Last Days Read online

  "Ah," said Kline. "I'm afraid so."

  "Look at you," said Torn-Lip. "Do you want to die in bed?"

  "You don't want to die in bed," said Low Voice.

  "We're here to save you," said Torn-Lip.

  "I don't want to be saved," said Kline.

  "He doesn't want to be saved," said Low Voice.

  "Sure he does," said Torn-Lip. "He just doesn't know it yet."

  "But I--"

  "Mr. Kline," said Torn-Lip, "we have given you every opportunity to be reasonable. Why didn't you take advantage of either of the tickets we left for you?"

  "I don't need your ticket," said Kline.

  "When was the last time you ate?" asked Low Voice.

  Torn-Lip reached out and prodded Kline's face with a gloved finger. "Clearly, you are your own worst enemy, Mr. Kline."

  "Depression," said Low Voice. "Lassitude, ennui. I so diagnose."

  "Look," said Kline, struggling to lift himself up a little in the bed. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

  "He sits," said Torn-Lip.

  "Or nearly so. Who says the man doesn't have any fight left to him?"

  "That's the spirit," said Torn-Lip. "That's the man who can have his hand cut off and not flinch."

  "Come away with us, Mr. Kline."

  "No," said Kline.

  "What can we say to convince you?"

  "Nothing," said Kline.

  "Well, then," said Torn-Lip. "Perhaps there are means other than words."

  Kline watched as the man grasped one of his gloved hands with the other. He twisted the hand about and levered it downward and the hand came free. Kline felt his stump tingle. The other man, he saw, was doing the same thing. They pulled back their sleeves to show him the bare exposed lumps of flesh in which their forearms terminated.

  "You see," said Torn-Lip, "just like you."

  "Come with us," said the other.

  "But," said Kline. "I don't--"

  "He thinks we're asking," said Torn-Lip, leaning in over the bed, his damaged mouth livid. "We're not asking. We're telling."

  II.

  Before he knew it, their hands were screwed back on and they had him out of the bed and were dragging him down the emergency stairwell.

  "Wait," he said. "My claw."

  "Your claw?"

  "For my hand."

  You don't need it, they claimed, and kept pulling him down the stairs. "Where are you taking me?" he asked.

  "He wants to know where we're taking him, Ramse," said Low Voice.

  "To the car," said Torn-Lip--said Ramse--grunting the words. They came to a landing and Kline felt his own body sway to one side and then steady itself. Ramse was beside him, his head sticking out from under Kline's arm, his lips, torn and whole, tight against each other. "Tell him we're going to the car," Ramse said.

  "We're going to the car," said Low Voice, and Kline looked over to find Low Voice's head under the other arm.

  "But," he said.

  "Enough questions," said Ramse. "Just try to move your feet. If you have them, may as well use them."

  He looked down and could not see feet, only legs. There was a whispery sound, but it wasn't until they left the landing and started down the next set of stairs and the sound changed to a thumping that he realized it was his own feet dragging. He tried to get his feet underneath him, but the two men were moving too quickly and all he could do was to nearly trip them all down the stairs.

  "Never mind, never mind," said Ramse. "We're almost there." And indeed, Kline realized, they were pushing through the fire exit door and into full sunlight. There was a car there, long and black with tinted windows. They hustled him into the back of it.

  Ramse got in on the driver's side, Low Voice on the other. There was something wrong with the steering wheel, Kline noticed, as if a cup holder had been welded into it. Low Voice opened the glove box, awkwardly groped a candy bar out of it with his artificial hand, passed it back to Kline.

  "Eat this," he said. "It'll help focus you."

  Kline heard the locks snap down. He took the candy bar, began to strip the wrapper off it. It was almost more than he could manage. In the front, the two men were shucking their coats and hats, piling them on the seat between them. He watched Ramse snap off his artificial hand, glove and all, and drop it atop the pile. Low Voice did the same.

  "That's better," Low Voice said.

  Kline ate a little of the candy bar. It was chocolate, something crispy inside it. He chewed. Ramse, he realized, was holding his remaining hand up, toward the other man.

  "Gous?" Ramse asked.

  "What?" the man said. "Yes, right," Gous said. "Sorry."

  With his single hand he reached out and took Ramse's remaining hand and twisted it. Kline watched the hand circle about and break free. Ramse rubbed his two stumps against each other. Gous reached out and took hold of Ramse's ear, tore it off. It came free, leaving a gaping unwhelked hole behind.

  "There," said Ramse. "That's better." He looked at Kline in the rearview mirror, lifted up both stumps. "Like you," he said, smiling. "Only more so."

  They drove, the city slowly dissolving around them and breaking up into fields and trees. Gous kept rummaging in the glove box, passing back food. There was another candy bar, a plastic bag of broken pretzels, a tin of sardines. Kline took a little of each, left what remained on the seat beside him. He was beginning to feel a little more alert. Outside, the sun was high; even through the tinted glass it looked hot outside. They turned right and went up a ramp and entered the freeway, the car quickly gaining speed.

  "Where are we?" Kline asked.

  "Here we go," said Gous, ignoring him.

  "Smooth sailing from here on out," said Ramse. "For a while anyway."

  "But," said Kline. "Where, I don't--"

  "Mr. Kline," said Gous. "Please sit back and enjoy the ride."

  "What else?" asked Kline.

  "What else?" said Gous.

  "What do you mean what else?" asked Ramse.

  "What else comes off."

  "Besides the hands and the ear?" said Ramse. "Some toes," he said, "but they're already off. Three gone from one foot, two from the other."

  "What happened?" asked Kline.

  "What do you mean what happened, Mr. Kline? Nothing happened."

  "We don't do accidents," said Gous. "Accidents and acts of God don't mean a thing, unless they're followed later by acts of will. Pretzel?" he asked.

  "Your own case was hotly debated," said Ramse. "Some wanted to classify it as an accident."

  "But it was no accident," said Gous.

  "No," said Ramse. "Others argued, successfully, that it was no accident but instead an act of will. But then the question came 'An act of will on whose part?' On the part of the gentleman with the hatchet, surely, no denying that, but responsibility can hardly rest solely with him, can it now, Mr. Kline?" He turned a little around as he said it, pivoting his missing ear toward Kline. "All you had to do was tell him one thing, Mr. Kline, just a lie, and you would have kept your hand. But you didn't say a thing. A matter of will, Mr. Kline. Your will to lose the hand far outweighed your will to retain it."

  Outside, the highway had narrowed to a two-lane road, cutting through dry scraggled woods, the road's shoulder heaped in dust.

  "What about you?" Kline asked Gous.

  "Me?" said Gous, blushing. "Just the hand," he said. "I'm still new."

  "Have to start somewhere," said Ramse. "We brought him along because the powers that be thought you might be more comfortable with someone like you."

  "He's not like me."

  "You have one amputation, he has one amputation," said Ramse. "Yours is a hand, his is a hand. In that sense, he's like you. When you start to look closer, well . . ."

  "I used anesthetic," said Gous.

  "You, Mr. Kline, did not use anesthetic. You weren't given that option."

  "It's frowned upon," said Gous, "but not forbidden."

  "And more or less expected fo
r the first several amputations," said Ramse. "This makes you exceptional, Mr. Kline."

  Kline looked at the seat next to him, the open tin of sardines, the filets shining in their oil.

  "I'm exceptional as well," said Ramse. "I've never been anesthetized."

  "He's an inspiration to us all," said Gous.

  "But that you cauterized your wound yourself, Mr. Kline," said Ramse. "That makes you truly exceptional."

  "I'd like to get out of the car now," said Kline softly.

  "Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Kline," said Gous, grinning. "We're in the middle of nowhere."

  "I could count the number of people who self-cauterize on one finger of one hand," said Ramse.

  "If he had a hand," said Gous.

  "If I had a hand," said Ramse.

  They drove for a while in silence. Kline stayed as still as he could in the back seat. The sun had slid some little way down the horizon. After a while it vanished. The tin of sardines had slid down the seat and was now at an angle, the oil leaking slowly out. He straightened the tin, then rubbed his fingers dry on the floor carpeting. It was hard not to stare at Ramse's missing ear. He looked down at his own stump, looked at Gous' stump balanced on the seat's back. The two stumps were actually quite different, he thought. The end of Gous' was puckered. His own had been puckered and scarred from the makeshift cauterization; after the fact, a doctor had cut a little higher and smoothed it off, planed it. Outside, the trees, already sparse, seemed to vanish almost entirely, perhaps partly because of the gathering darkness but also the landscape was changing. Ramse pushed one of his stumps into the panel and turned on the headlights.

  "Eight," said Ramse, gesturing his head slightly backward.

  "Eight?" asked Kline. "Eight what?"

  "Amputations," said Ramse. Kline watched the back of his head. "Of course that doesn't mean a thing," he said. "Could be just eight toes, all done under anesthetic, the big toes left for balance. That should hardly qualify for an eight," he said.

  Gous nodded next to him. He held up his stump, looked over the back. "This counts as a one," he said. "But I could have left the hand and cut off all the fingers and I'd be a four. Five if you took the thumb."

  They were waiting for Kline to say something. "That hardly seems fair," he offered.

  "But which is more of a shock?" asked Ramse. "A man losing his fingers or a man losing his hand?"

  Kline didn't know if he was expected to answer. "I'd like to get out of the car," he said.

  "So there are eights," said Ramse, "and then there are eights." They came to a curve. Kline watched Ramse post the other hand on the steering wheel for balance, turning the wheel with his cupped stump. "Personally I prefer a system of minor and major amputations, according to which I'd be a 2/3."

  "I prefer by weight," said Gous. "Weigh the lopped-off member, I say."

  "But you see," said Ramse, "bled or unbled? And doesn't that give a certain advantage to the corpulent?"

  "You develop standards," said Gous. "Penalties and handicaps."

  "Why do you need me?" asked Kline.

  "Excuse me?" asked Ramse.

  "He wants to know why we need him," said Gous.

  "That's easy," said Ramse. "A crime has been committed."

  "Why me?" asked Kline.

  "You have a certain amount of experience in investigation," said Gous.

  "Not investigation exactly, but infiltration," said Ramse.

  "And you don't flinch, Mr. Kline," said Gous.

  "No, he doesn't flinch."

  "But--" said Kline.

  "You'll be briefed," said Ramse. "You'll be told what to do."

  "But the police--"

  "No police," said Ramse. "It was hard enough to get the others to agree on you."

  "If it hadn't been for the hand," said Gous.

  "If it hadn't been for the hand," said Ramse, "you wouldn't be here. But you're one of us, like it or not."

  III.

  He woke up when the car stopped in front of a set of metal gates. It was fully dark outside.

  "Almost there," said Ramse from the front.

  The gates opened a little and a small man stepped out, turning pale and white in the over-bright halogen glow of the headlights. The man came over to the driver's door. Kline could see he was missing an eye, one closed lid seeming flat and deflated. He was wearing a uniform. Ramse rolled down the window, and the man peered into the car.

  "Mr. Ramse," said the guard. "And Mr. Gous. Who's in the back?"

  "That would be Mr. Kline," said Ramse. "Hold up your arm, Mr. Kline," said Ramse.

  Kline lifted his hand.

  "No, the other one," said Ramse.

  He lifted the stumped arm and the guard nodded. "A one?" he asked.

  "Right," said Ramse. "But self-cauterized."

  The guard whistled. He drew away from the window and made his way back to the gates, which he drew open just wide enough for the car to pass through. Through the rear window, Kline watched him draw the gates shut after them.

  "Welcome home, Mr. Kline," said Ramse.

  Kline didn't say anything.

  They passed a row of houses, turned down a smaller road where the houses were a little more spread out, then down a third, smaller, tree-lined alley that dead-ended in front of a small, two-story building. Ramse stopped the car. The three of them climbed out.

  "You'll be staying here, Mr. Kline," said Ramse. "First floor, second door to the left once you go through the entrance. There's probably an hour or two of night left," he said. "We'll see you in the morning. For now, why don't you try to get some sleep?"

  When he went in, he couldn't figure out how to turn the hall light on so, instead, wandered down the dark hall dragging his hand along the wall, feeling for doorways. His fingers stuttered past one. He lifted his fingers from the wall and brought them near his face. They smelled of dust. He went on until he came to another doorframe, fumbled around for the handle.

  Inside, he found a switch. It was a small windowless room, containing a narrow single bed with a thin, ratty blanket. In one corner was a metal cabinet. The floor was linoleum, a streaked blue. The light, he saw, was a naked bulb, hanging from the center of the ceiling. The walls' paint was cracking.

  Welcome home, he thought.

  He closed the door. There was no lock on it. He opened the cabinet. It was full of stacks of calendars, each month featuring a woman in various states of undress, smiling furiously. He looked at the first picture for some time before realizing the girl was missing one of her thumbs. With each month, the losses became more obvious and more numerous, March losing a breast, July missing both breasts, a hand, and a forearm. The December girl was little more than a torso, her breasts shaved off, wearing nothing but a thin white cloth banner from one shoulder to the opposite hip, reading "Miss Less Is More."

  He put the calendar back and closed the cabinet. Turning off the light he lay in the bed, but kept seeing Miss Less Is More's face contorted with joy. There was Ramse's face too, his mutilated ear just above the car seatback angling itself toward him. His own stump was tingling. He got up and turned on the light, tried to sleep with it on.

  He dreamt that he was sitting at the table again, the gentleman with the cleaver standing before him, cleaver coming down. Only in his dream he wasn't just the man losing his hand but also the man with the cleaver. He watched himself bring the cleaver down and the hand come free and the fingers pulse. The sheared plane of his wrist grew pale and then suddenly puffed, blood pulsing out. He stripped off his belt with his remaining hand and tightened it quickly around his arm until the bleeding slowed and mostly stopped. He watched himself do it, holding the cleaver in his hand. Then he watched himself, pale and holding the belt tight, go to the stove and turn it on, wait for the coils of the burner to smoke and begin to glow. He pushed his stump down and heard it sizzle and smelt the burnt flesh, and when he lifted the stump away it was smoking. Bits of flesh and blood were stuck to the burner and smoldering.

>   Then, with his left hand, face livid with pain, he took out his gun and, left-handed, shot himself through the eye. It was a hell of a thing to watch, a hell of a thing to feel. And as soon as it was over it started again, and kept starting until he forced himself awake.

  Gous and Ramse were in the room, the first standing at the open cabinet looking through the calendar, rubbing at his crotch with his stump, the second standing near the bed, looking at Kline.

  "Rise and shine," said Ramse.

  Kline sat on the edge of the bed, pulling his pants on awkwardly with stump and arm. Ramse watched. Only when he was done did he say, "There's new clothes for you."

  "Where?" asked Kline.

  "Gous has them," said Ramse. "Gous?" he said, louder.

  "What?" said Gous, turning stiffly away from the calendar, face red with shame or heat, or perhaps both.

  "Clothes, Gous," said Ramse.

  "Oh, right," said Gous, and picking up a pile of clothing near his feet, threw it to Kline.

  Kline stripped out of the clothes he had just put on as Ramse watched. The new clothing consisted of a pair of gray slacks, a white shirt, a red clip-on tie. The buttons weren't easy one-handed, particularly since the shirt was freshly starched, but after the first three they got easier. He tried to leave the tie on the bed, but Ramse stopped him.

  "Put it on," he said.

  "Why?"

  "I'm wearing one, Gous is wearing one," said Ramse. And indeed, Kline had failed to notice, their outfits were the same as his: white shirts, gray slacks, red clip-on tie. He found himself wondering how Ramse had managed to put on his shirt by himself. Perhaps he hadn't.

  "Let's go," said Gous once Kline's tie was on, and nudged him toward the exit.

  "Look," said Ramse, as they went out the door and started to walk down the drive. "Things are done in a certain way here. We hope you'll try to respect that."

  "All right," said Kline.

  "The other thing," said Ramse. "The investigation."

  "He's taking you to Borchert," said Gous.

  "I'm taking you to Borchert," said Ramse. 'He'll tell you about the investigation."