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by A. Wendeberg

  The term crime scene comes to mind again. I pat him down but can’t find a gun. There’s a small leather case with tools I can’t identify, and a big clasp knife in his jacket — I pocket it quickly. His lids flutter.

  I tap his chest. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hrm,’ he grunts.

  ‘What’s your name? You know, for the obituary.’

  His eyes open, and it seems to take him some effort to focus on me. ‘Obituary?’ he whispers.

  ‘Just kidding. I need you to take off your jacket and shirt. Can you do that? Else I have to cut it off.’

  He blinks and looks around in the room. His gaze zeroes in on something behind me, maybe the living room, or maybe something in the air. Who knows if someone with a hole in his arm hallucinates or not.

  ‘Adam,’ he croaks. ‘Name’s Adam.’

  Such a clown. He’s spotted the Cranach that Dad gave Mom when I was born. The thing is some ugly-as-turd 16th century painting of Adam and Eve that cost him who knows how many millions.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Adam. I’m Eve,’ I say with a grin. ‘You probably have a headache, yes?’

  He nods.

  ‘So…what about the clothes? Shall we?’

  He fumbles with the fabric, and tries to push shirt and jacket up his chest. After a few moments he drops his hands, exhausted.

  ‘Ah, you know what? There are tons of new shirts in this house. You can take what you need.’ I lift the scissors, wait for his consent, and then start cutting off his sleeve.

  Yikes, what a mess that arm is! A screeching noise in my ears tells me I’m not made for this shit. Why did I ever consider studying medicine? Maybe because of the prestige? Nope, don’t think so.

  I turn my head away and swallow hard.

  Okay. Eve. You’ve never stitched up a wound. Your medical knowledge is limited to epilepsy, how weed works, and how to stick plasters on ouchies. This here is a fucking amputation.

  Education is when you know where to find what you need, one of my teachers once told me. I grab my ruck, pull out my tablet, and hesitate for a moment. I don’t want Dad to know where I am. He might see it, but then again, he might not. And he’ll definitely not know what I’m doing. I’m using Tor to access the internet, never the browsers normal people use for their porn and shit.

  Okay, let’s do this.

  I type, “Emergency treatment of” and then stop. What precisely is it?

  ‘Hey, Adam. How did this happen?’

  One eye opens, then the other. He mumbles something I don’t understand.

  ‘I need to know what caused the injury so I can treat it correctly,’ I explain.

  His lips compress. I guess that means fuck the cause.

  I type “Emergency treatment of knife wound to upper arm” and get a ton of videos. I click on one, then the next and the next in quick succession. None of them tells me how to sew an arm back on in ten seconds. But I already know what I need: needle, grain alcohol, silk or nylon thread, bandages, scissors, hot water and a washcloth or towel to clean off dirt and blood so that I can see where to stick the needle. And how to stick in the needle.

  I’m ready to puke again.

  ‘Get your shit together,’ I squeeze through my teeth, and run to the kitchen to find what I need. I even spot a first aid kit in the bathroom.

  Once back, I fold a towel and place it under his arm, wipe off the blood until my vision tilts. I slap my face, then pull the thread through the needle, and place both into a glass with vodka. Dad’s vodka. Which means this guy gets the most expensive disinfectant there is.

  Am I even supposed to pour alcohol into an open wound?

  I search the internet and find that this is one of the most stupid ideas ever. Unless you want your patient to gnaw off his arm. So what do I do now?

  I remember the first aid kit and zip it open. Hallelujah! Disinfectant spray. I put a bit on my fingertip and dab it against my tongue. It doesn’t burn.

  He blinks again, this time more awake than a few minutes ago.

  ‘Hey, you feel any better?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he croaks. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You hit your head on the way in.’ I shrug.

  ‘Could I have something to drink, please?’ He sits up and leans heavily against the wall.

  ‘Oh, sure!’ I jump up, and fill a glass with tap water. ‘You hungry?’

  He shakes his head, empties the glass, and holds it out to me. I refill it, wondering how much blood he’s lost.

  He looks at the things I’ve laid out, then at his wound. He swallows and sets his chin. Matter-of-factly.

  ‘It needs stitches,’ he says, as if the presence of needle and thread require confirmation. ‘You know how to do it?’

  ‘Sure,’ I squeak.

  He cocks his head.

  I pick up my tablet and his eyes grow large. ‘I’m just checking to make sure I thought of everything.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  I push the tablet toward him. He doesn’t touch it, just looks at the screen. Something flickers across his face, can’t tell what. He nods once.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ he answers, and picks up the disinfectant. He sprays it around the wound, wipes it off with gauze. Maybe he doesn’t trust me to do it for him. I wait and watch.

  ‘Can you help me with the tourniquet? I need to move it farther up.’

  I loosen it, move it up a bit, then fasten it. He grunts.

  ‘Too tight?’

  ‘No. Check for dirt and foreign bodies.’ His voice is warbling a bit. ‘Please,’ he adds.

  At the mention of foreign bodies I squint at him, hoping very hard I won’t find a bullet.

  But that would cause a hole or a crater, right? Not a…ripped-off piece of flesh that’s sort of dangling off…

  Here I go again. Gagging, I press my forehead to the tiles.

  ‘I can do it,’ he says.

  ‘No, I’m okay now,’ I lie. ‘Just don’t mention foreign bodies, okay?’

  ‘’kay.’

  I scoot closer and try to focus on functional stuff like anatomy or engineering or something. All I’ll be doing is fusing stuff back together. Can’t be that complicated. The only problem is, I don’t have a curved needle. So…do I have to pinch the flaps together?

  The room tilts. Growling, I spray more disinfectant on his wound and dab at it with fresh gauze. He doesn’t even flinch. I stare at the layers of skin and the ripped muscle.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asks.

  ‘Um, I’m not sure if I should try to stitch up the muscle and the skin separately, or just the skin.’

  I look in his face. He’s a bit greyish around the eyes.

  We stare at the injury, and watch the blood ooze from the lesions. ‘The muscle will be okay,’ he finally says. ‘Just sew the skin back together.’

  My fingers shake when I pick up the needle. ‘Could you…hold this flap up,’ I stammer.

  He picks up a wad of gauze and pushes the dangling piece of skin up to where I need to make the stitches. Nausea roars in my ears. Just do it. Just do it.

  ‘Yeah, just do it,’ he says softly.

  I didn’t know I was talking aloud.

  I push the needle in and out the other side. My mouth floods with saliva. Trembling, I cut the thread and make a knot. Next stitch, cut, knot. And again. I hate the sound of the thread pulling through the flesh. Adam’s knees are knocking against each other.

  ‘Take a break,’ he croaks.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  He drops the gauze and wipes tears off my cheeks. I didn’t know I was crying.

  ‘Have a drink, then finish it up.’ He points his chin to the vodka.

  I shake my head no. ‘I’m good. Ready?’

  He nods once.

  ***

  Alex

  The wound throbs, but I tell myself that I’ve had worse. The couch is comfortable, so that’s a plus. Gingerly, I roll from my back onto my healthy side, drop my feet to the floor,
and sit up. My head spins. What time is it? Early in the morning or late in the evening? The house is dead quiet. I’m guessing it’s just before sunrise.

  Slowly, I stand, keeping a grip on the armrest. I turn to gaze out the window. Is that…the sea? So what I’ve been hearing isn’t tinnitus or the singing of blood loss, but the actual fucking sea? How the hell did I get here? The…what’s her name? Eve. She must have driven what? Four, five hours? I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember the ride, but all I recall is the pain, the exhaustion, and her…crying?

  She stitched me back up. That, I remember clearly.

  Fuck. She called the cops! Didn’t she say that? I have to get out of here. A soft noise by the door stops me. I whip around, lose my balance, and plop back on the couch.

  ‘You’re up already.’

  Too stunned to say anything, I watch her approach. Dark hair in a ponytail, a shirt and PJs, face still half asleep. She must believe I’m not rapist material. At least not in my current state.

  ‘You okay? How’s the wound?’

  I nod. Did I pretend last night that I don’t speak the language? I didn’t. I should have, though. She thought I was a refugee or something. If I’m lucky, she still thinks that.

  She points at my arm. ‘I’d like to see if it’s clean and the stitches are okay. Last night was a bit…’ She frowns.

  ‘Hasty?’ Slips out of my mouth.

  ‘Yep.’ She smiles. ‘Actually, it’s only been an hour or so. Um… How ‘bout I make us breakfast, and after you’ve eaten and the sun’s up I check my needlework?’

  ‘It can’t remember what happened,’ I croak, trying to play the part of the poor, injured guy that I am.

  ‘You can’t?’

  I shrug and immediately realise my mistake. The pain is exquisite.

  ‘Can you stand?’

  I produce a half-hearted nod, and reach to take her offered hand. It’s warm and soft. The whole woman looks soft. A rich kid who’s never had to work hard in her life.

  We shuffle through a corridor and into the kitchen. Yeah, that kitchen I do remember. The rug is bunched up on the floor. The bloody bandages, the needle, and the vodka are gone.

  As she switches on the lights, my gaze falls on a photo taped to the fridge. My mind stutters as it processes the information. The kitchen begins to tilt, but that picture stays in the centre of my vision, painfully sharp.

  ‘Hey!’ She grabs my midriff and sits me down. I have to put my head on the table. My heart is hammering so hard, I’m worried my chest will burst. Feeling nauseous, I squeeze my eyes shut and force myself to breathe slow. One deep in, one deep out. Repeat.

  I hear her move away from me. No need to look up to know she’s peeling the picture off the fridge and putting it away. Too late now. The photo is burned in my mind.

  Four people on a boat: Eve, and next to her, her big brother. Behind them, their mother. And with a big smile on his face, a fishing rod in his hand: Gregor Lange.

  The man who had Chris murdered. The man who set the trap. The man who had my brother abducted and tortured. The man who’s responsible for so much suffering, he should burn on a stake ten times over.

  And now I have his daughter.

  I have to bite down on my sleeve to not laugh out loud.

  — END —

  The next book in the series is in the making.

  Continue reading for a preview

  of 1/2986

  Preview of 1/2986 - the climate fiction saga

  The clock on the wall shows 12:01. Twelve hours left to live, minus one minute. No drama. We all are going to die, and I’m overdue anyway. An exhale of relief will rumble through my village when they find me tomorrow morning. Maybe Zula will miss me a little. I hope he does. A few tears shed would be nice, just so I know I wasn’t a total waste of space. But then, I’ll never know.

  Actually, I’m surprised I’m still here. One could say I’m a coward who doesn’t dare press the blade deep enough. But that’s not the entire truth. If hope didn’t bug me, life would be simpler. And shorter. In my case, shorter is better. But I’m naïve enough to hope the last day of school might magically turn my dismal grades into excellent ones, so that the city council forgets my wrong gender and wrong past, and allows me to be the new turbinehouse keeper. I would have a future. But even the best grades won’t convince them to allow another generation of Capras to soil this honourable occupation, excellent skills or not.

  I’m thinking of my knife’s tip wedged in the hollow between bone and tendon of my wrist. I’m thinking of opening an artery, of life draining from me, and I’m growing calmer. People around me fade. I’ve already cut off most of myself. But I forget when.

  I catch myself hoping to meet my brother and my grandfather tonight. My heart flutters. Of course it’s all nonsense. When you’re dead, you’re dead. Depending on how your body is processed, you either end up as ash, or as worm poop.

  If Grandfather were still alive, he’d call what happened to my life after my brother died “hell,” earning him a public whipping for using a banned word. He was a rebellious guy, always talking about the Great Pandemic and how he kicked ass, then, how he stopped kicking ass when Grandmother died and he raised Mother all by himself.

  When I was little and sat on his lap and no one else was listening, he dared talk about God — an old guy who made the first two humans from clay. Since then, the word “God” tastes of clay, although the sound of it is more round and fruity, like an overripe tomato, maybe. Grandfather also talked about his parents a lot, my great-grandparents, who believed our souls are all going to this place called “hell,” where we are eternally burned, or put on a stake, or gutted, or whatever.

  I have no idea why people back then thought this stuff would make any sense. Maybe that’s why religions are illegal now? But there’s still tons of stuff around today that doesn’t make sense to me at all, and yet everyone thinks it’s cool.

  Grandfather believed in God. He didn’t really care much about rules, and that’s why I loved him. Neither of us fit in.

  For me, the fitting-in begins with the stupidest things; for example, the ability to stand with a group of giggly girls who talk about boys. It’s considered the coolest activity since we turned twelve or thirteen and the game always has the same outcome: the more men you can attract, the better. No one seems to notice how embarrassing it is to climb the social ladder simply by being the most fuckable female. Maybe I’m thinking this because I’m at the very bottom rung, but I can’t imagine that the whole circus looks any more logical from a higher vantage point.

  I know I’m not good with people. But I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t like them or why I don’t like them.

  The one thing I’m good at is fixing machines, especially turbines. The word “turbine” has the taste of hot pancakes with melting butter and treacle. Turbines always do what I want them to do. Maybe they like my hands. Being up at the reservoir or inside a turbine duct makes me insanely happy. The smell of grease makes me happy, too. I tasted it once, but it wasn’t good. Its sting didn’t leave my mouth for days.

  Maybe turbines are my main reason to pull the plug: once I finish school, I won’t be allowed to play with machines anymore. I’d be assigned a real job. Every time people call what I’m doing “playing,” I could scream. The word “play” tastes of burned oak; ash. Although it sounds almost liquid in my ears. Like a sudden splash on a still surface.

  Everyone believes I’m stupid. I tried to be better. I really did. Every first morning of a new school year, I told myself that this year, I’ll do it. This year, I’ll work my arse off (although I don’t really have one to begin with), I’ll do my homework on time (or at all), will daydream less (or not at all), and will be thinking so hard that my brain bleeds out through my nose (if that’s even possible).

  Every second morning of a school year, I knew I would only be myself.

  Today, my grades won’t improve either. I haven’t learned a thing. I tried but�
� I’m a scatterbrain.

  Hope dies last, they say. I hate hope; the bitch keeps screwing me. If I were alive tomorrow, the council would assign me a job at the composting facility — the stupidest activity there is — even more brainless than street sweeping and picking weeds from the cracks in the pavement. I’d shovel the shit of every inhabitant, every cow, cat, sheep, and goat, from one container to the next, aerating and judging its ripeness before it goes out on the fields. It takes three years for fresh poop to turn into good compost. Piss is collected, stored, and sprayed on the fields every spring, but shit needs treatment. And that’s all I’d need to know to excel at this job. One gets what one deserves. I wouldn’t mind as long as people let me be. My parents do mind, though. I’m like the ugly mole on Father’s nose, making him cross-eyed and sick, and Mother’s fingers itching to slap at it.

  The word “mole” feels furry on my tongue.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and imagine my hand holding out my quivering school certificate to Mother and Father — a few moments before dinner is on the table — and I wonder how they’ll respond this time. The word “certificate” runs bitterly down my throat. My ass cheeks burn with knowledge. Will my parents feel sorry when they find me in the morning? The thing is I do care, although there’s no reason for it.

  Right now, I’m at a place I’d rather not be. I’m standing in a line of naked girls in the blistering hot town hall. My bare feet happily leak heat into the stone floor. Beads of sweat form along my spine. I’m itching. All windows and doors are closed. Someone must be worried we could oxidise if fresh air were allowed to blow in.

  The room is divided by a long curtain, so we girls don’t get to see the naked boys and the boys don’t get to see us naked girls. As if we’ve never seen a prick.

  Two women — a physician and a nurse — prod, ask questions, and take notes. I have no clue why old Zula doesn’t do this. He’s good at all kinds of things, from delivering babies to curing whooping cough. He can even do cesareans on Lampit’s milk goats. Strangely, no one feels the need to enlighten us as to why our physician has been replaced by two strangers from the city. No one even asks. Not the other girls, anyway. I did, but all I got as a response were two sets of raised eyebrows.