The Mutilation Machination (4 page)

The Mutilation Machination

I’ve seen what dreams are made of; it’s a mind-field in there!

Smoke hung in heavy narcotic clouds, exhaled from a mouth open in
silent accusation as I took the twelfth hand in a row. Being a psi card shark,
phantom of the mind, seer of fortune, my fortune, I win more hands than most,
but I also take more risks. I smiled (more of a sneer) to reveal a flash of
metal teeth, replacements for a losing hand in a game I hardly remember.

The thirteenth hand dealt, I leaned back, studying my cards while
trying not to seem too nervous. Transgressing the mental privacy of the
Squealer I beheld lights cast runic across membrane walls, symbolic bullshit;
another dead-end. Shit gets harder each time, mental mantraps more difficult to
decipher; brain’s still fucked from bio-toxic toke on the pipe of peace, so no
wonder I just lost that hand – first one all night! Also got laid by an
hermaphrodite two minds back. Man she/he knew how to leave a tidemark where it
counted most. Hope to meet her in the flesh one day. Filed under kinky sex but
not much use while trying to perceive a hand of cards. Scum she/he slept with
has got two fingers raised in a  permanent salute. His mind is a carnal
flickerscape, lucky bastard.

While we played the cards a nubile dancer teased erotic on the
stage. Nice tits, shame about the splayed innards. Can’t see the attraction
myself: ‘Stapled stomach cavity reveals the inner you’. I didn’t need to be psi
to tune into the bullshit on that one.

Shit. Needed to concentrate to encroach these heavy duty mind-fields,
subconscious implants of the finest quality; no breach to reach. Toke dragon in
the head doesn’t help, but it sure felt good. Cracking another code I saw
Two-fingers was holding ... shit, three aces. Next to him sat the fat Sushi
woman, her cheekbones exposed through layers of sliced skin, delicately held
together by fish bones. Beauty’s only skin deep. Took another toke from the
pipe before becoming a ghost in her machine. Worming through the highbrow I
spied a pair of fours; no traps to unravel as her money was all spent on
vanity.

A wrong turn in her cerebral domain forced me to recall the
removal of her cheeks. I rubbed my face and cringed. Sweat peppered my brow.
Pain like a blowtorch on fillets of flesh made me shiver before exiting from
Sushi doll’s mind. Too much pain in memories.

A ferrous oxide smile averted my opponents’ stares as I rejoined
the game. Too much at stake to let them know I’m a wild card. Took another
toke. Needed to calm down. Bio toxic shit glowed iridescent through my body’s
capillaries, each inhalation revealing a subtle map of veins. All roads lead to
heaven.

With a shake of the head I threw in my cards, unconcerned by the
inscrutable sneers from my opponents which made me laugh sardonically as I
scanned their thoughts in rapid fire, breaching cracked codes into grey matter,
a glimmer of suspicion festering in closet cells. Leper, unclean, psi card
shark.

Time to leave.

The toke dragon breathed fire through swollen arteries of boiling
blood and my temples’ pounded – membranous metronomes of flesh. Already on a
charge for invasion of privacy I couldn’t afford to get caught again. I
gathered the money, slowly – didn’t want to seem too anxious. A scrutinising
glare from Sushi doll made me shiver in remembrance of her pain. She went under
the scalpel cognizant, a martyr to grief in the nightmare world of reality. The
woman is sustained by torture, a member of the fashionable self-mutilation
machination. Shit makes me shiver. Didn’t want to get caught.

Had to time it right, beat of the heart: four-chambered furnace
melting the rivers of blood. One, two – and I stretched my arms as though tired
– three, stood up, four – grabbed the pot – five, ran for all I was worth. In
my frantic bid to escape the table went flying; cards revolved in the air like
steamboat paddles running to ground.

The crowds parted like a whore’s legs; man with a bloated
transparent stomach cowered to protect the foetus which floated in amniotic
dreams as my legs pistoned me past him towards the exit, head still ablaze with
the toke dragon’s breath. Screams echoed from behind and the erotic dancer
gathered the intestine snake into its visceral pit before exiting stage left.

I was breathing heavily as I burst through the doors, leaving them
swinging to and fro in my wake, beckoning pursuit from the mutilation tribe.
Outside the club and a person wearing an insect-like filter mask peered through
bulbous goggles as I brushed past: myopic scrutiny of my ferrous snarl. Throat
now raw with exertion, two bellows fanned the furnace. Blood pumped faster,
loud within the labyrinth of the ear.

Lights flashed stroboscopic from moving vehicles, braking quick to
avoid joining ancestral spectre jeans in the swirling dust as I ran in front of
them, head down, sprinting, leaping detritus fragments of history in tumbledown
central. Behind me, a shout, the voice raised against the roaring wind: “We’re
gonna find you, and when we do—” The wind stole away the shrill utterance,
leaving supposition to fuel the flights of fancy, the enmity unfortunately not
purloined.

It was time to retreat to the foundry, lay low until the incident
became another tale of the city.

Leaning against crumbling walls I counted the money. Bad habit,
gambling, but we all got to let loose the devil inside. It’s all I can do. Psi,
freak. No one wants a stranger in their thoughts. The ability to read minds is
like a curse. Ever tried having sex while seeing your partner’s fantasising
about being fucked by a dog?

Casting a baleful glare over humanities’ crumbling edifices, I
traipsed out into the desert of sorrow, sowing one more tear in the sand.

A muslin sheet was wrapped around my stubble chin, a filter
against the raging sand which formed the countless miles of barren vistas where
the flimflam demon of the mind gathered the dust into distinguishable forms:
raging beasts flowing over the rippling sea. My eyes were continually stung by
the vicious grains: nature’s particle accelerator. Madness was only a step away
in the hourglass plain.

And then I heard it: syncopated sheet metal thunder. My smile
flashed heliographic elation and tired legs increased their pace at the glint
of fire on the horizon, smoke twisting in the wind like dark banners above
monoliths of steel, seraphic temples pointing accusingly at the sky.

Beneath arched ribs of rusting iron, the entrance. My feet padded
hollow against the metallic floor and there, the Metalsmith. Face shrouded by a
mask of black, the figure sent arcs of liquid metal spewing across the floor as
she worked on a new sculpture, the bright glow of cutting accoutrements at work
giving birth to a galaxy of molten metal that skittered across the floor.
Sensing my presence, the welder of metal stopped work and looked back, raising
the mask to reveal a latticework of metal inlaid into her delicate flesh: a
circuit board connected to the prosthetic cutting tools, she a symbiosis of
metal and flesh.

She smiled, filaments of metal shifting along her jaw like liquid.
A bolt of light from a hole in the roof illuminated her features, eyes molten
pools of solder. A quick mind scan revealed her carnal desire. She discarded
the mask, hair flowing with sentient life, twists of fine spun gold. She
sloughed her coverall to stand naked, breasts firm within flesh-wired
supporting cups of steel below which more circuitry pierced her skin,
interwoven and bronzed by the furnace glow. The metal conundrum on her torso
flashed, coiled around to the twisted array of implements supplementing her
hands.

Smoke twisted from the melting pots, molten metal bubbling along
veins between the maze of constructs dominating the foundry interior. The
Metalsmith is my junkyard angel. She walked towards me, synergy of metal and
flesh, transient ghost beneath her creations. In a mute world she converses
through metal, forming images in wrought iron and steel. But in her mind I saw
the pain of silence.

Together; embracing, the melding of lips sent a quick static burst
of pain through sand blasted, tingling flesh before my clothes were shed like
skin. Descending onto the steel floor we degenerated into primordial lust. My
fingers caressed burns, scars of fire, a zip of scabs along her torso where
skin still resided. She grabbed my penis and I glimpsed her wish to be pierced
by metal, her weaver of words, her god. The petals of her vagina bloomed and I
nailed her between the legs, jackhammer thrusts matching pneumatic pelvic
lunges. Our minds were syntonic, clawing for orgasm; coils of metal scratched
across blistering panels beneath her back until ... release.

I was breathing heavy, my throat dry as I rolled from her torso.
The Metalsmith lay motionless, her mind disconnected, caught in lovers limbo
...

Love. I’d never imagined. Her thoughts surprised me. A kiss to her
cheek, lips and long reverence of breasts returned the emotive response and she
smiled. We had merged in the fire and returned as one.

We made love again before darkness crawled sluggish through the
arched entrance. The smelting pots cast ochre shades against twisted
constructs: silent sentinels communicating in the Metalsmith’s sign language:
pain, loss and fear before darkness enveloped their message.

Awakened by a shrill laugh my fast beating heart boded menace. My
mind pierced random thoughts in the dark before a flash of light from the
smelting pots illuminated Sushi doll nodding her head in wry amusement. I
jumped up, features etched by fear and rage, teeth bared in a snarl until I saw
the Metalsmith held fast by Two-fingers and the Squealer, the wink of sharp
metal at my lover’s throat.

The intruders’ minds were closed to my tentative feelers, tight as
cauterised arteries, and I grimaced. Even Sushi doll had been reconditioned and
there was no breach to ascertain what they intended to do. Only the
Metalsmith’s thoughts remained open: fear, panic, pain, a replication of her
metal sculptures. From the entrance came the sound of feet, hollow on the metal
floor as the spectators gathered in the dome, silent except for the murmur of
their minds: they’d gathered to watch the game.

Seated around the floor, Sushi doll dealt the cards. No stakes had
been specified.

I looked across at the Metalsmith sat hunched by a smelting pot,
her instruments of creation removed leaving sores that wept hydraulic fluid,
lubricating oil and blood. I felt the pain without invading her mind.

Picking up my cards, I tried to perceive events but remained
locked out, unable to even see my opponents’ hands. For the first time I played
the game fully cognizant and I hungered for the toke dragon’s breath to ease
the mental anguish of trying to decrypt barriers of mind.

I lost the first hand, augmenting the fear. The assembled crowd
sighed disapproval as one, and I frowned at their reaction. Hadn’t they come to
see me lose?

Two-fingers dealt the cards between his saluting fingers, his face
haunted by shadows. The Metalsmith’s fear split my brain like ice. I couldn’t
concentrate beneath her gaze; a crevasse isolated us, the gambler’s toll. My
second hand was better. It eased the pain. Sushi doll grinned as she cast down
her cards, fish bone filigree bending to accommodate the laughter lines that
creased her face.

I smiled taking the hand. No pot to win, but I felt vindicated. A
winner can’t lose ...

Until I saw the Squealer sever the Metalsmith’s arm and throw it
on the floor: my prize. Her scream echoed through my mind. A sound only I could
hear. Every hand I won, I lost: baptism of pain.

The cards went bad. I refused to play, but they turned my cards
over for me anyway. Every time I won, the Metalsmith lost: arm, leg, her skin’s
latticework of metal removed one painful strip at a time, bloody red creases
weeping tears of rust until she died, sacrificed for my greed. When it was
over, the Mutilation machination departed like a bad memory, leaving me
wallowing in self pity.

I lay motionless for hours, surrounded by the silent sculptures
until prompted by a whisper, the contracted squeal of tortured metal. I
gathered the Metalsmith’s remains and fired up the furnace. When it was hot
enough I deposited her in the smelting pot, allowing her to merge with her god
and be at peace. She flowed through the veins of the foundry, bubbling
quicksilver into moulds, conversing in a voice only I could hear. My tears
spattered and sizzled as they rained into the molten metal. The Metalsmith was
gone but not forgotten.

Would never be forgotten. I opened taps allowing the hot metal to
flow out, setting fire to the building and then I walked out into the desert
without looking back.

There’s too much pain in memories. And I should know because
that’s all I have.

Clockwork

I knew the black cat was dead. Even if I hadn’t just seen it
struck by the car, I would still know it was dead. Finding my father lying on
the floor two weeks ago, hands clutched to his chest as though trying to keep
warm made sure of that.

One of the cat’s front paws protruded at an odd angle, its claws
protracted as if in a failed attempt to scratch at the vehicle that had bowled
it along the road.

The driver of the car hadn’t stopped. Unlike dogs, you didn’t have
to report it if you killed a cat.

I gingerly reached out and touched the body. Its fur still felt
warm and soft. My fingers brushed a red collar around its neck. The attached
tag on the collar told me the cat was called Sooty.

Although it was only a cat, I couldn’t stand the thought of the
owner finding the dead feline in or at the side of the road, so I picked the
carcass up, and with nowhere else to put it, I dropped it in with the shopping
I had bought in town. I would bury it when I reached home.

A car drove by, making me flinch. I wondered what it sounded like;
wondered what lots of things sounded like. Deaf since birth, I lived in a world
of unimaginable silence. The only time I had been glad of my deafness was when
I saw mother screaming after I alerted her to father’s body.

When I arrived home, I reached into the bag and touched the cat.
Its body now cold, it had already started to go stiff. I stroked it once, and
then opened the gate and deposited the corpse outside my den at the bottom of
the garden before heading toward the house.

“You took your time,” mother said as she took the shopping bags
from me. She enunciated each word so I could lip-read.

I shrugged and signed that I had lost track of time.

Mother smiled, but she couldn’t disguise the haunted look of the
bereaved. She started to say something else, but her lips stopped moving and
she pulled out a tin of baked beans dotted with blood. She frowned. “What’s
this?”

Already one-step ahead, I weaved my fingers to say the steaks must
have leaked.

Mother nodded. It was a reasonable answer, as the cuts of meat
often leaked.

My sister, Vicky, sat in her highchair, playing with a rattle. I
smiled at her and she smiled back. She opened and closed her mouth and I
touched her cheek, feeling the vibrations of noise resonating through her skin.
While mother put the shopping away, I made my way out to the den, a wooden
structure four foot high and three foot square that I had built last summer.

The cat lay on the grass outside. If it weren’t for the mangled
paw and the specks of blood, it would look as though it were having a catnap.

I picked it up, opened the door and carried it into the den,
stooping as I entered.

It was warm inside the room, and I stood up straight. Sheets of
plastic yellowed in the sun made the light that shone through the window appear
golden, illuminating the clocks that covered every surface.

There were mechanical clocks, pendulum clocks, mantel clocks,
cuckoo clocks and clocks that I had made. Within the den, I could feel the
reverberating beat of the clocks like a huge heart, and feeling the familiar
tick-tock of the clocks through the ground and walls, I felt it was the closest
I came to actually hearing.

Pieces of clocks cluttered the table against the back wall. There
were springs, cogs, levers, weights and a whole host of other parts. I swept
some of the bits aside and deposited the cat on the table while I searched for
a bag to put it in. Deciding on an old plastic one, I turned back and grabbed
the cat. Straight away, I felt the familiar pulse of the clocks through my
fingers. For a brief moment, I imagined the cat was still alive, that I had
made a mistake, that it wasn’t dead.

A coiled spring unwound against the cat’s leg. I stared at the
clock components. If there was one thing I was good at, it was making broken
things work again. And that’s when the idea came to mind. What if I could mend
the cat? I wasn’t thinking I could bring it back to life, but perhaps I could
give it a semblance of life, could give it movement.

I thought about it for a long while before I actually set to work.

There was a penknife on the table. I picked it up and unfastened
the blade, feeling it click open. A thin sheen of sweat painted my brow as I
gingerly held the small penknife against the cat’s soft underbelly. This was
stupid. I couldn’t do it, and my stomach recoiled at the thought.

With a shake of my head, I dropped the knife and stared at the
corpse. It looked pitiful and fresh tears stung my eyes. After a slight
hesitation, I picked the knife up again and sliced the blade into the cat
before I had time to change my mind. It wasn’t so bad when I started. There
wasn’t much blood as no heart pumped, and despite the cold, slimy feel,
removing the cat’s innards was no worse than taking the giblets out of the
turkey at Christmas, something I had done last year.

Once I had gutted the cat, I started to construct a mechanism to
provide movement. It wouldn’t be the most technical of accomplishments, but I
knew when it was inside the cat, no one would see it, so I wasn’t too concerned
with its aesthetics. I used a small drill to make holes in the cat’s bones, to
which I attached Meccano strips, supplementing its own skeleton with one of my
own onto which I attached the clockwork device I had made.

 I had to make a couple of journeys to the house, but mother
seemed to either not notice me or ignore me as she fed Vicky.

Because I found the body, I think she blames me for father’s
death.

 It took the best part of the remainder of the day, but
eventually I finished.

I stood the cat on the table, inserted a key into a small hole in
its underside and turned it. Through my fingers on the cat’s back I could feel
the cogs turning, the multiple springs being tensioned.

Ten turns later, I released the key and stepped back. The cat’s
eyes stared back at me, but nothing happened.

Wondering if I had done something wrong, I stepped toward the cat
when it suddenly blinked, stopping me in my tracks. That wasn’t supposed to
happen. Its eyes weren’t supposed to blink; couldn’t blink because nothing
powered them. I had considered how to make its eyes move, but decided making it
walk would be enough.

The cat’s head moved a fraction, just a twitch at first, almost
imperceptible, then it swivelled from side to side as though testing the
movement. It took a tentative step, its movement’s jerky, mechanical. The limbs
hardly bent at the joints, which was disappointing after I’d spent so long
fashioning the Meccano and bone links.

I could feel my heart beating in time with the clocks that pulsed
through the room. The cat staggered toward me, its limbs moving with the
stiffness of a soldier on parade. I took a step back; could feel the blood
throbbing at my temples, could feel the sweat on my back.

What had I done?

The cat opened its mouth. That shouldn’t have happened either. It
wasn’t wired to work.

I wondered whether it made a sound.

Unable to look at it any longer, I ran out of the den, back to the
house and into the kitchen where I stood shaking.

“Alex, are you okay?” mother asked as she looked up from feeding
Vicky.

I couldn’t tell her what I’d done, didn’t fully understand it
enough to explain, but that dead cat was more than a reanimated clockwork
pussy. It had a life of its own, and it terrified me. I’d only wanted to make
it move, to make it not seem so dead.

“You’re pale as a sheet. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I signed that I was fine, then I offered to carry on feeding Vicky
while mother had a break. Mother smiled and nodded.

“You’re a good boy, Alex.”

While I spoon-fed Vicky something purporting to be pasta in sauce,
I thought about the cat. I couldn’t leave it in the den. But what could I do
with it?

My sister opened and closed her mouth, as greedy as a baby bird.
Her hair was like spun gold, her eyes as blue as the sky. She still had a lot
of baby fat, which made her look like those old paintings of cherubs. I smiled
at her, and she smiled back. I envied her the innocence that didn’t yet feel
the pain of loss.

After I’d fed and changed her, I rocked her to sleep, put her in
the cot and then walked back out to the den.

I stood outside the structure, my hand on the door, feeling the
beat of the clocks through the wood.

Bracing myself, I took a deep breath, then flung the door open and
stepped back. When the cat didn’t appear, I took a cautious step toward the den
and peered inside to find the cat had torn its way through the plastic window.

Distressed, I ran around the side of the den and looked in the
hedgerows to see if I could spot the cat, but it was nowhere to be seen.

How far would it get with ten winds of the key?

Surely not that far.

I remembered the way it had blinked and opened its mouth, actions
it wasn’t supposed to be able to do. Perhaps it would go further than I
imagined. Perhaps the clockwork components weren’t powering it at all; perhaps
it hadn’t really been dead. A shiver ran up my spine. I felt like screaming but
didn’t know if it was through fear or uncertainty.

Although I continued searching, there was no sign of the cat.
After a while, I even wondered whether it had really happened, but when I
returned to the den, I noticed the cat’s innards in the plastic bag that I’d
put them in. They had started to smell so I buried them in the garden and then
ran back inside the house, where I shut and bolted the door.

During the next few days, I stayed indoors more than normal, which
didn’t go unnoticed by mother. I think she preferred it when I was out. She
questioned me a couple of times, and I could tell she thought there was
something wrong. But I couldn’t tell her what I had done as it didn’t seem
right. Besides, I didn’t think she’d believe me.

That first night in bed, I had felt sure the cat was going to
creep up on me, and there I’d be, unable to hear it. So I lay on the mattress
in a way that I could touch the floor, trying to feel for the tick-tock of my
feline creation, but when it never came, I eventually fell asleep.

It wasn’t until three days later that I found the bird’s carcass
in the hedgerow.

I stared at it for a while, wondering how it had died. Eventually,
I crouched down and picked the bird up, recognised it as a starling. When I
looked closer, I noticed a hole in its neck. Parting the plumage around the
hole, I could just make out the shuttlecock ridges of an air rifle pellet.

Bird in hand, I walked down to the den. Being a small creature
made it a tricky process, but I made a small incision on the underside of its
chest. Into this, I placed a small frame, to which I attached the motor,
fashioned from watches. Its legs were too small to animate, so I didn’t
consider doing anything other than making its wings move. I hoped it would be
enough.

I had rigged the windup mechanism into its chest, and I gave the
key ten turns and then set the bird on the table.

It took a while, but then it blinked and its beak opened and
closed. It flexed its wings, the movement still very mechanical. Moments later,
the bird gave a nod of its head and launched itself into the air. It made an
ungainly test flight, struggling to keep itself airborne. I wondered whether
the watch components were too heavy.

It finally came to rest on the windowsill where it fluttered its
wings a couple of times before flying away through the open door.

I ran outside and watched it struggle into the sky, circling
higher and higher until I lost sight of it. When I eventually lowered my gaze,
I saw mother standing at the back door, gazing out. She looked happy; Vicky
babbled in her arms.

When I found Vicky sprawled on the floor by her highchair a couple
of days later, it seemed like an ironic case of déjà vu. I stared at her for a
moment, then checked her neck for a pulse. The feel of her cold skin made me
flinch. I sat back and chewed a fingernail, wondering whether she had cried out
when she fell. Not that it would have mattered as I wouldn’t have heard.

Having left Vicky in my care while she visited my father’s grave,
mother would undoubtedly hold me responsible. This time she would be right.

My sister felt heavier than she was as I lifted her from the floor
and carried her out to the den. The partially gutted badger that I had been
working on eyed me from the bench as I set my sister down. My skill at
reanimating the clockwork menagerie had grown immeasurably.

I picked up the knife.

Hopefully, mother would never notice.