Chapter 4:

Jon looked around, toward the silver door, the entrance of the operating room. All he saw was his own face, staring back at him. No one there. His heart beating frantically, he made a tiny incision into the flesh of the young man on the slab. Euphoria almost overwhelmed him; the sickly high he got from hacking up the dead bodies, the sensation as the cold skin split beneath his fingertips. The experience was almost orgasmic: the tendons yielding to his practiced slice, exposing innards that should never see the light of day. He could do what serial killers did and get paid for it. Easily, he could see himself doing this for the rest of his life.

He cut the standard "Y" incision in the young man’s chest, divulged his lungs and rotted heart behind a cage of pink-stained bones. The stagnant blood leaked onto his white gloves. Some even stained his arms; the white uniform he wore. He looked like a butcher by the end of the day, and smelled absolutely rancid. Blood of all pigments, and, sometimes, even parts of organs, decorated his smock. He would always look at it and grin in perverted delight.

It was just when he was in a car, or in his bed at night, that his profession took traces of life. Yes, in the bleak darkness, where a pair of rolled back eyes ogled at him from the oak rim of his windowsill, the eyes of an old man who had died when a typewriter fell on his head. He would realize then that lives had been lost. That he had mutilated. Had pickled their organs and, in doing so, raped their sanctity. There were times when he saw, for a brief moment, himself on that slab; times when the rolled back eyes ogling at him were his own… But he didn’t think about that while working. He had graduated from the Kern County School of Mortuary Science a month before. Before he had been on an internship, but now he was getting paid for doing this. Awesome.

He operated on the man, reveling in each cut, each time he removed an organ. After he was done he sewed up the body, and thought how cool the stitches looked in the branded letter on his chest. The man’s mouth had slacked, and with his bare hands he touched the blue flesh spotted with stubble. The man’s straight teeth snapped together with a faint click. Jon labeled the jars of samples. He recorded what he had found in the selected space of his files. "Punctured lung. Punctured upper diaphragm. Severed heart tissue. Stabbed five times in the right upper chest. Suffered shock trauma."

And now onto the next body.

This one was a baby: a baby girl. She had a wonderful hank of blonde hair. In her early toddler years. Maybe able to walk; maybe not, somewhere around there. He couldn’t imagine her ever doing so; her legs were snapped back. All the way back. She looked like a turkey, with her feet in line with her shoulders. Jon wanted to know how she had died, even though he thought that he already knew. He had seen this before. He read the police report. Jonathan always skipped over the names, as a rule. He didn’t want to know what their name was. That made them more than something to cut up. More than some toy. Knowing the name made them more than real; they made them alive. They gave them a soul. He could see the first name—that was fine—but any other information was just too much.

The scary thing was that sometimes he already knew the name.

He skipped past the technicalities and caught:

"Victim of incest. Sandra was found on the floor, head facing the wall, legs snapped back towards the face and blood dripping from the mouth and crotch. Her father, Kevin" (Jonathan skipped over the last name) "admits to the rape and murder. He was found in the bathroom, with a gun in his mouth. Larry Shandler, deputy officer of The Bakersfield Police Department, District 8, talked him out of suicide…"

"Basically, she was fucked until she died," he said to no one. This echoed against the empty room. She had been laying on this slab for a long time, the sheet over her.

Jonathan hated seeing rape/homicide victims. And yet he loved it. There was a perverted side to it, a putrid fascination.

He tried to make an incision in her small chest, although he knew that wasn’t where the problem was. He hoped that high would overwhelm him and he’d forget. But he didn’t. He felt nothing as her soft skin cleaved to his scalpel. He sat heavily—the blade still sticking out of her chest as if she had been a stabbing victim—next to her on his black stool. The whiteness of the room, the blankness of it, suddenly overtook him. He looked around. He could hear his own shaky breath. He watched the young man, with the sheet over him now, waited for that sheet to rustle.

He could see it in his mind. See those fingers move, ever so slowly. Those dead, cold fingers. There were the cubbies where the bodies were kept, just beyond him, and he looked at them now against the far wall. There was a section for the adults…and a section for the babies. Their tiny feet pressed against the glass of their little boxes. Some were white; some purple; some blue; some green. Depending on when they were found, and what stage of decomposition they were in.

Inside the mortuary there was a tainted stench. A stench hidden with a sterile stench. He was in the middle of a bunch of rotted meat. He glanced back at the girl. She was naked, the skin white around her face but bruised black around the hips. The bone of her right hip protruded through the skin, and both legs were swollen. They were thicker than even Jon’s legs.

He loved rape victims because it always made him feel better about himself. That could’ve been me.

Jon hadn’t known what Tony, his neighbor, really planned that day. The day that he called him over to clean up his cellar. He asked him to take his shirt off; Jon did it. He asked him to take off his pants; Jon did it. There were other things, other things, that Tony made him do. Jon had always been told to respect adults, but what Tony asked him he would not do, though he was in his boxers and Tony had an angry finger poking from his pants. Jon thought it looked like his father’s finger. It pointed at him savagely.

When Jon tried to make a run for it was when he sprang into gear. Jon couldn’t resist him, although he had jumped up the stairs in great bounds and made for the front door. All Jon had wanted to do was be a good neighbor, help him fix up his cellar. Move stuff. Tony grabbed him just as he reached the front door knob, a kitchen knife cocked at his neck.

"The only way you’ll avoid getting fucking cut up is to listen to me," he had spat.

Listen to me…

Jon did. Although it hurt. He bent over the table (actually, was pushed and pinned, the wood hard against the side of his face). He still got cut in the neck when Tony lost his composure and rammed him hard. It had felt like the scalpel must, bloody and cutting. For there was more than one knife that penetrated Jon that day…

And there were other days to follow, sure. Jon was a good listener. He had the scars to prove it.

His parents weren’t good listeners like him, however; they didn’t believe Jon when he finally got up the balls to tell them. They said that he was lying. Tony was a family friend; no way was he some closet fag rapist.

Yeah, sure.

Fag. That word. Even the dead bodies everywhere had befriended it.

He finished operating on the girl and smoked until the next physician came in. He tried to think of nothing as he waited in the main lobby, but his mind kept returning to that little baby. Who, ever, would rape their daughter? He had snapped her legs back. To make it easier. What kind of crazy fuck would ever—

"Sir! Sir! You must help me!"

"Hello?" he asked. The woman who had barged into the main lobby wore a large red sweat suit; it bagged around her chubby hips and billowed around her neck. There was something swimming in her wild eyes. She did everything but bow down before him. He had removed his uniform, but there were still speckles of blood on his shirt.

"My husband! He’s going to kill my daughter! I tell you, he’s going to kill my--!"

"Settle down, ma’am," he assured. He took her hand in his large one and looked into her vulnerable eyes. They teamed with tears. A lot of loonies came in here; she was one of them. He was willing to bet money. "Your daughter is fine. Nobody is going to hurt her."

"NO! I’m fucking telling you!" The wrinkles around her mouth deepened into riverbeds. She backed away from him when she saw his doubt. "He looks at my daughter and they always get into fights and everything! I saw him sharpening a knife last night! I saw it! I swear!"

You shouldn’t come here, lady, was all he thought. You go to the cops with this kinda shit. You don’t come to the fucking mortuary. By the time you come in here it’s too late. I can’t do nothing until after the fact. Despite himself, he wondered if this so said "daughter" was a hot piece.

"So, you can do something about it?" she asked. Her eyes were bottomless. The pupils dilated. "Yeah. I’ll do something about it. I’ll call the cops." The woman made an animal moan. "NO! Don’t call the cops! Don’t CALL the COPS!"

"Excuse me. Jon, is this woman bothering you?" Dr. Johnson asked in an authoritative tone. He had guided Jon there since day one. He worked the midnight shift, and had just walked into the door. He had a long face that contrasted starkly with a chubby, short frame. He was far from attractive; his face sagged after a stroke had handicapped the right side. He looked like the guy from Batman, Two Face. Even if he smiled, the other half of his face was frozen in an eternal frown. A rather odd thing to see.

Mr. Johnson was head honcho at the Kern County Coroner’s office. He knew how to deal with shitfucks. He kicked the woman out. After, when he asked what that was all about, Jon crumpled up the paper, threw it away, and walked the mile to his apartment.

The next morning, after a night of fitful sleep, he came to work.

The daughter was a hot piece, her flesh still warm. She was just a fresh piece of meat. Her mother lay next to her on the table. Her wrists were slit. The little girl’s legs from the day before were the only pair of feet that didn’t show in the infantry cubbies.

Chapter 5:

The last months of high school were winding down, finally, for Ham and Munky. After twelve fucking years of hard work and absolutely no pay, they were getting out of school. And out of Bako. The band they had put together was doing well locally. It was a surfer band, LAPD, standing candidly for "Love and Peace, Dude." Ham had dropped out of the band a year ago; he dug the metal thing more than the surfer thing, and he could hardly convince the others to give their music a metal influence.

That would be too different. Too different from the music they heard all the time. If it was a little bit surfer and a little bit of something else, what would it be? Ironically, the band was reluctant to find out. Besides, Ham had gotten a job at the gas station in the town center. It occupied most of his time. He would probably manage it someday, if he didn’t find a way out of Bakersfield. Though he had dropped out of LAPD, the friendly competition between Munky and Ham raged on. Neither could seem to quite outdo the other for long.

They were equals.

And besides, in bands these days two guitarists was odd; only one would do for a surfer band.

Ham, now definitely lanky and no longer a ham—more like a hambone—had outgrown the unfit nickname. At a party in the town’s notorious dirt fields, a girl he had hooked up with had called him "Head". For the life of him, he couldn’t remember her name; all he remembered was waking up with her in the back of his old Toyota. And when he told Munky about it, about the blow job she gave him and how much he had loved it, so much more than the sex, that became his resident nickname. Head was a facsimile for many different things. Despite efforts to explain it’s "real" meaning.

Anyway…

Munky still burned for Kaitlin Eurich (who still never gave him the time of day), and now that prom was coming up he had sweaty fingers. Sweaty palms. Sweaty hands. At night the sheets writhed from the tortured dreams he had of her. She was his only object of affection. There were some girls that had showed interest in him after his father forced him down and cut his hair a few years ago. But now that it had grown back and was twisted into dreadlocks, that was no longer so (In L.A., where him and Head had ventured one night to see "Cradle of Thorns", a popular band in the area, everyone who was anyone had dreadlocks).

He looked like a surfer. Awfully scrawny, however. His narrow chest was just a bit smaller than Head’s, which was saying a fucking lot about how skinny he was. In his senior year, Jimmy’s delicate features were carved from caramel ivory, his hands magnificent and slender. He had earthen brown eyes, with black fuzz under his nose and chin. He was trying, and unsuccessfully, to grow facial hair. That would come in a few years, he was sure, but he was impatient. He was a man, baby! He should look like one.

Besides, he had heard from the grapevine that Kaitlin liked guys with facial hair.

It took him a while to see Kaitlin in the hall the week before prom, but he managed it. He knew it was too late; he had stalled; there was nothing he could do about it; Kaitlin would turn him down and there would be absolutely no one else to fill her shoes. He would have to go stag, or not go at all. And that would be a shame, because his mother had saved up a bunch of money to go down the street and rent a decent tux. It was black—black wasn’t his favorite color…sea blue was—but that was fine. It meant so much to her that he go, even if he couldn’t afford a black limo or a meal out on the town. He wondered if that would matter to Kaitlin. Thought it would.

He would have to borrow some dough from Head, then. Head had tons of moolah.

"Hi, Kaitlin," he said, trying to act nonchalant, though he was quivering all over.

She looked at him as if for the first time with her deep blue eyes. He had never seen them this close up before. She had to go to a study hall soon, where she would give Stacey, her best friend, beauty tips while the snot-nosed teacher reprimanded them. She noted his facial hair: pathetic. Who was this loser, anyway? She had vaguely remembered him from a class in her freshman year. Every day he had swiped his hair in his face and pretended that he wasn’t looking at her. Cute but dumb, she decided.

Wasn’t he in a band…?

And what was with the dreads?

"Um, yeah, I was just wondering if you would want to go with me to the prom."

It didn’t take her long to answer. "Uh, no." She waltzed away, jiggling in all the right places. Munky watched her go. He would have pursued her, but he was not the type. He had had a couple of girlfriends before. Even could have gotten laid before. But he just didn’t want to do it with anyone but her. She was so beautiful…There had been one time, with some other girl, and he had decided that he should get some practice in before he got Kaitlin. But he had accidentally called out Kaitlin’s name. Big mistake. He didn’t get any practice that night, but he sure did learn a valuable lesson all the same.

Head passed Kaitlin, holding hands with his own sweetheart. Rebekkah was somewhat short, with short blonde hair and beautiful green eyes. The two were walking oxymorons. Head was tall and bone skinny. Rebekkah was short and curvy, with big breasts and a slightly tiny head. She didn’t look impish, but her features were quite tiny. She was one of the nicest girls either guy had ever met. Munky was positive her and Head would be together forever. One could talk to Rebekkah about anything. Many times had Munky talked to her on the phone about things in his life that he had never even told Head. Head wasn’t possessive of his girlfriend at all; he flirted, and she flirted. That was just the way things were. Their mutual trust was unreal.

"What’s wrong?’ Head asked when he noticed Munky’s placid face. Though, of course, he knew what.

"That fucking bitch. Oggh, why can’t I just get over her?" Munky wailed.

"She really is a bitch, Jim. You wouldn’t get along anyway… I know someone who likes you!" she teased suddenly, as if it had just popped into her mind. She took Munky’s hand in her other one. Munky was less than interested, almost to the point of ignoring her. He didn’t really wanna hear it. He just wanted Kaitlin. Why was it always you want something you can never have? Not ever?

"Who?" Head asked when Munky said nothing. The three made their way down the now empty halls. The bell for seventh period would ring any second.

"Jessie."

"Jessie?" Munky asked. This got his attention. She was one of Kaitlin’s best friends. Liking him? That had to be a joke. Jessie was a tall black-haired chick with legs up to her neck. Definitely delicious, although she was one of those goth girls. Head let out a whistle, and slapped Munky on the back. If what Rebekkah said was true, then he could get to Jessie, and in the process find stuff out about Kaitlin…

"She’s a freak," was all he said.

"So what? She is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet."

"Yeah. And besides, she’s probably into bondage," Head snickered. He snapped an invisible whip in the air. He also caught a very real smart slap to his arm, delivered lovingly by Kaitlin.

"Go for it."

"Why should I?" Ever since the first day of high school he had wanted only one thing: Kaitlin. She was an almighty, all-beautiful angel with out-of-this-world cleavage and fuck-me-please eyes that sunk his ship. A seed of longing blossomed in his stomach. It was cut down by shears of reality before it could blossom into a hint of hope. He was left feeling drained, alone, when Head and Rebekkah veered down the extra hall. Munky had a study hall. But he decided to fuck that, and made his way down the other hall to the fresh Californian air (although it somehow seemed forever tainted in Bakersfield).

The walk home was as serene as it was scenic. There were roaring cars passing him on either side, and all that he saw were the same old fucking-bullshit buildings and small-time businesses he had seen all his life. He knew every crack and crevice of the entire town, the entire desert just beyond his apartment. There was absolutely nothing special. When he had gone to L.A. for the first time had he realized how reserved he had actually been his entire fucking life. He was determined to get a job and get the fuck out of Bako and to L.A. as soon as he possibly could. He knew his mother would object, but after a while she wouldn’t mind; one less mouth to feed.

He would make it on his own.

However, the weight of these ideas never condensed in his mind. Munky was not one to sit and think about the dreariness of the world. He was mostly into pot and rock, like most teenage boys his age. And he was also into girls. No, that wasn’t right. He was into Kaitlin.

Instead of going home, he stopped at the 7-11 Head worked at (He had yet to get outta school; his shift would start in another half-hour). He bought a Coke and a Snickers. He looked at the guitar magazines there until Head showed up.

Then, after talking to Head for a while, he went to Jessie’s house. He had overheard Jessie telling Kaitlin her address and her phone number. There was no need to give directions when one had been a long-time Bakersfield resident. A road and a number would do. He followed that now: 26 Hutchinson Street. It was all the way back around town, but he had time to shit on. Besides, he had a plan. If he could get close to Jessie, then Kaitlin was reachable. If there was only a way…

Thinking about her brought a notch in his pants as he made his way down the street, and he pushed her from his mind. It wouldn’t look good if he showed up at Jessie’s door wearing a silly grin and pointy pants.

He finally found the house. He knocked on the door; waited; knocked again. He would have given up had not the door flung open. Blaring music reached his ears. Jessie hid surprise as he shifted his weight from foot to foot on the top step of her doorway. He had seen her many times in school, but he couldn’t remember her looking more beautiful—more normal—than she did in a pair of black sweatpants and a white t-shirt reading "I SUCK" in scraggly permanent-marker letters. She still had her gothic make-up on from school: a pale foundation, one blue contact, and black lips. She stood tall and slender, evil, even, in that normal attire.

She was weird.

But she was also nice, which was the only reason why Munky would have ever believed that Kaitlin would hang out with her. There was also a rumor that her and Kaitlin went to LA together, but that, he was sure, was just a rumor. There were times when Jessie looked good, yes, even Munky had to admit that. Some of the Gothic dresses she wore to school were ornate and lacy; low-cut and for the most part see-through. Some of the guys in his school dug that; Head did, that was for sure. She had the LA look. Munky couldn’t deny that he had seen a lot of girls like her in LA and in that crowd he thought nothing of it.

When he was in Bako, however, the rules changed. Munky’s commonplace dreadlocks were a sign of the utmost rebellion in that hick town. The way Jessie dressed was simply and positively unheard of.

"Um, hi," was all he said when she welcomed him in. She ran out of sight, and suddenly the heavy metal music that had pounded throughout the humongous house ceased. Her house was just as big as Head’s but not quite as ornate. It was in the shape of an octagon, which he thought was odd; but then again, nothing about this girl was normal. There was a window on the top of the house that revealed the sky. He pointed it out to her, his hands in his pockets, and she just shrugged after following his gaze.

"I get really scared of that thing at night. I just keep looking at it and expecting someone to peer their head over and look right back down," she said. But in her eyes was: Why are you here? "Do you want something to drink?" she asked instead.

He waved his hand. He didn’t want anything to drink. Here we go. "I just visited by because I want to know if you want to go to the prom with me." He let out a long sigh. There. It was out. Just like that.

"Sure! That would be great. Just like that, huh?"

"Uh, yeah."

"When do you wanna pick me up?"

He cleared his throat and leaned toward to the oak door. He wanted to be the fuck out of there. Her gaze revealed way too much; this would be a tricky operation, if it even worked at all. A simple fact hit him: he was messing with people’s heads now. Did Kaitlin really mean that much to him? That he would look into those multi-colored eyes, one brown and one sea blue, and lie his ass off to her?

"Um, I don’t have a car. I would have to meet you at the restaurant we would eat at or whatever."

"I could pick you up. Where do you live?"

"In the—" he bit his tongue before he said "slums". That was not a way to impress a girl. In that lied yet another question: Did he really want to impress her? No. She was just his guinea pig. That’s all. A scary little fucking guinea pig that he was using to get real pussy. "I live on the corner of Fourth Street. In the apartment building. On the edge of town."

Her eyes grayed over with sympathy, and he turned towards the door to avoid it. She knew how that part of town was. She had gotten a flat tire there, once. She had grabbed her "hole puncher" from the dashboard—a spiked leather hand band she had gotten at a store called "Retail Slut" in Hollywood—and walked to the 7-11to call her mother. As she had returned she saw Jerry Hawkins and others from school. They had spray-painted "The Fukkers", they’re gang name, all over the car. When they saw her, they didn’t run. Had it not been for her "hole puncher"…

No one knew why Jerry had showed up the next day with three stitches right under his lip. But the "scary girl", as the school knew her, knew why.

"Jimmy, you’re not in with them—" she said, referring to The Fukkers.

His face twisted in such a way that it crossed her mind that he was annoyed with her. What had she done? "No. Bye, Jessie. You’ll pick me up, then? Apartment 26, Hemmingway Complex. Seven o clock, okay?"

"Yeah. Bye."

………………………………………………………….

All the next week Munky waited, a ticking time bomb, as the days slithered by. Head wouldn’t get off his back; Rebekkah found out inside info about Jessie. Jessie thought that roses were wimpy; he should get her a corsage of "dead babies" instead; she had a burning desire to be a forensic scientist when she grew up; she wrote poetry; she met "Cradle of Thorns" (this Munky was temporarily interested in, but not for long). And then there was the kicker: she was bi.

"Bisexual? What do you mean? She’s like, half-gay? Where the hell are you finding all this out? Why isn’t this anybody’s business but mine? Or hers?" he asked, exasperated. Lately, the thought of going to the prom with her was becoming less and less appealing. He was on the phone with Head, lying on his bed. In pornos it was cool if a chick was bisexual. In real life it was just kinda, well, gross. But only kinda. He would never admit that to Head.

"Sorry, man, couldn’t hold that one back. I know more about your prom date then I do about my girlfriend, I think." And then, gushing at the thought of Rebekkah, "I can’t wait until prom."

"Yeah. Lucky you."

"Did you hear that thing about Kaitlin?"

"What?" he asked, suddenly interested. He could swear that his crotch had magnetism to the very name. It shot straight up, so fast that he almost got a cramp. He groaned, but Head just laughed. "She’s going stag."

This didn’t sink in right away. Then, "No way! Stop fucking with me!"

"Nope."

Munky was about to talk about it more, but Head’s mother yelled something at the top of her lungs, and after muttering "Bitch!" he had to go. Munky simply placed his hand over his head and kicked himself as he lay on his bed. He had gone through all this trouble with Jessie, all for nothing. What if Jessie wanted to mess around with him? What then? What would he do if she took out the whips, just like Head had jokingly said? What would he do if he got with Kaitlin that night and left Jessie in the dust (a highly unlikely possibility)? After hearing about Jessie, he was almost positive about what she would do: Hang him by the dick and perform rituals on him until he announced her his evil empress. He felt in a positively shitty mood suddenly, and so did what he always did to make himself feel good. Something he had discovered in freshman year, quite by accident…

He played his guitar.

And forgot about Jessie. Even Kaitlin.

But not for long.