Chapter Text
With my hands fully submerged in the open cranium of some corpse that thought I was going to fuck him when he was alive, I grimaced. Dried blood caked around the rim of my gloves and reeked of rust, almost coppery. Of course, my job was gruesome, but it was to make a point. In one quick tug, I was holding the brain, with a clear line of bloodied tissue from the bullet that had run him through just an hour earlier. As I trimmed the stem off and cleaned up the organ, Vincent looked up from packaging the bladder and just stared at the brain.
“Good shot, eh?” I pursed my lips and lifted it closer to him. His only eye was damaged, so I had learned to become well aware that his low sight was like a tube television blacked out in the center. He tilted his head closer, pulled on his lower eyelid, and his grayed pupil slightly focused with some struggle.
“It is quite straight, isn’t it?” He shifted as though he was uncomfortable and sucked in his breath, his tone flat. I politely swiped off one of his auburn hairs that had rested on top of the membrane.
“Why wouldn’t it be? You’re the best.” I put all my weight on the side of the operating table, the sickle-shaped amputation blade still in my grip. For absolute certainty, I hated that emptiness that had struck him a mere few years ago. As children, we were ready to face the world, yet there we were, in an abandoned apartment building’s root-cellar-turned-hurricane-shelter just below a Raleigh, North Carolina road, dismembering a man we never met before last night. I would look up every then and again and see the ankles of passersby through the slits that made up a thin rectangular window near the ceiling. It was the only natural light that leaked in.
Vee’s rifle, an 1886 Lebel model, leaned against the wall near the doorway, recently fired and disliked by its owner. He’d gotten it a few years back, when he was given it for joining the French trench-crawlers in 1914. Almost every time I’d seen it, it was against his bedside table or under his pillow. Vee was a mortified man, but I loved him. His wife adored him, his daughter was too young to truly know her father, and I was the only one who knew that he was a god at handling a bagged kidney.
With the brain removed, I started stitching a graft over the hole I made for removal — covering it with hair would make any funeral goers none the wiser. Vee completed his duties with the organs and started taking a tan putty to cover bullet holes and mortician’s cuts. He was incredible at making it look like there was no injury, as if he just had an understanding of the texture of skin and how to make it with such a smooth substance.
I started humming before I felt a gloved hand slap over my mouth. I was about to snap at him due to the smell of urine on his sleeves and the possibility that he got putty on my face, but I paused.
Boots. They were above us.
We stayed in place. My eyes followed the squadron that walked along the sidewalk, with their long black rain ponchos and clinking guns and keys. Coppers. I dared to not even breathe in through my nose. Vee took up his rifle and positioned himself out of the splash zone, should they decide to come in. It was too late for that shit, I wasn’t about to pry open another body and still be home before sun-up. Nearly being able to see my heart beating under my coat wasn’t fun, but it was the loudest I was at the moment. The marching faded, and I let out a labored breath.
“Too fucking close. We’re getting too brash,” Vee commented, fridging his bags from the senator’s body in the top shelf of our icebox.
“It could be a pretty lady ankling up there rather than Wesley’s folks, and it’d still be best for us to shut up.”
“Yeah, I follow. It just makes me think we should move shop somewhere a bit more discreet.”
“I’m too sober for this, dude. We had this conversation yesterday.”
“Fair, fair, and same. Lock up.”
I sighed and looked around at our basement. Leaving it relatively clean was part of the job. My practice was almost the equivalent of a licenseless bar around there, so anyone and everyone with an interest could walk in if they knew how to get the services they required. Reporters, hospital colleagues, a crime ring, and obviously, the police – I had even seen a deaf man knock the code and drop in, begging for me to fix his hearing. Given the vactuphone battery hanging on my waist and the pad over my impaired left ear, I had yet to figure that out. I guess I had some minor celebrity to my name, but thank goodness there had yet to be a face pinned to it.
On the way out, I had to adjust my leg from standing so long, and dug the keys out of Vee’s right pocket. The air where we worked was musty, so it was nice to breathe freely outside as I fixed all eight locks from the inside and flicked a cosmetic switch mounted on the bricks that meant nothing to most people, but to clients, said we were out of shop.
I groaned as I took off my medical gloves. “What a day,” we said in unison as I tossed them on the ground, set them alight with a cigarette match, and used a second one to light a smoke for myself and Vee. We would get shot if I held his hand in the daylight, but the streets were nearly empty at four in the morning, allowing me to intertwine my fingers with his.
“I’m cold,” I complained, expecting no response.
“Should’ve worn pants.” Vincent was snide and monotonous, but it was just because he was tired. My ankle-length dress provided plenty of heat, though winter days made its contribution null. Ducking under his coat, I pressed my face into the side of his chest. He was warm from the layers of clothing he wore, with an insulating layer beneath a black dress shirt and similar-tone dress vest. His down coat had a lining of faux fur along the edges, and it was soft against my skin.
The snow there wasn’t too deep, so if I pressed my boot down into it, the concrete would show. Ice was minimal, even in mid-December. Slipping and breaking a bone was a familiar roughhousing consequence, so I held issues with iced walks, but kept close to Vee.
We walked to my car a couple blocks away and I took my motoring goggles off the front console after unlocking the ignition coil. How I dreaded the process to start my own car – sometimes I wished it would just register that it was me and unlock itself. It was an entire ten-step-and-some process. Soon, I hoped to afford a windshield modification for the Model T, something that would go with the sleek black metal that made up its body. Vee usually helped me pull the top cover over my vehicle, but he couldn’t do anything else as we both feared an error that would leave us stranded. Vee wrapped a scarf from the backseat around his lower face as he waited for me. He and I both took precautions to protect ourselves in the Deep South, and winter helped us with the guise alongside eliminating many other vehicles on the road. He regularly wore clothes that showed no skin from the neck-down, so his face was the only part we had to worry about. Once I had shut my door, I obscured my jaw and neck with the high collar of my coat, although they weren’t too prominent. People around there looked for reasons to shoot you, and a black man and a transsexual were by-far some easy targets. Vee held his gun between himself and the console, just in case, and sunk down in his seat far enough that his knees pressed against the bottom of my glovebox. He was a bit too tall for anything I owned, although there was less than a foot of height difference between us.
As I drove, I found it sweet that he stuck his hand out in an attempt to catch snowflakes. I knew it was far better than our methods with the trolley, since we had to sit in the back and I caught dangerous looks for it as I would cuddle into Vee’s side as well as my own outerwear. In my car, it felt like freedom.
“What’re you looking forward to for tomorrow?” I asked in an attempt at casual conversation.
“Uh… No work, I guess. I do enjoy the holidays, but they’ve grown rather bleak.”
“Isn’t Christmas huge for Catholics, though?”
“Yeah. I fear Angela will become spoiled.”
“I find that unavoidable, don’t you?”
He snickered. “I didn’t think it’d come so soon.” His infant daughter had lawyers for parents. ‘Mosquitoes with brains and suitcases,’ Vee described himself and his wife as. He forgot fortunes of money, as well.
I paused the car on the road for a moment to ensure my door was shut before continuing the conversation. “What do you think you’ll be getting? Another to add to the busyness?”
“Oh, by all, no. I can barely keep up with the babies right now. Calli just wants to stash everything, but Nudel is showing great progress in hunting.”
“I could never deal with a ferret for years. They’re fun to be around for an hour, though.”
“Agreed. I can get tired of them, but you have to admit, when they bring home a rabbit for you to cook, they’re the sweetest things. And, you did have that hen, though, so don’t pass judgment.”
I sighed and let myself smile. “Yeah. Taught her to shit off the balcony to piss off Mr. Danes.”
Vee threw his head back and laughed, pressing his cigarette in the ashtray in the door. After that, we drove in relative silence until I pulled into Vee’s driveway about thirty minutes later.
Trees overshadowed the way in until it opened up to reveal his five-acre land and renovated 1842 home. It was a two-story beauty, with pillars all around. A highly organized garden took up much of the front yard, and a tent protected it from the weather. At the back of his land, some space was set aside for ferreting as rabbits entered through strategically placed holes in the fence. The driveway was gravel and somewhat rough on my wheels, but it wasn’t terrible.
“Okay,” I shivered as I hopped out and left any outerwear with traces of blood in the car, “So where are you going to tell Cara you went this time?”
“Oh, hardy-har-har. I don’t know, what do you think?”
“Bar. Go with a bar.”
He rolled his eyes and we headed up to the front door. Through the window and the screen, I could see Cara sitting on the couch holding their baby. I stepped up and rapped my fist on the wooden frame. She looked up and sighed, standing up and coming to unlock it.
“Vinny.”
He leaned his gun just inside the door and reached out for her. She leaned into his hand and he kissed her cheek. Her expression was relieved, and I knew she had been paranoid in regards to the time as her pocket watch was swinging like a pendulum from her hip against the loose pants of her pyjamas.
“Morning, Caw,” I hugged her, “Sorry we’re so late. I didn’t want to leave before work was done; y’all know I need that raise.”
“Oh. No worries.” Although her words seemed genuine, her face expressed her suspicion. Vee was acting impressively natural and that seemed to convince her. “It’s real late, Isa, you shouldn’t go home in this weather.”
“I promised my father I’d spend Christmas with him, Caw.”
She shook her head and started taking Vee’s scarf, which had then been lowered around his coat collar. “You can leave in the morning. I’m sure Jack’ll understand.”
I stood there for a moment, considering it. “Y’know what, I can call him at eight. That’s when he gets back from his deliveries.”
Cara smiled and bounced Angela in her arms. “Great. Vinny, you made the guest bed, right?”
“I- No. Sorry, honey, I forgot.” Vee pretended to wince at me as if it was some great mistake of his.
I waved it off with a slight chuckle. “Y’all know I don’t mind that kind of thing. Thank you kindly.”
We entered, and a wave of heat washed over us. A cast iron radiator was working near the wall to our left. The soft glow emitted from the otherwise dark living area, with a tree twice the height of me covered in silvery tinsel, ornaments, and bells.
Cara had just returned from the Mass of Angels. Vee’s family took it with its deepest meaning, as I had seen framed photos turned face-down around his parents’ home – they were old portraits from before the turn of the century, and his mother was pictured holding children that were no longer present in their lives. Vee was their only one to make it.
“I assume you don’t want to go to Dawn Mass with us, Isa?” Vee seemed to be making eye contact with the coat rack in front of him, but remained sociable.
“I’d love to, but I have no fair clothes, nor do I wish to let Jack down.”
They both nodded at me. “Then, uh… tea, by any chance?” Cara asked.
“Chamomile, if you have any.”
I pressed my luck whenever I took those stairs. By that time of the day, my leg dragged behind me as I carried the spare set of pyjamas I left at their house last time. They were off-white with pastel red vertical stripes. I shut the door behind myself and got ready for bed. For a second, I stood in the middle of the room, reluctant to move. Everything hurt, and the urge to write was stronger than ever. My head pounded with tension. It was so difficult to describe. Even as Cara knocked on my door and passed a cup of tea into my ever-still hands, I remained motionless as I collected my thoughts. See, I had a strange terror that would strike at the worst times. Simply put, it was some kind of urge to write, document, record, photograph… anything. Every time, I felt my memories would flee me. There were so many journals piled up in my father’s broom closet from my adolescent years with my incessant droning. I hated that those attacks were often before bed, robbing me of hours of sleep, and on Christmas Eve of all days, when I already had trouble.
I just sat in bed, staring at the grey-blue wall in front of me. Paintings of Jesus and a pug adorned a vanity that had been there since the house’s original owners, and a contrasting newly-installed ceiling fan spun high above me, blowing my loose hair in my face. For once, nothing was running through my mind. When I woke up, I’d be met with a couple of heartfelt gifts from my best friend, get on the road, and go see my father. To an outsider, it must’ve been so simple to be me.