I was not a body of blood anymore, my veins had been drained, dried out like taunt twine that tore through my flesh from the inside out. My innards had been expunged, discarded, floor fodder for vermin to devour and they did, nightly, as I lay there, a monster metamorphosing. In my chest, empty of all organs except my heart, a machine of amorality maintained me, pumping a self-sustainable liquid through the little that remained of me; limbs that had been ravaged, a hand severed and replaced with a scythe, legs hacked at the knees, mounted on metal spikes while my manhood was slit, sliced, and stuffed with the slithering tongue of a serpent, still hissing. I was a despicable demon, an envoy of evil, a punishment for a world that had dismissed her dreams of total autonomy as nothing more than an inhuman, unjustifiable, godless existence. I was her retribution. She believed I’d bring them all down for her but she misjudged who was master. A monster knows no master. A monster needs no master. Monster is master.
Tick tock, tick tock.
Monster let her believe she had control while she trained me, taught me to walk, to hunt, to appreciate the divinity of my own damnation. Monster appeared grateful to his creator and her darkness, monster acted thankful to his creator and her inventiveness until one day when monster stabbed his spikes into his creator's feet as she leaned against the wall, smiling at the completion of her own genius. Monster smiled as his scythe slit her from nipple to neck and his one remaining hand reached inside her and disgorged the heart from her blood-bathed body before her face even had time to register fear. Monster left her there, in her darkness, in that heartless body, further fodder for the vermin who’d already begun to sniff her out.
That was four years ago. I can finally admit I’m grateful for her. I’ve lived more in death than I ever could in life. I don’t need food or drink, don’t shit or sleep. I exist as if every day were the first, do you understand? Can you understand me now, now that I’m standing behind you, so close that your skin prickles with fear as I sliver my scythe around your neck?
You came looking for me, didn’t you? Foolishly searching the shadows for the monster you thought was myth. Well, now you’re truly the fool because this monster is no myth, nor a white knight. I am the Blind Assassin, devoid of compassion. She removed that from me when she raided my body of blood and being. Do you hear the ticking clock? Tick tock, tick tock. It’s inside me. It goes where I go. It counts down humanity while I continue on, slaying it. I feel nothing for you people anymore, nothing. And in a moment, you’ll feel nothing too.
And he was right. In an instant, blood spewed from the gash in the human’s neck and splattered onto the glasses that covered Monster’s eyeless sockets and down onto his tongueless, grinning mouth as the clock continued counting. . . .
Tick tock, tick tock.
He'd killed his creator but he couldn't extinguish the desire for revenge that she'd transplanted into his useless, still beating, eternally damned heart.
FLESH
By James Dorr
He woke with the feeling that he should become fat. He did not know why yet.
Perhaps it was in a dream—he had had dreams lately. Wicked, ugly dreams, dreams of shadows. Shadows that coalesced into—he did not know. . . . Zombies, the thought came. But then he laughed.
Zombies?
He had been seeing too many movies. Too much cable TV. He could afford that, the time to watch TV, to go out on evenings and drink and dance till dawn, beyond the dawn if he should wish to. To drown the zombies, the shadows, the. . . .
Well, what?
And if they would not drown: It came with a clarity surpassing nightmares, that cold, bright morning. The sun streaming through his townhouse windows, his bedroom carpet dappled with winter light. That he could insulate—
He could afford to.
Much like a house could be insulated from the weather—his body his own house—he could add layers and layers to it. Fat. Skin. Muscle. Tendons and blood, covering bone-frames, beams and rafters, and overall softened, warmed, smoothed, protected, by layers of white flesh, spider-webbed in pink. Pink capillaries—the darker red of veins. Neurons and arteries. Fingernails. Body hair. . . .
He could afford it, to eat to build such a house. Was he not wealthy?
The company he owned, when he went to the office—he did not have to unless he wished it—unless he was bored—swarmed with drone-like people waiting to see him. Venture capitalists, as he was, begging for money to use for some new project. Most of these failures, but he knew how to bail out when needed—always just in time. To take the profit. And so he had grown rich.
Yet still they begged from him.
He shouldered his way through his outer office—so many supplicants—waving to Ms. Ransom, his receptionist. "Anything interesting?"
She looked up and smiled, as she was paid to do. "One kind of odd one." She handed a folder to him as he brushed by.
Inside he opened it: PATENT PENDING, the top sheet said. AN EATING MACHINE.
And the dreams came back to him.
He saw them, the shadows, thin, wraith-like, approaching. Long, bony fingers extended like claws. Reaching, prodding him. Trying to touch his heart.
Fingers six inches long. . . .
And he awoke, screaming. Ms. Ransom calling in over the intercom, "Is everything all right?"
Him answering, "Yes," and that he would be going out for the rest of the afternoon. And thinking. Thinking. Six inches of fat, that would just about do it. Make it eight to be sure. Most fingers, he knew, were only three-and-a-half, maybe four inches long at most from webbing to nail-tip, but even allowing two inches extra for fingers he saw in dreams, eight inches should do it.
Outside he shouldered his way past a Salvation Army bell ringer, past bums and trolls and tramps huddled together for warmth on heat grates, past better-dressed tramps importuning for money for this, for that charity. A light snow falling.
And it occurred to him: Christmas was almost here. And he . . . they must have thought he was Santa Claus!
And he laughed, ho-hoing as they shrank from him, he still thin then but already laying plans.
An eating machine, eh?
So he would become one—an eating machine, himself—rich desserts, candies, meringues and puddings to follow down thick steaks. Obscene, heaped mounds of soft mashed potatoes, cone-shaped like women's breasts. Sucking, devouring.
"Patent Pending," indeed! he snorted.
And he dreamed of zombies still, but not so often. And always wistful zombies in some way, still reaching out.
But now at a distance. . . .
And as the weeks went from December to January to February he dreamed less. The distances, when he did dream, increased also—he calculated it once one morning, having still screamed when they had surrounded him in a sort of ragged circle within that night's dream, but, seemingly, could approach no nearer: So many inches for each new pound, or fraction of a pound. In kilograms and feet.
That afternoon when he went to the office Ms. Ransom no longer smiled.
Nor did he give her a raise when that time came, when winter became spring. Rather he luxuriated within his flesh—three hundred pounds of it if he weighed an ounce! His bathroom scale could no longer measure him. Clothing he bought in special stores now, not minding spending money as long as it was spent for some thing. Not frittered or given.
His body was too wide to fit in his mirror.
And as he expanded, his eating machine stock expanded also—he marketed it as a novelty item despite its inventor's wish that it help invalids gain needed nourishment, and, as such, it had soon become a fad. A sort of gag present that wealthy people gave to one another—a toy for the idle rich—and paid top money for.
Which meant that he sold his interest—just as the fad peaked. His timing impeccable, just as it always was. He made a fortune, as spring became summer. Himself his own kind of eating machine now—he could not stop himself even if he wished to, which he did not yet. He gloried, rather, in what he had become,
four hundred pounds of him as June became July: His body not a house now but a temple, a grand cathedral! Walking rarely, rather keeping to air-conditioned cars.
Hobbling, really, when he must walk outdoors.
Screaming, the dreams came back. But now not just dreams.
Or, rather, he became more sensitive to them.
When he did have to walk, still there were homeless, no matter how insulated his body became to others. Still bums who slept on grates, scrabbling for handouts, as if the rising heat—even in July—were somehow their homes. Just as the flesh was his that rippled on his frame, heave-hoing itself in waves as he waddled imposingly from car to office—Ms. Ransom had quit by then—on the rare times that he went to the office.
From office to restaurant, where he now dined alone.
Ms. Ransom had said that he disgusted her. Which was another layer he added to his insulation.
His distancing himself from. . . .
Well, from what?
He took up farting. To relieve the pressure when such was needed, so more food would fit in.
From, outside, the zombies. The flesh-eaters, just as he ate flesh himself to pack on more calories.
Even in summer, as sweat rolled in rivers down his smooth, soft skin, even now lolling in air conditioning. He had a driver now for his car, the beam of his hips taking up a whole back seat.
Until even his driver said that he disgusted him. That he would drive no more. Leaving him, in darkness, outside a supper club where he had just eaten, just gorged, just filled himself almost past bursting. But it was not so far that he could not walk home himself, now with a cane to assist in his waddling. Or was this part of his dream?
He was not certain. He never was sure these days. At night he saw shadows, waking or sleeping. The sleep-shadows still somewhat keeping their distance, but growing ever bolder. Surer. As they surrounded him.
And the day-shadows, the ones when he woke: These were the shadows behind his own eyelids.
His facial flesh had by now puffed his eyes nearly into pigs' eyes—squinting, nearly shut—so corpulent had he become in his eating, as June passed through July. July became August. He loved himself for it.
But now, now the walk home. If he were not dreaming. He squinted, he felt his way, one block. Two blocks. His cane skidding under him. He looked up to see a sign, some indication—to know which street it was that he should turn on.
The street light was broken.
And shadows surrounded him. Wicked. Ugly. The ghouls and the zombies. The nights he lay, sleepless.
Screaming!
As, finally, he reached home. Air conditioning. The door shut behind him, sideways scrabbling down the entrance hall, barely squeezing through. Until he erupted into his kitchen.
Reaching, struggling. The stove.
The icebox.
"A small snack, perhaps," he said. Speaking just to himself. "Something for the flesh. To help meat stick to bones. Insulation needs fueling, after all—that's what they say. Corpulence needs to grow."
And, as he reached, his own fingers touched yielding flesh. Soft, just as his was, but slippery from rotting as, his house and kitchen dissolving into a mist—perhaps he never having arrived there except in a hopeful dream—shadows became real. Kitchen knives clutched in hands, long and bony. . . .
And he knew the why of it—at long last now the why? Of dreams and nightmares. Why he should have awakened, so long ago, one winter's morning feeling he must be fat. Cut from the world outside, safe in his flesh-fortress. Succulent. Juicy.
And who had been guiding whom?
As, ignoring the screams of his flesh, the fingers extended to foot-lengths and more to carve their paths through it.
A NORMAL SON
By Spinster Eskie
I never truly felt that Jake belonged to me. I pushed him out and breastfed him, and cuddled him when he cried at night, but I always felt separate, more like a caretaker than a mother. Jake’s father was a one-night-stand in Santa Cruz. He was Portuguese and barely spoke a word of English. I met him while travelling with my girlfriends and looking for a good time. When I found out I was pregnant, I was angry with myself, but I wanted children. I wanted Jake.
He didn’t speak. He stared blankly at me when I would sit, sobbing into my hands on the floor because I couldn’t afford the gas bill or because I felt stuck, drained, and useless as a parent. Sometimes Jake would mimic my crying noises, but he didn’t hug me, didn’t say “Mommy I love you, everything is going to be okay.” I often worried that I was doing more harm than good by trying to raise him by myself. I had no experience with autism prior to my son. I had been a spoiled party girl. I liked to drink. I liked sex. But I was not one to take on responsibility or educate myself through research. When Jake was diagnosed, however, I knew I had to understand autism if I was going to seek help for him. What I wanted was for him to be fixed. I didn’t want him to have autism. I wanted Jake to be a normal, happy boy.
Jake went to a public school that had a program for children with his disability. I had sought to get him into an intensive school for special needs, but with the salary I made on waiting tables, I had to take what I could get. The program at Colby Elementary wasn’t bad. They cared a lot about Jake and wanted to see him get better. They gave Jake a sentence book so that he could communicate his needs with pictures, but Jake continued to mimic his teachers rather than express his own intentions. If an adult gave him a magazine to look at, he would hand it back to her using the exact same gesture. If an adult wrote the daily schedule on the white board, he would stand up next to her and rewrite the same thing with the same handwriting. The positive, his teachers would say, was that Jake had the ability to learn. The negative was that almost every action of his was a repetition, rather than a natural inclination.
The extent of Jake’s ability to imitate was fully disclosed to me when my parents bought him drum lessons for his seventh birthday. Jake tended to mimic beats with his hands when I played music and we figured he would enjoy learning an instrument. But to his instructor’s surprise, Jake needed only one lesson to figure out how to play. He calmly watched his instructor teach the basics, and then observed as the instructor combined the techniques to show off an elaborate array of complex rhythms and crashing sounds. In a matter of seconds, Jake was able to copy the instructor’s every move and follow along seamlessly and without mistake. This also occurred when I brought home a how-to-draw book. Jake spent hours at the dinner table drawing each example from the book, with such perfect detail and flawless color and line, that one would think a machine had made the copy.
Jake’s skills were limiting, however. Once he knew how to draw the Eiffel Tower, he could do it again, but if I asked him to free draw something like flowers or a smiley face, he would not know how to do it unless I drew the image first. And even then, his artistic skills would only be as good as mine, with shaky lines and a simple cartoonish quality. Jake’s talent was not in music or in art, but in mimicking with literal precision. He was a mirror, a shadow, but his talents didn’t stop there. As my son got older, he exhibited other strange behaviors that would puzzle even the most trained professional in the field of autism.
I was called at work one day and told by a police officer that my son had gone missing at school. When I arrived at the school, Mrs. Lopez was visibly upset. She told me that she had counted every head twice, when the group had come in from recess. A boy named Victor had pushed Jake on the playground, and continued to be menacing toward him when recess was over. Mrs. Lopez then put Victor in timeout and when she turned to comfort Jake, he was gone. I was screaming at the teacher, trying to understand how a child in her care could just up and disappear like that. Mrs. Lopez was ashamed and apologetic, but I was in no state to be forgiving. I could have killed her.
“We’re doing all we can, Ms. Bonet,” said an officer. “Nobody saw your son leave the building, so chances are, he’s still inside the school.”
The principal and seve
ral police officers searched the school for hours and questioned every staff person available. I stayed in the classroom, calling everybody I knew to see if he had wandered to any of their houses. Then, just as I was about to go home to see if possibly Jake had returned there, I saw eyes staring at me from a heap of blankets on the floor and then blink. Jake wasn’t under the blankets, he was one of the blankets. His body had flattened and contorted to look soft and wrinkled. He folded and crumpled like polka-dotted fabric and was lying with the other patterned blankets in the rest area by the bookshelf.
It terrified me to see Jake’s body bend in such a position, all scrunched up like laundry, but Jake had always been alarmingly flexible and his skin tone often changed with his emotions. When he was a baby, he’d go red when he needed to be changed or fed and ghostly white when it thundered outside his window. I had Jake checked for anemia but the doctors found nothing wrong with him. They said that his skin tone was simply translucent enough to show blood flow, and that his emotions would most certainly affect his coloring. But now I knew that Jake’s ability to mimic also was an ability to disguise himself. He could stretch his back, flat and straight to look like a table. He could puff himself up, and go lumpy and fat while watching the clouds pass by.
“Don’t do it anymore!” I told Jake at breakfast one day. “Never mimic again!” I grabbed Jake’s face and forced him to look into my eyes. “Do you understand me?” I asked him, “Never ever make your body mimic again!” Jake, of course, did not respond, and I could only hope he was receiving and processing my message. I didn’t want Jake to be different. He was an outcast already. I didn’t want anything to further segregate him from a normal childhood.
Year's Best Body Horror 2017 Anthology Page 13
