Skin Cage

by Nico Laeser

  I continue to write, “It has been so long since I have had a chance to say anything. I don’t know what to write. I am very thankful that you have never given up hope that I can hear you. Cassie, you are my angel. Without you, I would not have wanted to go on living. When you are here, I no longer feel trapped, and when you read to me, it allows me to escape, no longer bound by this chair; I am free, following Frodo on his quest or following a postman across an apocalyptic landscape. I look forward to wonderful conversations with you. I do have a request, and it is for pain medication to help with my headaches. They come and go, but are sometimes so painful that I cannot see or hear. Cassie, this is the greatest gift anyone has ever given to me, the ability to rejoin the world as a real person. Oh, and by the way, in my opinion Cassie, that boy did not deserve you in the first place. You need a nice guy with a sense of humor. Knock. Knock.”

  Marcus stands up and moves around me. “What the fuck?”

  I can hear him breathing over my shoulder as he reads the text on the screen, “Knock, knock?”

  Anna says from somewhere, “What was that? Did he write something?”

  “What? No. It just looks like random letters. Can you get me a glass of water, please?” Marcus says.

  “Please?” Anna says in surprise, “I think that is the first time you have ever said please.”

  “I just don’t want to miss it if Danny boy starts to write,” he says.

  After Anna leaves the room, Marcus turns the screen and leans toward it for a few seconds, his eyes flicking to the right and up and down.

  “If you can talk, you’ll get me fired. There’s no way I’ll get another job if all the shit you’ve seen goes on my file. Sorry, little bird, but you’re not going to say a word,” Marcus says, then unplugs something from the back of the computer and turns the screen back to me.

  The message at the top is now a stream of vowels, and the boxes no longer expand when I look at the letters to the right.

  Anna walks back in and hands the glass to Marcus, “Anything yet?”

  “I don’t think so, take a look,” Marcus says and takes a drink.

  Anna leans her head around the screen for a second and I hear the air pour out of her. “Cassie really thought this would work,” Anna says and looks down at the floor.

  “If Danny is in there, then he knows that we will do whatever we have to,” he says.

  Anna says, “I’ll be back later to take Danny to bed.”

  “Ok, thanks, Anna,” Marcus says, imitating a smile.

  On the outside, I am calm and still. Inside, I am screaming, I am shouting, I am begging, and crying. Please, please. Plug it back in. Let me speak. I won’t tell anyone about you, Marcus. Please. Don’t lock me back in here. Please.

  CHAPTER 11

  I am the open wound

  I follow closely behind. The hunt has been long and grueling, lasting almost three days. My jeans are soaked to above the knee, and the sleeves of my hooded sweater are also wet. The ground is soft and spongy under foot, and he shoots me a glance every time a twig snaps under my boots. He walks carefully and silently with bare feet, wearing only a loincloth that is the same earthy color as his skin. He carries a small tubular wicker basket that hangs at his waist from a string over one shoulder and a long bamboo tube wrapped with old cloth and leather strips.

  He turns, and from a crouched position, he spreads his fingers in my direction, and I stop and wait. I worry that I will scare off whatever it is that he has seen or heard and make every effort to stay silent. I can hear myself swallow, and I have an urge to cough, a tickle in my throat that I am trying desperately to ignore. He slowly reaches into the wicker basket and withdraws a dart. He spins the dart between the palms of his hands to fluff up the material to obtain a better air seal in the blowgun, and then he dips the tip into a small section of bamboo that is sealed at one end and lashed to the inside of the wicker basket. He feeds the dart into the blowgun and raises it vertically to his lips before lowering the end to aim and puffing out his cheeks. I follow the blowgun to what he is aiming at, and he forcefully exhales the projectile.

  For a couple seconds, I think that he has missed, then the animal goes limp and crashes down through small tree limbs, getting hung up on a limb around halfway down. He gestures for me to take the blowgun and then climbs the tree with the agility and ease that I would associate with the animal he is going to collect. He frees the animal and tosses it to the ground, where it lands with a wet thud, next to me. The small monkey that he has killed will go toward feeding the people of his village, and by this point, I am somewhat desensitized to the killing of animals. To him and his family, the animals of the forest are food; it is how they survive. It is my task to carry the dead animal back to the village, along with whatever quarry has been caught or killed in the traps that were set.

  ***

  For three days, I have been stalking through the Amazon, or at least a memory of the Amazon. The singular goal of the native that I follow is to kill and procure food. The singular thing that I will kill on the hunt is time.

  Cassie has not read to me for three days. The day that I attempted to write a letter to her, I heard her crying in the hallway outside my room. Cassie was sitting in the chair when Anna wheeled me into the day room the next day and cried again when she looked into my eyes. Seeing her cry, seeing her heart broken, hurts more than knowing that I will never again have the chance to speak with her. Knowing that Marcus did this to me is not what fills me with the now constant burning hatred. It is what Marcus has done to Cassie that has done this. My world has become an open wound, and Marcus Salt has poured in.

  The target of my anger seems to switch back and forth from the cold-blooded reptile named Marcus, to the useless gape-mouth sculpture that I haunt, and even to the long dead parasite that destroyed so much of my brain. The parasite led my own immune system into beginning a never-ending war against the scar tissue left by each cyst, which would eventually do more damage than the tapeworm itself.

  Cassie says, “I have a training day tomorrow.”

  “Are you okay, Cass?” Anna asks.

  “No, not really,” Cassie says.

  “We can’t give up hope; he might still be in there, Cassie,” Anna says.

  “I know.” Cassie looks up at Anna. “That’s the part that upsets me. If Danny is in there and he can’t ever communicate, then what kind of life is that? What if he’s trapped in there, screaming at me all day, every day, to unplug everything and put him out of his misery? What if he hates the books that I read to him? What if everything that I have done to try and make Danny’s life just a little better has been torture for him?”

  “Cass?” Anna says and puts a hand on Cassie’s shoulder.

  “I haven’t felt like this since Emily passed away,” Cassie says and begins to sob again.

  Anna cradles Cassie’s head. “She would be proud of everything you have done for Danny and who you have become.

  CHAPTER 12

  I am rotting meat

  My grandfather, Montgomery Stockholm, was generally a well-respected and well-liked man. I loved my grandfather, and I miss him. I did not attend his funeral and was unaware of his passing until months after the event.

  Some of my fondest memories as a child were of fishing trips with my grandfather. He would tell me stories from his childhood while we sat in a two-man rowboat holding rods and hardly ever catching any fish. When we did catch a fish, he would skin and debone it right away before packing the meat in salt. He told me that this was the way that meat had been preserved for centuries and that sometimes salt is also used to hide the taste of spoiling meat. He grew up poor, and his parents did not have a refrigerator, so they would pack their meat in salt.

  Most of the stories he told me included petty crime, stealing bread from the bakery or fish from the fishmongers. When I listened to his stories, I would always picture it in my mind like the 1948 Oliver Twist movie, but I never let on that fact to my grandfather. He mad
e his money later on in life as a realtor and grew his wealth with a few lucky investments in companies that grew almost overnight, which made him a multi-millionaire. He hardly ever discussed his wealth and seemed to derive more joy in talking to me about the years in which he was young and poor.

  My grandfather would come over for dinner every Friday evening, when my parents and I were not off in some remote part of the world. Sometimes, the dinner would become a dinner party with other guests, and my grandfather would hide out in the day room, which at that time was a study. Whenever I noticed him missing, I would make my way to the day room, and he would replace his smoking pipe with a finger to his lips and wink. He made no secret of not liking the formality of the dinner parties and had said to me on occasion that he couldn’t understand why a whole room full of people half his age acted more like old farts than friends his own age.

  After I was paralyzed, my grandfather spent a lot more time in the dayroom and would continue to tell me stories from when he was a young man. He no longer smoked his pipe in there but sat in the same leather chair. Even in my condition, I think my grandfather felt that he still had more in common with me, than with the high-class entourage that had attached itself to my family.

  My eighteenth birthday would be the last I would spend with my grandfather. He sat and talked to me about all of my past birthdays and about some of his. I assume that everyone had left it to someone else to inform me of my grandfather’s illness; maybe the staff believed that the news should be, or had been, delivered by a family member, and maybe my parents had believed the opposite.

  Over a year later, Marcus arrived in the day room and informed Cassie that he would be helping her perform her duties and would be relief care for me now that Monty was gone. He also said that this had been something that my grandfather had explicitly asked of him, before he died. This is how I learned of my grandfather’s passing—a flippant remark from the palliative care helper, Marcus Salt. I didn’t like Marcus from his first sentence, and over time, I wondered how he had managed to fool my grandfather into asking him to stay.

  Salt is rarely used anymore to preserve meat, but is still often used to hide the taste of rotting meat.

  CHAPTER 13

  I am the remote controller

  I hear the Mustang pull into the driveway. The engine shuts off and I hear the door shut. I hear Anna greet Marcus in the foyer. I see him enter the room in my periphery, and I watch the shape of him come into my field of vision. He is wearing sunglasses, and I want him to take them off and look me in the eyes. He keeps them on and sits down in Cassie’s chair. He doesn’t greet me the way he usually does, and after ten minutes of my eyes burning holes into his flesh, he turns my chair and turns on the television.

  I watch the green lines stack on the screen as he turns the volume up, way louder than it needs to be, and I wonder if this is an attempt to drown out the sound of his conscience.

  Between special offers on the shopping channel, I hear Marcus talking to Anna.

  “You look like you’re taking this as hard as the rest of us,” Anna says.

  It cuts vegetables.

  “Yeah, it’s hard to look at him, knowing that he’s not really in there,” Marcus says.

  It cuts meat.

  “We don’t know that; he might still be in there. Cassie is right, we shouldn’t just give up,” Anna says.

  It slices meat.

  “Maybe no one will ever know if he’s in there or not,” Marcus says.

  Call now, or you’ll miss this special offer.

  “Don’t be so pessimistic, Marcus. Who knows what will happen in the future with technology and medicine?” Anna says.

  This is your last chance to take advantage of this one-time deal.

  The blue light from the television spreads around the room as I stand up and walk toward the hallway, passing Anna and Marcus. I make my way through the house and into the kitchen, where I see a glowing yellow figure that I assume is the cook. I move toward him and the world unfreezes as the color returns. It takes a second to shake off the vertigo-like sensation before I snatch up a knife from the block, and with my head down and purpose in my heavy steps, I storm back toward the dayroom.

  I turn the corner, and as I glance up, I see the cook clutching the knife. He is small in the mirror at the end of the hallway, and I stop at the day room entrance, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

  An image from memory flashes in my mind. I’m looking down the length of a blowgun at a beautiful multicolored bird. I’m thinking that this is no longer a bird, but food for the families of the village. This is how they live. This is how they survive.

  I take a breath and let the air fill my cheeks. I steady my aim. I hesitate, with my breath held for too long, and begin to shake. I try to silence the conflict in my conscience, but I cannot, and I cannot kill the bird. This is not how I have lived or how I have survived. I hand the blowgun quietly to the hunter at my side, and without hesitation, he exhales the dart through the bird’s chest. It flutters for a second and falls still to the wet ground below.

  ***

  As I stare at the cook, I know that I cannot do it, but not for the same reason I couldn’t kill the bird. Whether I can bring myself to kill or not, I can’t let an innocent man be condemned to a cage for the rest of his life for my actions. I let go of the knife.

  Anna looks over at me before the world turns blue and turns to stone. I walk over, stop an inch away from Marcus, and glare into the white lights where his eyes should be. You are a lucky little bird.

  I return to my chair and sit down. The world resumes speed, and I hear the knife hit the floor, followed by a thud and slap.

  Beyond the squealing and stabbing pain, I hear Anna say, “Oh my God are you okay?”

  “What happened?” Marcus asks.

  “I don’t know; he was just standing in the doorway and then he collapsed,” Anna says. “Help me turn him.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Marcus says.

  “Call an ambulance,” Anna says.

  I listen as Marcus gives the details over the phone.

  “I don’t know; he just collapsed. I think he hit his head when he hit the floor,” Marcus says.

  “No. I don’t think so. He’s the cook. I don’t know. Okay,” Marcus says intermittently.

  He gives the address, and we wait as the dance soundtrack of the workout DVD infomercial plays.

  You can really feel it in the pit of your stomach.

  This will change your life.

  I can hear the siren in the distance.

  This will help you drop that unwanted weight.

  The siren grows louder, and I can see the lights reflecting off the walls in the dayroom and off of the television screen.

  Now we’re going to drop to the floor and relax for a minute.

  Anna leads the paramedics in, and I hear them trying to talk to the cook, asking if he can hear them.

  You can really feel the burn.

  One, two, three, and lift.

  I hear the paramedics ready the stretcher, “Three, two, one, lift.”

  A minute later, the ambulance pulls out, and the siren fades out behind the sound of the television, telling me of the one-time-only, life-changing opportunity that I have now missed.

  CHAPTER 14

  I am animal

  Cassie says, “I’m so sorry, Danny. I’m sorry that I have been quiet and withdrawn, and I’m sorry if you don’t like the books that I read to you, or if you are sick of hearing about my life. I’m sorry if you are sick of my problems when they pale in comparison to what I can only imagine you endure every day. I’m sorry that I don’t hear you or know what you want, and I’m sorry if anything I do or say makes it worse. I’m sorry if I got your hopes up, like I did my own.”

  If Cassie had never spoken to me again, I would have understood. Without her, I would have nothing to want to live for, not that will or want in any way affect my standard of living, but I can see what this last
failed attempt to communicate has done to her, and it breaks my heart.

  ***

  Over the course of almost nine years that she has cared for me, I have learned a great deal about her life and the events that have helped to shape her into the strong and beautiful person she is. I know her better than anyone else does. I know that her parents were both drunks and that she was taken away by social services after a fight between her parents spilled out onto the front lawn. The fight landed her dad with an assault charge, and as the police were putting him in handcuffs, her mom jumped on the back of the arresting officer and bit his ear, which earned her an assault charge also.

  Cassie was taken into foster care, and from the stories that she has told me, most of the families that took her in, it would seem, did so only for the government check. She was not abused, or beaten, or any of the foul things that you hear horror stories about from foster care. At best, she was treated with mild neglect and indifference, and at worst, made to feel like a burden. She grew up with many different siblings. Brian was the foster brother that she had for the longest time; although, they were never really that close. She has maintained casual contact with him over the years via sporadic phone conversations, but they rarely ever see each other.

  She was moved around from home to home for whatever reason, and was eventually taken in by Emily Mathews, namesake of the Emily Mathews foundation for under-privileged children, which coincidentally, was one of the charities that regularly received generous donations from my mother and father and probably still does.

  Emily’s husband had passed away unexpectedly when she was in her thirties. She had refused to ever replace the love of her life but had always wanted children and so she began fostering. She became known for her kindness and her many years raising happy children that would all congregate back at her house for every holiday or family get-together, bringing with them their children, and eventually, grandchildren. Cassie was the last child to be fostered and was later adopted by Emily.