Husk (2 page)

A quick glance downward.

Followed by a prolonged stare.

Shouldn't there be more down there?
I thought.

Two deep incisions had been made, one from each shoulder. They descended toward my sternum, meeting up above my ribcage and merging into a single slice that continued downward, splitting horizontal just past the navel. The musculature of my chest and torso had been peeled back and away, exposing all points beneath. My hide hung loosely open in two ragged wings, shivering whenever the fan oscillated in their direction.

I expected ribs, muscles, connecting beams of bone and sinew,
something
, but where once there had been situated a bloody xylophone there was only empty space. The bones had been cut clean through, I noted, and the majority of my ribcage had been removed.

I was inside out. I was being autopsied. I had woken during my own dissection, rudely interrupting the accepted procedure for a postmortem.

This
is when panic set in, raw and volatile. I tried to scream, to tear the walls down with my fear. My jaw cracked as the full force of horror unimaginable issued forth.

Nothing.

Not a peep.

I sat there, straining, my mouth yawning wide. The panic abated, replaced by vexation.

I tried again, baring my teeth, thrashing my tongue about, whipping my head to and fro.

I should be able to do this
.
This shouldn't be hard.

Nothing.

It was hopeless. I gave up for the time being, reminding myself to fully collapse in abject terror when I could better do so.

I gave my chest hole a closer survey, maneuvering myself on the table so that more light could flood the area. I experimentally poked a finger into the cavity, craning my head forward. Two brownish sacks dangled limply inside like distended plums hanging from a branch. Abnormally large plums. Lungs, I decided. By the looks of them, they were rather depleted of air, a piece of information that rankled me. I watched, but there was no movement. Behind them, the bumps and nodules of my spinal column protruded from the inner meat of my back. A few of my sweetmeats were directly beneath the lungs, tucked away within coils of sausage that threatened to unspool.

I straightened up, and the intestines sloshed back into the base of my new orifice. I pushed them back further, earning myself a sensation not many have experienced, the impression of being prodded from the inside. My bowels squished comfortably down toward my pelvis, and I gave them a little extra squeeze to keep them in place. A kidney threatened to slip out, but I forced it back between a few ropes of innards to keep it still. There were more important things to attend to than an errant refugee from a butcher's window.

My heart, for example. I was pretty sure it wasn't where it was supposed to be. I felt around my lungs at the area I approximated the heart should be, then widened the search to the entirety of the hollow, digging my hands into the morass of me. While the majority of my circulatory system seemed to still be in place — later research would prove this correct; if nothing else, my circumstances have forced me to become relatively conversant on human anatomy — the heart was most definitely absent.

I chewed this over, but a haze of perplexity clouded every thought. There was no how, or why, or where, or what that I could form a coherent thought around. There was only me, the room, and a body on the floor, to which I had contributed a large degree of mangling. The body was apparently still alive, as an occasional moan escaped from its lips. I took in a breath to clear my head. Correction: I tried to take in a breath. The mechanics of the task had become lost to me, and I sat, mouth open, awaiting the occurrence of a natural process that was plainly not going to occur. I tried to call to mind the actions required to inhale, trying to work the muscles. I pushed my chest out in imitation, hoping to jar a reflex memory, but gave it up when I remembered that there was barely half a chest left. I looked at the lungs, flattened and useless at the end of my trachea. I extended a finger and poked at the right sac. The side dented inward and moisture seeped out of the membrane, a sponge releasing its watery contents to the world. I pushed harder, and felt a tiny bubble of air rise slightly into my throat. I grabbed both lungs and gently gave them each a squeeze, taking care not to puncture the meat with my fingers. I noted the sensation of the muscles, the diaphragm, trying to gain back my control over it. Gradually, as I re-acclimatized myself to the exercise, a miniscule flow of air traveled slowly up my throat and out past my teeth. I let go, and worked at reversing the flow. Soon, I had the sacs working at capacity, inflating and deflating for all to see. When I shifted my attention to other matters (i.e., the missing heart), however, the bags deflated, refusing to continue the rhythm on their own. Nevertheless, I continued to function. I tabled the breathing versus not breathing conundrum for a later discussion, as I had finally laid eyes on my dismembered remains.

My heart — I thought it was my heart, anyway; I was fairly certain that the misshapen piece of meat was my ticker — lay on the floor, a few feet from Craig's legs. Nearby lay several mucous-soaked pieces of bone, which I surmised were my rib trimmings. Looking down, I noticed the slab I sat on was wheeled at the legs. It was a gurney. One of several placed about the room, two of which were topped by large black bags filled, no doubt, by other drowsing gentlemen of the naked sort. They didn't appear to be as mobile as I was, but perhaps in time they'd rise up and help me figure out my situation. Until then, my unwillingly segmented sections were of primary importance. The word
morgue
finally began to dance about in my mind, but I shoved it aside as needless ephemera to the task at hand. It was stupid, but I felt it was of vital importance that my heart be placed back within my body.

My blood pump, seeping slime, had slid across the floor and come to rest against the wall, leaving streaks of ocher in its wake. Craig had knocked it off the table in his mad scramble to defend his understanding of the way the universe operated. I stared at it as comprehension finally took a pickax to the wall of my mind and began hacking out a doorway. My heart, my engine, my valentine lay across the room from me, immobile, unloved, separate and apart from its warm housing, finally experiencing the world on its own.

It did not look happy. It looked . . . violated. Its ventricles had been sliced open, its aorta gaping open to the re-circulated air. It wasn't meant to be outside. It had been weighed and measured, raped, and tossed aside to fester in the cold, cruel world.

This would not stand.

I swung my legs over the side of the gurney and cautiously slid myself off, taking care to cross my arms over my hollow and keep its residents from joining their leader on the floor. I placed my gray feet firmly on the tile. My lungs swayed and bumped against the inside of my arm at the movement. Standing, I took a step, and my upper half swayed back as a willow in a breeze. My spine was intact, but the absence of ribs threw off the stability of the entire structure. I teetered wildly at the waist, leaning forward and feeling the remnants of my ribs reach forward, trying to reunite with their opposite fellows. I flailed my arms out for balance, releasing my internal cargo to the grip of gravity. I grabbed at another gurney, toppling it, flipping its black bag off. The zipper had been opened, and the recently breathing resident slipped out and collided with the linoleum with a
splorching
sound. I had a brief, abstract instance of regret; he was a companion to me now, a bosom compadre in the
hey what happened to my life
club. My floor buddy did not look peaceful in death. Whatever had happened had not been pleasant; there were jagged holes in his chest and his nose had been sheared almost clean off. Any peace death might have provided was now disguised under a pile of innards that had fallen atop him from my frantic attempts to regain balance.

I watched my intestines unreel themselves and drape the body in glop. My spleen drooped over the edge of the incision, trying to permanently depart my corpse and fulfill its organ donor obligations. One kidney made a break for it; there was a mildly pleasurable irritation as it stretched its tether, like picking a scab, before it snapped and flew free. It bounced off the man's chest and slid quickly to a stop near Craig's head. My spleen tugged at its imprisoning ligaments, and I enjoyed the unpleasant sensation of being torn in pieces from the inside out. The rest of my organ population deigned to stay where they were, but their connecting tissues were only so strong. Further defections were imminent without action.

I took handfuls of viscera and shoved them back inside, unheeding as to proper placement. It seemed important that they be inside me, whether they fulfilled any functions or not. The kidney I decided to leave, I had a spare somewhere. I pushed the entire mass deep inside me, packing it tight with a few good punches. I teetered my way over to my heart and scooped it up, placing it back where I approximated it usually resided. It rested there for a moment between the weight of my lungs, shifted, and thumped back to the floor.

The room was seriously losing its luster of hygienic sterility. I retrieved my heart a second time, forced it deep within my entrails.
Fix it later
. Folding the flaps of skin down across my chest, I crossed my arms to keep the entirety from spurting back out and looked for something to fix the mess in place. If this
was
a morgue, there had to be something around for patching a torso back together.

What kind of hospital doesn't have at least one roll of tape lying around? Duct tape, string, anything. A stapler? I rummaged through cabinets until I found a roll of tensor bandages and clumsily wound the elastic cloth tightly around my abdomen. Tying it firm, and feeling more in control of myself, I took a moment to weigh my options.

One: stay put. Jamal would undoubtedly be back soon, bringing coffee. I could explain that there had been some sort of horrible mistake, and I was plainly alive — mysteriously so, very strangely so, but alive all the same. Craig was an accident, an understandable reaction to an unprovoked attack. Yes, the man looked bad, but science could repair his limbs. What was important here was that a serious error had occurred, and luckily I was little worse for wear. I couldn't remember the particulars of my identity, but that was a nevermind, it would come back. I could already feel the inklings of personality swimming back toward my shore.

Flaws with option one: I had no voice with which to explain myself. The man in the white lab coat lying in his own personal bloodslick displayed external signs of forced trauma, and I was the only other mobile inhabitant of the room. And I was carved up like a Christmas turkey. A sure bet Jamal would react poorly, and I couldn't be sure I wouldn't behave in the same fashion as before.

Option two: flee. Head for the hills, or even better, home. Get myself in a controlled environment. Take the time to sort out everything.

Flaws: I was naked. Falling apart. And not sure where home was.

A whistling from outside. Footsteps. Not good. I looked around for some place to hide, but the room was in a shambles, and I had seconds at best.

The door began to push in.

I ripped my bandages off and collapsed to the floor.

“Craig, I got doughnuts, you want?” Jamal asked, pushing the door open with his back as he carried coffees and snacks inside. “Sorry it took so long, couldn't believe the lineup. It's three in the morning, you believe that?” He turned around slowly, balancing the coffees and asking about preference, chocolate or sprinkles, when the chaos of the room hit him.

“Holy jeez,” he whispered, and stepped forward, stumbling over my outstretched arm. He looked down, and a squeak of fear popped from his lips. I kept still, staring at a spot on the far wall. “What the fuck . . .” He took another step and saw Craig on the floor, his arms bent at unusual angles. For a few moments Jamal spun slowly about, holding the Styrofoam cups and bag of pastries in front of him, his eyes bulging as he took note of the blood, the bodies,
my
body, open for inspection. Tiny puffs of air rushed from between his teeth.

“Heh . . . huh . . . heh . . . huh . . .”

Down on the linoleum, peripherally observing Jamal undergo mindfuck meltdown, I decided to speed this along. My foot was near a cart; I shot my leg out, catching the wheel and pushing it into Jamal's hip.

That
got things moving.

Jamal screamed, coffee and pastries soaring into the air as he bolted, tripping over my arms and flying into the door. It swung open, depositing him into the hallway. He scrambled to his feet and ran, yelling for the guard, a nurse, police, anyone. I quickly lumbered upright, reinserted my gizzards, grabbed the bandages and tottered out the door, moving in the opposite direction of Jamal's wailings. My knees refused to rise, my gait a reeling lurch that sent me careening into walls as I fought for balance and tried to keep my folds shut.

I turned a corner into a corridor lined with doors. There was an exit sign at the end of the hall. I peeked into the first open doorway. Bins of soiled towels and hospital gowns. Laundry. I dug into the first container, finding a towel that I wrapped around my chest, binding it with the bandages for added containment. Then, real luck, clothing. Scrubs. Blotted with blood, but actual clothing. I pulled a lab coat on, then leaned against a wall and forced my knees to obey my will and bend appropriately as I struggled into a pair of light blue pants. No shoes, but there was a pile of used paper surgical booties near the door.

I slipped on a pair, and poked my head back out. No people in sight, but definite sounds of panic and dismay wafted down the hall.

For the briefest of instants, I contemplated staying put. Take off the clothes — or don't, add an extra blanket of mystery to the night's proceedings — and lie down in the hallway. Let them find me. Stay still. They'd never believe Craig, if indeed he lived. They'd attribute his ravings of a corpse attack to shock and medicate him for weeks. They'd finish up the examination, weigh my components, stuff me full to bursting with sawdust and formaldehyde.