John K. Plaski
(Content Warning: Graphic Violence)
Hands That Help is hosting their President’s Day Banquet at Carver’s Ballroom this year, and the staff arrives at four in the afternoon to prepare. The menu is designed to be familiar and easily digestible. Mountains of greased-up green beans and buttery mashed potatoes stand beside acres of iceberg lettuce passing as salad and hundreds of wedges of white bread that is mostly flavorless crust. The meatloaves sizzling in their pans resemble boulders submerged in lakes of motor oil while dessert is serried rows of red, white, and blue parfaits standing at attention. Dozens of trays loaded with appetizers circle the ballroom floor while social lubrication is provided by reservoirs of old fashioneds and cheap domestic beer.
Meanwhile, the servers stand against the wall closest to the kitchen and scan the tables for empty plates and hands raised for another drink. Announcements tumble from the stage in bursts of microphone feedback that no one seems capable of fixing. The totals raised for American Heart Month and World Cancer Day shake dust from the rafters while the names of the donors for the new spring planting fund rattle every glass and piece of silverware in the room.
During all of this, I imagine Jaxson and Teddi taking the stage and delivering their own speeches. Jaxson educates the crowd on every patch of untraversable sidewalk they’ve encountered within the past year while Teddi reads off all the proposed spring plantings and replaces the invasive species with native flowers and harvestable vegetation.
They’re two of the more entertaining speakers to make an appearance at Carver’s Ballroom whereas their audience, these men gulping down gallons of meatloaf and Hamm’s, are the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of the types immortalized in gilded frames hanging on the ballroom walls. The ones that wiped forests from the maps of Western Michigan, scammed the Potawatomi, Chippewa, and Ottawa tribes out of millions of acres of land, and designed weapons and public policies that flattened cities across the globe. And now their pale and frustratingly sloppy offspring are applauding themselves and happily chattering about vinyl siding on their two-car garages and last month’s inauguration. Meanwhile, decked out in my starched white shirt and pressed polyester slacks, I shift my weight from one foot to the other, trying to dodge the icepicks hopping up and down my legs: servers aren’t allowed to sit during an event, and my custom insoles are helping very little right now.
The banquet goes all the way till midnight, and it’s only at ten past one that Carver’s Ballroom is cleared and closed. Every staff member is handed an aluminum-foil pan filled with leftovers on their way out as well; I’m given sixty toothpicks loaded with salami and green olives before being thrown into the freezing darkness. We trickle out one at a time, most of us too tired to talk and too scared of initiating an exchange: five pounds of mashed potatoes for a cubic yard of white bread, or how about three quarts of beef gravy minus the meatloaf for three slabs of extruded beef without the sauce?
Outside is quiet, well past everybody’s bedtime. It’s technically Monday morning already, a special edition of the witching hour as all the Founding Fathers scrutinize me from the other side of a sky covered with clouds, their staring as warm as winter starlight as I cross Eldred Avenue and begin my trek through Halligan Park. Home is thirty minutes away, and I march parallel to the river as I pass by trees stripped to their branches and the occasional indent in the snow from when some kids made a mess while the sun was out.
I wince with every step and catalogue all the things I hate about my uniform to pass the time. Besides the shoes that make my job twice as hard, my shirtsleeves and collar must be buttoned all the up to cover my tattoos. I’m also not a huge fan of pants on most days, and these black slacks are as breathable as binding my legs in rolls of plastic wrap.
I’m also thinking about coming home, throwing on something shapeless, and ranting to Jaxson and Teddi about my shift, but I highly doubt that either of them will still be awake when I arrive. Tonight is Teddi’s night with Jaxson, and both will have turned in early since Teddi always leaves for work before sunrise.
It’ll just be me and Jaxson for the rest of the day, and I go over our possible itineraries: they finished binging the medieval epics, so maybe we’ll walk to the library, return their stack of books, and come home with another? Or maybe we’ll build a snowman in the alleyway before heating up some hot chocolate on the stove? Or, between the cold making Jaxson’s aches ten times worse and the prickling sinking deeper into my thighs with every step forward, maybe it’ll be a quiet day for us both? The whiffs of salami and olives rising from the container in my hands reminds me that at least we’ll have snacks: Jaxson will eat the meat while I take the veggies, and all sixty toothpicks will be cleaned and tucked away in a cabinet for uses that will never arrive.
“You going to share those?”
My head jerks upward at the sound of this voice, and it’s three men ambling down the sidewalk towards me. I don’t know which of them spoke, but I instantly drop my chin and squeeze into the rightmost sliver of the lane, giving each of them a cautious glance as we pass. The tallest one grins down at me from behind a thick, rust-colored beard while his buddy watches me closely without smiling; his face is a clean-shaven mask topped with an inoffensive crew cut. Both wear drab waterproof jackets as they march in lockstep: Hairy walks with his feet flying ahead of him while Wary wobbles slightly as he struggles to keep one leg beneath him at all times.
“Aren’t you going to invite us over?” Wary shouts as we pass each other.
He and Hairy blow factory-sized plumes of vapor into the air as they stroll past, and I smell a familiar cloud of whiskey and bourbon swirling around them and a third figure taking up the rear. He’s the shortest of this gang of three and wears the same crewcut as Wary with a thick duffle jacket zipped all the way up to chin. Its drab shade of green reminds me of lizard skin while his expression is like a frog submerged in scum: we lock eyes for the briefest moment, and Starey’s gaze pricks me all over as he quickly looks me up and down, as if he’s unable to decide if I’m a fly or a heron.
“Or do you got too much meat to snack on tonight?” Wary barks.
Hairy chuckles at this third comment, and I’m suddenly boiling hot as I continue to stare down at my feet pushing me eastward. I can picture Jaxson applauding my restraint, saying that it’s not worth it to engage with a couple of drunks, whereas Teddi hisses in my ear, saying that it’s unfair that they handed me this hate to carry without any consequences on their end.
“I am too busy, actually.”
I stop as I say this and hear the scraping of boots behind me as Hairy, Wary, and Starey suddenly halt and turn around, not used to hearing a voice like mine speaking after their own.
“What’d you say?” Wary shouts.
Trying to flex away the aches wrapping around my thighs, I turn to face them, feeling like an effigy of plenty as I pose with a loaded aluminum tray in my left hand and my cell phone in my right. It’s only on its lock screen, but my thumb hovers over the home button as Jaxson and Teddi smile up at me from our latest road trip to Sault Ste. Marie. Meanwhile, Hairy, Starey, and Wary stand about fifteen feet away, their unsmiling faces arranged from shortest to tallest. Only the clouds pouring from their heads betray their status as living beings.
“I’ve only got room for one more tonight,” I say loudly, starting out strong with my server voice before remembering to add my own, real smile as well. “And I’d hate to break up this threesome you guys have already started. But y’all have fun!”
Besides a chuckle uncoiling from in between Hairy’s lips, all three faces refuse to change. I wait, then nod once and walk away; Hairy’s laughter grows fainter as I siphon all my energy into not peeking over my shoulder or letting these three jerks see my knees wobble.
“You fucking bitch!”
The bottom of a boot slams against the small of my back and throws me forward. My torso flies miles ahead of my center of gravity as I stumble and fall onto the pavement, my cell phone and tray of appetizers both clattering against the ground behind me.
I throw one forearm in front of my face as I hit the concrete, saving my wrists and cheeks from the impact before rolling onto my side. I scramble onto my hands and knees, but that same boot, now with a steel toe, catches me halfway between my bottommost rib and the top of my pelvis. The wind flies out of me, and I’m flat on the pavement a second time.
I lift my gaze towards the sky, and it’s Wary towering over me, screaming, throwing a finger down at my face as he delivers a second kick that crushes my body into an even tighter ball. My eyes scramble across the dark horizon for anyone to see and help me, but there’s only Hairy holding my cell phone high above his head and spiking it against the pavement with a savage grin. Starey stands farther back, watching all three of us with the appetizer tray cradled in his hands.
There are four more kicks to my chest and stomach and twice as many insults before Wary stops and screams at his accomplices. Hairy snaps to attention and races towards the two of us; now that my cell phone lies in pieces on the sidewalk, he’s been helping himself to the stacks of salami and olive inside the dented aluminum tray. I try using this precious second of freedom to do or think of something, but my mind and body are both as helpful as a pile of jellyfish stranded at low tide. Even my thoughts are spilling over their usual banks and oozing together. They’re all about Jaxson and Teddi and whether I’ll ever see them again.
At that exact moment, a pair of hands grabs me and hoists me to my feet: one grips my bicep and twists it behind me while the other presses down on my mouth. Wary swims closer as he examines me from head to toe, and a single realization pierces red-hot through the haze of pain and panic: they’re either going to start working on my face or my legs, and neither of those outcomes can happen.
Wary’s voice drops to a mumble as he instructs Hairy on what to do next. I try wrenching my body away from Hairy’s as hard as I can, but the hand wrapped around my arm isn’t going anywhere. The hand clapped over my mouth is slightly looser though, so I lessen my struggling and let my head slump forward, acting as if I’m suddenly losing consciousness. Hairy’s index finger slips under my upper lip, and that’s when I open my mouth and bite down as hard as I can.
The bone slips out of the way of my teeth as they bore straight through the skin and meat of Hairy’s right hand. He lets out a high-pitched screech as his grip tightens all around me, trying to pull his hand away from my mouth, but I succeed in making my upper and lower incisors meet as blood gushes behind my lips.
Something long and fleshy peels loose and presses against my tongue, and Hairy throws me away from him. I fall back onto the pavement and spit as soon as I lift my head off the ground, recoiling at the sight of a sliver of flesh lying inside a bubbling puddle of blood and saliva. Meanwhile, Hairy stumbles backwards, bent over like a question mark as he cradles his right hand with his left. Starey cautiously steps towards him as he screams, and this turns out to be another precious second wasted as Wary swoops in from the right and surprises me with another kick to my sternum.
“Fucking bitch,” he grunts.
I take the hit and curl up even tighter than before with my fingers knitted around the back of my head. A wad of spit hits my left temple and dribbles down my cheek.
“If I see you get up, I’ll smash your fucking face in!”
I find myself nodding along as my knees touch my stomach and both forearms press against my ears. Hairy’s screams fade into the distance as I feel my heart thumping behind my eardrums and melt into the slow throbbing that is my torso. The metallic taste caking the inside of my mouth could be my own adrenaline or the remnants of Hairy’s hand, and my gasping breaths refuse to slow down as I wonder if any of these ten thousand aches slathered across my body means an irreparably-broken bone or fatally-ruptured organ.
Over seventy breaths push their way out of me before I pull my arms away from my head and look up. The world is empty, reduced to strips of white earth and black sky. No sounds reach me out here in the cold besides the trickling of the river, and climbing to my feet is slowly and shakily done with my eyes whipping in every direction. I’m able to stand and shuffle towards a nearby bench despite everything swimming around me. And once I lower myself onto its cold metal slats, I count seventy breaths again before surveying the damage before me.
First is my body. I wriggle my toes inside my shoes, making sure I can feel all ten of them, before curling and uncurling each of my fingers and running my tongue across my teeth: everything is where it should be. My stomach throbs even harder when I sit, and Wary’s boot slamming against the small of my back refuses to fade, like a footprint trapped in fossilized mud.
This pain tells me that I’m still alive, and I wipe the tears from my cheeks as I sort through everything that still needs doing. My cell phone rests in pieces ahead of me beside a single strip of flesh soaking in its own blood. First is getting a new phone: I’ll have to see if my warranty is still valid and figure out a time that Teddi can drive me to the store. I’m also going to need to schedule a blood test to see if I’ve been exposed to anything: I’m certain that the blood in my mouth isn’t mine, and who knows what Hairy has gotten into lately? Jaxson will give me the name of a clinic, but they won’t be able to accompany me if it’s too far of a walk.
I check my back pocket and make sure my wallet is still there. Nobody reached for it during the attack, so there’s no need to cancel my cards. Hairy and Starey wouldn’t have gotten past my lock screen, so the names, numbers, and addresses of family, friends, and partners are secure. Jaxson and Teddi are safe at home right now, but they’re not waiting up for me since it’s Teddi’s bed tonight. It’s also late, and there won’t be any words of consolation or anger until they wake up in the morning. They won’t mind me being even later than I already am, so I follow this trail of blood as it wobbles westward from its starting pool.
Somewhere in that darkness, Wary is busy shouting his successes to the wind while Starey walks beside him with my tray of appetizers. Hairy takes up the rear, swearing every couple steps as he presses the cuff of his coat against his hand to staunch the bleeding. Wary looks back at him and laughs, saying that Hairy will need an AIDS test in the morning, but the latter doesn’t chuckle as he winces at a harsh thumping creeping up his arm.
The three of them share an apartment southwest of the river. And as soon as they walk inside, Wary pours himself a final glass of whiskey and parks himself on the couch while Starey takes a seat at the kitchen table, the doorway to his back as he places the aluminum tray filled with meat, olives, and toothpicks in front of himself. Mowing them down one by one, the only other noise in the room is the refrigerator standing and humming beside the doorway leading out.
Meanwhile, Hairy locks himself in the bathroom, pulling out bandages from under the sink. His coat hangs from the hook on the back of the door as he grimaces at the diamond-shaped vacancy running along the side of his right index finger. Strangely enough, it appears to dive inside of him and reemerge past his wrist, traveling up all the way to his elbow as a long scarlet line beneath the skin, like a bad vein shooting poisoned blood back towards his heart.
Was Wary right? How fast does infection set in?
Hairy grunts as he unpeels the backs of several bandages and arranges them along the edge of the sink. Darker droplets splatter against the porcelain bowl as he works, dying its entire surface pink; it hurts to move any part of his hand, but it should be alright by morning.
“Fucking bitch…”
Hairy mutters this for all the world to hear, and his right hand pops open with all five fingers fully extended. He stops gathering tissues to staunch the bleeding and stares at his appendage instead. He pulls his fingers in, but they spring back out right away; his mind immediately leaps to lockjaw, but Hairy’s racing thoughts are interrupted by four of his fingers slowly curling inward, leaving only his index extended. Then, with the stiffness of a marionette operated by a first-time puppeteer, Hairy’s right hand slowly climbs into the air, only stopping once a single finger presses itself against his lips.
The bathroom door creaks open a few seconds later, and Wary catches a glimpse of Hairy moving towards the kitchen with his right hand stretched ahead of him. He looks like an extra in a zombie movie, Wary thinks with a chuckle as he returns to his glass of whiskey.
And in the kitchen, Starey is working on his nineth appetizer, carefully sliding the salami and olive off their toothpick skewer while fifty more stand at attention in front of him, their points shooting straight towards the ceiling. He hears footsteps behind him and assumes it’s Wary grabbing another drink from the refrigerator.
But then, a massive hand grips the back of Starey’s head and lifts him up and out of his seat. He tries reaching for the edge of the kitchen table as it and the tray of appetizers shrink in size by at least two feet, but, right as his toes part ways with the tile floor, everything rushes back towards Starey’s face: fifty miniature wooden stakes and the solid oak panel beneath them.
Wary hears some scuffling through the wall separating the living room from the kitchen before a deafening slam echoes across the apartment. He chokes on his drink and jumps to his feet. From inside the kitchen, Starey screams for only a second before another thunderous bang cuts him off. Two more blows follow on its heels, each one reverberating throughout the rooms like a giant knocking on the door of a medieval stronghold. Then, a fifth bang ends with the creaking and clattering of wood as a series of weights crashes to the floor.
In the perfect silence that follows, Wary wants to shout, to call out for someone or something, but he doesn’t know who or what to ask for: he even finds himself inexplicably terrified of breaking this new stillness that has flooded his space. So, instead of speaking, he steps away from the couch and shuffles towards the kitchen with a highball glass still clutched in one sweaty hand. He turns the corner slowly, seeing Starey’s feet framed in the doorway before the rest is revealed.
The kitchen table is in several pieces: the central column still stands erect, but the tabletop has been knocked off its base and now lies flat on the floor. A head-sized chunk has been taken out of its bottommost quarter with the edges of this hole ringed with massive white splinters. Starey lies face-up beside it and an overturned chair with a pool of blood encircling his head. Fifty toothpicks jut from every inch of his face: a slimy sea of cold cuts and green olives lies on top of these bristles, creating a multi-eyed death mask with only Starey’s mouth exposed as it gapes open and fills with blood pouring in from each and every wound.
“What the fuck…”
Kicking aside a crumpled foil container, Wary steps through the kitchen doorway and looks up right as the freezer door swings into his face. His nose shatters first before the rest of him crumples to the floor; and with eyes clamped tight, Wary moans as hot liquid gushes from in between his fingers: he tries groaning but is interrupted by five fingers wrapping around his ankle and dragging him deeper inside the kitchen.
It’s only a short trip before Wary lies in the center of the floor, his legs bunched up against Starey’s unmoving body and the overturned chair. An undimming lightning bolt arcs across Wary’s face, and he can faintly hear the refrigerator door opening through his throbbing eyelids and the spluttering of blood as it dribbles through his lips and teeth.
Then, a body falls onto his hips, its legs straddling his own. Wary cracks one eye open with difficulty, and it’s Hairy looming above him: shoulders hunched, chin tucked against his chest, and his left arm pressed against his side while his right stretches out past his range of vision. The bits of face that poke through his beard are white as bone and beaded with sweat while his eyes are rimmed with tears and soaked through with silent horror.
“Please…” Wary chokes. “Hairy…”
Hairy’s right arm slowly retracts, and the hand at the end is gripping Wary’s bottle of Seagram’s 7. Still cold from the refrigerator, its sculpted glass magnifies the long strip of missing flesh running along Hairy’s index finger as a dark dash of red slithers all the way up his arm, under the sleeve of his t-shirt, and out through his neck. And with his head cocked to the side with his mouth clamped shut, Hairy looks like a puppet operated by a single, scarlet string.
He moves like one too as his right hand slowly hovers the bottle of Seagram’s over Wary’s face, holding it there for several seconds before plunging its bottom towards the floor. In total, it takes forty-seven attempts before the bottle shatters against the tiles beneath Wary’s head. On the way there, the first blow splits his nose bone even wider and ignites a peal of screams that shreds his vocal cords. Number five intensifies his spitting and choking: futile attempts to clear his airways as blood pours out of the fleshy dent where his upper row of teeth used to be.
Wary stops making human noises at stroke number twelve. The deepening cuts along his cheeks and brow push the flesh further from the center of his face, and the only accompaniment he provides between downstroke number thirteen and the cracking of glass against tile at forty-seven is the squishing of meat and the infinitesimal grinding of bone against something just as hard and brittle but wielded with much greater force.
And once the cracking of glass tinkles against the walls, the strokes go to an even fifty before the remains of the Seagram’s bottle are left inside their new cradle fashioned from hammered flesh and pulverized bone. Hairy’s hand hovers above the mess it made, as if inspecting its work, before slowly rising towards Hairy’s face. His skin is grey and lacquered with sweat and daubs of blood, and he tucks his chin against his chest as tightly as he can, as if trying to escape this thing that will never be more than three feet away from him at all times.
The bloodied fingers find his mouth right away and slowly separate his lips: the three longest digits start, then the pinky, before all four pass between his two rows of teeth. Hairy feels his fingernails scraping against the roof of his mouth while his tongue presses flat against its base to make room for his thumb.
He immediately starts to choke, that same uneasy feeling accompanying strep test cotton swabs and toothbrushes shoved in too far back, but now he’s past the widest part of his hand and going even deeper as the rest of him follows in this descent: the base of the palm, the wrist, and now the long smooth highway of the forearm. Hairy even feels the hairs coating the top of his arm as they scrape against his incisors.
It’s all coming from the fingers: they don’t have much room to work with, but they studiously inch themselves down inside him, sliding deeper bit by bit as they push through the slick, flexing muscles lining Hairy’s interior. Soon enough, his entire forearm has disappeared inside of him, replaced by a single elbow pointing at the ceiling and two rivers of tears pouring out of a pair of eyes seeing the world pulsing with black veins along its edges.
And what is found at the very bottom of Hairy? Either more of what was found after thorough examinations of both Starey and Wary, or something so unexpectedly incredible that it must be gripped with all five fingers and brought to light with a sharp yank and a fountain of blood, bile, and saliva splattering the cabinets and countertops.
I try answering this question myself, hoping to design a climax fashioned from the purest poetic justice I can muster, but it’s getting too cold to sit outside any longer. I rise from my seat with a wince and a sigh before scooping up the pieces of my cell phone and sliding them into my pocket. It’ll be thirty more minutes of walking, and I know no one will be up once I get home.
But this means plenty of time to think of what lies below, inside the cores of Starey, Wary, and Hairy. Jaxson and Teddi will hear all about it in the morning, and they’ll give me all their condolences and fury and shower me with hugs and kisses and laurel wreaths hammered out of tin and fire once they hear my tale. Teddi will try to ask off work and pitch a fit once their request is denied, and Jaxson will insist on making the hot chocolate themselves and taking the blow when their stack of library books becomes one day overdue. They’ll say that more money going to the public library system is better than less, and Boccaccio and Dante can wait: they’ve both had their day!
We’ll sit on the couch and listen to my story instead. All three of us know how it goes and every detail along the way, but I’ll need the rest of tonight to come up with an ending that truly satisfies.