Zippered Flesh: Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad! Read online

  His body fluxed again, this time into human form, green tint fading to peach, claws retracting. He clung to the kitchen counter, gasping as dreadlocks sprouted like snakes from his scalp. With another long hiss from the neck implant, the creature became just Tony the liquor store clerk again.

  And, to my considerable relief, human-looking, crumpled-in-pain Tony was far less intimidating than the green-skinned, claw-flashing version.

  When he buried his face in his arms and wept, I was dumbfounded.

  “I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I’m just having a really bad day. I ... I really liked this town, ya know? It’s quiet. The fishing’s good. I have friends here.”

  I had a blubbering, unstable alien in my kitchen, and though I had no way of knowing if he was the good guy or the bad guy, I was starting to have sympathy for him.

  But what if he was lying about the short cop being a hunter in disguise? And even if that was true, what if they had a damn good reason for chasing him, a motivation that ran deeper than “Hey, an alien, catch it!” It was certainly an option that Tony was evil, tears or no tears. This wasn’t a movie, as he’d reminded me. In real life, it was entirely possible that villains wept.

  But I never did like cops much. And even being a teacher, an authority figure myself, I still possessed my teenage, stick-it-to-the-man attitude on some level. Or maybe I just wanted to think of myself as a free spirit since my carefully crafted life fell apart like a house of cards with one blow. “Free spirit” sounded way better than “drunken slack-ass.”

  Or maybe I just liked the idea of packing my cooler full of beer. Despite the sunrise warming an amber glow on my window shades, a cold beer sounded real nice right now.

  “I’ll help you get out of here,” I said.

  He didn’t look up. “I can’t compact my body when in human form. There’s no place to hide me in your car now.”

  “You’ll probably shift again soon,” I said. “I mean, judging by the way things have been happening, right? I’ll start rounding up some beach stuff to put in my jeep. When it happens, we’ll just load you up and go. I’ll bullshit the cops on the way out.”

  Straightening up, Tony wiped his eyes and studied me. His tanned skin glistened with sweat, dark circles cupping his brown eyes. “Okay,” he said. “But no funny stuff. And don’t be thinking you’ll get me packed up in that cooler and just hand me over to them, like I can’t get out and cut your throat. Because I can, I don’t need claws for that.” He pulled a knife from behind his back. I recognized it as one from the set of steak knives resting on my kitchen counter.

  “Wow,” I said. “And here I thought we were making friends.”

  He grinned, holding the knife up a moment longer, and then pocketing it again. “Listen, recluse. I appreciate you helping me, but let’s get one thing straight. I am not E.T. You are not Elliott. And there’s no spaceship coming to take me back home. I’m an exile, one of thousands rejected and dumped here. And I will do whatever it takes to survive. Even if that means killing. Understand?”

  I hesitated, and then nodded. “I understand.”

  He studied me, and some of the tension eased out of his shoulders. He held a hand out and I shook it. He laughed, and it took some of the strain out of his eyes. “You’re all right, Twelve-Pack. We could use someone like you playing both sides.”

  “I have no idea what that means,” I said.

  He grinned. “Maybe someday I’ll explain it to you.”

  I’d just let go of Tony’s hand when the kitchen window shattered.

  The dart missed Tony by inches and bounced off the cupboard. Tony ran out of the kitchen and down the hallway. I jumped back as the chubby guy in the police uniform climbed through the shattered window and landed on the floor. Glass crunched as he pushed me aside and stomped off down the hall after Tony, dart gun out in front of him.

  I started after them when the front door opened and three more cops, including the tall redhead, plowed in. They surveyed the kitchen and then ran down the hall. I heard Tony scream and the sounds of a struggle, so I ran after them.

  I found them in the bathroom, where they had Tony pinned down in the tub, two of them holding his legs as he shrieked and struggled. A dart stuck out of his abdomen, my navy T-shirt soaked with dark blood.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted.

  They ignored me as Tony tried lunging from their grip. “Give him one more,” the fat guy shouted. “He’s not going down!”

  Tony kicked the dart gun out of the redhead’s hands and it clattered across the floor, but the second cop got a shot off and stuck Tony straight in the neck.

  He fell back into the tub, jerked twice, and then went still, eyes rolling back as his mouth went slack.

  I stood in the hallway, helpless, as they carried Tony’s limp body out of the house. The chubby cop eyed me suspiciously. “How long was he in here?”

  “He ... he showed himself right after you left the first time.”

  He moved closer to me, those cold eyes probing, like trying to see a lie printed on my retinas. “Why didn’t you alert us?”

  I swallowed hard. “He had a knife.”

  “A knife.”

  “Yes, a knife, it’s in his pocket. Check him if you don’t believe me.”

  “Is that all? Just a knife? He do anything ... strange while you were with him?”

  I knew what he was getting at, but strongly suspected that admitting knowledge of Tony’s alternate persona would be a very bad thing for me. At best, inconvenient. At the worst, Twelve-Pack Jason would need to be silenced.

  “Strange? Well, yeah, he was naked, for starters, and pretty agitated. He made me give him some clothes, and he kept checking the windows. Then you guys came in and shot him with darts.”

  He stared me down. “That’s it? Nothing you want to add?”

  I shrugged. “That’s it. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I certainly hope so. You think of anything, anything at all, you call me.” He handed me a business card; no name, just a phone number. “You call only me. No one else. Got it?”

  With that, he left my cottage, slamming the door.

  I stuffed the card in my pocket, and then moved in a daze down the hall into my kitchen, frowning at the shards of glass on the floor.

  I packed the cooler full of beer and ice, threw a beach chair in the jeep, and headed down the long dirt road toward the village below. When I reached the lake, I pulled in and parked, taking my chair out of the back and setting myself up on the shore with the cooler. I opened a beer and watched the sunrise.

  I stayed there until nine a.m., when I was pretty sure the town businesses would be opening up for the day. Then I collected my things, got back in the jeep, and headed toward Alpine Drive.

  Michelangelo’s Body Design was a little wooden building that smelled like incense and pine-scented floor polish. A bell rang when I stepped inside, my eyes flitting around at the racks of jewelry and glossy photos of tattoo designs pasted along the walls.

  A young woman with short platinum hair came out from the back and stepped behind the glass counter. “You need help?” she asked, glancing over at me.

  I approached the counter. “I’m looking for a man called Fat Pierre.”

  She raised eyebrows at me, and I realized how John Wayne it had sounded, so I amended it a little. “A friend told me to ask for him. Does he still work here?”

  “Pierre!” she shouted, in a voice so loud it reactivated my hangover, even with three beers coursing through my blood.

  A tall, impossibly thin man stepped out from behind a curtain in the back and joined the girl at the counter, eyes on me. He had long, sandy blond hair tied back in a ponytail, a hawkish nose, and a scruffy goatee. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “This guy was asking for you. Says a friend sent him.”

  “Do I know you?” Though his smile was gentle, the eyes were guarded.

  “You’re Fat Pierre?” I asked, scanning his thin, gangly body.
/>   “Yeah, that’s me. What can I do for you?”

  “I need to speak with you. In private.”

  He frowned at me, then he and the young woman exchanged a glance. He looked back at me and sighed, putting his hands on his hips. “I have no secrets from Adele. Say what you want.”

  The girl’s gaze was hostile now as she studied me, and I thought I saw a yellow gleam in her green eyes, but it could have been the joint I smoked on the beach. I hadn’t rehearsed this part, so I opted for bluntness. “They got Tony,” I said.

  Fat Pierre flinched, only slightly.

  I took the business card out of my pocket and placed it on the counter. “This guy, he’s the one.”

  The blond woman glanced at the card, and then started to the back of the store, behind the curtain. Pierre called out to her. “Wait, Adele. Just hold on.”

  She paused and turned back, holding the curtain, but remained where she was. Her jaw was stiff and she looked ready for a fight, and despite her small frame, I got the feeling she could give a good one.

  “What Tony are you talking about?” he asked.

  “I think you know,” I said. “The guy from the liquor store. He broke into my house. I saw him ... I saw him change. His implant is broken. He wanted me to bring him here, to you, but then they came in and shot him with darts. They took him.”

  He took his hands off his hips and rested his palms on the counter, taking a deep breath. After a moment, he met my eyes. “What’s your name?”

  “Jason Sarno. I live up on the mountain.”

  “Well, Jason Sarno, if you don’t want Adele to go back and get the gun she’s itching to fire at you, you better tell me what the hell you want. And fast.”

  I glanced at the young woman, who stood stiff and poised, like a cat about to strike, and then I looked up at skinny Fat Pierre. “I want to help.”

  “You want to help do what?”

  “I want ... I want to work both sides,” I said.

  He scowled. “Where did you hear that term? Working both sides?”

  “From Tony. He said he wanted me to.”

  He stared at me for a long time. He glanced back at Adele, who shrugged, and then he looked back at me. “You better come downstairs,” he said. “Hang on.”

  He went to the front door and locked it, turning the sign around so it read “closed” from the outside, then led me around back, behind the curtain.

  I followed Fat Pierre and Adele through a storage room stacked high with boxes and lined with tables displaying body-piercing tools, then through a locked steel door and down a set of stone steps leading to a second door.

  Pierre punched in a code, and the door slid open.

  I’d moved to the mountain to cast myself away, to deliver myself from the world I’d known, and either disappear completely or resurrect myself into something new.

  I followed Fat Pierre and Adele into the vast white room, weaving through tables and cots, some bulky with sleeping aliens covered in sheets. Other aliens sat in chairs, sipping coffee as their yellow eyes followed me, and that’s when I knew I’d done it.

  The old world was gone, forever transformed. And I was new again.

  COMFORT

  BY CHARLES COLYOTT

  The phone rang, and William’s heart clenched. The muscles along his ribs seized, squeezing his lungs like a corset, and an ache rolled from his chest down to the fingertips of his hand. He snatched the handset from its cradle before the second ring and, licking a droplet of lukewarm sweat from his upper lip, answered with his standard business-like greeting. Someday, William knew, the phone would ring and bring the worst possible news. It could happen any day, any minute. Sometimes, when he lay awake at night, listening to the cavernous wheeze of his mother’s labored breathing, he made himself sick thinking about it. One day the wheezing would just ... stop. And then the call would come. The fear had lived in his breast since the age of ten, when Nana had died and woken within him the realization that sooner or later everyone he knew was going to die. Even Mother.

  He was so relieved to hear Julia’s voice that, at first, he didn’t even register what it was that she was saying. While his anxious mind finally did begin to piece together her message in tiny, bite-sized snippets of understanding—the frantic cadence, the sharp tones, the angry sibilant hiss of her S’s—he was still shocked at her ultimatum. Yes, he would give the nurse a ring, but no, he would never consider a nursing home. That was out of the question. He would be more than happy to stop off and pick up some perfume on the way home, but if she—Julia—did a better job bathing Mother, then it wouldn’t be an issue.

  Fifteen minutes after she had hung up on him, William sat with his head in his hands and allowed the truth to wash over him. Julia was leaving him. Just like that, just when he needed her most. Though his eyes burned and were undoubtedly red and swollen, he refused to cry. Not at work. Once he got home, it would be a different story, but here—in his dingy cubicle—he had to remain professional. He composed himself—a quick, dignified sniff, a clearing of the throat, a running of fingers through the hair—and called Dr. Heaton’s office. Though he had standing appointments for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 5 p.m., he thought that adding in sessions for Tuesday and Thursday might be a good idea for the next two weeks or so, and Dr. Heaton agreed. She also reminded him to take his medication, which he did. The Xanax helped to take the edge off long enough for him to make it through his shift, but he found himself chewing at his fingernails as he drove to his appointment.

  Dr. Heaton greeted him at the door and ushered him into her office. She was a good foot taller than he was, but he was used to that; he’d always been mocked for being short, but for whatever reason the fact that she was taller was soothing, somehow. She wasn’t a beautiful woman—not like Julia, and not like Mother had been, in her youth—but he always felt a strange attraction to her anyway. Her size was attractive. Her listening was sexy. He sat in one of her overstuffed chairs and waited for her to set her timer before he started in with his problems. There was the bit with Julia, naturally, but the bulk of the session came back, as it usually did, to Mother.

  “Julia never understood. Some of the things she said today ... I mean, that stuff doesn’t just happen, y’know? I mean, this stuff must have been on her mind for a long time.”

  Dr. Heaton frowned. “What sorts of things did she say?”

  “I dunno ... I mean, she acted like it was just ridiculous for me to want to take care of Mother. She said it was unhealthy. This, from the same person who had me drive to Kansas City twice a week when her grandmother had cancer, y’know? Unbelievable. I mean, really un-friggin’-believable, y’know?”

  Dr. Heaton tapped her chin with a pencil, thought for a minute, and said, “Do you think it has something to do with the somewhat ... unusual situation that you have at home?”

  William blinked and licked a droplet of sweat from his lip. “W-what’s so unusual, huh? So Mother’s overweight. Is that what you’re talking about? There’s a friggin’ ... a friggin’ ... epidemic of obesity in this country, okay?”

  “Please, William, don’t get agitated. I merely meant that maybe Julia wasn’t ready to deal with your mother’s condition and all the care that it entails. That’s a lot to ask of someone, don’t you think?”

  William worried at his thumbnail. “I dunno. I mean, I never asked her to drive to Kansas City, I’ll tell you that for nothing. And y’know, Julia talked Mother into the surgery, anyway.”

  “Her gastric bypass, you mean?”

  “Yeah. I mean, that’s when she went downhill. She was heavy before, but that damned surgery is what really screwed things up. I can’t tell you how sick she was, that first month or so. Nobody should have to go through that. And no child should have to see their mother like that.”

  Dr. Heaton glanced up from her notebook in interest. “But you weren’t a child, William.”

  “No, I know that. You think I don’t know that? I didn’t mean child like t
hat ... I meant it like no son should have to see their mom like that, alright? Better?”

  The doctor wrote something in her notes and said, “How much does your mother weigh, William?”

  William peeled a half-moon-shaped sliver of nail away from his thumb and spit it onto the carpet. “I dunno. I can’t exactly weigh her, can I?”

  “Is she still mobile?”

  “No. God, no. Not since the surgery.”

  Dr. Heaton took a deep breath, let it out, and said, “Don’t you think that your mother might be better off somewhere where she could get the kind of care she needs?”

  William fidgeted in his seat. “There is nobody that would take better care of her. Nobody.”

  After the session, William didn’t feel any better. He spent the drive home not really listening to NPR, and pulled into his driveway at 6:30. As he unlocked the door, he called out a greeting; sometimes, during the day when no one was home, Mother would sit with her nightgown untied in the front, to air out her scar. William didn’t want to embarrass her, though he had seen (and cleaned) her scar too many times to count. He heard the faint sound of his mother replying. When he came around the corner to the living room, he hid the small bouquet of flowers he’d bought for her.

  “How are you today, Mother?”

  The woman shifted her bulk a little to look at her son. “Oh, Willy. Today was a bad one.”

  William presented the bouquet to his mother, who took the flowers and sniffed at them. “Willy, honey, you didn’t have to do that. As I was saying, it was terrible. Laura married that Joe fella, even after he went and tried to run off with that Tina. Can you believe it?”

  “No!” he said, feigning interest. He suffered through Mother’s daytime TV habits, but it was the one thing about her he never understood. She was a college-educated woman. How could she possibly be interested in soap operas and gossip talk shows?

  “Are you hungry? What would you like for dinner?” William said, moving a throw pillow so he could sit beside her.