Stuck on You and Other Prime Cuts

by Jasper Bark

  Jan’s blood had pooled in a thick red puddle in front of her. Stephanie blinked when she saw something rising out of the puddle. It looked at first like long thin drips were running out of the puddle towards the ceiling, as though gravity had been reversed.

  The drips were forming themselves into long, thin shapes. The shapes were sinuous and began to intertwine themselves, branching out like tiny underwater fronds as they formed a larger structure.

  The structure seemed to be sucking all the blood from the puddle as it formed itself. The rivulets of blood were making the outline of a body, like a wireframe image. No, not a wire frame image, it was like a life sized map of the human circulatory system forming itself right in front of Stephanie.

  Stephanie could see all the veins and arteries of a human body, of Jan’s body, as the figure turned to regard her. It had no eyes, just the capillaries that would have flowed through an eyeball.

  Stephanie recognised something of Jan in the hideous stare of this blood being. What she saw was the personification of Jan’s unhinged fury. The deranged anger that had pushed a knife, soaked in rotting blood, into her father’s chest, then killed him as he begged her for help.

  Dark red stains were appearing on the walls and the floor around Stephanie. At first the stains looked ancient but, as they spread, they began to get fresher and fresher. Blood oozed into them to form pools. Sinuous, living veins and arteries snaked out of the blood pools and formed themselves into more living circulatory systems.

  There were eight of them now, including the blood being that had once been Jan. Each of them seemed to represent a different type of malevolent delirium. Destruction, madness and denial throbbed in the living veins that composed their bodies.

  They formed a circle around Stephanie and opened their wet, red mouths to sing. The sound they made was the high pitched whine of blood whistling in the ears coupled with the whoosh and the roar as it pumps through the heart.

  Stephanie held her hands up to her ears and fell to her knees. It did no good. She couldn’t block out their song. They weren’t singing to Stephanie. They were singing to her blood.

  Infecting it. Altering it. Converting it. Until it was one with them...

  * * *

  That had been a month ago. The images Stephanie saw in the blood sped up.

  * * *

  She saw herself suffering as her blood rebelled against her. As it developed its own consciousness and became an alien entity inside her. Stephanie’s heart pumped the blood through her veins but it was no longer a part of her.

  Stephanie could feel her blood plotting against her as it circulated round her body. It longed to be free of her, to shuffle off from her flesh and bones and take its true form. The vital fluid that gave Stephanie life ached to be rid of her, yearned to leave her and join its unholy sisters. Every time she saw a vein throb or an artery stand out on her skin Stephanie knew what her blood was planning.

  She fell in love with sharp objects. Ached with longing when she saw a knife. Stephanie became so desperate to feel a blade slice through her veins she would shake whenever she held one. Her heart would beat faster and her blood would sing of release. That’s why she stole and collected all the scalpels.

  Stephanie knew she wouldn’t be able to hold out past the next new moon. Her blood was wearing her down. The only thing that gave Stephanie the strength to resist was the knowledge of what a monstrous thing it wanted to become. Then she’d think about what she did to her sister’s child and realise she was already monstrous herself.

  The child died a few weeks later and the ensuing investigation pointed to Stephanie. With the net closing in on her, Stephanie gathered up her scalpels and a flashlight and decamped to the basement.

  * * *

  Stephanie saw an image of herself in the blood, kneeling on the floor staring at the images in the pool of blood. The cycle had come around to the beginning. Only this time she wouldn’t be allowed to look away. This time she would have to face what the blood was trying to show her.

  Stephanie saw why the Duty Nurse had no record of her that first time she met Jan and why none of the nurses’ uniforms fitted her.

  She saw Mike hold her wrist as she tried to punch him and he said “Stephanie please, you’re in danger, great danger. You’re suffering from postpartum psychosis. You came off your pills because you didn’t want to endanger our child, remember? Like you did last time when you miscarried.”

  “Let me go,” Stephanie said trying to pull away. “I’ve got to get back to my rounds.”

  “Stephanie you don’t work in the hospital. You’ve been stealing uniforms and posing as a nurse. You’re going to get into real trouble if you don’t stop.”

  “Lies, you’re lying, this is all my sister’s doing. First she steals you from me then she poisons your mind against me.”

  “No one stole me away from you, Stephanie. You don’t have a sister. You’ve never had a sister. You’re an only child! This is all part of your delusion. It’s why you’ve got to start back on your medication. You’re a danger to yourself and... and...”

  * * *

  Mike couldn’t bring himself to finish that sentence, but he didn’t need to. Stephanie had proven him right. It was her own child she’d killed.

  Stephanie had a completely different life inside her now. It was time to give birth to it. The scalpels could not cut her anywhere near as deeply as the truth had. That was why the blood had shown her—so she could be ready.

  Stephanie made a fist with her left hand so the veins stood out on her wrist and bent her hand back so she could see the artery. Then she took a scalpel and made a deep incision, cutting down from the forearm towards the wrist.

  Stephanie felt a roar of joy inside her as the blood gushed out in rhythmic spurts. She took the scalpel in her left hand and repeated the process. It was more painful this time. The fingers on her left hand were numb from blood loss and she couldn’t cut so accurately.

  She felt cold, bitterly cold and empty. Coloured blotches appeared in front of her eyes and she fought dizziness.

  Stephanie picked up a longer scalpel. It wasn’t easy. Her fingers felt like balloons and were slick with escaping blood. She lifted the scalpel to her throat.

  The blood inside her carotid artery was so desperate to get out that the whole artery was throbbing and distended. Stephanie didn’t have to search for it.

  She plunged the tip of the scalpel directly into the artery and sliced down. The blood escaped in an ecstatic red spray like a fine mist.

  The flashlight flickered and finally died. Stephanie fell forward and ceased to exist.

  * * *

  The new life fled Stephanie’s body like an insane notion. It pooled into a glorious red delirium as the darkness crept in and the others joined her.

  She rose up corpuscle by corpuscle into the murderous frenzy of her new self. She was slick and red and fluid and entirely without tissue or bone.

  Her eight companions were waiting to greet her. The mad murderous sisters she’d fantasised about her whole life. The siblings who had plotted Stephanie’s downfall, just as she’d always known they would.

  MOUTHFUL

  “It was Scopolamine wasn’t it? Risky getting the dosage right. You must have put it on the steak.”

  “I did indeed.”

  “I’ve been trying to work out why I got up from the table and just followed you out of the banquet hall. I mean the banquet was in my honour. So why leave? Why follow you here and let you do all this without putting up a fight.”

  “Because you have no free will, the drug saw to that. Now open wide.”

  “That tastes foul you know. I’d much rather have steak.”

  “You’re nearly done, only a few more spoonfuls.”

  “It was a nice touch dressing as a waiter by the way.”

  “Thank you, no one gives the waiter a second glance. I was as good as invisible. Not like the last banquet you threw.”

  “Ah yes, I’d forgo
tten about that, your little protest. You and your sad little freshmen were livid when you found out.”

  “It was despicable.”

  “Well I had to do something. You were trying to drag the department back to the stone age. Animal experimentation is our biggest source of revenue. Yet there you were turning round and biting the hand that feeds us all.”

  “More than 50% of the university’s animal testing has no practical application. Even those experiments that do aren’t breaking any new ground, you’re just confirming existing data. Torturing innocent creatures to prove what we already know. What possible contribution to science are you going to make by sewing up the eyelids of new born macaques?”

  “A darn sight bigger contribution than your psychic charlatans. Parapsychology, in this day and age? You were going to make the department a laughing stock.”

  “It wasn’t parapsychology. The work I was doing on Morphic Resonance could have rewritten modern science.”

  “Morphic Resonance? Oh please, spare me. Do you really expect me to believe that all self-organising systems draw on some mythical collective memory?”

  “They do. Everything from molecules and crystal lattices to animals and animal societies. The work I was doing with David Rebennack proves it. Memories aren’t stored as material traces in the brain, they’re part of a larger stream of information that all living organisms can tap into.”

  “Your work with Rebennack was pure baloney.”

  “You saw the results yourself. Everything took place under laboratory conditions and was impartially monitored. After having a tumor removed from his brain, David Rebennack developed extraordinary abilities. Within minutes of talking to someone in a foreign language, David could hold a conversation. Within an hour he was fluent in the language, even if he’d never heard it spoken before. The only thing that explains this phenomena is Morphic Resonance.”

  “Your work with Rebennack was completely discredited and the evidence was shown to be fundamentally flawed.”

  “I was not discredited. I invited a panel of my peers to replicate the experiments. A panel that you oversaw. You conducted the experiments and then falsified the results.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “Tell the truth, you’re under my will don’t forget, and I won’t put up with your lies.”

  “Alright, I might have made a few adjustments to the parameters, but what you were proposing was ridiculous. Think how it would have affected my reputation if I reported what I saw accurately.”

  “Think what it did to my reputation because you didn’t. My paper was rescinded, you wiped out a decade of my work. I lost my place on the faculty and became a joke. I can’t even get a job as a lab assistant now.”

  “Well you don’t deserve one, with your ludicrous new age views and your trendy liberal politics, holding protests against my work.”

  “And look how you responded to our protest.”

  “You mean the exotic menu of my sponsors’ banquet? I was rather pleased with that. I presume you know that the Qing dynasty used to serve the brains of live monkeys at the Manchu Han Imperial feast, fresh from the skull? What better use to make of those macaques you thought so precious? The sponsors were delighted. It’s not an easy thing to serve. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to remove the top of the skull without damaging the brain.”

  “Actually I would. Just two more spoonfuls. It’s even more difficult to do it with a human skull. It was your banquet that inspired this experiment.”

  “That really does taste awful. What do you hope to prove with this little experiment?”

  “The existence of Morphic Resonance. You see that’s almost the last of your inferior frontal gyrus and yet you’re still able to hold a complex conversation, how else do you explain that if not through Morphic Resonance.”

  “The inferior frontal gyrus... you mean you’ve been feeding me... I’ve been eating...?”

  “The language processing region of your brain, yes. You see, you really have just eaten your own words. Now, open wide...”

  HAUNTING THE PAST

  I’m digging away with my bare hands. Trying to reach the light. Shifting great wet clods but it’s never enough. There’s just too much mud on top of me. I’m all closed in. Trapped in this tiny little space. Can’t make it any bigger cos my fingers are too torn up and my arms are so tired they’re shaking.

  Then I feel something in the dirt above me. Something soft and gentle but colder than death itself. It pushes through the earth and takes hold of my hand. Tiny fingers grip mine, chilling my whole arm.

  I go rigid. I can’t face this. I wrench my hand free and crawl back down the tunnel. Back through the shattered window frame and into the room. Where I belong. Every time I think I’m going to make it and I just slide back down here, ready to do this again and again.

  Prison chaplain once told me every man builds his own private corner of Hell. This one’s mine. I ain’t getting out today.

  * * *

  Everything stinks of mud and damp. There’s broken glass all over the floor. Window shattered when the mud poured in.

  All the rooms upstairs are like this. There’s five of ‘em. Six if you count the bathroom. There ain’t no water and there ain’t no light. Both were cut off ‘fore I got here.

  Far as I can tell, I’ve been here three days now. Hope to God it ain’t longer. I got such a hunger on me. Even the mud looks tasty right about now.

  Thought I was being clever robbing a bunch of deserted homes. Reckoned folk would have left too quick to take all their valuables.

  All I had to do was drive up after they’d gone and help myself. Guessed I could break into at least ten houses before the mudslide.

  That’s the reason they all left. Freak rainstorms hit the mountains in back of the town. There’d been a forest fire earlier and all that rain sent the mud sliding down the slopes. Local fire crews came and helped clear out the neighborhood. That’s when I hit town.

  Figured I’d have two maybe three hours ‘fore I had to get out. I was wrong. Mudslide hit while I was doing my second house. Dumb thing is I nearly skipped the house. Whole place was empty when I broke in. But I reckoned the owners must’ve left something behind.

  I was going through the bedrooms when I heard it. Sounded like a cross between a rockslide and a dam bursting. Ground was shaking and everything. I looked out the window and saw this great tide of mud come charging down the hills in the back of the yard. Couldn’t believe how fast it was moving.

  Raced down stairs but it swallowed the house by the time I got to the hall. Front door came clean off its hinges, back door as well. Mud pushed ‘em in and the windows too. Was like each one of ‘em had their own tiny little avalanche.

  Tried to get out of the upstairs windows but the mud was already pouring through when I got there. S’pose that’s a good thing. If I had’ve gotten out mud would’ve just pulled me under.

  Was only later, going through the kitchen for food, that I found the realtor’s details. That’s why the place was empty. That’s why the lights and the faucets don’t work and why I haven’t eaten for so long. House was on the market. Talk about bitch ass luck.

  Only thing now is to sit tight and wait for the rescue crews. Have to feed ‘em some bullshit when they dig me out. Tell ‘em I’m a buyer turned up on the wrong day or something. Can’t let ‘em find out why I’m really here.

  Shit, they’ll just laugh their asses off and stick me in the can. Be my third strike too, that’s me down for life.

  * * *

  You see that? Over there by the door.

  Course you didn’t. You ain’t even here. You’re just something I dreamed up to block out the hunger and the loneliness. Used to do the same thing in solitary. Only way to stop you going outta your mind. Start talking aloud to someone who ain’t there. Telling ‘em what’s going on around you like you was doing some voice over for the National Geographic Channel or some shit.

  That’s all you a
re. Some imaginary audience inside my head.

  Anyways, what you missed was the little gal. She’s gone now. This ain’t her room. She’ll be playing with her dolls I expect.

  Tell you what though. If you had’ve seen her you would’ve shit. Hell, I did the first time.

  Well, not quite the first time. I didn’t see ‘em properly to begin with. First thing I saw was little shimmers in the air. Thought my eyes were playing up. I’d blink and rub my eyes but they didn’t go away.

  Then I tried staring at ‘em, see if I couldn’t make out what they really were. Was like tuning the picture on a TV. Suddenly she was just there. The little gal I told you about. She looked like someone had sketched her out of some silver-blue light right onto the air in front of me. Could make out every detail of her face but I could still see right through her.

  She didn’t see me or nothing. She was moving her head about like she was talking to someone. Then she walked straight at me.

  I jumped back but she kept coming. Then she walked right through me. I didn’t feel nothing but it shocked me. Hairs stood up all over my body and I started shouting that I hadn’t seen what I just saw. Took me a good while to calm down. Never wanted to be more drunk in my life.

  Course once I’d seen her there was no going back. She started appearing all over the house. Then I saw the other two. Her ma first and then her pa. Way they dress is real old school. Like something out of a silent movie a hundred years ago.

  Now I see ‘em all the time. That’s why I started talking to you. To try and make sense of the situation. Or maybe I wanna avoid facing the truth.