Body Parts For Hire, Page 2

  After the call, my phone was turned off and confiscated. Mrs. Campbell said the operation was delicate and she didn’t want complications from disturbances. I was okay with that. But I was foolish again. I could’ve simply shut it off and still kept it with me.

  She brought the painkiller. It was used to spike a drink that tasted like over-diluted orange juice. I took it in and sure enough, I was knocked out and the operation commenced.

  ###

  I woke up feeling very dazed. My head was spinning in an oscillatory motion, coupled with an infrequent ping. I felt like I’d been thinking since forever. I held my head to stop it from spinning. My body was weak. For a moment I felt I was strapped before I remembered my hands holding my head so I sat up. A heavy bandage had been draped over my eyes. It issued a stinging sensation. It had never done that before.

  My senses felt the sockets there but did not feel the eyes that were supposed to have been implanted. I was still in the darkness, one that even deepened.

  I freaked.

  “Anyone here?”

  “Oh, you’re finally awake,” that charming voice that belonged to Mrs. Campbell responded, “and about time too.”

  I heard her footsteps beside me. “How do you feel?”

  “Fuzzy,” I replied. “My head keeps spinning and there’s this sharp sound and I can’t feel my eyes.”

  “That happens at first,” she assured. “Five days could be a short time, see?”

  I rested assured. “Okay, but I need bathroom break. And I’m hungry.”

  “Surely,” she said.

  ###

  FIVE days was a lot of time and time was very slow. Riley kept me company throughout that time. I asked her why her mother wasn’t a hospital specialist, given how good she was but she said her mother didn’t want the bondage of working under someone who would get the credits and lauds for her work. Made sense.

  It turned out three days was enough. On the third day, the pinging in my head stopped. My head also stopped spinning and I began to feel the eyes, only numbly. When I told Mrs. Campbell, she was surprised. She took the bandage off but made me keep my eyes closed.

  “That’s a first,” she said and added, “my, my, you have such an active brain. Already, it has accepted your eyes. Now we can test them.”

  I felt a rush then. It was like a whole new world was about to be opened before me. The thrill was exhilarating.

  “Slowly now,” she said.

  I obeyed. I slowly, and with utmost care, opened my new eyes.

  ###

  I still did not see the light. When I opened my eyes, all I saw was pitch-black but what distinguished this from my previous plight was that the blackness moved. It vibrated within itself.

  “How are they?” I was alerted to Mrs. Campbell.

  “It’s still dark, but vibrating,” I answered. It was a precarious situation I was in. I heard frustration in my voice.

  “That’s impressive,” Mrs. Campbell encouraged. “Your eyes are beginning to adjust. The retina, the lens…”

  “Wait…” I almost shouted, interrupting her. The darkness began to disperse. Gradually, it disintegrated but left my vision blurry. I almost jumped out of the bed in excitement. I had the worst case of goose bumps that day.

  Finally the blurs blended into focus. I still did not see the light and then suddenly I started scrambling for breath.

  Before me, right in front of me, was the big shelf of jars. I couldn’t count how many. They filled the shelf. They were transparent and were filled with chemical preservatives. They were the sources of the putrid smell within the place. I realized only too late.

  Inside each jar was a body part. I saw eyes, tens of misty eyes focusing on me as I saw them, ears, teeth and gums, tongues, noses and et cetera. Each jar contained a particular body part and lots of that body part. The eyes were clustered together so they appeared to be staring at every corner of the room. Larger jars contained arms and legs. One jar that was black was labeled penises and another one beside it of the same colour was labelled vaginas. A jar at the centre contained flesh.

  I would’ve screamed if there was breath enough in me and if I hadn’t heard her voice. The previous night’s food began to churn in my belly.

  “It seems the blurs have cleared,” Mrs. Campbell commented.

  With a need to relieve my new eyes of the gruesome sight, I turned to her and I instantly vomited the churning contents of my belly.

  Mrs. Campbell looked like something out of a hellish nightmare. Her face had been sown in many parts that the threads were still visible and they traversed each other so that they practically split her face into segments. Most of the segments created by the traverses were decayed and stuck out of her face revealing bloody bones within. Her lips bulged in several sections as needlework did its best in splitting it apart. That face was gruesome. It never belonged on a human body. Beside her stood a cart on which all the tools she’d used for my surgery were laid, still bloody.

  I tried to say something but a blub escaped my lips, along with saliva.

  “Yeah,” her charming voice left me more dumbfounded. “I get that a lot from my patients.” That voice... I was sure it didn’t belong to that body. Her hairs were sandy-brown, straggled and streaked with filth.

  She sat on a stool and looked so hard at me that I felt my face begin to pull off. At that point, I wished I was still blind. Seeing the darkness was better than seeing death through another eye, believe me.

  She held a finger up and asked, “How many?”

  It took a few moments before I registered. “One.” And air rushed in through my mouth. It tasted bitter.

  “Good.” She displayed one finger each on her two hands. “How many?”

  “Two.”

  “Impressive.” Then she pulled four fingers on her left and all five on her right.

  “Nine,” I answered before she asked.

  “My, my, that’s superb,” she said. “It’s incredible. Your brain activity is quite remarkable.”

  “So I can leave very soon?” I asked eagerly. I totally wanted to leave this place. Staying away from home for the past three days had been seriously nostalgic. I longed for familiar voices, sounds, places.

  “Not yet,” she dashed my hopes to the rocks. I sensed a sneer. “I haven’t got what I want yet.”

  “But Riley said you were not collecting a dime,” I argued.

  “She said that?” Mrs. Campbell asked, sounding astonished. Then she calmed as if understanding. The sneer was still in her voice. I couldn’t tell if it was in her face. Every bit of emotion that face showed was swallowed by the needlework so she appeared not to show any. Maybe she never showed any. “Of course I don’t need your money.”

  I relaxed.

  She went off and returned with a cup of juice. She walked with a limp.

  “This should help your nerves and put you right,” she said, handing me the cup.

  I took it and drank up facing my vomit. I couldn’t bear drinking it while looking at her face or at the bodies in the jars on the shelf. When I finished, I returned the cup. I never should have drunk that stuff.

  “Like I said,” she started, “I don’t need your money. There are other ways of getting what I need, other things I can get from you.”

  “What thi...” I started to ask but I began to feel drowsy. I realised the juice had been spiked with some potent sleeping drug.

  My body gave way to induced exhaustion. Every part of me became limp. My head fell back. I watched in fright as she turned to the cart where she picked a scalpel.

  “Thanks to you I know that that pair of eyes is in fine condition,” she said.

  My vision began to fade. I heard the door open. It was Riley.

  “Come, come, sweetheart, come and see how the brain is taken out,” Mrs. Campbell said.

  Then she turned to me. “Your brain is incredible,” she said, “a collector’s special.”

  I faded out. I knew I was never going to see the
light again.

  ###

  I’VE been lying in that jar before you came along. I believe with my help and your cooperation, we can both get what we want and get out alive.

  All I want from you is to be able to see my mother through your eyes, even if it’s for once. I want to know what she really looks like. I feel very sorry every day I’ve been here. You have no idea how it pains me every time I think of her and think I might never get the chance to see her, especially after having her beloved son and husband snatched from her by the cruel hands of fate.

  All this time Maddy listened without interrupting. Then she sat up.

  “What did you say your name was again?”

  Gabriel. Gabriel Rice.

  “How is it that you’re talking to me, Gabriel?”

  The likeliest theory is that since my brain activity is encouragingly high, my memory remained and was preserved with my brain, waiting hopefully for an opportunity to warn others of this horror.

  “Well, Gabriel,” Maddy started in a serious tone, “first, the girl I met is Gretchen. Gretchen Summerholt. And her mum, Mrs. Summerholt, is a nice and beautiful lady who cares so much about my sanity. Okay?”

  But you don’t get it...

  “Ah!” She screamed and grabbed her head tightly. Then she sighted the tools that’d been used to operate on her and grabbed the trephine. She twisted it till it turned into a helix and she sent it crashing to the floor.

  The door burst open and Mrs. Summerholt hurried inside holding a cup, agitated.

  “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” she said in a charming, relaxing voice.

  “It hasn’t stopped!” Maddy screamed. “I still hear voices in my head. It just won’t stop!”

  “Calm down, dear, sorry. There may have been a problem but I still have another brain I can try. If you don’t mind, that is.”

  “Please do,” Maddy said, despairingly. “I just want it to stop.”

  “Here, drink up. This should help your nerves and put you right.” Mrs. Summerholt offered the drink and used her hand to stroke Maddy’s hairs.

  Maddy accepted the drink and took it in one gulp. It tasted like orange juice.

  “With your help, you’ve shown me that one of the brains needs disposing of,” Mrs. Summerholt said and then noticed the twisted trephine on the floor. She picked it up, astonished.

  “Did you do this?” she asked, more out of curiosity than annoyance, and turned the trephine so Maddy could see it. Maddy gave a weak nod. Her eyes began to close.

  “You have incredible hands, Maddy Philips,” Mrs Summerholt said grimly, “very powerful hands. A collector’s special.”

  And she moved out of the room to obtain a new trephine. Maddy fell into sleep. It proved to be her sorry last.

  ~~***~~

  JOE held the pen in his new right hand. His fingers fumbled for the pen at first but they finally got a good grip. He was excited, delirious. Finally his limbs were complete. All thanks to Judy Hunter and most importantly, Mrs. Hunter.

  Judy was the angel that’d fallen in love with him despite his invalidity and had introduced him to her mum, a wonderful private surgeon. She was probably one of God’s Cherubim sent from heaven to heal the handicapped and the disabled.

  With an aura of cheerfulness and gladness, he readied his right hand to write and then he was writing; only he wasn’t controlling his new hand to write.

  Excitement and afterglow turned to terror as he watched his new arm helping itself to the paper in front of him. As much as freaked out as he was, he couldn’t bear not reading what the hand was writing. The cursive was surprisingly smooth, neat and tidy.

  Hi, my name is Madeleine Philips. Call me Maddy. I was the unwilling, forced donor of the hand you now possess. Please read and accept every word that I’ll write here now as it may save your life, depending on your choice. Someone else, certain Gabriel Rice, tried to warn me in a similar fashion and failed. It’s my hope you don’t fall into our horrible fate.

  Mrs. Hunter poked her head through the door. He looked up.

  “I brought something to calm your nerves...” she started.

  ~~***~~

  An Excerpt From The Curse In The Chest By Artie Margrave

  HE pounded at the chisel harder than he’d before done. Sweat poured down his face in driblets. His wet shirt stayed on the floor, jumbled with the fodder. He paused for a moment, resting the arm holding the chisel on the lid of the chest and bowed his head. A soft chill consumed him. He despaired, hardly knowing why. Was this chest that worth it? He was killing himself over what he wasn’t sure of. It had become so much of an obsession that he’d found it difficult, even disturbing, focusing on other things. He wanted to really believe mighty good could come off the chest, but what if he was tricking himself. Was it a coincidence his finding the chest at that section of the lake? Did it even contain anything?

  All you need do is believe.

  Very slowly he gave into his reasoning self. Figuring he just might not get the contents within, if there were any to start with, he considered the precious stones carved into the chest itself and believed they were worth a mighty much. Too, they wouldn’t be so hard to remove. He resolved and pulled his hand off the chest. Only, his hands pulled free, free of both chest and chisel. He stared at the chisel and couldn’t believe his eyes. The chisel held fast, suspended in mid-air with a little bit of its blade stuck through the lids of the chest. A feat he’d executed himself to for the past few days. He had pried a hole in! At last!

  “Ha-ha,” he leapt exultantly, kicking a pack of fodder out of the way onto a wall. “Yes!”

  No!

  His reasoning self faded behind his victorious feeling. He returned to the box, ever determined to finish off the job. He tried pulling the blade for good measure. It stayed stuck.

  Satisfied, he pressed his hands, one first then the both of them down on the chisel in an attempt to lift the lid of the chest. The chisel remained rigid. Try as he could, which was a well vigorous attempt too, he found it another stiff task to pry the lids apart. After struggling for a most difficult twenty minutes, he halted. His reasoning self quickly took form in his mind. He shook his head. Why was everything so hard? He wanted to give up. He had to give up. There wasn’t any way to sweet talk this thing into spilling.

  Or is there?

  He threw a look at the other tools scattered on the table and his look fell on the crowbar. He looked at the handle of the chisel and back to the crowbar and smiled.

  He picked the crowbar. Its wedge was going to come good. He placed the wedge beneath the chisel’s handle, pushing it upwards so the tool would gain a good grip. When he was okay that it did, he pulled the handle of the crowbar downwards, trying to bring the chisel with it. He failed at first as the crowbar fell off its target and went over the sequence. He pulled harder the second time, exerting a tremendous degree of force to it. It held, it held, it held and then caved in.

  He fell. The crowbar spun with a dizzying velocity several times in the air and fell on Roy’s face, right on his chisel wound, opening it up once more. He cursed in pain, picked the crowbar and flung it away from him. Something forced itself out of the wooden walls of the shed almost simultaneously.

  He rose up and found himself in darkness, a darkness he didn’t understand. Something scratched the walls from outside. He couldn’t see a thing. He groped around hoping his eyes would adjust. They didn’t and fear slapped into his consciousness. What had he gotten himself to?

  A piercing cry rang out through the heavy darkness. It rocked the very foundations of the shed, sending the darkest chill into him. It sounded bird-ish. It melted almost as suddenly as it had started, into the shadows.

  The darkness weighted down on him pulling into his mind a flurry of creeps, nightmarish things and filth. He shivered in fear. He had to get out of the dark. He needed to see the noon. He stumbled forward, at least where he thought was forward. Something soft brushed past his foot, something cold and hairy.
It had many shapes, the dark, and it did not keep a state. Constantly it moved, constantly it instilled a new form. He dropped to his knees. Hopelessness bit at him. He crawled a few steps frontwards. Something tugged at his shorts. It made an effort to pull him back.

  “Leave me alone!” he despaired.

  Leave you alone? You started this. Wasn’t this what you wanted? Wasn’t this what you always wanted? Yet the job isn’t even finished.

  He was forced down on his belly, his face welted in the scattered hay. His hands shot up in the air seeking redemption. They met claws instead, claws that burned, claws that pulled him and laid him on his back, claws that clamped his throat tightly.

  Look upon me now! Look upon your persecutor!

  He struggled weakly against the force hovering him. As he gazed into the dark, he sensed a presence. It was filled with hate. A feeling he knew well enough. It looked down on him, into the crevices of his soul, searching, filling, taking. It engulfed him, slithered in. His soul flailed. He slept.

  ROY woke in a start. He pulled himself out of the rubble. Something swam within him, something like the backwash of catharsis. He felt different, capsulized by freedom. The darkness had dispersed, leaving a still, silent shed. Everything he laid his eyes upon looked new, and yet not too new. On the desk, the chest rested, an abstract of its former shiny self. It remained shut too. The chisel wasn’t anywhere around it. His wound throbbed wildly. The throbbing only gave rise to anger, madness, hatred…

  Yes! You’re getting there!

  For a few minutes, he tried recalling what had happened. The most he could make of his memory was falling. Something scratched the walls. It was familiar. It moved to the door. It knocked.

  “Dad?” Lucy cooed. “Is everything okay in there?”

  Dad? Roy fought with himself. His hate began to submerge. Lucy. Briskly, he walked to the door and opened it less than halfway. The evening air slapped him and more of it rushed past him. He reveled in it. He’d never been freer in such a long time.

  “Oh God,” Lucy croaked, “are you okay, dad?”

  He was drawn to the lithe thing that called him dad. Her voice was beatific. She looked up at him through blue, squeezed eyes, the colour of her skin and shape of her body as that of the temptress. She touched his left cheek, just below his wound. Her touch injected thrills into him. Thrills that seemed alien. He fought with himself again. He struggled until his darkest despairs were forced down. He emerged. He felt her fingers again – soft this time, reassuring.