Lol I Eats Your Fingers
HERE 'TIS!
Almost as Cool as Stealing Prosthetic Legs
Lizzy Borden Took an Axe
Plastic isn't important. Plastic is nothing. When you steal a plastic limb, you're taking nothing of value.
“I know. Shut up.”
The words played through his mind anyway. Plastic is not important. Plastic is not important. Plastic limbs are worth nothing. You’re not stealing a real limb.
But it was a real limb. It was a real limb for so many people, and Shane was taking that away. He was taking their legs right off of their bodies. He was denying people their right to walk, to sew, to play tennis. He was raising insurance and hospital costs and prosthetic costs and funeral costs and probably spreading hepatitis and AIDS while he was at it.
You think too much.
It was true. Shane did think too much. He didn’t even understand how he got into this mess in the first place. The Shane he used to be didn’t even have the balls to ask for someone’s pencil. He never kept down a girlfriend. Never kept down a job. Never fit in with his family. And here he was, still not fitting in, yet somehow breaking into hospitals and health shops to steal supplies.
The problem was that the Shane back then didn’t have Neil. And even when Neil did show up, Neil wasn’t inside his head. He was there now, watching, listening, and dictating every move Shane made. He wasn’t sure if Neil actually had some crazy telepathic power or if he had just gotten to the point where he imagined Neil’s voice. The terrifying thing was that he didn’t know. He didn’t know if he was crazy or possessed, or both, and that scared the shit out of him. It scared him enough to initiate Neil’s voice again.
Time is wasting.
They were ready for him. The health shop had tripled their security efforts, not that Shane could blame them. They were, after all, the only medicinal shop not burgled on this route. Security cameras lined the outside of the building, scanning the parking lot at every available angle. They were scattered throughout the inside of the store as well, not as visible so as to give the ‘hidden camera’ edge. Shane could point them out though. There was one in the left corner, one above aisle seven, and another pointing at the mirrors lining the ceiling. It made Shane almost want to chuckle. All that money spent on cameras, but it didn’t matter. Shane was invisible.
You’re dead inside.
It was true. He was invisible. It was how he met Neil. Funny thing, meeting someone because you don’t exist. It didn’t make sense. Then again, nothing about them made sense. Nothing about them ever made sense.
“You’re broken,” Neil had said.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re dead inside. No one knows you exist.”
Shane had blown it off at the time. Neil was a freak, a new boy at Cutlers that didn’t get on with anyone. He ate alone, sat alone, slept alone. Up until that point Shane didn’t even know he could speak. It wasn’t until Shane was standing in line at the grocery store and his image didn’t appear on the camera that he listened. That’s when he realized Neil was right. That’s when he got too close.
There was a new lock on the door of the medicinal shop. Not that it mattered. Shane was good at picking locks. When he was a boy, his father would lock up special foods in a hutch above the kitchens. Shane never had a place to go home to during the holidays, never tasted a mother’s homemade sweeties, so he became an expert at sneaking the hidden tarts and chocolates. If only he knew then that his sweet tooth would benefit him in committing federal crimes.
The truth was, it didn’t matter who made the lock or what size it was. As long as you had the right pin, it was simple to hit the release trigger. Shane used his mother’s old hair pin, another item that his father had found missing under strange circumstances. The pin was long and thin, with a curved gold handle and a dulled point. Three small turns and a dull click later, the lock was on the ground and Shane was slipping inside the building. The alarms didn’t go off. How could they? He wasn’t made of anything.
The stock of prosthetics was located in the back room. It was a simple job really, all he had to do was grab the prosthetics, put them in a bag, and leave. It was so easy. So very easy. It was a simple in and out job, fifteen minutes tops, but Shane hung around. Next to the boxes of prosthetics were the papers for each recipient.
Don’t ever look at the patient files.
But he did anyway. He had too. Breaking and entering, stealing; it was all so easy. It was all so painless. He was numb going through the motions, didn’t feel anything. It was like he was turning into Neil; cold and remorseless. So he had to read the files. He had to read whose lives he was destroying because then he would feel guilty. If he hated himself, it meant he was still human.
And what if you don’t?
The first set of legs was meant to go to a war veteran named Thomas Mitchell. The man lost both of his legs fighting for home and country. By taking them away, Shane was spitting on the public service and millions of lives given for his home. Shane was being a cold ungrateful bastard by taking them away. It stung, but only a small prick of remorse. Shane picked up the next chart and flipped through the pages. Old woman lost her arms in a freak electrical accident, young football star hit by a car…young child missing hands from a boating accident. The guilt hit him suddenly, forcing Shane to drop to his knees and resist vomiting on the floor. There it was. He was still human; he was still capable of feeling.
No, you’re just selfish.
He didn’t bother unpacking the prosthetics and putting them in bags. He rushed the job, dropping the charts all over the floor and grabbing the entire box of prosthetics. He may have even knocked medicines off of the shelves as he ran out of the store. It was only when he was on the streets, surrounded by people who didn’t even see him that he was able to slow down and breathe. Neil would know about the mess at the store. He would know about the sloppy way Shane handled things. He would know everything unless Shane slowed down and breathed; breathed and pretended nothing was wrong.
It didn’t matter. Neil was either a mind reader or Shane was a crap actor because Neil knew as soon as Shane walked through the door. And Shane knew that he knew, could feel Neil rummaging around in his brain for satisfactory answers that Shane would never be able to say out loud. It was written in Neil’s eyes, for eternity.
“That took a little long, Shane,” Neil said coldly, eyeing the corner that Shane was to drop the boxes. “You weren’t having a look at patient files, were you?”
Shane was a shit liar. Actually, Shane was quite brilliant at lying, it was only around Neil that the art fell to pieces. Neil knew everything, and Shane knew it was a rhetorical question but he lied anyway.
“New lock,” he mumbled, “I had trouble picking it.”
Neil gave a small smile that looked like it was tearing his skin and nodded as if he understood. He ran his fingers through Shane’s hair, almost lovingly, except there was nothing loving about the look on his face, and his grin grew wider. It almost made Shane’s face hurt to look at the unnatural stretch of skin. “Don’t worry, Shane. I believe you,” he cooed in a way that made Shane want to vomit because the glint in his eyes meant that he didn’t believe a single word that had come out of Shane’s mouth.
And Gave Her Mother Forty Whacks
Shane should have suspected something was out of the ordinary when Neil called him in during the afternoon. Neil and Shane didn’t live together, even though it certainly felt like it from Shane’s perspective since Neil was always lurking in the back of his mind. Jobs were always given to Shane on a post-it attached to his door, and they were all meant to be done at night. Even though Shane was an extremely talented thief, slipping into a store and stealing in broad daylight was plain foolhardy. Part of him wanted to ignore the summoning. Whatever it was that Neil wanted, it wasn’t good. Neil was never the bearer of good news.
The door of the house was left open for Shane. Neil never gave out keys. Shane doubted that the man even owned a spare himself. The rules of the house were simple, when you were wanted or expected, the door would be open, and if you weren’t it would be closed and bolted. It had taken a few months for Shane to get used to the routine, but now he was accustomed to these mid-afternoon rendezvous. He stepped inside the dim hallway, removed his shoes, hung his coat, and bolted the door shut behind him. Sometimes he liked to think Neil was paranoid, but after years of knowing the man, he knew paranoia had nothing to do with any of Neil’s actions.
Neil had a cold house. It wasn’t even the temperature that was cold, the thermostat generally read 70 degrees, but despite this Shane always felt chilled inside. The floor was grey marble tile, and the cold seeped through his socks and nipped at his feet. The walls had never been painted, and remained the same cool white that had been painted when the house was first built. There were few furnishings, no pictures on the wall. It was almost like a hotel. A hotel no one wanted to sleep in. Neil sat in an ice blue chair in the middle of his living room. When he saw Shane, he smiled.
“I have something for you,” he said and gestured to the battered table by the window. On it was a crudely wrapped parcel. Shane felt the package first, checking to see if it was fleshy or hand-shaped. It wouldn’t be the first time that he had received some sort of appendage from Neil. This package was different. It was small and had smooth corners and sides. It was a box. What was in the box, Shane didn’t know.
“Well open it,” Neil murmured, and even though he was all the way across the room, Shane could feel the breath tickle the back of his neck.
Shane unwrapped the brown paper slowly. He wasn’t trying to be careful, he just didn’t know what to anticipate. Gifts from Neil never fell under the category of roses, or rings, or fish, or anything normal. As the paper fell away piece by piece, Shane felt his stomach sink closer to the floor. He was mildly surprised when it wasn’t a box of used needle tips infected with AIDS, or a box of hornet stingers, or something equally grotesque. Instead a small box of crayons fell into his hand. He held up the box to clarify that Neil wasn’t confused and hadn’t accidentally given him something else. Neil just smiled, and the coil in Shane’s stomach sprung tighter because Neil never did anything accidentally.
Shane regarded the box with new intensity, desperately searching for anything out of the ordinary. It was small, and the brand didn’t match any crayon he had ever heard of, but other than that, nothing seemed wrong.
“What’s this?”
“A delivery for an Andrew Shinny,” Neil answered with a smirk. “I believe you know what room he’s in. Come on Shane, the little boy wants to color.”
Shane felt as if his lungs had collapsed. “That little boy has no hands,” he wheezed.
Neil just smiled; a cold smile that didn’t even come near his ice blue eyes. “What a pity.”
Shane opened the box and nearly vomited all over the floor. Inside was a perfect rainbow, red to indigo, of finger shaped crayons. He tossed the box aside and watched as the multicolored fingers scattered across the floor. Neil didn’t even move. He didn’t have to.
“Well really, that was rude. They were his fingers after all.”
“You’re a sick fuck.”
Neil was right on him then, standing too close like he always did so that Shane could feel the words straight through his chest. “You never read the patient files Shane. You never read the files.”
Andrew Shinny’s room was smack dab in the middle of the pediatric ward. Shane felt his palms slick with sweat as soon as he stepped out of the elevator. Even though he had gone by three different nursing stations, run into a couple of elderly men, and walked in on two residents swapping spit in a supply closet, Shane was still nervous about the task set at hand. The plan was to leave the crayons on the table set by the door with no one being the wiser of how they got there.
Or he could throw the crayons away and not have anything to do with the entire situation. Except Neil would find out, like he always did, and Shane would be forced to amputate the kid’s legs and then turn them into meat pies for the mother as a consolation. His stomach rose to his throat at the thought, and Shane managed to make it to the sink of the staff bathroom. His vomit stained the porcelain sink, staining the white with red. Above the sink was a cracked mirror, and Shane stared at his split reflection.
“Did I really think of that?” he asked the two faces. They smirked at him, each side rising in a crude imitation of Neil’s tight face-splitting smile. He leaned in closer, trying to figure out the color of his eyes, but black pools stared back at him.
“Yes,” they answered, mirror rippling under their voices.
You have a job, Shane.
He did have a job. It was in room 207. 205, 206, 208… Room 207 stood separate from the other rooms, planted in a corner between 209 and 211. It was a room no one could find except for those who went looking for it. Of course Neil would choose this room, or Andrew would choose it, or Neil would choose Andrew because of it. Shane didn’t believe in coincidences anymore.
There was no table by the door of the room. It had been moved to flank the other side of the young boy’s bed. Shane’s stomach churned unpleasantly as he entered his room, and even though he was sure it was his nerves, his footsteps seemed to shake the entire building. The boy stared at him; a blank stare, not unlike Neil’s, and didn’t move. It was a simple in and out job, all he had to do was leave the crayons on the table. But as soon as he set them down, a small stump slammed down on his hand, making his own fingers crunch and whither.
“I know what’s in the box,” Andrew said, eyes still hollow and unfocused.
Shane forced a smile around the pain in his hand. “You do?”
Andrew’s stump pressed harder. “I know what’s in the box, Shane.”
Shane’s stomach dropped at that. He didn’t believe in coincidences anymore, but it didn’t mean that he didn’t wish for them.
“Would you like to color, Shane?” the boy asked, and his voice sounded surprisingly similar to Neil’s.
“What?” The boy didn’t answer. And then there was searing pain running up his entire arm because the stump was pressing down…and down…and down; hard enough to sever. Shane couldn’t even scream as he watched his fingers pop off one by one. Pop, pop, pop, just like the cheap Barbie heads from the Dollar Store. Pop, pop, pop.
“Quick Shane, you don’t want the ink to dry out.”
And Shane knew that the ink was his own blood, that he was supposed to draw with his own fingers like the sick twisted freak that he was, but he didn’t know how to explain that he had no fingers and he couldn’t hold onto anything and he couldn’t even see anything because the pain was blinding and the blood was making him queasy and he didn’t know…didn’t know. And everything. Went. Black.
Andrew was asleep on the bed, his stumps wrapped in clean gauze, with a tired woman sitting close and stroking his head. There was a tray with old food sitting on a table by the door. It was a simple in and out job. Shane threw the crayons on the top of a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich and bolted from the hospital.
When She Saw What She Had Done…
Shane escaped to a closed off coffee shop not far from Neil’s house. Sometimes Shane wondered if part of everything was his fault, because he always came when Neil called, and even when he didn’t Shane wasn’t that far off. The pain in his fingers had reduced to a dull ache, but they were still red and almost swollen. Hot coffee did little for the pain, but it was pleasant enough to drink.
“Arthritic hands?”
Shane raised his gaze at the sound of a woman’s voice. Standing right in front of him, and apparently talking to him, was a young woman with strawberry hair and supple curves barely visible underneath her bulky sweater. She was the most beautiful thing Shane had ever seen, and Shane had half a mind to blurt out something lame like: You can see me? Instead he went along with something a little more traditional.
“Excuse me?”
The woman chuckled, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and took the chair across from him without asking. “Your hands. I noticed you rubbing them so, it’s either arthritis or a nervous tick of some sort.”
Shane saluted her with his coffee. “Very observant.”
She laughed appreciatively. “I have to be. My assignment week is to observe different people. I’m studying psychology.”
Shane smiled. “So can you help interpret my dreams?”
The girl looked a bit nervous, as if she wasn’t sure if he was being serious or if he was trying to pick her up. “I said psychology, not astrologic dream reading,” she said noncommittally.
“I’m serious.” Shane saw her expression drop. “Please?”
She shrugged and sipped her coffee. “I suppose.”
Don’t speak Shane. You never speak.
“I have this dream,” his throat closed and he coughed to clear it. “Sorry. I have this…dream. I get it a lot. I’m in a room-“ his heart was in his esophagus and it was getting harder to breathe-“and it’s a chessboard. It’s all a chessboard. And all the pieces are dead. It’s just me and no one knows I’m there.” His lungs were collapsing. He could feel them caving in, but God it felt so good to speak to somebody. “And it’s all one room, all one chessboard, but I can’t help but feel like I’m lost. And then-“ God, his head was killing him. He could see sparks behind his eyelids. “-I realize I have strings attached. I-I’m a puppet and all of my stitches are coming undone. But instead of straw it’s-maggots…because-“
He was going to die. He was going to die now because he spoke when he shouldn’t have and Neil couldn’t stand it and his head was going to explode and he was going to die.
“-because…”
You’re dead.
“I’m dead.”
Shane cradled his head as the girl stared at him. Then her hand was on his shoulder and he could feel it and the pain started to ebb away. She gave him a small smile and handed him his coffee. He took a sip, savoring the burn down his throat.
“I think,” she began, “I think you watch too much Harry Potter.”
He laughed. It was weird because he hadn’t laughed in such a long time and it sounded like dirt and soft wind and it tasted like death and it hurt, but it was wonderful. She laughed too, and hers smelled like grass and warm spring and didn’t look painful at all. Maybe if he laughed a little longer, his would feel natural too.
“I’m Roxanne,” she said.
“Shane,” he responded.
“Hello, Shane.”
That night, Shane didn’t see Neil or go back to his apartment. There was a twist in his gut, something telling him that he was being a bad child, disobeying his parents, but everyone had to sneak out of the house once in a while. Shane ignored his conscience, and fell asleep in a warm bed that was not his own and smelled faintly of roses and formaldehyde.
Neil was waiting for Shane in his flat, and it was almost comical because Neil never came to Shane’s place. Shane’s walls were a light caramel color, and his accents were in browns reds and oranges. He tried to feel warm when he came home. Neil almost looked like he was sweltering, and it made Shane almost feel like he was in control. Almost.
“Here comes the triple traitor to the king,” Neil recited softly.
Shane held up his hands in a fit of early surrender. “She initiated conversation with me,” he explained.
Neil shook his head. “Shane,” he nearly cooed, “that doesn’t bother me. I’m glad you’ve made a friend.”
Shane knew that there was most likely some cryptic message hidden behind Neil’s words. Deep inside he knew that Neil would never be happy for him about anything, knew that he should anticipate some sick joke to come next. But none came. The silence stretched on and Shane felt like he was the only uncomfortable person in the room because he hadn’t accepted Neil’s good wishes.
“Thank you,” he tried uncertainly.
Neil nodded, as if in approval, and handed Shane to folded pieces of paper. Shane unfolded them carefully and was surprised to see two admission tickets to the city’s corn maze. He looked at Neil in confusion and the other man shrugged.
“They were a gift. I would have taken you, but it’s always better to go to these things with a female companion, don’t you agree?”
Shane did agree. He agreed completely. He just didn’t understand why Neil was being nice and handing him an actual gift. An actual, useable, no-body-gets-hurt gift. He felt liberated, crazy with power, and he had a feeling that Neil could feel it too, especially since Shane’s home warmth was penetrating Neil’s icy blues. Even his head was quiet.
“It’s because she saw me isn’t it,” Shane pieced together before Neil left. “I’m not broken anymore.”
Neil gave a pained smile, one that looked almost grotesque on his thin face, and walked out. It made Shane giddy with delight, a feeling on par with being immortal. When he looked in the mirror, he saw his own face.
Roxanne was thrilled about the maze passes. The city corn maze was set up in the heart of downtown, and it was still a mystery to everyone how they managed to grow corn in the middle of a cobblestone street. It was for that reason alone that there were no complaints about the cost of admission. A free ticket was the equivalent of winning the lottery. The crowd even seemed to split and disperse as they walked by, almost as if they were royalty. Shane didn’t mind.
Once inside the corn maze, his good mood began to spoil. Shane was never a fan of Halloween or dressing up or fake blood or horror movies. Corn mazes were like haunted houses, only outside. Roxanne didn’t mind at all; didn’t even notice Shane’s reluctance to trudge forward.
“I love going to the corn mazes before anyone else gets there. Otherwise it’s too crowded and you don’t get nearly as scared,” she said after about ten minutes of wandering.
Shane actually preferred it with other people around. He wasn’t keen on getting scared. He was always scared. He smiled and agreed with Roxanne anyway. Better with no people. Better with no witnesses.
“Did you ever go through the corn maze as a child?”
Shane could feel something prickling the back of his neck. Something wasn’t right. He was being watched and it wasn’t playful. He knew how these things worked. People hid behind the bushes and jumped out. But they were halfway in and no one was jumping.
“I think we came a little too early. It doesn’t seem like there’s anyone here.”
Roxanne laughed and tossed her hair out of her face. “Don’t be silly. If it wasn’t open, that nice man wouldn’t have let us in.”
Shane nodded, but the twist in his stomach wouldn’t go away. Nice man at the front. Nice man at the front. He looked so familiar but Shane couldn’t place his face.
“Wouldn’t we have already been jumped by now?”
Roxanne sighed in a way that conveyed she thought Shane was being quite childish. “Maybe they’re waiting for the opportune moment to come out and scare the little pants off of worry warts like you.”
Opportune moments? Yes, there was an opportune moment but it didn’t belong here. This wasn’t right. The whole scenario wasn’t right.
“Something keeps touching the back of my neck,” he said instead.
Roxanne gave an exasperated sigh and clasped his hand in hers. “It’s just the corn leaves. Now will you stop worrying please?”
Shane nodded. Maybe he was just being a worry wart. Maybe he should just relax. Except there was rustling in the corn and he could feel Roxanne let go of his hand and he knew why it felt wrong but it was too late because Neil was there and the knife went across her throat so quick that she couldn’t even scream. Shane couldn’t even scream as the blood poured out of the wound and splattered over his shirt and neck. He couldn’t speak because he could hear the bone cracking under the force, could feel her windpipe collapse; could hear her gurgling as her lungs filled with blood.
Neil let go of her body and it dropped unceremoniously to the ground. He was completely clean, even in a white shirt and pants like some holy messiah sent by the devil. He flourished the knife with a chuckle. “Don’t you hate it when women don’t listen,” he asked with a predatory glint in his eyes.
Shane couldn’t answer. He knew there was something wrong, he had felt it, but he hadn’t done anything. He had let her die. The man in the front was a man he worked for and he didn’t notice and he had killed her. No, Neil had killed her. It was always Neil. Neil regarded Roxanne like she was a piece of road kill.
“Funny isn’t it,” Neil said with a smirk, “Death in the breadth of life.”
“You planned all of this didn’t you?”
Neil smiled. “Why Shane, the maze doesn’t open until nine. You’re an hour early. Didn’t you read the card?”
Shane wanted to lunge at him. He could feel the adrenaline pulsing throughout his entire being, could feel every fiber in his body screaming at him to just do it. But he didn’t. He wanted to punch Neil. He wanted to rip the smile off of his face. He wanted to bite, kick, scratch, and scream, but he couldn’t move. And Neil knew it. Neil knew it because he was laughing and licking the blood off of the knife, and even when he pressed up against Shane and kissed him to where Shane could taste the blood too, he couldn’t move. Neil pressed the blade into Shane’s hand, and Shane found himself taking it without question.
“I’m your spade. You’re dead. You’re my Maraclea.”
She Gave Her Father FORTY-ONE
Appendage Thief Caught!
The famous prosthetic thief that has been plaguing hospitals and medical supply stores alike has finally been caught, and in a surprising turn of events, has turned out to be another well known person of town and country. Prime Minister Albert Baker was discovered this morning with the stolen goods stored away in his personal warehouse. Along with the plastic limbs were other stolen items ready for import. The police are treating this case with utmost priority and it is quite possible that the prime minister election will come sooner than expected…
Shane stopped reading the article and folded over the paper. Neil looked relaxed, a new look for him, a good look for him, now that the job was done. Shane had just been the bus boy. Neil was the mastermind behind everything, the one who actually took all the action. As much as Shane didn’t want to admit it, he almost admired him for it.
“Is it over then?” Shane asked, sitting next to Neil and not flinching away when the other man rested his arm on the back of the sofa.
“It’ll never be over. You know that.”
Shane looked at the map tacked against the wall listing every club member from the highest in command to the lowest servant.
“No, I suppose not.”
It wouldn’t be over. Shane knew it, and he accepted it…sort of. No one knew Neil, no one knew him like Shane did. Maybe if they did, they would understand that he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t possibly ever leave. The truth was, sometimes it was rough. Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes Shane thought he was in love, and sometimes he knew he was wrong.
Almost as Cool as Stealing Prosthetic Legs
Lizzy Borden Took an Axe
Plastic isn't important. Plastic is nothing. When you steal a plastic limb, you're taking nothing of value.
“I know. Shut up.”
The words played through his mind anyway. Plastic is not important. Plastic is not important. Plastic limbs are worth nothing. You’re not stealing a real limb.
But it was a real limb. It was a real limb for so many people, and Shane was taking that away. He was taking their legs right off of their bodies. He was denying people their right to walk, to sew, to play tennis. He was raising insurance and hospital costs and prosthetic costs and funeral costs and probably spreading hepatitis and AIDS while he was at it.
You think too much.
It was true. Shane did think too much. He didn’t even understand how he got into this mess in the first place. The Shane he used to be didn’t even have the balls to ask for someone’s pencil. He never kept down a girlfriend. Never kept down a job. Never fit in with his family. And here he was, still not fitting in, yet somehow breaking into hospitals and health shops to steal supplies.
The problem was that the Shane back then didn’t have Neil. And even when Neil did show up, Neil wasn’t inside his head. He was there now, watching, listening, and dictating every move Shane made. He wasn’t sure if Neil actually had some crazy telepathic power or if he had just gotten to the point where he imagined Neil’s voice. The terrifying thing was that he didn’t know. He didn’t know if he was crazy or possessed, or both, and that scared the shit out of him. It scared him enough to initiate Neil’s voice again.
Time is wasting.
They were ready for him. The health shop had tripled their security efforts, not that Shane could blame them. They were, after all, the only medicinal shop not burgled on this route. Security cameras lined the outside of the building, scanning the parking lot at every available angle. They were scattered throughout the inside of the store as well, not as visible so as to give the ‘hidden camera’ edge. Shane could point them out though. There was one in the left corner, one above aisle seven, and another pointing at the mirrors lining the ceiling. It made Shane almost want to chuckle. All that money spent on cameras, but it didn’t matter. Shane was invisible.
You’re dead inside.
It was true. He was invisible. It was how he met Neil. Funny thing, meeting someone because you don’t exist. It didn’t make sense. Then again, nothing about them made sense. Nothing about them ever made sense.
“You’re broken,” Neil had said.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re dead inside. No one knows you exist.”
Shane had blown it off at the time. Neil was a freak, a new boy at Cutlers that didn’t get on with anyone. He ate alone, sat alone, slept alone. Up until that point Shane didn’t even know he could speak. It wasn’t until Shane was standing in line at the grocery store and his image didn’t appear on the camera that he listened. That’s when he realized Neil was right. That’s when he got too close.
There was a new lock on the door of the medicinal shop. Not that it mattered. Shane was good at picking locks. When he was a boy, his father would lock up special foods in a hutch above the kitchens. Shane never had a place to go home to during the holidays, never tasted a mother’s homemade sweeties, so he became an expert at sneaking the hidden tarts and chocolates. If only he knew then that his sweet tooth would benefit him in committing federal crimes.
The truth was, it didn’t matter who made the lock or what size it was. As long as you had the right pin, it was simple to hit the release trigger. Shane used his mother’s old hair pin, another item that his father had found missing under strange circumstances. The pin was long and thin, with a curved gold handle and a dulled point. Three small turns and a dull click later, the lock was on the ground and Shane was slipping inside the building. The alarms didn’t go off. How could they? He wasn’t made of anything.
The stock of prosthetics was located in the back room. It was a simple job really, all he had to do was grab the prosthetics, put them in a bag, and leave. It was so easy. So very easy. It was a simple in and out job, fifteen minutes tops, but Shane hung around. Next to the boxes of prosthetics were the papers for each recipient.
Don’t ever look at the patient files.
But he did anyway. He had too. Breaking and entering, stealing; it was all so easy. It was all so painless. He was numb going through the motions, didn’t feel anything. It was like he was turning into Neil; cold and remorseless. So he had to read the files. He had to read whose lives he was destroying because then he would feel guilty. If he hated himself, it meant he was still human.
And what if you don’t?
The first set of legs was meant to go to a war veteran named Thomas Mitchell. The man lost both of his legs fighting for home and country. By taking them away, Shane was spitting on the public service and millions of lives given for his home. Shane was being a cold ungrateful bastard by taking them away. It stung, but only a small prick of remorse. Shane picked up the next chart and flipped through the pages. Old woman lost her arms in a freak electrical accident, young football star hit by a car…young child missing hands from a boating accident. The guilt hit him suddenly, forcing Shane to drop to his knees and resist vomiting on the floor. There it was. He was still human; he was still capable of feeling.
No, you’re just selfish.
He didn’t bother unpacking the prosthetics and putting them in bags. He rushed the job, dropping the charts all over the floor and grabbing the entire box of prosthetics. He may have even knocked medicines off of the shelves as he ran out of the store. It was only when he was on the streets, surrounded by people who didn’t even see him that he was able to slow down and breathe. Neil would know about the mess at the store. He would know about the sloppy way Shane handled things. He would know everything unless Shane slowed down and breathed; breathed and pretended nothing was wrong.
It didn’t matter. Neil was either a mind reader or Shane was a crap actor because Neil knew as soon as Shane walked through the door. And Shane knew that he knew, could feel Neil rummaging around in his brain for satisfactory answers that Shane would never be able to say out loud. It was written in Neil’s eyes, for eternity.
“That took a little long, Shane,” Neil said coldly, eyeing the corner that Shane was to drop the boxes. “You weren’t having a look at patient files, were you?”
Shane was a shit liar. Actually, Shane was quite brilliant at lying, it was only around Neil that the art fell to pieces. Neil knew everything, and Shane knew it was a rhetorical question but he lied anyway.
“New lock,” he mumbled, “I had trouble picking it.”
Neil gave a small smile that looked like it was tearing his skin and nodded as if he understood. He ran his fingers through Shane’s hair, almost lovingly, except there was nothing loving about the look on his face, and his grin grew wider. It almost made Shane’s face hurt to look at the unnatural stretch of skin. “Don’t worry, Shane. I believe you,” he cooed in a way that made Shane want to vomit because the glint in his eyes meant that he didn’t believe a single word that had come out of Shane’s mouth.
And Gave Her Mother Forty Whacks
Shane should have suspected something was out of the ordinary when Neil called him in during the afternoon. Neil and Shane didn’t live together, even though it certainly felt like it from Shane’s perspective since Neil was always lurking in the back of his mind. Jobs were always given to Shane on a post-it attached to his door, and they were all meant to be done at night. Even though Shane was an extremely talented thief, slipping into a store and stealing in broad daylight was plain foolhardy. Part of him wanted to ignore the summoning. Whatever it was that Neil wanted, it wasn’t good. Neil was never the bearer of good news.
The door of the house was left open for Shane. Neil never gave out keys. Shane doubted that the man even owned a spare himself. The rules of the house were simple, when you were wanted or expected, the door would be open, and if you weren’t it would be closed and bolted. It had taken a few months for Shane to get used to the routine, but now he was accustomed to these mid-afternoon rendezvous. He stepped inside the dim hallway, removed his shoes, hung his coat, and bolted the door shut behind him. Sometimes he liked to think Neil was paranoid, but after years of knowing the man, he knew paranoia had nothing to do with any of Neil’s actions.
Neil had a cold house. It wasn’t even the temperature that was cold, the thermostat generally read 70 degrees, but despite this Shane always felt chilled inside. The floor was grey marble tile, and the cold seeped through his socks and nipped at his feet. The walls had never been painted, and remained the same cool white that had been painted when the house was first built. There were few furnishings, no pictures on the wall. It was almost like a hotel. A hotel no one wanted to sleep in. Neil sat in an ice blue chair in the middle of his living room. When he saw Shane, he smiled.
“I have something for you,” he said and gestured to the battered table by the window. On it was a crudely wrapped parcel. Shane felt the package first, checking to see if it was fleshy or hand-shaped. It wouldn’t be the first time that he had received some sort of appendage from Neil. This package was different. It was small and had smooth corners and sides. It was a box. What was in the box, Shane didn’t know.
“Well open it,” Neil murmured, and even though he was all the way across the room, Shane could feel the breath tickle the back of his neck.
Shane unwrapped the brown paper slowly. He wasn’t trying to be careful, he just didn’t know what to anticipate. Gifts from Neil never fell under the category of roses, or rings, or fish, or anything normal. As the paper fell away piece by piece, Shane felt his stomach sink closer to the floor. He was mildly surprised when it wasn’t a box of used needle tips infected with AIDS, or a box of hornet stingers, or something equally grotesque. Instead a small box of crayons fell into his hand. He held up the box to clarify that Neil wasn’t confused and hadn’t accidentally given him something else. Neil just smiled, and the coil in Shane’s stomach sprung tighter because Neil never did anything accidentally.
Shane regarded the box with new intensity, desperately searching for anything out of the ordinary. It was small, and the brand didn’t match any crayon he had ever heard of, but other than that, nothing seemed wrong.
“What’s this?”
“A delivery for an Andrew Shinny,” Neil answered with a smirk. “I believe you know what room he’s in. Come on Shane, the little boy wants to color.”
Shane felt as if his lungs had collapsed. “That little boy has no hands,” he wheezed.
Neil just smiled; a cold smile that didn’t even come near his ice blue eyes. “What a pity.”
Shane opened the box and nearly vomited all over the floor. Inside was a perfect rainbow, red to indigo, of finger shaped crayons. He tossed the box aside and watched as the multicolored fingers scattered across the floor. Neil didn’t even move. He didn’t have to.
“Well really, that was rude. They were his fingers after all.”
“You’re a sick fuck.”
Neil was right on him then, standing too close like he always did so that Shane could feel the words straight through his chest. “You never read the patient files Shane. You never read the files.”
Andrew Shinny’s room was smack dab in the middle of the pediatric ward. Shane felt his palms slick with sweat as soon as he stepped out of the elevator. Even though he had gone by three different nursing stations, run into a couple of elderly men, and walked in on two residents swapping spit in a supply closet, Shane was still nervous about the task set at hand. The plan was to leave the crayons on the table set by the door with no one being the wiser of how they got there.
Or he could throw the crayons away and not have anything to do with the entire situation. Except Neil would find out, like he always did, and Shane would be forced to amputate the kid’s legs and then turn them into meat pies for the mother as a consolation. His stomach rose to his throat at the thought, and Shane managed to make it to the sink of the staff bathroom. His vomit stained the porcelain sink, staining the white with red. Above the sink was a cracked mirror, and Shane stared at his split reflection.
“Did I really think of that?” he asked the two faces. They smirked at him, each side rising in a crude imitation of Neil’s tight face-splitting smile. He leaned in closer, trying to figure out the color of his eyes, but black pools stared back at him.
“Yes,” they answered, mirror rippling under their voices.
You have a job, Shane.
He did have a job. It was in room 207. 205, 206, 208… Room 207 stood separate from the other rooms, planted in a corner between 209 and 211. It was a room no one could find except for those who went looking for it. Of course Neil would choose this room, or Andrew would choose it, or Neil would choose Andrew because of it. Shane didn’t believe in coincidences anymore.
There was no table by the door of the room. It had been moved to flank the other side of the young boy’s bed. Shane’s stomach churned unpleasantly as he entered his room, and even though he was sure it was his nerves, his footsteps seemed to shake the entire building. The boy stared at him; a blank stare, not unlike Neil’s, and didn’t move. It was a simple in and out job, all he had to do was leave the crayons on the table. But as soon as he set them down, a small stump slammed down on his hand, making his own fingers crunch and whither.
“I know what’s in the box,” Andrew said, eyes still hollow and unfocused.
Shane forced a smile around the pain in his hand. “You do?”
Andrew’s stump pressed harder. “I know what’s in the box, Shane.”
Shane’s stomach dropped at that. He didn’t believe in coincidences anymore, but it didn’t mean that he didn’t wish for them.
“Would you like to color, Shane?” the boy asked, and his voice sounded surprisingly similar to Neil’s.
“What?” The boy didn’t answer. And then there was searing pain running up his entire arm because the stump was pressing down…and down…and down; hard enough to sever. Shane couldn’t even scream as he watched his fingers pop off one by one. Pop, pop, pop, just like the cheap Barbie heads from the Dollar Store. Pop, pop, pop.
“Quick Shane, you don’t want the ink to dry out.”
And Shane knew that the ink was his own blood, that he was supposed to draw with his own fingers like the sick twisted freak that he was, but he didn’t know how to explain that he had no fingers and he couldn’t hold onto anything and he couldn’t even see anything because the pain was blinding and the blood was making him queasy and he didn’t know…didn’t know. And everything. Went. Black.
Andrew was asleep on the bed, his stumps wrapped in clean gauze, with a tired woman sitting close and stroking his head. There was a tray with old food sitting on a table by the door. It was a simple in and out job. Shane threw the crayons on the top of a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich and bolted from the hospital.
When She Saw What She Had Done…
Shane escaped to a closed off coffee shop not far from Neil’s house. Sometimes Shane wondered if part of everything was his fault, because he always came when Neil called, and even when he didn’t Shane wasn’t that far off. The pain in his fingers had reduced to a dull ache, but they were still red and almost swollen. Hot coffee did little for the pain, but it was pleasant enough to drink.
“Arthritic hands?”
Shane raised his gaze at the sound of a woman’s voice. Standing right in front of him, and apparently talking to him, was a young woman with strawberry hair and supple curves barely visible underneath her bulky sweater. She was the most beautiful thing Shane had ever seen, and Shane had half a mind to blurt out something lame like: You can see me? Instead he went along with something a little more traditional.
“Excuse me?”
The woman chuckled, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and took the chair across from him without asking. “Your hands. I noticed you rubbing them so, it’s either arthritis or a nervous tick of some sort.”
Shane saluted her with his coffee. “Very observant.”
She laughed appreciatively. “I have to be. My assignment week is to observe different people. I’m studying psychology.”
Shane smiled. “So can you help interpret my dreams?”
The girl looked a bit nervous, as if she wasn’t sure if he was being serious or if he was trying to pick her up. “I said psychology, not astrologic dream reading,” she said noncommittally.
“I’m serious.” Shane saw her expression drop. “Please?”
She shrugged and sipped her coffee. “I suppose.”
Don’t speak Shane. You never speak.
“I have this dream,” his throat closed and he coughed to clear it. “Sorry. I have this…dream. I get it a lot. I’m in a room-“ his heart was in his esophagus and it was getting harder to breathe-“and it’s a chessboard. It’s all a chessboard. And all the pieces are dead. It’s just me and no one knows I’m there.” His lungs were collapsing. He could feel them caving in, but God it felt so good to speak to somebody. “And it’s all one room, all one chessboard, but I can’t help but feel like I’m lost. And then-“ God, his head was killing him. He could see sparks behind his eyelids. “-I realize I have strings attached. I-I’m a puppet and all of my stitches are coming undone. But instead of straw it’s-maggots…because-“
He was going to die. He was going to die now because he spoke when he shouldn’t have and Neil couldn’t stand it and his head was going to explode and he was going to die.
“-because…”
You’re dead.
“I’m dead.”
Shane cradled his head as the girl stared at him. Then her hand was on his shoulder and he could feel it and the pain started to ebb away. She gave him a small smile and handed him his coffee. He took a sip, savoring the burn down his throat.
“I think,” she began, “I think you watch too much Harry Potter.”
He laughed. It was weird because he hadn’t laughed in such a long time and it sounded like dirt and soft wind and it tasted like death and it hurt, but it was wonderful. She laughed too, and hers smelled like grass and warm spring and didn’t look painful at all. Maybe if he laughed a little longer, his would feel natural too.
“I’m Roxanne,” she said.
“Shane,” he responded.
“Hello, Shane.”
That night, Shane didn’t see Neil or go back to his apartment. There was a twist in his gut, something telling him that he was being a bad child, disobeying his parents, but everyone had to sneak out of the house once in a while. Shane ignored his conscience, and fell asleep in a warm bed that was not his own and smelled faintly of roses and formaldehyde.
Neil was waiting for Shane in his flat, and it was almost comical because Neil never came to Shane’s place. Shane’s walls were a light caramel color, and his accents were in browns reds and oranges. He tried to feel warm when he came home. Neil almost looked like he was sweltering, and it made Shane almost feel like he was in control. Almost.
“Here comes the triple traitor to the king,” Neil recited softly.
Shane held up his hands in a fit of early surrender. “She initiated conversation with me,” he explained.
Neil shook his head. “Shane,” he nearly cooed, “that doesn’t bother me. I’m glad you’ve made a friend.”
Shane knew that there was most likely some cryptic message hidden behind Neil’s words. Deep inside he knew that Neil would never be happy for him about anything, knew that he should anticipate some sick joke to come next. But none came. The silence stretched on and Shane felt like he was the only uncomfortable person in the room because he hadn’t accepted Neil’s good wishes.
“Thank you,” he tried uncertainly.
Neil nodded, as if in approval, and handed Shane to folded pieces of paper. Shane unfolded them carefully and was surprised to see two admission tickets to the city’s corn maze. He looked at Neil in confusion and the other man shrugged.
“They were a gift. I would have taken you, but it’s always better to go to these things with a female companion, don’t you agree?”
Shane did agree. He agreed completely. He just didn’t understand why Neil was being nice and handing him an actual gift. An actual, useable, no-body-gets-hurt gift. He felt liberated, crazy with power, and he had a feeling that Neil could feel it too, especially since Shane’s home warmth was penetrating Neil’s icy blues. Even his head was quiet.
“It’s because she saw me isn’t it,” Shane pieced together before Neil left. “I’m not broken anymore.”
Neil gave a pained smile, one that looked almost grotesque on his thin face, and walked out. It made Shane giddy with delight, a feeling on par with being immortal. When he looked in the mirror, he saw his own face.
Roxanne was thrilled about the maze passes. The city corn maze was set up in the heart of downtown, and it was still a mystery to everyone how they managed to grow corn in the middle of a cobblestone street. It was for that reason alone that there were no complaints about the cost of admission. A free ticket was the equivalent of winning the lottery. The crowd even seemed to split and disperse as they walked by, almost as if they were royalty. Shane didn’t mind.
Once inside the corn maze, his good mood began to spoil. Shane was never a fan of Halloween or dressing up or fake blood or horror movies. Corn mazes were like haunted houses, only outside. Roxanne didn’t mind at all; didn’t even notice Shane’s reluctance to trudge forward.
“I love going to the corn mazes before anyone else gets there. Otherwise it’s too crowded and you don’t get nearly as scared,” she said after about ten minutes of wandering.
Shane actually preferred it with other people around. He wasn’t keen on getting scared. He was always scared. He smiled and agreed with Roxanne anyway. Better with no people. Better with no witnesses.
“Did you ever go through the corn maze as a child?”
Shane could feel something prickling the back of his neck. Something wasn’t right. He was being watched and it wasn’t playful. He knew how these things worked. People hid behind the bushes and jumped out. But they were halfway in and no one was jumping.
“I think we came a little too early. It doesn’t seem like there’s anyone here.”
Roxanne laughed and tossed her hair out of her face. “Don’t be silly. If it wasn’t open, that nice man wouldn’t have let us in.”
Shane nodded, but the twist in his stomach wouldn’t go away. Nice man at the front. Nice man at the front. He looked so familiar but Shane couldn’t place his face.
“Wouldn’t we have already been jumped by now?”
Roxanne sighed in a way that conveyed she thought Shane was being quite childish. “Maybe they’re waiting for the opportune moment to come out and scare the little pants off of worry warts like you.”
Opportune moments? Yes, there was an opportune moment but it didn’t belong here. This wasn’t right. The whole scenario wasn’t right.
“Something keeps touching the back of my neck,” he said instead.
Roxanne gave an exasperated sigh and clasped his hand in hers. “It’s just the corn leaves. Now will you stop worrying please?”
Shane nodded. Maybe he was just being a worry wart. Maybe he should just relax. Except there was rustling in the corn and he could feel Roxanne let go of his hand and he knew why it felt wrong but it was too late because Neil was there and the knife went across her throat so quick that she couldn’t even scream. Shane couldn’t even scream as the blood poured out of the wound and splattered over his shirt and neck. He couldn’t speak because he could hear the bone cracking under the force, could feel her windpipe collapse; could hear her gurgling as her lungs filled with blood.
Neil let go of her body and it dropped unceremoniously to the ground. He was completely clean, even in a white shirt and pants like some holy messiah sent by the devil. He flourished the knife with a chuckle. “Don’t you hate it when women don’t listen,” he asked with a predatory glint in his eyes.
Shane couldn’t answer. He knew there was something wrong, he had felt it, but he hadn’t done anything. He had let her die. The man in the front was a man he worked for and he didn’t notice and he had killed her. No, Neil had killed her. It was always Neil. Neil regarded Roxanne like she was a piece of road kill.
“Funny isn’t it,” Neil said with a smirk, “Death in the breadth of life.”
“You planned all of this didn’t you?”
Neil smiled. “Why Shane, the maze doesn’t open until nine. You’re an hour early. Didn’t you read the card?”
Shane wanted to lunge at him. He could feel the adrenaline pulsing throughout his entire being, could feel every fiber in his body screaming at him to just do it. But he didn’t. He wanted to punch Neil. He wanted to rip the smile off of his face. He wanted to bite, kick, scratch, and scream, but he couldn’t move. And Neil knew it. Neil knew it because he was laughing and licking the blood off of the knife, and even when he pressed up against Shane and kissed him to where Shane could taste the blood too, he couldn’t move. Neil pressed the blade into Shane’s hand, and Shane found himself taking it without question.
“I’m your spade. You’re dead. You’re my Maraclea.”
She Gave Her Father FORTY-ONE
Appendage Thief Caught!
The famous prosthetic thief that has been plaguing hospitals and medical supply stores alike has finally been caught, and in a surprising turn of events, has turned out to be another well known person of town and country. Prime Minister Albert Baker was discovered this morning with the stolen goods stored away in his personal warehouse. Along with the plastic limbs were other stolen items ready for import. The police are treating this case with utmost priority and it is quite possible that the prime minister election will come sooner than expected…
Shane stopped reading the article and folded over the paper. Neil looked relaxed, a new look for him, a good look for him, now that the job was done. Shane had just been the bus boy. Neil was the mastermind behind everything, the one who actually took all the action. As much as Shane didn’t want to admit it, he almost admired him for it.
“Is it over then?” Shane asked, sitting next to Neil and not flinching away when the other man rested his arm on the back of the sofa.
“It’ll never be over. You know that.”
Shane looked at the map tacked against the wall listing every club member from the highest in command to the lowest servant.
“No, I suppose not.”
It wouldn’t be over. Shane knew it, and he accepted it…sort of. No one knew Neil, no one knew him like Shane did. Maybe if they did, they would understand that he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t possibly ever leave. The truth was, sometimes it was rough. Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes Shane thought he was in love, and sometimes he knew he was wrong.