In All the Dead Things

In All the Dead Things

The hand sits motionless on the stainless steel table, fluorescents bouncing off it. Marek wonders if the grimaces are because of the hand or the glaring lights. Other parts are laid out across the lab, a hip with skin flaps and a bone, the marrow hardened and brown, next to the door. Half a face under what looks like a cake jar near the back, its eye glued shut and half mouth sewn from the inside, lonely and feared.  A large thigh, calf, foot, all still connected, being grabbed, rubbed, poked, held, like a heavy doll by the students. But the hand, with its arm still intact, is the only one that is skinned, save for the fingertips, which are wrinkled, like it has been soaking in formaldehyde for weeks on end, so wrinkled they slit, able to see the dead, pale meat inside.

Marek and Thea sit near each other at the end of her bed in her basement room. She says her parents are upstairs on the second story, nothing to worry about. Marek’s hands are clenching each other. There are no windows in her room here in the basement. Sound doesn't travel very far if you close the door, and it’s even more silent when no one is talking like now after she says this.

“Look at me.”
All of the posters on her wall, a Japanese school girl dancing, a large flyer for a concert that hints at casual drug use, a throwback fast food mascot, are all of the things he likes and wishes he had on his wall, but they make him uncomfortable and scared nonetheless. Especially because they are hers and they tell him about her.

“It’s okay. I know. I know.”

She leans closer and his ear warms by her breath. His hands become white. He can’t.

She pushes his chest and slowly follows him onto his back, his hands follow too, clenched still in the air. There are tiles like in their classrooms for her ceiling. Those things are fragile.

She kisses his neck, her hand trails his arm and meets resistance when she tries to lower them. She reaches his stomach and lifts his shirt, pokes his belly button. He grimaces. She reaches his belt and he sits up and runs out of the door, into the other part the basement and outside the house. He gets to his car that he used with sweaty palms to drive both of them back to this place. He stands there motionless looking at the trees in her backyard wave in the wind and whisper.

She walks out the door. He doesn’t look at her, embarrassed. Apologizes.

“I want to. I really do. I don’t know why.”

Softly : “You can at least hold my hand? I can do that?”

“Look, Mister PHD, I never meant to hurt nobody, and I swear by that. I just get these urges that I can’t keep bottled up. You know those ships they put into bottles and shit? Never understood that. Put that shit on the water, doofus. Let it do its thing what it does best and that’s sit on water.

“You need to know all I done? How ‘bout I tell you why I’m here. I wanted a Snickers bar really bad, you know? I got the urge for some nice chocolate but I didn’t have any money, not even a quarter, but I did have a car with some gas in it and a gun with no bullets. There was a Grub Mart just five minutes from where I was so I went over there. Took a Snickers. Now I could have just took them all, but you should know I only took one. I put the gun in the guy’s face at the counter and said, 'Now look here I’m taking this here Snickers and there’s nothing you can do about it.

“He had his hands up and said okay, dude, and I got out of there. I didn’t realize there was a cop there getting gas and he must’ve seen me coming out of the store with the gun in my hand and the Snickers in my mouth. So I ran into the car and drove off with the sirens right behind me.

“I barely got out of there, going maybe eighty, ninety, and a fresh dead deer popped into the road out of nowhere, man. It must’ve just got ran over, the blood on the ground was still red and all. So anyway, it had these huge antlers too, maybe a seven eight point, you know? And I swerved the wrong way and my left tire hit the antlers, popping it to bits, huge hole afterwards. My right tire hit the deer’s back side and because that tire jumped up so high and the other’s air went out so quick it made my poor car go on its side, and it made the sirens stop. The Snickers in my mouth fell out and hit ground in all that broken glass, the window being shattered by the wreck and all. I picked it up and made sure there were no glass in it and finished it, I wanted that Snickers so bad.”

Marek looks over at the hand while he holds a human heart, harder than he expects. The lungs too, one perfectly healthy, the other blackened and rotten. A few people pick it up. Marek notices it is the smokers who do it. The ones who smoke behind the Dumpsters during the lunch period. He sees that some people are interested in the hand, the tendons and muscles naked and bare for everyone, but no one dares touch it, it being too close to the real thing, reminding everyone about the decay. It is always in his field of vision as he moves from body part to body part. The leg that needs a new shave, the hair still growing. The hip, which outside the body doesn't look like anything he recognizes. The kidney, stomach, and liver, all harder and more resilient than he anticipates.

Five minutes left the teacher announces and Marek finally makes his way over to the hand. Alone and unnoticed, he picks it up, cradling the arm, not quite sure what to do. He needs to do something, he feels. Like there is a failing black hole in his chest. Bringing everything toward the center of himself, but only so far, leaving him in a state of constant anxious anticipation. He doesn't know where the feeling comes from, but the only way to rid it is to do something with this hand, he knows.  

 He holds it in the air by the arm, the hand limp at the wrist, bobs it up and down. The hand waves telling Marek hello there how are you. He moves the fingers into several positions, surprised at how nimble they still are. He gives some students the bird behind their backs, shoots them devil horns as well. The fingers will not stay crossed though.

He sits down with one minute left, the hand in his lap. He takes off his gloves and holds it like a lover’s, not too firm and not too soft. The resulting cut on his head as he jolts up and bangs it on the edge of the table when the hand takes life and grabs his hand back will take two weeks to fully heal.

“Look, man, I think I might have OCD or something. I can’t tell you why I punched that guy in the showers. I just wanted to do it. I had to do it. It was something I needed to do. I know you don’t believe me, but whatever.

“There was like, I dunno, maybe fifteen of us in those showers? Guy didn't even give me a look or anything. I just walked over there and punched him in his goddamn face. It’s funny when you think about it, you know?

“So yeah, he punched me back, but then I really got him good in the jaw and knocked him out. When he fell his face hit the wall and it probably fucked up his neck a little bit, but the autopsy said he didn't die from that I was told so I’m, like, scot free, really.

“And blah blah that started a whole fight that the guards couldn't stop and all the while the showers were still going and shit. You know all this.

“I’m sure some guys in there were just blowing off some steam. I saw one guy’s dick just get pulled on like someone was ringing some church bell. I saw another just jump around screaming, soap still on him and all. Slipping everywhere, his ass is still probably all bruised to hell from falling on it so much.

“So yeah, okay, the guy I punched and knocked out covered the drain with his face when he fell. The water from all the showers and the blood from all those guys couldn't go nowhere and it pooled up around his face and he drowned. S’not my fault, really. He would've survived the broken neck they tell me.

“I hear they are thinking about replacing the shower heads with motion sensor ones now, so stuff like that can’t happen again.”

Marek holds the hand for a little while longer. He undoes his pants and sticks it in with his leg and the hand grabs hold of his ankle, telling him that yes, please take me, I want to go with you, I need to go with you.

It rubs the tip of its index finger up and down his leg on the bus ride back to school. Everything’s all right in here. Don’t worry about me. George and Sandy are in the seat next to Marek. Her head is resting on his shoulder and his head is resting on her own. They are sleeping. A simple position in the cuddle karma sutra, Marek thinks. It is only a twenty minute ride back from the lab. He doesn't know why they are sleeping. How they just got to that point. What do you do to get there. They can’t be that tired.

The bus returns to school and Marek drives home with the hand still holding on his ankle. He takes off his pants and the hand lets go. He places it on his bed. There’s a wet, sticky hand print on his ankle that he washes off in the sink before he returns to bed and takes a nap.

Marek wakes up with the hand petting his head, moving the hair away from his eyes and caressing his cheek. Marek smiles, notices a wet spot on the sheets next to his face. He gets a paper towel and sets the hand on top of it. It moves its fingers around the tiny paper indentions like Braille. I like this, it says. This is neat.

Marek has reading to do. He lets it turn the pages for him. When it’s not turning pages it trails its long fingernails down Marek’s arm. It creates goose bumps all around his body, he has never felt this before. On his arm, his legs, the top of his head. He tries to reciprocate the gesture, not with his fingernails, that might pull up some skin. The hand doesn't seem to notice and Marek is disappointed. But the nerves must just be shot he thinks. He taps the top of the hand and it turns the page with a happy skip.

The next morning, the paper towel is soaked through, and strings of flesh hang off its arm like a banana’s bad hang nail. Marek places a few rubber bands around the arm to keep them from falling off completely. The hand wiggles its fingers in satisfaction.

“What you really want to know is if I've had any such history of the animal cruelty, Mister PHD, and I know what you’re doing here, but I’ll tell you anyway. I’m not going nowhere any time soon anyways even though I’m no psychopath. I never meant to hurt nobody.

“Anyway, I think I was about six or seven. I had a cat and I called it Henry. It was the best cat, let me tell you. It loved me and I loved it. I could pick it up any time I wanted and it would just purr and purr. It was smart too, and I even taught it tricks. I even got it to juggle some ice cubes one time.

“But it was old and it drooled everywhere. If I was lying on the couch it would jump on my stomach dropping little things of cat spit on my shirt. It would throw up a lot, too. But I still loved Henry.

“So yeah, it dies and my mom tells me about Kitty Heaven and that we have to bury him in the backyard to get him there. No one told me that heaven was up in the sky. I thought a grave meant some portal in the ground, that heaven was somewhere way down in the world.

“And, yeah, whatever, I cry for weeks and weeks. I stop eating and sleeping because all I can do is cry. I didn't know any other way that would make me feel better. If I weren't crying I felt like I was doing something wrong. Like I needed to cry or I might die.

“So my mom being all well-intentioned gets me another cat that looks exactly like Henry. I know it’s not Henry, but I call it Henry anyway. Shit, I wanted it so much to be Henry. But it never purred. It didn't like being picked up and it just licked the ice cubes I tossed at it, you know?

“I tried for months to get the new Henry to just be like my old Henry, but it just wasn't working. So I says to myself, 'Well it looks like you’ll just have to learn from the old Kitty himself. Watch him, New Henry, and learn from his ways. Become him and I will love you.'

“So I dig a hole next to Old Henry, tie up New Henry, and place him in the new grave. Cover him with dirt as he meowed, portal ready and all. I planned to keep him in there for awhile, it taking a long time to really get the details down from Old Henry, I figure, but then my mom notices New Henry isn't nowhere to be found.

“I tell her he’s learning from Old Henry. She screams and looks outside and digs New Henry back up, mouth full of dirt, ankles rubbed raw, and legs stiff as the shovel she used to dig him up.

“Woops.”

Marek brings the hand to a movie theater. He hides it in his jacket. The entire time the movie plays they are holding hands. He feels comfortable now.

After the movie, Marek is on his way to Thea’s. He can do it now. He isn't scared. The hand is in the passenger seat, seat-belt on. The car in front of Marek’s makes a sudden stop and the sudden whiplash in the car causes its ring finger to fall off. Frantic, he drives to the nearest convenience store and buys a roll of tape. He wraps loops on loops around the knuckle and the base of the finger. It stays limp and the hand is unable to move it, but it stays in place.

At Thea’s Marek knocks on the basement door, the hand still in the car with the windows rolled down a little.

“I have to show you something. I think it will make me better. Change everything.”

He shows her to the car.

“Wicked.”

“There’s been a lot of death in my life. I just done what I had to. Survive somehow, you know? Maybe I’m just a violent person at the core. I've done a lot a bad things in here that’ll keep me here ‘till I die, I know this. I've hit too many people over the heads with dumbbells. Punched too many people in the showers. Hurt myself too many times, too. Guess that’s why you’re here anyways."

Marek leans Thea down on her bed. The door is closed. He brings his face near her neck and hesitates.

“It’s okay. You can do it.”

“I don’t know what it is, man, Mister Doctor. My body tells me to do these things and if I don’t I’ll die. I have to do it. I can’t just sit there and not do shit. In a way, making pain saves me. I never meant to hurt nobody and I swear by that.”

He kisses her neck and her breathing grows louder, more harsh. He props himself up with his hands at both her sides. She grabs his left wrist and places it on her stomach. He doesn't move it. The hand, damping the sheets, lies next to her waist, fingering her skirt. The tape wrinkles loudly.

“Does it makes me think about what happens after? All this death? Sure. I mean I realized anything could happen after the whole Henry thing. I was all wrong. We’re probably all wrong.”

She lifts his shirt off. He lifts hers, but won’t touch the bra. She takes it off and he looks away. She grabs his hand and he pulls away.

“No, I want you to.”

He apologizes. “I thought I could. I want to. I don’t know what’s stopping…”

“Here, look.”

“Hell, you know what I want all you fellahs to do to my body? Why not science, eh? I can’t give you the answers now, but when I’m gone maybe you’ll figure it out. Maybe I’ll tell you if I ever had a soul, and if I did what kind of soul it really was.”

She grabs the hand, ring finger still limp, shreds of flesh getting away from the bands, hanging loose, and places it on her breast. It starts to caress it. “See? You do it too.”

Marek slowly draws his hand closer to her other breast. Touches it and lets out a huge rush of breath. A relief. He comes closer, nearer, and starts to kiss her.

“Maybe I can tell you how to cure cancer, stop world hunger, end all wars. Maybe I’m the spark of some new revelation! Maybe you all science people will discover something new. This is a mysterious universe we live in, uh huh. There’s something there that’s been under our noses this whole time and we don’t know about it. Don’t know what it is. I can smell it. Under it this whole goddamn time. Maybe it’s God, I dunno. Allah, Jesus, the collective souls of all the unconscious, ha! I know it’s there. You probably do to. Why we’re all curious. But you can’t get any answer from me. Ask me when I’m with the rest of the dead. They know what’s up. They change everything, not us livelies.”

She takes off her skirt, breathing heavily. Takes his hand and glides it down.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how…”

“Here.”

She places the hand on top of his own, and it directs his movements. They are near identical in size. The fingernails, in need of clipping, poke him, telling him what to move. Marek smiles. She kisses him, holds his cheek in her hand, stares at his face, and thumbs his lips before closing her eyes and letting out a moan of pleasure, lost in it all.

“So, fellah, Mister PHD, I sure as hell don’t have any answers now. When you guys do figure all this shit out you better let me fucking know, okay? And give me a medal.”

Her moans become louder than the wrinkling of the tape. Stained now, and falling apart.

 ©2012

(Was told to copyright everything, even if I don't like it very much.)

Toni Morrison's JAZZ Pastiche

What I Would've Named My Kids

I would've named the first one Rose, or maybe not Rose. Joe wouldn't like that name and I wouldn't argue with him. We would've named the first one Frances and it would have been born in that field of cotton, sticking to my flesh with the natural glue that once glued us together, some of it sticking to my own face as I held her in my arms and kissed her on the head knowing once and for all what true Love was and tasting the glue on my lips as I did it. And I would still find bits of cotton on her a week after. Finish picking in the fields and start picking after and it would never end even when we moved to the city. From birth to her death at six, I would still find cotton. After a bad week of constant rain, I would hold my only daughter in my bed, toeing the line of different squeezes, wanting to squeeze Frances hard and full of comfort to stop my baby from shivering and vibrating the bed, but not wanting to squeeze too hard as to make her uncomfortable, her already having only enough energy to cough and cough and cough and cough and cough and cough and cough over the sounds of honking horns and yelling passersbys and those drums that never seemed to go away as it reverberated in her ears and me wondering if they touched my daughter’s at all. And two days later when the coughing and shivering finally stop, it could have been an hour later until I noticed, or maybe I would wake up to find my silent daughter there in my arms held so tightly I would always wonder if I squeezed just too hard in her sleep, all my fault. The first thing I would do is pick a piece of cotton from behind Frances’ ear and stick it in my mouth and underneath my tongue.

And I would’ve named the second one Ulysses and it would have been Joe’s favorite. Always keeping him in his arms even when he slept, and I would always worry when he would bring Ulysses in the tree (where we first met) with him to sleep in the hammock saying this is where the family started and this is where it’s keeping. This is where it’s keeping. When we would move to the city, and when he would be earning more money, he would buy gift after gift to his only son, gifts that babies have no business messing with. Buying Ulysses a red tie saying he’ll need it one day as he tied it around his neck anyway, not too tight now, before he threw up all over it laughing then crying. Buying him a large cap gun that I would be terrified of and think how’s he going to pull that trigger with those nubby fingers of his, and Joe saying he’s going to be just like Father Drew. Buying him a harmonica that Ulysses would absolutely love after he, when chewing on the edge, would slip and breathe into the mouth piece, his first introduction to music and the drums and the sound they all make together. I would always hate the sound of my son’s baby voice with the dissonant sounds of that harmonica. I would see the baby’s blues forming. Goo Goo Gah in B Flat. It’s gonna be a hard life for me. It’s gonna be a hard life for me. All the while smiling at the sounds.

And my worries would never go away, never leaving me as it stuck to my heart, adding a new film of tissue, hard and constricting, over it, always always feeling it in me like my chest was caving in under the gravity. I would feel it as I yelled out my window at a young Ulysses to get out of the damn street and come upstairs and he responding but you do it too mama. I would feel it while he was sleeping on the floor and wake him up yelling why do you sleep on the floor when there’s a bed right next to you, this wood isn't gonna do it for you. I would feel it when he said but mama I like it better on the floor and I would wonder again and again if there is something wrong with my womb, I knew there was. I know there is. 
I would feel it when he didn't clean out the birdcages yelling don’t you know how important it is to clean its home, that’s where it lives and that’s where it’ll be until it dies. And it would worsen when he yelled back at me for the first time. All the yelling always the yelling mama shut up don’t you ever... He would end up running away at one point and I wouldn't feel it anymore and would breathe again.

The third would have been twin boys and we would've name them Jonah and Andy.

Twins have this deep unexplained connection, something that goes beyond being able to finish each other’s sentences and looking exactly alike and one hearing the other say something but understanding the real meaning behind his words he’s trying to hide. It’s way beyond that. Like something mystical, something supernatural, something only they can know but never explain or articulate. Something lost whenever it’s mentioned so they never bring it up. It’s the only explanation for how Jonah knew what to say or babble to keep Andy from crying when they were babies. Or for how Andy knew all the words to the song across the street from where Jonah used to play with the other kids, I would figure. This strange power they had only seemed to bother Andy at all.

Sometimes it was like he couldn't control it, whatever you want to call it, and it would wash all over him, cause his breathing to expand and harden at the same time, and squeeze him so hard that when he inhaled his stomach would rise, but his chest would stay still, all the while hearing the wind travel across the window’s glass, which couldn't calm the thing, and his brother sleeping on his side, back facing him, breathing heavily, normally, in the twin bed only five feet away from his own. 
And Andy sits there, motionless except for his stomach rising and falling, never in a pattern, erratic, and he waits for it to stop. This knowing, this deep, spiritual connection he feels and is too young to know what to do with if there was such an age. Knowing that the brother next to him is dreaming of scattered images, a rope, a piece of candy, a cartoon heart, and a girl Andy has never seen before with curly blond hair and a freckle on her eyelid that he thinks is so beautiful, knowing Jonah'll never remember a thing when he wakes up thinking how tragic, how tragic is it not to know and to know all the same.

And he looks in front of him, his feet under the covers even though it feels too hot just so he doesn't feel as exposed as he has to, the open door and the hallway light that shines into the room and cuts a triangle in between the brothers’ beds and touches the soft warm glow of the street lamp. And he sees the room at the end of the lit hallway, or more the closed door, how it looks yellow in the light and he feels his brothers body across from him and how he can’t move his arms and legs and doesn't want to and just stays in that position for years and years until he finally wakes up and he knows it’s not him, not Andy, who is feeling this, but only this squeezing on his chest and he starts to cry and cry.

Through the drums he hears in the night streets, Andy weeps and sobs and he doesn't know why and doesn't know what this feeling is because he knows it’s not Jonah’s so it must be his. It must be his. It must be his.

And it isn't until what feels like several days later that I come and stand in the doorway listening to the sobs of one my sons and say okay okay calm down let’s go over the list again is it your head. No. Is it your arms, legs? N-no. Is it your hands, your feet? No. Are you sick. Are you nauseous. Are you going to throw up. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry I’m sorry I don’t know. Shh. Calm down I say. Calm down we don’t want to wake your brother up, come here. Come here. He says I’m sorry I’m so sorry. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what’s wrong. I think I might be dying.

As I carries him to my room, to the bed where my first child died, his toes scraping the floor, him being so tall, as I stop and adjust his weight in my arms halfway to the room and out of breath by the time I reache it, I don't notice how damp my shoulder is really getting from his tears and how hard-pressed his fingers are onto my back and how loud his sobs are getting, still. But he knows that Jonah is in there waking up and forgetting about his dream of the freckled girl, has been awake ever since I entered their room, and now standing just inside the edge of the doorway, waiting until we reach the living room downstairs so he can finally shut the door and finally go to goddamn sleep. It must be his. It must only be his.

©2012