Sixteen Small Deaths

Frosty speckles of rain pounce on the city streets and she leans into me with cyanide kisses and the faint glance of a dying angel. Time bursts into thirty-seven millimeters of broken ice, autumn wind whipping at my back with the force of a pipe bomb. She pulls me under the canopy of The December Club, frigid glow of neon lights the color of a summer sky.

“Let’s go in,” she says, eyes like sparkling green fireworks.

I shake my head, look to the moon for comfort. Four and a half years of bliss, crash love into a stone wall. Only a few more minutes with Molly, a few minutes for forever.

“Come on.” I push the front door open and hold it for her, gentle waft of lavender spinning from the invisible halo above her head. She walks in front of me with confidence and the presumed attitude that for all of her life she’s gotten everything she’s ever wanted.

A Joy Division tune plays somewhere in the space between my eyes and the bar. Shudder of static, the melting quiver of lost time. Molly pinches my arm and smiles. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m the one who should be scared, not you.”

#

I lick the edge of the shot glass, sweet traces of whiskey and fear. Molly’s a few feet away, talking to the man who in a few minutes will change both of our lives forever. Molly’s hands float in front of her chest when she talks, little blips of black fingernail-polish buzzing in the serene radiance of the bar like spider shadows. When she finally turns away from him my heart drops into my stomach. I’m afraid if I cough my insides will twist and convulse.

Molly walks over with a grin, eyes as bright as broken stars. “This is Kleyton Parker,” she says. The man, short black hair and
eyebrows like dead caterpillars, extends a hand. I ignore it and turn to the bartender. “Another one,” I say, raising the empty glass to the air. The bartender nods and disappears.

Kleyton leans on the edge of the bar and sips a beer. He smiles when he finishes it and looks to the ceiling. He’s cool and confident and there’s nothing about him that I like.

“How many of these have you done, Kleyton?” I stand so close to him that I can smell the wispy edges of cheap aftershave.

He stares ahead, pupils following a buxom blonde entering the club. He drops a sawbuck on the bar and tilts his head. “Please, call me Kley. And, we only talk in the back.” He points to a rusty metal door past the restrooms and kitchen. “Follow me.”

We trail behind Kley, ruffled edges of an untucked dress shirt barely covering a brown leather belt. I haven’t looked down but I can bet he’s wearing cowboy boots. He holds the door open for Molly and I and darkness follows the eerie presence of silence in the rooms behind all is that wild and lively in the bar. Kley slams the door shut and it startles me. Molly twists her hair into a pony tail, little blonde stub poking from the throes of a frayed purple elastic. We’re in what looks like a small makeshift office, two chairs planted in front of a card table. Kley plops down in the leather chair behind the table and invites us to sit down.

Molly sits first but it takes me a full minute to bend into the chair. Molly crosses her legs, slices of pale flesh peeking from the bottoms of her black jeans and above her little white socks. I sigh and before the memories of our life before today can cross my mind, Kley’s voice cuts through the momentary fog. He tosses his legs up on the side of the table, collected and calm in the face of something I’d never thought Molly would ever do.

“I trust you brought the rest of the fee.” Kley nods at Molly, who produces a small manila envelope from her purse.

“Two thousand,” she says. “It’s all there.”

“Great.” He looks at me for a moment and smiles. “Cheer up, cowboy. She’s about to experience something that most people
can only dream of.”

“Yeah.” I have nothing to say but my heart flutters for a single second, blood sloshing and dancing and fearful of every beautiful moment I’ve spent with the woman next to me.

“Two rules,” Kley says, looking at us with red cheeks and serious eyes. “First, no moving or helping or touching her. I’m in charge and no matter how much blood or screaming I need you both to sit still and be as calm as possible.”

“Fine.” Molly arches her back, something she does when she’s nervous. “And the second?”

Kley stands up. “There are no refunds.”

#

I sit in the corner of the room, sweaty thumbs wrestling each other as Kley engulfs Molly’s wrists in aged black leather straps to the rusty metal chair in the center of the black-and-white tiled floor. He steps away to a rolling desk tray that’s lined with metallic instruments. He slides on a pair of purple latex gloves and sighs, eyes closed and hands pressed together.

Kley looks in my direction as he makes his way to the surgical tray. “Remember what I said,” he says, pointing at me with a purple finger. “Especially you, muchacho.”

I nod. Vision fades in and out, single light bulb swaying in a momentary graceful breeze. Kley’s shadow swoops over Molly’s figure and I can only imagine what she’s thinking right now. Kley chooses a slender blade from the tray, plastic fingers clenching its black wooden handle.

He wastes no time. The opening hack happens in slow motion and when the first crimson drop hits the tuxedo-colored floor I have to turn away. Molly lets out an apocalyptic scream and it’s then that I can see her face. Eyes glossed over like two wet marbles, mouth agape and cherry lips glistening in the pale synthetic light. I know she can see something because the next
swipe of the blade elicits nothing but her dead hand careening toward the tile without a single shout.

She sees it. She sees beyond the brick wall, beyond the pain and beyond everything we ever knew.

Kley unhinges the shackles and places a navy blue towel around the fresh stump. What’s surprising is the lack of panic on his face. At this point I jump forward and Kley catches me.

“No,” he says. “We’ll take care of it.” He fishes his cell phone out of his front jeans pocket and says a few words after dialing. Within a minute or two a husky figure enters the room and slugs Molly over his shoulders.

Kley pats me on the back. “This is why I do this. She knows what she saw.” He tosses the phone next to the surgical tools. “Follow Hank, now. He’ll drop you guys off at the hospital.”

#

I sit and wait for her to wake up. Even with scraggly hair and a bloody patch where her right hand used to be, she’s gorgeous. I slip my fingers into hers and she opens her eyes. She stares straight ahead for a second before taking a deep breath.

“Baby,” she says, lips dry and cracked. “There’s more… more…”

“What do you mean?”

She pushes away my hand and points to the window, slow crawl of sunlight peeking into the hospital room. Molly sits up, lips now careening into a powerful frown. “We’re not alone. They’re all over the place. Look…” The black tip of a fingernail cuts the air between us and the window. “I saw it, baby. I saw
them.
”

Goosebumps march up through the skin of my hands and down into the marrow. Molly turns to me and the first thing I notice is that one of her once-green eyes is now a dark shade of gray.

#

I open the front door to our apartment and let Molly in ahead of me. She’s quiet and walks slowly. She says the stump doesn’t bother her. She spent two nights in the hospital and only did she sleep on the car ride back home. She won’t talk anymore about what she saw, what she felt. I drop her duffel bag in the corner of the living room and head into the kitchen. She’s sitting at the edge of the table, one hand clenched into a fist. Burgundy mascara slithers down her cheeks in a mess of tears and curls under her chin without hitting the table.

I sit in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

She looks away and stares out the kitchen window. “They’re here, baby. They’re all over the place.”

“Who?”

“They want you to see, too. They want you to be enlightened.”

“Molly, you have to tell me who
they
are. Please.”

She leans in and pecks a quick kiss on my cheek. She whispers at first, and when she tells me everything I need to know, I sit back and wonder how long it’ll be before I can schedule an appointment with Kley.

#

I dial Kley’s number and he picks up on the third ring. I can’t believe what I’m asking of him and never in a million dark years would I need to feel the type of pain Molly experienced only a short few days ago.

#

“Your gal didn’t come with you?” Kley snaps the bottom of the latex glove and my heart jumps through my ribcage.

“No.”

“Well, that’s just dandy.” He begins to strap me into the chair but I shrug his efforts away.

“Don’t need to do that. I’m ready.”

Kley nods and pulls one of the blades from the tray. He holds it to the light, insipid refraction of light and ash. He traces the edge of his finger alongside my left wrist and I recoil out of excitement and fright. He brings the blade to the sky and comes down in a quick slice. White hot flash of pain funnels from the tip of my toes and tings the middle of my bones. By the time it reaches my brain I can see it. Their eyes, quick red slivers of glowing light, like fleeting bursts of comet dust. Slender appendages and crooked smiles, oval skulls and a skeleton allure. Another hack and the world stops spinning. Their mercurial motions, both fast and slow. Leaden skin and eyes of fire, they’re all around us.

I can see them.

I could almost see the heartbreak in my stepfather’s face, the way the morning sunlight would quickly dissipate and leave only the natural cobalt blue of his old and tired eyes. It was like I just told him that his nearly twenty-two years of raising a boy that wasn’t of his own blood was a waste of time. Twenty-two years of a union laborer’s life, money and sanity spent watching a disheveled child bloom into what he would at one point call a ‘man.’

“Not a single word from him in over two decades,” he said, “and now you’re ready to drive five and a half hours to see him like he had only gone out for milk during that time.”

I shook my head and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, Dad. Even though I can’t remember the time when he was around, I feel like I owe it to him to at least sit for a while with a cup of coffee, let him know about all the
good
things in my life that he’s missed.”