Zippered Flesh: Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad!
Page 11
I don’t have a high forehead. I don’t have any hair at all, anymore. No mustache. Not even eyebrows. I don’t have blue eyes. (Probably, neither did Einstein.) I don’t look like Einstein in the slightest. I don’t own a graduation gown, and I never completed a college course.
But picture me that way. I am pointing at a home movie screen with my official pointer. On the screen is a projection of a young man who has shaved himself bald and who wears a tattered Army uniform with a Clerical Corps patch on the right shoulder, half peeled off. The young man has his back to the home movie camera. He is playing a TV-tennis game. This is one of the first video games, old school. Each player is given a knob that controls a vertical white dash designating the “tennis racket,” one to each half of the television screen. On a field of blank gray, the two white dashes bandy between them a white blip, the “tennis ball.”
With a flick of the knob, snapping the dash/racket up or down, one knocks the blip past the other electronic paddle and scores a point. Jabbing here and there at the movie screen, I indicate that the game is designed for two people. I nod my head sagely. But this mysterious young man manipulates left and right knobs with both hands at once. (If you look closely at his hands, you’ll note that the index finger of his left hand is missing. The index finger of his right hand is missing, too.) Being left-handed, when he first began to play himself, the left hand tended to win. But he establishes perfect equilibrium in the interactive poles of his parity. The game is designed to continue incessantly until 15 points are scored by either side. He nurtured his skill until he could play against himself for long hours, beeping a white blip with euphoric monotony back and forth between wrist-flicks, never scoring a point for either hand.
He never wins, he never loses, he establishes perfect equilibrium.
The movie ends, the professor winks, the young man has at no time turned to face the camera.
My practical joke was programmed to compose an Equilibrium for Robin Hobbes and his family. Is it Karma? Are the Composers the agents of Karma? No. There is no such thing as Karma: That is why the Composers are necessary. To redress the negligence of God. We try. But in establishing the Equilibrium—something far more refined than vengeance—we invariably create another imbalance, for justice cannot be precisely quantified. And the new imbalance gives rise to a contradictory inversity, and so the Perfect and Mindless Dance of Equilibrium proceeds. For there to be a premise, there must somewhere exist its contradiction.
Hence, I present my clue to the Hobbes conundrum, encrypted in a reversal of the actual situation.
In the nomenclature of the Composers, a snake symbolizes an octopus. The octopus has eight legs, the snake is legless. The octopus is the greeting, the snake is the reply; the centipede is the greeting, the worm is the reply.
And so I selected the following document, an authentic missive—a true story, in every detail—illicitly obtained from a certain obsessive cult overseen by the Composers. I mailed the document to the Hobbes family as my clue, offered in all fairness. It was the inverted foreshadowing. It read as follows:
My dear, dear Tonto,
You recall, I assume, that Perfect and Holy Union I myself ordained, in my dominion as High Priest—the marriage of R. and D., Man and Wife in the unseeing eyes of the Order, they were obligated to seek a means of devotion and worship, in accordance with their own specialties and proclivities. I advised them to jointly undertake the art of Sensual Communion with the Animus, and this they did, and still they were unsatisfied. Having excelled in the somatic explorations that are the foundation of the Order, they were granted leave to follow the lean of their own inclinations. Thus liberated, they settled on the fifth Degree in Jolting, the mastery of self-modification. They sought out a surgeon who, for an inestimable price, fused their bodies into one. They became Siamese twins, the woman joined to his right side. They were joined at the waist through an unbreakable bridge of flesh. This grafting made sexual coupling, outside of fondling, nearly impossible. The obstacle, as we say in the Order, is the object. But R. was not content. Shorn of normal marital relations, R.’s latent homosexuality surfaced. He took male lovers and his wife was forced to lie beside the copulating men, forced to observe everything, and advised to keep her silence except in the matter of insisting on latex condoms. At first this stage left her brimming with revulsion; but she became aware that through the bridge of flesh that linked them she was receiving, faintly at first and then more strongly, her husband’s impressions. In this way, she was vicariously fulfilled and, in the fullness of time, no longer objected when he took to a homosexual bed. R’s lovers accepted her presence, as if she were the incarnate spirit of the frustrated feminine persona that was the mainspring of their inner clockwork. But when their new complacency was established, the obstacle diminished. It became necessary to initiate new somatic obstacles. Inevitably, another woman was surgically added to the Siamese coupling, to make it a tripling, a woman on R.’s left. Over a period of several months, and after the proper blood tests, more were added to the surgically fused group. Seamless cosmetic procedures and the most intricate mysteries of internal surgery were employed. Today, they are joined to six other people in a ring of exquisite Siamese multiplicity. The junctures connect in a circle so the first is joined to the eighth, linked with someone else on both sides. All face inward. There are four men and four women, a literal wedding ring. (Is this a romantic story, Tonto?) Arrayed as they are in an unbreakable ring, they necessarily go to great lengths to overcome practical and psychological handicaps. For example, they had to practice for two days to learn how to collectively board D.’s Lear jet. Four of them, usually the women, ride in the arms of the other four; they sidle into the plane, calling signals for the steps. This enforced teamwork lends a new perspective to the most mundane daily affairs. Going to the toilet becomes a yogic exercise requiring the utmost concentration. For but one man to pee, each of the joined must provide a precisely measured degree of pressure. ... They have been surgically arranged so that each man can copulate with the woman opposite him or, in turns, the man diagonal. Homosexual relations are limited to one coupling at a time since members of the same sex are diagonal to one another. Heterosexually, the cell has sex simultaneously. The surgeons have extended the relevant nerve ends through the links of flesh so that the erogenous sensations of one are shared by all. I was privileged to observe one of these highly practiced acrobatic orgies. I admit to a secret yen to participate, to stand nude in the center of the circle and experience flesh-tone piston-action from every point of the compass. But this is below my Degree; only the High Priest’s divine mount, the Perfect and Unscrubbed Silver, may know him carnally. ... Copulating as an octuplet whole, they resemble a pink sea anemone capturing a wriggling minnow. Or perhaps interlocked fingers of arm wrestlers. Or a letter written all in one paragraph, a single unit. ... But suppose a fight breaks out between the grafted Worshippers? Suppose one of them should die or take sick? If one contracts an illness, all ultimately come down with it. And if one should die, they would have to carry the corpse wherever they went until it rotted away—the operation is irreversible. But that is all part of the Divine Process.
Yours very, very affectionately,
The Lone Ranger
Mrs. Hobbes found the letter in the mailbox and opened it. She read it with visible alarm and brought it to her husband, who was in the backyard, preparing to barbecue the ribs of a pig. He was wearing an apron printed with the words DON’T FORGET TO KISS THE CHEF. The words FORGET TO were almost obliterated by a rusty splash of sauce.
Hobbes read the letter, frowning. “I’ll be gosh-darned,” he said. “They get crazier with junk mail all the time. God-darned pornography.” He lit the letter on fire and used it to start the charcoal.
Seeing this, I smiled with relief, and softly said: “Click!” A letter for a letter, Equilibrium for the destruction of the letter Robin Hobbes had given me in Honduras. If Mr. and Mrs. Hobbes had discerned the implication of the
inverted clue, I would have been forced to release Robin from the sanitarium, to the custody of the Army.
When the day came for my joke, I had my friend bring Robin over to my hotel room, which was, conveniently, two blocks from the Hobbes’ residence.
It should be a harmless gesture to describe my friend, as long as I don’t disclose his name. Not a Composer in fact but one in spirit, my Meditech friend is pudgy and square-shouldered. His legs look like they’re too thin for his body. His hair is clipped close to his small skull and there is a large white scar dividing his scalp, running from the crown of his head to the bridge of his nose. The scar is a gift from one of his patients, received in an unguarded moment. My friend wears thick wire-rim glasses with an elastic band connecting them in the rear.
Over Robin’s noisy protests, I prepared him for the joke. To shut him up, I considered cutting out his tongue. But that would require compensating with some act restoring equilibrium that I had not time to properly devise. So I settled for adhesive tape over his mouth. And of course the other thing, stuck through a hole in the tape.
Mr. Hobbes was at home; his Miss America bodyform car filled the driveway. The front of the car was crumpled from a minor accident of the night before, and her arms were corrugated, bent unnaturally inward, one argent hand shoved whole into her open and battered mouth.
Suppressing sniggers—I admit this freely, we were like two twelve-year-olds—my friend and I brought Robin to the porch and rang the doorbell. We dashed to the nearest concealment, a holly bush undulating in the faint summer breeze.
It was shortly after sunset, 8:30 p.m., and Mr. Hobbes had just returned from a long Tuesday at the office. He was silent and grumpy; he’d spent time commiserating in the driveway with his abused Miss America.
Two minutes after our ring, Marvin Hobbes opened the front door, newspaper in hand. My friend had to bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud. But for me, the humor had quite gone out of the moment. It was a solemn moment, one with innate dignity and profound resonance.
Mrs. Hobbes peered over Marvin’s shoulder, electric shaver in her right hand; Bobby, behind her, stared over the top of her wig, something hidden in his left hand. Simultaneously, the entire family screamed, their instantaneous timing perhaps confirming that they were true relatives after all.
They found Robin as we had left him on the doorstep, swaddled in baby blankets, diapered in a couple of Huggies disposables, a pacifier stuck through the tape over his mouth, covered to the neck in gingham cloth (though one of his darling stumps peeked through). And equipped with a plastic baby bottle. The shreds of his arms and legs had been amputated shortly after the mortar attack on Puerto Barrios. Pinned to his chest was a note (I lettered it myself in the crude handwriting I thought would reflect the mood of a desperate mother.) The note said:
PLEASE TAKE CARE OF MY BABY
SAWBONES
BY L. L. SOARES
There was the initial shock of waking up in a strange place, followed by the realization that he was strapped down to the bed. Not exactly the most pleasant of awakenings. The anesthesia was dissipating slowly.
“Are you awake?” the voice said, filtered through the fog in his brain. He saw, as if through a fish-eye lens, a face hovering above him.
Paolo Searle struggled with the bonds, and a hand rested on his shoulder.
“Don’t freak out,” the voice said. “You’re in good hands here.”
His vision focused, blurred, and focused again.
“I’m Dr. Raymond,” the voice said. “The surgery was a success.”
Dr. Raymond. It sounded familiar at least. They must have pumped him full of some high-test elephant tranquilizer, considering how tough it was for Paolo to return to the land of the living. Dr. Raymond was the guy you went to when you needed to keep it off the books. Dr. Raymond was the epitome of discretion.
“You did it?” Searle asked, coming back to his senses.
“Yes,” the doctor replied, clearly happy that Paolo was coherent again. “I thought I was going to have to sedate you again.”
“No, I’m fine. I think.”
“Good, good. I’m sorry about the straps, but you would have been more than a handful if you had freaked out unrestrained. I did it for my own safety, as well as yours.”
“I understand.”
“This was a very unusual request,” the doctor said. “I hope you’re happy with the results.”
“I’m sure I will be,” Searle said.
The doctor then started unstrapping him from the table.
“This is going to take some getting used to,” the doctor said.
Searle sat up and instantly felt severe pain in his arms. He could barely move them.
“I think someone needs more morphine,” Dr. Raymond said when he heard Searle groan.
Back at the apartment, his arms were sore as hell, but that was to be expected. He took off his jacket and noticed the sleeves were already split down the middle. He stood in front of the full-length mirror and admired the craftsmanship.
Ridges of exposed bone on each forearm, from just below the elbow to just short of the wrist on each arm. Like two shark fins. The left arm, sharp and serrated like a saw. The right, honed to razor sharpness. Both were formidable to look at.
They had been his own idea. No other doctor would have even considered the operation. But Dr. Willard Raymond was no typical doctor. He was open to some very wild things, if the price was right.
He remembered the initial consultation. Dr. Raymond had never uttered the word “crazy.” He just nodded his head as Paolo explained what he wanted.
The skin around the bone fins was caked in bandages. It hurt just to move. But in a few weeks, he would be as good as new.
They’re going to be beautiful, Searle thought as he admired himself in the mirror. Fucking beautiful.
He learned the hard way how dangerous they were. How careful he had to be at all times. It was so easy to cut himself if he wasn’t careful. When his modifications had healed enough for him to become comfortable with his new additions, Searle hired two prostitutes and brought them back to his apartment.
One was named Esmeralda and the other was Aggie, from what he could gather from the conversation they were having on the elevator ride up to his loft. He had picked them because they were pretty and they were huddled together. Something about them said “package deal,” and he was in the mood for a threesome.
“Make yourselves at home,” he told them, as he went to get the wine from the refrigerator. He rarely brought hookers to his home. There were motel rooms for that sort of thing, but he was finally starting to feel like his old self again, and it was time to celebrate.
As they drank and turned on the television, he went into the bedroom and changed into a blue silk robe with big, loose sleeves and then went out into the living room to invite them to join him.
He watched them undress, but kept his robe on. He didn’t want to give away the surprise too soon. He held one on the bed and pressed the tiny switch with his tongue that released a venomous fang (another enhancement courtesy of Dr. Raymond), and bit her on the neck. The poison was slow-acting and would take a few hours to kill her, but in the meantime, she would be in a paralyzed state, a captive audience. Then he turned his attention to the other one.
The other one, Esmeralda, was so busy drinking that she didn’t notice what was going on. Paolo threw her down upon the bed and held her wrists tightly as he fucked her. He kept his robe on. She pretended to enjoy it, looking to Aggie who rested on the pillows with a blank look on her face.
“What’s up with you, Aggie?” she asked. “Why don’t you join in?”
Paolo held both her wrists above her head with one hand and grabbed her face with his free one. He turned it to face him. “Is your name really Esmeralda?”
“Yes,” she said.
“That’s a beautiful name,” he said. “It sounds like a Russian princess.”
It’s then that he let go o
f her and rose up on top of her, letting the robe slip to the floor, revealing the sharp edges of the boney knives protruding from his forearms. With the serrated one, he pressed down gently on her throat, just enough to draw blood from a series of pin pricks and keep her from struggling, and he kept thrusting until he was about to come. Then he switched arms and sliced off her head with the other, sharper blade. It cut through her neck muscles and spine effortlessly, much easier than he had expected, and her head dropped to the carpet, her neck bathing him in blood. The action had caused all of her muscles to contract, and her vagina closed tightly around him for a moment, squeezing every last drop from his orgasm. The ultimate donkey punch.
He turned to Aggie with a grin on his face, now dripping with blood. He could tell she wanted to scream, but the venom kept her frozen.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” he said, displaying his arms. They had healed nicely. “I am a work of art, no?”
She could not even nod her head.
He tossed Esmeralda’s body, which had stopped convulsing beneath him, to the floor, and then turned his attention to the other girl.
“Aggie, is it?” Paolo said. “I’m guessing your real name is Agnes?”
She stared at him.
“A dignified, old-fashioned name,” Paolo said. “I think it’s a shame you go by Aggie. That sounds like the marbles we used to play with on the playground as children. Don’t you think?”
He raised his arms and then made short work of her. It was interesting to see how much damage the blades could create. He tested them to see how much effort it took to do the things he wanted. All in all, it was a nice way to try them out—on the flesh of two people who would probably never be missed. The way they’d been huddled together on the rainy night when he found them, it made him think they were the only friends each other had in the world.