by David Six
It’s all I think about, now: cancer. That disease eating me alive from the inside, eating away my livelihood. If I can’t talk, if I can’t give my sermons every week, people will turn away from me. I have to save my flock, and I have to be able to talk to save my flock.
So I hope you’ll understand why I told you all this. Why I have to do this. The doctors won’t help me, so I have to take charge of my own healing. To do that, I have to find out where the corners are. What they are. So I can go back to the know-nothing doctors and show them the results of my research and they can save me from cancer.
I bought a brand-new chef’s knife from the restaurant supply over on Elm and Forty-Second, and they promised me it was the best one they had. The sharpest one. I don’t want this to hurt, but it will hurt a little, I can’t lie to you. But this time I’ll make the cut fast, so you’ll barely feel it. And then in a few moments it won’t matter anyway.
Don’t worry—after doing this nine times already I’ve gotten better and faster at it, so you will reach your heavenly reward sooner than the others did. I feel bad about that, that it took so long with the others, but they served a higher purpose. You’ll serve a higher purpose, too.
You should feel good about that.
The Gift
He cut the ribbons with the precision of a surgeon. They had to be perfect. They must be perfect. If even one ribbon was out of place, she would be unhappy with him.
He cut the wide strip its length, making narrower bands. The thick ribbon resisted the blade of the scissors, the sound a muted slik as he squeezed the handles closed. Open, closed. Open, closed. Strips of ribbon fell away from the thick sheet: slender, perfect.
They must be.
Another thin ribbon, red and pink. The bow would be lovely. He hoped she would think it lovely. The trimmed strips dropped away from his scissors into a clean pink wicker basket, purchased just for this occasion. Every part of his gift must be pristine. Must be perfect.
As he cut, his heart overwhelmed with the love he knew she felt for him. His chest took on a fullness; sometimes he thought he would burst from her fullness. He only ever wanted to take her into himself, and therefore, he into her.
Slik. Slik.
Music played as he cut: Satie’s “Trois Gymnopedies”. The calming piano notes flowed over him like the cool water of a stream. That was good, because he tended to sweat while he worked, even in the fifty-nine-degree temperature at which he kept his workroom. Sometimes his fingers slipped in the scissor handles, and what had been a perfect thin strip of ribbon instead became a horrific abomination of his craft, of his offering: jagged edges, uneven width, tatters and tangles.
Unacceptable.
His tongue thrust from his lips, clamped between his teeth as he concentrated, wriggled like the tail of a trapped serpent. He never remembered he did that, until he realized his tongue was bleeding a little, and then was sore for two days after.
But it was worth it, for when he gave her his gift, she would be overjoyed. Any pain was worth that!
He finished cutting the final ribbon; there was no more stock to be had. It was always this way: he could not make a mistake with his limited stock, and if he did, he had to start over. Starting over was upsetting. Abandoning his previous work was upsetting. Throwing it all out was time-consuming.
But this time… This time it was perfect! Each ribbon—as he pulled them from the basket with delicate fingers, like they were made of gossamer—was perfect. The edges of all the ribbons were even and unmarred, thanks to the very sharp scissors and his skills.
“Practice makes perfect,” he murmured, then glanced up to see if he’d been heard, there in the shadows. It wasn’t time for her to know yet.
But soon. After all, what good was a surprise gift if she knew about it?
He giggled at that. Laying out the ribbons side by side on his worktable, he arranged them in the order that they would be needed. Now came his favorite part: wrapping his gift to her.
He had already fashioned her gift earlier in the day. He liked to do that first, while he was fresh and feeling creative, because as necessary a part of his process as was the ribbon-cutting, it was tiring, and he had learned his creativity waned if he did the busywork before the artistry.
But her gift was shaped to perfection, and he had finished that morning, even before lunch. He had been inspired! And why not? She was beautiful, and wanting to please her drove his emotions and inspirations. She made him be a better man. And knowing how much she would appreciate his efforts always carried him through the tiring part.
But now it was only a matter of tying the ribbons in the most artistic way he could do. He picked up the first, it almost three feet in length, and looped it around her gift. Then the next, and the next, until he had tied the ribbons in an interwoven mesh about her gift, the free ends gathered on top into a red and pink bow a foot and a half wide.
It was magnificent! His best yet.
Now she could see his gift.
“I know you’ve been waiting a long time,” he whispered to her as he flicked on the switch. “But now it’s ready.”
Two pinpoint halogen spotlights flashed on, shining on the head inside the Plexiglas case atop the wooden pedestal he had built, just for this occasion. The eyes in the face were milky, unseeing.
A large floodlight illuminated his gift, spilling light across the table and making the elaborate bow—the ribbons cut from the carefully peeled away sheet of her epidermis and dermis that had wrapped around her torso, chest to spine—radiate like a daisy blossom in midday sun. He had arranged her defleshed pelvis inside the arc of her ribcage like the golden sacraments on an altar, and had reserved her heart for the place of honor: atop the sacral promontory, between the iliac fossae that flanked the seat of her love like angel’s wings.
“Do you like it?” he said to her decapitated head inside the plastic case.
Some blood and matter still seeped from the scalpel-severed edges of her neck, but he had thoughtfully placed a thick pad of gauze beneath the spike upon which her head was fastened. He had also helped her by removing her eyelids so that she could see.
He knew she could see, because her spirit was too immense to be contained by mere flesh. He had liberated her so that she could sing among the spheres as she was meant, and he knew she was grateful.
“Do you like it?” he said again.
He bent and pressed his lips to the plastic side of her beautiful display case.
“I hope so,” he said. “I love you so much.”
Trappings
I’ma take off my jeans. No, now, don’t go a-fussin’—it’s for your own good. You see, these here jeans, I don’t know where they been. They come a-strollin’ in four-oh-six in the ay em this mornin’, all smug as you please, grinnin’ pocket to pocket, like the cat broke the canary.
I swear, I ain’t no lemon-curd pushover, but I’ma ‘bout to have words. I mean, who’s the boss here anyway? No goddam Levis mother-fucker, that’s for sure!
Now why you go and start cryin’? Ain’t you never seen a red-blooded American man in his skivvies before? I thought all you gals been around the block and then some. I thought all you gals tumbled and twitted and faceliked and knew the score. I thought all you gals knew what you was for.
But here you are— Now what’d I say about cryin’? Here.
Now I done told you not to cry! Didn’t I? I told you to put a sock in your cakehole! You ain’t gonna do it, I am…
There. Now you quiet, ain’t you? Screamin’ against the sock—no, now, it was your idea, so don’t go fussin’ again—won’t do you no good. Ain’t nobody can hear you for miles, even if they was standin’ up there in the kitchen right on top a’ you, way I got things set up here. You ain’t my first, you know.
Don’t look at me like that. What’d I say?
Shut up. A little smack ain’t never hurt nobody. Your momma raise herself a baby?
Let me ju
st get you right… Oh, you got one a’ those fancy brassieres, don’t you? One a’ those ones from that shiny store at the mall, with all the nekkid plastic gal statues in the window, the ones wearin’ the naughty undies. Well then, you just a whore, like I thought.
Never could work these hooks. Think you gals set this up just to frustrate a man from his well-deserved rewards, way the good lord intended him to have.
Oh this? This is David Bowie, I named him. ‘Cause it’s a Bowie knife, right? Somebody told me was a fella name Jim Bowie made the knife, but I don’t think that’s right. ‘Cause who ever heard a’ Jim Bowie? Everybody’s heard a’ David Bowie, that’s who! So here, I’ll just slip this big ol’ blade underneath them pesky hooks.
Ain’t that better? Them brassieres always look tight and pinchy to me. Wonder why you gals don’t just chuck ‘em and be done with it. Y’all look better without ‘em anyways. See there, what purty tits you got. And don’t tell me you don’t like this, ‘cause I got eyes the good lord gave me. I see them little nips a-perkin’ up when I pinch ‘em. You tellin’ me you don’t like that? You lyin’, that’s what. But lordy, what can a man expect from a whore?
Let me get my other tools.
Now don’t start up that screamin’ again, or I’ll be stickin’ another sock down your whore throat. Lordy, why’d the good lord ever give y’all tongues? Well, I’ll show you in a minute what that tongue is for. Here, let me wipe them tears away—can’t have my girl all sad and shit, can I? Oh now, look, your mascary done ran. Don’t worry, I’ll fix that.
After.
The Wrong Man
Rain sputtered like grease on asphalt still hot from the July Texas day. The black ribbon with the double-yellow line wound out, a miasma of blinks and blurs from the downpour.
It was five till midnight.
He drove, the wipers doing their clack-squeak-clack, saying Oh, I know. Oh, I know, over and over. The last digit on the clock changing from “5” to “6” caught his eye. He pressed hard on the gas.
Four minutes.
Oh, I know.
The tires hit a puddle deep and wide enough to drown a horse. Water striking the undercarriage sounded like the car had vomited, and for a moment he lost control of the wheel. Then the rubber bit shallow tar, and the big Buick shuddered back into line.
Three minutes.
They were dead, in three minutes.
Oh, I know.
He wished he’d never brought them to Texas, never went to work for that company. He should have listened to his gut.
The road bent, headlights glaring off a guardrail he clipped with the front fender, metal wet and screeching like a dying hawk as he wrestled the old Buick around the sodden curve. One headlight lost, making him feel he’d gone half-blind, the glares off the asphalt even more confusing as the rain pounded harder.
Two minutes.
Oh, I know.
The road straightened. The yellow of the lone headlight pinned the building like a spotlight center stage.
One minute.
He did not let off the gas till he was almost on top of the parking lot, then he slammed the brakes like he was trying to stop the car with his foot through the floor. The Buick rattled and fishtailed, brakes shrieking as the tires chomped over the gravel in the lot.
The car still rocked as he flung open the door and leaped out, then stood in the pelting storm, staring at the green building that had once been some kind of shop. The structure’s color in the car’s headlight was key lime, if the pie had been left out to rot. All the windows showed broken jags like teeth never tended. Spray-painted sentiments like “Fuck Lanie” and “I eat at Josies thighs” covered the structure. Fragments of broken bottles—Lone Star beer and Wild Turkey whisky, mostly—outnumbered the chunks of gravel in the lot.
“Well, there he is.”
A man with a mullet came from behind the building. Another man, shaped and sized like Lennie Small, followed behind. Their hair was plastered to their heads from the unrelenting deluge.
Mullet had spoken.
“Just made it, din’cha?” Mullet said now, spitting tobacco at the gravel like it had insulted him. He grinned. His teeth were yellow, except for his left central incisor, which was black.
“Where are they?”
Mullet held out a hand. “Now, now, don’cha worry—the wife and kiddies are jus’ fine.” He held up his arm and looked at his watch with a dramatic sweep, as if he were acting in an old silent film. “Cause you made it.”
“Let me see them.” He started forward.
Mullet frowned, and Lennie behind him hulked forward a couple of steps. Mullet reached behind his back and pulled forth a Glock 17, waved it.
He stopped. The rain soaked through his overcoat, suit, shirt, undershirt. Thunder cracked, and lightning lit his severe face a moment.
“Pretty uppity for a whistle-blower, ain’cha?” Mullet inquired. “You’re a’ready in enough trouble, so stay put ‘fore I lose my friendly mood.” He glanced to his side. “Barky, get ‘em.”
Barky—Lennie—turned and lumbered towards the rear of the falling-down building and was lost from sight.
He stared at Mullet. Mullet stared back. Water dripped from their brows.
“Look, cuz,” Mullet said, “I ain’t got nothin’ against you.” He flicked the barrel of the Glock around. “But the bosses say you gonna spill the beans, well, that’s when they call me and Barky ta fix a problem.”
“You took my family from me.”
Mullet scrunched his lips in a twisted grin and laughed. “What’d’ya think was gonna happen? You threaten ta let loose papers I unnerstan’ could make the bosses unhappy, they gonna do somethin’ about it.”
He opened his mouth to speak, then felt his face heat.
Not now.
“Someone had to speak up. They are poisoning the water table.”
Mullet shrugged. “Drink Dasani.”
Barky shambled back into view, dragging a woman in one big paw, the wrists of a young boy and a girl gathered in the other. The children were crying. The woman saw him.
“Oh!” she cried, and tried to rush to him.
Barky’s tree-limb brows frowned into each other. He shoved her to the ground.
“Leave her alone.” The heat spread downward to his neck. Not now. Oh, not now.
Mullet ignored him, grinned at Barky.
“Don’cha move,” Barky ordered the woman.
She ignored him and tried to gain her feet, reached for her children with one arm—“My babies!”—and her husband with the other.
Lightning fizzed the air, spotlighting to center stage Barky’s hard slap to the woman’s face.
“Stop!” he yelled, starting forward.
The heat flowed down his torso like quicksilver on glass.
Mullet raised the Glock and fired.
The gravel at his feet spat where the round struck.
“Now, din’t I tell you ta stay put?” Mullet said. “We want all of us out of this, you gotta stay put, ‘fore the next one goes higher, like your gut.” He smiled his yellow-and-black smile. “Now where’d’ya put the papers?”
He looked back to the car. “Briefcase.”
“Keep an eye, Barky,” Mullet muttered. Barky nodded and Mullet went to the car, opened the passenger door, pulled out a slim fake-leather attaché. He pulled the zipper, peered inside.
“This don’t mean nothin’ ta me,” he said, coming back into the headlight, a sheaf of papers in his fist.
“It’s what you asked for.”
“Hell, we told you, no askin’ about it,” Mullet cackled. “But this’s it?”
“Give it to your bosses. And now, hold up your end of the deal and give me my family.”
Mullet pursed his lips and scratched his cheek with the Glock’s barrel as the rain sizzled around them. He looked back at the woman.
“Well now, we can do that,” Mullet said. He leered at the
woman. “Or we can have a little fun first.” He leaned an inch towards the man in the overcoat, as if to tell a secret. “Your wife, she’s a piece, she is.”
The heat tingled in his arms and legs.
“So I tell you what,” Mullet went on. “Me and Barky, we gonna have some fun with the missus ‘fore we give her back. And guess what? You get ta watch.”
Mullet unzipped his pants. Barky laughed, high-pitched, like a five-year-old girl, and undid his as well. Both men were hard. Barky reached down for the woman, took a fistful of her hair.
The heat exploded in his belly and flashed outward to every part of his body. The rain did not soak any longer; the droplets hissed and crackled on his skin like water splashed onto a hot skillet.
“No,” he said.
An instant later both Mullet and Barky lay on the ground. The looks on their faces suggested they had been asked to solve a complex mathematical formula, and could not.
A hole had appeared in their torsos where their hearts had been, front to back. The edges of the holes were blackened like Texas barbeque left on the grill. Rain hissed and steam rose. He could see the gravel of the parking lot through the holes.
His children gaped, then crawled forward and began feeding on the corpses.
His wife rushed to him, and he took her in his arms.
The heat cooled. The rain soaked once more.
But she was safe. They were safe.
For now.
“We have to move again,” he said.
“Oh, I know,” she murmured, her head against his chest.
Sell Phone
It’s fuckin cold out here. I can feel every hair on my arms prickin up like a goddam dog’s ears when he hears the kibble bag.
That buzzin fuckin streetlight over there is pissin me off. Stupid orange glow from it looks like somebody puked a puddle of OJ on the street.
What a shithole neighborhood. More oil on the goddam asphalt than in the cars. Bet I could punch a hole right through this one, more rust than metal.