Selected Short Stories Featuring New Corpse Smell

by Nicolas Wilson

wouldn’t have to wonder- and I hate suspense.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Simply? Money and women, and a pulse with which to enjoy them. I suppose I could have just slipped kiddie porn on your computer and sent you to prison, but this seemed like it would hurt more. Besides, in prison someone might have tried to murder you, and that just never would have done.” The realization must have shown in my face. “Ah, so you hadn’t figured it out. Your creations, they’re all bits and pieces of people you know, but mostly hiding behind those crudely constructed masks, they’re you. So the damage you’ve done wasn’t just to your friends- I’d guess you’ve taken a good slice off the end of your life, too- no more than a smoker or an overeater, but enough that you might kick before seeing, well, not yours, but someone else’s great grandchildren.”

  “So what’s the point of this? I don’t see you having an endgame. After all, you didn’t come up with all of your clever ploys- I did.”

  He smiled. “You come up with grifts over the course of two years writing a book. I do it over the course of four minutes waiting for water to boil for my tea. But really, there’s no ploy here. I’m you, you’re me. Admittedly, I was angry with you for trying to kill me, and I did marshal some of your more tender moments against you, but frankly, you’ll notice that none of the real monsters came after you, none of the mercenaries, hitmen, psychopaths, or even dirty cops. I lobbed softballs over the plate for you, knowing that every home-run you hit just hurt you and the people you love that much more. But I never wanted you murdered. Because I’m you. Unlike most of the characters you’ve dealt with, hell, unlike even most of your other mains, I’m you, removed of the moral tropes and allowed to function as a purely Darwinian creature. As for you- even assuming you could best me, do you really want to wager that you left enough of yourself out of me that you’d survive my end?”

  It seems like an anticlimax now. Perhaps I should have struggled with him a bit, first, for show. But I shot him in the face. You see, I’d let Albert get me that gun. Malcolm barely had time to react, barely had an instant for the smug smirk to slide off his face before his face slid off his face.

  And it cost me. I have headaches strong enough that I hear Arnold Schwarzenneger yelling, “It’s not a tumor!” and it echoes like those Ricola yodelers. And I’m not as quick on my feet. My mind’s a little slower, and I forget things I haven’t written down (really only a slight inconvenience for a writer), and Albert keeps pushing to have me tested for Alzheimer’s. And I keep forgetting to ask Kati to a proper meal- though I think there are other reasons for that.

  Table of Contents

  Mine

  “I want you to take a deep breath, Mr. Prasith. Good, now if you can, count backwards from ten for me, ten, nine, eight- that’s good. You seem to be awake. No, no, don’t speak- I know this seems like the opposite of how it’s usually done, and it is. See, I cut the line to the isoflurane, so the room was full of anesthetic gas. That’s why the nurses are out on the floor there. But I still need you conscious for the procedure; this clever little device is a re-breather, scrubs the anesthetic out of your lungs as you breathe. And I told you not to talk- not that you can, because that was the other thing I gave you, a paralytic agent.”

  “Don’t be scared, Mr. Prasith. 'Oh, you’re right. I’m sorry. Mr. Samphan. How could I forget to keep up our little charade?' Anyway, where were we? Oh right, your heart’s failing. Now I wonder why that might be? I mean, you had your last full check not seven months ago. The doctor said you were fine, maybe your cholesterol was a bit high, but congestive heart failure just seven months later? I imagine you were planning on having a talk with your doctor about that, weren’t you? Once you’d gotten your new heart?”

  “Well, you might notice we’ve already made the incision. Customarily, you wouldn’t be conscious for this part, but customarily the anesthesiologist wouldn’t lying unconscious on the floor; you like that I made him spoon with the big male nurse? I thought it would be funny- besides which, I can’t stand homophobes.”

  “Your eyes keep darting to the cooler. No, I haven’t forgotten your heart, but honestly, why would you want that old thing? Been in some fat man for forty odd years; it probably would have given out on him by the end of a decade, if he hadn’t been stupid enough to scrimp on his diabetes medication. They had to take his foot, and he was greedy and wanted to keep the leg, but the leg got gangrenous, and by then it had gone too far. Still, this heart’s too good for you, which is irrelevant, because I have something better.”

  “No, don’t try to sit up, you can’t anyway, and it isn’t time for show and tell. Right now I just want to tell you a story while I work. You already know I’m one of the best cardiovascular surgeons in Cambodia, though if it would make you feel more comfortable, I can always, ahem, call it Kampuchea. But what you may not know, what a cursory background check on me may not have discovered, is I had a family, once. I lived in the west, but my family originally came from the east, in the stretch of land Nixon bombed for fear of communists, which ironically enough gave you and your leftist allies control of the country. And when the Vietnamese, who Nixon had been fighting, finally overthrew you, the west became the seat of your Khmer Rouge.”

  “Because you couldn’t win, you holed up in the west, far enough from Vietnam to be safe, and to be certain, you salted the earth with landmines. My original family, with my parents, fled Nixon’s bombs, and ended up on the opposite side of the country. Now my new family, it started with my wife, Kalliyan. She was born in the west. We were young and foolish and ignorant of the atrocities of war, and in love enough that when she became pregnant, we decided to be married. And from the day of that accident, I thanked my former selves religiously, because I knew in this life I’d done nothing to deserve her.”

  “Our first daughter we named Chantrea. She remained our only child until I graduated from the University of Health Science in the capital. My son, Nhean, was born after we returned home, and after him a second daughter, Sopheap. What we did not know is that while we were in Phnom Penh, the entire countryside near our home had been mined. By forces under your command.”

  “Don’t try to speak; you’ll choke on your own spittle at that rate, and I can’t have that- especially not before I finish telling my story. My children and the neighbor’s children liked to play football in the field just past our home. They had played there a hundred times, without any incident, and my children regularly won; how could they not? They had their mother’s legs, long, powerful, but graceful. But on this particular day, my son had the ball, and was making a break for the net. He feinted to the left, and threw the goalie, so he had an open shot at the net.”

  “The shot went wide. My wife had made lunch, and when calling the children didn’t work, she ran onto the field and grabbed Nhean by the arm (being a boy, and strong-willed, the girls always followed his lead). He looked to his mother, mewling already about how she’d ruined his shot, but she was no longer listening.”

  “She had heard stories of the mines, stories that seemed like so much gossip in our protected little world. But she knew when she stepped in that spot on that field, she knew they were real, and she knew what was about to happen. She threw Nhean as hard as she could as the mine went off.”

  “My son was made deaf by the explosion; Kalliyan did not survive, though she did not die immediately.”

  “My wife’s sister took my children, and she was right to do it. I could hardly function, certainly couldn’t care in any meaningful sense for myself. And it would have broken me to fail my children, too.”

  “You took something from me, and I believe enough in Karma to think I should give you something in return. Don’t sit up, just move your eyes, look into the mirror I’m holding over you. Disconcerting, isn’t it, to look inside yourself like that? I know, it’s difficult- even with suction, there’s still an awful lot of blood. Here, follow my finger. You see this, here. It’s too circular, geometric, to be organic
. Now look here, in the corner, do those numbers mean anything to you? MN-79. I imagine that takes you back. And I can tell from that look in your eyes, I chose wisely. China, Belgium, Russia, the US, you put a lot of mines in your country, but the MN-79 is Vietnamese. I do not know you for a racist, but certainly, the idea that the Vietnamese will be the ones to finally kill you must sting.”

  “You’ll notice I had to rig it differently, or the weight of your organs pushing down on you would have just set it off the first time you sat up. And honestly, if my goal was to simply blow you up, I’d have done it and left by now. But trust me, any attempts to remove it will set it off; anyone foolish enough to give you so much as the Heimlich will set it off. In its current condition, your heart will give out within the month. The mine will not last near that long.”

  “Now I’m going to begin sewing you up. Incidentally, you won’t remember this. Not at first, anyway. Side effect of the paralytics and anesthetic. You’ll remember things slowly, details coming back to you in pieces, and at first you’ll doubt it all, doubt that any of this could be true. And when eventually you come to realize that it is, you will be resigned to it.”