Husk (7 page)

I wrapped my heart in a thick hand towel, grabbed several more from the rack, and walked out to the kitchen. Rummaging through my tools drawer, I withdrew the heavy-duty stapler I used for minor household repairs. I retrieved an old wooden cutting board from my cabinet, and then moseyed downstairs to get my dad's old nail gun, the one I used when a big staple wasn't enough.

Using the detachable spout above the kitchen sink, I gave my interior a hot spraying, sponging up the water and slop with the towels. Once I had the area relatively clean and dry — you might be surprised how presentable you can gussy up your chest cavity when the blood stops pumping — I placed my heart in approximately its original place, using a decorative mirror from the hallway to help guide my hands. I had to use one hand to push my lungs apart and away. I lined up the aortic halves of the heart with the remnants that protruded from my walls. This was not strictly necessary, as I functioned perfectly fine without it — I had only an elementary school conception of the proper placement of the various tubes and pulpy conduits anyway — but I felt it might help me from a psychological perspective. Pinching the aortas and veins together with my fingers, I squirmed my stapler into place and fixed the whole mass together. The effect was Frankensteinian, but I felt better knowing it was safe and secure within me.

For an instant I considered the possibility of infection, then silently mouthed a laugh. There's absurd, and then there's
really
absurd.

Only later on did I consider that what I was in the process of doing should have really hurt. I should have been screaming to wake the dead; in the annals of pain, self-inflicted heart surgery should have been right near the top of the list, alongside labor pains and shooting Mountain Dew out the nostrils. It wasn't as if I lacked for tactile sensation, but my brain compartmentalized the torture, kept it behind a curtain. It was as if I was watching a drive-in movie from outside the fence, listening to a buzzy soundtrack on a half-assed radio while a projector lit the action onto a distant screen.

The next part was trickier. I climbed up onto my kitchen table and lay on my back, my flaps loose and open. I had likely lost some essential packaging en route, and could use a thorough stuffing before the final step. I wadded up the few clean towels I had left and crammed them into the nooks and crannies of my physique. I took care not to pack too tight, but with the loss of the ribs, the next stage was going to need a little support.

I carefully placed the cutting board atop the towels, fitting it up between the remnants of ribcage until it was good and snug. Aiming at an angle, holding the mirror in my left hand and the gun in my right, I shot a nail into the board, piercing the wood and embedding itself deep into the marrow and bone of my sheared ribs. I put two more nails in, then switched hands to repeat the process on the other side. This was not as successful, my aim too shallow; the first nail glanced off the surface of the board and shot into my bicep. Cursing (as much as a mute can curse, which is quite a bit), I adjusted the angle and set the next two nails in solid. My makeshift ribcage was not pretty, but neither was the real thing, and as I lacked any skill in sewing, carpentry was my only option. I pulled the one-inch spike from my arm and tossed it away.

I folded the doors of flesh over the board, stretching them tight to minimize gaps, and nailed my chest together. I made sure not to use too many nails, to reduce the chance of tearing. I rolled onto my side and carefully left the tabletop, acclimatizing to the new weight. The construction appeared firm. Checking out my handiwork in the mirror, I chose to ignore the haphazard pattern of the nails — my high school carpentry teacher would have freaked at the slipshod work on display — and congratulated myself on a job, well, done. The edges more or less met at the middle, and the skin appeared amenable to the metal pins perforating it. My nipples were stretched and lop-sided, but I could live with that. There were a few bubbles of air, but a quick banging with the stapler solved that problem. At least now I could wear a shirt and not have to worry about constant bandage readjustment and repair.

So, physically returned to near normality.

Next, the voice.

The role likely had a fair amount of dialogue, unless the character was a deaf-mute — how great would that be? Either way, I'd have to make at least some noise during the process, if only to meet the casting agents. I would have to learn to speak.

With the musculature so ravaged, getting any noise out at all would be a miracle. I focused inwardly on my lungs and diaphragm, picturing them working together, the bags opening and closing in a continual and unbroken rhythm. Inhale now. I forced the walls of the lungs to expand, and felt a thin stream of air pass my tongue and enter the throat. Now, exhale. I tightened the muscles, squeezing the sacs empty. Exhaling was definitely easier. I practiced this for a few minutes, just moving the air in and out, trying to make it appear natural. The breaths shuttled back and forth, up and down my throat, hissing forth into the air with a sound like a decaying pump organ — moldy, dank with disease, leprous.

Emboldened, I tried to make a sound. I didn't work on clear words, just tried to get some noise to exit my mouth.

Anything.

Any noise at all.

Just a peep.

You don't know how difficult it is to talk unless you have to retrain your vocal cords to vibrate.

Really.

Fucking.

Difficult.

I moved my mouth into different positions, forcing the air out, trying to get even a whisper of sound beyond the sickly death-rattle I was so far very, very good at. I should have been sweating under the exertion, but my skin remained smooth and clammy. Finally, my lips puckered in an imperfect oval, I was rewarded with a quiet but audible “
ooh
.” Not willing to stop and celebrate, I kept up the rhythm of air, devoting myself to my throat, feeling the muscles and tendons re-familiarize themselves with the patterns of speech. The
oohs
got progressively louder, to
oohs
to
oohs
, and eventually to a full-throated
OOOO-AAAAHHH
that filled the room and warbled off the walls.

It wasn't my voice exactly; there were tonal similarities, but the sounds were barely human and growled with feral terror. I kept it up, screaming at full volume now, not willing to relinquish my triumph. It was only one vowel sound, maybe an arguable two, but ees and ays could not be far behind, and then consonants. I stood up and marched around the table, keeping the beat with my footsteps as I modulated my mouth and throat to get new sounds.

Step.
AAAAAYYYYY!

Step.
EEEEEEEEEE!

Step.
EYE-EYE-EYE-EYE-EYE!

Break. I had limited time, and needed to modulate the voice to a more manageable, conversational tone. I curved my tongue against the roof of my mouth to get a hiss of air going, and contracted my lungs, forming my lips and tongue around my name:

It was a gruesome utterance, a word of putrefaction, splatting heavily on the floor like clotted cream gone rancid.

I tried again, smiling around the word this time, picturing kittens frolicking in a meadow with baby goats, dolphins performing back flips in a tranquil bay.

The sound of orphans being strangled in their cribs soaked into the walls. The goats head-butted the kittens into red mush, and the dolphins lined up to be mercury-laden breakfast treats for Chinese children.

One more time, quick and tight. Try to flatten it out, squeeze the horror out of it. Pop the lungs, don't drag it out.

Shelley.

Sheldon.

My voice was grated, raw, shards of glass rubbing against shale and hamburger. I called to the cat a few times. “Sofa. Sofa. Sofa. Hey, Sofa. Come here.” I played with the modulation, managing to turn it from a bloodless whisper into a parody of friendliness. A pederast inviting the paperboy in for a cookie. Sofa eventually returned from wherever she had hidden herself and weaved her mass through my legs. I considered this proof of success.

I looked at the clock on the wall. Seven o'clock. In another hour or so, the sun would have fully risen on my first full day as a member of the undead. I'd call Rowan at half past eight to make sure I had enough time to get past her army of underlings and toadies.

In the meantime, the voice needed major calisthenics if I were to pass muster. I passed the time by petting Sofa on my lap while practicing some vocal warm-up exercises. I'd run through some tried-and-true tongue-twisters, childhood classics to limber up my aural mechanisms. I inhaled deeply, expanding my lungs to their absolute limit, then pushed the breath out over the words “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” my lips and tongue imperfectly meshing. It all came out
peerpiperpitapetotpittedpedders
, each syllable dripping from my lips in tones of black death.

“She sells seashells by the sea shore.”
Shesellshellabaseshory
. Angels wept bloody tears as my syllabic modulation killed all in its path.

“I am the very model of a modern major general, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral.”
Iamfhjdrlibbitableinmeraralrawwwwwwrrrrraaaagh
. Sofa, before a subdued admirer of my linguistic proficiency when I practiced, bristled at that one.

Oh fuck it.
Talking slow was the only option, and no matter what I did to make my utterances sound even remotely human, the sound of my voice rattled like dirt falling onto a freshly planted coffin.

“Oh . . . that this too . . . too sullied flesh would . . . melt,” I said slowly, metering out the beats with my breath and forcibly enunciating every syllable. Not too bad, that time. The words of Shakespeare's Dane had never sounded so bereft of hope, but at least it suited his melancholy mood. Now, all I needed was an impresario who wanted to mount an all-singing all-dancing all-undead adaptation of
Hamlet
, and I was set.

“What the fuck?”

For an instant, I was illogically proud of the sentence. It sounded normal, human. Definitely something I would say. I glimpsed a shadow against the wall, moving quickly toward me, and realized I had not spoken. A baseball bat — a memento from childhood, I recalled, a fatherhood gift that never instilled a love of sports but kept alive a long-gone love of a parent — crashed against the wall behind me, narrowly missing my head, clipping my earlobe.