by Mark Nutter
“We’ll always have Paris,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a line from the movie Casablanca.”
“Are there mermaids in it?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t think I’d like it.”
She gave me a peck on the cheek, then swam away to play fetch with the moray eels.
I returned to Beachville Town, feeling melancholy. I knew I had to do something to preserve the memory of what Oola and I once had.
I quadrupled the price of a mermaid fishing license. No one could afford it now.
Only me.
Mr. Swill And Mr. Muck Who Are Not Murderers
We — and when I say ‘we’ I mean Mr. Muck — we dragged the heavy sack along the pavement, up to the glass doors under the sign reading “Emergency Room.”
Mr. Muck paused, breathing heavily, no doubt because of his consumption of pipe tobacco and his consumption of ale and his consumption. He removed his bowler hat and wiped his brow with a tattered sleeve.
“Are you sure about this, Mr. Swill?” he said.
“What does the sign say, Mr. Muck?” I said pointing.
“E... mer... ,” he began. I immediately regretted asking him to read, as I knew it would tire him.
“I’ll read it for you. It says Emergency Room. What does that mean, Mr. Muck?”
“A bad place?”
“Not necessarily. Because...”
I paused in my explanation as I was drowned out by the shrill sound of another horseless carriage with flashing lights approaching the Emergency Room. It was a peculiar time and place we had unexpectedly found ourselves in, and at some point I hoped to ascertain why.
The earsplitting sound ceased and I continued. “Because the Emergency Room is attached to this massive hospital, it means that only transactions of the greatest urgency are permitted through these portals. Are you listening, Mr. Muck?”
Mr. Muck had fallen asleep. He awoke with a start, after I kicked him repeatedly.
“Beg pardon. Your eloquent speechifying makes me drowsy, that plus this wretched lung disease.” He coughed up a bit of blood, reached into his coat for his pipe, and struck a match.
I made an effort to explain it in simpler terms. “We have what they want. We shall sell them our wares.”
“Thankee, Mr. Swill. I do enjoy your speechifying, even if it tires me fiercely.”
I waited patiently as Mr. Muck smoked his bowl, making hacking sounds all the while.
“Then,” I said after a few minutes, “if you are adequately rested, let us enter this Room of Emergency.”
Mr. Muck heaved and pulled and dragged the sack through the glass doors which miraculously were drawn aside by unseen hands.
We walked past what appeared to be a uniformed guard. The room was filled with wretched ailing creatures holding bandages against broken and bleeding body parts. I felt buoyed, optimistic. I was certain we were in the right place to do business.
I approached a counter behind which sat a sour-faced matron.
“Greetings to you, my good woman,” I said, tipping my top hat.
“Can I help you?”
“Ah. It is we who can help you.”
“Is that right?”
“Indeed. We have what you desperately need. My partner carries the merchandise.”
“Greetings,” said Mr. Muck, doffing his bowler.
The matron leaned over the counter. “Is there somebody in that sack?” she said.
“There is indeed.”
“Are they here for treatment?”
“In a sense. They are here to be treated as an object of study.”
“Do they have insurance?”
I was puzzled.
“Insurance? I said, “that they will achieve their final reward in Heaven, as promised by Our Heavenly Father?”
“Praise God,” said Mr. Muck.
The matron sighed. “Medicare? Medicaid? Blue Cross Blue Shield?”
Mr. Muck took the initiative.
“We’re selling a body so your medical school doctors can autopsy him,” said Mr. Muck, then added, “we didn’t kill him.”
“Oh no,” I said. “His was a sad and untimely death. He died of dropsy.”
“Dropsy,” Mr. Muck nodded, “and not being smothered by a pillow and knifed in the back, because you can’t hardly see where the blade went in.”
The matron was waving at the guard.
I thought it best to finish our transaction in haste.
“Our going rate is seven pound ten shillings. Consider it an investment in the future of the medical sciences.”
The matron rose to her feet. The guard from the front door approached, holding something that seemed to be a handgun. I sensed our transaction had come to an unfulfilling end.
“Mr. Muck, if you would be so kind.”
Mr. Muck nodded. Although weary, he was able to level the approaching guard with his gnarled fists. We gathered up our dead friend in the sack and hurried out the door.
“What now, Mr. Swill?”
We sat in an alley on the sack, safe from our pursuers.
“We seek out another medical institution more amenable to purchase.”
“Why not do what we done before? Sell the body to Dr. Knox at the Royal College of Surgeons.”
“Because, Mr. Muck, for some inexplicable reason we have been transported far from Edinburgh to this unknown time and place.”
“Ah yes. I forgot.”
“I surmise we have been sent far into the future.”
“To Friday?”
“Farther than that. This is clearly no longer the Year of Our Lord 1828.”
As if to emphasize my point, several horseless vehicles with blazing lights sped past on the street outside the alley. I held my hand over Mr. Muck’s mouth so his violent hacking would not give us away.
“I reckon they’re no more tolerant now of body snatchers than they were in Edinburgh,” mused Mr. Muck.
“There will always be a demand for fresh corpses.”
“I reckon.”
“It’s a basic human need, along with food and water.”
“I reckon.”
“We’ll prevail, as long as you refrain from using the word ‘kill’.”
“I’m doing my best, Mr. Swill.”
We faced another woman behind another counter.
“He got dropsy,” said Mr. Muck to the woman. “Terrible dropsy, what caused the hole in his back.”
“My partner is trying to say he died of natural causes.”
“And not from being killed.”
“Do we have a deal?” I said. “I’ll settle for six pound five shillings.”
The woman stared in disbelief.
“This is a dental clinic,” she said.
“He’s got teeth,” said Mr. Muck, pulling the sack down to reveal the decomposing head. He counted and showed her: “Five good ones.”
“Dental students would assuredly benefit from witnessing a full autopsy,” I elaborated. “Some students may ask, are there teeth found in any part of the human body besides the mouth? Of course answer is ‘no,’ but they should see for themselves, don’t you agree?”
Mr. Muck used the corpse in the sack as a weapon. He swung it in a circle and leveled two approaching guards. Once again we fled.
“Four pound three shillings, to give the little ones a medical lesson they’ll never forget,” I said.
The woman in charge of the five-year-old children in the playground screamed at the top of her lungs.
Mr. Muck rolled the sack along the ground like a log, tripping up four law officers, once again giving us time to escape.
It seemed appropriate to change our strategy by including other options. We app
roached a boutique clothing shop, thinking the corpse could be used to display the latest fashions. But even in its current state of decomposition, our corpse was still not thin enough to wear chic clothing in a flattering manner.
We made an appointment with the artistic director of a theatrical company currently presenting a murder mystery. We reasoned a corpse could play a corpse more convincingly than an actor playing a corpse. The artistic director agreed, saying he was disappointed in the current actor’s interpretation of a carcass. But in the end he was afraid of bruising egos and declined our offer.
We were exhausted and hungry. We needed to sell the corpse, take the money we requested, and find an eatery that accepted currency from 19th century Scotland. It was a tall order. Just thinking of it tired me, and I fell asleep in yet another alley.
When I awoke there was no sign of Mr. Muck. Then I saw him at the opposite end of the alley, running toward me, waving a shiny knife and dragging five or six sacks behind him.
“Mr. Swill! I had an idea and didn’t wish to wake you!”
He arrived at my side, breathing and coughing heavily.
“We couldn’t sell the corpse as is. I thought, what if cut it up and sold the parts? I’m sure the money we make will more than cover the cost of this Messermeister Meridian Elite Stealth Chef Knife and the extra sacks.”
“You may be onto something, Mr. Muck.”
“We can sell the arms to a used arm shop. Likewise for the legs. The torso we can sell to the local torso merchant, I’m sure there’s one on the High Street.”
“And the head we’ll sell to the highest bidder. Well done, Mr. Muck.”
“Thankee, Mr. Swill.”
Just then the artistic director of the theater rounded the corner.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he said. “I’ve fired the actor playing the corpse. Lying onstage not moving, he was still more interesting than the rest of the cast. I couldn’t have that. I’ll purchase your corpse — what’s this?”
“It’s still the corpse, now neatly segmented,” I explained.
“He was dead before I cut him up,” added Mr. Muck. “We didn’t kill him.”
“But he does me no good in pieces,” cried the artistic director, wringing his hands.
“I’ll give you a deal on the head. Two pound two shillings,” I said. “Simply rewrite the script and say the rest was eaten by wolves.”
“No no no,” said the artistic director as he scurried away in a huff.
We could find neither a used arm nor used leg store to sell our wares. There used to be torso store on the High Street, but it had folded and was now a Dunkin’ Donuts.
Once again we found ourselves in an alley, with no prospects.
“Mr. Swill, I’m hungry and tired and sad,” said Mr. Muck.
“You’re despondent.”
“It’s no use your trying to cheer me with your big words,” he said.
At that moment when our future seemed bleakest, there was a great whirring sound. A sudden wind blew dust and garbage into the air.
There appeared before us a wondrous machine, a shiny mechanical contraption, like an open-air carriage with many dials and levers. When it had settled in the alley, the driver stepped out.
It was none other than Dr. Knox of the Royal College of Surgeons!
“Dr. Knox!” we exclaimed together. “It’s Mr. Swill and Mr. Muck. Do you remember us?”
“Of course I remember you,” said the doctor, smoothing down his dusty mutton chops.
“You’re just the man we want to see.” I pointed to the sacks at our feet. “We have here the corpse of a man who can be easily reassembled.”
“A man murdered by natural causes,” added Mr. Muck.
“It would be our pleasure to sell you these body parts for the reduced rate of five pound three shillings.”
Dr. Knox shook his head.
“I no longer purchase corpses or body parts. I now pursue a new field of study.”
Dr. Knox gestured to the complicated vehicle behind him.
“I study time itself with my wondrous Time Machine, a conveyance of my own invention.”
“But you were renowned among surgeons,” I said. “How can you abandon all that?”
“Anatomy and time travel have much in common.” Dr. Knox paused. “Actually I can’t think of any similarities at the moment, but I’m sure they exist.”
Dr. Knox polished one of the machine’s shiny levers with his mutton chops.
“Can we take a ride in it?” said Mr. Muck hopefully.
“You’ve already had a ride in it. How do you think you got where you are now, an American city in the year 2020?”
“Which American city?”
“Either St. Charles, Illinois, or Prescott, Arizona, I’m not certain which.”
“But why is it we have no memory of the journey?”
“You both fell asleep,” said Dr. Knox. “Time travel does that. It’s very relaxing. I’m only able to stay awake because of the large quantities of cocaine I inhale.”
Dr. Knox produced a vial from his waistcoat. He snorted something up his nose, then polished the lever with renewed vigor.
“But... why did you — ?” was all I could manage.
“You were part of an experiment. I was curious to see if two grave robbers from nineteenth century Edinburgh could thrive in twenty-first century St. Charles or Prescott. I call the experiment a success.”
“We haven’t sold anything.”
“It’s a success because I now know the outcome. You failed. I’ll be sure to enter that in my journal.”
Dr. Knox climbed back into his Time Machine.
“Thank you for your participation. The College of Time Travelers is most grateful,” he called to us. “I’m off to kidnap DaVinci and put him onstage during the Ziegfeld Follies of 1922.”
He snorted more cocaine, threw a lever, and disappeared in a cloud of dust.
“What now, Mr. Swill?” said Mr. Muck.
***
“Doesn’t that look realistic?” I said to the ten-year-old boy as I waved a decomposed arm at him.
Halloween was but two weeks away. Mr. Muck and myself had been gainfully employed at a pop-up shop downtown, in what we learned was neither St. Charles nor Prescott but Bloomington, Indiana.
“It stinks,” said the boy, who nevertheless was fascinated.
“That only adds to the realism, young man. Or how about this?”
I gestured to Mr. Muck who produced the decayed head from a sack. The young man’s combined fascination and repulsion increased tenfold.
“You can remove the skull and wear it as a mask.”
“We didn’t kill him,” said Mr. Muck.
“No, we didn’t kill him,” I agreed. “One pound one shilling... “
One Last Thing Before I Save The World
“Repeat everything back to me.”
“Everything?”
“The future of Infinity World depends on your perfect recall.”
Lora stood and faced the ancient wizard Agarthius, seated on a stump in front of her parents’ cottage. She shifted nervously back and forth, wondering if she would ever see her cottage or the stump again.
“I am to travel across the Bitter Brown Plain, ford the River of Decay, ascend Dementia Mountain, pass through the Forest of Anguish — “
“Don’t forget the Swamp.”
“I was getting to it. Through the Doomsday Swamp to the Granite Castle, home of the Ghostly Hollow Men. There I will retrieve the Sacred Egg, the Holy Feather, the Serpent’s Tooth, the Book of Dark Destiny, and... uh... “
“The Jewel... “ the wizard prompted.
“The Jewel of... uh... “
“Mm... “
“The Jewel of Midnight!”
&nbs
p; The wizard nodded. “Continue.”
“I will return these objects to their rightful places... “
“And those places are... ?”
Lora took a deep breath. “The Golden Altar, the Temple of Truth, the Holy Shrine of Zola, the Alchemist’s Library, and the Chicken Coup of Destiny.”
“Oddly enough,” said Agarthius, chuckling, “the egg goes in the library, and the book goes in the chicken coup. That amuses me.”
His smile faded. “Go on,” he prompted.
“Danger awaits those who challenge the Ghostly Hollow Men,” said Lora, her voice cracking. “But I will not be afraid. Because I am protected by the Divine Amulet of Maj, the Singing Sword, the Scroll of Wisdom, the All-seeing Hammer, the Mischievous Harp, the Sorcerer’s Helmet, the Witches’ Lamp, and a big heavy mirror.”
“And the name of the mirror?”
“The mirror has no name.”
“You’re right. Trick question.”
Lora glanced at the aforementioned items stacked in a wheelbarrow. She dreaded the thought of pushing it through the Doomsday Swamp.
“I can’t do this, this quest. I’m a simple farm girl.”
Agarthius rose and pounded his wooden staff on the ground.
“You. Are. The. Chosen. One.”
“But I’m only twelve years old. How can you be certain?”
“Because of the hawk-shaped birthmark on your forehead, the clover-shaped birthmark on your left upper arm, the sixth toe on your right foot — “
“Okay!”
“There are other portents.”
“I’m good.”
“Fear not, child,” said the wizard, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You won’t be alone.”
“You’re coming with me, Agarthius?”
“I wish I could. But I have fading eyesight, arthritic knees, painful sciatica, multiple toothaches, Irritable Bowel Syndrome — “
“Then who will accompany me?”
The wizard gestured. Lora saw a giant who hadn’t been there earlier.
“This is Tark,” said the old man. “Move aside, will you?”
Tark stepped sideways, revealing dozens of companions behind him, trampling the vegetable garden.