Haunted, Page 33

  “Then suffer already,” the Chef says. He snaps his leftover fingers, saying, “Or give me my cleaver back. That is my cleaver . . .” He stands there, his hand out.

  The Earl steps up to the table, his hands holding out the tape recorder, the little-mesh microphone ready to tape over the past with the single sound of the chop. The Earl of Slander, he says, “Be a man.”

  He says, “Here's your last chance. Be a man and whack off that dick.”

  The Missing Link, his shirt open, his chest nothing but dark hair and the ladder of his rib bones, he says, “When that door swings open, it's going to be too late for any of us.” He says, “So hurry.”

  And the Matchmaker looks at himself reflected in the big blade of the cleaver. He holds the blade out toward the Reverend Godless and says, “Help me?”

  The Reverend takes the cleaver. Gripping the handle in both hands, he hiss-slashes the air with it.

  The Matchmaker sighs, deep, in and out, and he pushes his hips against the table. “Don't tell me when, just do it,” the Matchmaker says.

  And the Reverend says, “Remember.” He says, “I'm doing this only as a favor.”

  The Matchmaker shuts his eyes. He cups both hands over the top of his head, his fingers basket-wove together.

  And . . . then . . . and: Shooo-rook. The cleaver's stuck in the black wood of the table. The table done-jumped and humming, and something's shot across to drop off the other side. Something blurred pink and pushed along fast by a hot geyser of blood. The zipper still exploding with steaming-wet red, the Matchmaker reaches a hand after the gone object. To catch it. Then his knees buckle.

  Both his hands grab the table edge, but the fingers slip. His chin hits the tabletop and his teeth hard-click together. After that, both the Matchmaker and his penis are under the table. Both of them, just gray meat.

  Our poor Matchmaker, now just a prop we can build into our story. Our new puppet. His family story about death camps and blows jobs, now it's our story.

  The Missing Link ducks under the table. He stands, and in his open hand is the gray cut-off dick, most of it wrinkled skin from changing size and shape with every hard-on. Just regular pink meat at the cut end . . .

  “Dibs,” the Link says. He sniffs it, once, twice, his nose tipped up and his nostrils flared and almost touching the meat. He shrugs, saying, “Everything we cook in that microwave is going to taste like popcorn . . .”

  Even the Link knows that eating a dead man's severed penis will get him extra prime-time exposure on every late-night talk show in the world. Just to describe how it tasted. After that will be the product endorsements for barbecue sauce and ketchup. After that, his own novelty cookbook. Radio shock-jock shows. After that, more daytime game shows for the rest of his life.

  A victim, someone with the missing toes and fingers to prove they suffered, they'll have the world's okay to be in always-bad taste.

  And with arms out, hands up, stopsigns, Miss Sneezy says, “You can't.”

  Watching from their green satin niches, our audience is all the naked statues.

  “Watch me,” the Missing Link says, and tilts his head back, his mouth gaped open at the green ceiling. Holding his arm straight up, he drops the fleshy blob down his tongue. Past his teeth, whole, he swallows.

  He swallows again and his eyes bulge. He swallows again and his hairy face swells, red. Eyes tight, shaking-shut under his one eyebrow. His hands grab around his throat and tears spill down his hot cheeks. The Link holds his throat, not breathing, Frankenstein-lurching one step, then another step, then another step around the room.

  His panic-red face yawns, his werewolf teeth and lips making words with no sound. He drops to his knees on the bloody green carpet and makes each hand into a fist. Kneeling, he pounds, slugging himself in the stomach. All of his effort—the crying, the slugging, the begging—silent.

  Nothing for the Earl to tape-record past the Link saying, “Watch me.”

  On his knees, the Missing Link leans to one side. He falls, to lie there, silent, his eyes still tight-puckered shut, his fists still buried in his gut.

  Chef Assassin looks at the Earl, who looks at Miss Sneezy, who sniffs and says, “The people coming to rescue us, they might be able to save him . . .”

  And the Reverend Godless shakes his head.

  Downstairs right now, nobody's drilling the lock in the alley door. No rescue team. No one's arrived to save us. We lied because we were tired of the Matchmaker hogging the cleaver.

  After now, we have two less ways to split the money. Only eleven of us left.

  Coming up the stairs, her skirt bunched and pulled high in both hands, the Baroness Frostbite comes trudging. With her pink, scar-frilly lips, she's smiling, until she sees the Matchmaker on the floor, most of his clothes soaked black with blood. Next to him, the Missing Link, with his eyes dead-tight, rigor-mortis-shut, in his hairy gray face.

  Her greasy pucker gaping, slack-open, the Baroness says, “Which one of you shits killed the Matchmaker?”

  None of us, we tell her. It was him. After all this time, he cut off his dick.

  And the poor Link, he choked to death trying to hog down the cut-off dick.

  The Missing Link—the last link on that food chain. Well, the last link if you don't count the microbes and bacteria Mrs. Clark talked about eating her daughter.

  Already, we can figure how this scene will sound on radio. Already, we're wondering if you can say “penis” on broadcast television. This scene alone will be more than most whole-truth books deliver, and just we saw it. The real-life dress rehearsal for a movie star someday choking to death on another star's cut-off dick.

  You, choking to death from having your throat stuffed with penis, that's the kind of scene that wins the Academy Award.

  Only us and maybe the Baroness saw.

  Excepting that our version will say Mrs. Clark cut off the penis and forced the Link to eat it whole. The truth is so easy when everyone agrees who to blame.

  “Not to be a killjoy,” says the Baroness Frostbite, “but we'll need a new villain.”

  The devil is dead—we need a new devil.

  The Baroness, she sashays over to the dark wood table and both-hands the cleaver from deep in the chopped mess. She says someone's killed Mrs. Clark.

  “Whoever it was,” the Baroness says, “they can't be very hungry right now.”

  The killer ate most of her left leg. The rest of her is backstage in her dressing room, stabbed in the stomach to death.

  Chef Assassin shakes his fist at the Earl of Slander and says, “You stupid, greedy fuck.”

  And the Earl says, “Wait.” He says, “Listen . . .”

  We get quiet, and you can hear his stomach. The Earl's stomach is kicking and growling with the ghost of Miss America's stewed baby. No way was it him.

  Still, Mrs. Clark—our whip-cracking, thumb-screwing she-devil, is dead. What's left of her, it's now just leftovers.

  Our next order of business will be to elect our new devil.

  After we have dinner.

  It's over dinner, Miss Sneezy blows her nose. She sniffs and coughs and says she really, really needs to tell us a story . . .

  The Interpreter

  A Poem About Miss Sneezy

  “My grandma made money,” Miss Sneezy says, “by saying ‘I Love You.'”

  As many ways as possible. For people who could not.

  Miss Sneezy onstage, the cuffs of her sweater sleeves sprout

  the scraps and ruffles of dirty tissues stuffed there.

  Those tissues, yellow and matted with nasal discharge.

  Her nose running, bright with snot and blood, and her eyes

  busy with red lightning and watering down each cheek.

  Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment:

  a scene from some medical drama, showing doctors and hospital staff

  in white coats, holding test tubes,

  busy finding a cure.

  Between sniffing her
nose and coughing, Miss Sneezy says,

  “Until she died, my grandma made money saying ‘Happy Birthday' for people.”

  Saying, “Deepest Sympathy.”

  Saying, “Congratulations.” And “We're so Proud of You!”

  And “Merry Christmas.”

  As many ways as possible, her grandma said, “Happy Anniversary.”

  “Happy Father's Day”

  and “Happy Mother's Day”

  for a greeting-card company.

  Between blowing her nose and stuffing the tissue back into her sleeve, Miss Sneezy says,

  “My grandma's job was to interpret what other people had no words to say.”

  But every “Happy Birthday,”

  really, every card, she wrote with Miss Sneezy in mind.

  Her grandma's ideal target audience.

  And the card rack is her bank account, her left-behind trust fund of future best wishes

  for her granddaughter.

  So, after she was dead, her Miss Sneezy could come and find the right “I Love You”

  or “Happy Valentine's” for that moment of the distant future.

  Long, long after her grandma was dead.

  “Still,” Miss Sneezy says, “there's one card, one special occasion she never covered.”

  There needs to be a card that says: I'm sorry.

  Please, Grandma.

  Please, forgive me.

  I didn't mean to kill you.

  Evil Spirits

  A Story by Miss Sneezy

  The intercom comes on. First is a crackle of static, then a woman's loud voice, saying, “Good news, girlfriend.” Coming out of the little wire-mesh speaker, it's Shirlee, the night guard, her voice saying, “Chances look good you might get laid in this lifetime . . .”

  Just admitted this week, Shirlee says is another Type 1 Keegan virus carrier. This new resident, he's asymptomatic, and, better yet, he has got a huge dick.

  Shirlee, she's as close to a best friend as it gets here.

  You know that boy who had to live in the plastic bubble because he was immune to nothing? Well, this place is the opposite. The folks who live here, on Columbia Island, the permanent residents, they carry around bugs that would kill the world. Viruses. Bacteria. Parasites.

  Me included.

  The government types, the navy brass, they call this place The Orphanage. This is according to Shirlee. It's called The Orphanage because—if you're here—your family is dead. Chances are, your teachers are dead. All your old friends are dead. Anybody who knew you, they're dead and you killed them.

  You know the government is a little over a barrel. Sure, they could kill these folks—to protect the public interest—but these folks are innocent. So the government pretends it can find a cure. It keeps folks locked away here, drawing their blood every week to test. Providing clean sheets every week, and three square meals each day.

  Every drop of piss that comes out of them, the government sterilizes it with ozone and radiation. Their every exhale is filtered and scrubbed with ultraviolet light before that air goes back into the outside world. The residents of Columbia Island, they don't get head colds. They never rub elbows with anybody who might give them the flu. Except for the fact they're each carrying their own personal potentially world-pandemic plagues, they're the healthiest batch of folks you could ever not want to meet.

  And it's the navy's job to make sure you never do.

  Most of what I know comes from Shirlee, my nighttime guard. Shirlee says being locked up here, it's not much to complain about. She says people in the outside world have to work all day, every day, and still don't get half of what all they want.

  These days, Shirlee tells me to order up a set of hot rollers. To pretty myself up, some. For my new groom-to-be. This new guy, the Type 1 Keegan virus carrier.

  Here, you just go to the computer and type a list of what you'd like. If the budget allows, it's yours. The biggest hurdle is when you get too much stuff. Books. Music CDs. Movie DVDs. They can shovel it in here, but after you touch it, the stuff is toxic. The bigger problem is how to burn it down to sterile ash.

  To get around this, Shirlee has you ask for stuff that Shirlee wants. Shirlee loves old-time Elvis Presley shit. Buddy Holly shit. I put that on the list, and Shirlee pockets the music when it arrives. No muss. No fuss. And no big accumulation of toxic crap in the room.

  The navy folks, they say they can't expense poetry books. If some public watchdog saw an item like Leaves of Grass on some Freedom of Information document, there would be hell to pay. So Shirlee buys my books out of her own pocket. And I pay her off with Elvis CDs I order but don't want. Most nights, Shirlee wants to educate me about current events, like who's dropping bombs on what country and who's the new boy singer every girl wants to fuck.

  Instead, I want to know the stuff Shirlee can't say. The stuff I've started to forget—like how does rain feel on your skin? Or stuff I never knew—like how to French-kiss?

  We talk back and forth through an intercom. This means pushing a button when you speak, then letting go to hear the other person. Even now, when I try to imagine Shirlee's face, all I can picture is the little wire-mesh speaker on the wall next to the bed.

  All the time, Shirlee's asking, how did I get here?

  And I tell her: It was all my dad's brilliant idea.

  Shirlee's always after me to shave my legs. Order a tanning bed. Ride my stationary bicycle a thousand miles to nowhere. Shirlee tells me, her voice from the wire-mesh speaker says, “You only lose it once.”

  Me, I'm twenty-two years old and still a virgin. Until today, it looked pretty certain I'd always be a virgin.

  Still, I'm not too much a social retard. Residents get to watch television. They get to surf the Internet. Of course, you can't send any messages out. You can lurk in chat rooms, reading all the action, but you can't contribute. You can read the postings on a bulletin board, but you can't respond. No, the government needs to keep you a National Security secret.

  And Shirlee, her voice from the wire-mesh speaker, she says, “How did your old man get you put here?”

  It was my senior year in high school when people around me started to die. They died the same way my folks had died ten years before.

  My high-school English teacher, Miss Frasure, one day she's holding a paper I wrote, telling the whole class how good it is, the next day she's wearing sunglasses inside. Saying the light hurts her eyes. She's chewing those orange-flavored aspirin the school nurse gives out to girls on the rag. Instead of teaching, she turns out the lights and shows the class a movie called How to Field Dress Wild Game. The movie's not even in color. It's just the only reel of film left on the shelf in the audiovisual room.

  That's the last day they see Miss Frasure.

  The next day, half the kids I know ask the school nurse for those orange-flavored aspirin. Instead of English class, we get sent to the school library for an hour of quiet study. Half the class say they can't focus their eyes to read a book. Behind a bookshelf, I let a boy named Raymon kiss me on the mouth. As long as he keeps saying I'm beautiful, I let him put one hand up inside my shirt.

  The next day, Raymon doesn't come to school.

  On the third day, my grandma goes to the emergency room, saying her head hurts so bad that everything looks black around the edges. She's going blind. I skip school to sit in the hospital waiting room. I'm reading a copy of National Geographic magazine, the pages all soft with wrinkles, sitting in a plastic chair crowded around with crying babies and old people, when a man comes into the waiting room wheeling a gurney. He's wearing white coveralls and a gauze surgical mask.

  The man has a buzzed haircut, and through the gauze mask he tells the whole room to get out. They need to evacuate this part of the hospital, he says. I go to ask if my grandma's okay, and the man grabs me around one skinny arm. The man's wearing latex gloves. While the old people and crying babies hurry down the hallway, edging past the gurney, this man holds me in the waiting room,
asking if I'm Lisa Noonan, age seventeen, currently residing at 3438 West Crestwood Drive.

  From the gurney, the man takes a blue bundle sealed in clear plastic and tears it open. Inside is a blue container suit, all plastic and nylon with zippers sewn up and down the front and back of it.

  I ask again, about my grandma.

  And the man with the gurney shakes out the blue container suit. He says to put it on, and we'll go see Grandma in Intensive Care. The suit, he says, is for my grandma's protection, and he holds it by the shoulders so I can step inside. A container suit is three layers of plastic, each layer sealed with zippers. It has built-in gloves and feet and a pointed hood with a window of clear plastic to see out. The most outside zipper goes up the back and locks, so you're trapped inside.

  When I step out of my tennis shoes, the man picks them up with his latex gloves and seals them inside a plastic bag.

  At school, the rumor was Miss Frasure's had a CAT scan that showed a brain tumor. The tumor was the size of a lemon, filled with some piss-yellow fluid. According to gossip, the tumor was still growing.

  Just before I pull the hood shut, the gurney man gives me a little blue pill and says to let it dissolve under my tongue.

  The pill tastes sweet. So sweet my mouth fills with spit I have to swallow.

  The man says to get up on the gurney. He says to lay down with my head on the little white paper pillow, and then we'll go see my grandma.

  I ask, is she going to be okay? My grandma, she raised me since I was eight years old. She's my mom's mom, and she came across the country to get me after my mom and dad both died. By then, I was laid out on the gurney, and the man was wheeling it down the hospital corridor. Through open doors, you could see all the beds were empty, the sheets thrown back to show the dents where sick people had been. In some rooms, the televisions still played music or people talking. Next to some beds, lunch trays still sat, steam rising off the tomato soup.

  The man wheeled the gurney so fast the ceiling tiles started to blur, so fast that, laying there, I had to shut my eyes or I'd get sick.

  The hospital public-address system kept saying, “Code Orange, East Wing, second floor . . . Code Orange, East Wing, second floor . . .”