Get Katja

by Simon Logan

  “Come on, Bridget, do something,” she says to herself, taking out the hypodermic syringe she had prepared earlier. She opens the car door, the screams coming from across the road now clearly female. The man lifts the woman’s prone form onto his shoulders and carries her back to his car.

  “Wait. Just wait,” Bridget mutters. Her hands, now in a fresh pair of purple latex gloves, are shaking. “I don’t even know if it’s her.”

  The man opens the rear door of his car and shoves the body inside, dusts off his hands. Places a handkerchief back in his pocket.

  When he’s circling around to the front of the car Bridget finally jumps out, keeping her head low as she crosses to him.

  He hears the sound of her footfall but only at the last moment. By that time the needle is already sunk deep into the flabby tissue at the back of his neck and the effect is almost instantaneous. His body first goes rigid, hands coming up to his neck but not quite making it before everything goes limp and he crashes to the ground like a felled walrus. Bridget watches over him until she is certain that he is out cold then reaches into his coat pocket and takes out his wallet. She pulls out some old, stained business cards. A fucking detective.

  “Shit,” she says, suddenly panicking that there will be others, wondering if she has just interrupted some sort of police operation but when nothing happens she hurriedly opens the rear of the car.

  The woman’s hood has been pulled off and Bridget takes the gig poster from her pocket and unfolds it, matching the two despite the murky light and the fact that the woman’s head was clean-shaven rather than littered with spikes. Bridget leans in closer, checks the woman is still breathing then examining the extensive tattoo which covers her neck, running a gloved finger across it. She feels something embedded in the skin beneath the design and instantly knows that it is the reason that Stasko is after her.

  She reaches in and, with some difficulty, manages to haul the body up onto her shoulder. She staggers across the road and cracks open the rear door to her own vehicle, shoves the woman inside. Slams the door shut, starts the engine.

  The car tires squeal as they try to find purchase and as she drives off she glances in the rear view mirror at the still-prone figure of the fat man, wondering what the hell kind of trouble Katja is already involved in.

  10.

  Flesh Heel is busy with the usual clientele when Bridget enters. Loud darkwave music blasts from speakers positioned around the club, deftly controlled by a man in an expensive-looking metal and latex outfit lurking behind a set of decks in one corner. Neon tube lights of varying colour adorn the walls along with metallic whips and casts of various body parts, curtains of chain-mail, and paintings of latex-clad women. More latex-clad women sit in the booths beneath them as if they have just stepped out of the portraits, nursing vibrant cocktails and pitchers of dark purple liquid.

  Bridget adjusts her grip on Katja, the other woman’s arm hooked around her shoulder and gripped by the wrist. A few look up as they pass but merely give Bridget a knowing look, perhaps having been in a similar situation themselves or hoping to achieve it by the end of the night. She manages to haul Katja through the club and to a door at the back of the bar area.

  She punches a code into the security keypad mounted on the door frame. There’s an electronic click as the lock is released. She struggles to get the door open while maintaining her grip on Katja, only just managing to get through without letting the unconscious woman tumble to the floor. The door seals shut behind them on weighted hinges and instantly the atmosphere changes.

  Silence swapped for the pounding industrial throb of the music.

  A cool, almost clinical air, swapped for the sweaty heat of the club.

  She descends a mercifully short set of steps into the basement and calls out Stasko’s name.

  The room which extends beyond the stairs is kitted out with exactly the same gleaming white fittings as the clinic, lit by an enormous surgical lamp which looms over a gurney like a predator. The girl from the clinic lies on the table, limbs slightly parted, her hair wrapped in disposable plastic. A green sheet is spread across her and there’s a bloody gauze taped over her mouth out of which a small piece of tubing emerges. Another breath-restriction fetishist, Bridget realizes. Her breathing is steady and calm, a couple of machines to one side monitoring her sedation.

  Stasko is in the far corner, bent over a sink and scrubbing blood and iodine from his hands. He knocks the tap with one elbow when he becomes aware of Bridget’s presence. His face lights up when he realizes she is not alone and he rushes to them.

  “You found her already? How?”

  Bridget hands Katja’s limp form over to him, deciding not to mention the information Nikolai had given her. She might as well get the credit if she can get away with it.

  “Does it matter?”

  Stasko holds Katja around the waist as if he is clutching his lover after a fainting episode. He gently runs his hand across her face and scalp then over her neck. He feels what Bridget had earlier felt, the little protrusion from the middle of her neck, almost lost amidst the tattoo. He uses his pinkie to prod it and lets out a sigh.

  “So we’re done?” Bridget asks, already stepping back towards the stairs.

  Stasko barely acknowledges her, nodding absently but still studying Katja intently.

  “Get her cleaned up and into the recovery suite,” he says, vaguely indicating the girl on the operating table.

  “Are you sure she’s ready to . . .”

  “Now, Nurse Soelberg,” Stasko insists.

  “Yes doctor.”

  11.

  Katja emerges back into consciousness like a bead of blood into new tattoo.

  Each time the room around her comes into focus it quickly shivers and fades again, dragging her even deeper back into the haze which had previously consumed her. Her limbs feel heavy and a crashing headache throbs within her skull. She tries to move but can’t. She hears footsteps and an occasional electronic beep. She becomes aware of someone in the room beside her.

  She does her best to focus her every thought on breaking free of the darkness and finally it peels away from her. Bright light rushes in, causing little spikes of pain to shoot through her eyeballs. Her throat feels raw, each swallow like knocking back a shot of broken glass, and when she tries to touch it she finds that her hands won’t move.

  She looks down, blinking to clear the remainder of the drug-fog, and realizes that she is lying on a hospital gurney, her wrists and ankles held in place by black leather restraints.

  “What . . . the hell . . . ?”

  A figure appears next to her, almost entirely described in silhouette but she just barely makes out the surgical scrubs and mask.

  “Am I . . . in hospital?”

  “No,” the man says. “Why, are you ill?”

  “I . . .”

  Katja tries once more to sit up but the restraints hold tight. She blinks some more and the initial dazzle of the light fades away as her eyes adjust. She struggles to recall how she got here, remembers the gig. No—the sound check. Then after that?

  Heels. Why is she thinking about high heels? And a fat man, reeking of an ugly body odour. A chemical burning at her nostrils. These pieces float around her, refusing to settle into any sensible order.

  I know who you are, Katja. And I think we both know that there are certain people who would just love to get their hands on you.

  X-rays and sketches are pinned to the wall above her, enlarged photos of what she instantly recognises to be her own neck.

  The surgeon leans over her, his gloved hands working their way across her chest and throat.

  “Healing well,” he says. “I do not understand why you would have wanted to cut the tube out in the first place. Such a shame. But this one is much improved anyway.”

  He holds a small mirror up, presenting her with the image of a gleaming new tracheotomy tube p
rotruding from the midst of the tattoo which she had gotten to cover up the remainder of her previous one.

  “What the . . . fuck is . . . this?”

  “Beautiful,” the surgeon says, too focused on her neck to properly hear the question. “A good start.”

  “Start of what?”

  He puts the mirror to one side, regarding her with puzzlement, as if he couldn’t contemplate why she would ask such a thing. “Your transformation.”

  And he waves a hand across the collection of prints and x-rays pinned to the wall.

  Katja examines them more carefully, realising that there are Polaroids of people in amongst the sketches, people with strange additions and modifications to their heads and bodies. They’re still bloody from whatever operations they have been through, still marked with dotted incision lines.

  “You’re fuck . . . ing . . . kidding . . . meee,” she slurs.

  “You have nothing to worry about,” he tells her. “What Anna and I had planned for . . . you are so much like her. So much like her in so many ways.”

  He removes his gloves, runs a hand across Katja’s shaven scalp. She wriggles beneath him but her body is still refusing to fully co-operate.

  “But this is enough for one night. You need to keep your strength up.”

  He goes around the back of the gurney, out of her line of sight, then pushes her across the makeshift surgery towards a door at the rear.

  “I am going to unstrap you now, Katja. I should warn you that if you try anything I have a dose of sedative here. I haven’t properly calculated the dosage based on your body weight so whilst it might not be lethal, I cannot guarantee it. I would hate to lose you so early on and I’m sure you will be keen to not lose yourself either, yes?”

  He holds up a syringe to prove his point. She nods and so he undoes her straps one by the one, watching her the whole time.

  “There,” he says when done. “Can you stand for me?”

  He slides an arm underneath her back and assists her into a sitting position, then onto her feet. She grits her teeth, fighting for control of her own limbs, her legs threatening to give way beneath her. She scans the room whilst the surgeon punches a code into a keypad mounted on the wall, calculating any potential escape routes, but the staircase behind him appears to be the only way out and she has no idea what it leads to. The surgeon opens the door, the room beyond is no more than twelve feet by twelve feet and swathed in darkness. A bed lies up against the far corner, a chrome wash basin in one of the others. The surgeon helps her to the bed, lays her down.

  “Get some rest,” he tells her, smiling. “I will be back soon and we can begin the next procedure.”

  “So who is it then?” she asks him, still wary of the syringe he holds. “One of Szerynski’s lot? It can’t be Kohl—that one couldn’t organise a fuck in a brothel.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” he says. “Please, get some rest.”

  He closes the door and the sound of his footsteps quickly fades.

  Katja forces herself upright, one arm on the wall beside her. Her eyes now fight to re-adjust, the stark illumination of the surgery swapped once more for darkness.

  She staggers across the room and tries the door handle but it holds fast. She bangs on the door, snarling threats into it, all the while feeling as if she is about to collapse. She feels her way around the room blindly, checking for taped-up windows or ventilation shafts, anything. She finds a light switch and hits it, a strip-light buzzing into weak life above her.

  And then someone says, “Katja?”

  She freezes, finger still on the switch, recognising the voice instantly.

  12.

  After having had his blood drawn Nikolai is led out of the clinic by the nurse with the pink hair.

  She locks up and he gets back into her car. She drives him a short distance to a club district and into a building with the words Flesh Heel emblazoned across the front doors in reflective paint. A queue of people in fetishwear line up behind a rope guarded by doormen so beefed up it appears as if their shoulders have enveloped their necks. They step to one side when they see the nurse and open the doors for her. Nikolai is quickly guided through the smoke- and neon-filled room, past people gyrating and wrapped around one another, past the bar lit from beneath in a cold blue light, and into a rear passageway.

  “Where are we going?” he asks her.

  She doesn’t answer, leads him down a set of steps and into a makeshift surgery.

  A girl lies out on an operating table and Nikolai recognises her as the one from clinic. Her head is turned to one side and she is staring right at him but her eyes are glassy, vacant. A man dressed in surgical smocks, including a facial mask and cap, looks up from the instrument tray he is arranging. He nods at the woman and she takes Nikolai’s arm, guides him to a door at the back of the room and enters a secure code, and then they go inside.

  She flicks a light switch on, revealing a small, sparse room with a basic wire-framed bed on either side and a chrome washbasin in between.

  “Get some rest,” she tells him.

  The sound of a drill revving up echoes through from the surgery beyond.

  “I thought this was just going to be some tests,” he says as he is sat down on the bed. “I mean . . .”

  The whirring increases in intensity and volume from outside, matching the speed of Nikolai’s hands rubbing up and down his legs.

  “Don’t worry about that,” she tells him. “It’s unrelated.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “I’m going to turn the light off so you can get some rest, okay?”

  Before he can say anything the room is plunged into darkness as the door closes, muffling the noises coming from the surgery beyond.

  “Shit,” he mutters.

  Without knowing what else to do he settles down on the bed, remaining in the darkness for what seems like hours until the door opens once more and a woman is brought in by the surgeon. Nikolai can only make out the vaguest impressions of them but even in the low light he thinks he recognises her.

  The surgeon closes the door and she launches herself at it, slamming her fists against it and screaming obscenities then scrabbling around the room, her hands just barely brushing him at one point, until she finds the light switch. She hits it and now he is certain.

  “Katja,” he says.

  And perhaps being locked in the room with the surgeon might not be the worst possibility after all.

  “Nikolai?” she says, turning around. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  “I didn’t think I . . . what are you doing here?”

  “You first.”

  “Another medical study. I think.”

  She looks at him for a few moments, taking in the fresh plasters rimmed with dried blood on the back of his hands and inner arm.

  “You’re here for the trial too?”

  “Tell me, Nikolai,” she says with menace, ignoring his question. “Does the name Lady Delicious ring any bells?”

  “Lady who?”

  “Ah, I see,” she says, arms crossed as she walks towards him. He backs farther into the corner. “So you don’t remember taking out a loan in the name of the band?”

  “A loan?”

  “Yes, a fucking loan!” she screams. “A fucking loan which that demented bitch and her gang of tranny psychos are now expecting me to settle! I hope it was money well spent, Nikolai, I hope you got utterly off your face on it.”

  Nikolai says nothing.

  “I trusted you, Nik. I stood up for you! I told the rest of the band you were clean and then what do you go and do? You turn up to rehearsals whacked out of your little mind.”

  And it’s as if the last couple of months haven’t happened, their current argument seamlessly entwining with the one they had had the last time they were together.

  “Well, I’ve got news for you,” she c
ontinues. “The band is doing just fucking fine without you. Joey stepped in.”

  “Oh,” he says. Then, “I saw your poster. The gig.”

  And he takes the folded up scrap of paper from his back pocket, unravels it and shows it to her.

  “Yeah, well it ain’t going to happen if I’m locked up here much longer,” she says quietly. She looks around the room, examining it in more detail now that it is lit.

  She climbs up on the other bed, running her hands along the wall as if hoping to find a secret lever or door.

  “Katja,” he says eventually. “I’m sorry.”

  He’s lost track of the number of times he’s apologised to her after what happened but each time the sentiment has less and less meaning—though what else can he do?

  And then he realizes exactly what he can do.

  13.

  DeBoer rolls the syringe back and forth between his palms, the remaining trickle of liquid glinting in the moonlight coming in through the station wagon’s windshield. He rubs at the back of his neck to work away the lingering numbness, winces when he touches the little lump where the needle was shoved into him.

  He was still woozy from the injection when he threw his weight around inside the squat, threatening whomever he found, demanding that they tell him where Katja was, but it had gotten him nowhere. So here he is now, back in the crappy old-man car, parked outside a welding plant, a shift just ending and the workers, their overalls filthy and their hair matted with sweat, emerging onto the street.

  DeBoer licks his fingers, straightens his moustache, then gets out.

  His legs are more stable now, willing to go along with the request to stride towards the workers. His raincoat billows around him and the men spot him when he is still several metres away but he is honing in on one in particular. His target sees him coming and there’s a moment where it looks like the man is going to run before thinking better of it and coming to a halt. The other workers keep moving, isolating him.