Vivisepulture (2 page)

At first he thought the man was bent over the drill press, then he realised this was an illusion caused by the man’s lack of a head. Pipes and wires went up from the hole between his shoulders to plug into the labyrinthine ducting above. With automatic precision he was taking skulls from the belt, pushing them into a complex jig, and drilling out the ear-holes. First one side, then the other, then into a box. 

Morris backed away into another shower of sparks, ducked, ran. 

Ahead of him was a door:
R & D – Bones
. He pushed through then froze at the sight of a hugely fat man in a white coat. He backed up against the door, shivering. This was insane.

A naked woman was strapped down on a table and Morris could not understand why. She was not going anywhere. Her head was missing. One free arm was laid out across a side table. Her hand was severed at the wrist and had been neatly chopped apart at every joint. While Morris watched, the fat man picked up a finger-joint and chewed the flesh from it with stained teeth then, obviously irritated, he popped it into his mouth and munched it around for a while. When he removed it the knuckle-bone was free of flesh. He measured it with a Vernier and wrote the measurements down on a pad.

“I think she must have had a skull injury at one time,” said a thin man in a white coat, as he came through the back door into the room. In his right hand he held a skull stripped of flesh, and in his left hand he held a pair of callipers. He immediately saw Morris. 

“This is a restricted area,” he said, deeply offended.

That fat man turned and Morris got a look at a grey troll-face and piggy eyes. The fat man burped. 

Morris was out of the door and running for it before anything more could be said. He ran and ran, down aisle after aisle. Here rib bones were being moulded, here were leg bones. 

He stopped at a trolley filled with rubber eye-balls. He took one out and studied it. A sound startled him and he dropped it. The eye bounced over the machinery like a power-ball. 

He ran again, past a room where all the parts were being put together, past a bench where artificial muscles were being tested to BSI standards, past a vat filled with glistening livers, and past a reel of intestine being drawn into a machine. The next sign said ‘
Packing & Despatch
’, and here he saw the completed product being dressed in blue overalls, shrink-wrapped, and packed into cardboard boxes. 

“Perfect little workers,” said Morris, and repressed a giggle. He did not have time for that. With great care he crept from one stack of boxes to another, hid behind a forklift with its motor still humming, then behind the bench on which they did the shrink-wrapping. In a room off to one side he saw the perfect little workers standing in rows. They were undressed and he saw that they were sexless. What need of genitals to pull levers and press buttons? He had figured it out now. Those who applied for jobs were patterns. When they got an efficient worker he or she was probably taken back to
R & D
, there to be measured, weighed, categorised, dismantled, so they could then make more of the same. Mitchell just had not proved out. The woman had.

Daylight ahead. Morris crept behind stacks of boxes like city blocks. An aisle of boxes to freedom. He ran down it then skidded to a halt as someone in blue overalls stepped into the aisle. He didn’t have  time for this. He hit the man in the stomach as hard as he could. The man bowed over without a sound. Morris ran on, out into daylight, into the cover of a lorry, across tarmac, and to his van.

For a moment Morris was overcome with the terror that he had dropped his car keys somewhere inside, then he located them in the leg pocket of his army trousers. With his hand shaking he pushed it into the lock, turned it.

“I was wondering where you had gotten to.”

Morris whirled round and backed up against his van.

The supervisor.

Morris could not get any words out, his mouth seemed to be jammed open.

“You have an invoice for me I believe?”

“Yes. ... Yes!”

Morris reached into his trousers’ pocket and took out the sweat-damp invoice. He passed it across then snatched his hand back when the paper was taken. The supervisor lifted up a set of glasses from where they hung by a cord on his chest. He put them on and carefully read through the invoice. Then he glanced over the top of his glasses at Morris. Morris could feel the sweat trickling out of his hair and down the back of his neck.

“Would you like to come in now? I’m sure we can get the cheque signed for you.”

“No! ... I mean ... no, I’m rather busy today. If you can post it that would be fine.”

The supervisor smiled congenially, folded the invoice, and put it in his top pocket. “You’re self-employed I take it?”

“Yes, yes I am.”

“Seems the way of the future. Everyone is doing it. It’s difficult for us to get hold of good factory workers.”

“Yes, I imagine so.”

The supervisor grinned. “If you’re ever at a loose end, there’s always work here.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” said Morris, and keeping his eye on the supervisor he climbed into his van and locked the door. 

As he drove away he decided that his next move would be to call the police, anonymously. He had to wonder if factory workers were all they made here.

PRETTY TEETH

by

TONY BALLANTYNE

Dinner in one of the flats at the exclusive Monagan Hall development.

Katie wished she hadn’t come.  Rather, she wished she hadn’t come with Matthew.   Matthew was losing the argument he was having with the woman to his right, but as usual he was too pig headed to see it.  She wished her husband would just shut up and listen. She wished he’d take the time to take a look at the world, rather than blindly explaining what was wrong with it.   She wished he’d take the time to look at himself, sitting there in a white shirt and pale green tie when all the other men had chosen to wear dark silk shirts and ties decorated in rich gold or silver. Matthew had been the only man to hang his jacket on the back of his chair as he sat down: he had belligerently demanded beer with his meal whilst the rest of the party drank white wine.

Katie was more saddened than embarrassed by her husband’s behaviour.  She absently rubbed her bump, idly wondering when she would first feel the baby kick. Her husband drew back in his chair, accidentally elbowing her in the ribs as he did so.

“Sorry,” he said, and then he turned back to his conversation.  

Oh Matthew,
thought Katie,
why does everything have to be a fight with you?  Why can’t you just sit back and accept these people’s company, just for the evening?  It’s never just a night out for you, is it? It’s a challenge:  everything is about you proving a point.

Alex returned to the room, supposedly from the toilet. He nodded to his partner, Helen - Katie and Matthew’s host - slipped into his chair and resumed his conversation with Anya to his right, thanked Freddy for the refill to his glass, looked everywhere but at Katie who was fingering her cheap necklace and rubbing her tiny bump and feeling the slipperiness between her legs where Alex had just been.  

Ten minutes in an upstairs bedroom. How much of it was attraction, and oh yes, Alex was so attractive it hurt, and how much of it was the illicit thrill?  Of knowing she was having sex whilst somewhere downstairs, Matthew was still arguing away, oblivious to the embarrassed and patronising expressions he would provoking. 

Well Matthew,
she thought, I’ve done it. 
Alex tried and tried and in the end he just broke down my resistance, as he knew he would.  But you know Matthew; I don’t feel guilty.  You drove me to it.  

If she said it often enough she might begin to believe it.

“Twins?” said Matthew, “Are you sure?”

“No,” said Katie, her voice heavy with sarcasm, “I wasn’t really listening to what the radiographer was saying.  I suppose it might have been ‘fins’ she saw inside me.  Maybe she was trying to tell me I was going to give birth to a fish.”

Matthew sucked at his bottom lip.  He had turned pale.

“Sorry Katie,” he said.  “It’s the surprise.  Why didn’t they see that you were having twins sooner?”

His wife said nothing. 

“Well, I’m not sure how we’re going to afford it, but I guess we’ll find a way.”

He shook his head slowly.  A gentle smile dawned on his face.

“Still.  Twins.  Two babies.  That’ll be something.”

He smiled at his wife.  She was fighting back tears.

“I suppose that puts an end to our hopes of moving into Monagan Hall.”

Matthew was trying to smile, but you could see the confusion on his face.

“Monagan Hall?  But Katie, come on.  We never really had enough money to move into Monagan Hall.  Besides, it’s no place to raise children.”

He gently took her hand.

“Come on prettykitty, we wouldn’t be happy there.  It’s all very well for Alex and Helen with their trekking in India lifestyle and their matched pair of Mercedes, but they’re not like us.  Come on, you don’t really want to live there, do you?”

Katie snatched her hand away.

“Don’t tell me what I want,” she snapped.  

Do you expect the best?

Monagan Hall.  

An exclusive development of one, two and three bedroom flats located in this elegantly restored Manor house.  A haven for professional people.  Relax in the beautiful grounds, play tennis in the private courts, swim in the indoor pool or have a workout in the gym followed by a relaxing sauna.

Each spacious flat has an interior that whispers- rather than shouts- individuality…

Katie lay back in bed reading the brochure.  Her back was aching, her feet were aching, her womb was aching.  The twins had been kicking all night: it felt as if they were having a fight in there.

One of them had kicked Alex earlier that day. Kicked him in the stomach during the middle of their furtive lovemaking in one of Monagan Hall’s exclusive flats.  One of the ones with a view over the beautiful grounds.    Alex had had laughed, withdrawn from her, turned her over, and entered her from behind.  Even as she had knelt there on all fours she had thought it unusual.  

I’m carrying another man’s children in me,
she had thought. 
My husband’s children. Doesn’t it bother you at all, Alex?  Don’t moments like this just awaken a little twinge in you? Aren’t men who have affairs with their best friend’s wives supposed to turn around the pictures on the mantelpiece?  Don’t you have that last little sense of wrongness?  Isn’t there a line that you wouldn’t cross because it’s going just too far?  Don’t you have that Alex? 

He didn’t.  He wouldn’t.  And that’s what she found so fucking attractive about him: the way that the world just arranged itself for his benefit.  Alex believed that was the way things should be, and so things happened that way.  At work, at play, everything just bent itself to his will.

Helen, Alex’s partner, was just the same.  It was the same with all the residents of Monagan Hall. 

They had stepped into the world and bent it to a shape that suited themselves. They lived in the expensively furnished flats and invited each other around for wine and dinner; they discussed business in the saunas and shaped the future of the country in elegantly tiled bars after keenly fought games of tennis.

And other people, lesser people like Katie, had to be content with serving in their bars or making their beds. Or fucking them.  

Matthew came to bed wearing nothing but a hopeful expression.

Katie rolled over, put her back to him.

Her husband gave a sigh and climbed into bed, pulling on an old T-shirt as he did so.

“What are you reading?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Katie, allowing the brochure to slip to the floor.

Matthew’s silence was a loud accusation.

Katie could feel him, sitting up in bed behind her.

After a few minutes he got up to turn off the light.  Katie lay awake for ages, her hand on her bump, feeling the twins in there.  They really did seem to fighting, she thought.  Was that usual?  She didn’t know.  The past few weeks had been such a moral fog she didn’t really know what was usual any more.  If she was honest, she didn’t even believe she was having twins.  She had been so sure there was only one child in there, originally.  But where could the second one have come from?

The kicking was getting worse.

Katie was making her way across the kitchen for another glass of orange juice, and then suddenly she was doubled over in pain.   The kicking inside her grew increasingly frantic.  More than ever she felt as if the little bastards were having a fight in there.

She pushed the fridge door shut and fumbled the cordless phone from the kitchen counter.  Pressed autodial and waited for the answer.

“Hello?”

Katie felt so relieved to hear the voice.

“Ma?  It’s me.  Ma, it’s worse than ever.  It feels like they’re fighting to the death in there.  Was it this bad with you?”

Her mother paused before answering.  Katie guessed she was sipping tea.  When she answered, her tone was less than comforting.

“Not that bad Kate, but I never had twins.  I don’t know what that’s like. I told you, you should see the doctor.  Why haven’t you seen the doctor yet, Katie?  That’s what I keep telling you.”

The fighting had stopped.  It was almost as if they were listening to what she had to say.  Katie straightened up, one hand on her stomach.  Such a relief.

“Oh Ma,” said Katie.  “I don’t know.  I feel such a fool.  I’m twice the age of the other mothers at the clinic.  There’s a girl there who’s only fourteen.  I see her grunt when the baby kicks.  She doesn’t complain, and she’s just a kid.”

“That’s the point, Kate.  You’re not a kid any more.  It’s harder when you get older.  Tell the doctor.  It could be serious.”

“Okay,” said Katie, 

“You will tell the doctor, won’t you?  You’re not just saying that because it’s what I want to hear?”