Dr. Boots

I call my orthopedic surgeon “Dr. Boots,” because she wears these sexy boots that stand in sharp contrast to the plain white doctor jacket she wears. They’re like biker boots or something, I don’t know. Black leather and high-heels and faux-fur around the tops. I don’t call her “Dr. Boots” out loud. Not to her face. It’s a private joke, just for me and the warm interior of my head.  

     While I’m sitting on the examining table, waiting, I inventory the room.

     A poster that says, Finding Answers so you can Reach Your Full Potential! It shows people jogging, biking, rock climbing, etc. A lot of lens flares. There’s a desk with two chairs, a computer, a third chair that rolls on casters, a telephone, a used-needle receptacle, a hazardous-material hamper, a suture kit, a box of sanitary wipes, Purell hand sanitizer, a sink, a children’s book called Venus and Tara and the Big Game, a Cosmopolitan, a National Geographic, and the examination table adorned with a crisp paper tablecloth. The room smells like cotton and gauze and the ghost of a disinfectant.

     There is no clock as I sit and wait for Dr. Boots. I realize my nickname for her is a lame attempt at control, a way to diminish her status as an authority figure. I need to take these doctors down a peg. I feel ashamed of myself.

     She arrives carrying a clipboard; a list of my secrets. “Hi, sorry to keep you waiting,” she tells me. She gets behind the desk. I take a seat across from her.

     “Oh, that’s okay.”

     “Your blood pressure is a little high. Are you nervous?”

     “Always,” I say, forcing myself.

     She examines my messed-up elbow. In two weeks she will be cutting it apart and operating on my bones.

     You would think I’d have more on my mind than her boots.

In Haste

So Joyce finally hit her limit and asked herself, Why is that depraved, depressed little weirdo still in my life? It had been twelve everfucking years now. Twelve! Longer than most marriages! Longer than most lozenges. Their relationship should have faded away long ago. Fade away or collapse. Or explode. Or was implode the correct term for the fucked-up situation they had situated themselves in? Their relationship was hard to describe. That sound you get from the bottom of a glass when your straw sucks up the last of the liquid. THAT was the sound of their relationship—a lot of air and a speck of taste. A not-very-satisfying final gurgle from the bottom of the glass.  A flat, tepid death-knell.  

     Flogging the dolphin. All that was left to do was acknowledge that this final (?) ordeal came out of nowhere. Again. Well, in truth there’d been several small skirmishes along the way but Joyce and Walt inevitably teamed up again and cleaned up the caustic, hateful debris they’d hurled at each other like pizza sauce, and returned to the weird relationship that didn’t make sense to either of them but was—for some loony reason--important. But Jesus, sometimes he was just exhausting.

      But they needed each other, right? Christ, maybe not. Walt hated to think it might all come crumbling down due to a ringing phone in the middle of the night.

     Everything was done by telephone. Walter and Joyce had met on an online writing community and their relationship never moved beyond that. At least in a geographical, spatial sense. They were 1,314 miles apart yet obsessively close together. They talked and laughed and wept and fought and fucked and got as close as two people could get without actually meeting. They helped each other through trauma and loss: The death of a pet. That time Walt got cancer. When he lost his job. When Walt was lost in the hospital, arms sore and punctured like a voodoo doll, hers was the number he wanted to call. When Joyce went in for one of her endless arteriograms (Joyce had a blood-sucking hole in her brain) Walt tried his best to make her laugh. Tried to make it seem less frightening. They played like children sometimes to alleviate, if only for a few dewdrops, the horror of existence. They were as close as they wanted to be. Neither one was booking flights or planning a cross-country drive. Their magic moved through the sizzling intimacy of telephone lines.    

     The freakish[1]* magic that held them together was borne out of some mysterious alchemy forged from transmission signals and electronic membranes. Migraine headaches.  Drunken foolery. Frenetic, sugary, disaccharide molecules flavored the air they breathed, air that transmitted delicate personal information. Boy did they know each other. They felt like invisible, forever-babbling entities, and spent hours sharing their lives and analyzing things. It was easy to share long-distance. They didn’t have to look each other in the eye but they could never hold hands. A lot of stuff was made up. They wanted to hire the Banana Splits to play at their wedding. They spent long hours dissecting the behavior of serial killers. The songs on their (imaginary) jukebox would part your hair. They agreed that No Reply by the Beatles was about a creepy, possibly homicidal stalker and not a song about lost love. They quoted lines from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Taxi Driver, (1976) and Goodfellas (1990). They both used the Marx Brothers as directed—to stave off fear and despair. They developed verbal shorthand which started to morph into a new, private language. Sometimes their conversations were so short-handed and kinetic it made their hair stand on end, their compass needles go weird, their bunnies flee, and once, even TIME ITSELF sat down and slowly froze to death like crazy Jack Torrance in The Shining (1980).

     There was power to their friendship. In the early days they’d talk for eight or ten hours. Batteries would die. They couldn’t get enough of each other. They would recite poetry or favorite passages from favorite books and Walt still remembered with fondness their first phone conversation. They talked about A rebours with such giddy, delighted surprise. They felt like they had found someone new and revelatory yet strangely familiar. They were in their 40’s when they “met” but turned into teenagers in each other’s company.

      All over the phone. Give it up for Alexander B.

      But things were different now. The word impasse came to mind and Walt tried to sweep it away. He didn’t want to dwell on his many mistakes, how freaked out he was to talk to her. All the times he tried to run away or push her away, all the times he was weak and pathetic in front of her. The times he confided his darkest impulses...

Joyce was forcing herself to get exercise (for some arcane medical reason) by walking around Lake Walnut. Her doctor—a devout, bald man—recommended she take up jogging. She said, “Okay,” but knew jogging wasn’t in her future. She refused to jog. It was a matter of dignity and self-worth. All those women straining and sweating and struggling up and over endless, merciless hills. And don’t even mention power-walking. Every time a power-walker passed by, Joyce wished for a sniper in the trees, aiming at the walker through the scope of an assault rifle.

     Joyce was the kind of gal that used to sneak a smoke during gym class, hiding on the distant side of the track. Once, in art class, she and her best friend Rita managed to share a joint simply by opening a window (which wasn’t allowed) and releasing the smoke through the screen. It was audacious and scary (if caught they would have been royally screwed) and they got away with it. Of course they did. They were fearless.

     Joyce smiled at the memory, remembering Rita. It was only half a mile around the lake (Lake Walnut should have been called Walnut Pond or, better yet, Walnut Puddle). A gaggle of chatty women ran past her and Joyce remembered the term “runner’s high,” something to do with endorphins producing euphoria.

     Joyce had been addicted to Percocet for several years. She knew all about euphoria and was quite sure she couldn’t achieve it by running around a puddle.

     She walked around the pond once and then bounced. She fled the scene in her red Mazda Miata, tires spewing pebbles and sand behind her. That was enough for today. She wondered if Walt would call. She really read him the riot act. Would he even remember? Everclear abuse had worn holes in his head. They both had holes.

Walt was at work. Walt was hungover. Walt worked at FedEx. The Graveyard Shift. He took packages and moved them around. He placed them according to lettered codes on the labels. For example: JBC went to Franklin. PVD went to Providence. You would think WST would go to Westboro or Worcester but no, it went to Providence too. It was best not to ask too many questions. Walt worked in what was called The Sort.

     The Sort was housed in a big building full of machines growling and grinding. There were conveyor belts and chutes all over the place. Guys drove forklifts, guys handled hazardous stuff, guys stood way up on scaffolds scanning barcodes. “Guys” meant women too. There were a lot of women that worked on The Sort.

     Walt was standing at his spot in front of a conveyor belt and packages going past. Walt stood there and read the codes on each box that glided by. He had three codes that were his responsibility: HYA, BDL and good old JBC. When a package came by with one of those codes, Walt would shove it off the belt and it would slide down a chute and then it was the next guy’s problem.

      There were people that the managers selected to be “team leaders.” They could boss you around. Walt’s immediate team leader was a black, mountain of a man named Jesse. Some of the package handlers hated him, others feared him. Walt was somewhere in the intimidated middle. Jesse always seemed to be under tremendous stress. He could kid around and laugh but mostly he just worried and barked orders. He had to. He was a team leader. One of Walt’s coworkers, a friendly, verbose guy who drove a white panel van, told him that Jesse’s personal life was as miserable and stressful as his job and he spent his off-hours alone, swilling whiskey in the dark. Yeah, but Panel Van Guy’s gossip couldn’t be trusted. He hated Jesse and once confided to Walt that he wanted to stab him in the face, the eyeballs. Like a prison hit. Walt just nodded and eased away.    

     Walt looked at the clock even though it was pointless. The shift ended when all the freight had been sorted and shipped. Walt looked at the clock again anyway. It was two o’clock in the morning and he had never needed a drink more ruthlessly. He needed to talk to Joyce with such desperation he felt embarrassed by himself. But he was afraid to call her. He had seriously fucked things up (again).

     See, Joyce lived with people now. Walt couldn’t just get drunk and call at all hours anymore. People were sleeping. He had become a natural disaster. Unpredictable. A befuddled invader. Joyce was right to be furious. No one needs a screaming phone at two in the morning. And Walt was no help. He couldn’t remember a thing. He looked at the clock again. It was still two o’clock in the morning. Endless packages, endless time.

Joyce couldn’t work because of her condition and passed the time doing scrimshaw. She used bone instead of ivory. She could lose days etching and scribing into the bone. Her current project was carving the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show into a moose hip. Scrimshaw ate hours.  Sometimes her hands hurt from repetitive motion.

     She had left home at 16 and moved in with her pot-dealer boyfriend, still managing to complete her education. Now, at 50 she was living with her parents again. She started to tackle Gavin MacLeod, etching his head into the polished bone.

When Jesse the Team Leader finally yelled, “Third shift all set!” Walt felt close to collapse. Package handling was hard work. It was hard on the body, all that activity and heavy lifting. He punched out and urged his aching form out the door and into the pre-dawn dark. It was three o’clock in the morning. Birds were screeching in the trees. “I hate those fucking birds,” said a disgruntled guy behind him.

     When Walt got home the telephone was sitting there. He cracked open a beer and turned on the TV. Looking at the phone. Calling Joyce was impossible, of course. He wanted to talk to her, tell her about his workday. A new guy had lost three fingers to a conveyor belt. A hazard guy had to clean up after him wearing a spacesuit. It was exciting. The guy who lost his fingers remained eerily calm as he reported the accident to the dispatchers. We figured he was still in shock. That would explain his calm. Three fingers, Jesus. An amputation too mangled to repair. Walt drank his beer, casting an occasional glance at the empty phone.

1,314 miles south, Joyce decided to call it quits. She put away her scrimshaw tools and then hit the hay. She wondered if Walt would call. He didn’t. Neither one of them was reachable anymore.

---

[1] Freakish here is used as a positive attribute.

Pinhole

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Amy's Arms

My poem Amy's Arms in Horror Sleaze Trash!


Horror Sleaze Trash 

God's Little Miscarriage - Part One

Joe discovered the big green fetus beached on the edge of a small, heart-shaped lake in the littered thicket behind Fontaine’s Shopping Centre. It was the size of a Saint Bernard, glowing with a green haze. It was obviously dead (or possibly dormant? Best not to think about that...).
      
A thin drizzle settled like poison over the trash-strewn woods. It was a cold, misty morning. The sky was a sagging gray tarp. Fog disguised the landscape. Joe, who had been picking through the Dumpsters behind the buildings, was heading home. The Dumpsters gifted him with nothing. Aside from a few crushed soda cans, they were bankrupt; spewing worthless paper and rotted garbage. Nothing he could pawn or use or eat.

     
He approached the giant glowing fetus warily, his heart pounding with arrhythmic fury in his chest. By God, it looked human. Joe felt too old for this kind of macabre shock. His ordinary life was grotesque enough. He reached down and brought up a muddy, broken crutch. He held it like a lance, moving closer until the thing’s full, monstrous details emerged.

     
Its eyes were black and open. It was swathed in a gelatinous coating of green slime and emitted a dim glow. Its huge, awkward head was pale, bulbous, and running with a tangled network of purple blood vessels. It was posed like a pugilist, its bony back hunched, hands curled into fists. It had ten tiny fingernails. Joe could make out the hazy shapes of dormant organs under the glossy, opaque flesh. It was also male, he saw.

     
He wondered where the hell it might have come from. It looked ancient, primordial, and possessed a power that traveled through time. But there was also something vaguely familiar about it, as if it had slipped loose from a damaged dream.

     
He poked the giant fetus with the crutch, prodding it like a curious kid and for a split-second he thought it moved and he almost screamed and took off running.

   
But no, it was still dead. He poked it again, feeling resistance in the meaty mass. The drizzle had turned to light rain, transforming the gray lake into millions of ripples. Joe wiped moisture from his thick gray beard and thought about how he was going to get the thing home.

     
The idea of taking it just occurred to him—popped into his hungover head. He didn’t wonder why. It was just another thing he needed. He didn’t want the empty day to be a total loss.

     
He dropped the crutch and placed both hands on the monster. It was cold and wet and dead. It smelled like sulfur and rotted beef.  He tested it by gently pushing against it and was surprised at how easily it rocked back. The thing looked heavy as a bull, but it was light, as if composed of nothing more than faded contours and empty air. Joe looked around to make sure he wasn’t being watched and then embraced the thing with both arms. He lifted it, guessing it weighed around a hundred pounds. He held it like a bridegroom holding a bride and took a few hesitant steps. The rain increased. He headed back to his shack hidden deep in the woods. He carried the thing easily, across two pathless miles. He walked over wet leaves and rocks and roots yet his sneakers never slipped. He didn’t falter or pause or stumble. It was as if he held a guardian angel in his outstretched arms.

     
He made it back to his home; a jumbled shack he’d hammered together from discarded debris. He was a scavenger par excellence. He carried the thing inside.

     
He set about lighting his lantern and then stopped when he realized that the thing gave off enough illumination to light the room. He sat on his mattress to admire it. For the first time he wondered if it might be valuable. Maybe he could sell it to some sideshow impresario. It was a freak of nature, like a three-headed mule. People liked stuff like that. Whatever it was, it was important. Like a space alien or a sea monster or a god. God’s holy miscarriage.

     
His discovery might make him famous. Or at least get his name in the news. He imagined himself showing the thing off on The Today Show. It was better than a yeti.

     
He removed his cap and saw that it was full of his coarse white hair.

     
What the hell?

     
He reached up and brushed his hand across his scalp, coming away with a fistful of clumps. He tugged his beard, likewise filling his hand with hair. He moaned and felt his teeth suddenly loosen and move. He spit a tooth to the floor. And then another. And another until he was staring down at nine dead teeth. He slid his tongue over slick empty gums.

     
He began to panic.

     
The thing in front of him seemed to glow more brightly. Was the damn thing radioactive? Was it killing him? Leaching away his energies? He looked at his trembling hands. His fingernails had abandoned their anchors and began to slip off the ends of his fingers. He shook his hands and the nails clicked into the pile of teeth on the floor. God, he was falling apart. His eyesight dimmed.

     
A heavy weakness stole over Joe and he fell back on the mattress. He could feel his muscles atrophy and dissolve. He felt his bones settle into themselves and then crack and fracture and wither away.

     
And then he felt nothing at all.

     
The glowing thing quivered and blinked. Its huge heart stammered to life.

     
Another one.