by Ike Hamill
Lynne stopped on the driveway—“No,” she said.
“No? What no? There is no no,” said Jenko. “Just get in the car and give me the keys.”
Lynne took another step, shifted the smelly cat to her shoulder and dug in her bag for the keys. Her hand was still cold from the cat. She unlocked the passenger side and slipped in. Her goal was to get the door shut and locked before Jenko knew anything was wrong. That way she could drive the cat’s body to safety from her new by-the-book partner, and then make a hard decision about whether she really wanted this new job.
Jenko was one move ahead of Lynne. When she tried to shut the door, his foot shot into the gap and stopped the door short. Her hand pulled away from the inside handle, tugging at her short fingernails.
“Damn it,” Lynne hissed, looking at her nails and then up at Jenko.
“You got those keys?” he asked, pushing his hand in through the gap in the car door.
Lynne handed them up and then flinched back when he shut her door. She put the stiff cat in her lap and pet him absentmindedly while Jenko circled the car.
“I know it sucks,” he said. “Having to give up a dead cat and all. After all, you only signed a contract and agreed fully to the terms.”
“If it was just a dead cat, I wouldn’t have a problem,” said Lynne. “But there’s Sparkle. You wouldn’t want to do something to mess that up, would you?”
“Fortunately, I don’t have to wonder about that,” said Jenko as he pulled the car away from the curb. “I’ve got instructions for this situation, and I know exactly what steps to take. As soon as you let me, I’m going to go ahead…” said Jenko. He was interrupted.
The smelly cat in Lynne’s lap mewed softly, hacked once, and then let out a full-strength meow. Jenko checked his mirrors, glanced at his blind spot, and then screeched to a quick stop at the curb.
“What did that thing just say?” asked Jenko.
Lynne was frozen with her hand poised over the previously-dead cat. Her mouth hung open and her eyes darted back and forth, surveying the cat back and forth.
“He’s purring,” said Lynne.
“The dead cat?” asked Jenko.
“I don’t think he’s dead anymore,” said Lynne.
“No shit, really? Okay, look, we’ve got to get this thing back to the office and hand it over. They’re not going to do anything really weird to it now that it’s up and walking again,” said Jenko.
“Still no,” said Lynne. “I’m still not going to turn him over to be pulled apart and researched. You just pretend we never saw any cat and I’ll take him home.”
“That’s crazy,” said Jenko. “They don’t have to pull him apart, there’s tons they can find out without killing it.”
“I’m taking him home,” said Lynne.
“You can’t,” said Jenko. “As soon as they find out, they’ll just take him away from you.”
“They won’t find out,” said Lynne. “Or else they might find out that you snapped the neck of that naked guy before I had a chance to finish my work.”
“You don’t have the guts to pull that off,” said Jenko.
Lynne considered that accusation and looked down at the cat. She’d been so involved with the confrontation with Jenko that she hadn’t really regarded the small purring miracle in her lap. The kitty, gray and white with a few black streaks, licked one paw and dragged it over its head. It glanced up at Lynne when she stopped stroking and didn’t look away until she had resumed. Lynne made the turn from just wanting Jenko to think she was resolved, to actually being resolved. This was no longer a matter of setting precedent for their working relationship, or trying to secure a tiny amount of control in a very out-of-control day.
“I do, and I will,” said Lynne.
Jenko’s face didn’t change as he evaluated the resolve in her statement—“Not another word then,” he said. “This never happened, and neither did the neck.”
“Got it,” said Lynne. She looked out her window as Jenko pulled away from the curb. She wanted the extra water to un-pool from her eyes before Jenko noticed. They were leaving the good suburbs and encountering fewer houses and more businesses. Cracked concrete parking with tall chickory weeds sat next to cinderblock buildings. Lynne watched them stream by her window without reading the faded signs. Her kitty turned tighter, into a ball, and slept. The smell was nearly gone and its hair looked glossy and new in the late afternoon sun.
“Is that clock correct?” asked Lynne, pointing to the dashboard.
“Yup,” said Jenko.
“Can you take me directly to my mom’s? I don’t want to be late. I can have one of my brothers drop me off at my car later,” said Lynne.
“No problem,” said Jenko.
The Food of the Immortal
By Samantha Flude
The Associated Press
Wednesday, July 8; 7:30 AM
LOS ANGELES—Gregory, last year’s miraculous Lazarus, has announced his forthcoming book will coincide with the opening of several Wellness Centers around L.A. His last book, Refuting the Lies of the Prophet, still tops the New York Times Best Sellers list in both hardback and paperback nonfiction. In two chapters of Lies, Gregory alludes to his clean food choices and simple approach to life. Interview questions probing those statements have been dismissed quickly by the author who says of Lies—“It’s not a diet book.”
Apparently, this was a mistake he sought to rectify. The Forever Diet is available for pre-order today on Amazon.com and is slated to be on store shelves by Friday morning. Several large stores are planning midnight releases for Thursday. Ben Sareem manages Baker’s Books, a large independent bookstore in southern California. He’s planning more than just a chance to own the book before anyone else. “We’re making a whole event of it. We’ll be open continuously with live music, and a projector set up so everyone can watch Gregory’s interviews. We’ve got several rare clips that have never been broadcast.”
East Coast distributors have been forced to agree to hold sales until 3 AM EDT. Gregory’s press release stated that he didn’t want the East Coast to “enjoy a unfair advantage,” and “see the book before anyone else.” In fact, aside from the title, he has released no advance information about the book and its contents.
Dr. Nissa Maynard, one of the original surgeons to attend to Gregory after his rise from the grave, is dubious about the new book. “I don’t see what diet has to do with anything,” she said earlier this morning. “When I first saw him his condition was completely baffling. There’s nothing that could explain a man who’s walking around, talking, and fully conscious, without a beating heart in his chest. He had no circulation, and no brain activity whatsoever. This wasn’t a mistake. He was purely dead." This is the same sentiment Dr. Maynard has echoed for the past twelve months. She continued, addressing the new book directly—“There’s certainly no possible connection between things he ate and his ability to grow new organs, or survive without them. Any claims he makes are surely false.”
Whatever those claims may be, they remain closely guarded secrets. Even Junktra Press, publishers of both Lies and Forever Diet, claim ignorance to the book’s contents. “His designers are delivering the finals directly to reproduction overseas,” one person commented. Only the cover, featuring the title, a red apple, and a housefly, have been released.
Gregory’s first book was well received by consumers, critics, and the medical community. His thorough documentation was backed by several peer-reviewed papers and countless hours of video footage. Only a handful of skeptics still challenge his claims. His history of vindication is not slowing doctors like Nissa Maynard though. They insist that this book will contain no compelling substance, just as so many predicted that his last book would fall short.
The Forever Diet is available at bookstores on Friday, July 10th.
Chapter 2
Changeling
Two Years Earlier…
CAROL STRUGGLED between short breaths—“Just… Listen�
�”
“Honey, I hear what you’re saying, and it’s perfectly normal for you to feel this way,” said husband, Don. He looked at his pale, exhausted wife. Now that the baby was safely delivered, she looked deflated and frail.
She held up her hand and clenched a fist with her palm facing Don. It wasn’t a threat. It was an old hand-signal they’d had back when they first started dating, back before she’d even remotely considered having his baby. The sign meant hold—stop and listen. Don’s mouth shut automatically. He gave the floor to Carol so she could complete her thought.
Carol forced herself back against the hospital bed and dragged in a long, tortured breath. As her lungs filled, she felt tiny knives jab into her shoulders from the inside of her torso, but she kept pulling in the flat hospital air. Don waited through all of this. He knew of Carol’s determination, and knew he had no other choice.
“Camera,” Carol ordered. Don reached back to the long windowsill and handed his little camera towards his wife. She shook her head slowly against the pillow—“Other…. One…”
“I don’t…” said Don and then he understood. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. When he’d located the photo menu he passed the phone to Carol. She didn’t look at his hand, but held out her own and let him drop the phone into it. She hoisted the small device to her face and pressed buttons carefully before handing it back.
“Mark,” she said. “Birth… Mark…”
“I see what you’re pointing at,” said Don. “But that could have been anything. There’s blood, placenta, all kinds of gunk on her at that point.”
Carol pointed towards the bassinet. Don sighed and stood up slowly. His smile warmed when he got closer to his new daughter. She lay swaddled, mouth open, breathing towards the ceiling with her eyes closed. Their beautiful daughter didn’t want to be disturbed, and so Don paused over her, not sure what to do. Carol’s look insisted that he move forward. He untucked the corner and released his daughter from the snug blanket.
Don compared the photo of his screaming daughter, recently plucked from the womb via a long incision in Carol’s abdomen, to the little baby girl stretched out before his eyes.
“It’s the same,” he said, holding up the phone to Carol even though she had just seen it and couldn’t see their daughter from her angle.
“Reversed,” Carol struggled to say.
Don looked at the photo again. His phone’s display had timed-out, going dark again, so he pressed the arrow buttons until the image reappeared. He compared, back and forth, reinforcing his assessment before he determined what Carol meant.
Carol stared vaguely off towards the door and took the smallest breaths she could muster. She’d been doing okay until lunch, when a couple of the nurses had ganged up and convinced her to have some soup and a piece of toast. The small meal had looked harmless, but she’d quickly found out that she now had an all-too-finite volume of space available inside her torso, and the small lunch had made breathing out of the question. With each inhale, her chest overfilled and the gas trapped inside her abdominal cavity pressed painfully at her joints and muscles. Most of the bubbles had worked up to her shoulders, making her feel like her arms were being torn from their sockets with each breath.
It was the doctor’s watch that tipped Don off. He wore it so the face was on the inside of his wrist, and they’d even had a conversation about it. In all Don’s memories of the jewelry he could clearly picture it on the doctor’s left wrist. In the picture on his phone, the birthmark was on their daughter’s right thigh, very close to the watch on the doctor’s right wrist. It was covered mostly by his surgical glove, but it was there. Once he found this inconsistency, Don found several others quickly. The clock in the background was reversed, and the sign on the door could be read forwards even though it was printed on the outside.
The problem was Don’s phone. The sensor in the hinge had worn out, and sometimes the camera took pictures with the horizontal axis reversed. These photos looked perfectly normal if you were looking at yourself in the display, but meant that any stored image would be reversed. None of that was confusing until Don considered the birthmark. It should have been reversed, just like everything else.
While Don worked through this conundrum, Carol thought about her morning. It had seemed like everyone was conspiring to make her think she was crazy. Her doctor had visited early, checking on her and the baby and offering a steady stream of advice that she couldn’t remember. Don had been getting pancakes and had missed the entire visit. One thing the doctor had been adamant about was medication—he didn’t want Carol to take any unnecessary painkillers.
The doctor’s advice had been clear—“Anything you ingest will go straight to the baby through your milk, so nothing stronger than Tylenol, and only if you need it.”
When Don had returned, the nurse was right on his heels. She asked Carol to rate her pain and then had started to push the medications. Carol had objected, but Don jumped to the nurse’s side.
“Honey, you look awful. Just let them help you feel better. Then you’ll be back on your feet quicker and you’ll heal faster,” Don had recommended.
Carol felt embattled—she had no authority figure on her side, but had taken the doctor’s orders very seriously and figured it was an imperative for her daughter’s health. She didn’t give up. Carol stuck to her guns and refused the narcotics, too concerned with her newborn’s health to consider her own comfort.
The nurse had explained very carefully—“One school of thought says that drugs remove the barrier of pain so a bond can form normally.”
“I see what you’re saying,” Don said, snapping Carol’s attention back to the present.
Carol frowned. She had been just seconds away from forgetting her troubles—casting them aside as paranoia due to postpartum depression. She looked at her baby through the clear plastic side of the rolling bassinet. They hadn’t settled on a name yet.
“This picture is clearly reversed,” Don said, coming to her side and pushing his phone in her face. The bed shifted and Carol grunted. “But the birthmark is still on her right thigh. I didn’t see it at first. This is the only picture I have of her until we got back to the room." He looked a little panicked, glancing back and forth between his camera and the baby. Don settled more weight on her bed and his hip started to press into her shoulder. “I don’t understand though. They clip that thing on the umbilical cord right after they weighed her, and there’s supposed to be an alarm if anyone unclips it. This hospital is supposed to have all the latest security.”
“Fine…” breathed Carol. “Mistake…”
Don looked back at his wife and furrowed his brow. She was the problem-solver of the couple. She was the rock, the steady one. This problem was too much for Don, and Carol realized that she should have never brought it to his attention. In her moment of need she had tried to lean on a wobbly person.
“I’m going to check with the nurse,” said Don. “Maybe birthmarks can move right after birth? Could that be right? Maybe we’re thinking too absolute. I’ll find someone to help us figure this out.”
Carol nodded, but gave him one more instruction—“Swaddle…”
“Oh yeah, sure,” said Don. He wrapped up their baby after a few botched attempts.
When he had exited, Carol adjusted her bed a little more flat, trying to minimize her pain. She kept her eyes on her baby. Was it possible that someone had switched her baby between surgery and the room? Carol had chosen the hospital for their volume and security. They’d seen everything before and knew how to protect mother and child. The baby looked content in her tight wrap. Confused, but content.
While Carol watched, her brand new little girl turned her head slightly away and then back towards the ceiling. The little mouth closed, giving the sloping chin a determined look that Carol recognized as her own. Baby Girl’s eyes squeezed shut and then her face relaxed. Her little head turned towards Carol. The bassinet was at the foot of Carol’s bed, a
nd Baby Girl’s body lay perpendicular to Carol’s feet. Carol moved her own foot to watch Baby Girl’s head turn. It seemed to turn too far. Carol wondered if she could turn her own head that far.
When Baby Girl’s face was pointed directly at Carol, the baby’s eyes opened. Carol gasped and doubled over in pain at what she saw. The baby’s eyes were black, flat black. They didn’t reflect the lights in the room, but seemed to absorb it. At the center of each pit of an eye, a small white spot stood in contrast. Carol wheezed as her heart rate sped up. She couldn’t look away from those black eyes. The room seemed to narrow with the baby’s eyes, and Carol began to feel light-headed.
Don burst back through the door and the baby’s head snapped back up towards the ceiling. By the time Don passed the bassinet, Baby Girl looked perfectly normal again—eyes shut and mouth open—sleeping after the struggle of coming into this new world.
“They don’t have any answers,” said Don. “I showed them the picture, but none of them could grasp that it’s flipped. They all just said what a pretty girl she is, like I was fishing for complements. They must get that a lot, I guess.”
“Ugh,” said Carol, trying to regain her voice.
“So what are you going to do?” asked Don.
“We…” said Carol.
“Right,” said Don. “That’s what I said: what are we going to do?”
Carol shook her head—“Sleep…”
“Yeah, okay, that’s a good idea,” said Don. “I’ll watch the baby and you get some sleep. In fact, I’ll take her down the hall.”
“Thanks…” said Carol. She let her eyes drift shut and opened them only a couple of times to check on Don’s progress as he prepared for his trip. She was nearly asleep by the time he wheeled the cart out the door. She smiled as she heard the nurse interrogating him about his wristband. To wheel the cart, you had to have the proper wristband, or somewhere the alarms would sound. With her eyes closed and body positioned to be nearly pain-free, Carol reevaluated what she had seen. It was easy to explain. The paranoia combined with lack of sleep had brought about a terrifying delusion. It was perfectly normal. She’d been up all night in labor before they decided that a Caesarian was necessary. Then, they’d hastily anesthetized her and pulled her baby out. Who wouldn’t be seeing things after such an ordeal?
