I hoped.
I tried my newfound articulatory confidence on the operator when the bus arrived, spewing sludge over my legs as it slid to a halt twelve feet past the stop, turning a dapper pair of slate polycotton khakis into a soggy gray waste of a hundred dollars. Suppressing my natural inclination to let the driver know of my dissatisfaction with his job performance thus far — happy or not, I still needed to get to the audition, my car being trapped in the garage by a waist-high snowdrift pressing against the door, and wreaking havoc on the driver through sonic assault would not get me there any faster — I hawked up a garbled “Good morning” as I slowly walked up the stairs and paid the fare. He blanched slightly and stifled a burp, but smiled a weak grin in response.
How the audition would go, I had no idea. I’d probably have to speak up a bit.
My luck as it pertained to bus seating accessibility held fast, and I nabbed the only remaining seat near the rear exit. I mmm-hmmm’d an acknowledgment of the day’s goodness to my elderly seatmate’s pleasant salutation and watched as she clutched at her chest for a moment. Satisfied that this was not the big one, not today anyway, she took on the deadpan stare of the seasoned bus rider and gazed blankly out the window, the lives of others slowly scrolling by.
I prodded at my meatball surgery scars through the Gore-Tex of my coat. The cold wasn’t worrisome to me, but shuffling through downtown Toronto in a thin shirt at minus twenty plus windchill might draw unwarranted attention from even the jaded populace of the Big Smoke. The construction seemed to be holding, but I’d have to avoid bending forward at the waist too quickly or the skin would tear around my ramshackle rivets and the whole of me would burst forth like a Wes Craven piñata.
The bus ground to a halt and more denizens entered, brushing snow off shoulders and stamping feet clean of muck. A few more stops and the bus was crammed full, stopping only to allow citizens outside to realize the futility of attempting to wedge themselves into a mobile sweat lodge. The stink of wet wool and steamed armpits suffused all available air, dulling the senses of the passengers and effectively disguising the scent of rotting meat I was sure emanated off me. I had finally decided a sponge bath was the most appropriate course of cleansing available to me considering the delicacy of my circumstances, but you can never get truly clean by wiping yourself down with a damp washcloth. I had applied a layer of talcum to my body after toweling off, and doused myself with brand-name odor suppressant after choosing an appropriate ensemble, but I was certain the aroma of interrupted eternal slumber radiated off me.
Bodies bumped and swayed against each other, the bus gradually making its way into the heart of the city. I allowed my mind to drift. Normally I would be preparing for the reading by running lines in my head, or working on possible character motivations and sense memories I could draw from. Blind line readings were both a blessing and a curse for actors as they allowed for a great deal of on-the-spot improvisation and immediacy but did not permit in-depth preparation. The only thing you could work with was you, and if your you wasn’t up to snuff, we’ll call you.
It wasn’t my audition and the prospect of actual money and long-term career advancement that ate up my thoughts. Partly it was the remnants of Fisher moldering in my bathtub. A little more than partly was my absolute intention, when the day’s tasks were completed, to have another nosh on fresh rump roast of paramour.
I wondered at my lackadaisical attitude toward Fisher and his demise at my hands/teeth. Was it symptomatic of the condition that I necessarily forego empathy with my food? My fondness for animals was a prime motivator for my on-again/off-again bouts of vegetarianism, but I thought that option now off the table. Or was it that, after four months, I still had no emotional connection to the dazzling young lover who occasionally shared my bed and made me passable egg-white omelets in the morning?
Was I a standard zombie, or an awful human being?
I had rarely formed meaningful attachments as a child. Eileen was a major impediment to happiness, her allegiance to all things biblical forcing me to sublimate my natural instincts to maintain a semblance of household harmony. When I left home, her claws were still embedded in my spirit, and the sense of freedom I felt at walking away from her front door was triumphed only by the sense of shame of wanting to be myself. And so the charade continued; Eileen’s duty-bound son Sheldon was only another persona for the CV of a struggling actor. It was easier to find a decent agent in a city teeming with actors than it was to confront eighteen years of evangelical shame. It took me another three years to summon up the courage for a sexual encounter that would wipe clean Mom’s indoctrination techniques, and her force of will has kept a constant presence within my id and ego ever since.
I tried to recall why Fisher and I had ever hooked up. For me, it was obvious: he was a fit young object of desire who approached his recent coming-out with the predictable enthusiasm of the unexpectedly paroled. Fisher was excited to be himself for the first time in who knows how long, possessed of inexhaustible ardor and a body like sculpted chocolate. We met at a production of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author I was performing in at the Berkeley Street Theatre. It was opening night, and my portrayal of The Father had not gone over well — the part is nothing but goddamned monologues concerning philosophical theories of identity, and I had unthinkingly repeated a few lines when I had lost my place, hearing the giggles out in the dark and flushing with ignominy. I was ergo fully in the cups when the director, Hamish, minced up to me and introduced the appetizing youthful gentleman next to him as “the luscious Fisher, my newest discovery, an actor of raw talent and limitless potential.” Just “Fisher”; no indication of first or last name, no hint of a nickname, and never once had I felt compelled to dig any deeper.
I told Ham to fuck the hell off and die for once, and blurted to Fisher to run for the exit and don’t look back, that unless Ham’s newest discovery had ten inches or more on his person, his raw talent would be stuck doing understudy roles and chorus parts until Ham “discovered limitless potential” in someone else’s boxers in the back alley. Ham huffed a pithy exit line (“Fuck you, you dried-up queenie cunt,” I think, very original) and flounced away, dragging his protégé behind him. Fisher caught up with me outside as I was haggling with a cab driver over how far ten bucks would get me (tip included), and offered me a ride home on his Vespa. One lift turned into a night’s worth of heavy panting, we shared a laugh over the scathing online reviews of my performance the next morning, and Ham’s ward became my newest distraction from a life of immeasurable disappointment.
Fisher’s attraction to me was an inexplicable happening, given my (only in comparison) advanced age and severely bitter frame of mind. He never explained it, I never pushed for more, and whatever it was quickly became a comfortable arrangement. He’d disappear for a few days at a time, but I recalled my own shame-based explorations into a newfound land of sexual liberation and never begrudged him his carnal autonomy. I was just depressed enough with my placement in the cosmos to simply be thankful for diversions.
But that was all there was to it. I rarely inquired into his personal life before the switch, as he put it, and most of his new friends were my acquaintances already, so for me life continued much as it did before, albeit with more anal. Fisher was my coital version of Sofa; sometimes there when I needed comfort, sometimes not, and always, when he was hungry or horny, I became the center of his universe for a brief period. We were not soulmates, we were hardly two ships that bumped rudders in the night, we were not star-crossed lovers, we did not each fill that emptiness in the other, we were not each other’s missing piece.
We were venereal associates.
So in retrospect it was not surprising I harbored no deep yearning for Fisher beyond superficial. What was unexpected was how effortless the shift was from the sexual to the nutritional. Fisher was always an object, rarely anything more.
Before death, he was enter
tainment.
AD, he was brunch.
Did a lion worry about lack of remorse when felling a gazelle? Did a Great White ponder the seal pup’s last desperate thoughts? Does a country singer get a lump in his throat as he unloads an M-16 into a rabbit warren? Why was I upset about Fisher in the abstract but not in the particular?
Most of my brain, however, was consumed with worry over the television news report I had watched that morning while I busied myself with removing all traces of Fisher’s effluence from the house, wiping down all countertops and walls with generous spritzes of cleaning fluid. The morning anchorperson droned on in the background, his soothing baritone reporting on pods of whales that had beached themselves in Australia and some U.S. senator who was hell-bent on removing all environmental restrictions and drilling for oil wherever she damned well felt like it — her words — before switching over to local matters. The anchor, tie expertly knotted, hair coifed to exacting standards, teeth whiter than the feathers of doves, wrapped up a softer-than-soft news segment with an update on a paperboy who heroically insisted on continuing his daily rounds despite having lost both his arms in an industrial accident (lawsuit still pending), before launching into his serious voice once again.
In what police have labeled a “strange case of grave robbing,”
I snapped to attention, my joints arguing at the suddenness.
a morgue attendant was viciously assaulted at Toronto General Hospital late last night. Cherie Elin is live on the scene and has this report. We’d like to warn our more sensitive viewers beforehand, some of the details and images may be disturbing. Cherie, what can you tell us?
The picture switched to a two-shot, the anchor now situated on the left within the safe confines of the studio, to the right a digital box displaying a young woman standing just outside the hospital lobby. The blizzard was in its death throes, and her face was being battered by the elements. Her hair, like the anchor’s, was immoveable, withstanding the punishing wind with ease.
Lorne, a hospital is usually perceived as a place of healing. Early this morning, that belief was shattered as the Toronto General Hospital became an ironic scene of gruesome violence.
The report switched to voiceover, and images of the morgue flashed onto the screen. There was a lot of red splashed about.
At approximately 1:30 a.m., Craig Neal, an attendant at Toronto General, was forcibly attacked by an unknown assailant or assailants while in the course of his duties. Neal sustained major trauma to both arms, but it is the opinion of specialists that he will eventually make a full recovery.
Switch to a full-body shot of Craig sitting on a cot, looking miserable and doped up, both arms swathed in full casts. The moldings jutted from his shoulders, metal rods holding them upright from a thick belt around his waist.
Even stranger than the attack itself is Neal’s repeated assertion to this reporter that there was in fact no outside attacker involved, and that the wounds he has sustained are the result of an altercation with one of the hospital’s recently deceased arrivals.
Close-up on Craig speaking into a microphone held before him, his eyes watery, words pharmaceutically slurred, his story absolute proof of his insanity.
“Yeah, I swear, this body came in, we were starting the autopsy, it, he, this guy we had cut open, I took the heart out, he, he just got right up off the table and attacked me. He grabbed me and broke both my arms.”
“What happened next?” the reporter’s voice asked off-camera.
“I passed out.”
“But a body attacked you, is that what you’re saying?”
“Yeah, a body. He got up, broke my arms, and left. Oh, he bit me, too.”
Craig wiggled the fingers of his left hand, bluish little sausages squirming at the end of his cast.
“Kind of tingles a bit. Can’t feel much, though. These drugs are awesome.”
The picture switched to generic shots of the hospital’s interior hallways.
Despite Neal’s story, hospital officials have stated in a press release that there is no truth to this account, which they have put down to an unfortunate misinterpretation of the night’s events brought about through a combination of the trauma of the attack and the pain medication Neal was on at the time of our interview. They stand firm that there was one or possibly two assailants involved, but that is the extent of their knowledge at this time. Officials have also refused to remark on the rumor that a body was taken from the morgue, but Captain Melissa Palmer confirmed the disappearance in her statement.
The captain’s face filled the frame, the bottom of the screen dotted with handheld mikes.
“At this time, we do not have any leads as to the reason for this attack. I can confirm a body has gone missing from the grounds of the hospital some time this morning. We are working on the hypothesis that the two events are connected, and that the victim either witnessed the theft or was ambushed beforehand. At present, he is in no condition to provide a full account, and we hope to gain a better picture of the incident in a few hours. That’s all for now, thank you.”
Switching back to the two-shot, the anchor wore his concerned-for-the-safety-of-the-citizenry face, the reporter just looked tired. She consulted her notes as she completed her report, barely holding on to the papers fluttering in her hand.
At present, Lorne, the police have not released a name in connection with whomever’s body was taken, but an anonymous source within the hospital has stated that the body was admitted under the alias “John Doe,” which is common code for persons of unknown identity. The hospital’s surveillance video has been seized to aid the investigation, but police will neither confirm nor deny that a man was seen leaving the hospital and running into last night’s snowstorm soon after the attack.
The anchor thanked her for her diligence, and assured the viewers that they would have more information on the story the moment it became available. Then, more soft news, a Pomeranian who could bark the tune of “O Canada.”
I let this sink in for awhile as I fed Sofa, gave her five uninterrupted minutes of head-scratching pleasure, and went to the bedroom to decide on a suitable audition ensemble, something loose to hide my lumpy torso. The police might be able to get a picture from a video, but without a name they’d still have a difficult time tracking me down.
I looked about the bus at the riders, at the press of humanity I was suddenly no longer a member of. Was I alone in all this? It seemed ludicrous that I could be the only heartbeat-challenged person on the planet. But someone had to be first, right? The odds were against it being me, but there were odds. It stood to reason someone had to be a patient zero. I made a quick mental note to purchase lottery tickets on the way home.
And if this were all actually happening — if this wasn’t all some bizarre last-ditch effort of my dying brain to give me one last astonishingly realistic dream before it turned out the lights and sent everyone home — what did it mean for reality outside of myself? If people could arise from the grave and walk around, take the bus, make small talk, interview for employment opportunities; if people could do this, what other mythocultural beings might be wandering about the face of the Earth? I searched the faces of my busmates, looking for anything out of the usual. There was a particularly gothy-looking emo kid near the front: was he a zombie who had found a way to live in plain sight? Were those reputed “haunted houses” that seemed to find a place in every neighborhood’s folklore actually infected with the spirits of long-dead inhabitants too stupid to float into the light? Could there be honest-to-goodness vampires haunting the suburbs? Worse, would they be sparkly? Could clans of werewolves be running through the forests, feasting on Boy Scout campsites? Was a family of Sasquatch running the Mountain Equipment Co-op? A Minotaur eking out a living as a short-order cook? Were outer-space aliens to blame for every unexplained disappearance since they taught the Aztecs complex binomial theorems far beyond the compre
hension of MIT graduate students?
Maybe I am death itself, I mused. The physical manifestation of the Grim Reaper, on Earth to claim souls for harvest. At this point, was that so absurd a suggestion? I had always liked wearing hoodies, but shouldn’t one have been supplied beforehand? Did I have to purchase a scythe at Canadian Tire? Should I keep the receipt?
I needed a test. My seatmate was not wearing gloves, and had her hands lying flat on her lap. I daintily placed a fingertip atop the right hand and watched her closely, seeing if she would keel over at my touch.
She moved her hands away with a sniff. I reached over and placed my whole hand over hers. “Do you mind?” she asked. This wasn’t working. I pressed down, harder; maybe it would take a moment to kick in.
“I have got mace in my purse, asswipe,” she wheezed, “and I am not afraid to use it.” I pulled my hand away and offered a smile of apology. She sniffed and edged away toward the window.
So. Dead then, but not death.
The old woman pulled at the signal to stop and pushed herself past me and into the aisle. As she shuffled herself around my knees, her hands, ungloved, brushed against my jacket and I got a whiff of her scent, buried underneath layers of eau de toilette and Gold Bond Medicated Powder. Pungent, animal. My mouth was immediately saturated with saliva, and a thin stream of drool escaped my lips and trickled down my chin. My breakfast of Fisher had kick-started my autonomic reactions concerning food, apparently. I could see the blood beneath her skin, briskly swimming corpuscles doing laps around her ancient pool. Her heartbeat throbbed arrhythmically in my good ear. The world around me blurred red, and all was blood and hunger. I leaned forward, my mouth cranked itself open, my jaw popping as it gaped past the manual’s recommended limit and my teeth bared themselves and snapped at the air where the woman had been seconds before.
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