelo.”
Chris smiles fondly. “Yeah? Probably was. He doesn’t like to cite his sources.”
“Is he a sculptor, then? I know he teaches at one of the art academies in the city, but there are at least six of ‘em.”
“I should know which one, but I don’t. Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if he could sculpt. He can do basically everything.”
“A renaissance man.”
He laughs from his belly, unreserved. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Wish I saw him more often. Seems interesting.” She stands, stretching her arms skyward before bracing them on her lower back and giving her spine a good crack. “So how’d it happen? Blind date?”
“What?”