Zippered Flesh 2: More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad

by Bryan Hall

Smiling.

  Over the next few days he was dragged to meetings, and heard the tone, but none of the words. Voices were raised, threats were issued, and peace was imposed. There were questions, different faces asking different questions, all of them threads connected to the same ball: Why did you do it, Dean?

  Had he chosen to answer those blurry, changing faces in all those rooms that smelled of furniture polish and sweat, he would have told them: I just sat there. But instead he said nothing, and soon the faces went away, the slatted sunlight aged on the walls and there was only one voice, a woman, speaking to him as if he were a child, but still asking the question everyone wanted to ask and which he refused to answer because it belonged to him, and him alone.

  “Dean, I want to help you, but you have to help me.”

  That made him smile.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  He wouldn’t.

  “Tell me why you did what you did.”

  He didn’t, and when she shook her head at some unseen observer, standing in the shadows at his back, he was released. No more faces, no more voices, just his parents, expressing their disappointment, their frustration. Their anger.

  It meant nothing to him.

  In the dark of night he awoke, unable to breathe, his body soaked in sweat, panic crawling all over him.

  I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry

  Look at you now, a voice sneered in his ear and when he turned toward it, Fuckface Freddy was grinning a smile missing most of its teeth, his nose squashed and bleeding, one eye misshapen from when Dean had knocked it loose. His breath smelled like alcohol. Look at you now, shithead.

  Dean clamped his hands over his eyes, into his hair and pulled, screamed, a long hoarse tortured scream that made lights come on in more houses than his own.

  Look at you now ...

  “These sessions will only be beneficial to you, Dean, if you open up to me ...”

  Look at you now ...

  “He starts at Graham High in the fall. Let’s hope he doesn’t fuck that up.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Don. He’s still your son.”

  “Thanks for the reminder.”

  Stephanie kissed him, her head making the covers ripple as she worked her way down his stomach. He moaned, filled with confusion and desire. Surely it couldn’t all have been a dream, but if not, then he was thankful at least for the respite, this neutral plain where no harm was done and no one had been hurt.

  Not here.

  And when he ran his hands through her hair, she raised her face so that he could see the scars. So that he could touch them, remember them. But there were no scars. Only a wide gaping smile from which Greer’s giggle emerged ...

  Almost a month later, his parents left him alone for the weekend. They’d asked him to come with them to Rodney’s farm; his uncle was sick, and they claimed getting away from the house for a while might do Dean some good. And Rodney would be just tickled to see his nephew.

  Dean refused, in a manner that dissuaded persistence, allowing them no option but to leave him behind, but not without a litany of commands and warnings. Then, on Friday evening, his mother kissed him on the cheek; he wiped it away. His father scowled; Dean ignored it. Then they were gone and the house was filled with quiet, merciful peace.

  Until there was a knock on the door.

  Dean didn’t answer, but his parents had not locked it and soon Les was standing in the living room, hands by his sides, a horrified expression on his face.

  “Dude, what the fuck are you doing?”

  “Venting,” Dean said, drawing the blade of his mother’s carving knife across his forearm. He stared in fascination as the cuts, deep and straight, opened but remained bloodless and pink for a few moments before the blood welled.

  “Hey ... don’t do that okay?” Les said, his voice shaking as he took a seat opposite Dean. “Please.”

  “It helps,” Dean said, wiping the blade clean against the leg of his jeans. Then he returned the knife to an area below the four slashes he’d already made. Blood streaked his arm and Les noticed a spot of dark red was blossoming on the carpet between his legs. Dean had his arm braced across his knees, as if he were attempting to saw a piece of wood. Face set in grim determination, eyes glassy, he slowly drew the blade back, opening another wide pink smile in the skin.

  “Jesus, Dean. What are you doing this for?”

  “I told you,” Dean said, without looking up from his work, “it helps.”

  “Helps what?”

  “Helps it escape.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “No. You don’t,” Dean said and gritted his teeth as he made another cut.

  There were dreams and voices, the words lost beneath the amplified sound of skin tearing.

  And when he woke, he knew his arms were not enough.

  Summer died and took fall and winter with it, a swirl of sun, rain, snow, and dead leaves that filled the window of the Lovell house like paintings deemed not good enough and replaced to mirror seasons that surely could not move so fast.

  A somber mood held court inside. A man and a woman moved, tended to their daily routines, but they were faded and gray, people stepped from ancient photographs to taste the air for a while.

  And upstairs, a room stood empty, the door closed, keeping the memories sealed safely within.

  Another year passed.

  “Two, babe,” the kid said, running a hand over his gel-slicked hair and winking at the pretty girl in the ticket booth. On the screen behind him, garish commercials paraded across the Drive-In screen and the meager gathering of cars began to honk in celebration.

  The kid glanced over his shoulder at the screen and looked back when the girl jammed two tickets into his hands. Using her other hand she snatched away his money, offered him a dutiful smile and went back to her magazine.

  “Chilly,” scoffed the kid and returned to his car, his shoes crunching on the gravel.

  The movie previews began and the honking died. Crickets sawed a song in the field behind the screen.

  The moon was high, bathing the lot in a cool blue light.

  “One,” said a voice and the girl sighed, looked up at the man standing in front of her and began to punch out the ticket. Her hand froze.

  “Hi, Stephanie,” Dean said.

  He moved his face into the amber glow and Stephanie barely restrained a grimace.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked after a moment, then tugged the ticket free and slid it beneath the Plexiglas window.

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “Oh yeah, for what?”

  “To apologize.”

  “Apology accepted,” she said testily and glared at him. “That’ll be two dollars.”

  He smiled, said, “You look amazing,” and passed over the money.

  And she did. The scars were gone, with only the faintest sign that they’d ever been there. Perhaps the skin on her right cheek was just a little darker than it should have been, a little tighter than normal, but that could be blamed on makeup. Without the scar, she was stunning, but then, through all his nights of suffering and the endless days of rage, he’d come to realize that even with them, she’d been beautiful. It was he who’d been the ugly one, ugly on the inside.

  She stopped and stared at him, the look he remembered, the look that had haunted him—but then it was gone, exasperation replacing it.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  He put a hand to his chin, to the hard pink ridges of skin there and shrugged. “I had to let it out.”

  He expected her to ask the question so many people had put to him ever since the day his father had kicked in the bathroom door and found him lying bleeding on the floor, his face in ruins, his mother’s carving knife clutched in one trembling hand, but she didn’t. She simply shook her head.

  “You destroyed yourself.”

  He nodded. “For you.”

  Her laugh was so unexpected he staggered back a step, t
he scars on his face rearranging themselves into a map of confusion.

  Someone honked a horn at the screen. A chorus of voices echoed from the speakers.

  Stephanie looked ugly again. “You almost killed him, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Freddy.”

  “I know. He deserved it.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  He watched her carefully, watched her features harden and a cold lance of fear shot through him.

  “What do you mean? After what he did—”

  She frowned, as if he had missed the simplest answer of all. “I asked him to do it.”

  On the screen, someone screamed. For a moment, Dean wasn’t sure it hadn’t been himself.

  “You used to see Freddy hanging around all those cheerleaders and blonde bimbos at school, right?”

  He nodded, dumbly, his throat filled with dust.

  “Did you ever actually see him out with any of them?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Ominous music from the speakers; footsteps; a door creaking loudly enough to silence the crickets.

  “He had an image to maintain, Dean. He had to fit the role of the high school stereotype. He was a jock and that meant he should be seen with a certain type of girl. But that’s not the kind of girl he liked.” She smiled, and it was colder than the night. “He liked his girls damaged, as if they’d been through Hell and returned with tales to tell, as if they had scars to prove they were tough and ready for anything. The Barbie doll type made him sick.”

  Dean shuddered, jammed his hands into the pockets of his coat; wished he’d brought the knife.

  “I was his girl,” she said, a truth that wrenched his guts surer than any blade. “No one knew because he still had his pride. Why do you think he hit Greer for trying to fuck me? That was going one step too far. ‘Course that dumbass Greer knew nothing about it and still doesn’t.”

  Dean stared, his body trembling, his hands clenched so tight the scars on his arms must surely rip open and bleed anew.

  A joke. It was all a joke.

  “We didn’t think you’d freak out like you did and beat seven shades of shit out of Freddy. Christ. You nearly killed him, you asshole.”

  But Dean didn’t hear her. An evil laugh filtered through the speakers, followed by a hellish voice that asked: “Where’s my pretty little girl?” And then a scream to make Fay Wray proud.

  Where’s my pretty little girl?

  “How ...” Dean began, before pausing to clear his throat. “How did you ...?” He indicated his own mangled face with a trembling forefinger.

  “Surgery,” she said airily. “It’s why I’m still working in this fucking dump. My mother refuses to help me pay for it. Too busy buying shit she doesn’t need on the Shopping Channel. Of course, when I lost the scars, I lost Freddy, too. I was tired of him anyway.”

  The sound of unpleasant death, of skin rending, gurgling screams, and bones snapping, filled the air.

  “Hey,” Stephanie said with a shrug, “it’s all in the past, right? No hard feelings?”

  Look at you now, shithead.

  Dean nodded, licked his lips. “Yeah. Right, no hard feelings.”

  Stephanie nodded her satisfaction. “Good, so are you going to watch your movie, or what?”

  Look at you now.

  THE PERFECT SIZE

  BY A.P. SESSLER

  The vinyl flaps lifted as suitcases of all sizes emerged through the wall on the conveyor belt and rolled into hands of every ethnicity. A coffee-colored hand lifted a green canvas suitcase; next a lemon palm swept up one in burgundy leather, then peachy fingers gripped a tartan of red.

  A female voice boomed over the loudspeaker system in one language after the other, directing all new arrivals to their desired stations at Changi International Airport.

  Frank stood at the curve of a U-shaped baggage carousel awaiting his luggage. A Caucasian businessman from America, he stood roughly six feet tall and wore a dark-blue suit and dark-gray fedora. He was so anxious to leave, he flinched when he saw his suitcase come through the opening, but the crowd gathered around the carousel made it impossible to retrieve without knocking them down or climbing onto the conveyor itself to do so.

  He restrained the impulse and waited until the brown leather bag bearing his initials came to greet him. After catching it by a corner he unzipped the suitcase to ensure the entirety of its inventory was secure and intact.

  He zipped the suitcase closed and made his way to the airport exit to hail a taxi. He was fortunate to gain the attention of a nearby driver, who looked up from the newspaper he was reading and waved for Frank to approach.

  The man was in his forties. He wore a red short-sleeve T-shirt with faded, illegible print on its front. His small eyes were canopied by his thick, wiry eyebrows. He quickly folded his newspaper as Frank approached the cab.

  “Where to?” asked the driver as Frank opened the back door and put his suitcase inside.

  “The Tiger Lotus Hotel,” answered Frank after sitting down and closing the door. He removed his hat and held out his hand with a folded fifty-dollar bill between his fingers for the driver to take. “I would appreciate it if we got there fast.”

  “No pay now,” said the driver. “Pay later.”

  Frank shrugged it off and put the bill in his breast pocket.

  The driver turned his head forward and started the meter. The back of his head looked like a ball of slick, dark yarn down to its last strands. “We get there real quick,” he said just before putting the pedal to the floor.

  Frank fell back into the seat and put his hand on the door handle, first to brace himself, then to ensure it was locked.

  The taxi weaved in and out of traffic as the cars falling behind became a blur. Frank squirmed in his seat and waved his cell phone around as he tried to pick up a signal. The taxi exited the East Coast Parkway and headed into the city, away from the Singapore Strait.

  Frank pressed the CALL button on his phone again. A moment later a graphic indicating the signal had been received appeared on the phone’s LCD. After a few rings, a female voice answered.

  “Hello, husband,” she said.

  “Hello, Xiulan,” he replied.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “I’m on my way to the hotel. I landed about forty-five minutes ago.”

  “How was your trip?”

  “It was fine, but we’ll talk about that later. How are you doing?”

  “I am well. I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you,” he echoed. “I’ve been thinking about you the whole time. Actually, it was really difficult to keep my mind on business.”

  “I hope your thoughts of me didn’t interfere with your success,” she said gingerly.

  “No, they didn’t. But even if they had, the thought that I would soon be with my beautiful little wife would be more than enough.”

  There was an extended pause before she spoke. “I have a confession to make.”

  “Yes?” he swallowed as his concern became audible. “What is it, dear?”

  “I am not as ‘little’ as I was on our honeymoon.”

  “You mean,” he asked excitedly, “you’re pregnant?”

  There was another pause. “No. I’m not.”

  “I don’t understand. If you’re not pregnant, how could you be any bigger?”

  “Though I am not pregnant, I have been eating enough for two,” she said in an attempt at the western humor he often used.

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “You could eat four times as much as you do and not gain a pound.”

  “I respectfully disagree,” she said. “I have put on considerable weight since we’ve last been together, and for that I sincerely apologize.”

  “Xiulan, you couldn’t gain enough weight for there to be cause for apologies.”

  “Again, I respectfully disagree, husband. I do hope you are not disappointed with me.”

  “You couldn’t disappoint me. You
’re everything I’ve ever wanted. And I can’t wait to see you again and make love to you no matter what size or shape you are. You are what matters, not what you look like.”

  Again there was a pause, then soft sobbing.

  “Oh, Xiulan,” he said. “Don’t cry. I love you.”

  “I love you, too. But I know you’re attracted to me because of my culture and my size. You know we encourage women to remain demure, and I regretfully confess that I have lost that which you were attracted to.”

  “That’s enough of that talk. Don’t you worry about your appearance,” he insisted. “It’s not for your sake that you’re beautiful, it’s for mine. And no amount of weight could take your beauty away. I want you to put on the slinkiest, sexiest thing you can find and I want you to be ready for me, because I’m going to make love to you the moment I lay my eyes on you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I will do as you say.”

  After they said their goodbyes, he hung up the phone. He looked up to see that in the rearview mirror the driver’s eyes were fixed on him, and Frank suspected they had been for the duration of his now less-than-intimate conversation. When their eyes locked, the driver quickly looked away.

  The taxi pulled to the curb in front of the Tiger Lotus Hotel and came to a stop. Frank ducked his head as he exited the taxi, then removed his suitcase and hat. He put the hat on to shield his eyes from the bright noon sun, then removed the fifty-dollar bill from his breast pocket and handed it to the driver.

  “One moment. I get change,” said the driver as he opened a small cash box and reached inside.

  “No change,” said Frank.

  “You give too much,” said the driver.

  “No, no. That’s yours,” affirmed Frank.

  The driver looked ashamed for having eavesdropped.

  “In case you didn’t get the gist of that phone call, this will be the first time I’ve seen my wife since our honeymoon,” said Frank as he winked at the driver.