Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala

by Rick Hautala

  One night I had been drawing, lost—as always—in watching the way the skin on the back of my hands moved when my hands felt like they had suddenly burst into flames. I yelped in surprised and pain, but then tried to ignore it and keep drawing.

  It didn’t stop, and I had to try to endure it.

  After a while, though, I couldn't stand it any longer. I put my drawing pencils away and started to roll one of the gloves off, the one on my right hand. Over the past few weeks, the skin had been treated so well that it usually rolled off smoothly. This time, though, when I lifted the top edge, the skin caught. When I tried to pull it down, the skin on my own wrist started to rip.

  Let me tell you, I sure panicked.

  It took a great deal of effort to sit back, take a few deep breaths, and then try once again to remove the hands. I sure as hell didn't want to damage them. Where was I going to get another pair like this? I thought maybe it was just a matter of decay, but when I took the edge of the skin on the other hand and lifted it up, once again my own flesh lifted with it.

  This isn't happening, I told myself.

  Someone—I think it was that lady shrink I talked to a while ago—told me that I was imagining all of this. That Derrick's skin had rotted away by then, and I was pulling at my own flesh. I listened to her, but like all that transference stuff she'd been talking about, I think she was dead wrong. I should have killed her and tried using her hands.

  I lowered my drawing light and shined it straight down onto my hands, looking closely as I tried several times to peel back the skin. Each time I got the same result. The skin wouldn't roll down. It was fused to my own skin. Hell, I can't deny it; it looked like it had become my own skin.

  I'm telling you, I was some scared at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I started to accept it.

  This ain't so bad, I told myself. In fact, isn't this exactly what I'd wanted all along?

  Why have hands that I have to put on and off like gloves?

  Why not have them be permanent?

  Didn't I want to feel the way Derrick had felt, and be able to control my pencils and brushes the way Derrick had controlled his?

  I had wanted Derrick's hands, had coveted them so much that I was willing to kill him to get them. So what was so wrong if his skin was permanently attached to mine?

  We'd been twins in the womb! We shared everything else right down to our chromosomes. Other than the women in our lives, there wasn't anything we hadn't shared, and sometimes I wondered about Emily, the woman I dated several years ago.

  The only problem was, no matter what I did—whether I massaged hand cream into them or held them under a steady flow of cool water or held them inside the freezer— I couldn't make that burning sensation go away. It penetrated all the way to my bones, bringing tears to my eyes. I told myself that I'd eventually get used to it, that this was just a stage as Derrick's skin and mine fused, but I didn't sleep much that night.

  The pain—oh, the pain!

  It was a pure, silver singing inside my hands, and it never let up.

  * * *

  That next morning, a couple of weeks after Derrick's death, I was supposed to attend a memorial service being held in my brother's honor at one of the art galleries in Portland. I forget the name of the gallery, but I'm sure the invitation is still on my desk, back at my place. Everyone was going to be there—a lot of important people in the art community as well as Alice and Derrick's kids. I've been trying to feel bad for them, losing their father like that, but pity just doesn't seem to be inside me.

  When I got out of bed that morning, hardly having slept a wink all night, I considered calling the gallery and canceling. I was supposed to say a few words about my brother, but I hoped Hugh Andrews—the gallery director—would understand that I was still too shattered and couldn't cope with facing the public like this.

  Before I dialed the gallery, I started thinking about how suspicious canceling out might look. Sure, the cops had stopped coming around and asking me questions, apparently satisfied that I'd had nothing to do with my brother's murder, but I couldn't be sure. They might still think I had done it, and they might be waiting for me to slip up so they could pounce.

  Maybe they even recognized Derrick's hands. I panicked, trying to remember if I’d been wearing them when they fingerprinted me.

  So I determined, no matter how bad the pain in my hands got, I'd go through with this farce of a memorial service.

  The problem was, I had no idea how bad it could get.

  Even before I walked into the gallery that morning and saw how many people had gathered to honor my brother, my hands were clammy with sweat and trembling deep inside. I was self-conscious when I shook hands with anyone and made it a point to touch as few people as possible. I couldn't help but notice the startled reactions most of the people there gave me when we clasped hands. Maybe it was my imagination.

  Being one of the guests of honor, as it were, I had to sit in the front row along with Alice and the kids. Every wall in the room was adorned with Derrick's paintings. None of them were really very good, I thought. I could do—and had done—much better.

  Andrews spoke first—a bit too long, I thought—about how he had been one of the first people in the "Art world" to recognize Derrick's extraordinary talent, and how we and all of humanity have suffered a great loss in such a senseless, brutal act of butchery. I could hear people sniffing back their tears, but I hardly paid any attention to them. I couldn't stop looking down at my hands. They felt like they were on fire.

  I tried rubbing them, scratching them, folding my arms across my chest and pressing them tightly against my sides— anything, but nothing relieved the pain and burning. It got so intense I thought I was going to jump to my feet and scream.

  I didn't notice when Andrews stopped speaking, but after a moment or two, I noticed that the room had fallen silent with a hushed expectancy. I glanced around and realized that everyone was looking at me.

  A boiling blush raced up my arms and across my face. My heart was slamming hard inside my chest when I realized that Andrews must have introduced me. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, preparing to stand, but I wasn't even sure my legs would support me, much less carry me all the way to the podium.

  The crowd was perfectly silent.

  A steady, low, throbbing sound filled my ears as I inhaled and held my breath. I took a single step forward. My shoes, scraping across the carpet, made a sound like the rough scratching of sandpaper. Cold sweat broke out on my brow and trickled down the sides of my face.

  I wanted to scream, I tell you, but as I made my way to the podium, I noticed a glass pitcher and several clean glasses on the small table beside the podium. The pitcher was filled with ice water.

  That gave me an idea.

  With each halting step forward, the agonizing sensation in my hands grew steadily worse until it became intolerable.

  I had no idea what to do with my hands, whether to shove them deep into my jacket pockets so no one could see them, clasp them behind my back, shake them wildly above my head, or claw at them and start screaming.

  That's what I wanted to do—

  Scream.

  The thought crossed my mind that if I fell completely apart, everyone in the room would think it was simply an outpouring of my overwhelming grief over the loss of my dear brother. They would all react respectfully, with sympathy and understanding.

  But my throat was constricted. My chest and lungs were so tight I could hardly breathe, much less scream. I was suddenly afraid that, if I opened my mouth and tried to say even a few words—something about my dear, departed brother—deathly cold hands would clasp around my throat and begin to choke me.

  I had jotted down a few notes of what I wanted to say, only because I was afraid of what I might reveal if I started rambling. The problem was, the sheet of paper with my notes on it was in the breast pocket of my jacket, and I didn't dare reach for it. I was suddenly fearful that I would no longer be able to
control my own hands. The skin— Derrick's skin—had long since dissolved into my hands, fusing with them.

  His flesh had become mine.

  I glanced down at my hands and was suddenly convinced that I didn't even recognize them.

  They were someone else's hands!

  They really were Derrick's hands!

  I know it isn't possible. You're not the first person to tell me it was all in my mind; but even if it was, it was nonetheless true!

  The silence in the room continued to pulsate. When someone toward the back of the room cleared his throat, it sounded like a distant cannon shot. Somehow, though, I made it to the podium. Leaning forward and gripping the edge of the podium with both hands, I forced a smile, but I could tell by the way the skin stretched around my mouth that it was more of a grimace. As if moving by its own volition, my right hand reached up and inside my jacket and clasped the sheet of paper in my pocket. The heat inside my jacket was intolerable. It was as if I was reaching into a blazing furnace. I almost cried out. Bone-deep tremors shook my body as I unfolded my notes and, without looking at them, spread the page on the podium.

  Glancing to my left, I once again saw the pitcher of water. I wanted more than anything to plunge my hands into that icy water to soothe the pain, but I was immobile.

  I could tell that the audience was getting restless. It was awkward for them to see me so distraught, almost out of control, but it was just as obvious—to me, at least—that they didn't know the real reason why I was so upset.

  I nearly fainted when I lowered my gaze and looked down at my hands, holding the sheet of paper in place. The backs of my hands were discolored. They’d turned a sickly yellow and were wrinkled like an old man's hands. For a dizzying instant, I felt as though I was looking at my hands through a huge magnifying glass. Every hair, every pore and blemish, every vein and tendon stood out in stark relief. The feeling that these were not my hands—that they were Derrick's—grew terrifyingly strong. I thought that—somehow—maybe Derrick was still alive and standing behind me, reaching around me and manipulating things for me.

  I tried to push such thoughts from my mind. I cleared my throat and, with great effort, began.

  "I want to ... thank you all for ... being here today."

  I forced my grimace of a smile to widen. I locked eyes with Alice, sitting there with her children in the front row. Her expression as she looked at me was kind and sympathetic. I could see that she was on the verge of crying, too, but she nodded to me, offering her silent encouragement.

  The choking sensation in my throat grew steadily stronger. When I reached up to loosen my collar, I was suddenly fearful that my hands—Derrick's hands—were going to clasp me by the throat and start to squeeze until they choked the life out of me.

  I lowered my gaze and shook my head, taking a few moments to compose myself. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, but it was like striking a match against a sun-baked sidewalk. A hot flashing line of flames erupted across my brow.

  It was intolerable, I tell you. Intolerable!

  I wanted to say something—anything—just a few words about how much I missed my brother … what a tragic loss his death was to me and his family and friends … but I couldn't focus on the few notes right in front of me. All I could think about was the burning pain flaming inside my hands and spreading up my arms.

  I looked again at the pitcher of water and finally understood what I had to do. You see, I knew then—or if I had known it before, I finally admitted it to myself then—that these really weren't my hands.

  They truly were Derrick's!

  His dry, desiccated skin may have rotted away, but some part of my dead brother had fused with me, and this small part of him—the one small part I thought I could possess and control—was not under my control.

  Maybe I would have been better off if I had killed myself, had strangled myself right there in front of that crowd.

  It would have ended it all, and maybe … just maybe the people in attendance would think I had been unable to contain my grief and had finally snapped.

  But that's not what happened.

  I didn't plunge my hands into that pitcher of ice water, either.

  I had tried that many times before, and it had never worked.

  No, what I did—well, you probably read about it in the newspapers, but what I did was take the water pitcher and smash it against the side of the podium. I don't remember hearing the sound of breaking glass or feeling the cold dash of water splashing over me. I sensed some muted and surprised reactions from the crowd, but not much. I was lost inside a cocoon of whistling silence where there was just the raging roar of my breathing and the unbearable burning knowledge that my hands were not my own.

  Holding the handle of the shattered pitcher, I turned the jagged edge around and began slashing and sawing at the back of my hands.

  "These aren't my hands! These aren't my hands!"

  I remember screaming that or something like it, but I was lost in a blind frenzy of panic as I tried to cut and scrape the flesh from the back of my hands. Suddenly, I had the unnerving sensation that I was somehow outside of myself—that I was floating above it all and watching what I was doing … as if this were all a movie or a play.

  I felt no pain—none whatsoever—but I could see the ragged strips of flesh I was flaying from the back of my hands. There was blood everywhere, but no matter how much I tore at the skin on my hands, the burning sensation didn't stop.

  Oh, no.

  It continued to spiral up, getting stronger and stronger until it was all I knew. The mere physical pain of tearing the flesh from my hands was nothing ... literally, nothing.

  From my vantage point, hovering above it all, I watched as I continued to rake the broken glass across the back of my hands, first the left one, then the right. Cutting. Slashing. Gashing. My sheet of notes was splattered by red smears, like ruby teardrops. I started laughing softly when I realized that one splotch of blood—the biggest—looked exactly like the splash of blood on Derrick's kitchen wall, the night I had killed him.

  Every other sound in the room was muffled, but I sensed a rush of motion as someone—I have no idea who ... probably Andrews—ran up to me to help ... to try to stop me.

  Then I heard a sizzling, crackling sound, and everything went black.

  * * *

  I woke up sometime later, here in the hospital. I realize now that I must have grabbed onto the microphone and, because I was standing in the puddle of water I had spilled, had gotten one hell of an electric shock.

  Not enough to kill me, mind you, and—well, the emergency room doctor said that, thankfully, I hadn't severed any arteries, so I didn't bleed to death, either.

  Lucky … Yeah …

  The most horrible thing about it all was that I didn't get rid of Derrick's skin. It's still here, on the back of my hands.

  See?

  It's still growing. Maybe you can't see it, but it's all the way inside me now, still growing ... and look at this. It's spreading out, moving like black fungus up my arms. Pretty soon it's going to cover my whole body!

  I swear, it's true.

  Look at my hands!

  Can't you see?

  I still can't control them, either. Even with these bandages on, I've been trying to do a little bit of drawing while I've been here, and you can see that I'm not drawing anything very good ... certainly not what I want to draw.

  Look at these sketches. Every single one of them depicts something from the night I killed my brother.

  See here?

  This is him lying on the floor, leaning up against the wall. Remember how I said he looked like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  Well, doesn't he?

  That's exactly what he looked like!

  And check out this one.

  This is the design the splash of blood made on the wall behind him, after I shot him. You'll have to take my word for it, but it's exactly like the bloody smear on my sheet of notes.<
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  And look at this one.

  See?

  It's a closeup of Derrick's face, once he was good and dead. He looks really relaxed now, doesn't he? Like all the pressure’s off. It's amazing how much he looks like me, but we are, after all, twins. I also did a couple of sketches of what his arms looked like after I'd hacked off his hands, but I had to throw them away. I didn't like the way they were coming out even though I always was pretty good at drawing anatomy, especially hands.

  The problem is, you see, I'm not the one who's doing these drawings.

  Derrick is.

  He's using my eyes and memory to record what happened to him.

  His hands are doing all of this!

  His hands have betrayed me!

  The police never would have even found out that I had killed him if his hands hadn't started drawing these pictures. They found them in my apartment.

  That's how they finally got me to confess.

  They wore me down by telling me that no one except the murderer could have done these sketches, not with such exact detail. They even showed me a couple of photographs taken at the murder scene. I don't know if that was before or after I drew these pictures. They give me drugs here and I’m plenty confused.

  And yes, the backs of my hands still hurt like hell. I don't even like looking at them anymore. Sure, the cuts are healing up just fine, but the burning sensation keeps getting worse, day after day. I tell you, it's going to drive me insane! Even when the nurse gives me a shot of something, it doesn't really stop the pain. And I know, once these bandages come off, it won't be any better.

  Oh, no.

  That's why I asked you to come up and see me again today, doctor. I know we talked about all this before, and you said no to the idea, but I'm positive I want you to do it.