by Alan Spencer
The body finally went still, all nerve pulses killed. The woman dumped the brain into a plastic case brimming with a clear fluid. She sealed it, labeled it by name, and was working toward the room with the other patients in-waiting when she caught Craig hiding.
“Who are you and why aren’t you in restraints?”
Craig tightened his fists. “I’m not one of the patients you’re exploiting. You take another step, and I’ll hurt you.”
She smiled, tickled by his defense. “You will do no such thing.”
“Let me guess, you’re another Krone. And you’re crazy too. Another crazy Krone.”
“Excuse me? How do you know me?”
“You’re extracting brains. All of you do that. Every Krone is obsessed with brains, and memories, and whatever else you people do. And let me guess, we’re in one of his facilities. You’re killing patients and nobody cares to find out about it. You’re doing research.”
“I’m helping my husband complete his work. Hey, why aren’t you in a straightjacket? You don’t belong here, do you? Come here. Let’s straighten this out.”
“You don’t take another step toward me.” He eyed the space behind her work area. Five headless bodies were heaped in a laundry basket on wheels. “I’m not ending up like them, and you’re not hurting another one of these people.”
“I only want to cure them of their minds,” she explained, her intensity revealed by her widening, globe eyes. “I work alongside my husband. His work is essential. These people take their meds, shit their diapers, suffer manic fits, and they stay here locked up in these depressing quarters. Our facilities offer no cure for these people. Families leave them behind, heartbroken and fed up. We have to physically extract the maladies they contain. And it’ll take a practiced physician to actually enter their minds, their memories, and their thoughts to save them.” She tightened her fists. “Can’t you see this is crucial work?”
“Do you have anybody’s consent to do this?”
She scoffed, shaking her head, and feigned resignation. “This is work taken with a leap of faith. Our hearts are in the right place, and more importantly, so are our minds. Breakthroughs aren’t made by the books. All will be forgiven when these patients will walk out of here sane, cured, and able to live meaningful lives. And I’m preserving our patients’ minds. Their souls are very much still alive, and they will be forever.”
“How do you know this? You can’t, really. Nobody’s been cured.”
He caught the row of brains on a shelf hooked to electrodes, and the EEG machine spitting out readings. Two bodies were placed standing on an upright stretcher. The brains were exposed, another EEG machine charting brain waves.
“You see those two bodies,” she explained. “I switched their brains, and they still live! It’s amazing. Imagine if I can get them to return to consciousness what they might say.”
Craig yelled with every muscle of his throat, “What the hell is the point of this work?”
“I’m going to cure them of their maladies!” she shrieked and aimed a pistol at him, what had been tucked under her belt. “Look, I don’t know how or why you’re here. Now I can either shoot you, or I can drug you. Regardless, that brain of yours is all mine.”
“Wait!” He battled to create a diversion from her shooting him. “You see, I’m a part of your husband’s work. He’s created a machine. This machine can play my memories on a TV screen. He can also enter my mind and my thoughts.”
She was stumped. “My husband showed me the machine, but he hasn’t gotten it to work. Is he keeping secrets from me?” She raised the gun so it was face level. “Tell me how you know about this right now, or I’ll kill you.”
“I’m one of his patients,” he pleaded, then realized he was talking to Dr. Krone, Sr.'s wife. “Look, I'm actually one of your son's patients. And he’s in my mind playing games with me. He’s not curing anybody. He’s enjoying himself, the sick fuck.”
She trained the pistol at his head. “No, you lie. You're not making any sense! You're just another one of these lunatics.”
The patients mumbled collectively, ball gags stuffed into their mouths. Many drooled and their muffled laughter distracted the woman long enough for him to launch over to her. He landed a stiff punch to her stomach, swinging hard. He pushed her to the ground, forcing the gun from her grip after stepping on her wrist. Craig raced to pick up the gun, and he couldn’t believe what he witnessed in the back of the room.
Dr. Krone, Sr. stood confused and frightened. The doctor helped his wife to her feet. Craig raised the gun and kept them where they stood. This was his chance to observe the rest of the room.
Heads without eyes were stored in formaldehyde jars. Hundreds of brains floated in preservatives. More bodies were also wrapped up in blankets and heaped in laundry carts.
“What do you do with the bodies, Krone?”
Dr. Krone Sr.’s brow sweated and he clutched on to his wife, shaken from his daily routine. “I don’t have to tell you anything.” He turned to the woman. “Are you okay, Hillary?”
She nodded, still out of sorts.
Craig insisted, “Where are we right now?”
“You don’t know where we are?” Hillary was stumped by his naivety. “Why don’t you know? Isn’t it obvious?”
He raised the gun. “Spell it out for me, or I shoot you both. I’m in my brain. I guess it’s not murder.”
“You’re in one of my sanitariums,” Dr. Krone, Sr. enumerated, sharpening his eyes, penetrating Craig. “And what do you mean by ‘I’m in my brain?’”
“You hooked me to a machine. You, no, wait, your son, Dr. Krone, he did it. That fat bastard roams my memories and thoughts. He's manipulating my past. Treating me, that’s what he calls it. Tormenting me is a better word. I guess in the future, he fucked up and decided to have fun instead. He's a sadistic voyeur. He's nothing more than a criminal.”
“My son brought you here by the machine?"
Dr. Krone, Sr. almost fell backwards, the revelation so powerful. Hillary propped him up straight, making sure he wouldn’t tip over again. “This is…well, staggering. The machine works. I haven’t hooked a living patient up to it yet. I wanted to commit to more research first, but if what you’re saying is true, I’m launching into it right now.”
He pointed the gun between Dr. Krone, Sr.’s eyes. “You’ll do no such thing. This ends now!”
He pulled the trigger.
The gun blast was rudely abbreviated by the blink. Dr. Krone, Sr. was in sight, the bullet shattered his skull, and then the doctor was gone. A shout involuntarily slipped from Craig, high-pitched and from his sternum. He forced himself quiet and stood in place. The darkness was blinding, and Craig was forced to rely on a different set of senses to survive, namely his nose. Something wet and ice cold was seeping through his shoes. The stench became a film on his skin. Pneumonia strong. He coughed, and coughed, and coughed to breathe. Death consumed the room. He could smell blood and spoiled human carcasses en masse.
He feared stepping another inch. The room, whatever box he was now in, was silent. No crazies babbling in their padded rooms or victims mewling in torment. From above, a series of light bulbs flickered on. Rust light provided red and orange hues to the damnable room. He didn’t hear anybody’s approach yet, and it gave him an opportunity—though it nearly claimed his wits to do so—to study the horrifying box.
The institutional appearance made Craig believe he was still in an asylum. The walls were tiled, the floor concrete. He counted fifteen steel gurneys haphazardly strewn side by side, discarded and piled up, with bloodless corpses on them. Their skullcaps had been removed, the brains pilfered. Many of the bodies had begun to putrefy into greens and browns. Faces reflected waxen, bodies sunken and soft in the middle, and they were leaking their bodily fluids, the brackish substance dripping from the edge of gurneys in thick caramel consistencies. Sets of tools on carts ranged from scalpels, pinch claps, bone saws, circular saws, and pliers. Hundreds of
used surgeon gloves littered the floor.
The rusted light kept the room healthy in its supply of shadows. Somehow, Craig managed to decipher the bulky items positioned throughout the rest of the corridor—the very purpose of the room. They were prototypes, he believed, of the machine he was hooked up to, though he hadn’t seen the damn thing yet. Craig compared many of them to the body of a tractor where the engine component was hidden. Steel doors were open from two sides of the machine, and within, nine brains were housed in a dark yellow fluid. Electrodes were inserted between hemispheres and lobes of the brain, though they were collecting green growths and far from fresh. From the back end of the machine, an industrial-sized plug-in trailed out. It was unplugged and discarded as a failure.
Across the room, four men in straightjackets were sitting with their backs to each other in chairs. Their mummified heads were reared back with a silver bowl placed over their skulls. A long steel rod extended out the bowls and connected to a black box with circuits and projection lights. The victims’ mouths were wide in an eternal scream.
The stink hit a crescendo, and Craig covered his mouth and held his breath. A glass box the size of a hatchback’s trunk contained hundreds of deflated, cut-up, and otherwise ruined brains. They stank and stewed in a yellow fluid. Whatever preservative it had been, it had lost its potency.
He then inched toward a wall, curious at what was taped up on display. He counted twenty, thirty, forty, and many more blueprint sketches of the machine throughout the various stages of its development. Each had the steel box as the core. The power source ranged from mechanical hinges, lawnmower engines, to car engines, and a wheel-and-pulley system—an Amish version of Dr. Krone’s machine, he thought. Ropes, and circuits, steel wires, and bared wire were used interchangeably. Car batteries, nuts, bolts, copper wire, computer keyboards, steel gears, and rods were among many of the pieces scattered about the floor.
Disturbed from his investigation, he heard the confident stride of footsteps enter the corridor. Ducking behind a wooden crate, he looked out and found it was father and son Krone. He caught their shadows come closer, and Craig couldn’t stand to be in the wretched cesspool room a moment longer.
He closed his eyes and thought of a happier place.
Bachelor Pad
Craig was again moved to a new place, guided by the blink, the shift and placement influenced by his thoughts. He studied his surroundings, taking in the danger level. The darkness was the only factor that remained a constant. The sliver of light, a square, was the only indication he was far away from the sanitarium and the two Krones. The musical humming urged him into an erect position. His back, shoulders, and head bumped into boxes. Dust was disturbed, and he coughed on it.
The humming stopped.
He froze.
And then the humming started again. A wet schick followed the return of the humming.
Shick-shick-shick-shick-shick.
The sound was rhythmic, on time.
He gathered the courage to move again, having to know what was happening. He peered at the line of light in the corner. He couldn’t see anything yet.
Wait.
This is the crawlspace.
The humming wasn’t from Brandon. His father wasn’t the type to hum or sing. Maybe to get laid he’d do it. That meant his mom was out there. He craved her comfort. The warmth of her hug, and the humming, the ability to soothe was a motherly instinct she could wield to perfection.
He worked his way out of the boxes, pushing them aside, and barged through the door. He stopped before revealing himself to his mother.
This is too easy.
“Where are you, Dr. Krone?”
Did the doctor know he had trespassed into his mind? And if he did, what form of retribution would he take?
If I die here, what happens to me in that room? Will I decay like those other bodies?
The door was thrown open from the other side before he could work out a solution. “Oh, there you are, kiddo.”
Tina grabbed him by the arms and dragged him out. He was a child again. He couldn’t have been older than ten. He issued a high-pitched scream. Tina held his lips shut. The tang of blood met his nose, and Craig gasped, looking at her face and the red pasted on it. Blood clung to her shirt and painted her body like she’d bathed in it. Her hair was standing on end in sections and was pasted to her scalp in others. Tina’s eyes were wide, her mouth drawn in a straight line but it quivered. She contained her amusement, a secret pleasure. Something brewed inside of her that had yet to be released.
The source of the blood was still a mystery, but the blood itself was well utilized. Large red X’s crossed out Brandon’s super model and playmate posters. The thick slashes dribbled onto the floor, fresh. Brandon’s Budweiser can fridge was knocked onto the ground, the cans inside littering the floor.
“This is my room now,” she shouted out with the zest of a seven-year-old. “I’m the decorator. What do you think, Craig? I’ll let you come down whenever you like. I had to make some changes first. Brandon let me…after we talked. Parker guided me through it. He told me what to do with your father. We can be together now. No more secrecy and Parker will love you like a son.” Under her breath, “For the first time you’ll feel a father’s love.”
Tina’s hands squished within his. It wasn’t only blood. Gobs of flesh were tangled between the notches of her fingers. The adult statement was foreign through the mouth of a child. “Mom…what have you done to Dad? What did Parker tell you to do?”
The thrill continued to sparkle in her eyes. “Parker said God would look the other way, and God did.” She was whispering now. “Parker knows God’s feelings. And now I know God too. You should get to know God. I’ve brought Dad directly to God, and God can deal with him.”
Under the green fixture that shone onto the pool table—the only source of light on in the entire room—was Brandon’s body. His throat had been gouged through numerous times. Brandon’s eyes were affixed on nothing, wide open. The eyes screamed terror and agony but the rest of his face was limp. He’d turned blue and pale, losing much blood. A seven-inch steak knife was laid out on the green carpet alongside Brandon’s straight razor. Strips of flesh similar to the thin slices of a carrot peeler were taken from Brandon’s naked back.
Craig curled into himself, repulsed. Tina tightened her grip on his hand to the point his bones protested. “Ah, you’re hurting me!”
Tina shrieked, triggered by his reaction, “And your father hurt me! He tore my heart out. I caught him sticking his dick in a random stranger. I was walking to the grocery store, and I noticed our car parked outside a hotel. I fought my way inside, and there was the slut spent and ready to go home. Cum and wash bitch, that whore, that slut, that fucking diseased bitch, only my husband could find something attractive about her. I acted like I’d forgiven him. I brought us home. Then I remembered what Parker said about bringing Brandon to God.” She paused, licking her dried lips. “That’s when I stabbed him in the throat.”
She looked to him for acceptance and understanding. “This was what you wanted for me, Craig. Remember?—don’t you remember? You said he didn’t deserve me. You were right. Now he can’t have me. I can be happy now.”
Tina snarled and returned to the pool table. She picked up the straight razor and began flensing strips of skin from Brandon’s spine and between his shoulder blades, the blade clicking against bone with each swipe. “He’s slept with so many women. He’s dirty. I’m sure he’s passed something on to me. He didn’t make love to me with real passion. But Parker, he’s a real man. I’m his one and only.”
She shaved down the back of Brandon's head and removed a long cut of meat. Craig abhorred the sight, internally shrinking from the sight. Tina expressed more joy than he’d ever seen, and it disgusted him. “Dr. Krone taught me this trick.”
Both his fists tightened at his name. “What did he say to you? When did he talk to you, Mom?” He closed in, grabbing her by both arms to steal her at
tention. “Christ, speak up—tell me right now!”
Tina’s eyes, Tina’s smile, Tina’s brow, everything about her face went crooked. The shadows gnarled the blood stains on her face. It looked like she’d been the one who was bleeding. “He said simply stabbing him in the throat wasn’t good enough. I’d regret not torturing him more—even though he’s already dead. Parting the skin, I’m shaving him clean. He’ll be a good man when there’s nothing left of him. The doctor said that’s the only way for a devious man to make a fresh start. Clean. Pure. Without sin—oh wait, the sin part was Parker’s talk, not the doctor’s.”
She glared at him, her joy suddenly draining, her smile fading into a frown. She growled, “I see your father in you. You’ll be just like him soon, Craig.” A whimper of fear, her eyes shirked from him, and then they returned, staring at him like he was stranger, someone to harm. “I can’t let you go, Craig. You’ll break another girl’s heart.” She tightened her stare. “Poor Katie. You were supposed to be a man. You let her bleed to death. It’s your fault your wife and baby died.”
She cast her head down, mourning his ineptitudes. “But your mistakes hurt others, Craig. You could potentially harm another girl that may come into your life.” The next words caused the hairs on the nape of his neck to stand. “I must save you. Cleanse you like I cleansed your daddy.”
The motherly role was distorted. She had consoled him when Katie died in real life. She was the major factor in moving on versus wallowing in self-pity and guilt, and now, she was taking back that gift.
Shick-shick-shick-shick-shick.
Brandon’s scalp was bared to the skull, Tina carving the straight razor with precision and determination. She slapped the skin onto the floor, wringing her hands of the flesh.
