by Dan O'Shea
“I must ask you to leave,” Gaston said calmly.
The stranger’s eyes bounced. First to the bundled head on the floor, then to me coming back inside with the Colt, and then finally back to Gaston. Rain thrummed on the tavern roof hard.
“Is this about me insulting you before, Frenchie?”
“I will count to five,” Gaston said. “If you are not out of here and on your way I will shoot you in the face.”
A snort. “You? Shoot me? Right. When pigs fly.”
“Vas t’en che’ vous! Un….”
“Oh, dry up, you French fuck.” The man’s small eyes switched to me. “What did he just say?”
I glanced at Gaston and then back at the stranger. I steadied the Colt in my hand and water dripped from my wrist. “I think my friend just said you should be on your way.”
“He ain’t going to shoot me, and neither are you. I know men. You two sorry excuses don’t know the first thing about killing.”
Gaston licked his lips. “Deux.…”
“Doo?”
“Trois….”
I wagged the Colt. “He’s counting, you jackass.”
“Quatre….”
Shifting left, the stranger lunged for Gaston’s Winchester and knocked the barrel aside. The space he created with the effort gave me just enough room to charge forward, and as he wheeled back around I didn’t hesitate. I whipped the Colt into the side of his skull and knocked his Homburg off. The big man teetered sideways with groan, and my second blow watered his legs. On his way to the floor he whacked his chin on the edge of the bar. Blood leaked from his mouth as he kicked out a leg and flopped over.
Gaston and I decided to tie the crazy bastard’s legs and dragged him outside to wait in the rain. When he came to he sobbed and sobbed and squirmed like a fat worm before I stepped outside and threatened to knock him senseless again with the butt of the Colt. It took an hour for us to raise the Staties on the telephone. They had to come up from all the way down in Augusta and fitting the cockamamie nature of things they got themselves lost.
Before the Staties showed I helped Gaston stash all the illegal liquor downstairs in the potato cellar, and afterward we set ourselves up with a couple of tall glasses of warm gin while we waited. We smoked the rest of my pack of Chesterfields and didn’t look at the bundled head on the floor. Both Staties were soaked to the bone when they finally arrived, and the younger of the two, a freckled boy of maybe twenty, couldn’t handle the senseless horror of it all and broke down crying.
“These are terrible times,” Gaston said.
2 KILOGRAMS OF SOUL
Keith Rawson
The liver is probably one of the most disgusting organs in the human body. I’m not talking about its functionality, but its overall appearance outside of the body. The organ is a shit stain brown. The color reminds me of disease, decay. Even the healthy liver of a five or six year old child makes me cringe and my gag reflex go into overtime.
I don’t even want to describe its smell.
Of course, it’s rare that I deal with fresh, young livers. Most of the organs I handle come from middle aged bodies; bodies that have been mangled in twenty car pile ups; gang shootings; massive heart attacks. They’re organs from the people who were stupid enough to allow the state to remove their usable organs after their deaths.
I used to be one of them.
I used to think I was doing a noble thing; I used to think that maybe, just maybe some innocent child, or housewife, or construction worker would be the ones who would benefit from my healthy, exercise and low fat diet fit body parts after my soul had departed. Typically this isn’t the case. Most of the time the organs are removed and donated to local area medical schools for study and dissection; the reason for this is because usually by the time an organ donor kicks off, the bits and pieces of themselves which kept their complex little machine ticking are in such bad shape from years of disuse, that all most organs are good for is training exercises. Not my old body, though. At 36, I was at the peak of physical perfection. I loved life and the temple that was my body.
I should have known I was going to die young.
I died in the way that I always imagined I would. (albeit much, much older than I was) I was mountain biking down South Mountain, the sky was a clear majestic blue, the 110 degree sun pounded down on my shoulders, beads of sweat pooling in the crack of my ass as I negotiated quarter mile switchbacks at forty miles per hour, and then my brain simply stopped, big black. I think it was an aneurism, a stroke, something that flipped my off switch and then a sizable portion of me ended up in Brian.
Whose Brian, you ask?
Well, at one time, Brian Flanders was a complete piece of shit. Brian spent most of his adult life shooting up whatever narcotics he could get his hands on. He also had an even more disturbing habit of picking up prostitutes and raping them. Thanks to this double whammy of negative lifestyle choices, Brian contracted Hepatitis C, and the Hep C managed to destroy his liver.
In most cases of Hep C, when the major organs start to go, the medical community more or less washes their hands with the idea of being able to save the person. At the point of failure, all most doctors want to do is make the person as comfortable as possible, i.e. dope them up with so much dilaudid that they think they’re going down the rabbit hole headed into the great white light and a happy reunion with all their childhood pets.
That’s most doctors.
However, if you have enough money to pay one, a personal physician will try their damnedest to make sure that the patient lives no matter what; even if it means removing old diseased organs and implanting healthy ones back into the vile blood that destroyed them, so be it.
Just to let you know, Brian didn’t have that kind of money, but his father did. And Brian’s father by no means wanted to let his son go, so they transplanted my healthy liver into the bubbling, noxious cavity that was Brian’s body and is now mine.
But to get back to the liver.
The reason I mentioned it—you know, other than it apparently being the physical sack which contains the human soul—is because I’m staring at one sitting in a large stainless steel serving bowl of rapidly melting ice. And despite my obvious distaste for its very presence, I am in awe of it because of what this roomful of dying actors, investments bankers, and other such masters of the universe are willing to pay to possess it.
By the way, the current bid on this disgusting nugget of human flesh is up to 2.6 billion dollars.
• • • •
Did that last bit confuse you?
You’re going to have to forgive me for that, because of all the drug use Brian’s short term memory is Swiss cheese and he has an annoying habit of flipping from one subject to the next. It’s an annoying habit, but one I’ve come to accept over the past couple of years. In fact, I’ve learned to accept just about everything about Brian, and trust me, it’s been a long road to acceptance.
Everything about Brian absolutely disgusts me.
The drug use, the booze, the cruising high school parties in search of sixteen year old girls looking to party, all of it makes my skin crawl. Everything about his lifestyle I was taught abhor and rage against growing up. I taught my children the same things: Clean living, regular exercise, early to bed, early to rise—these are the things that make an exceptional, successful person.
However, since I’ve been occupying Brian’s rotting body, I’ve learned that the entire premise of my former life is complete and utter bullshit.
• • • •
The six men sitting around and staring at the liver are the most successful men on the planet. They are captains of industry, masters of the universe worth literally billions of dollars, and each one of them is absolutely obsessed with beating out the other men surrounding them. Out of these six men, only one of them is ill and truly in need of the liver. The sick man is an actor who has 3 Academy awards to his name and does not make a movie for less than $25 million dollars. He is the only one
in the room with any real need, and there is a better chance than not that he will not win the liver for the simple reason that he’s the poorest among the bidders. Compared to the other five men, the actor is a dirt poor hillbilly living in a rusted out single wide trailer with no electricity or running water.
I can honestly say I feel bad for him, but in the same breath, he’s 71-years-old, he’s lived a long, successful life, but when it comes right down to it, he’s just another fucking actor. Yes, he’s an institution, but in the grand scheme of things, he’s merely a blip; a someone who everyone who professes to love him will forget a week after he’s gone, only to be briefly remembered at the Oscar’s when the television show comes to the part where they showcase all those who died the previous year. His picture will receive thunderous applause, and then we’ll go back to forgetting he ever existed.
These other men, though, they would be truly missed. No, you’ve never heard of them, but you’ve heard of their creations; you have visited their countries, consumed their products. Their legacies will live long after they’ve passed on. The point is, though, is that none of them wants it to pass. All of them want to keep on living, and living, and living. So at least once a month, various combinations of these men, or men exactly like them, attend auctions brokered by Brian’s father. The point of these auctions is to stockpile healthy young organs.
• • • •
Brian’s father is a good man. I know that sounds obscene considering what I just told you about the organ auctions and what not, but he is. Brian’s father has spent a life time doing nothing but helping the wealthy and the poor alike. That’s one of the benefits of being a surgeon who inherited the wealth of four generations of war profiteers; he also inherited the guilt that went along with inheriting said wealth. The guilt drove Brian’s father to travel the globe performing organ transplants and reconstructive surgeries on the downtrodden of the world. He’s particularly inclined to helping war veterans, mainly because the bullets, bombs, and land-mines which tore most of these soldiers to bits were manufactured by the companies which his far less sophisticated ancestors created.
Of course, Brian’s father still holds massive shares in all of these companies.
None of this matters, as long as Brian’s father keeps sewing these mortally wounded young men and women back together again, no one except a small fringe of conspiracy bloggers remotely care his family still manufactures weapons,
The one thing Brian’s father can’t escape from is genetics. Genetically, he’s hardwired with the same level of sadomasochism as his father, and his father’s father.
There are days when Brian’s father simply has to hurt someone.
It is an urge he long tried to fight, but there were no denying his urges, so he embraced them, but as humanely as possible, and he did so outside the confines of any G12 country, for the exception of China, which had so many neglected citizens, chances were no one would notice one or two missing children.
His preferred hunting grounds were Africa and various countries in South America.
Brian’s father would spend days stalking his prey, sometimes as long as a week. He had to make sure the child was healthy, disease free, which was a stretch sometimes, particularly in Africa. But they made for such easy targets. Africans loved and trusted Americans, and why shouldn’t they? Americans brought food, water, medicine, and occasionally a gifted surgeon who sometimes stripped four and five year-old children of their organs under local anesthetic and then sold those body parts to salivating billionaires.
• • • •
Brian’s father just wasn’t a philanthropist; he’s also an extremely successful businessman, not even remotely at the same level as the masters of the universes he kept company with, but successful none the less.
Medical waste transport and disposal has been very good to Brian’s father, and really, it was the perfect fit considering his proclivities. Brian’s father’s greatest hope was that Brian would one day take over the business, but much like his hopes for Brian to attend medical school, he knew that his carefully constructed empire would be broken up and sold off to his stockholders once he died. He’d faced the facts, Brian was a member of the new idle wealthy. Young people from long lines of “new” American money who had no ambitions other than to live off of the accumulated assets of his ancestors and indulge his most base desires. He should’ve known Brian would turn out this way. Brian’s mother was of the same mind; she was the product of twelve generations of European wealth, although the previous two generations had managed to deplete it to the point of collapse.
This all changed after the transplant.
I wasn’t raised to lie around. I needed to move, I needed purpose, I needed a job. As soon as I recovered, I expressed my interest in the family business. Nothing too demanding, I was by no means looking to become the President and CEO of the organization, I felt I needed to start simple and move my way up. Brian’s father was moved to tears and said he would hire me as a organ handler. The position could be stressful, particularly if the organ was one which would be the key to yanking someone away from Death’s door. But really all the job was was a bit of driving and sitting on long airplane flights from either African and South America, and making sure the cooling unit continued to function during transport.
• • • •
I can’t think myself into becoming Brian. It’s not the alienness of my new body. It was at first, but now it’s the disconnect I feel from my old life. The separation I feel from my parents, my wife, my children, my job.
Every day that I’m Brian, the further I move away from being Allan.
Allan Demming.
I repeat it daily, sometimes hourly.
I am Allan Demming.
I was raised in Gilbert, Arizona.
I am a construction foreman.
I have been married to my wife for fifteen years. She was my high school sweetheart, and we have three sons together.
I am Allan Demming.
The problem is I used to be able to remember their names and now they’ve faded; the same with their faces.
The other problem is, I don’t know if Allan Demming ever existed? I am starting to believe that I’m nothing more than a carefully created construct; a second life Brian crafted because his true life sickened him and he sought escape into the life of a simple man. I’m sure to Brian, my life was just as exotic and unnatural as his is to me.
It seems like a perfectly logical explanation to me, but still, I hold on and refuse to believe that I’m the fever dream of a sexually depraved junky.
• • • •
The bidding is now at 3.6 billion dollars. The two competing bidders are an investment banker based out of Toronto and the owner of an NBA franchise. Both are notoriously heavy drinkers and are openly salivating over the hunk of meat that will eventually save their lives.
• • • •
Brian started on the lowest rung as a transporter. At first, he was only allowed to work in teams which moved 200-to-300 vital organs at a time. His job in the scheme of the operation was to make sure the refrigeration units stayed at below freezing and make note of any temperature variations on his handheld computer. If there were any startling spikes, a technician would be alerted remotely. A box only went haywire once while on Brian’s watch, and the glitch was dealt within five minutes of the variance being discovered.
After six months, Brian was reassigned to single organ transport. At first, he worked domestic transport only. Fifteen minute runs between the airport and hospital. The trips were harried, and our body sang with adrenaline as we sped through traffic. Brian’s driving ability was the one thing I respected about him; he was in his element behind the wheel moving at 80 miles in rush hour traffic.
It wasn’t long after the local reassignment when Brian’s father came to us and admitted his guilty pleasure, and how he profited from it.
He said it was a sign of trust.
Brian and I agreed to the new as
signment, both out of pride in our jobs and morbid curiosity.
• • • •
4.2 billion
The basketball owner is in the lead and is staring down the stock broker, his eyes hard, but with softness around the corners, moistening with tears. Everyone in the room knows that if he wins, the liver will practically bankrupt him. You can tell he doesn’t want to lose, like most of these men, he’s hard wired to win above anything else. The NBA owner is rubbing his hands together like some comic book super villain. Brian and I stare at him with an almost clinical detachment.
Well, I look at him with clinical detachment, Brian’s jumping up and down inside our head, yelling at me to ram our fist down his throat, which doesn’t make any kind of sense to me. He’ll still be the top bidder; he’ll still walk out of this room with the liver vacuum sealed in an igloo cooler.
All I know is that if I’m real, if Alan Demming was once a living, breathing man, and that his soul was incased in his liver, neither of these men deserve it.
I rise from my seat, Brian cheering me on, dive my hand into the bowl, pick up the liver, take an enormous bite out of it, and wonder if Brian’s body has room enough for the three of us?
RAGE
Julia Madeleine
At first Tanya didn’t even notice the dog. All she saw was the naked man with his beer belly, running across four lanes of traffic at warp speed, his junk slapping back and forth, his bathrobe flapping out behind him like the cape on a superhero. And he was heading straight for her.
Tanya froze at the sight of his fat eager face and sucked in a breath that lodged in her throat. Her only thought was that this man was going to rape her. Rape her right there on a suburban sidewalk on a Sunday afternoon for all the neighbours to see. This, at the tender age of fourteen, was not how she wanted to lose her virginity.
