Chop Shop

by Andrew Post

  But who was to even say he was AB-positive? And to ask him before clonking him out, who was to say he’d even know? Jolene didn’t even know her own blood type and figured most people didn’t. She remembered she’d learned it once, when she gave blood in college for some fundraiser the sorority had hosted, but that’d been years ago. A-positive? A-negative? B-positive? B-negative? AB-positive? AB-negative? O-positive? O-negative? It was anybody’s goddamn guess what Cornelius had rolling around in his twisted little heart. One in eight. Not great odds.

  That, and of course there was also the small matter of: could she really do that to another living person, even a serious creep like him?

  She returned inside, slamming the door behind her. In the kitchen, she took a sip of coffee from her cup that’d since gone cold, staring at the digital numbers on the microwave – it was two minutes until one. She had two hours. Two goddamn hours to make a human leg magically materialize. She stood in the reception area with a cup of coffee in one hand and one of the rubber mallets they bought the other day, waiting for the doorbell to ring.

  The grandfather clock in the other room tolled two-thirty.

  Jolene tossed the rubber mallet onto the floor and dropped her head, staring at the floor for some answer, some solution, to rise up out of it – it never came. But she saw two feet in her patent leather shoes. What she stood upon. A possible means to saving her friend’s life, a friend who’d saved her life.

  In the basement, Jolene tore through all her old boxes of college stuff. Various textbooks and old reports she’d decided to keep that she’d aced. She hadn’t seen a lot of it in years. Some framed photographs of the sorority house, captured moments of the bake sales and car washes they’d held – Amber and Jolene in bikinis, car sponges in hand, smiling, young, stupid. Jolene dug through more papers and files and stuff she didn’t even remember why she’d kept. She paused only when she caught a piece of letterhead that featured a red teardrop. She pulled out the form and saw it was a little print-out certificate thanking her for her blood donation. There was her name, and her blood type.

  AB-positive.

  From the garage Jolene dragged in the camping cooler and tossed it onto the floor of the workroom at the foot of the stainless steel table. Pulling on the thick gloves, she poured enough dry ice into the cooler to cover the bottom and dropped the lid to keep it cool. She set out the plastic wrap, some gloves, and extension cord.

  Heart pounding, questioning herself and this possibly fatal decision, she moved into the house’s living-quarter side and unzipped her suitcase that still lay on her barren bedroom floor, rooting through until she found her leather belt with the double-tongued buckle. Draping it over her shoulder, she moved into the bathroom, filling her arms with the half-bottle’s worth of hydrogen peroxide they had and several bath towels. Dropping those onto the table in the workroom, she went back out into the reception area and approached the front door, using the peephole to make sure, last chance, Cornelius hadn’t arrived. Their front steps stood empty, no necrophile in sight. She unlocked the front door and on the walk back to the workroom, dialed the cab company.

  “Yes, could I order a taxi for two-forty-five please?” she said and gave the address. She hoped the driver would take her where she wanted, even in the state they’d be picking her up in. She pocketed her phone and returned to the workroom and surveyed what she’d laid out, running down a mental checklist. In one of the lower cabinets she kept a bottle of bourbon hidden for emergencies. Not even in the worst of times did she allow herself a drink from it, only when it seemed that burning the funeral home to the ground would be the best option. Today warranted a deep swallow of it. Once she felt the warmth in her stomach begin to spread and make her hands feel light, from the bleach bath, she lifted the BranchBuster 9000, shook the water out of its chain, and set it on the table.

  When she started going through Amber’s dad’s old cassette tapes, trying to decide on something that might help the process, she realized she was stalling. She didn’t have the time to mess around with this. She slapped in Motown Greatest Hits, hit play, hopped up next to the saw on the table, kicked off her shoes, drew off her pantyhose, and paused when she noticed she’d forgotten to shave her legs this morning.

  Would they still take a hairy leg? The shit you think sometimes in weird situations.

  She sat with her unshaven legs, the same two legs she’d had her entire life and had gotten quite attached to, hanging off the edge of the table.

  Her left had a tiny scar on the knee from when she crashed her bike in a gravel parking lot on her way to class her senior year of school. She should’ve gotten stitches, but hadn’t. On her right leg, down by the ankle, in the trickiest spot to shave, she had a tiny scar that looked like the Nike swoosh. It almost matched the set of scars on the inside of both her wrists, faint from the years, which refused to tan no matter how long she laid out in the yard.

  Both leg scars were a story, same as those on her wrists, all of which she’d miss seeing every day for the reminders of things they could cultivate so quickly in her mind. But one had to go.

  She decided. She’d crashed her bike in that gravel parking lot because she’d been really hung over, she remembered, and her equilibrium was all screwy. That was a memory she could stand to let go; one less reminder hanging around. She’d keep the Nike swoosh.

  Jolene lifted her thigh and fed the belt under, wound it tight, and pulled until the leather band was pressing deep into her skin. She clicked the tongues into the holes – she couldn’t squeeze a finger underneath. Almost immediately her toes started to feel cold.

  The next song on the tape was ‘I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)’ by the Four Tops. She always liked this song. She doubted she would after today.

  One last cheek-swelling swallow of bourbon and she picked up the chainsaw and clicked on its electric motor.

  It shook in her hands, the chain hungry, all those tiny teeth. It would lurch on its own, the chain always slowly turning even without putting any pressure on the trigger.

  Her leg was starting to ache from blood deprivation, her pulse hammering hard against the belt, desperate to push the red stuff where it needed to go. Her toes were blue, almost matching the shade of her chipping nail polish. Pins and needles now, and in a few seconds a waxy numbness. That’s what she was waiting for.

  When it came, Jolene took one deep breath, held it, let it go. Held another, let it go. Amber saved your life. You owe her. She saved your life. You owe her. This is for her. She would do the same for you.

  Jolene told herself the same thing she did when she cut her wrists.

  “Fucking do it.”

  Squeezing the trigger all the way down, the electric engine screaming and the blade throwing off a faint breeze as it spun, Jolene lowered the blade, inching it close to just below her knee.

  The first bite. She screamed and pulled the blade away, letting the trigger go. The blade slowed, the engine quieted.

  She stared at what she’d done to herself.

  Blood ran down her leg, dribbling off her toes onto the floor. Just a divot. She could see pink inside her skin – and though she’d taken care of hundreds of dead people, seen their blood a million times, gallons washing down this very same table’s drains, this time, it was different. She breathed deep until the wooziness cleared, and squeezed the trigger again and brought the blade down, pushing down behind it.

  The screaming motor guttered, struggling. The blade screeched hitting the bone. Jolene screamed, the pain filling her. It felt like lava that was shooting out of her from every pore, detonating in her brain, tearing her apart, not just her leg – it was like all else in the world had gone away and only the pain existed, this burning-hot tearing.

  She squeezed the trigger harder, though it could go no faster. The bone snapped, cut through.

  “Fibia,” she said.

  As the
blade continued down through the thick part of her calf, the entire blade buried in her leg, she screamed and screamed and pushed and pulled the trigger, working the saw forward and back, rocking it through the meat of her leg.

  More screaming of blade on bone.

  “Tibia.”

  She gunned the motor and pressed in hard.

  Her glasses were dotted with blood. She cleared it with a finger swipe and continued, sweat dribbling off her chin. She may’ve pissed herself. She may’ve shat. She may’ve thrown up in her mouth and swallowed it.

  She let up on the trigger, squeezed again hard, and pushed.

  Only a couple more inches.

  Only a couple more goddamn fucking inches.

  When the saw met the table with a scream of metal on metal, she lifted the blade back out and bits of herself were flung from the free-spinning chain.

  She tossed the saw aside, clattering to the bloody floor, and sat, for just a moment, staring at what she’d done to herself.

  There it lay, her pale leg no longer attached to herself. She could not remember seeing a stranger sight in her life. Something so familiar, so very, very familiar and hers, totally hers, no longer warm and attached and part of her.

  “Oh, my God.”

  The open end of it, red, pink, the yellow layer of fat. The brown cores of her fibia and tibia staring at her like wide, surprised eyes, mirroring her shock.

  A half-second where the world blinked out. Fuck. She’d nearly gone unconscious. Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was the pain mashing her brain’s go-to-sleep button, too much, too much. “Stay awake. Stay fucking awake.”

  She turned herself around and watched the ragged stump leak blood in a few different streams of varying power onto the floor, dribbling fast. Shit. The belt could only restrict so much but right now it was the only thing keeping her alive.

  Her stomach felt hollow, her ears rang from the trilling noise of the saw and her own screaming. Remaining on the table, she snagged the box of cling-wrap and with heavy hands, and fighting her eyes trying to close, she wrapped her leg in plastic, over and over in enough layers until the details of it – the nail polish on her five toes, the stubble of dark hair running down its length – were buried. Once it was swaddled to satisfaction and wrapped in a couple towels, she tossed it off the side of the table, into the cooler, and it made the same whack sound as dropping a fish onto a hard, cold surface – soft, but firm too.

  Now to get it out into the reception area and wait for the cab.

  Turning herself around on the table, she let herself drop onto the floor. One bump against the raw stump and she screamed out in pain – she clawed with her fingers, reaching for a leg that was no longer there.

  She rolled onto her back, screaming, crying, laughing a little at how fucking insane this all was, and looked up at the ceiling…as her vision started to darken around the edges.

  “No.” She cracked herself across the cheek. “Do not pass out.”

  She sat up and pulled some towels off the table onto the floor with her and, as gently as possible, began tying some around her stump. The towels filled immediately, growing heavy. She replaced one for another and filled that one too. Tightening the belt meant having to loosen it first. No. The cab will be here any minute. You just have to hold on that long. Maybe if she died they’d agree to take the cooler where it needed to go. Maybe she should’ve just called a very morally lax courier company.

  Slow blinks. Hands cold. Breathing shallow.

  She pressed a towel, hard as she could stand to have any pressure on the stump, and hissed through her teeth, “Keep it together, girl. Keep it together.” She felt immediate dampness on her hands through the towel.

  One small nod off. She started awake, the towel having slipped off onto the floor.

  Another small flash where all sound around her stopped. She slapped herself. “No. No.”

  Each time she snapped awake again the pool of blood around her was wider.

  Grabbing the bottle of peroxide, she unscrewed the cap, lifted her thigh to bring up the raw end – and upended the bottle. She roared – the sound inhuman even to her ears, the one who’d made it.

  The stump hissed and, as if growing rabid, a frothy pink foam dribbled off onto the floor. But it’d be clean.

  And something, deep inside her, clicked. It had had enough, whatever determined consciousness, and triggered.

  She’d later remember smelling blood and overworked electric motor as she watched the room tilt – wall, wall, ceiling. And the sound it made when the back of her head cracked against the tile floor. The double slap of the backs of her hands as her arms fell wide, releasing the towel from her leg and the soft trickle like a creek of her body slowly, slowly emptying itself.

  And somewhere, in the fog, maybe dreamed or maybe heard – a doorbell was ringing.

  The cab. She tried opening her mouth to shout for them to come in, but like a nightmare, she was mute. Her words wouldn’t come out. Oblivion took her.

  * * *

  Amber sat shivering in the thin hospital gown, the drugs wearing off now, and she began to feel, fully, every bit of her that was broken. She listened as the proceedings continued around her. Becky spoke in Spanish to someone on the phone – she sounded like she was begging for someone’s patience. Fernando, Luke, and Ted had left to dispose of whoever Bryce Petrosky was, since he was apparently the cause of her drop being dirty and they wouldn’t need him. On three of the slabs across the room, three body bags lay – one much more round and full than the others. A large man was inside, Robert Pescatelli. She knew none of these people. She had never felt further from home than now. She wanted to call her parents. She wanted to run away. She wanted to start over. She wanted to go back in a time machine and make so many decisions differently. She noticed Becky, who stood facing away on the phone, had a gun peeking out of the back of her cut-off jeans.

  Slug stepped away from the corner he’d been standing in for the last hour, wiped his eyes, glanced at Becky, and moved over next to Amber.

  “Do something,” Amber begged, whispering. “Let me go. Please. Don’t let them do this to me.”

  “Here’s the plan,” Slug said. “I’m gonna go over there and hit her. And I’m gonna get you out of here.”

  “Be careful. She has a gun.”

  Slug knelt next to Amber’s wheelchair. “I got this, boo. Don’t worry. We’ll—”

  A shot rang out and Amber felt a hot spatter on her face as Slug’s body was flung to the floor. Becky stood across the room, smoking gun in hand, still pressing the phone to her ear. She said something in Spanish into the phone, ignoring Amber’s screams and curses, and continued on with her conversation not missing a beat.

  Amber looked over the arm of the wheelchair as Slug’s dead eyes stared up at her – an expanding pool of blood circling his corn-rowed head. “Oh, God. Oh, God. What the fuck. What the fuck.” She screamed across the room at Becky, “Why did you do that?”

  Becky tucked her phone into her back pocket and approached Slug’s body. “Because I was just on the phone with my contact in Juarez. And Shawn Klegg didn’t check out. His brother works for the ATF.”

  “He wasn’t doing anything, you crazy bitch. We were just talking.”

  “I know you were just talking, I know,” Becky said with faux sympathy. “But it’s better that we weeded him out now than have it become a problem later when he might’ve gotten scared and decided to place a call.” She paused. “Christ, why am I bothering to tell you any of this? I’m talking to ground chuck. You’re product in an hour.”

  Becky unzipped one body bag. A man in a silk Hawaiian shirt lay inside, pale, eyes open, covered in blood. The next was an elderly woman missing half of her face, dressed in a red tracksuit. The third was a young man in a motorcycle jacket and tight black jeans. Becky stared at the three bodies, shook her head,
and began unbuttoning the one corpse’s Hawaiian shirt. She sat him up, peeled it off, tossed it aside, and let his weight drop him back to lying down – his head clanging loudly off the metal slab under him.

  Becky noticed Amber watching. As she uncoiled a long garden hose and began spraying the first corpse, she said, “In Japan the blood type means a lot more than just compatibility for transfusions and organ transplants like it does here. Unlike everyone else in the West, they know, right away, what type they have. They look at it like it’s their horoscope, determining everything from personality to tendency to go into certain lines of work, to how well they’ll get along with other people. They call it ketsueki-gata. Like horoscopes, it’s all bullshit, really, but they’ve been believing ketsueki-gata affects so much of their lives since blood types were even discovered to be a thing. They say people with A-type are more logical and B-types are more inclined to be artistic, that they think outside the box. O-types are the most level-headed and clear thinkers, adaptable. But then we get into the discussion of AB-types and things get kind of confused. Because they’re often unpredictable, tend to have poor impulse control and are the most likely to end up homeless or die by suicide. They’re the most likely to develop drugs or alcohol problems. They spend their lives confused, torn between their A-side and B-side. Gutter blood. But, again that’s all superstition. Hokum. B.S.” She sprayed off the dead man for a while, not saying anything. “Of course, then I look at you and see what kind of a pretty little mess you’ve made of your life, Amber, and I think, maybe there’s something to that. The A-type half of you did a really good job packaging up your load. You were professional when we were texting, you always said thank you after each time I sent you some tips on what to do next, and you were on time for your drop. Then the B-type rears its ugly head and you fail to ask whether or not the body you received had any history with drug use or had any background whatsoever. So, I guess maybe ketsueki-gata might not be total crap. It sure got you pegged.”