Dead in the Trunk: A Short Story Collection

by Craig Saunders

  The door closed, but Simon did not notice.

  They both missed the article on the next page. With words like ‘Serial,’ and ‘Killer,’ and ‘Doctor.’

  He rose from the comfortable chair where he would meet his latest client and walked on shaking legs to his own, behind an imposing desk. His office was at the end of a hall. He was the sole surgeon at Auger. His office reflected his success. The large flat screen on the wall would be employed for computer generated images of enhancements.

  The computer on his screen, where he could tap in all the necessary measurements, was state of the art. The plaque outside his frosted glass door made sure people knew he was a Doctor.

  He’d worked hard for that plaque. He was more proud of the prefix to his unremarkable name than all the trappings of success.

  His Porsche, parked in its reserved place underneath the premises. The second house he owned, by the lake. His staff of seven. He had earned the right.

  ‘…your ten o’clock, Dr. Hughes.’

  He nearly jumped out of his skin.

  The young doctor brushed his hair from his eyes and straightened his tie. He quickly checked his reflection in the darkened screen on his desk and sat. People felt more at ease, he had found, if he rose when they entered. It seemed he was being solicitous, he supposed.

  A dark shape before the glass door, then the door swung open. A young woman, beautiful, in her way, pushed inside, carrying a heavy case. She smiled as she walked toward him, and as he always did he rose, coming around the desk to shake her hand.

  His knees shook, but he hid it well.

  ‘Ms. Fincher? A pleasure to meet you,’ he said with a warm smile, somewhat spoiled by his blanched face.

  The young woman paused for a moment before taking his hand. Then her poise returned. She shook, with a shy smile.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he replied, running on automatic. He waved to the low seats. The low seats put people at ease. There was no easy or comfortable way to sit erect on those seats. Slouching people were more at ease. It was all about the body language.

  ‘Has Theresa offered you a drink?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m fine,’ she said.

  She looked tense. But then, everyone looked tense, to begin with. Confidence came later, warmth came later, when they had the look they wanted, when his job was done. Surgery was the smaller part of his job. Instilling confidence, with plastic. That was his job description.

  Who went to medical school planning to become a plastic surgeon? He certainly hadn’t, but he knew his talents didn’t run to saving lives.

  He tried to compose himself. Keep his mind on the job. Be professional. He smiled, to cover his own lack of confidence.

  Would the lawyers be calling soon? He hadn’t been required, not by law, to be present at the inquest. But now the way was open. The lawyers would pick him over. Pick over the carcass of his business.

  The woman was smiling at him, unsure, but trying to cover her qualms with the smile. She really was quite beautiful.

  Simon coughed.

  ‘Well, I know why you’re here. If you would disrobe, behind the screen will be fine. I’ll need to take a few shots, for the computer. Just let me know when you are ready.’

  She nodded. A flush had crept to her cheeks.

  Not unlike his own, he imagined. He was a fool. He was panicking. They couldn’t take his licence to practise away. So he’d pay. People were sued all the time. It hadn’t been criminal negligence. Just a mistake.

  ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘Right. Right. Just one moment.’

  He took the camera, top of the line, digital, from his desk. He stepped up to the curtain.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind…just step up to the screen. I need you against the background…there…’

  He had a system for this. Get the initial reaction over with, and move on. People came to him because they didn’t like their bodies. He had to be cold. No reaction must show. His patients had to recognise the clinician in him.

  He gasped when Ms. Fincher stepped out into view. And stared.

  For the first time in his life his professional persona had slipped.

  Should he cover it with a joke? Ignore it?

  She had the most perfect breasts he had ever seen. They were perfectly natural, gently sloping down to small, dark nipples, the perfect curve underneath…for once in his life he was looking at a breast as a man, not as a doctor, and he was ashamed of himself.

  ‘Doctor?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ Damn it. He hadn’t meant to apologise.

  She was looking at him in a knowing way. She no longer seemed shy, unsure of herself. She was fully aware of the effect she was having on him.

  She was supposed to be flustered, not him!

  Doctor Hughes raised the camera to his eye so that he didn’t have to look at her, but could see nothing. She giggled, and his hands were suddenly shaking. It was a digital camera.

  Bloody fool!

  ‘I’m sorry. I had some bad news today.’ He tried a disarming smile, but even his face was quivering.

  ‘I don’t mind, doctor. I get this reaction all the time. I’m a topless model, you see? I’m used to people looking at me.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Ms. Fincher. I perform breast augmentations, reductions, lifts…you…I’m sorry, it’s not my place.’

  Ms. Fincher smiled. She was trying to put the doctor at his ease. But somehow, he didn’t feel any easier. If anything, her smile was unsettling. She was standing there, naked to the waist, and he was the one on the defensive. He wasn’t trained for this. He didn’t know what to do.

  She just carried on smiling at him, until his words faltered and he was reduced to a shrug.

  ‘You must forgive me, Ms. Fincher. I’m not accustomed to this.’

  ‘You’re just the man I’m looking for. I don’t want them improved, Doctor. I want them removed.’

  The surgeon’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘What? I can’t…I’m sorry. I can’t do that.’

  ‘You change people’s bodies to make them feel better about themselves. Why not this?’

  She was still smiling that knowing smile.

  ‘I don’t think we should continue this consultation.’

  ‘But come now, Dr. This is what will make me feel better. I’m tired of people looking at me the way you’re looking at me know…’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘Oh, Dr. Why not? Just a few slices, a cut here, a cut there. Excise the flesh.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ms. Fincher, but I think you need help.’

  ‘Really, Dr. I hate my body. Your advertisement says you empower women. Do you only empower women to look the way a man wants?’

  ‘I really don’t think…’

  ‘Dr. Do you want to feel? Feel them? I know you do.’

  ‘Jesus! No! I think you should leave!’

  She was advancing toward him now, closer, until the back of his legs hit the desk.

  She took his hand and placed it on her chest. His hand was shaking. My god, he thought, for just an instant. Perfection.

  Then he felt a tiny pinprick in his thigh and he crumpled into her arms. She was strong, though. She held him easily and took him over to his comfortable seats, the ones you couldn’t sit upright in. He lounged effortlessly, as all the feeling had gone from his body. All he could do was roll his eyes. His body would not move. Not one inch.

  His mind, though, his mind was functioning perfectly.

  ‘So, Dr.’ She said, sliding onto the chair, at perfect ease, her elbow resting on the back of the low couch. ‘I suppose you’re wondering what my game is?’

  ‘What the hell did you give me?’ he tried to say, but his mouth just flopped open. A spool of dribble worked its way over his chin.

  ‘Just a little something to make you compliant,’ she said, as if she could hear the thought running through his mind.

  ‘What do you want?’
>
  ‘Oh, Dr, don’t you want to play anymore?’ She giggled. Laid a hand on the inside of his thigh.

  ‘I don’t know what your game is, but you won’t get away with it.’

  ‘Malpractise, Dr. Does that ring a bell?’

  His eyes must have given him away.

  ‘Yes, I see you know.’

  Just because I looked at her breasts? No…oh. Shit.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dr. I’m not going to come out with some phoney rape accusation.’

  The woman laughed. There was little mirth in her laugh. It was unsettling. Her face seemed changed, somehow, since she had taken him captive. She was taunting him.

  ‘I’m not going to cry rape. Oh no. That’s not what I’m here for, Dr. Hughes.’

  ‘What, then?’

  Her hand was stroking him, still. Absentmindedly, stroking, getting a reaction. He could feel it. Apparently he wasn’t completely paralysed.

  ‘You remember Maeve Gable?’

  Suddenly, he was cold. Very cold.

  The pressure in his groin disappeared. His eyes followed her hand, downward, to the heavy case. She began stroking it, lovingly, as she had him, just seconds before. She was watching his face, watching his reaction. She was still smiling. That knowing, dark, smile.

  He tried. God, he tried. He struggled. He could feel his muscles burning with effort, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t move. Not one inch.

  ‘I see that you do. My sister, Dr. She was married. Did you know that? Married for three years. They were trying for a baby.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘She tried to make herself perfect for her man, you see. So he wouldn’t leave her. Did he try to make himself perfect for her? What do you think?’

  ‘I’m sorry. It was nobody’s fault…sometimes things go wrong…’

  ‘I’m glad you can’t speak, Dr. Because I know what you’d say. I can see it in your eyes. I heard the statement read out on your behalf at the inquest. You vile…you filthy…’

  She seemed to regain control of herself. She shook her head.

  ‘I thought to tell you what you were doing was wrong, but why try to change the world? It’s a world that thrives on plastic, after all. People forget it’s all fake. They try to change themselves, but it’s all fake. I fucking hate plastic, Dr Hughes.’

  ‘I’m just a Doctor!’

  ‘It’s all wrong,’ she said, carrying on, ignoring him now. She had a distant look in her eyes that was scaring him, scaring him badly. ‘I’m a doctor, too, Dr. Hughes. But I don’t try to make people less than they are. I don’t fool them with lies. All plastic is fake, Dr Hughes. But I’m a hypocrite, too. I know being a Dr is about saving lives. But then I’m going to do this…’

  Oh God. No. ‘No. No. Please…’

  All that came out was drool.

  She reached down and flicked the catch on her case.

  ‘I’ve killed three plastic surgeons before you. I think I’ll kill another few after…who knows? Obfuscation, I guess…’ she said as the case came open.

  He couldn’t move. He tried to close his mouth, refuse the bitter pill he was being forced to swallow. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t do a damn thing. God, he couldn’t shout, claw, he couldn’t even wriggle…

  ‘At least, it started that way…but then…’

  After the silicon implant was stuffed in his mouth, he couldn’t even dribble.

  Although what he really wanted to do was scream.

  Dr Fincher worked with careful precision, in complete silence.

  She sliced Dr Hughes shirt open, laid it to one side. In much the same way as she would have done were he a trauma victim in the A&E.

  ‘I think I started to like it,’ she said.

  Tears rolled down Simon’s cheeks. Big fat tears, running down his cheeks, through his immaculately trimmed beard, onto his neck.

  He could feel those tears, how cold they were on his skin. Like a scalpel might feel…

  She cupped the mound of fat below his nipple.

  ‘A 44 F? Was that it, Dr? I do believe they will make you quite irresistible.’

  Then there was cutting, inserting, sowing.

  Dr Hughes passed out long before it was done.

  Dr Fincher snipped the suture, put her equipment away, then stepped back to admire her handiwork.

  ‘Outstanding,’ she said.

  Then she closed her black case, washed up in the sink, and left for her next appointment through the same door the police came through an hour later after Theresa’s panicked, sobbing phone call.

  The first policeman looked at the second.

  ‘You want to say it?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Your turn.’

  ‘Is it? I thought I said it last time?’

  ‘Whatever. You say it, and I’ll say when we find the next one.’

  The coroner said it for them.

  ‘Bet he feels a right tit,’ he said.

  The coppers nodded. All was right with the world. Sometimes you find a man with his head off, or a body in a suitcase, or someone floating down a river. There’s always a gag, always a punch line. But sometimes, you’ve got to let the little guys take the credit.

  ‘Because, in the end,’ as Dr. Fincher said while she worked over Dr. Hughes’ body, believing some part of him might hear her still, even while his heart slowed and his blood flow slowed to the merest trickle, ‘whether you’ve bought it on credit or not, it’s yours. A little bit of that bad debt you built up, those payments you missed, they’re yours. You own them.’

  She closed her incisions with sutures. There was no need to leave drain holes.

  ‘Those great big tits you bought your wife?’

  She shrugged. She didn’t know if he had a wife. She didn’t care.

  ‘You own them,’ she said. ‘Fake plastic is all there ever is.’

  *

  This is an older story - you'll be able to tell, I think, from the tone, the language...my *voice*...it doesn't really fit this collection, but as with all the stories in here, the collection itself is a story, and this is an episode in it. It was written in a dark time. As you can probably guess from the subject matter.

  Happiness

  Turning, always turning. My mind recoils at stagnation, anything slow, or moribund. Nothing for me but the new. The excitement of a new acquaintance, or a sip of cool white wine (I like red wine, too, but the tannins leave a blemish upon my tongue, a blot I can’t escape when I look in the mirror. I don’t like imperfection in myself, although I can see its allure in others), sometimes a smoke of hashish to augment my natural high. All these things make me feel more than I am.

  At times, sadness weighs heavily on me. I find during these times the remembrance of happiness is sufficient to stay the blade, or the pill, or the plummet, as I often imagine would be my preferred method of suicide. There is something fundamentally pristine about flying through the air toward the end, a sudden rush to end a dreary existence, beautiful and poignant, like a stanza or a swan.

  But not often do I have these fantasies. They are mere moments in an otherwise perfect succession of highs, dips that accentuate the rollercoaster of my emotions, lowlights to bring out the joy at living in my perfect world. They make me feel the brilliance of life all the more vividly. When the mood hits me, as it usually does, never does it sidle up and cajole its way in, but it fires point blank into my cerebellum, a fat slug of happiness to wash the blues away. It is then that I remember happiness, and the sadness of imperfection fades. It is then that beauty cradles my mind in angelic arms and warms my soul with light and vibrant colours that I can only imagine come from heaven.

  A voice once told me that I am special. I listen to my voices, certain in the knowledge that they only mean to tease from me my alluring darkness and bring me into the light. They speak in tongues, sometimes, but I can interpret for them, where they are unable to express themselves into my language, the language of saints. I understand what they are telling me –
that to speak like them I must access their plane, a higher consciousness of the mind, where they reside. I imagine, should I be able to see the ethereal speakers, that they are as light, or smoke, or dust motes in a red orange glow from the evening sun, passing to darkness after a time but for one glorious moment able to speak to me in their lilting otherworldly language of sibilant sighs and sometimes wails. They only wail when I let sadness take me. I feel they feel my sadness, too, and wish only the best for me.

  The voices are my companions. The creatures that speak to me, speak plainly and are without guile, unlike my human friends. I know the voices are not human, for they comfort me, and urge me on to better things. People, on the other hand, they talk about me, and plot, and deny me my perfection. Only when those words come from within do I feel comfort and peace. There is no other design there, but for their wish to make me one of their own. They do not suffer unhappiness in their world. Surely that is why they screech when they see my despair; they fear to lose me.

  I will not let them down. I will feel happiness again. Next week, perhaps, or the week after, and at that time, when I am ready, I will fly with them, into the sun, and never come down. The world cannot pull me back. I will have wings but no tether, no hood. I cannot be trained like a wild bird, told when to hunt, when to sleep and when to eat. Mortal hands may try to hold me back but I have the voices on my side. They can free me, and I can free myself. They only want the best for me. They are a team of masons, building me a crypt, where my perfect body will lay for all eternity, free from the ravages of time and human input. I will be without this body one day, and with the voices. Perhaps I, too, will be a voice and can join their choir, in turn urging other lost ones onto greater feats of happiness. Then, after millenia (for who knows how their time works? Perfection must know no age, or dementia, or even rigor mortis) the whole of the human race will ascend and join us and we will be legion.

  For now I await my happiness. I fear if it does not come soon they will give up, and leave me behind to this mortality. I cannot join them sad. They would push me away, and I would tumble back to earth, head over heels, into the waiting arms of all those who know me. Their words would tear at my flesh like taloned hands, until there was nothing left but shreds of flesh and bones, and these I imagine would be mere morsels for their neverending hunger.