The Kimota Anthology Part 6

The walls were built of large blocks of sandstone. I had visited several neolithic tombs, in Carnac, in Orkney and on Salisbury Plain. This gave the same sense of age, of a time long past. What I hadn't expected, what was completely different, was the overwhelming feeling that this place was in use. The walls ran damp and there was a salt tang in the air but there was no sign of moss or lichen on the walls - only the damp glistening stone.

I pressed on. By s.h.i.+ning the light downwards I could see the barefoot prints which Sandra had made on her descent. I had no choice but to follow.

The path kept going down, deeper and deeper, and the air was getting colder and damper. I judged that I must be under the sea by now and the thought of all that water above added an extra worry line to my already furrowed brow. At least the pa.s.sage hadn't diverged. Not yet anyway.

I was so busy concentrating on the way ahead that I stumbled when my foot didn't meet the expected step and the path levelled out.

I was in some sort of chamber. It was hexagonal in shape, about ten yards across and there was an entrance in every wall. My feet were wet. That was what I was thinking. It's funny how your mind gives you something else to think about at times of stress.

The thing I was trying to ignore was lying on a slab in the centre of the room. The slab was a pale green marble of a kind I had never seen and she was lying on it with her knees raised in the air as if on an operating table.

Between her legs something moved - something grey and green and warty and hideous. It slithered and crawled and I could see that it was inside her, was copulating with her.

I think I went slightly mad then. I remember grasping the slimy body, almost dropping it as its small wizened face turned towards me, a face lined with age and infinitely deep in its evil. Even as I looked, the life went out of the eyes and the puny head bent in death, one last smile playing on its lips.

I remember das.h.i.+ng the body again and again against the wall but I don't remember tearing it and mas.h.i.+ng it. I must have done though for when I moved towards my wife I had the slimy remains of it all over my free hand and its juices coated my feet and ankles.

She was alive. I thanked G.o.d for that as I cradled her in my arms. She seemed to be in a stupor but when I stood her upright I found that she was able to walk.

I dragged her unyielding body along, grateful that she seemed to be capable of walking. I had one last look around the chamber before we headed for the stairs. The pieces of the creature I had dismembered were bubbling and frothing in a puddle of b.l.o.o.d.y ooze. I fled.

After only twenty or so steps I felt her stiffen beside me and then she began to pull me back as she tried to go down once more.

I am not proud of my next action. I hit her, hard across the chin and she fell into my arms. I carried her up the stairs. Quite how I managed it without dropping the torch I am not too sure, and how long it took us I will never know.

Finally we emerged into the cold night air. I laid her on the gra.s.s beyond the railings and tried to tumble the rocks over the pa.s.sage. I had just covered the entrance when the screaming began.

"The baby. Oh G.o.d. . it's coming. It's coming."

I don't remember much of the next half hour, only fragments - driving like a maniac as she sobbed quietly behind me - the sudden light in the deer's eyes just before the car hit it dead on, smas.h.i.+ng the car's headlights into a million tinkling fragments.

I remember the small twinkling lights in the black distance as I just managed to avoid the cliff edge and, finally, the iron gate on the path which I almost fell over as the doctor came towards me and I collapsed into a faint.

I have a vague memory of being put in an armchair and practically force fed whisky as my wife was carried upstairs and the doctor called for some help but my legs wouldn't move and my arms were heavy and sleep called me back again.

I dreamed - hot lurid fantasies of violence and fire, of rape and bloodletting and of a cold black fury which carried all before it. I woke from screams into screams.

My legs pushed me out of the chair and towards the door long before my brain was fully awake and I was halfway up the stairs before I recognised the voice behind the screaming. I reached the door just as the screams stopped.

Early morning sunlight was streaming into the room, lighting a scene which will be forever etched into my memory.

The doctor is standing off to one side, his left hand covering his mouth, his right clutching his chest as if to keep his heart in.

An old women is lying across the bed in a dead faint, her grey wisps of hair mingled with the blood from my wife's legs.

My wife is lying there, throat muscles straining, mouth open in a long soundless scream which refuses to come, her gaze fixed on the shape writhing on the carpet, ignoring the blood flowing from her, ignoring the woman across her legs, all else immaterial to her pain at the sight of our child. And there on the floor lies our future, burning golden in the first rays of the sun, being cleansed in the purifying light of the new day, my son.

The last thing I see before darkness takes me away for a long time is the face, the small wizened features and the age old eyes, the red mouth which squeals at me as I bring my foot down, hard, and all the members of my family scream in unison.

[Originally published in Kimota 8, Spring 1998].

AMYGDALA.

by David A. Sutton.

Dark winter streets are exuding fog. Like it was steam coming off a hot, freshly laid skin of tarmac. And the amber street lamps are hazy, glowing balloons, and the car is crawling along, with its tyres hissing at me as though they were adhering to the road surface. And...

The turnoff negotiated. the old hospital buildings huddle in groups, motionless lumps of grey concrete, or older red brick, with many yellow-lit rectangles covering their surfaces, and narrow five miles per hour minimum access roads weaving in and out and sleeping policemen lying in wait...

And...

People are parking their cars and shuffling forwards under the weight of the fog that is particularly dense hereabouts. They head in the direction of faded, unlit signs over doorways: Accident & Emergencies; Wards 18-32; Intensive Therapy & Theatres 1-4. Many visitors are trudging, like automatons, to their destinations wrapped in thick overcoats and scarves to keep out the cold. I'm reminded of my task tonight and how enormously important it is. Persuading myself to undertake this venture has not been easy, but there came a recent period in my life, a temporary fugue state, out of which emerged a new me. One of uncompromising resolve.

Seven o'clock.

Always the best time, early evening. So many relatives visiting the sick and injured, you see. And medical staff changing s.h.i.+fts; caterers clearing up patients' dinner dishes. The hospital's particularly busy at this time of the day. So occupied are the staff with their jobs, that I shall likely go unnoticed as I proceed about my business.

The car clicks at me, complaining as its engine cools, and the shrubs in front of where I parked are backlit from a window, reflected in silhouette onto the windscreen. The spray of naked winter branches resembles white nerve fibres, denuded of the internal organ from which they have been stripped. Such an image also reminds me of my obligation.

I slip the white lab coat over my shoulders, b.u.t.ton it up and pull a pristine plastic ap.r.o.n on over that. The ap.r.o.n's touch against my fingers is squeaky and moist, the sound reminiscent of a scalpel dividing skin as taut as an inflated balloon. The slithering of my cold fingertips across its surface is sensuously like that of a surgeon's, running his fingers along the slippery, white, fatty tissues that stretch between the displaced contents of an opened abdomen.

The grin in the rear-view mirror is wide and all teeth.

Fortunately, the grin can't see the eyes. The rectangular mirror is too narrow, as if it were made for the purpose, and only the grin reflects. The mouthparts are, after all, the only reliable parts to observe. The lips and the teeth, and the tongue, sometimes plopping into view, provides the entire stimulus I need. The full gamut of emotions is expressed there, captured and controlled. They are restricted only by the limitations of the animation available to the mouth. Closed lips, for instance: devoid of feeling. Or open slightly, teeth bared: anger. Tongue peeking out teasingly. Tongue protruding shamelessly, changing its shape, slapping lasciviously. Yes! Chattering teeth: s.h.i.+vering brittle-hard and nervous. Hard enough sometimes to suffer chipped incisors.

The doorway to the soul. That's the mouth. This truth was revealed to me when my dissociation of personality ended.

The grin dominates the mirror and does not allow the eyes to infiltrate. The eyes are not allowed to see themselves. Other mirrors are avoided or positioned accordingly. The eyes are insignificant blobs of jelly and fluid.

Of..

The abstract inside. The untouchable, maddeningly ungraspable parts. The streaming, screaming information bits that you want to lash out at and tear away, severing the many thousands of coiled micro-fibres, ripping their ends from the connections that can't be seen with the naked eye, but which are there nevertheless, circuits of teasing, corrupt falsehoods.

I'm ready.

The mouth is ready, it's grinning.

Uncle is at home, waiting very patiently.

Tonight is a first and I would be expected to be nervous. Wouldn't you? The mouth expresses the anxiety extremely well and, had I brought a mirror from the car, I would behold my timorousness. Breath is coming out of the mouth, condensing in the frosty night, billows and billows of hot air, more than normal because of the adrenaline and the blood pressure.

Mortuary.

The mouth sees the building...

AUTHORISED STAFF ONLY.

BEYOND THIS POINT.

A large, open rectangular vehicle entrance looms under the instruction. Darkness fills the s.p.a.ce now, the lights are off. But I know the way, my rehearsals have been protracted. My ap.r.o.n squeaks as I walk. More confidently now, I pa.s.s through the double swing doors which are really for the trolleys and the medics who push them. Beyond the doors the corridor is well lit, bright with fluorescence.

I realise the need to hide my growing confidence and zeal, thus the fixed grin has reluctantly to be suppressed. I don't need a mirror to show me how appropriately sad and mournful my expression has instantly become. The eyes, I'm not one hundred percent sure about, but they do not really count, treacherous organs that they are.

The empty corridor is wide and cold and along the middle of the grey floor tiles, red directional strips guide the way. So no chance of my becoming lost. Ceiling lights slide past overhead and hum contentedly. Corridors branch off; corridors are like arterial pa.s.sageways. A service lift with wide horizontal doors expresses itself as a closed, stern mouth. Administrative offices might he empty, except that people are probably hidden beyond the opaque gla.s.s panels and the dog-eared notices taped thereon.

The room I want is easy to find, because it smells. Antiseptic clean, but with an underwhiff. Detectable decay. Inside it is nearly as chilly as the night outside. Gleaming white enamel slabs in rows wait for occupants. Sluices and drains cry for the gurgle of blood.

There is someone in the mortuary, placing a green plastic sheet over the only other resident, who occupies one of the autopsy tables. The man's gaze transfers its interest to me, confusion exhibiting itself in the curve of the mouth. He sees the white uniform I am wearing, however, and continues his ministrations, although I can detect his unease, because he does not recognise me.

The words he speaks I understand who're you? -- but I do not answer. Silence is what I require, because his mouth is not permitted to speak. Not ever. And the mouth will only speak when spoken to and then only to reply according to a prearranged script. Otherwise the eyes are likely to a.s.sume control and reveal too much of the inside, and the abstract wiring will need tearing out, and cauterising with a red-hot scalpel and clamps.

The mouth is showing its emotion now. I don't need a mirror to tell me that the teeth are naked and ugly looking. Chattering they are, too, just slightly. The breath is coming through with a hissing sound and saliva flits through the gaps in the incisors. The mouth must look pretty threatening.

The man is wrinkling his face all over, but I am not looking at his eyes. There's annoyance displayed in his mouth and I can tell it is about to add something to what it said before. Against all the rules. I raise an open hand in a gesture to stay the sounds before he utters them, but too late -- Who the f.u.c.k are you? -- and the effect inside me is excruciating, An abrupt migraine, can you imagine it? Infuriating. I will not have any words spoken not of my making!

I'll have to ask you to leave, otherwise I will call security!

Ow!

He produces a portable two-way radio from the pocket of his laboratory coat, brandis.h.i.+ng its wobbly black aerial at me, a feeble weapon.

His pathetic gestures do not matter in the slightest. Fearlessly, the grin becomes deeper and wider, almost agonising, and thundering forwards at a terrific pace dragging me with it. Next, the man is falling away from me even before I reach him. Fright overwhelms his mouth, so much so that his teeth display themselves as though he has decided to mimic my expression. His radio slithers across the floor, its aerial a stiffened rat's tail. The man's lower back bounces against one of the tables and he whooshes out a breath as one of his kidneys calls out its pain.

f.u.c.king get away from me..!

His mouth, widening in fear, sees the instrument trolley, as if he beholds it for the first time, although he undoubtedly placed it there himself He watches me grab a mixed handful of the stainless gleaming utensils lying neatly in rows. He has slipped onto the floor and his hand goes to his back to tend the self-inflicted kidney punch. He groans miserably, but he's still wildly excited. Scrambling around, he is much as a crab would be with half its legs amputated. I know more articulate sounds are going to come out of him and have to do something to make them stop before the big sound comes out. The one that will alert other members of staff.

Unexpectedly, he is curling up into a foetal position and that suits me -- Please don't! -- because now there are no arms or legs to become entangled with, and his mouth can be observed without difficulty and maintained in the manner to which it should be accustomed. It opens obligingly and I stuff inside a large wad of cotton wool I'd brought with me, produced from my trouser pocket while he wasn't looking. I press down firmly, the tongue underneath the wad trying desperately to reverse the manoeuvre with dry, choking coughs, but failing. With the heel of my left hand now placed firmly over his mouth and chin, holding the head against the floor, my right hand uses the instruments. Although. I have to say that I used to be left handed. The utensils are held as you might for plunging a dagger. Then before you know it they are ripping and tearing. They make an unusual multiple tracery across the neck. An aerial map, as it were, of a complex river delta, developing in a tide of living red before evolving messily into a lake on the floor.

The body jerks heavily, legs and arms twitching like a pinned insect.

The mouth grins wide and deep, and I almost wish I had a mirror to enjoy the show.

Now I am free to go about my obligation unhindered, although I must be quick, must be quick, must be quick and the one single occupant in the room will have to do although it is better to have had a wider choice for Uncle. I know there is the man on the floor, but he is still undergoing convulsions, his limbs in spasm and pink froth gus.h.i.+ng, and I do not have the time to wait to ensure the abstract wires inside him are completely disabled before I perform.

The operation.

In my white coat, the deep pocket contains a hammer. I lift back the green plastic sheet, hoping against hope for someone young and am blessed tonight with the body of a teenage male. The very ideal requirement in fact. Especially because its eyes are firmly closed and thereby not causing me any anguish.

The mouth grins so broadly now, so joyful with its luck.

The body flips over very easily in my hands, the neck flopping limply, which suggests to the medically trained the probable cause of death. Fortunately, the head itself is undamaged. Had it been harmed, tonight would have been a complete waste of time.

Dry brown hair covers the back of the boy's head. No time for ceremony. I bring the hammer down sharply, centre-stage. Viscous cerebrospinal fluid pours out from the cracked cavity, draining off nicely. I select one of the clean instruments from the trolley and slit through the scalp until I am able to peel it back and separate the broken sections of bone beneath the flesh and open up the interior. Working with the knife, I concentrate on disengaging all remaining obstructions: the stalk of the pituitary and the medulla oblongata from the spinal cord.

Out of my white overcoat, I flourish a clear plastic bag and a pair of rubber surgical gloves. I slip the gloves on, gently scoop out the skull's contents, and place them in the bag, a streak of blood smearing the inside as it goes in, a telltale sign that the organ is quite fresh, Holding the bag up to the light, its contents so unblemished, so malleable and awaiting transformation, is ecstasy.

The grin cannot contain itself now. The mouth even wants to laugh, to shriek with joy, but that desire must be quelled, because it isn't allowed yet. Not yet, not until I have successfully resurrected oblivion.

Steaming fog like it was hot, fresh tarmac and the street lamps glowing amber balloons and the car crawling with tyres hissing as though sticking to the road surface. And...

And the need to maintain a slow and regular speed so that the brain might remain safely on the pa.s.senger seat in the plastic bag I have sealed with a bag-tie. There is condensation forming on the inside of the bag with the car's interior warming up, which conceals the brain so no busybody might otherwise see that it resembles something purchased at the butcher's shop.

Pairs of lights cruise past annoyed with my car's slowness, but the smile in the minor dismisses them. A light smile, a smile of mild disdain. If they had to do the job I was having to, they would also drive with more caution. A big car screeches forward, slowing as it rides next to me on the dual carriageway, keeping pace with my speed. Inside, there is a face that is all mouth, all snarl, and hands are thumping the steering wheel and the driver's mouth is letting forth with expletives that, luckily, I cannot hear through the sound of the engines' and the closed windows, and the heater fan.

I stop.

And he's through the red light which he didn't see in time and there is a minor accident when his big car clips the rear b.u.mper of another vehicle crossing legitimately in front. Both cars slew sideways, slow down, and recover, but the big car grunts and roars off although its driver should stop so that both occupants can exchange insurance details.

The mouth in the rear view minor slaps its lips together in a self-satisfied manner, knowing that such stupidities are beyond it. The outright abandonment of emotion is unthinkable. The wild failure to observe what is going on around is a stupidity of the first order and not permissible.

Home!

The garage door is similar to a mouth opening automatically, a mouth with no tongue and teeth, but instead the car slips inside; a prosthetic metal tongue yet to be coated in flesh.

And...

Uncle is waiting as patient as the dead do wait.

On the dining table.

I've cleared the table of everything except for the white cloth on which he is lying. Uncle looks very small, thin, and frail. He's quite a bit older than I am, so, along with his present status, that is to be expected.

Earlier. I prepared him and now it is a simple matter to lift off the top of his skull which I had sawn away, from the forehead to the middle, a full half-dome of skull in fact. His face is not particularly pale, but his eyes are closed. Uncle's mouth, though, oh, the mouth! A cheeky grin curves his ruby lips, just revealing a thin crescent of white teeth beneath. The smile is frozen there, ready for use.

Soon.

My white lab coat and plastic ap.r.o.n lend a professional air to the proceedings. And they are needed, for this is a solemn and groundbreaking moment in medical history. The first ever brain transplant. All organ replacement surgery before tonight was merely rehearsal!

I am already aware that the brain I have brought with me will not fit inside Uncle's skull cavity and have prepared for that. A plastic was.h.i.+ng-up bowl and scalpel have been put out to perform the required excisions. The so-called grey matter has to be cut away, the two hemispheres of the cerebral cortex are superfluous to Uncle's needs. There is too much information in their jelly-like convolutions, too much that is unnecessary, all that ungraspable wiring! I slice away carefully as the brain sits in the bowl, through occipital lobe, parietal and frontal lobes. The offending parts float off in a swirling mixture of fluid and blood, but there is still s.p.a.ce in the bowl for me to work and to see that I have reached the crucial areas. I am down to the thalamus, hypothalamus, the cerebellum and reticular formation. Most importantly, undamaged, is the ma.s.s of neurones of the amygdala nestling within the temporal lobe.

It takes one of flexible attributes and forward thinking to accept the importance of the archaic amygdala. Primitive though this early brain is considered, let us not underestimate how powerfully it controls the mouth, the tongue, and the teeth. How dismissive it is of the eyes and the wiring and all extraneous thoughts. The emotion of the mouth is its sole purpose.

Lifting the precious groupings of the remaining brain, I find, delightfully, that the fit into Uncle's skull is as near perfect as it possibly can be. His mouth almost moves as I insert the brain into the cavity, and I sense the antic.i.p.ation waiting there. The teeth snap together satisfactorily: His or mine I'm not sure, perhaps both! Quickly I replace the skullcap and I use fake skin and cauterise and seal the seam with a small soldering tool. Uncle is bald, but that will not be for very long. The smell of singed plastic is pungent and choking, making the mouth display its distaste, but I am not about to allow a bit of discomfort to spoil this ill.u.s.trious moment.