by Wayne Hill
Tommy had been staring through Jonesy while he was talking, but now his stump and one remaining hand are covering his face. He is trying to control his breathing, whispering, “CALM, Calm, calm. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Jonesy looks around the cold stone room, blinking as his old eyes slowly become accustomed to the light. On the walls he slowly discerns symbols, drawings on paper covered them, and pieces of metal littered each surface. There was a butcher’s table, gathered wire coils, tubes, and vials of bubbling metallic material being heated over small, green flames.
No longer talking to himself, Tommy moves behind the table and lights a lantern. He prepares a large hypodermic needle, filling it with a metallic liquid from an ampoule.
“What’s all this, Tommy?” asks Jonesy indicating a separating curtain.
Tommy pulls the fabric back and shows Jonesy a mini-factory, full of sleek metallic objects of assorted sizes — machines chattering loudly. The thin fabric curtain had stopped the sound entirely, but with it open, Jonesy finds himself having to shout over the din.
“Where’s all this shit come from?” shouts Jonesy.
“The facility,” says Tommy.
“Drumcroon?”
“Yeah,” says Tommy, touching several buttons on a control panel. A polished metal plate, with large needles protruding from the metal, rose from the ground behind him.
“O-kay, o-kay. How the bejeezus did you get into Drumcroon? And how the fuck did you get all this stuff in here without anyone seeing?”
“I know someone fast,” Tommy says, the corners of his mouth edging into what Jonesy would call a creepy smile, a madman’s grin. “He has knives for fingers and horns on his head. I asked him to get me some supplies and he agreed.” Tommy ignores the confused Jonesy and frantically attaches different coloured cables to the back of the vertical surgical table.
“Fuck’s sake! What the hell is this, boy?” Jonesy whines. Forgetting that he is holding a machete, he gestures wildly, and only narrowly avoids chopping his own nose off.
“It’s for chopping my arm off. I told you. But, if you’re too yellow, I’ll just get Toad,” says Tommy matter-of-factly, continuing to tinker and twist dials.
A white cylinder begins to rise from the floor to the right of the surgical table. Steam whooshes from a hole that appears in the middle of the white pod. The pod is then attached to the surgical table with golden cables, which appear from indented areas on either side of the casing.
Jonesy scratches at his chin with the point of the machete as he tries hard to work out what the fuck was going on. “I don’t know about this, Tommy. This seems like some fucked up Frankenstein shit to me.” Without even thinking about it, he sniffs at the green flakes of skin he had liberated from under his chin and wrinkled up his nose in disgust.
“If you follow my instructions, everything will be fine, Jonesy. Better than fine.” Tommy hefts the large needle, now filled with the glowing, metallic solution, and sets it aside. Using a piece of charcoal, he draws a dotted line around his arm where he wants Jonesy to chop.
“Here would be good,” Tommy says.
Jonesy is wondering exactly how this day could get any stranger as he automatically licks the green chin mange from the machete.
“An inch lower or higher would be acceptable, too, but no more.” Tommy draws a zigzag line through the areas of flesh that he has calculated he can afford to lose. The line is positioned high up on the biceps of his right arm. Tommy points over at the medical syringe, containing the flickering metallic fluid.
“I will take this needle, Jonesy, and I will inject the liquid integrated circuitry into my arm.”
“Liquid ...right ... what next?”
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is time. My arm needs to be cut off soon. I’ll tell you when to do it. After that, my severed arm will fall to the floor — but there’s going to be something else — something other — there. Something you then have to feed through the hole in the MediPod.” Tommy is studying Jonesy’s face, straining to see any signs of comprehension there. Tommy points to the MediPod. “That’s the MediPod. Any questions? Make it quick.”
Jonesy looks over at the clunking machinery, over to Tommy and then down to the machete in his hand. He tightens his grip, knuckles whitening. He feels the weight of it, the balance, and then examines it by squinting down the blade with one eye shut. Some sort of decision made, he grunts and looks back to Tommy.
“Fuck it! Sounds like you know what you’re doing. Do I get a few practice swings?”
“Do you think you’ll need them?”
“Well, it has been a while since I fuckin’ hacked me mate’s arm off with a fuckin’ machete! I want to get it right. Do you know what I mean? I’ll do it, but I need to get it right. Is that okay, skelf?” Jonesy stares at Tommy until he nods.
“Okay. Fine. You’re right, of course. We’ll do a trial run.” Tommy runs off behind the curtain, leaving Jonesy alone in a room with noisy, hazardous, flashing equipment. Jonesy grins at all the kit around him. He walks over to the sleek, white MediPod. It is whirring away happily, and he places an ear up to it. Just as he touches the device with his ear, the soundproofing material is wrenched back and Tommy glares at him.
Knowing Jonesy all too well he says, “Don’t. Fucking. Touch. Anything!”
“I’m looking forward to chopping your fuckin’ arm off — ya cunt ya!” Jonesy shouts after the boy, a smile on his stubbly, mange-ridden face. “He’s a clever wee shite, though,” Jonesy admits, quietly, as he circles back to the surgical table and tries to understand all these fascinating machines. He feels hamstrung. His only reference to machinery are the pumps and the pipes which transfer the beer from the cellar to the bar. Jonesy is at a loss. He has no idea what Tommy is up to, but surprises like this make life worth living.
TOMMY BOLTS UP THE graveyard path, his lanky, beanpole legs pumping. Taking shortcuts through bushes and jumping over a few knee-high gravestones, he barrels into the larder. Here, Tommy finds a fine array of arm-substitutes: a long cucumber, three lengths of rhubarb (with big leaves), and various other vegetables. Tommy is eyeing-up a marrow when he notices the dried meats hanging in a corner. Perfect, thinks Tommy. He hurriedly unhooks three long salami sausages and bolts towards the door of the larder ... and straight into Toad, who is never too far away from food — any food.
The collision with the portly cook sends both Tommy and his arm-substitutes flying.
“Toad, you fucking space turd!” screams Tommy, desperately trying to salvage his savoury research materials from the floor at the large chef’s feet.
“Hey, put that back,” says a shocked Toad, in his slow, toadlike way.
Tommy gets to his feet, his hair sticking to his sweaty brow, black veins writhing across his forehead, and screams at the large man. “Move, you fat lump of a man! You’re interfering with a delicate scientific project, the likes of which nobody has ever witnessed!” Tommy is waving a large salami, which he snatched from the floor, at Toad.
Toad makes a grab for the salami, but Tommy holds it aloft like Excalibur, and wards off the chef with the stump of his right arm.
“I don’t care about science,” an angry Toad says — black tentacles swirling on his red jowls. “I just want my salami back!”
As this scene is unfolding, Claude, Toad’s ginger tomcat, wanders in, plopping down a huge dead rat. The white-and-ginger cat, striped like a tiger, sits licking his paws and occasionally glancing over at the scuffling duo. This looks like fun, thinks Claude in his feline way. He stops cleaning himself, gets down on all fours and waggles his hindquarters, preparing to pounce. Cats will never miss an opportunity to play or hurt something — and, to the feline brain, the two are not mutually exclusive.
Tommy smacks Toad over the head with the dried meat and screams “Niels Bohr!” Toad shakes his head and swings a right hook at Tommy’s head. Tommy ducks under the blow and delivers another salami smack to Toad’s increasingly red f
ace and shouts, “Albert Einstein!” A furious Toad swings another left hook, this one connects with Tommy’s right temple and sends Tommy bouncing off the parlour window and onto the floor. Toad has picked up the Salami that Tommy has dropped and is about to give a dazed Tommy a clout around the lughole with it when Claude enters the fray. Claude leaps onto Toad’s forearm — all four sets of his claws sinking into the meat to get a good grip — and bites his hand, hard. Toad lets out a high, feminine squeal and drops the sausage of cured meat.
Tommy catches the meat before it hits the ground. “Schrödinger’s cat!” he screams, backhanding the meaty club into Toad’s face.
Claude, the cat, suddenly figures out that there is no game, and bolts out the door — past the dead rat he brought the Fat Man, and into the graveyard. Eventually Claude slows his pace and stops, his tail flicking in annoyance. Claude regrets nothing. Regret is something cats do not understand. Although, still wary of reprisals, he shoots apprehensive glances back to the chaos coming from the pantry.
Claude decides that the Fat Man needs more rats. Claude also decides to hunt all night for delicious, idiotic rats. That should make the Fat Man happy. Such an agreement was in place betwixt the cat and the cook, and both were delighted by the relationship. Afterall, without the rats, how else could the Fat Man make those tasty meat batons? Meat batons like the one the Metal Man is using right now to hit the Fat Man. (Claude always thinks of Tommy as the Metal Man because, to Claude’s sensitive olfactory receptors, Tommy reeks of metal.)
From the pantry, noises filter out to Claude: “Michael Faraday!” — THWACK— “James Clerk Maxwell!” — THWACK— “Gregor Mendel!” — THWACK — “Charles fucking Darwin” — THWACK.
Then there was a brief pause and: “You can’t stand in the way of science, Toad, you fucking piece of shit!”
Claude sees the Metal Man burst from the pantry, cradling something in his arms, and run down the graveyard path.
From the pantry window, the Fat Man shouts: “Bring my salami back, Tommy, you crazy bastard! What are you doing with it?”
“It’s fucking science, Toad!” Claude The cat observes Tommy yelling over his fleeing shoulder, from halfway down the path. “Science! You wouldn’t understand you piece of —!” The rest of the Man’s words are lost as he tries to clear a low gravestone, clips the top with his foot, and falls headfirst into a freshly dug grave.
Huh, people! Claude thinks, haughtily, licking a paw. Give me a dead rat, any day.
“WHAT THE FUCK’S HAPPENED to you?” Jonesy asks a limping, panting Tommy, covered in dirt and cradling an assortment of food.
“Doesn’t matter!” Tommy says, dumping the goods on the heavy wooden butcher’s table. “This is it, Jonesy. These are our arms,” says Tommy, brandishing a length of rhubarb at him. Tommy smeared some mud halfway down the length of the rhubarb in a dark band. “This is where I want you to chop off my arm,” says Tommy, holding the rhubarb out.
“Right-O,” says Jonesy, taking some practice swings in the air.
“Ready?” asks Tommy.
“Aye, Tommy boy,” says Jonesy, nodding.
Jonesy raises the machete above his head, high in the air. A ray of light glints on the blade’s edge, accentuating its lethality. The mad barman jumps in the air, releasing a piercing war cry, and brings the blade through a deadly arc. He misses the target and nearly cuts off Tommy’s only remaining hand.
“What the fuck!” Tommy shouts, checking his fingers. Blood welled on his knuckles where the blade had skimmed them.
“Oh, that was a bad miss, hey?” says Jonesy, eying the blade of the machete, as if it had somehow betrayed him, and then looking back to the furious Tommy.
“You crazy Irish bastard! You nearly had my fucking fingers off!” Tommy sucks on his scraped knuckles, spitting the blood at Jonesy’s feet.
“Hey boy! I’m an Ulsterman! You’re lucky I don't take yer fuckin’ head off! ...Here, let me see that,” says Jonesy.
Tommy offers his hand reluctantly.
“Och! That’s only a fuckin’ scratch, you soft welt! You’ll live,” Jonesy says giving Tommy a toothless grin.
“A scratch? I can see my knuckle bone, Jonesy,” Tommy says, angrily wrapping his wounded hand.
“I’ve had worse,” Jonesy says.
Tommy marks up one of Toad’s salamis.
“This time no jumping in the air and screaming,” Tommy insists. “I’m sure that’s what put you off target, the last time. ...Why did you do that, anyway?”
“I suppose ...er ... bit carried away? This one’s authentic, now. You watch this one, now, boy. This is it. This is the one, the absolute best-of-the-best,” Jonesy says with an easy confidence that didn’t ease the throbbing pain in Tommy’s left hand.
“The blade is sharp, I made sure of it,” Tommy says, holding out the cured meat baton. “Let the blade do all the work and you just concentrate on hitting the target.”
“Shouldn’t I take a run-up, or something?”
“What?” An angry black mess of snakes were wrestling for space on Tommy’s forehead.
“I’m just fuckin’ with ya!” Jonesy says, chuckling nervously.
Jonesy swings and chops the salami in two.
“Perfect!” says Tommy.
The other practice run-throughs are just as successful. One of the slices, on a stick of rhubarb, was an inch out, but Tommy feels a little more confident in Jonesy’s accuracy. Tommy runs through the procedure once more with Jonesy before re-marking his right arm for amputation — the previous markings had gotten smeared during his pantry escapade. Tommy injects the metallic serum into his arm and waits for a little while, staring at his arm as he feels the metallic solution searching out the right areas in his arm. He holds it out.
Biting down on a piece of leather, Tommy closes his eyes and says through leather and clenched teeth, “Right, Jonesy, NOW!”
The machete blade comes down true, bright blood sprays into Jonesy’s face, and Tommy’s arm comes off, mid-biceps. Blood pumps from the stump of meat, but metallic tentacles also snake outwards and coalesce into an arm shape. The shock is making Tommy pass out, so Jonesy jerks into action.
“It’s okay, Tommy. I got you, son!” Jonesy moves the injured lad to the vertical surgical table, with the white MediPod attached, as requested. He threads Tommy’s other arm through the steaming hole and lowers Tommy onto the bed of syringes. They pierce his back and go deep into many of his vital organs. Jonesy pushes the bloodied stump all the way through the MediPod hole until he hears a satisfying, albeit slightly wet, clunk.
A distant bell-sound rings out from the device and hot and cold jets of vapour spout, as golden cables, from inside the pod, wrap around Tommy’s bloody right shoulder. Tommy’s eyes close, and his breathing becomes shallower. Jonesy looks at his pallid friend’s unconscious face.
“Fuck this!” Jonesy says, as the MediPod begins to make ting-ting noises, like metal tapping on glass. “The boy’s had enough now, ya metal bastard!" he screams, kicking the machine and ripping at panels, tearing at the beast’s exposed innards. Sparks fly as the sleek white machine falls away exposing ... what looks like a magnificent, metal arm-cannon.
“Crazy doctor Frankenstein bastard,” mutters Jonesy, as he throws his friend onto his shoulder and runs out of the bunker. “Toad!” he bellows, jumping gravestones. “Go get the White Shite!"
“TOMMY. TOMMY, WAKE up, son.” Jonesy has a damp cloth in his hand and next to him is a bowl of bloody water, the result of cleaning up Tommy’s experiment.
“How long have I been out?” Tommy feels the heaviness of his mind and pain hits him like an avalanche of hot coals.
“Only a couple of hours, but I was worried. You need to drink; we all need to keep drinking.” Jonesy points over to a bottle of brandy with two glasses and smiles.
Tommy looks around. He is in his room at O’Shea’s, which used to belong to his love, Marie-Ann — and there seems to be a lot of people there: some he
likes, some he does not.
Noticing Tommy looking at the crowd and frowning Jonesy says, “Tommy, look now, everyone’s here to see that you get better.”
“I’m fine. I need a drink. And for fuck’s sake, Jonesy, call me by my real name: Splinter.” Tommy reaches out and grabs for the brandy, Jonesy helps. He pours two large glasses and necks his.
“Another,” Tommy says, handing his glass back to Jonesy.
“I think you should look at your arm first, Tommy,” Jonesy says nodding towards Tommy’s arm. “There seems to of been ...uh... a bit of a problem?”
Getting out of the bed, naked from the waist up, but still wearing his muddy trousers and blast boots, Tommy looks at his metal cannon-arm. Murmurs start up in the bedroom crowd and Tommy puts the cold mechanical arm up to soothe his head. I’m getting a bastard of a headache, thinks Tommy. Perhaps dehydration?
“The problem is, Tommy boy, that there’s no hand on that arm,” Jonesy says, handing Tommy another brandy.
“There isn’t meant to be. Here, I’ll demonstrate.” Tommy downs the brandy and throws one of Marie-Ann’s favourite chairs against a nearby — and thankfully empty — wall. The chair explodes into pieces, and to the gasps of the crowd, Tommy grabs a large chair leg fragment and feeds it into the arm cannon. With the crowd’s murmuring increasing in volume, he points his arm out the window at a 45º angle into the air and grabs his mechanical biceps and rachets it backwards and then forwards. The moving biceps makes a satisfying chuck-chuck noise and then ... BOOM!
