Shards (7 page)

"Please God, no." He slumped to
the ground, dizzy from blood loss. Again.

The worm burrowed towards his
anus.

A fingerless hand swatted at
it, the effort futile. His fingers, like his hair, nose, and toes,
had withered and dropped off. All thanks to the fucking little worm
crawling inside him.

His body was scabbed and
scarred---desperate attempts to cut the little bastard out, time and
again, dozens of times over.

It started on his return from
Africa. After the loss of his hair, the doctors rationalised it as
a parasite contracted in the Congo. It took six weeks, and just as
many toes, for him to realise the worm was more than a
parasite.

The boy in Lagos had been a
diversion. A piece of arse, willing or otherwise. So were the ones
in Kinshasa. And the little boy from the village near Kisangani.
The worm whispered of those sins when it chewed through his ear
canals.

He rolled onto his back,
feeling the worm tunnel around his bowels and towards his
stomach.

Its curses flowed like acid
through his veins, declaring the next target. After weeks of
hosting the prick, he'd learned how to tune into the creature's
rage.

Its voice was that of the Congo
boy's mother, the village shaman---the Bone Mother. It screamed her
curses, from the day she had found him with her son's carcass. The
worm now screamed of all the naked boys, the debauchery; the evils
his eyes had seen.

His eyes. Next.

He knew it. His dick would be
saved for last.

The worm wriggled along his
stomach and into his chest. It bulged his skin, dipped below a rib,
bulged again. A sliver of fire burning his chest.

He eased the bloodied knife to
his side. Clumsily at first, he clasped it again between his palms.
Ragged breaths punctured the room.

Blade poised below his eye, he
waited for the worm to claim its prize.

He'd get the bastard this
time.

* * *

R U OK?

I wake with my cheek pressed
into the quilt. My chin is plastered with drool, but when I try to
raise my head and brush it away, nothing happens. Inexplicably, I
can smell peanuts, and there is a high-pitched whine in my ears. My
world is reduced to three items that swim in my vision: the
pathology referral letter from Dr McEvoy about the tumour, the
tribal pattern of the quilt, and my mobile phone.

The mobile flashes in front of
me. It takes a few moments for me to realise what's happened, but
then the agony flares again above my left ear, and the world
shudders and fades to black.

The flashing phone greets me
when I wake. With effort, I can read a text message from Terry on
it: R U OK?

Am I OK? Are you kidding? I
don't think I can fucking move! I strain my head until the blood
hammers in my ears, but I can't move a muscle. I strain to move
until the strain itself becomes too great, and I black out.

When I return to consciousness,
I spend what must be hours staring at the quilt's pattern. It's
faux-African with swirls and sharp hexagonal lines, but from my
perspective, the lines angle together to form a skull that grins at
me.

Again, the phone flashes to
life before me, with Terry's message still front and centre: R U
OK?

Terry is on the first night of
his week-long footy trip with his mates, so he'd be well and truly
plastered by now. He wasn't much for checking in with me,
anyway.

The quilt skull continues to
grin as I struggle to call out to the neighbours. Fat lot of good
that would do, though. With the exception of Terry, all my
significant interactions are online: work, friends, even shopping.
The one time I spoke to the neighbours, it was to tell them their
son was a dickhead for revving his car too loudly.

Over the next hours, I drift in
and out of consciousness. I mistake the stickiness on my lip as
more spit, but when the coppery taste reaches the corner of my
mouth, I realise what it is. Must be from my nose.

My phone drifts in and out with
me. The power saver switches the screen black for half an hour and
then powers back to life for 60 seconds, every time asking me: R U
OK?

The quilt skull grins and
stares at me with sightless eyes. It knows the time bomb finally
went off in my head---a tumour nourished by all the radio waves spat
out by that goddamn phone over the years. It knows no one will
check on me for eight days.

The phone flashes again. R U
OK?

Funny that the phone shows such
concern after it's already doomed me.

My eyes mist and a tear
meanders down my cheek.

R U OK?

No, I'm not. I don't want to
die alone.

* * *

Itch

It begins as an idle rub. A
calloused palm. Friction and hair. A lingering heat like a Chinese
burn.

He sits on the sofa, tuning out
the worries of another long day, instead tuning into the nagging
itch on his forearm. The lump has reddened from his attention. He
awoke this morning to find little more than a mosquito bite. Nine
hours has seen it soufflé, with a reddish-purple moat of
discolouration. A mass of dark hairs hide the full extent of its
diameter.

It's now bigger than the lump
of his wrist bone. He splays his fingers and holds his hand high.
His hand suddenly seems alien as it floats in front of his face. It
somehow doesn't belong.

Ochre light seeps in from the
window, casting the coffee table and the papers spread across it in
an orange sheen. The light darkens his already ruddy skin but
catches in the webbing between his fingers. The webbing glows. The
rest of his skin writhes with a thousand little hair shadows.

The lump has its own
shadow.

It looks as though he's grown a
second wrist further up his arm. There's a suggestion in the way
his forearm now bends. Something. Beneath the skin and hair, he
imagines new bones forming from the old. A new hand emerging from
too high up. His old hand to be shed? A stumpy arm the trade-off? A
knot of disgust twists his stomach as he struggles to push the
thought aside. Instead, it's easier to look away. Unpaid bills and
floating orange-tinted dust become his obsessions until the image
is finally banished.

Scratching makes the lump
bleed. He's already discovered that. It nags, this itch. It wants
to be noticed. It wants to weep.

He scratches.

It bleeds.

It burns.

He scratches, until it bleeds
and burns too much, until he grimaces from the pain, until his
threshold is reached.

Then he waits, poised. Fingers
clawed, nails dark and glistening from the furrow of skin pink and
red and spreading.

He scratches a little more.

There's blood beneath his
nails. Fresh slivers, too brown to the eye in the sunset light.

The lump is now a wound, raised
and ragged at the centre of a bloody strip of skin. There's clear
fluid, plasma maybe, which shines orange in the light. It pools
with the blood. Mixes. Is swallowed.

He rubs once more. His palm is
warm and rough, the sensation pleasant but not nearly satisfying
enough. The rubbing spreads the itch. It diffuses along his
forearm, subdued for the instant flesh presses on flesh. The burn
and the itch flood back the moment he breaks contact.

With the rubbing comes the
smear of blood. The smell is already up his nose, coppery and
sharp. The blood is sticky and cooling on his skin in an unpleasant
way. He doesn't mind it on his palm so much, except when he bumps
his shirt and runs a smear across the cotton. A sigh is all he
gives the inconvenience. Stains are the washing machine's
concern.

The rest of the house is in
silence. This allows him to concentrate as he rubs, willing the
itching to subside. Silence is concentration music, he tells
himself, while stroking his arm.

Soon his forearm, almost from
elbow to wrist (his actual wrist, not the new one) has a red-brown
coat of blood. As it cools with the sunset, it has the sensation of
tightening, shrinking his skin. He frowns and rubs some more to
generate warmth, spreading another layer of blood in the
process.

Is it the cold that's numbing
his arm or is the arm dying?

Dying, he decides, and
scratches around the perimeter of the wound. The once purple skirt
of skin is lost beneath a sticky coating. It regains its identity
as his fingers probe, his nails tear, and the sting, the
sensitivity, tells him he is crossing the moat and about the storm
the castle.

If he maintains the assault,
like a true and loyal crusader, maybe he'll liberate the royal
family---King and Queen Puss. Questing nails tear up the outer walls
and move inwards for the keep. Puss eludes him, but he finds a
wellspring of that clear liquid. He keeps searching (in vain, he
idly thinks, chuckling to himself; in vein indeed, if he's lucky).
Like all true lords and ladies of the manor, the Pusses have a
secret escape passage. Perhaps they've tunnelled deeper? His arm
grows colder.

He closes his eyes and plunges
the tip of his finger into the wound. Forget the royal family. He's
after their treasure trove. If a hand is destined to erupt from his
forearm, he'll find it first. Maybe even shake it with his other
hand.

"How do you do," he says to the
crater.

If there's bone hidden beneath
the mound, he'll find it.

It stings. It is now a freezing
burn.

He clenches his teeth as his
fingernail quests deeper. His whole arm twitches for a moment.

Is that a good sign? Maybe,
just maybe, there is a funny bone growing in there too.

Maybe.

His arm twitches again. A
tingle jolts through the length of his arm and body, settling in
his lower back. The fingers on that arm spasm in time with his
scratching. The sight is mesmerising. He scratches a little harder,
setting aside the pain as his fingers dance a jig. He is the puppet
master, pulling his own string.

Scratch.

(Pull).

Twitch.

Scratch.

(Pull).

Twitch.

His new hand wouldn't be so
compliant, no. They make them tougher these days, more independent.
Maybe they could work two jobs, the hand and he. Maximise their
income. Perhaps even start a relationship---if the new hand could
reach low enough.

He is sure they'd find a way to
make it work.

All the best relationships
endure through adversity.

He stabs his nail deeper into
the wound, which shoots bolts of agony into the top of his
skull.

Damn sympathy pains. Damn nerve
endings.

He is better than this.

A thought strikes.

He withdraws his nail. The pain
dulls to an ache, but the itch returns once more. It takes more
willpower than he'd care to admit to leave the crater alone, but he
does it. He leans on the coffee table to stand, sliding on a piece
of paper for a second as it bears his weight. Despite the slip, he
stands without further incident and moves to the bookshelf.

It doesn't take too long to
find the book he wants. A reflexology book he bought for ex number
3 or maybe number 4. She was really into that new age shit, but not
enough to take the book when she left him.

The itch grows more insistent.
The burning pain from earlier now becomes a burning itch. Is the
mass getting bigger?

He stalks into the kitchen and
ransacks the top drawer. He can't find what he's looking for, and
as each second passes, the itch burns and prods him a little
more.

Scratch me. Scratch me.

He yanks the drawer from the
cupboard with the crash of colliding utensils. The crash lingers,
ruining the silence until at last the ringing fades. With the
drawer in hand, he carries it back to the sofa. It clatters in
protest when dropped onto the cushion in front of him, but he
doesn't care. The fall has unearthed his quarry---the metal
skewers.

SCRATCH ME!

"Okay", he says, and scratches
at the insistent wound in a coy way, gently, trying to re-establish
the proper rhythm.

As he reaches for a skewer, his
eye is drawn to the paper which slid under his palm when he stood.
It is the electricity bill, $239 worth of unpaid juice overdue by a
month. Five neat fingerprints and the heel of his palm, each a
smear of his own blood, beckons to him. The hand print is almost
artistic.

He blinks a few times to snap
himself out of the trance. When he does, he finds the skewer in his
grip, the sharp end poised over his knee.

He tries kicking off his boot
against the arm of the sofa, but it won't budge. The time it takes
to unlace is almost comically slow.

Scratch me.

With his foot exposed (boot and
sock now random hazards on the carpet), he flicks through the
reflexology book.

Scratch me! Scratch me!

In his scratching hand, he
holds the metal skewer like a pen, nib in the air as if ready to
sign an autograph. He continues searching the book.

SCRATCH ME!

And he does, raking the skewer
across the ruined skin. It is sharp, intense, and immediately
relieving. He runs the skewer in loping lines across his forearm.
Its tip is ice, similar to the slicing torture of having a tattoo
done. Pleasure in pain. When it passes across the wound, more jolts
zap through his body. His neck, head, and back spasm in sympathy.
His nerve connectors are having the time of their life.

He'd show them.

Found it!

The chart is toward the back of
the book. It doesn't take long for him to find the reflexology spot
on the sole of his foot that coincides with his forearm.

Taking the skewer in a
full-handed grip, he hovers over his pale foot for only a few
seconds before taking the plunge.

Red spots blaze before his
eyes. He yelps, caught off guard by the agony that spears through
his leg from his foot. A disturbingly fast stream of blood courses
from the skewer jutting from his sole.