Sticky Fingers: Box Set Collection 2: 36 More Deliciously Twisted Short Stories (Sticky Fingers: The Complete Box Set Collection)

by JT Lawrence

  “The other address,” says Susman, buckling herself in. “The seventh address. Thinskin?”

  They speed towards the house in Orange Grove, not knowing what they'll discover there. They find the street—a tapered road pocked with holes. Litter swirls in dust devils outside the house, which is squat and needs its roof tiles repaired. De Villiers and Susman are still riding the adrenaline wave from the gunshots when they creep onto the property and look through the windows. The rooms appear empty. Susman and Devil look at one another; he wants to bash the door down, but they don't have a warrant. Instead, he picks the lock—which is just as illegal, but leaves less evidence. He squeezes the knob and turns it so slowly you hardly hear the spring moving, and the bolt gives way. Guns drawn, they edge inside. Susman can hear her whispered breath, and her stomach is aching again. She wonders if there is a basement.

  Robin Susman doesn’t want to find five dead girls. She doesn’t want to find five living girls, either, if they’ve been brutalised. As it is, she can’t sleep; her midnight mind is a spool of bad memories.

  On the cream carpet in the lounge, they find the bodies. Five compact frames lying beside each other, motionless, as the rising sun slices through a gap in the drawn curtains. Susman watches them—her mouth desiccated—as Devil checks the rest of the house and comes back showing empty palms. They holster their weapons, and De Villiers coughs to clear his throat.

  “Girls,” he says, in his gruff way. “Girls. Wake up.”

  One or two of them groan. Another stretches, eyes still closed. When the blonde girl catches sight of the strangers in the room, she crawls out of her sleeping bag and onto the sofa, long-limbed and painfully thin. She looks skittish; ready to run.

  “Wake up!” she yells at the others, and their eyes shoot open.

  “We’re here to help you,” says Susman.

  Marijke looks at De Villiers. “Oom?”

  The captain is not used to being called uncle. He looks uncomfortable and then smiles at his niece. “You’re safe, now,” he says.

  “What do you mean?” asks one of the girls. “Who are you?”

  “We’re here to take you home,” says Susman.

  They all frown and complain.

  “We don’t want to go home,” says Marijke. “We all chose to be here.”

  “You’re children,” says Devil. “You don’t get to decide. You belong with your parents, not some bad people you met on the internet.”

  “I’m not going home,” says the blonde girl. “No way.”

  “They’re not bad people!” says Marijke. “They’re helping us.”

  Susman glares at her. “How?”

  "They're teaching us how to be models. They're going to take us to New York. They've already taken some girls over there, and they say it's amazing. Sally is our coach and agent. She's organising special passports for us. Clem is a photographer, and he's shooting our portfolios."

  “I know this is difficult to hear, kids,” says Susman, “but Sally is not a modelling agent, and Clem is not a photographer. And I’ll bet those aren’t their real names, either.”

  “They’re good people,” says the blonde girl.

  Devil’s lips are white. “He took photos of you? What kind of photos?”

  Marijke's nostrils flare, and she crosses her arms. "Nothing bad, if that's what you're thinking. He's not like that. He's kind. Kinder than Dad.”

  Blom sends them a voice message. The team in Rosebank had identified the bodies as Silje and Asbjørn Berdahl, a married couple from Norway. They’re wanted in South Africa and other countries for dozens of counts of sexual exploitation of minors, human trafficking, and child pornography.

  “We’re going to take you to the station now, and notify your parents,” says Susman, picturing Marijke’s pretty room with the concealed razor blade and the photograph of jutting bones under paper skin. She looks at the scars on the girl’s thin arms. The parents would want to punish their daughters for putting them through such hell, but Susman couldn’t help feeling sorry for the girls. She saw the pain on their gaunt faces. Happy kids don’t make themselves disappear. Happy kids don’t commit slow suicide. What were they running away from?

  No, they all say. We don’t want to go home.

  “Wait for Sally to come back,” says Marijke. “She’ll explain everything.”

  De Villiers takes a deep breath. “Sally’s not coming back.”

  3

  An Eye for an Eye

  The last thing I remember is Lorin’s scream as my roadster smashes into the guardrails and flips into the air. There was Lorin’s terrible wail, and then being silently airborne. Then there was nothing.

  Later some bright lights shone through—hospital ceilings I guess—and doctors' terse commands. I piece together the clues I overhear. The crash, the rocks, the fire. Agony like I've never experienced before burns my every organ and bone. Pipes and palpations. Needles, catheters, and a heart monitor that sounds like a ticking time bomb. More waves of searing pain, and more darkness. A doctor with blond hair comes in and peers at me. A crucifix dangles from a silver chain around her neck. She looks familiar. She injects my IV line with something, grabs the foot of my hospital bed and navigates it out of the ward. The metal rails of the bed bump the double-doors and send a lightning bolt of pain through my broken body. I thought I might be going to the operating theatre for more surgery, but she takes me in the opposite direction. We travel down in the elevator and go outside. I see a flash of crisp sky and feel the sun briefly on my face, then she pushes the gurney into the back of an ambulance and slams the doors shut. More bumping, more agony. I try to concentrate. I want to ask where we're going, but the tranquilliser kicks in and my pain fades, along with my vision.

  When I wake up, I'm in a new room. It looks like a hospital room, white and grey and clean. It has the same hospital equipment, including the ticking of the bomb. The pain is perennial. My focus fades in and out, in and out, and days pass like seconds and like centuries. The woman I thought was a doctor appears to be a nurse because she bathes me and changes the plastic bladder of my catheter. I am grateful to her, but cannot say so. I wonder why my parents haven't visited me. Do they know I'm here? I hear Lorin's scream over and over again. It is the soundtrack to my suffering. I thought the worst part of it was over, but I was wrong.

  I try to talk to the blond woman who checks on me every day, but my tongue is thick, and my mouth pools with sour saliva. I have forgotten how to speak. I want to thank her and ask her to call my parents. They'll be so worried about me. I want to know if Lorin is okay.

  Stravetsky, I try to say. Lorin Stravetsky.

  My pain begins to recede, and I can breathe easier. The ticking of the bomb stabilises. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to walk again.

  "You're going to have a little surgery," says the woman. Her eyes are cold. She's wearing mint green scrubs and a hairnet. My body starts to shiver; I can't cope with more pain. I've had enough of the invasive medical procedures, the sharp glint of scalpels in the bright, iris-shrinking light; the scent of disinfectant. The hospital room has become my prison cell, and she's the jailer and surgeon.

  She smothers my mouth and nose with a hissing mask and the air that cascades into my lungs is sweet and soporific. I try to fight the heavy blanket of black smoke that rolls towards me, but it wins. In this white sanitised prison cell, the darkness always wins.

  I go to sleep with those cold eyes on me, and I wake up to the same—like ice-cubes pressed to my skin. She looks so familiar. Did I know her before the accident? I wrack my brains, but it feels like my memory has degraded along with my atrophying body. I need to get out. I try to sit up, but a new pain shears through me. I lie down; my lower back is on fire. Was that where the surgery was? Spleen, perhaps, or kidneys. I hope they were able to repair what was damaged.

  There is a picture on the wall. It’s a young boy, smiling. I don’t know who he is. My kidneys hurt. I escape, gratefully, into sleep.

 
“Another little operation today,” says the blond jailer with the crucifix hanging from her neck. The sweet gas soon knocks me out, and the last thing I see is Lorin’s pretty face. Did I love her? I wasn’t sure.

  I wake up in pain. I thought I'd get used to it, but it's yet a new ache in a new place, and I think I'd rather die than go through any more of this. I glance at the door, yearning to be set free, but it is, as always, locked. There is no way to escape.

  There’s a new picture on the wall. This time it’s a middle-aged man with a well-groomed beard. Are these people I should know? Do I have amnesia? Are we re-constructing my life?

  After the next cold-eyed surgery, there are five more photographs on the wall. Seven people smile down at me as I writhe and perspire until my pillow is wet beneath me. I pull up my hospital gown—inch by inch because every movement hurts—and this time I see a fresh wound run from my shaved pubic hair up to my protruding ribcage—a neat railway line of staples. Beneath the ruptured and stitched skin, my organs ache. The woman arrives with an injection and punctures my thigh. The still air is scented by antiseptic and alcohol.

  "That will make you feel better," she says, and it does. The sting recedes, and I feel as if I'm floating. I'm in the roadster as it rolls and tumbles in the air. Lorin screams.

  Please, no more surgeries, I want to say, but my mouth is still not working. The woman pats me and smothers me with the mask. I've lost count of the operations I've had, but the photos on the wall give me an idea.

  “You’ve helped lots of people,” says the doctor the next time she gives me a sponge bath.

  Have I? I don't remember that. In fact, I've come to realise how selfish my life has been. I was just a trust fund brat, failing class, and getting ahead anyway because of my family connections. I didn't care about anyone but myself. If I had cared about Lorin, I wouldn't have taken her for a drunken spin in the roadster after that party. It was stupid and reckless. Had I loved her? I didn't know; I guess not knowing answers the question. I was too immature to really love someone. Guilt becomes a cage I can't escape from. Ten people smile down at me from the wall.

  I'm desperate to escape the cell, but it's no use. Getting out of bed and crawling to the door is excruciating and pointless. It's always locked. I know, I've tried. On one escape attempt, I left the catheter bag behind. It isn't a mistake I will make again.

  The next time I wake up after being under anaesthetic, my eyes won't open. My hand shoots up, towards my head, and I feel a bandage there, wrapped around my temple. Confused and disorientated, I wrench it off, and my brain buzzes. Sharp needles of pain shoot into my eyes, which are compressed with cotton pads and surgical tape. I rip that off, too, and place my fingertips on my eyelids. That's when I start screaming. I channel Lorin's terrified scream, and we yell together like wounded animals. My eyelids are still there, but my eyeballs are gone, and only newly scarred hollows remain.

  WHY? I want to scream at the surgeon. Why?!

  My eyes weren’t damaged in the crash; the surgery was not a reparative one. It was nothing less than thievery; a smash and grab. They had been pecked out by the white-lab-coated vulture.

  My broken body vibrates with sobs; it hurts everywhere. I no longer have the ability to make tears. Why would she do this to me? The answer slowly reveals itself. It had begun the day I thought the doctor looked familiar. I was in denial, at first, but I slowly came to understand where I knew her from, and why she had brought me here.

  I hear the lock on the door being clicked open; then I feel her presence in the sterile prison cell. I can no longer see the cheerful portraits on the wall, but I'm certain there are some new faces there. I can also feel the presence of Lorin—like a sixth sense—I picture her sitting on the foot of my bed, looking at me, her long blond hair matted with her blood.

  "You've done well," the doctor says, and in my imagination, it is now Lorin who is speaking to me. "You've saved twelve people so far."

  I choke in surprise, and she lifts a cup of water and a straw to my lips. “Your kidney saved an eight-year-old boy. Your section of liver saved a father of three. Your corneas gave a teenager the gift of vision for the first time.”

  She laid her hand on my knee. “It’ll be over soon. Today is your last surgery.”

  I knew what that meant. After today’s procedure, I would be set free.

  “Do you know who I am?” she asks, and I nod, blindly. She had looked familiar because I had met her once or twice when I was dating Lorin. She was Doctor Stravetsky.

  Lorin’s mother, I tried to say, but it came out garbled. And, because of me, your only child is dead.

  I hear the doctor loading up the injection and switching on the gas. I begin to shiver and sweat.

  “You took my heart,” she says. “Now it’s time for me to take yours.”

  4

  Drive This Way for Death

  Written by the (fictional) MillenniarellaBot AI after being fed classic fairytales and debate papers concerning the topic of euthanasia.

  (Inspired by “The Christmas on Christmas” by Keaton Patti, who fed his bot thousands of Hallmark Christmas screenplays and then instructed him to write his own.)

  Once upon a time, in a city bathed in moonshine soup, a voracious black wolf killed a dozen people. Some of the victims' relatives were upset; the rest were relieved. The Wolf's appetite was not sated; it never is. Wolves have stomachs that can stretch for galaxies.

  A young woman dressed in a robe made of red ants and ruby ribbons made her way across the hive-like urban landscape, dodging speeding cars and men wearing FongKong sunglasses. Her red-caped mission was to save her grandmother from the deadly wolf. She carried a basket which was woven from happy childhood memories and held black-dark forever secrets. She rushed like an autumn leaf in the snapping wind, rat-running down lonely roads and skipping over skyscrapers. A policeman stopped her with his sharp silver whistle.

  “What is in your basket?” the uniformed man wanted to know, more curious than cut-throat.

  “Mind your own school of sharks,” she replied. When the man looked for his pistol, it was gone, and so was the girl with the basket.

  The girl in the red cape had gone underground where it smelt like electricity and tar and yesterday’s cream cheese bagel. The lightest bits of litter fluttered around her like abandoned moths who had found their surrogate moon.

  “What is in your basket?” asked the woman on the subway. She had a giant raven’s head and skin as dirty as sleet.

  “None of your hot ashes,” said the girl in the red robe. She was gone before the raven-woman realised her knitting needles had been stolen from her navy charity-store bag.

  “What is in your basket?” asked the homeless opera singer lying on the sidewalk.

  “That’s for me to know,” said the girl, and disappeared in a puff of red smoke, taking the singing vagrant’s voice with her, and leaving just one silver coin spinning in her place.

  Armed and confident, the young woman knocked on her grandmother’s door. The door swung open like a haunted coffin lid. The young woman cautiously crossed the threshold, eyeing the furniture as if it would come alive and bite her. The chest of drawers looked especially hungry.

  “Grandmother?”

  No one answered her but her echo; the house was as empty as a ghost's dream. She strode to the bedroom and wrenched open the moth-eaten curtains, flooding the space with starlight and dust. Her grandmother's bed was stripped bare and smelled distinctly of wolf pelt; only the old rusted-coil mattress remained. The Wolf had already taken her, thought the red girl. I will get her back.

  She reached into her basket and retrieved the knitting needles, with which she unspooled the curtains and the carpet and the mattress and then spun them together. With that mismatched yarn, she knitted her way to the residence of the Wolf (more like a flying path than a magic carpet).

  The Wolf’s home was sleek and belonged well in the Future. There were no extras there. No excess furniture or bleak
equipment or wandering souls. No, the Wolf had his business of dispatching the living down to a fine art. Caravaggio, perhaps, thought the girl. Or bloody Pollock.

  The premises were so convenient it was more like a well-signposted drive-thru. Drive this way for death: white walls, bleached ivory sills, cotton clinic sheets. Come one, come all, the Grim Reaper awaits. He was down on his luck, but you just made it turn the right way around. It's the euthanasia drive-thru, roll up, roll up.

  She walked to the cashier’s window, which smelt of coffee stains and broken ambitions.

  “That’ll be one thousand koins,” said the robotic waitress (who was wearing a wig).

  “One thousand koins?” she asked. “To be eaten by a wolf?”

  The bot gave her a polite banana smile. “Nothing in life is free.”

  “I don’t have a thousand koins,” said the girl in the red hoodie. “I can give you the pair of magical knitting needles I stole from someone on the subway.”

  “It’s not enough,” said the robot.

  “I can give you a cherished childhood memory,” said the girl.

  “Still not enough. Don’t you know that death takes everything?”

  The girl used the opera singer’s voice to call the Wolf with a song. He arrived, prowling in his diamond charcoal coat, his apple-seed eyes alive with all the vitality he had stolen through the centuries.

  Little Red Riding Hood snatched her pistol and levelled it at the grinning Wolf; a Cheshire Cat in black dog’s clothing.

  Even on four legs, he was bigger than her, but the girl did not falter. “I’ve come to rescue my grandmother.”

  “You are too late,” he growled, his dark lips shining. His teeth were made of carved skeletons.

  The girl's eyes began to leak, but she did not lower the gun. "She's dead?"