Skin (14 page)

“
Hey
Fido!” A woman’s voice called. “I reckon you’ve made enough of a
mess tonight. Let’s finish this , me and you.”

The dog turned
and faced the woman I could only see as a dark silhouette. She was
short, wearing a heavy coat that made her look even shorter. A
hunting knife flashed in her grip. That was all I knew before I
passed out.

A high pitched
beeping tore through my skull and my entire body felt like it was
made of shattered glass. Gradually, other sounds crept in to my
half-conscious state. A whirring of what might have been air
conditioning. There were voices, not close to me. Firm footsteps
clipping on a hard floor. I heard television, more than one, set to
different channels. I opened my eyes to fluorescent tubes on a grey
ceiling and the smell of antiseptic. I was in hospital.

Both of my
legs were bound in traction and my left arm was bandaged and
strapped to my chest. I tried to sit, prop myself up on my good
elbow, but only managed to flail around helplessly. A series of
tubes fed in and out of me.

“
You’re
awake,” said a voice. I didn’t have my glasses on but the shape of
what I assume was a nurse came into rough focus. She was fat and
unhappy and swathed in dark orange scrubs that made her look like
an overripe pumpkin. She pushed some buttons on one of the machines
I was hooked into and scribbled a note on a clipboard.

“
Some
beastie made a right snack out of you then, eh? It’s always the
runners getting into places they don’t need to be.”

“
What
happened?” I asked in a thin, hoarse whisper. My throat
hurt.

She
looked at her notes on the clipboard.
“Says here dog
attack, which in Guessing means werewolf. Don’t worry, you haven’t
been bitten, just beaten. Scratches, cuts, two broken legs—a blown
out knee and a broken shin to be precise—and a dislocated shoulder.
That’s all.”

“
That’s
all?” I said, nearly spitting the words. How could she say that was
all? I was a broken man, strapped to a bed and useless. That’s
all?

“
Well
you might be about to get a whole lot more hairy and even more
unpleasant if there was more,” she tutted and shook her head. “You
people sometimes need to have a long hard think about mercy. I see
some stuff, some of it would turn your short and curlies white, so
when I tell you that’s all, you’d better trust me that’s a good
thing.

“
Now, it
says here you’ve been given a pretty high dose of morphine already
but that’s likely wearing off by now so if you need any more, just
press that little button and you’ll get a nice hit to take away any
pain. The stuff going into you now, it’s mostly fluids to keep you
hydrated, antibiotics too. Those dogs aren’t known for their hand
washing practises. You want to watch television?”

I shook
my head and closed my eyes. Broken, pumped full of synthetic
chemicals and poisons. I felt sick.
“I need to call
Sveta?” I said. I could see my phone and wallet on the small table
beside the bed but couldn’t reach.

“
That
your wife?”

I nodded, not
bothering to explain.

“
You
look like you’re hurting,” she said. “Here, have another shot of
the good stuff.”

Before I
could say anything, she pressed the button on the drip that lead
into my arm and everything that was left
of me was
washed away.

When the dark
tide began to ebb and consciousness struggled its way back to the
surface, the sounds and smells were all different. The voices and
televisions were gone, the general bustle of activity that was the
Guessing General Hospital was gone. I could still smell the vague
scent of antiseptics but it was veiled by something else, something
warm and comforting like sandalwood or one of those scents Sveta
was always burning around the place.

My
eyelids flickered open and she was there, looking down over me like
a snake eyed angel. The tubes were still in place and three of my
limbs were still bound and out of use, though I was no longer in
traction. This was some kind of medical room, but it
wasn
’t a hospital.

“
What
happened?” I asked, even more confused and disoriented than when I
had woken in the hospital. “Where am I?”

She
pressed her hand tenderly to my forehead.
“Shh, you’re
at home,” she said.

“
Home?”
I struggled to press my eyes open to take a proper look around the
room. It wasn’t the hospital but it definitely wasn’t
home.

“
This is
my clinic, Omega.” she said. “It’s a facility in my building. Our
building. You’ve been badly injured, Rev. Those butchers at
Guessing General, they…” her voice trailed off as she looked down
at my legs.

“
No more
drugs,” I said though I could barely form the words.

“
Just
sleep,” she whispered. “You’ll be back with us soon and I’ll
explain everything then.”

My eyes fell,
blissful in the release, calm knowing she was there with me, I
drifted back underneath the black tide of unconsciousness.

It might have
been hours, it might have been days, but when I woke up, my head
felt clear. Sveta was not with me. I was in a small room, dimly lit
by a soft glowing lamp. I was no longer hooked up to any machines,
but my limbs were still bandaged though the casts on my legs were
gone. My mouth felt like wet sand and I was ravenously hungry.

“
Sveta?”
I called, my voice once again sounding like my own. The door opened
in seconds and Sveta moved to my bedside, pressing her hand into
mine.

“
Oh
darling, I’m so happy you’re awake.”

“
Can you
tell me what happened now, please?”

Then I
saw it. It was a look on her face, a regret, a bracing. She had
something to tell me and we both knew I wasn
’t going
to like it.

“
I can’t
walk,” I said, pre-empting what I guessed she was about to say.
“I’m paralysed.”

She
smiled and a laugh spilled out of her as if it had been held in
under pressure.
“Heavens, Rev. No, it’s nothing so
terrible," she spoke quickly. "But I assure you, if we hadn’t found
you in Guessing General, then that might have been your fate.
Whatever happened to you—wolves they said in that place—your legs
had been quite badly broken and the methods those so called doctors
used to reset them, well that was worse than the initial damage. I
have a world class team of medical professionals working here, Rev
and thank God. Only for them will you be able to walk again and
lead a completely normal life as if nothing at all was
different.”

The
realisation of what she was edging around not telling me was
started to creep into my mind. This was Sveta
’s
operation, the clinic she’d mentioned before. The place they made
the Animus.

“
What
have you done to me?” I asked. My voice quivered.

“
I saved
your legs, Rev. I saved your life as you know it.”

“
Am I
still human?”

“
Yes, of
course you are.”

“
You
know what I mean,” I said. A deep malice rose as I saw that look
again and now knew exactly what it meant.

She had made
me an Animus.

“
It’s
nothing like you’re thinking,” she said. But I wasn’t listening. I
stared at the form of my legs underneath the cotton blanket. I
could feel they were wrapped in tight bandages. What monstrosities
lay beneath? I had immediately pictured the leg equivalent to
Pete’s grotesque orangutan arms. Hulking great hairy things with
hands for feet. Or what if it were worse? What if she’d given me
spindly bird legs, frail and fragile like twigs.

Sveta
left the room when I asked her to. She didn
’t protest,
she didn’t question. She knew what she’d done was wrong.

A nurse
sporting the same red hair that seemed mandatory for
Sveta
’s staff delivered me a tray of food. I picked
but had no real appetite for anything. She gave me a small pile of
paperback novels, some nature magazines and a tablet computer and
told me to press the bell if I wanted anything else.

How about
going back to that night at Saturn’s and not saying a word about
that weedy kid getting beat on my the Mechs? How about never having
laid an eye on Sveta and never getting dragged into this freak show
life of hers that I was now so tightly wound into I was no longer
even human. That’s the only thing I wanted.

Somehow I
managed to doze, not really sleeping, just tiptoeing on the edge of
dreams. In the dream, I was looking at myself naked in the mirror.
The top half of me was normal and so were my legs. And then the
bottom half of the mirror shifted, a sliding rotation of different
animal legs, horse, monkey, goat, chicken, lizard. I looked at each
one as if I were trying to decide which trousers to wear.

I woke
up, feeling a curious pressure of someone in the room. I
immediately thought it was Sveta and prepared to tell her to piss
off. I was shocked to see Victoria sitting in the chair leafing
through one of the nature magazines. She didn
’t smile
when she saw I was awake.

“
I got a
call saying you were here, that you were almost dead” she said.
“What is this some kind of private hospital?” I still didn’t
understand why she was there.

“
Who
called you?” I asked.

She
shrugged and still looked peeved.
“The nurse on the
reception refused to tell me anything, said there must’ve been a
mistake. But then a woman with the weirdest eyes intervened and
insisted I wait.”

My girlfriend
had called my recently ex-girlfriend to come and visit me. In no
way was this a good scenario.

“
What
happened to you, Rev?” she asked, finally looking at me properly. I
hadn’t seen the extent of my facial injuries but from her face, I
guessed they were pretty bad.

“
Parkour,” I said.
There was no need to get into
the truth, not with Victoria.

We hung in
awkward silence, neither knowing what to say and neither really
wanting to be there.

“
How’s
Delaney?” I said for a lack of anything else to say.

“
How do
you know about—”

“
You
want to keep a private life, stay off the Internet,” I
said.

The door
opened just a slit and a face appeared, gingerly peeking into the
room.

“
Knock,
knock?” Imogen said. I told her to come in and watched Victoria’s
eyes open wider and wider with shock and distaste, taking in the
full sight of Imogen and her furred form.

“
Oh my
darling, Priest, what has happened to you?” She leaned over to kiss
my forehead and I saw an entirely different range of surprise
register on Victoria’s face. “I didn’t put you here did I? Some
kind of delayed reaction to getting the snot beat out of you by a
girl no less?”

“
Not
even close,” I said. “I’m sure Sveta will fill you in on the
details. I’m actually not even sure I have them all
myself.”

Imogen
turned to Victoria who was doing her best to sink into the pale
green walls, away from this tiger skinned freak.
“And
you’re the famous girlfriend?” she held out her hand for Victoria
to shake, but Victoria only looked at it, a curl of disgust
twisting her lip.

“
Ex-girlfriend,” I filled in.

“
What is
it honey?” Imogen said. “Is it the hair or the boy girl thing you
like the least?”

“
It’s….”
Victoria stammered. She turned to me.

“
I
didn’t know you mixed with these kinds of people, Rev.” She said
quietly, not even looking at Imogen. I don’t know why I was
surprised to hear that kind of judgement in someone like Victoria.
And really, I couldn’t blame her, but I still hated her for it.
That was me she was judging, whatever lay beneath those blankets
and bandages, that was now me being judged.

“
Did
Sveta tell you anything about what they did to me?” I asked
Imogen.

She
shook her head.
“Just that you’d been made into a
werewolf snack, and something about a ghoul? What were you doing
slumming by the wharves anyway? Looking to get yourself eaten by
whatever monster you came across first?”

It was so
close to the truth, it was almost funny.

“
Werewolves?” Victoria said. “You didn’t say anything about
werewolves. You said you were—”

“
I know
what I said, Victoria,” I snapped. “But now you know the real
story.”

Imogen held my
hand and rested her other hand on the bed.

“
Can I
see, darling? I mean, that’s not too forward or anything is it? I’m
just curious.”

She was
talking about my new legs that I hadn
’t yet looked at.
I shook my head and she nodded to say that she understood.
Victoria’s wide eyed stare told me she didn’t and I just wanted her
to leave.

Before I
showed them to the world, I had to look at them myself.