Lazy Sunday, the day of some people's Lord, and I was up to my usual Machiavellian pursuits. I was midway through a fingernail job, you know, duct tape, uncomfortable wooden chair, dirty shivering nudity and pliers--when I thought, I should get out of this job. The guy I was working on wasn't even worth it. His name was Lexington, which only meant that he was a small time tool with a ridiculous big time name. We were in my living room listening to Tiny Dancer on repeat. I leaned in close, newspaper crinkling underfoot.
"Do you realize," I said, "That the only thing I'm not allowed to do is kill you?"
He nodded. It was all he was able to do, because I’d gone around his head with the tape a few times for good measure.
"That's not very good for you, is it?" I said, shaking a Dixie cup in his face.
He shook his head.
"You going to tell me where the watch is?" With only his nose showing and one eye I'd accidentally taped open, I was courteous enough to phrase everything as a yes or no question.
He shook his head again. I cursed and wished I was torturing a rapist instead.
I got to work on the next fingernail. He tried to arch his fingers and wiggle them around, but he didn't have much to work with. I latched onto the ring finger with my pliers and made a quick twisting, prying motion. If only I could have understood the muffled oaths he screamed when that sucker ripped sticky loose. I was dropping it in the Dixie cup when the phone rang. To escape his annoying noises, I answered it in the kitchen.
"Elephant Fucker, how ya holdin'?" It was my boss, Aristotle, or so he called himself. He liked to call me Elephant Fucker, on account of my sheer size. It implied that I was worthy of fucking elephants, which I learned to tell myself was a warrior distinction. Sort of like, if I had the strength and prowess to fuck an elephant, think of what I could do in combat.
"Stots, you got to take this guy off my hands,” I said. “Let me bring him by."
"What's he givin' ya?"
"Nothing but a cup full of nails."
"Jesus, you're givin' him the nails? It's just a watch."
"I'm a simple guy. I don't sit around thinking up things all day, I just practice my nails."
"On what, neighborhood cats? Bring him by, I got something with a little more zazz for a."
"Alright, you're the man,” I said with relief. “By the way, I been meaning to talk to you about something."
"I know, I know. In person. Bring him by."
I clicked off and strolled back into the living room carrying my cup of nails. Lexington was moaning and moving his head around. His taped open eye was starting to dry out pretty bad.
Hold me closer tiny dancer...
Elton John continued to sing, the same song over and over again. I relished it every time it was played. It was shallow and stupid, but I couldn't help it. It wasn't even directly connected to her. I mean, it's not like we ever just sat around and listened to it together. I just took the words tiny dancer and connected them to a memory. The memory of the one time I actually saw her dance. She was tiny then, but that was a long time ago.
Daisy...
According to her mother and a team of ravenous lawyers, it was easier on her little psyche growing up thinking her really daddy was dead, rather it was me. Maybe later, I thought, when I wasn't pulling fingernails for a living, I could see her again. I wondered briefly how old she was. I didn't want to do the math.
I pushed the thought aside. I looked at the collection in my little cup and made a disgusted face. No song came to mind for that particular image. I turned to Lexington. I figured it would be humanitarian of me to get that eye un-taped so he could blink. It was kind of a long car ride. I figured it would also be more humanitarian to knock him out before undoing the tape and ripping out most of his hair. I couldn't find a humanitarian way to knock him out, so I threw the chair face down on the ground as hard as I could, with him still taped to it.
I got to Aristotle's place twenty minutes later. I dragged Lexington out of the trunk and left him with some other big dangerous sap, then I strolled on through to Aristotle's whiskey den. He was sitting on the windowsill sipping away and staring out at the sky when I got in there. To my immediate left was a stiff young man who did nothing but stare straight ahead. New meat apparently.
Without further introduction Stots said, "Yeah, turns out he didn't take that watch." He kept his eyes on the window and the sky.
"Bullshit," I said, taking a seat in a plush red chair. "He would have lied to make me stop."
"Neh, he's just a moron," he said. He turned from the window and snapped his fingers at the young man. "Army boy."
"Sir?"
"Why don't you make like a tree and go fuck yourself?"
"Sir." He stiffened and stalked out of the room, closing the door behind him a little too politely.
“I hate that guy," Stots said. “No sense of humor.
“Anyway,” he changed gears, “Lexington's a dead man in a few short hours, so don't worry your pretty little head.” Stots was a funny guy. He called me pretty the same way you would call a Rottweiler or a professional wrestler “Tiny”.
“Eh?” I said, "How're we deading him?"
"You're gonna deliver him into the hands of an eighty-five year old man. He's gonna do the deed.”
“Eighty?” What kind of whack job was this going to be?
"He wants a kick,” he explained, downing the rest of his glass in one gulp and pouring himself another. “He's a writer, some sort of cult icon from the sixties."
"What did he write?"
"Breakfast in Bedlam." He shrugged, indicating he'd never heard of it either. "Supposed to be able to scare the mustache off of Hitler. You'll like him."
"So what, I bring in Lexington, he does him, then I split?"
"No, you bring the ex-Lex with you, disappear his meat for the old guy."
"Awe shit, clean up?"
"Clean up," he said gravely.
We sat for a while, staring each other in the eyes until the silence grew heavy.
“Why do you want out?” he finally said.
I didn't say anything. I just leaned to one side and took out my wallet. I showed him the picture inside. Daisy at six, caught in the act of running and screaming. The picture didn't show it, but I was the one chasing her, in a cheap Incredible Hulk mask.
“Hmm,” he said. “Ugly kid.”
“Yeah,” I said, putting the wallet away, “She takes after her dad.” It was true, she was ugly, I was ugly. We were a perfect fit, when it had been just the two of us, once upon a time. The memory caused me to wonder if maybe I'd finally caught a glimpse of what inner beauty was supposed to be. I'd seen innards all my life, and they were never pretty. I was beginning to think there was something beyond guts and bones and nerves, and that maybe if I could figure it out--
“You're not meant for that,” Stots said, crashing all my thoughts around me. I knew what he was doing, he was planting the seed of doubt. However, knowing that didn't stop me from getting royally pissed off. I walked out of the room without saying another word.
One more job, and then... well, I'd have to figure it out as I went. They dumped Lexington back on me and I dumped him in the driver's seat. I sat in the back of the car with a pistol while he followed the directions given to me by Aristotle. We drove the entire thirty miles to the old man's house listening to the same song.
The house itself was nothing to shake a stick at. It was the sort of storybook pad that people always dreamed of growing old together and living in, Labrador in the white picket yard. What made this place stand out was the crinkled fossil sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair, cleaning his shotgun, singing some form of the blues in the worst grating voice I'd ever heard. It sounded like a cat gargling an electric razor, and I couldn't pick out a single sensible word. When he saw us pull up he stood up and began to walk toward the car.
He definitely looked eighty-five, but he moved with a strange precision and purpose. He didn't betray any weakness. These were the things I noticed immediately, things that most people might not notice.
“Come, come, introductions inside,” he said, looking around nervously. We followed him up the steps to the porch. I had to give Lexington some real prodding to get his feet moving toward that door. Apparently he was getting the same vibes I was from the place.
Once inside his living room the old man turned to me and said, in a strange feeble, strong voice, “You call me S. What do I call you?”
“Well if that’s the case,” I said, “Then you call me Elephant Fucker.”
He laughed loud and hard, and I cringed, putting a pinky in my ear.
“This is him?” He looked Lexington up and down distastefully, then he gave me a strange glance. I couldn't penetrate those ancient eyes enough to interpret it.
Finally he said, “No, I can't use him.”
He swung the shotgun up into his armpit and fired it directly into Lexington's gut. The blast was stupendous and unexpected, and it lifted Lex from his feet, spreading his guts out in a wide arc over every bit of living room behind him. I couldn't believe the fucking mess.
“Christ man!” I said, running a pissed-off hand through my hair. “That's gonna be a motherfucker to clean.”
“Oh that’s right,” he said. “I paid for clean up.” He lowered the smoking barrel. “Well, don't worry about the carpet, I rather like the color.”
Lexington was on the ground, dying and moaning and letting out other various animal noises, grinding his own blood into the carpet with the heels of his shoes.
"Haven't you ever heard of tarp? Plastic wrap? And what do you mean leave the carpet? What if the cops walk in here?” I began to rant, working myself up into a frenzy.
“Then I'll kill them too,” he said, not blinking.
That threw me off. I stopped and looked at him. “You're not lying.”
He sighed, a heavy congested thing, and set down his shotgun. He said, “Time's already taken everything of worth from me. I'd gladly go down in a flurry of bullets, just to wipe the smug from someone's face.”
I had nothing to say to that. It made perfect sense to me. The man had his priorities straight. Aristotle was right; I was beginning to like the guy.
“Come, join me for dinner,” he said. “Mediocre wine and succulent mushroom steak. To make up for the mess.”
He began to wander toward the kitchen like I'd already said yes. As I followed him down the hall I took a glance back at Lex. He was turning a shade of white and barely breathing. The old man didn’t seem to care one lick about leaving him to die alone in his living room.
We dined in the kitchen, on individual stand up trays, the kind you set up in front of a la-z-boy to watch American Gladiators while eating TV dinners. I was sitting on a cooler, while he had the more prestigious kitchen chair. But he was right, the steak was excellent. The mushrooms were especially delicious. As we sat and ate I tried to strike up some conversation.
“So, what’s the deal with this job?” I asked.
He finished chewing and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “You mean why do I suddenly want blood on my hands?”
I nodded, chewing.
“Research,” he said. “For my final book. I don't write anything I haven't done with my own hands. That's cheating.”
I decided I didn’t want to know any more. It was those artsy killers I was especially leery of. We finished the rest of the dinner in awkward silence.
As he stood up to collect my empty plate he said, “I’ll wash these, unfortunately you’ve got the bigger mess to contend with.”
“Yeah. Fuck.” I said, getting up.
I got the supplies from the trunk of my car and brought them back to the scene. It was a bloody fucking mess, and I knew it would take hours to clean. Some last job, I thought.
About forty-five minutes in and I’d just finished the walls. I started picking the larger bits of flesh out of the carpet and dropping them into Lexington’s wound, which I was using as a sort of receptacle. I was starting to feel kind of nauseous at that point. The details of the room began to take on sharper focus. I figured it was the job getting to me. When I got out I’d have to find something more tasteful, like taxidermy. Just then, S. wandered back in to check on my progress.
He sat quietly on the wall for awhile, while I dug through the human refuse. Finally, he said, "Do you know the title of my book?"
"Uhm, no,” I said, picking up a chunk of vertebrate and dropping it into Lex.
"It's not about killing a man with a shotgun.” he said. “That doesn't take a lot of imagination. I've heard of six year olds shooting people. The book is called How to Grow a Demon."
"Snazzy title," I said, taking a drink of wine to try to cool off the sweats. It only made things worse. I could feel the hyper acute sensation of blood running through my veins. Something was strange, I was actually feeling anxiety.
"You know why I couldn't use your man?" he went on.
"No, why?" I was starting to get sucked into the sensation; I could almost feel individual blood cells.
"Because he lacked tenacity. One look at him and you say, there goes a squealer.” He smiled a nasty smile. “He'll just squeal all night and day, and not give you the courtesy of rising up and evolving. As the situation rightly intends."
"God, what are you talking about? I feel--" I stopped. How could I describe how I felt? The chair next to me lurched, but it didn't, it stayed in one place. My guts began to do somersaults. The walls were starting to pulse slightly. It felt like I could taste colors. "Did you...?"
"How about you? You're not a squealer are you?" His voice began to take on strange undertones, his features hardened and lengthened, gaining depth and shadow. "I'm not talking street language, I literally mean like a pig. Pain can be more than just pain, or do you already know that?” He showed me his hands. In one was a shiny black pistol. In the other was a ball peen hammer. “I hope you do.”
"You fucked up--rotten, rotted out bastard," I gasped. "You--" I vomited on my shirt. Convulsions began to radiate from my chest out to my arms and legs, my jaw seized up.
"I poisoned you, yes. My own special strain of Amanita Muscaria, the mushrooms on your steak. I can't believe you ate them all."
The mushrooms! I was starting to have a psychotropic reaction of the worst kind. The dirty fucked up old--paralysis gripped my hands, forcing them into claws. It spread from my spine to my neck and face. I fell to the ground and started to choke on my own tongue. I flopped as hard as I could, trying to overturn myself and let my tongue hang safely, but soon even the flopping was impossible. The reflex in my throat bobbed uselessly, and I began to die.
Suddenly S. strolled over to me and began to turn me over, letting my tongue fall loose. I was grateful until I saw what he was doing. He was emptying a tube full of pills into his hands.
“Motion sickness pills,” he said, “I'm not sure what happens when you mix them with the Amanita yet. It's all so exciting."
He started putting them on my tongue and carefully massaging them down my throat, until two whole tubes were gone. I kicked and screamed inside my head as he poured wine in my mouth to wash them down. As he walked away to grab a chair, I could feel the blood in my veins again in sharp detail. As he brought it back and set one of the legs on my forehead, I knew exactly how many red blood cells I had. When he brought up his foot I knew them by name. All I could think as he brought it down was that all the ones in my head would die alone, spread out on the carpet. I went away after that, into a land of indescribable dreams...
...and woke up again into an indescribable nightmare. At first I didn't know I was awake. This was unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life. The world was one shifting, jittery nightmarescape. It was only when I noted the regularity in the swinging pendulum of the grandfather clock that I realized I was awake. I didn’t know how long I’d been out. I didn’t know what time was. Otherwise I might have tried to read the numbers on its face as they deviled about. Confusion, pain, fear. Overwhelming and sensational fear: it devoured me from every direction. Music was coming from the walls that wasn’t there, drums and pipe organs and crowds of shouting agitators. Angry insect voices, and faces from memories long ago flickered in and out of existence. Many of the faces were of people I’d hurt. They were not happy with me. The world was a hostile maelstrom of psychic energy, and I was a frightened child without a blanket to hide under.
"Let me see your hand, I can make it go away," a voice was saying. It was a real voice, that much I knew. I didn't recognize the voice, but with much effort I tried to put my hand out. Anything but the hallucinations. Unfortunately I could barely twitch my fingers. The body attached to the voice must have seen how hard I was trying. He grabbed my hand for me. He put it on the table and said, “There, there,” and then he smashed my thumb with a ball peen hammer, crushing it completely. The pain, so sudden and unexpected sent me flailing and convulsing on the ground, where I made noises like an animal.
"Hey, hey, hey," he grated, snapping his fingers in my face, smiling a black tooth grin. My mind began to externalize the pain. An army of spiders marched towards my face from under the grandfather clock. Holocaust victims, gaunt and toothless, rode the reflections in the windows, a cacophony of screaming rabbits began to percolate through the vents. I wailed as the pain washed out my vision in a torrent.
"See, even a strong man like you is susceptible to the simplest positive stimuli. I must say the concoction was a success." I didn't know why he was calling me a strong man. The pain was worse than dying, and even worse than that was an anxiety that gripped me by the heart and squeezed until I couldn’t breathe.
He grabbed me by the hair with both hands, and started pulling with what sounded like all his strength. My muscles barely registered when I tried to use them, and even if they’d worked, I couldn't even move my eyes from one object to another. Every time I did, the world exploded into a frenzy of uninterpretable movement, overwhelming me. I was a child. Why was this happening to me?
"Did I do bad?" I glutted with a half-paralyzed tongue, whimpering, drooling.
"Oh, probably. That's why I picked you," he said, grunting and pulling me up to the edge of a staircase. He sat me up and I stared down into the blackness, and I'll bet he would have been pleased as piss to know what I saw. I looked down that staircase, that dark twisting maw, and I saw Hell. As he gave me the big boot to the back, I took a split second to realize that I had done bad. I'd torn off a guy’s fingernails that morning. As I smashed into the wooden steps, twisting and falling and breaking bones and bruising organs, I realized that it was probably about right for me to descend into Hell like that.
It didn't stop there. Time didn't exist in my current state of mind, so I'd say that I lay on that cold basement floor, bloodied and traumatized for about, oh, nine thousand hours, huddled in the dark. I could feel each new pain in my body as its own unique insult, and very soon it felt like dirty outside things were making their way into them. Moving around under my skin.
Suddenly, a static broke the silence. Soon, a voice started in. An inhuman monotone. It sounded like an insect.
“Old age sickness and death,
“The words Necessary and Evil come together.”
I latched onto it and I listened, because I knew it was real. It was my anchor among a sea of dread.
“The pain is not your own, you are a God,
“It is human sympathy that makes you mortal.”
I was reminded of the one's I'd hurt. I didn't want to be reminded of something like that at a time like this. Suddenly it felt like the voice had turned on me. My mind began to paint pictures on the darkness. Vivid, terrifying pictures.
“It is attachment that leads to suffering,
“Free of conscience. Free of flesh.”
Tiny faraway screams began to echo in the background static. Every scream I'd ever heard. Every scream I'd ever caused. My own screams, from different stages of my life. I could see the ghostly images of every person I'd ever hurt, standing over me. Sammy the red haired boy I'd pushed out of a tree at six. He was crawling on the ground, without his wheelchair. And there was the man from age twelve, the one with the brick from the overpass and the steering wheel column still sticking out of his chest. There was Eric Wilco from the bridge fight in college, his flesh soggy and ready to slough off, his head wound leaking upward as if he were still under water.
“Old age sickness and death,”
A slew of bar fights from my mid-twenties showed up. By my career years there were too many to count. Faceless, silent, and teeming. Suddenly their featureless faces began to morph and elongate. They shaped into long insect snouts and began to prod at my wounds. Several penetrated, and began to pump their pain back into me.
“Free of conscience. Free of flesh.”
Forgive me! Forgive me! I cried in my own head, while on my lips escaped bubbling nonsense. The voice from the recording wavered like a note out of tune, and the static grew. It engulfed me as a physical thing. The Taoists call this life the world of ten-thousand things. I felt all ten-thousand of them on top of me, jeering and spitting.
I began to lash out at them, ignoring my injuries. They fell like moths. Realizing that I could move, that I could fight back, gave me a surge of power. I continued to flail, striking the phantoms down. Nine-thousand nine-hundred and ninety-eight. Nine-thousand nine-hundred and ninety-seven. Forgive me, forgive me no more.
“The pain is not your own. You are a God.”
I had never shown them an ounce of compassion. I could never expect the same. Give it another few hours, and a few more ounces of strength, and I would be in the world of one thing, standing atop a mountain of corpses. My rightful place.
Just then the lights turned on and the recording cut out. My domination escapades disappeared, and the harsh fluorescence illuminated a very harsh scene. I could see my reflection in my own blood on the floor. The eyes that stared back at me from that crimson sheen were not eyes as at all. They were the absence of eyes.
Heavy awkward footsteps began to descend the stairs. I craned my neck upward to see S. emerge from the shadows, descending and carrying a bundle of something unseemly. Once at the bottom he approached me, and draped across his arms were entrails of every shape and size. Lexington’s, I hoped. He began to drape the guts over me in a decorative fashion, muttering the words, “Sim sala bim bam ba, zala du zala dimb.”
“Why?” I rasped, barely a whisper.
He took a blood soaked finger and put it over my lips. He lowered his crinkled face to mine, his eyes level dead, precise, and mocking me with well-practiced subtlety.
“Son cosas de la vida,” he said. He walked to the wall and pulled down a soldering gun.
“No use dreaming of escape,” he said over his shoulder. “The paralysis will last for some time, and by the time it wears off, well...”
And there was my ray of hope. The old man didn't realize that my paralysis had already started to wear off. He'd probably misjudged the dosage on account of my extra body weight.
He put down the soldering gun then picked up something else, then he walked back over to me. He crouched down and smiled.
I smiled back, a big nasty joyous fucker, and watched the fear come into his eyes. I shot out my hand and gripped him by the balls, twisting. The acid in my muscles was still barely flowing, but I still put enough into it to drop him. Except he didn't drop. Instead he leaned in close, grunting, his face turning a shade of red, and he showed me the fire in his eyes.
He brought his other arm up for a strike, and I was too sluggish to block it. What I thought was going to be a punch to the face turned out to be something far worse. In his hand was a small black taser. He brought the thing to my forehead and squeezed the trigger, punching me in the brain. A small sun exploded between my eyes, and I went screaming into that good night.
I dreamt of high frequency pitches and Daisy, dancing in defiance of gravity over a deepening abyss.
I woke up what must have been moments later. The frequencies from my dream were still there, overpowering layers of high pitched squeals. S. was at his workbench again, toying with the soldering gun. The jolt had done something to my system. I found myself standing up mechanically and without difficulty. Taking a few steps I found I could ignore my injuries, found the pain only made me feel more powerful. Everything seemed crystal clear. I looked down at my hand, clenched it and unclenched it. I felt like a man reborn.
I casually walked up to the old man's back until my shadow stretched up and over him. He stopped what he was doing, and took a moment to tremble. I clapped both of my hands forcefully over his ears. He shuddered like a corn stalk and crumpled to the floor without making a noise. I stood and watched as he crawled to his feet, feeling omnipotent. He began to mouth several words, and I wondered why I couldn't hear them. All I could hear were the frequencies. Suddenly I realized it; he'd deafened me. A faraway rage consumed me, while on the surface I remained placid.
He shuffled to the stairs for escape, moving in feeble terror and finally resembling the eighty-five year old man he was. He took one panicked step up the stairs and caught his foot in the space below the second stair, setting his leg up at just the perfect angle. I took to a run and jumped on that leg with both feet, forcing all of my body weight onto it.
It snapped in slow motion the first time. It snapped clear backwards. In my peripheral I could see him throwing back his head in anguish, but the screams never reached my ears. It was better that way. It let me concentrate on the task at hand, which was replaying the snapping of the leg in my head, over and over again at different speeds.
He slumped to the ground and started to say something. I couldn't hear the words or read his lips but I could tell he wasn't pleading. He had the calm confidence of a man who knew he was beat. I didn't really care. There was no capacity in me for feeling one way or another. I was suddenly staring at the shotgun leaning up against the workbench, and thinking about how I needed a smaller gun.
I went up the stairs as if in a dream, went into the living room, and retrieved the tiny black pistol. I went back down stairs and turned S. over on his face. There was a term in our business called giving someone buckwheats. It was used by dishonorable men, in cases of extreme vendetta. I thought this qualified.
I put the tiny black pistol between his buttocks, and pulled the trigger. He jerked like a puppet on a string and started spitting on the floor. I wished I could hear his cries. It added to the intensity of the experience. Now I would never know what it truly sounded like to have a piece of sizzling lead forced up the colon, to have it resting in the intestines.
If I'd been one of those artsy killers I might has left S. to die gutshot in his own basement. I might have even fed him some of his own drugs. But I wasn't interested in his suffering. Call me selfish. I grabbed him by the hair with one hand and dragged him thumping up the stairs. Shitty blood had soaked through the back of his pants, and dribbled into his shoes. It leaked onto the floor as I dragged him, and I made a trail of it all the way out to my car. I opened the back seat and grabbed the rope. I tied one end to the bumper.
I realized as I was tying the other end around his neck that I would never see Daisy again. It was all just a daydream to begin with. What I was doing then--getting in my car and driving very slowly with an eighty-five year old man tied kicking and screaming to the bumper--that was my dharma. It was the sweet to my sugar, the wet to my water.
I rolled up slowly so I wouldn't mess him up too bad before the shebang. Once on the highway I would be able hit top speed in one go. I figured I would drive back to Aristotle, whether or not S. made it or simply disintegrated through the rope. I’d tell him I had a cleanup job for him, thirty miles long. Then I'd probably ask for my job back.
I looked at my tape deck. The tape was spinning, and I knew the song playing was Tiny Dancer. I turned it up until I could feel the vibrations from the speakers, and I rolled down my window so S. could hear it at the end of his rope there. I thought of inner beauty as I punched the gas, while the road behind me filled up with guts and bones and nerves.
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