The Mutilation Machination

by Jeffrey, Shaun

  With a shake of the head I threw in my cards, unconcerned by the inscrutable sneers from my opponents which made me laugh sardonically as I scanned their thoughts in rapid fire, breaching cracked codes into grey matter, a glimmer of suspicion festering in closet cells. Leper, unclean, psi card shark.

  Time to leave.

  The toke dragon breathed fire through swollen arteries of boiling blood and my temples’ pounded – membranous metronomes of flesh. Already on a charge for invasion of privacy I couldn’t afford to get caught again. I gathered the money, slowly – didn’t want to seem too anxious. A scrutinising glare from Sushi doll made me shiver in remembrance of her pain. She went under the scalpel cognizant, a martyr to grief in the nightmare world of reality. The woman is sustained by torture, a member of the fashionable self-mutilation machination. Shit makes me shiver. Didn’t want to get caught.

  Had to time it right, beat of the heart: four-chambered furnace melting the rivers of blood. One, two – and I stretched my arms as though tired – three, stood up, four – grabbed the pot – five, ran for all I was worth. In my frantic bid to escape the table went flying; cards revolved in the air like steamboat paddles running to ground.

  The crowds parted like a whore’s legs; man with a bloated transparent stomach cowered to protect the foetus which floated in amniotic dreams as my legs pistoned me past him towards the exit, head still ablaze with the toke dragon’s breath. Screams echoed from behind and the erotic dancer gathered the intestine snake into its visceral pit before exiting stage left.

  I was breathing heavily as I burst through the doors, leaving them swinging to and fro in my wake, beckoning pursuit from the mutilation tribe. Outside the club and a person wearing an insect-like filter mask peered through bulbous goggles as I brushed past: myopic scrutiny of my ferrous snarl. Throat now raw with exertion, two bellows fanned the furnace. Blood pumped faster, loud within the labyrinth of the ear.

  Lights flashed stroboscopic from moving vehicles, braking quick to avoid joining ancestral spectre jeans in the swirling dust as I ran in front of them, head down, sprinting, leaping detritus fragments of history in tumbledown central. Behind me, a shout, the voice raised against the roaring wind: “We’re gonna find you, and when we do—” The wind stole away the shrill utterance, leaving supposition to fuel the flights of fancy, the enmity unfortunately not purloined.

  It was time to retreat to the foundry, lay low until the incident became another tale of the city.

  Leaning against crumbling walls I counted the money. Bad habit, gambling, but we all got to let loose the devil inside. It’s all I can do. Psi, freak. No one wants a stranger in their thoughts. The ability to read minds is like a curse. Ever tried having sex while seeing your partner’s fantasising about being fucked by a dog?

  Casting a baleful glare over humanities’ crumbling edifices, I traipsed out into the desert of sorrow, sowing one more tear in the sand.

  A muslin sheet was wrapped around my stubble chin, a filter against the raging sand which formed the countless miles of barren vistas where the flimflam demon of the mind gathered the dust into distinguishable forms: raging beasts flowing over the rippling sea. My eyes were continually stung by the vicious grains: nature’s particle accelerator. Madness was only a step away in the hourglass plain.

  And then I heard it: syncopated sheet metal thunder. My smile flashed heliographic elation and tired legs increased their pace at the glint of fire on the horizon, smoke twisting in the wind like dark banners above monoliths of steel, seraphic temples pointing accusingly at the sky.

  Beneath arched ribs of rusting iron, the entrance. My feet padded hollow against the metallic floor and there, the Metalsmith. Face shrouded by a mask of black, the figure sent arcs of liquid metal spewing across the floor as she worked on a new sculpture, the bright glow of cutting accoutrements at work giving birth to a galaxy of molten metal that skittered across the floor. Sensing my presence, the welder of metal stopped work and looked back, raising the mask to reveal a latticework of metal inlaid into her delicate flesh: a circuit board connected to the prosthetic cutting tools, she a symbiosis of metal and flesh.

  She smiled, filaments of metal shifting along her jaw like liquid. A bolt of light from a hole in the roof illuminated her features, eyes molten pools of solder. A quick mind scan revealed her carnal desire. She discarded the mask, hair flowing with sentient life, twists of fine spun gold. She sloughed her coverall to stand naked, breasts firm within flesh-wired supporting cups of steel below which more circuitry pierced her skin, interwoven and bronzed by the furnace glow. The metal conundrum on her torso flashed, coiled around to the twisted array of implements supplementing her hands.

  Smoke twisted from the melting pots, molten metal bubbling along veins between the maze of constructs dominating the foundry interior. The Metalsmith is my junkyard angel. She walked towards me, synergy of metal and flesh, transient ghost beneath her creations. In a mute world she converses through metal, forming images in wrought iron and steel. But in her mind I saw the pain of silence.

  Together; embracing, the melding of lips sent a quick static burst of pain through sand blasted, tingling flesh before my clothes were shed like skin. Descending onto the steel floor we degenerated into primordial lust. My fingers caressed burns, scars of fire, a zip of scabs along her torso where skin still resided. She grabbed my penis and I glimpsed her wish to be pierced by metal, her weaver of words, her god. The petals of her vagina bloomed and I nailed her between the legs, jackhammer thrusts matching pneumatic pelvic lunges. Our minds were syntonic, clawing for orgasm; coils of metal scratched across blistering panels beneath her back until ... release.

  I was breathing heavy, my throat dry as I rolled from her torso. The Metalsmith lay motionless, her mind disconnected, caught in lovers limbo ...

  Love. I’d never imagined. Her thoughts surprised me. A kiss to her cheek, lips and long reverence of breasts returned the emotive response and she smiled. We had merged in the fire and returned as one.

  We made love again before darkness crawled sluggish through the arched entrance. The smelting pots cast ochre shades against twisted constructs: silent sentinels communicating in the Metalsmith’s sign language: pain, loss and fear before darkness enveloped their message.

  Awakened by a shrill laugh my fast beating heart boded menace. My mind pierced random thoughts in the dark before a flash of light from the smelting pots illuminated Sushi doll nodding her head in wry amusement. I jumped up, features etched by fear and rage, teeth bared in a snarl until I saw the Metalsmith held fast by Two-fingers and the Squealer, the wink of sharp metal at my lover’s throat.

  The intruders’ minds were closed to my tentative feelers, tight as cauterised arteries, and I grimaced. Even Sushi doll had been reconditioned and there was no breach to ascertain what they intended to do. Only the Metalsmith’s thoughts remained open: fear, panic, pain, a replication of her metal sculptures. From the entrance came the sound of feet, hollow on the metal floor as the spectators gathered in the dome, silent except for the murmur of their minds: they’d gathered to watch the game.

  Seated around the floor, Sushi doll dealt the cards. No stakes had been specified.

  I looked across at the Metalsmith sat hunched by a smelting pot, her instruments of creation removed leaving sores that wept hydraulic fluid, lubricating oil and blood. I felt the pain without invading her mind.

  Picking up my cards, I tried to perceive events but remained locked out, unable to even see my opponents’ hands. For the first time I played the game fully cognizant and I hungered for the toke dragon’s breath to ease the mental anguish of trying to decrypt barriers of mind.

  I lost the first hand, augmenting the fear. The assembled crowd sighed disapproval as one, and I frowned at their reaction. Hadn’t they come to see me lose?

  Two-fingers dealt the cards between his saluting fingers, his face haunted by shadows. The Metalsmith’s fear split my brain like ice. I couldn’t concentrate beneath he
r gaze; a crevasse isolated us, the gambler’s toll. My second hand was better. It eased the pain. Sushi doll grinned as she cast down her cards, fish bone filigree bending to accommodate the laughter lines that creased her face.

  I smiled taking the hand. No pot to win, but I felt vindicated. A winner can’t lose ...

  Until I saw the Squealer sever the Metalsmith’s arm and throw it on the floor: my prize. Her scream echoed through my mind. A sound only I could hear. Every hand I won, I lost: baptism of pain.

  The cards went bad. I refused to play, but they turned my cards over for me anyway. Every time I won, the Metalsmith lost: arm, leg, her skin’s latticework of metal removed one painful strip at a time, bloody red creases weeping tears of rust until she died, sacrificed for my greed. When it was over, the Mutilation machination departed like a bad memory, leaving me wallowing in self pity.

  I lay motionless for hours, surrounded by the silent sculptures until prompted by a whisper, the contracted squeal of tortured metal. I gathered the Metalsmith’s remains and fired up the furnace. When it was hot enough I deposited her in the smelting pot, allowing her to merge with her god and be at peace. She flowed through the veins of the foundry, bubbling quicksilver into moulds, conversing in a voice only I could hear. My tears spattered and sizzled as they rained into the molten metal. The Metalsmith was gone but not forgotten.

  Would never be forgotten. I opened taps allowing the hot metal to flow out, setting fire to the building and then I walked out into the desert without looking back.

  There’s too much pain in memories. And I should know because that’s all I have.

  Clockwork

  I knew the black cat was dead. Even if I hadn’t just seen it struck by the car, I would still know it was dead. Finding my father lying on the floor two weeks ago, hands clutched to his chest as though trying to keep warm made sure of that.

  One of the cat’s front paws protruded at an odd angle, its claws protracted as if in a failed attempt to scratch at the vehicle that had bowled it along the road.

  The driver of the car hadn’t stopped. Unlike dogs, you didn’t have to report it if you killed a cat.

  I gingerly reached out and touched the body. Its fur still felt warm and soft. My fingers brushed a red collar around its neck. The attached tag on the collar told me the cat was called Sooty.

  Although it was only a cat, I couldn’t stand the thought of the owner finding the dead feline in or at the side of the road, so I picked the carcass up, and with nowhere else to put it, I dropped it in with the shopping I had bought in town. I would bury it when I reached home.

  A car drove by, making me flinch. I wondered what it sounded like; wondered what lots of things sounded like. Deaf since birth, I lived in a world of unimaginable silence. The only time I had been glad of my deafness was when I saw mother screaming after I alerted her to father’s body.

  When I arrived home, I reached into the bag and touched the cat. Its body now cold, it had already started to go stiff. I stroked it once, and then opened the gate and deposited the corpse outside my den at the bottom of the garden before heading toward the house.

  “You took your time,” mother said as she took the shopping bags from me. She enunciated each word so I could lip-read.

  I shrugged and signed that I had lost track of time.

  Mother smiled, but she couldn’t disguise the haunted look of the bereaved. She started to say something else, but her lips stopped moving and she pulled out a tin of baked beans dotted with blood. She frowned. “What’s this?”

  Already one-step ahead, I weaved my fingers to say the steaks must have leaked.

  Mother nodded. It was a reasonable answer, as the cuts of meat often leaked.

  My sister, Vicky, sat in her highchair, playing with a rattle. I smiled at her and she smiled back. She opened and closed her mouth and I touched her cheek, feeling the vibrations of noise resonating through her skin. While mother put the shopping away, I made my way out to the den, a wooden structure four foot high and three foot square that I had built last summer.

  The cat lay on the grass outside. If it weren’t for the mangled paw and the specks of blood, it would look as though it were having a catnap.

  I picked it up, opened the door and carried it into the den, stooping as I entered.

  It was warm inside the room, and I stood up straight. Sheets of plastic yellowed in the sun made the light that shone through the window appear golden, illuminating the clocks that covered every surface.

  There were mechanical clocks, pendulum clocks, mantel clocks, cuckoo clocks and clocks that I had made. Within the den, I could feel the reverberating beat of the clocks like a huge heart, and feeling the familiar tick-tock of the clocks through the ground and walls, I felt it was the closest I came to actually hearing.

  Pieces of clocks cluttered the table against the back wall. There were springs, cogs, levers, weights and a whole host of other parts. I swept some of the bits aside and deposited the cat on the table while I searched for a bag to put it in. Deciding on an old plastic one, I turned back and grabbed the cat. Straight away, I felt the familiar pulse of the clocks through my fingers. For a brief moment, I imagined the cat was still alive, that I had made a mistake, that it wasn’t dead.

  A coiled spring unwound against the cat’s leg. I stared at the clock components. If there was one thing I was good at, it was making broken things work again. And that’s when the idea came to mind. What if I could mend the cat? I wasn’t thinking I could bring it back to life, but perhaps I could give it a semblance of life, could give it movement.

  I thought about it for a long while before I actually set to work.

  There was a penknife on the table. I picked it up and unfastened the blade, feeling it click open. A thin sheen of sweat painted my brow as I gingerly held the small penknife against the cat’s soft underbelly. This was stupid. I couldn’t do it, and my stomach recoiled at the thought.

  With a shake of my head, I dropped the knife and stared at the corpse. It looked pitiful and fresh tears stung my eyes. After a slight hesitation, I picked the knife up again and sliced the blade into the cat before I had time to change my mind. It wasn’t so bad when I started. There wasn’t much blood as no heart pumped, and despite the cold, slimy feel, removing the cat’s innards was no worse than taking the giblets out of the turkey at Christmas, something I had done last year.

  Once I had gutted the cat, I started to construct a mechanism to provide movement. It wouldn’t be the most technical of accomplishments, but I knew when it was inside the cat, no one would see it, so I wasn’t too concerned with its aesthetics. I used a small drill to make holes in the cat’s bones, to which I attached Meccano strips, supplementing its own skeleton with one of my own onto which I attached the clockwork device I had made.

  I had to make a couple of journeys to the house, but mother seemed to either not notice me or ignore me as she fed Vicky.

  Because I found the body, I think she blames me for father’s death.

  It took the best part of the remainder of the day, but eventually I finished.

  I stood the cat on the table, inserted a key into a small hole in its underside and turned it. Through my fingers on the cat’s back I could feel the cogs turning, the multiple springs being tensioned.

  Ten turns later, I released the key and stepped back. The cat’s eyes stared back at me, but nothing happened.

  Wondering if I had done something wrong, I stepped toward the cat when it suddenly blinked, stopping me in my tracks. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Its eyes weren’t supposed to blink; couldn’t blink because nothing powered them. I had considered how to make its eyes move, but decided making it walk would be enough.

  The cat’s head moved a fraction, just a twitch at first, almost imperceptible, then it swivelled from side to side as though testing the movement. It took a tentative step, its movement’s jerky, mechanical. The limbs hardly bent at the joints, which was disappointing after I’d spent so long fashion
ing the Meccano and bone links.

  I could feel my heart beating in time with the clocks that pulsed through the room. The cat staggered toward me, its limbs moving with the stiffness of a soldier on parade. I took a step back; could feel the blood throbbing at my temples, could feel the sweat on my back.

  What had I done?

  The cat opened its mouth. That shouldn’t have happened either. It wasn’t wired to work.

  I wondered whether it made a sound.

  Unable to look at it any longer, I ran out of the den, back to the house and into the kitchen where I stood shaking.

  “Alex, are you okay?” mother asked as she looked up from feeding Vicky.

  I couldn’t tell her what I’d done, didn’t fully understand it enough to explain, but that dead cat was more than a reanimated clockwork pussy. It had a life of its own, and it terrified me. I’d only wanted to make it move, to make it not seem so dead.

  “You’re pale as a sheet. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I signed that I was fine, then I offered to carry on feeding Vicky while mother had a break. Mother smiled and nodded.

  “You’re a good boy, Alex.”

  While I spoon-fed Vicky something purporting to be pasta in sauce, I thought about the cat. I couldn’t leave it in the den. But what could I do with it?

  My sister opened and closed her mouth, as greedy as a baby bird. Her hair was like spun gold, her eyes as blue as the sky. She still had a lot of baby fat, which made her look like those old paintings of cherubs. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. I envied her the innocence that didn’t yet feel the pain of loss.

  After I’d fed and changed her, I rocked her to sleep, put her in the cot and then walked back out to the den.

  I stood outside the structure, my hand on the door, feeling the beat of the clocks through the wood.

  Bracing myself, I took a deep breath, then flung the door open and stepped back. When the cat didn’t appear, I took a cautious step toward the den and peered inside to find the cat had torn its way through the plastic window.