All Kinds of Things Kill

by Robert R. Best

  See, I don’t make much money. I work as a copier repairman. For a bit of change I come to your office, shake the imaging unit, fiddle with some knobs and pronounce the thing fixed for a few more weeks. I know what you’re thinking – I knew it. Well, yes, I guess you did. But screw it. Copies are always worse than the original, so why bother much with them?

  “This wouldn’t cost you anything,” she presses on. “This is an experimental drug. The drug company will pay for it so long as we report the results to them as research.”

  I consider this and nod. My chest pains are coming almost daily, and I’m not much for dying of heart attacks. And, free is free. “So what’s it do?”

  She smiles and flips to another page on the brochure. “Do you know what stem cells are, Jim?”

  My blank stare tells her I do not.

  “Okay, your body is made of cells. Little compartments of life that comprise everything in your body. Skin is made of skin cells, hearts are made of heart cells, and so on. Follow?”

  I nod, not entirely lying.

  “But, heart cells don’t start out as heart cells and skin cells don’t start out as skin cells. All cells start as stem cells, then develop into the cells for a specific body part. Still with me?”

  I nod, now just wondering when she’ll shut up.

  “In other words, using stem cells we can grow you a new heart.”

  I understand the part about a new heart, and it sounds good. “Ah.”

  “Now, do you know what nano-technology is?”

  She’s lost me. I shake my head.

  “Basically, it’s about extremely small machines. Microscopic robots that are programmed to do, well, whatever you want them to do.”

  She flips to another page, getting excited now. “So, this new pill contains both stem cells and nano-machines, which the company calls Nan-Bots™.” – She doesn’t say the “™” part, but I can see it in the brochure – “And, when you take the pill, the Nan-Bots™ will use the stem cells to make you a new heart. Right inside your body. Without opening you up.”

  Well, fuck me. “What about the old heart?”

  “The Nan-Bots stop it.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “According to the company, yes.” She flips the brochure to another page announcing 100% Safe! in big letters.

  “How do the little buggers know what organ to replace?”

  She frowns and flips pages, reading. “According to this, they seek out whatever organ is in the most trouble. Amazing.”

  I feel more flutter and pain just sitting there in her office, so what choice do I have? I sign some forms and swallow the pill. It looks like a small football wrapped in yellow vinyl, but I get it down. The doctor announces she has to go finalize the research paperwork and leaves me to wait. She is gone for quite some time. When she returns, she looks annoyed and embarrassed.

  “Well, Jim, I assumed the company would pay for an overnight stay so we could monitor you. But apparently not. They say you’ll be fine at home and that the pill is completely safe.”

  Again, I make shit for money, so I have to go home. She is very apologetic and gives me her cell phone number to call if anything goes wrong overnight.

  So I go back to my little two-room apartment with its old fashioned four-legged floor-model bed. I feel fine as I fall asleep. Maybe even a little better.

  I dream of a rat clawing into my chest. His grubby little claws are full of blood and meat. I wake up screaming, pain splitting my chest. I’m certain it’s a heart attack. I call the doctor’s cell phone as best I can.

  “Yes?” she says, sounding sleepy.

  “Does the company pay for an ambulance?”

  “What? Who is this?”

  “Jim,” I gasp. “The guy with the pill and the tiny robots. My chest is killing me.”

  “A heart attack?” she says, sounding fully awake now. “You need to call an ambulance immediately.”

  “I can’t afford it,” I say.

  She asks me my symptoms and I tell her. My chest feels like it’s splitting open, but there’s no pain in my limbs. I am not light-headed or short of breath. She says it doesn’t sound like a heart attack.

  “It must be the pill. I’m coming to get you and take you to the hospital.”

  “I can’t afford…”

  “I’ll fudge the paperwork, write it up as part of the research. Just hang on.”

  And she hangs up. And I wait.

  Fifteen minutes later she arrives in a sporty little hover number and speeds me back to the hospital. She and an assistant rush me to a scanning room, telling me over and over again that the company will pay for the scans as part of the research.

  They lay me on a table and wave a gizmo over me. The doctor frowns at a screen, gasps, and nearly drops the thing. “Oh my god.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “It worked. Halfway, but it worked.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask through my teeth. I desperately want to clutch my chest, but they’ve told me not to.

  “The bots built a new heart. But your other one is still going. Jim, you have two working hearts. This is amazing.” Her eyes are wide and the green light from the screen makes her face glow.

  She keeps me there overnight, again promising to write it off as research. My chest feels better and I drift off to sleep.

  I wake to hear my doctor’s voice. She is arguing with two men in business suits. I overhear her insist something about “research” and know they are from the company. They come to a decision that she is not happy with. They leave and she walks over to my bed.

  “Jim, you have to leave. The company will only pay for weekly checkups as part of the research. They’ll write last night off but that’s it. I’m sorry.”

  So I go. Whisked back home, on the apologetic doctor’s dime, with two hearts pumping away. A few days later, I feel great. I have energy again, more than in my hardest partying days. I feel like I could run through walls and hump a whole office full of secretaries. At the end of the week I go in for my checkup and the doc stares at my insides through the gizmo.

  “Apart from having two working hearts, everything seems normal.”

  That night at home, it starts again. I dream of a bird pecking the side of my torso. Its beak ruptures me and blood pours out. I wake up, clutching my side. I thrash around in pain, then call the doc.

  “Your side?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It feels like my guts are trying to escape.”

  “I can’t risk bringing you back in. Hold on, I’ll be there with what equipment I can scrounge.”

  I hang up, in too much pain to argue or to think how rare late-night house calls are these days. “I can’t pay you,” I say when she arrives.

  “Please shut up about paying,” she says. She has brought a smaller version of the gizmo and is fiddling with its buttons.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask, grimacing at the pain.

  She thinks. “Well, I did start it, after all. And … let’s just say you are a fascinating case.”

  “Glad to be of entertainment value.”

  “Hush.” She pulls up my shirt and waves the gizmo up and down my torso. She spends a long time on the side that’s giving me trouble, then spends a longer time staring at the screen.

  “Holy…” she says.

  “What?”

  “Two livers. You now have two livers.”

  “To go with my two hearts?”

  “So it would appear.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t…” then she gasps. “The hepatitis.”

  “The hep c? I thought we got that under control.”

  “Not before it did some damage to your liver.” She stares at the screen, reading things that would have been beyond me anyway. “The Nan-Bots are replacing everything that’s damaged.”

  Even through the pain, a cold realization comes over me. “Doc, I did some hard partying once upon a time. Everything I have is damaged.�
�

  She stares at me silently for a long time. Finally she speaks.

  “I have to get some answers from the company.” She fishes around in her pockets and sets a pill bottle on the bed. “These are for the pain. Try to get as much rest as possible. I’ll be back as soon as I’m able.”

  And she is gone again, leaving me alone in my little apartment. I thrash around on my bed. I take one of the doc’s pills, then two, then three. Finally I fall into a broken sleep.

  I dream of small children eating my insides. A little girl, blood on her face, looks up and smiles. My intestines are in her teeth. I wake up in agony, my whole body in unbearable pain. I down the entire bottle of pills and wait to die.

  Only I don’t die. I come to in the hospital. The doc looks down at me.

  “What the hell were you thinking?”

  My throat is hoarse. “I can’t pay…”

  “Shut up before I switch this thing off.”

  I realize I am hooked up to some huge gizmo. Wire and tubes come at me from all directions.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s life support. It can keep your brain alive and working for up to two hours, even if you were decapitated. We use it for major surgery.”

  “But…”

  “Shush.” She bites her lip and looks around impatiently. “We’re waiting until some men from the company get here. We’re going to get some answers.”

  I am extremely drugged up, but I can feel something wrong with my body. I crane my head down to look. I am inflated like a balloon. My stomach and chest are huge, blue-black and bloated. Veins stick out like worms. My legs are like tree trunks and my feet look like they came off a clown. A dead, bloated clown.

  I scream.

  “I know,” she says, coming over. “Just try to rest.”

  She kisses my forehead and turns a knob over my head. I drift back into sleep.

  I don’t dream.

  I wake up and see the doc sitting in a chair. She is slumped to one side and her eyes are wide open. A large red hole is in her forehead.

  A man in a suit steps into view. “Ah, he’s awake,” he says.

  “Is he?” says another man, dressed the same, stepping into view.

  Then I step into view. Or, someone who looks like me, naked and bloody but not bloated or deformed. He looks dazed.

  I try to look down but my neck won’t move. I strain my eyes downward as best I can.

  My body is in ruin. I look like a sandwich bag that’s been torn open. Blood and meat cover the table. My guts and bones stick out at odd angles. Like I exploded. Like something crawled out of me.

  I look back at my new twin. He is wiping blood off his face. The men see the realization in my eyes and chuckle.

  “Well,” says one, looking at me, “we can’t say the drug trial went as expected, but this certainly is a fascinating result. You’ll understand if we don’t go public with the findings. The doctor’s disappearance will be a little tricky to explain, but it doesn’t look like we’ll have that problem with you.” He nods and the other man leans in to smile down at me.

  “Congratulations, Jim, it’s a boy.”

  They laugh and one steps over to the gizmo that’s keeping my head alive. He flips a switch and I fade into nothing.

  Get Together

  Lois is on her front porch, facing her yard. Nothing around but trees. No one in sight. She is alone.

  Steven's car pulls up and into the driveway. Lois is old and the sun hurts her eyes, but still she smiles. Steven is her son.

  Steven frowns as he gets out of his car, rattling his keys in his hand. He looks worried. Lois is glad she has good news for him. She holds her prize close to her body and waits to show him.

  “Mom?” he says, stepping up onto the porch. “Why did you call? What's wrong?”

  Lois busied herself around the dining room table, making the perfect dinner. She straightened this and arranged that. It was turning out to be a wonderful evening.

  “Isn't this nice?” she said, humming as she set down three napkins. They were expertly folded. “I'm so glad, Steven. So glad you decided to stay for dinner with your father and I.”

  She set down three soup bowls and smiled. “And maybe later you can help your father fix the candy dish.”

  “Look,” says Lois, swelling with pride as she shows Steven what she's holding. “The candy dish.”

  Steven blinks and frowns. He looks down at the dish, then back up at her. “A candy dish?”

  “Yes.” Lois looks down at it. Crystal and heavy. Exquisitely beautiful. She looks back at Steven. “The one your father gave me. He's been so afraid it was lost.”

  Steven's face grows red and his lips tighten. “Mom, is this all...”

  “And look, Steven. Not so much as a chip on it.”

  Steven lets out a growling sigh. “Dammit, Mom. I don't have time for this...”

  Lois' mood darkens. “Well, sometimes it seems like you never have time.”

  “I can't believe you made me come all the way over for this.”

  “You never come over as it is.” Lois is angry now. “Shame on you. I'm your mother. You should come over more.”

  “Mom...”

  “Your daughter comes over all the time. And she's busy in college. Sweet Jody. Such a good girl.”

  Lois smiled and straightened the salt and pepper shakers. “And guess what, Steven? Jody's coming over too.”

  She looked in Steven's direction. He said nothing.

  Lois set down four water glasses, proud of how they shone. “Yes, such a good girl. All four of us together. Won't that be nice?”

  Steven said nothing.

  “That's exactly what I thought too, Steven. How wonderful that young people still care for their elders.”

  She smiled at Steven. He did not respond. One open eye stared back, but the rest of his face was in ruin. Blood, pulp and flecks of bone caked where his nose should have been. Random teeth jutted out of the gaping mess of his mouth. His clothes were thickly clotted with blood.

  Lois nodded. “Yes. How nice to have people who care.”

  Lois is so angry she feels tears starting. “You just don't care, do you? You just don't care at all, Steven.”

  Steven sighs. “Mom, of course I care...”

  “No! No you don't care!” Lois' face is hot and the heavy dish is slippery in her sweating hands. “If you cared at all, if you cared even in the slightest, you'd have known how worried your father has been about this dish.”

  “Dammit, Mom, Dad is dead! He's been dead for months!”

  “No!” yells Lois. She lunges forward, no idea what she's doing. Her hands, still holding the dish, hit Steven in the chest. He steps back. For a moment he balances on the stoop, his eyes wide as he sways. Then he falls.

  His spine hits the sidewalk first, then his head follows with a sharp “crack.”

  For a second everything is quiet. Steven lays there and Lois stands, shivering in rage and shock.

  Steven stirs and Lois looks down. There is blood beside his head, fresh and bright.

  “Mom,” he starts to say.

  She screams from somewhere deep within her. A feral, ferocious roar. She runs down the steps to where he lies. She drops to her knees, ignoring the pain from her old joints, to sit on his chest. She screams at him and brings the dish down on his mouth. That smart, disrespectful mouth.

  She screams and hits him again. And again. And again. He struggles more and more weakly with each blow. She feels his skull give way, feels blood and snot fly onto her hands. Feels his cartilage and teeth come loose. And still she keeps bringing the heavy dish down.

  She stops when the dish cracks in her hands. Three heavy, bloody pieces. What a mess.

  Lois clicked her tongue as she found a small mound of dirt on the table. She sighed and shook her head at her husband.

  “Dear, dear. Must you always make such a mess? Especially with Steven here?”

  She pulled a dish towel from her apro
n strap and smiled. “Now, you two men keep talking and don't mind me. So nice to have you both chatting.”