by Mark Teppo
The bed is full of trash, pieces of fabric and twigs, plastic bottle caps and paper. The blackbirds have turned it into a nest. I get up and find myself bleeding from several different places on my body. They’ve been eating me in my sleep again. My clothes are stained with blood and full of holes. Most of the blood is old, because I haven’t changed in a week. All my shirts have holes now.
In the bathroom, I wrap my fingers with gauze, trying to make them look even, as if there’s still meat underneath the white cloth. I consider using some antiseptic, but don’t see the point. I throw the bottle in the trash bin.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
Gaunt. Tired. Broken.
There are black circles around my eyes, my lips are dried and split, my face swollen and puffy. One of the ravens took out a small piece of flesh right under my eye. The blood runs down the side of my face, like the streak of a red tear. I wash up and put on a clean shirt. I feel almost human again. I look at my watch. I’m gonna be late.
Out on the street, people avoid me. Little girls clutch their fathers’ hands and hide their faces. They cry. I guess the clean clothes didn’t help. Head down, hood up, I try to look more like a thug, a guy you shouldn’t mess with, instead of the monster that I really am. It seems to work better. In the subway, a blackbird finds its way to me. It watches from the seat across from me, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. No one seems to notice or care.
Me, I’m used to it. I look down my nose at it and hold its stare. Not that it gives a shit. It hops down to the floor and comes closer. It picks at my shoelaces. I look at my face in the reflection in the window. I’m bleeding again. I feel no pain in my fingers or the myriad of smaller wounds I carry, but my head is killing me. I used to wonder how I can still be alive, but these days there’s a lot of things I don’t think about. I just don’t care. The extent to which I do not care would shock you.
I get off at my stop and head for the old church up the hill. There was a fire a few years back—they never repaired the building, but it is still in decent condition. You just have to get creative about entering it. Around back, where the fence put up by the city has a human-sized hole in it, I enter the churchyard. One of the doors, the one closest to the fence, is unlocked. When it’s not, they key is behind one of the loose bricks in the wall beside it.
Inside, Meg and Jonathan are already waiting. Meg is a tall woman, thin, used to be pretty. She’s wearing a summer dress that’s two sizes larger than it should be. I suspect it used to fit her once. One of her nipples is showing, but she’s too out of it to notice. Her dead eyes stare straight ahead. She doesn’t see me.
Jonathan is holding her hand. He turns his head to me when I come in, but then turns to her again. They met here two years ago. Meg is near the end now, Jonathan still going strong.
Two blackbirds fly in from the broken window and land on the rubble strewn about in the church. Most of the roof is gone, but the little corner we have set up here keeps dry even when it rains. Winters are tough; then again we rarely meet like this. Usually it’s just desperate phone calls in the middle of the night and unexpected visits. A circle of pews stands in the middle of all the trash and junk. I take my seat across the couple and say nothing.
Welcome to Damned Anonymous. Living with things that are killing you from the inside. "Getting well—not really, we’re just dying—together."
Our little support group. When Meg first started growing tumors that got up and walked around in the night, she figured a support group for cancer survivors wasn’t going to be that helpful. When Jonathan woke up to find himself chewing on his little daughter’s arm, Alcoholics Anonymous just wasn’t an option for him anymore.
But they tried. And in those endless support group meetings, we found each other. Maybe it was the desperation that we saw in each other’s eyes. The fear of something worse than death, which we recognized. Meg found me in a depression support group. I was saying I feel empty, numb, dead inside. After the meeting, over stale coffee and even staler donuts, she came over and said, "You’re not really afraid you’re gonna kill yourself, are you? You’re here for something else." Maybe she saw the birds, perching on the windowsill. Maybe she noticed the bloodstains. So we started our own group. A few of us sometimes visit A.A. and groups like that. We recruit the demonically possessed.
Brennan walks in and takes me out of my little trip down memory lane. He’s looking a bit better than last time. It probably means he fed again. One of those hookers downtown didn’t wake up today, and right now she’s floating in the river, facedown in the water, bloated like a balloon. If she’s lucky some poor fisherman is gonna snag her in his nets and she’ll get a burial.
He looks ashamed, but in this little crowd, no one gives a fuck if he ate some girl’s heart and dumped her over the bridge. We’re too involved in our own misery. I wave to him, and he sits down. The room slowly fills up with the rest of the monsters, and the stench gets progressively worse. The blackbirds have flooded the church, but they’re quiet today, so I’m not gonna get in trouble with Jennifer, our group leader. Jennifer has a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, each one filed to a point. When she cries, she cries blood. A Catholic, she tried to get an exorcism a year ago. It didn’t work. I’m pretty sure she killed them, but she says she didn’t. I think I read it in the papers: two priests missing around the same time. She looks like she’s been crying.
Today, there is a new girl. Short black dress, ripped in some places and dirty with what looks to be ashes, heavy black makeup, her eyes unblinking and taking in everything at once. She’s gorgeous, and deep within me I feel something slither, like Leviathan at the bottom of the ocean.
Her name is Magdalene.
There’s a rat gnawing at her ankle.
I think my heart has stopped.
We go around the circle, telling our story for the umpteenth time, pouring salt on our wounds again, to try and center ourselves, get in touch with the reality of our situation, understand and accept what we can’t change.
When it’s Brennan’s turn, he confirms my suspicions.
"I fed again. I couldn’t help it. I was looking at my wife and thinking about eating her heart. I had to do something." He pauses and looks at the floor between his legs. Crocodile tears.
"I drove downtown and picked up a streetwalker. Young thing. I just picked up the first that came up to my car. I held it off until we reached the hills, and then I killed her. I ate her heart and buried her up there, in the woods."
He’s almost gone, he just doesn’t know it yet. He’s talking about this girl and crying, but I can see he’s also salivating. I see him smile when he says the word "heart."
He breaks down, and between sobs he keeps repeating "I’m so sorry . . . so sorry."
Jennifer consoles him with a hug while I roll my eyes. Fucking poser.
Meg is too out of it to share today. Jonathan says he’s okay, he’s controlling the cravings. I’m trying not to fall asleep. I’m waiting to hear her story. I think I know what she’s going to say, but I want to hear her voice.
She will say:
"One day I saw them watching me on the street. I saw them again the very next day and the day after that. They watched from the alleys and under cars and from the roofs of buildings. They followed me around, they came into my house, they watched me sleep. No matter what I did, they found a way in, they killed themselves in their attempts to come to me, and in the end, they always found me. There was no way to stop them. No poison or weapon would keep them away. So, they became a part of me. They live with me. They are everywhere, always. I have no friends, because the last time I went for a cup of coffee, the little freaks attacked the waiter and I had to run out of the place with them after me, always after me. They are eating me alive."
Me, blackbirds.
Her, rats.
We have so much in common.
After sharing I walk up to her and say, "Nice dress."
She turns around an
d gives me the once-over. She seems unimpressed.
"Nice scabs." She smirks, but doesn’t turn away.
"There’s a rat trying to climb up your dress." I smile.
She looks down and then catches herself.
"Made you look," I say.
"Funny," she says, angry but laughing.
"Do you want to go someplace?" I ask.
"I don’t really go out in public." She motions with her head towards the two rats gnawing on donuts on the table. "But you could come to my place."
A blackbird lands on my shoulder, tries to pluck out my eye. I slap it, and it flies away, back up to the rafters.
"Where do you live?"
"Parkside," she says.
"Too far. Too many birds out there. How about my place?" I ask.
She agrees to come to my apartment tomorrow, to see my record collection. She’s into The Smiths but who the fuck cares; we both know she doesn’t give a shit about my records or anything else in my shitty apartment. Except me. She wants me.
On the subway ride home, I feel almost human again. I’d celebrate, but I haven’t eaten or had a drink in weeks. I go home, and I sleep on my bed made out of blood and black feathers.
She’s at my place exactly on time. I put on a relatively clean shirt, my skin itchy all over from the feathers and the bird shit that’s been irritating it. I open the door. She’s cute in her flower pattern dress, with fresh little wounds at the top of her breasts. A bit of her scalp is missing over her left ear, and she uses a flower to hide it.
"Hey."
"Hey."
She walks into my apartment, which is covered in black feathers and dirt, birds taking flight with every step she takes. I feel like a teenager. A teenager slowly turning into something else, but still. Nervous.
I drop the The Smiths record on her lap. She pretends to be interested for a bit but ultimately discards it on the coffee table. She pats the place beside her on the couch, and I obey.
"How are you doing with them?" I ask.
"Okay. I think I’m getting close."
I nod. I’ve felt the same lately. There will be a tipping point, and then the transformation will be complete. Our demons will consume us.
"You?" She picks at a scab on her knee. It’s cute.
I shrug. "Who knows? I don’t think about it," I lie.
I get up and bring out the wine and the glasses. She looks excited. We finish the bottle off in half an hour flat, and when we’re done with the boring chit chat, we make out on the couch. Our wounds open, and we bleed into each other, feathers and coarse brown hair sticking to our bodies. It’s painful and awkward, and sometimes I feel like I will faint from the blood loss, but there are moments when I forget that my body is rotting and my heart is dead and hell is waiting for me.
We stumble to the bedroom and fuck in a drunken stupor, with the rats and the blackbirds watching.
I wake up, and I feel empty, hollow. I reach into my chest, and I touch a crow nesting there. Its coat is slick with my blood, but it’s not afraid. It feels safe inside of me. I feel safe too.
She’s still here, her arm resting on my chest. A rat is peeking from under her dress. I wake her with a kiss, and her little rat teeth gnaw at my lips. She draws blood, and immediately I’m hard. I climb on top of her, and then we are one, and the blackbirds and the rats are clawing and biting, and we flow into one another, and as monsters we are reborn.
Digital
— Daryl Gregory
Sometime after the accident, Franklin woke up to realize that his consciousness had relocated to his left hand—specifically, the index finger of his left hand.
Before the accident, which is to say, his entire life until then, his conscious self seemed to reside just behind his eyes, a tiny man gazing out at the world through a pair of wide windows. He’d never considered how odd this was, and how arbitrary that location. Was it because humans were predominantly visual? He supposed so, but that didn’t explain why his self had been lodged there. Why not behind the nose? His sense of smell was quite keen, especially when it came to beer: he could tell a Belgian Abbey ale from an American microbrew knockoff with a single sniff. His taste buds were highly trained. If he had become a professional taste-tester, he wondered, would his consciousness have migrated down to his tongue?
His wife, Judith, could not seem to understand what had happened to him, even though he tried repeatedly to explain. "I’m down here," he told her, waggling himself to get her attention. He could not move his arm because of the cast that covered him from palm to shoulder. He’d broken his wrist, sent a hairline fracture along his ulna, and torn his rotator cuff.
Judith looked distraught. "It’s the stroke, Franklin. I told you you were working too hard. Now you’ve suffered a stroke."
Perhaps that was the case. He’d been standing at the top of the stairs, reaching out to the banister, when suddenly he felt dizzy. Sometime later he awoke, face down on the parquet landing, his arm trapped beneath him. He felt suffocated, as if he were buried in an avalanche. When the EMTs rolled him onto his back, he moaned in pain, but at the same time experienced a profound sense of relief when his hand came free. Daylight! Air! Though of course he’d been breathing perfectly well the entire time, and he could see fine. What he could not decide, even now, was this: had the accident caused the shift in consciousness, or had he become dizzy because his self was on the move down his arm?
"Don’t tell the doctors," he said. "They’ll think I’m crazy."
She patted the back of his hand, and he flinched. "I won’t if you don’t want me to," she said. Her fingers were stubby, which she tried to disguise with long, brightly painted nails. Liar’s hands.
That afternoon, the doctors stormed his room to interrogate him. They shone penlights into his eyes, wheeled him off to MRIs and a CAT scan, tested his vision, speech, and cognition. Except for some awkwardness rearranging wooden blocks during the motor coordination exam, the fact that his self was now nestled thirty inches southeast from its old location seemed to make no measurable difference. He was perfectly capable of performing from his new mental home.
"Let’s see if the feeling persists," the most senior doctor said, and handed Judith a dozen prescriptions to fill. "Call us if you experience anything odd, such as—" And here he rattled off a list of alarming neurological and physiological symptoms.
"The important thing," he said to Franklin, "is to avoid stress."
After eight weeks, Franklin returned to the hospital to have the cast removed, and then returned again a few days later for the first of several physical therapy sessions to restore motion to his shoulder. His therapist’s name was Olivia. She had lovely hands. She kept her nails trimmed, but they were painted with a clear gloss with white tips—a French manicure. Her long, delicate-looking fingers were quite strong; when she dug into the knotted tissue of his shoulder she could make him cry out. Whenever she touched his left hand, however, she was exceedingly gentle, which convinced him she’d been told about his mental condition. But on the third visit, when he worked up the courage to mention, casually, that his consciousness had migrated to the peninsula of his index finger, she seemed genuinely surprised.
"You feel like you are . . ."She nodded toward his hand. "There?"
"The funny thing is, I’m not even left-handed."
She frowned, not disapprovingly, but in a curious, scientific way. "What’s that like for you? If you don’t mind talking about it."
There was nothing he wanted to talk about more. Judith found the topic distasteful. "Close your eyes," he told Olivia. "Imagine yourself as one great finger. Picture a long arm extending from your back that stretches up to a gargantuan body."
She closed her eyes, and he watched her, moving his gaze from her white-tipped fingernails, to her face, and back again. The image was transferred from his retina to his brain, and there down his arm to his pulsing index finger. He curled against his palm, suddenly embarrassed by his thoughts.
"And up th
ere," he said, "at the top of the body, is a huge, remote head like a planetoid. A bony house for the computer of your brain. It tells you things, but it’s not you."
She concentrated for a few moments, and then opened her eyes. "I wondered why you kept looking at my hands."
"Sorry about that."
"It’s all right." She lifted one finger, flexed it, and laughed. "Hi there."
He raised himself up and waved back.
She said, "Does it feel . . . odd in there? Cramped?"
"It feels like the most natural thing in the world," he said. "I’d always been person who lived in my head, who kept his feelings contained. Now I can’t imagine living any other way. I feel free."
He was worried that his confession might alienate her, but at the next session there was no strangeness between them. As they worked on his muscles he talked easily of his new life, the new insights he’d gained. "Have you ever noticed how careless people are with their hands?" he said during one visit. "The other day my wife grabbed a pan from the oven, burned herself, and then she stuck her finger in her mouth. She didn’t even wash afterward." And: "I wonder if Helen Keller was hand conscious?"
He wanted the visits to go on and on, but his insurance ran out after only three weeks. At the end of the last appointment, he said, "You’ve helped me so much, I’d like to thank you somehow. Can I buy you lunch? You said you liked Thai food." Ever since she’d mentioned her love of pad Thai he’d been thinking of chop sticks moving in her fingers.