The Jigsaw Man (23 page)

that's not even h u m a n anymore, and I'm supposed to

feel
lucky?
Oh, for sure! T h a n k s
so
much, sir. God you're

pathetic. You're so freakin' out of your mind it's comi¬

cal, man. Just kill me and get it the fuck over with."

The room was quiet after my little tirade-—really

quiet—nobody m a k i n g a sound. Dr. Marshall stared at

m e , his body shaking with tension, hatred clearly shin¬

ing in his eyes, but he took a fall minute to compose

himself before speaking.

"Show him, Drake. Open the curtain."

Drake hurried over to the area where the surgeon

had appeared from a few minutes earlier, and found the

split in the center of the cloth. He opened the right-hand

half of the curtains, dragging the heavy drapes over

and securing them to the wall with a matching cloth

tieback bolted in place.

Beyond the curtain, the rest of the room was in dark¬

ness. I could make out a large glass container of some

sort, but with the way the meager light from this side of

the room was casting shadows, I couldn't make out what

I was supposed to be seeing.

Then Drake turned on the lights, and the breath was

literally sucked from my lungs as I stared in disbelief at

what was inside the glass tank.

It was the naked body of a well-conditioned m a n — o r

what
used
to be a m a n , at any rate—but the head was

missing and there was a massive cut on the body's back,

from the neck to j u s t above the buttocks, where the

man's spine had also been surgically removed. It wasn't

dead, though. N o t even close. W h a t looked like mil¬

lions of tiny colorful wires and electrodes trailed down

into the grievous neck and back wounds, presumably

attaching into the body's complex central nervous

system because the body was twitching and dancing

within the liquid-filled tank like a drunken vaudevillian actor.

"What on earth is that t h i n g ? " I worked up the cour¬

age to ask, my curiosity getting the better of my fear

for the moment.

Drake laughed, walking over to whisper in my ear,

"That
thing,
Mike, is what we're calling a flesh suit.

Basically, it's a body in waiting. It's what's left of your

buddy, Bill Smith. Should have been you actually, now

that I think of it."

Bill?

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"We t h o u g h t it was Mr. Smith who'd snuck into room

301 during your first night here. We thought he was

the guy who discovered Andrew's room was a fake, so

we grabbed him the very next night. It should have

been you."

"But why?" I wanted to know. "Why would you do

something like this to him, or to anyone?"

Dr. Marshall answered this time. "Two reasons. To

shut him u p , for one. We didn't want him telling the

rest of you what we thought he'd seen in Andrew's room.

We soon found out we'd made a mistake, but by then it

was too late to turn back. M o r e importantly, I needed

his body for the most important experiment of all, the

final step in my plan to free Andrew from his long life

of misery."

Dr. Marshall bent over and stuck his face inches away

from mine then continued, saying, "You can call me

insane all you want, Mr. Fox, and this might strike you

as comical and seem like n o t h i n g but a big j o k e , but

this is serious to m e , you worthless little piece of s h i t . . .

deadly serious, and whether you like it or not, you're

going to help me. Understand? Andrew
is
going to

walk."

N o w I was m a k i n g the connections, putting it all

together as far as Andrew was concerned, but where did

I fit into all this madness?

"What are you gonna do to m e ? " I asked.

Dr. Marshall backed up a few steps and started smil¬

ing again, his friendly demeanor back in place.

"Simple really" he said. "I'm going to do to you ex¬

actly what I plan on putting Andrew through. He's in a

very unstable condition, and time is of the essence, but

I don't want to rush ahead and screw up. He's only got

one more chance, and I have to make sure all the kinks

are out of my procedure. That's where you come in.

You're going to be my final test, Mike. I'm going to try

the entire procedure on you first to make sure it works.

Then I'll be ready to heal Andrew."

I couldn't think of a single thing to say. I was shocked,

and it must have registered on my face because Dr. Mar¬

shall started reassuring me things would be okay.

"Don't worry, Mr. Fox. Everything will turn out

great. Glorious, in fact. You've seen my experiments, so

you know I can do this. You should be grateful, really.

I'm going to give you back arms and legs, Mike. Think

about it. I'm going to make you walk again. You and

Andrew both!"

There was part of me buying into the doctor's crazy

spiel—a large part of m e , actually I had no doubts the

doctor could successfully do what he was planning, and

I desperately wanted to have my arms and legs back and

be able to stand on my own two feet, rather than being

strapped to this stupid gurney. Technically they wouldn't

be
my
arms and legs, but in the half-bonkers state of

mind I was in, that was starting to sound better than

nothing.

But then I took another look at Bill's electronically

animated body dancing in its tank in front of me and

realized that to put me inside that body, Dr. Marshall

would have to cut me down even further—down to my

head and spine j u s t like Andrew—and that was some¬

thing I j u s t couldn't handle. Another surgery would

surely drive me insane and I didn't want any part of it.

"Please don't do this," I pleaded. "I didn't know him

all that well, but I don't wanna wear Bill's body. I

couldn't live with myself. I'm begging you. Just kill me

now and let it be done with, okay?"

"Bill's body?" Dr. Marshall questioned. Drake and

he started to laugh. "Don't worry, you won't be wearing

Bill's body. Are you crazy?"

I didn't understand what I had said that was so funny.

I was tired and very confused. Had I missed something

or heard the doctor wrong?

"You're not going to put my head on that body? But

you j u s t said—"

"Of course not, you fool," Dr. Marshall interrupted.

"You think I'd waste a specimen like this on you? Bill

Smith's flesh suit is perfect. It's fit as a fiddle and blem¬

ish free. It's the ideal new body for Andrew."

He nodded to Drake, who happily walked over to the

left-hand curtains still drawn across to the middle of

the room. W i t h a wink, Drake slowly shoved this half

of the heavy drapes to the side wall, revealing a second

glass tank and a second flesh suit dancing in its own

watery grave.

Sweet mother of Jesus!

The glass tanks and the myriad color-coded wires

were virtually identical, but that was where the similari¬

ties ended. Bill Smith's body might have looked strange,

suspended without a head, but at least it still looked rela¬

tively human. W h a t was in the other tank could only be

described as grotesque—a flesh suit made with bits and

pieces from several different bodies (torso, hands, feet,

arms, legs, fingers, toes), the parts all sewn and grafted

together to make a hideous parody of a h u m a n being.

"This
is your flesh suit, Michael," Dr. Marshall said.

"I pieced it together from the various experiment parts

I had lying around. It's an amazing accomplishment in

itself, really, with more than twelve different body do¬

nors being used in all. Add your head and spine into the

mix, and we'll have used thirteen. A nice baker's dozen.

I know it's not quite as attractive as the suit Andrew

will be getting, but beggars can't be choosers. W h a t do

you think?"

My mind froze on me again. My thought processes

ground to a halt. Looking at the monstrous body that

might soon be my own, I couldn't think or say anything

that might help get me out of this crazinessi Partly fas¬

cinated, partly curious, but mostly horrified, I j u s t stared

up at the headless dancing Frankenstein and prayed to

die before Dr. Marshall could do to me what I knew he

had planned.

God wasn't listening.

"Mr. Drake," Dr. Marshall said. "Take Michael down

the hall, will you? Operating room three is prepped

and ready for us."

"Be a pleasure, sir," Drake said. "A real pleasure."

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - S I X

The mirror had to have been Drake's inspiration. His

sick twisted idea of humor to torture my fragile mind

even further. Instead of breaking me completely, as I'm

sure he'd hoped, if anything, it made me stronger.It

replaced my fear and anxiety with good ol' red-blooded

American bitterness and hatred, and I needed that in¬

tense level of anger to sustain me through the senseless

indignities I was being forced to endure. Rage became

my companion, my ally, my savior.

W h e n I'd first opened my eyes, I thought they'd put

me into a room with Andrew, put us so close together I

was looking right into his haunted-bloodshot eyes, and

seeing his ragged neckline with its multitude of wires

leading down to his thrashing submerged spine. But

once I fully awakened and my mind became a little

clearer I recognized the eyes, nose and. jawline of the

person I was gazing at, and noticed the thin wooden

frame around the perimeter of the silver-backed glass.

A man in a mirror—three guesses, first two don't count.

Drake had obviously put the mirror there j u s t so I

could see what they'd done to me. It wasn't enough for

me to know I'd been reduced down to a disembodied

head and spinal column—he wanted me to
see
it with

my own eyes.

It's impossible to describe the series of emotions that

washed over my damaged psyche at that moment. For

Christ's sake, what are you supposed to think and feel

when you can look down and count the number of ver¬

tebrae in your spine? Maybe shock, horror, sadness,

denial, self-pity, fear, or insanity? Yep, I had all of those

emotions, but as I said, it was when I started to get

m a d — n o , make that furious—about what they'd done

to me, that was the emotional life preserver I desper¬

ately latched on to. It wasn't much, but my wrath was

all I had left. Either that, or take the big plunge and go

straight out of my freakin' mind.

I was left alone for a long t i m e , silently staring at

what was left of my decimated body, my anger building

and building until I was sure steam would start leaking

from my ears. I couldn't even scream. I tried, you can

be sure of that, tried and tried, but no sound was com¬

ing out I didn't have any vocal cords left, or lungs to

push air up past them to make sound. All I could do was

open and close my mouth, raging in silence.

I soon realized it wasn't my voice I missed most, or any

of the rest of my body. It was the beating of my heart.

Normally we don't even hear it, or put any thought to¬

ward the j o b it performs—until it's gone, that is. I was

still being supplied with sufficient blood to keep my

brain alive-and functional, but somehow it wasn't the

same thing. Although I could hear the similar sounding

thump-swish
noise of the heart/lung bypass machine, the

blood flowing through me was no longer mine, and no

word of a lie, I could tell the difference.

Stop getting so fucking philosophical. These bastards have

cut away your whole damned body, why the fuck are you so

worried about your heart? Get over it.

I suppose that was good advice. Made sense, and

jolted my mind back on track. Right now, I'd probably

trade ten good hearts for one meaty fist and a powerful

arm to take a wicked haymaker at both Drake and Dr.

Marshall. That would be sweet, but it was a stupid, ir¬

rational thought. N o t the last, I was sure. I was losing

it, big t i m e , and I knew it. There j u s t wasn't much I

could do to stop it. Then again, maybe sanity was over¬

rated. W h a t good would it do me in my present condi¬

tion? I'd be far better off nutty as a fruitcake, lost in a

delusional sense of reality that had me strolling down

an imaginary white sandy beach with some dark-skinned

beauty on my arm. Wouldn't I?

I spent a minute thinking about the dream beach,

but my illusion was shattered when I heard Drake call

my name from somewhere behind me.

"Looking good, Mike," he said, walking around and

removing the mirror from in front of me.

The tank that held my spine was situated on a low

table near the floor, and I had to crane my neck to look

up at him. The muscle-bound head of security stared

down at me for a full minute without speaking, then