Inflictions

by John McIlveen

Physically, she was an Americanized version of her mother, a bolder and more solid reproduction. Like her mother’s, her hair was black silk, so lustrous it appeared blue. She had the same almond eyes staring deliciously from above high, sharp cheekbones. The only visual difference being that Suzi was six inches taller and twenty-five pounds heavier. She had the body of the All-American girl.

  Tippi had carefully chosen the name Suzi, because it and the girl smacked of both Japan and America; you would never be sure without asking.

  I showed Suzi to a barker as he bellowed of the terrors in The Devil’s Den. Stale air and the smell of dead wood were the only ghosts in that haunted house. He shook his head at the picture and shrugged an apology, then offered me a trip into hell. I told him I’d already been there.

  Another yelled of freaks and oddities, of Lucas, the two-headed man, of Belle, the world’s fattest woman, of Carla, the human wound, and of Micky, the world’s smallest man. He too offered me nothing but a view into The World of Weirdness. Madam Zorak had nothing to share, but for five dollars could read my fortune—who knows what it would reveal? I paid her twenty not to.

  Well into the night I asked, begged, and cried, but received only looks of sorrow and mistrust. Some would ask questions or wish me good luck, but most just wordlessly shook their head.

  Nothing could have prepared me for the death of my soul, for the murder of what remained of my heart. I had never experienced such emptiness—an undiluted sense of helplessness, like an astronaut who breaks the umbilical from the ship then drifts too far. I knew at one point in my insignificant life that the possibility of not finding Suzi was the worst thing that could happen. I had never been so wrong.

  I had just viewed Belle, the world’s fattest woman, and the almost laughable sight of Micky, the world’s smallest man, perched comfortably on the meaty pillow of her belly.

  I pushed the curtain aside to view the next curiosity. What I saw was a nightmare in flesh. Suzi, or Carla the Human Wound, recognized me immediately. The revulsion I felt when I first saw her was indescribable, though I did not recognize her. The woman, only distinguishable by the swell of breasts in her dark blue bikini top, rose from her chair as I entered the viewing room. A knowing smile seemed to appear on her ravaged face as she neared the glass.

  Gaping scars crossed every viewable surface of her body, parallel furrows bisecting every half-inch. She posed, distending her chest, presenting her legs, arms, and back, as if she were a prize bodybuilder. She ran her fingers down the length of her leg, following the course of the channels in her skin.

  Smaller ravines ran from her chin, mouth, nose, and eyes to her ears, which were tattered ribbons of flesh and cartilage. That is when I recognized her … Suzi. Those almond-shaped eyes, just like Tippi’s, were the only recognizable part of the once beautiful girl.

  Her upper lip was split under the nose, giving her mouth a cleft feline appearance, and whatever remained of her lovely oil-black hair was now a patchwork of stubble and scar tissue.

  I watched benumbed as Suzi performed. She modeled with a fervor she probably showed to no other customer. Today’s audience was special. Suzi advanced to the Plexiglas wall, her eyes locked with mine, and that smile, that ghastly smile, fixed on her face. Merely inches apart, our faces divided by only half an inch of plastic, Suzy licked the glass. Her tongue was divided into three even strips.

  I ran from the sideshow, horrified and appalled, trying to escape the incredible blackness that threatened to fold over me. It fluttered at the edge of my consciousness, some horrendous truth, like enormous bat wings that wanted to trap and smother me. I collapsed beside a booth outside, fighting the nausea that coiled like snakes in my stomach.

  How could she do that to herself?

  Why?

  What would make someone do that?

  I knelt in the dirt, shaking and sobbing as people walked warily past.

  “Come with me,” someone said. Belle, the world’s fattest woman, helped me onto my shaking legs then led me to a Winnebago. I didn’t resist; I was too weak.

  I followed her into the trailer and she motioned me to sit at a small table. “Wait here,” she said and left the camper, which rose significantly with her departure. Inside, it was surprisingly clean and smelled of coffee and fried onions. On the counter near the sink was an open bag of Canada Mints, so commonplace in a world that had just become so alien and foreboding.

  “Hello, father,” she said. Her words ill-formed on the tattered strips of her tongue. She came through a doorway at the far end of the camper, wearing an emerald-green robe and looking so normal through the dimness of the tight hallway. She carried a bag of cotton balls and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. She set them on the table and sat across from me.

  “Suzi?” I said, feeling sick, saddened, and very uneasy.

  “Carla, please. Suzi died four years ago.” She raised her leg on the bench beside her, freeing it from the housecoat and exposing the web of scars. “Why’d you come here?” she asked, her question whistling, but logical from her tortured mouth.

  “Tippi … your mother died two years ago,” I told her. I was rattled and had a tremendous desire to run, to escape this nightmare and run until I could run no longer.

  “Yes, I know. Killed herself.” She uncapped the alcohol and poured some into a shallow saucer and looked at me. “I knew that was coming. We had different ways of escaping you, she was just better at it.” Her words confirmed what I had already known, though a small part of me had vainly hoped differently.

  She took a single-edge razor blade from her robe pocket and unwrapped it. She dipped it in the alcohol, and then ran the blade deftly along a rut on her calf, opening a narrow line of blood inside the existing wound. My body contracted in an icy convulsion, and the blackness threatened again. I felt as if I’d just grabbed a live wire.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s a living,” she said, and then accusingly, “it’s a life.” She dabbed a cotton ball in the alcohol, then ran it along the fresh wound. Her jaw tightened slightly.

  “Isn’t it odd,” she said, displaying the blood-tinged swab, “that the same spirit that cleanses my wounds rotted your soul?”

  “You’re on the wagon now, right?” she asked. “Reformed?”

  “I’m trying. It’s been a few months.”

  “A little fucking late, wouldn’t you say?”

  I was defenseless. I could say nothing. She ran the blade along another wound.

  “Why do you do this, Suzi? Carla?”

  “They’re Novocain. These wounds hurt less than others, but they help take my mind off the bigger and deeper ones.” She swabbed at the slice in her leg.

  I could sense something bigger than life creeping up on me. Like a stalking cat, it stopped every time I tried to focus on it.

  “They’re my protection and my savior,” she was saying, her distorted voice barely audible above the pulse pounding in my head and in my ears. “My guarantee that no man—no bastard—can ever hurt me again.”

  Sweat ran down my back, from my brow into my eyes, stinging as it mixed with my tears.

  She opened her robe, exposing her mutilated breasts. Revulsion and remorse attacked me, a feral beast tearing at my heart. I screamed at the pain.

  “What’s wrong, Daddy?” She spit. “You don’t find it attractive anymore, Daddy?”

  There it was. Like the boy who discovers the forgotten bag of marbles hidden on the top shelf, it all came tumbling down on my head. Sneaking into her room, pushing the chair under the doorknob. Ignoring her terrified eyes and her tears. Hiding from Tippi. Hiding from myself.

  Suzi closed her robe, her eyes burning into me. For once she had the upper hand. For once she was the tormentor. I lowered my head to the table and covered my ears, trying to block the truth, hoping it was all an illusion.

  “Please leave,” she said. “I don’t want you here. I don’t need you opening old wounds. I do that fine on my own.”

  What could
I say or do? I’m sorry would be a colossal insult. It wouldn’t amount to a speck of dust in the universe of irreparable harm I caused her. Devastated by self-disgust, I rose without a word and left.

  Shortly after, I returned to the camper with two suitcases. One contained several of Tippi’s personal items that I hoped Suzi might want; the other contained the cash from the sale of the house.

  “These aren’t mine,” I told her, and slid the two suitcases in. I know that I could never correct what had happened in our lives, and I wasn’t going to pretend that the money and Tippi’s belongings were a token of such. I stated it as it was. They were not mine. I had done nothing to earn any of it.

  Suzi dismissed me with a nod of her head and returned to her handiwork.

  I left with nothing, which was truly my own.

  Jerks

  1

  Kelly sensed him standing behind her.

  The Jerk!

  He was stealthy, especially for someone with the body mass of your average Sumo wrestler. She hadn’t even heard him enter the office.

  The Jerk reached around Kelly from behind and dropped a Bible-thick stack of papers on her desktop. Kelly tensed and warily eyed his pudgy, liver-spotted hand as it hovered above the oak veneer. The Jerk retracted his hand, rubbing it firmly against Kelly’s left breast.

  Anger washed over Kelly like the vile, sinus-burning aftershave The Jerk, Jake Henneman—the owner of the felonious hand—had bathed in.

  Two months earlier, Kelly had accepted a promotion to administrative assistant, delighted she finally had more to show for her two years of mind-numbing night classes than the dark crescents that lay like hammocks beneath her eyes.

  Alas, goodbye production line … hello pervert.

  Until now, Kelly had tolerated old Jake’s escalating lewdness, hoping by ignoring the porcine, cigar-chewing degenerate’s advances he’d give up the venture. She had endured the countless fondling fingers on her back, and the nearly as frequent shoulder rubs, when she would actually feel the heat of his crotch against her back. She had shrugged off his hints of how beneficial a tryst can be for job security. Kelly might have even suffered through this, but this was yet another sweltering load in the shit-pile of a day she was having.

  Her morning had taken off with the flair of a three-legged race horse. Hardly a mile from her house, she had been handed a hefty speeding ticket by a cop who had as much civil manner as an infected Doberman, and walked as if his nightstick was jammed up his ass to hold his back straight.

  And then there was the coffee …

  Kelly loved her cup of java in the morning. It was her booster shot, a much-needed jab in the attitude to yank her through the AM with hopes—mostly false—that the day might become better. Kelly knew she should have turned the Bronco around and headed back to bed when she saw the grammatically nightmarish sign reading Back in 15 minits awkwardly taped to the drive-up window. Instead, she detoured to the Donut Dungeon, where she was served the nastiest batch of lukewarm sludge ever brewed. It was not the brush with ecstasy their ads promised.

  But even that was preferable to …

  Jake kneaded Kelly’s shoulders, panting like a pug and frisking her like a faith healer as his jowls quivered and swayed above her. He said something, but he may as well have been speaking in tongues. The angry, waspish buzz of Kelly’s rage drowned out his words.

  The wheezing maggot’s going to start humping my arm! Kelly thought, and sure enough, the pasty-skinned reprobate pushed his crotch determinedly against Kelly’s right arm.

  Kelly slowly spun in her chair and looked up at Jake. She suggestively licked her lips—and slammed her elbow into Jake’s crotch, twice.

  Jake sucked in a long, whistling breath and fell to his knees, hissing and sputtering like an empty whipped cream can.

  “Oh my,” said Kelly. “Your nuts seem to have bumped my elbow.”

  The ever-present beads of sweat on Jake’s forehead quickly became a river. He fell to the Stainmaster and gasped like a beached carp, his rotund belly bouncing with pain-driven paroxysms.

  “Yarpffhh!” he said.

  “What’s that?” asked Kelly.

  “Yarpffhh!” repeated Jake.

  “Did you say you’re fucked?” Kelly stood and slowly poured her can of Diet Coke over Jake’s contorted face. “You’re right, you are. Consider this my retirement, you disgusting blubber lump.” She grabbed her jacket from the coat rack and stormed out of the office.

  Melissa Valby, the company receptionist, looked up from her Vogue magazine, cocked her head, and furrowed her brow. She was owl-eyed and cute, but looked as if she had the mental aptitude of an eggplant.

  “Leaving early, Miss Braun?” Melissa asked.

  “You could say that,” snapped Kelly.

  Melissa leaned forward and whispered, “Is that freaking pig at it again?” Her eyes became even wider, threatening to eject from her sockets.

  Kelly stopped at the door. “Yes he is, but I don’t think he’ll be in a titty-rubbing mood for a while. Not until his balls crawl down from his throat.”

  Soothed by the illuminating grin on Melissa’s face, Kelly exited the company for the last time. Stepping from the tinted-glass dimness of the air-conditioned offices, the sunlight was staggering. A mild breeze brushed her bangs away from her face. The tantalizing scent of hickory drifted from The Leaky Ladle, a restaurant across the street. It was bold, woody, and so sweet it made her want to puke. She raised her face to the cloudless May sky.

  Perfect day to slam your boss in the pouch and quit your job, she thought bitterly.

  Kelly walked to her twenty-two-year-old Ford Bronco, which was as blue and loyal as any beaten dog, and had enough Bondo spots to make it look like a Dalmatian.

  She loved Broncos, and had wanted to own one since her early teens. She particularly liked the look of the front grill, which seemed to give the Bronco personality, a face with a friendly yet bewildered expression. Her fondness might also stem from the fact that she lost her cherry in the back of a midnight blue Bronco, locked in a bout of twisted clothing, tousled hair, and the awkward gasps and grasps of adolescence. It was the first time Kelly had experienced a genuine, penis-inflicted orgasm. A tender seven minutes that would always be etched in her memory. Sadly, Ford ceased the production of Broncos in 1996, favoring the less appealing, daft-looking Explorer.

  She slipped onto the faded blue leather captain’s chair, entering a sunbaked inferno, thick with the aroma of vanilla air freshener, Jontue, and old exhaust. This increased her urge to vomit. She quickly rolled down the windows and checked the Bronco’s clock console, which displayed 9:47 in weakly lit aqua digits. This meant it was nearly 1:00 PM. She had never learned how to set it.

  The faithful rig started on the second crank with a cacophony of shrieking belts and clacking pistons. The tailpipe rattled violently and snapped off an ear-rending backfire, surrendering a carbon-choked mushroom worthy of Hiroshima to the crystalline sky, and probably knocking out dentures for half a mile.

  Safe within her truck, Kelly looked at the aluminum and brick structure that had been her place of employment for nearly five years. It had been a good job until she accepted that promotion.

  … until that jerk!

  Now she was unemployed because that corpulent kielbasa couldn’t control his testosterone. She thought she had earned the promotion through merit, not looks, but now she questioned it.

  Kelly had never felt her looks could warrant a promotion. She felt attractive in a unique Drew Barrymore kind of way, not extraordinarily beautiful, but certainly not a troll. Yet, like Drew, sexuality oozed from her like sap from a maple, and adhered to anyone within oozing range. Her features were not pretty by some standards: the tip of her nose was too rounded, her cheekbones weren’t sharp enough, her lips were too full, and her eyebrows were too high. It seemed fate had tried its damnedest to make her homely, but couldn’t get it right. For some fortunate reason, her inelegant features worked surprising
ly well when combined.

  Her thick, auburn hair spilled over her shoulders in suave waves, though too many rendezvous with Miss Clairol had taken a toll on the shine. Her natural color was a basic brown that, to her, was as appealing as mascara on a warthog. Miss Clairol would stay.

  Kelly’s eyes, her most alluring feature, seemed to embrace a light of their own. Vivid and blue, they demanded attention. Almost as much as a certain other pair she possessed.

  Kelly’s remarkable bounty seemed somewhat incongruous on her otherwise thin frame. If such an allotment of fatty tissue resided anywhere else on her body, it would be regarded as a deformity. Since she carried it on her chest, it earned fervent admiration, yet seemed the core of many troubles, primarily from lusting males and envious females, although an occasional female hankered for them.

  Melissa, the doe-eyed receptionist, had once bemoaned the injustice of needing two rolls of Charmin to fill out her B-cups, while Kelly split the seams on double Ds. Kelly didn’t agree with Melissa’s estimation of injustice. … Melissa still had a job.

  Kelly had considered breast reduction surgery, making it as far as the doctor’s office. She sat, naked to the waist, waiting for an opinion while the prospective surgeon kneaded and poked at her like a proud baker with his best Panini.

  “Why mess with perfection?” the good doctor asked after the examination.

  Kelly sighed and noticed the jerk at his office window, trying to beckon her back into the building. He moved gingerly, with a slight bow, like a newly spayed tomcat. Kelly took a moment to gloat. She locked eyes with Jake, smiled smugly and flipped him the finger.

  She would have to hire a lawyer and retaliate somehow, but right now she just wanted to be home. She slammed the Bronco into reverse, but the SUV lurched and stalled with another blast from the tailpipes. She sheepishly started the vehicle again and drove off amidst a torrent of emotions. Anger merged with pride, relief, and sprinkled with a dose of fear at the prospect of being jobless. Kelly had never been unemployed before, but the idea of not facing that wheezing pachyderm every morning was certainly appealing. Fortunately, frugality was one of Kelly’s better traits and she had managed to build a respectable stash by salting away the meager remains of her paychecks, after her monthly obligations were met. She figured she had two months to find a job before she ran out of cash and would need to attack her 401k. Maybe three months if she didn’t eat or drink anything.