Little Deaths

by John F. D. Taff

  Suddenly, it took on depth, became three-dimensional.

  It was a hole again; the hole that had sucked at my fingers last night.

  It was oozy-shiny, raw and wet, coral pink at the edges.

  As Mutt’s fingers toyed with this orifice, he pushed himself up along Jesse’s body, positioned himself above her.

  I saw his erection bob into view, and I was horribly sure where he meant to put it.

  Something will want to get in…

  With a flash of insight Jesse would have been proud of, I realized what he was doing.

  He loved her—that much was evident. He hadn’t broken up with her a year ago; she’d broken up with him. Or, as was more likely, she simply drifted away from him, like an errant moon breaking orbit.

  Sometime after that, Mutt must have come to realize why he had lost her. It was for the same reason that I knew, standing there watching this, that I, too, would eventually lose her.

  I will put it to you bluntly.

  You could fuck Jesse, but you could never touch her heart.

  Mutt had tried, and she had ended up stealing away from him as a prisoner escapes from jail.

  She had stayed with me for so long because I had never tried.

  Never cared enough to bother.

  Mutt, though, had waited—waited until he had finally seen his chance.

  He had tattooed a hole, an entrance to Jesse’s heart, not a flower.

  Something will want to get in…

  Now, he was going to touch her heart in the only way he knew how… in the only way she knew how to let him.

  His back arched, his buttocks tensed.

  The curve of his back, so pronounced now that his knobby spine threatened to pop through the taut, shiny skin, flattened, drove down.

  The tattoo above Jesse’s heart accepted him.

  He pressed down to her chest, shuddered deeply, like a dog shaking off water.

  I could not watch any longer…

  Nearly falling into the room, I caught myself, stopped at the side of the chair as the two heaved and groaned near me.

  When I looked down, tears squeezed from Jesse’s closed eyes.

  Mutt turned his head sideways, grinned ravenously at me through his lank braids, grunted.

  In anger, I reached out, closed my hand around the first thing it touched.

  It glistened in the light, cold in my hand.

  With another move from me, it began vibrating in my hand, oddly comforting.

  Arcing it over my head, I brought it down hard onto that straining, undulating wall of muscle.

  Mutt screamed.

  It skipped over his skin like the needle of a kid’s cheap phonograph, leaving a meandering trail of red that looked like…

  … like I had drawn a ragged cut, a wound onto the unbroken flesh of his back.

  And it became one.

  Mutt wailed, his arms flailing behind him in an attempt to grasp the needle from my hand.

  But it was too late.

  Blood—or was it red dye?—gurgled from the wound, pooled across the ridges and scarps of his back, ran down Jesse’s sides and the cracked, autumn-gold vinyl of the reclining chair.

  Jesse screamed then, I think.

  At least, I hear her scream when I have my nightmare…

  I remember bringing the needle up again.

  The music was very loud.

  Mutt’s body flopped to the ground, didn’t move.

  Red dye, red tattoo dye was everywhere…

  I brought the needle down to Jesse.

  “I love you.”

  I said it. Or she said it.

  It doesn’t matter now.

  I remember her eyes then, wide and vacant, trying to stare up at the red blotch I had made on her forehead.

  * * *

  Now…

  That was a year and many states ago.

  I don’t even know the name of the city I’m staying in… one of those California names, ‘San’ something.

  I’m in a one-room apartment in a part of the city that’s so seedy it’s nearly fashionable.

  Jesse would have liked it.

  I often stand naked here at night, as I’m doing right now, with the lights of the bars and tattoo parlors winking at me reflecting off my body.

  I look in the mirror that hangs on the door in my room.

  And I remember what Jesse told me.

  When you make a hole in something—anything—something else will want to get in through it.

  Or out.

  I have tried, you see, to let it out…

  But so far, nothing.

  I am afraid that I am empty, devoid of love.

  Every square inch of my body is tattooed.

  I have shaved all of my hair, replaced it with tattoos.

  I have forgotten what color I was—black, white, yellow?

  It doesn’t matter.

  I have pierced every limb or appendage my body has to offer—my ears and nipples first, but then my eyebrows, nose, cheeks, navel, penis, scrotum, the webbing between my fingers.

  Last week, I had my tongue pierced and could not talk for three days.

  They did it by hammering a nail through it.

  And then I realized…

  It was so simple, really, when it came to me.

  Jesse would be proud.

  The holes were too small.

  Too small for my love to get out.

  It took me a little while to save up the money to buy it.

  The tired, disinterested clerk at the gun and liquor store told me that bullets—’dum-dums,’ he called them, I think—made the biggest holes.

  “That,” I smiled, “Is what I need, then.”

  When I saw myself smiling in the two-way mirror behind the man, I saw Mutt.

  I think this will work.

  I’m ready.

  I just hope that I will see Jesse when my love finally gets out.

  Because I will tell her that I love her…

  HELPING HANDS

  We shook hands the first time we met.

  How strange, now that I look back upon it.

  “Good afternoon, doctor,” he said, coming up from his seat in the parlor and rising to his full, towering height.

  I shook his hand, firm and strong, and there was seemingly nothing untoward, at this point, about Mr. Benjamin Craddock.

  Or his hands.

  Our first meeting was conducted just as his hideous malady had struck, and only days before his death.

  Are you sure you won’t join me in a scotch or brandy before we go on, doctor?

  No? I believe I will, however.

  We went together into my office, closed the door.

  “Please,” I said, “Have a seat on the couch or a chair, whichever you prefer.”

  “I prefer to be comfortable,” he said, avoiding the couch as if it were a ravenous beast, and sitting, topcoat and all, straight-backed in the nearby chair.

  “Your coat?”

  He dismissed me with a wave of his hand. “I think I’ll keep it for now. Maybe later, when you understand.”

  I thought little of it at that point. Though having been involved with alienism for only a very short time, I’ve learned to note, but pay little heed to, the specific obsessions or neuroses of my patients at this early stage.

  As I moved to my desk to get the wax cylinder for the recording machine—I record each of my sessions, have I told you? Marvelous machine. You really should look into one, keep up with the times and all that—I took the opportunity to observe Mr. Craddock.

  He looked about 45 years old, with a head of blonde hair and a weathered face, tanned and lined. He was tall, as I noted before, well over six feet, with broad shoulders and a massive, almost immobile neck.

  Mr. Craddock exhibited no interest in either his surroundings or what I was doing—unusual in that most first-time patients are very interested in both, signs of their discomfort.

  Taking the now clichéd seat at the head of the
couch, opposite Craddock’s own—I opened my notebook and placed the cylinder into the machine, which occupied a small table between us.

  “You do understand that I record all of my sessions…?”

  At this, he leapt up, his dark coat flapping about him like wings. “No, I do not, god damn you, sir! I’ll not be made a spectacle of between you and your infernal machine! You’ll not share my woes with your doctor friends!”

  “Really,” I said, attempting to calm him. “If you had so little opinion of me and my services, Mr. Craddock, why did you come here? The recordings are as private as my files. No one other than me has access to them. I can assure you—on my word as a gentleman, sir—complete confidentiality.”

  He stared at me for a moment, face flushed, hands wringing. “Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have come for your services, doctor,” he said, the last word dripping venom. “So, don’t let my presence here serve as proof of your sterling reputation. But I suppose the machine is acceptable… for now.”

  He subsided uneasily, took his seat.

  The entire exchange had, of course, been recorded. You’ve heard it, no doubt?

  I thought so.

  “I realize that this is uncomfortable for you, Mr. Craddock. But I can help only if you relax.”

  “All right,” he replied, still looking very tense.

  “Now, why don’t you tell me the problem?”

  This, rather unexpectedly, produced another strong response from my rather unwilling patient.

  “What?” he snapped, turning toward me. “No background? Nothing about my childhood? How can you possibly help me without first putting it into perspective?”

  In an instant, I realized that there was more to his reaction than discomfort or embarrassment over visiting someone in my profession.

  It was fear.

  “I’d rather hear about your problem first. Then we’ll get to your mother,” I said, hoping to inject a little levity to the conversation, but it was lost on him.

  Craddock twisted on the couch, and I noticed that his hands left dark, wet smears on the front of his coat.

  “My problem… yes. It has always been my problem, hasn’t it? That’s what my wife told me before I left. What my children said. My friends, when I had any. It’s kind of ironic, really.”

  This seemed more a rhetorical soliloquy, so I bade him continue.

  “Well, I see no way around this or to temper its effect on you. And I am paying you quite handsomely to listen to me babble. I suppose I’d best show you,” he said, rising again.

  “Show me…?” I began, but stopped when Craddock doffed the topcoat. He was dressed in a dark waistcoat, dark trousers, a plain white shirt and a dark blue cravat.

  He removed the waistcoat, pulled at the cravat.

  His shirt was loose and blousy on him, not at all the fashion these days.

  To my astonishment, though, something moved beneath it.

  Craddock didn’t look at me as he undid the buttons on his shirt quickly, savagely. He wore no undergarment beneath it to further cover what grew from the center of his chest.

  It was a hand.

  A perfectly formed, five-fingered adult hand.

  It hung limp from perhaps an inch of wrist that protruded from where Craddock’s sternum should have been, palm down, as if someone had reached through him.

  Fascinated, but trying not to appear overly so, I rose and stepped toward him.

  As if this did not astonish enough, the hand was a woman’s; pale, smooth and delicate, with a slender wrist and thin fingers, perfectly manicured. Although it grew from him, it seemed untouched by his ruddy skin coloring and his rather prodigious body hair.

  I poked at the hand with a pen, and it twitched, grabbed the pen, held it for a moment as if contemplating it, hurled it across the room in a spray of indigo ink.

  Startled, I stepped away, asked him to clothe himself, which he did eagerly.

  “I don’t see what you want me to help you with, Mr. Craddock,” I said, reseating myself and stopping the recording device. “You need the services of skilled medical doctor, not an alienist.”

  “The hell you say,” he spat, head still down as he buttoned his shirt. I watched, fascinated, as he wrestled the supernumerary appendage back inside the shirt. It fought his movements, poked through a gap between the buttons. He negligently swatted it back in, closed the material around it.

  “I know what I need. And I need an alienist, sir, not a surgeon.”

  He drew his waistcoat about him, then his topcoat, stood ramrod stiff next to the chair.

  “I don’t see what you expect me to do. You need to have that examined…”

  “Amputated?” he answered, staring coldly. “Is that what you were going to say?”

  I did not answer, but flushed guiltily.

  Indeed, that is exactly what I meant to say.

  Perhaps if he had listened, seen a surgeon, had it removed, it may have prevented what I will recount shortly.

  He moved toward the door as I struggled for something to say.

  “You’re just like the rest, sir. You don’t understand. I can no more cut it off than I could my own hands.

  “You see,” he said, drawing open the door, turning back toward me, and touching his chest where the extra limb spasmed beneath his clothing. “I can finally feel her.”

  He left me sitting there, and I shuddered at his last words.

  * * *

  Your brandy is excellent, doctor, and is proving most efficacious in relaxing me. No, that is not necessary, I feel most able to continue this tale without a rest. We must press on, lest the details overwhelm me prematurely.

  As one can imagine, the meeting stunned me, and I was quite unable to receive any more patients that day. I recall one of them was a gentleman of some import, a Mr. Richard Waddoes, who shortly thereafter killed himself.

  But, I digress.

  * * *

  The next I heard of Mr. Craddock was in the papers, of all things.

  I had been walking near Hyde Park after a meeting with my solicitor and had stopped to purchase the Times from a street vendor. It was an unusually balmy afternoon for October, so I decided to sit for a while, enjoy the weather, and read the paper.

  Imagine my shock when, upon snapping open the paper, I was confronted by a rather lurid engraving of Mr. Craddock accompanying an equally lurid story telling how he was the prime suspect in the murders of his wife and children. The bodies were discovered only recently, so the paper said, in Craddock’s estate in Aylesbury outside of London, he being a man of some wealth.

  Craddock was actively being sought by the local authorities and Scotland Yard for questioning, for he had not been seen since.

  Except, of course, by me.

  Evidence, so the paper said, indicated that the family had been strangled, the children so violently that their necks had been broken.

  I let the paper flutter away, was peripherally aware of a young urchin chasing after the pages, gathering them up no doubt to sell again.

  On the long walk home, all I could think of was that hand, slender and feminine and delicate, thrust out of the center of Craddock’s burly chest.

  Warm though the weather was, I took to my bed with a chill immediately upon my arrival home, and was forced to cancel my appointments for several days, referring them to a colleague, Dr. L_______.

  * * *

  Did I, at that time, ingest laudanum?

  Yes, but your unspoken accusation that I am or was a laudanum addict is quite preposterous. I have seen the terrible price paid by some of my less temperate colleagues, and have always been rather conservative when it comes to the substance.

  No, if there is anything I imbibe too much, I’m afraid it is merely spirits, and forgive my having yet another glass. We are coming to the heart of the tale, and I fear to share the details that have brought me to these lamentable straits.

  You’re sure that you can’t loosen…?

  No? Well, I
quite understand. Excuse my having asked again.

  * * *

  When I had recovered fully from my shock, I recalled my secretary and began scheduling appointments again and receiving patients. I had, at that time, made up my mind to alert the authorities to Craddock’s presence here in our city, and had sent a messenger to Scotland Yard requesting that an officer visit.

  A message returned, on a Tuesday morning I believe, informing me that a certain Inspector Lester from the Yard would pay me a call that afternoon.

  You find that hard to believe? No? You should. The very answer to my life’s calling right before me, shining like the sun, and me to blind to see it.

  I spent the morning with two of my most recalcitrant cases—frustrating, frustrating—and was about to leave for dinner at my club, when I heard an altercation in the parlor.

  Drawing on my coat, I was fully prepared to leave by the back door, so as not to be forced into accepting another unscheduled patient and miss my meal, when the front door burst open and a large figure dashed into the room.

  Craddock!

  My heart froze within me, my mouth very likely dangled open.

  Miss Delft, my dear secretary—whom, incidentally, I was forced to let go in the aftermath of these events. (Poor dear! How I do hope she is getting along well!)—had no idea who this man was, and was telling him in the most strident tone that he was not to bother me without an appointment.

  Craddock lurched to a halt, his dirty and tattered topcoat swaying around him, and pinned me with his burning eyes.

  He had the look of an animal, his features disheveled, ashen, drained of all human intelligence, primal instinct alone remaining.

  And pure, unreasoning fear.

  A thin line of spittle fell from his lips to the expensive Persian carpet, which elicited a gasp of disapproval from Miss Delft.

  “It is all right, Miss Delft,” I said, when I could find my faculties. “I will see the gentleman. You may leave for the day.”

  She gave me a most unbelieving look, as if I taken leave of my senses, but acceded and closed the door as she left, leaving me alone with a murderer.