Organ - Chapter 26
ORGAN
Chapter Twenty Six
Cabs in the area had become expensive, was the only thought rolling through Marys mind as she waited patiently on the curb outside the restaurant, her friend from school had been nice enough to take her out for a meal after they worked late grading papers to take her mind somewhere pleasant for an evening, but with her car being an unreliable piece of junk she took the now regrettable option of a cab ride to get home afterwards.
Even in the current context of her washed away normal life, this had been a specifically horrible few days capped on nicely by Boothe asking her to pry open her husband’s coffin and unleash he memories she buried of him for some research into her sons condition, the notion that Thomas passed something onto Oscar was gut wrenching, but if it had been Mary that had caused all this she would have no idea how to carry on with her days if they ever returned to normality – they won’t – she thought with cynicism. When the cab finally arrived a thin rough looking man, Turkish or maybe Greek she guessed, welcomed her in and took her address before speeding off in the evening hours with the privilege of traffic being non-existent.
“Nice evening Miss?” the driver asked glancing in his mirror at Mary who had chosen the back seats in hopes of avoiding a chatty ride home with a bored cabby.
“Good evening” she answered politely but shortly throwing up a conversational stop sign that she knew was going to be ignored.
“I have always wanted to try that restaurant, it’s good for breakfasts?” he asked once more fishing for a gabber from the woman clearly avoiding him as much as someone fixed in place behind you could.
“Yes they are really good, nice people” she replied with as little detail as verbally possible.
White noise from the road rolling away beneath them and the radios unintelligible music filled the car, the smell of the night air jumping in through the tiny slice of opening in the window to her right.
“I like seeing pretty women like you calling for cabs, it’s a dangerous world now. You see that Pyscho kid, they saying he escaped from a mental hospital and killed a man. Three kids and a wife he left behind, shameful world” he mumbled on to himself delivering a monologue that irritated her with lip chewing rage.
Mary ignored him and sat in silence the remainder of the short drive home; Mary gladly paid the insensitive driver what he requested before rushing out before his unwanted conversation could start up again. The late arrival fished for her house keys in her purse as she walked up to her door, then it appeared to her with that gut wrenching feeling it usually does for those unfortunate enough to experience it, her front door was open wide without her know-how. Mary was faced with that notion that all victims of home invasions suffer from as they stand at the breach of their castle surveying their downed gates, does she enter and risk her life by bumping into the thieving intruders possibly still rummaging through her life’s material contents, or does she wait and call the police assuming they will be there in time to rescue her from this quandary. Mary decided it was worth being the big brave woman she thought of herself and walked gingerly through the threshold into the dark of her homes entryway, immediately overcome by a rancid meaty smell that climbed the walls heavily in her nostrils.
“Hello” she shouted with her deepest voice; it shook but sounded good enough to scare any intruders away, but the house was silent outside of her own dense frightened breaths.
Floorboards creaked under her weight as she inched through her own home like an unwanted invader, it was a long pantomime stroll before the mother got where she was facing, upon entering her kitchen the first sense that was arrested was smell, heavy odours of rotting meat and metal coated her nostrils and caused a heavy wretch gagging up from her stomach. Mary did well enough not to vomit at the inhuman scent dangling from her nose hairs, her eyes saw it upon the table, but her brain refused to identify the shape, a dangling arm hanging off the place she once fed her baby at signified what she knew to be true. There was a body lying lifeless and unwelcomingly aromatic on her kitchen table. Mary rushed to the bodies side to but knew before she reached it that the person motionless and leaking onto her vinyl, that her husband helped pick out, was a woman, then she saw the face and gasped in further horror but not enough to scream assuming she was still unsafe, it was Katie pale of colour and draining out before her eyes.
Recoiling backwards as any normally raised woman would she slipped momentarily in a liquid she had missed upon first entering the room, it trailed away from the wall and after catching herself from a potentially dangerous slip the source of the pooling slippery puddle was made aware, this time she screamed, an unholy scream, as though the very shreds of soul she had left was being blended up within her rib cage and drained out through her throat. Oscars corpse faintly glowing in the intruding rays of the streetlights appeared clear enough for her to know his face. Oscar was dead and somehow had brought this final horrific episode of his life back home into the one place they had once both felt safe. His mother dropped to her knees and grabbed clumsily at her son, his arms and his hands slipping through her fingers with the volume of blood covering his battered and unrecognisable body, Mary sobbed and pulled his body into her cradling her only sons head and letting him know she was finally there for him. Holding onto his body she slid her hand down following the scorch mark of blood that seemed to explode up his side and down to his hip, for a split second she touched the opening of the fleshy jagged crater that once housed the lump he found upon himself all those days ago, recoiling her hand back in a snap and gently placing her boy back against the wall to inspect this deathly discovery. The sight broke the dam as Mary leaned away and vomited over her kitchen floor, adding acidic vileness to the pooling bodily fluids that threatened to relay the entire surface area beneath her feet.
Giving her mouth and chin a wipe with her sleeve that pulled over the ball of her balm, Mary again took a look into her sons vicious appearing wound and saw nothing but dark red mass, blood pooling and chunks of indescribable human matter littering the edges in loose clumps. Beside him lay a pool of thick red blood and swimming in this pool bobbed multiple balls of misshapen tumours, perhaps five of six she counted quickly with her eyes. Mary assumed it was one of these pink abhorrent objects that had destroyed her sons life but as they slicked around in the pool of B positive, she saw how pathetic the size had been and how devastating it had been to lose her only remaining immediate family member to such nothingness. Mary crawled away from her son and climbed to her feet, shaking and uneasy standing she found the house phone that dangled from the cord in the hallway, it had not occurred to her that someone had use the phone in order to knock it loose from its holder.
“I need the police please” she spoke softly into the phone, voice shaking and holding back more tears as she gave over her address to the handler, “My son has been in an accident, he’s” the words stuck in her throat and Mary coughed out a slobbering choke “dead” that word had her desperate to drop the phone and wake up from this viscous nightmare that chewed her up slowly but refused to finish the job of ending her suffering.
It was sometime before the police arrived, an ambulance pulling up shortly after and the neighbours filling out into the street as an officer arranged a taped off area to keep them at a respectable distance from the carnage they suspected was unfolding in the home that typically attracted no attention in the community, now it was destined to become some morbid attraction for the darkest minds of tourism. Oscars body was carefully loaded into a body bag, his abdomen still leaking with disgrace as the blood gradually thickened and turned to slime in the bag and along the floor of her home. Mary watched with disbelief as his limp person was placed on a stretcher and slowly wheeled out of her life and into the realm beyond of the morgue. Mary approached an officer that guided the body bag into the ambulance with a large towel in his hands that he generously held up to cover the site from the nosey good for nothings intruding on her darkest moment since the other love of her life had been removed in similar fashion.
“Is he definitely gone?” she asked hoping this was somehow, in some god inspirited moment of mercy, a mistake made by everyone at the scene of the recovery.
But his answer was grounded in reality that fell with the asteroids to the earth “I am sorry Mrs Rubens; your son is gone.”
He placed a gentle hand into hers to give her a comforting friend before releasing it just as quickly to help shut the doors of the ambulance before members of the neighbourhood comity could gain any insight into the identity of the unfortunate lost soul now covered in black rigid plastic. Voices screamed out from inside her home as Mary stood vacantly staring at the closed doors of the ambulance that served as a temporary holding place for her deceased offspring, his body growing colder alone with only the comforts of a suffocating black bag holding him close.
“We have a live one!” an officer unceremoniously called out into his radio racing past her as though she was not really there, her home suddenly seized upon by two police officers and another emergency medical personnel.
Mary seeing the events as though witnessing from outside her own body completely unaware of the earth’s gravity or the people watching intrusively just over her shoulder. Mary carefully walked through the house avoiding bumping into any of the fast moving officers that moved in blurs through her vision, further dirtying her home, whatever home would be left after all this was settled and the dust had found its new blanketed home, over their shoulders she watched as they placed various equipment with dedicated firmness over Katies mouth to and began pumping away clean air into her lungs, her eyes remained shut as far as Mrs Rubens could see, still unsure how to feel at the effort to revive the girl and not her boy who grew more rigid with mortis at the moments drifted away into words in a police report destined for a packed draw in a police station.
“Pulse, we’ve got a pulse, I need more hands over here. Keep her steady” a voice shouted out over the rabble of motion.
The kitchen was now more akin to the roadside of a car accident with bags, equipment and blood littering the landscape. Two medical uniforms kept the young woman breathing, pumping, and releasing with one hand as she took in unaware gusts of oxygen through their face mask, another tended to bandaging and wrapping the vast cut in her stomach at was torn to a flap of hanging skin and smothered in dark red horror.
“Prep the ambulance we need to get her to the hospital now” the officer said directing traffic with his stoic voice, it was telling others this was not his first rodeo, nor would this be his last evening putting young people into body bags.
Katie was loaded onto a stretcher and covered for the most part in blankets to keep her wounds hidden from any of the voyeurs still lurking with phones out for a snap of something grizzly to post across their tiresome media accounts, her faint breaths still assisted by a jogging paramedic who ran alongside them pumping the breathing aid as she rolled away from the home. Bumping up on an uneven slab in the path her eyes flickered open, Katie let out a guttural moan that was chased after by a scream of pain, her hands suddenly awakened with purposes grabbing at the medics attempting to get her away from the scene of her second attack in less than a week.
“Inside” she moaned trying to get above the noise that encircled her, “Please.”
The medics standing over her did their best to keep the young nurse calm, but nothing seemed to satiate her alarm.
“Please try and stay calm, we are getting you to a hospital” the woman explained fighting to get the breather back onto her patience face that wriggled and moved from her hands to plead for help.
“Inside!” she gasped out again seeking someone’s attention to her concerns.
Katie pulled at the bandage wrapped around her abdomen that she no longer felt, adrenaline or nerve damage relieving her of the torment. Through the tussle with the ticked off emergency team she had somehow managed to pull the bandage and cotton pad away from her wound that Oscar had inflicted in his possessed state, Katie knew not where he was but saw what he did, felt his wide-open fist careening through her decimated ribs and falling away from her without that grotesque monstrous lump he tore from his own body. Katie felt it inside her she knew it was there, the paramedics finally pinned her arms back down with the help of the officers nearby and got her into the back of the ambulance, as the doors closed behind them Mary caught a glimpse of the nurse fighting for her life, eyes widened by glassy and unbelieving as the young woman screamed.
“Get it out of me please!,” her stomach curdling yelps sending several uncouth neighbours back to their homes in disgust at the graphic nature of these events. “Get it out!” she continued to scream as the medics searched desperately for a syringe to calm her down and get her into the state they could maintain without worrying about her safety.
“Miss please, we need to get you to the hospital, they can check you over there but first we need to ensure you aren’t going to hurt yourself” the medic explained carefully despite the obvious shaken nature of his face.
“He put something inside me!” she shouted at the man doing his best to calm the terrified patient, “Okay, okay, let me take a look and see if I can help” a female medic interjected pulling her colleague aside and instructing him to call ahead for a rape kit.
This courteous women who could reason more readily with a horrified bleeding and brutally attacked woman took Katies hands gently away from her stomach and shushed gently as she did, Katie complied seeing the carers now listening to her concerns and fighting her bodies instincts to defend the weakness that tore her once flattering stomach in slashing gore. Katie breathed deep and allowed the medic to pull around at her stomach, removing the ruined bandages and padding before readying some on the bed to place back over after examining the wound to put this victim of domestic abuse at ease.
“Okay I can see the incision, I won’t lie I think you have some broken ribs, they told me you are a nurse so I won’t sugar coat it, this looks rough but we can get you fixed up at the hospital” her pause left Katie panicking and her heart beat rising in her chest pushing more spurts of fatty slime like blood that was threatening to congeal out of her stomach and arms that remain decorated with the savage slash marks courtesy of the artist formally known as Oscar Rubens.
“Stay calm Katie, I am just getting a look as best I can to check for foreign objects in the wound okay” her strength in voice brought Katies breathing back down to a deep wheeze.
She poked and examined the grisly manufactured pocket in her body before wrapping her back up quickly with the bandagers prepared and placing both hands adorned with the baby blue latex gloves she was all too familiar with on her arm.
“There is nothing there, I can see no foreign object or otherwise in the cavity okay. Now let’s get you to the hospital and get that fixed up properly” the medic explained, her ginger hair falling into her eyes for a moment and her puffing air from her lips up dislodging it back behind her fringe.
“Thank you” Katie mumbled out letting her breathing take priority over the intrusive foreign entity she was unbending in belief it had been thrust into her body without consent.
It was in that moment she thought of her attacker, the lack of mention led her to believe he was in a bad way but how bad she did not know and if this were to be the last time she saw him on this mortal world, it would be all too welcome. As the ambulance rolled away from the Rubens murder house, the siren faintly blaring through the creaks and cracks in the metal body serenaded Katie into a drifting nod, she felt like a child falling asleep in her parents care awaiting a carry inside from her father after a long family road trip, the gas was working, and she felt a million worlds away from the nightmare ordeal that boy had dragged her into not once but twice in their chance encounter. Tires screeched as the vehicle arrived outside the hospital, other paramedics came rushing out to bring her inside as quickly as possible, Bev’s voice was somewhere wandering in the throng, but Katies drug laced eyes could not find her face, nor was Boothe present but she knew he would arriving shortly after herself to involve himself for touristy walk through her burdens with his notebook and filthy glare.
Katie could not remember her placement into a room, nor the stitching up of her wound, or even the discussions she most likely had with the team of colleagues and likely the law when she was being administered, but now she was conscious and lying in her bed with the lights hurting her eyes and her stomach aching as the pain killers dulled in effectiveness. Bev popped into the room with her usual gusto entrance kicking the door open without care for its unsocial clatter, but her face was clearly dismayed, and the worry lines made her already decorated with age face all the more worldly, she pulled up a chair and sat at her bedside taking her limp scratched up hand into hers and kissing the back of her fingers in literal nurse of her wounds.
“What have they done to you now sweet thing?” Bev ask rhetorically as her eyes watered and turned red at the lids.
Katie could tell she was doing all she could not to cry in front her, almost a cadaver on the bed looking as though she had lost a fight with a petrol chainsaw.
“Is he dead?” Katie asked hoping the only question she had lingering would be answered and her fears of his survival being put to rest.
It would certainly have her sleeping easier knowing her would be murderer was likely already fighting off monsters in the pits of hell, Bev shook her head in reluctance to give her any news.
“I heard nothing about him, but I truly hope he’s dead or dying the monster” she never could hold her tongue and it was frankly more comforting than Katie expected, although still having nothing concrete to bury the boy for good was giving her ulcers of fear that pulsated and boiled inside her bed ridden shell.
Swinging open her door for a second time in minutes, two officers came through with Boothe attached right behind them like some unappealing unshakable tic, his face was solemn, but it was a mask, Katie had seen it before when he approached grieving families, and her head hurt with anger at his audacity to even attempt this sham with herself.
“Hello Katie, you doing okay?” the officers asked, she recognised one but not the other.
“Hanging in there despite my arms” she held them up to show off her scars “the stab wound in my stomach and the broken ribs” she joked with the officers cracking a smile at her toughness, something they appreciated in their line of work.
Bev stood up, gave Katie a kiss on the forehead “I will come back later and bring you some tea” she promised taking her leave and avoiding giving Boothe any interaction on her exit. Boothe pulled the singular chair out and offered it to one of the officers, they seemed to ignore him and stood standing with their hands tucked into their belts, a stance they likely adopted for quick access to weaponry or radios.
“I am sorry to be here so soon after your admittance, I understand you have been through so much already. We are just looking to clarify some details on your attack and anything that might be useful for our investigation” the officer explained with a slow and steady voice.
Katie imagined he was speaking this way in case she had some lingering head injury, his badge read ‘Murphy’ and that’s how she would show inform him of her attentiveness.
“Well Officer Murphy, I would like to know something first please” she stated with the fumes she had left, they sat patiently waiting for her to finish her expected offerings on their part, “Is Oscar alive?” the officers delayed answering and shared a look.
As always ignoring Boothe lingering behind them seeking an entryway into the debriefing.
“Oscar Rubens was deceased at the scene when we arrived” officer Murphy confirmed after a few agonising seconds of internal debate on whether or not she was ready to hear this news, her face was wobbling in sadness.
Katie was glad he was gone for the things he had done but the question will always linger in her mind as an unshakable birds nest, could she have done more in the end to keep him from the brink of beast-like behaviour or was this always going to happen with or without her involvement.
“Thank you for telling me” the air was tense with the three men all looking at the injured victim who was noticeably holding back tears.
Hands shaking with the adrenaline still leaving her body and the thoughts of her attack likely circulating firing off her injuries painful memories.
“We do have to ask some questions if that’s okay Katie?” Murphy asked adjusting in his seat and fetching out his notepad.
She had seen similar from her meeting with the uniforms in the hotel, the site of Oscars first assault – and murder, “Of course” replied Katie with trembling tongue.
“How did you end up at the Rubens residence this evening? Please try not to leave out any details you believe could be important” Murphy asked, his partner staring off out the window seeming more bored than engaged in this woman’s worst event ready to be recalled.
It was now Katies turn to adjust her posture in bed, the movement hurt her arms, legs and just about everything else Oscar had managed to get his knife wielding hands near.
“Careful Katie” Boothe chimed in as though she, a registered and practicing nurse needed to be told this. Katie cleared her throat and found a place in the blankets to speak into as they all stared with fixation.
“I was at home healing up from the hotel, I got a call from Oscar, and he said he was sick, that he needed medical help before he died. I said to him that he should call an ambulance, and he told me that this wasn’t the plan” she took a deep breath and let out a few tears silently that ran down her cheeks and fell onto her hands that sat in her lap.
“Take your time” Murphy said patiently.
“Oscar said that he had his mother, and he was going to kill her if I didn’t come help him without police or the hospital knowing, I was nervous so I took a scalpel in case he attacked me again” she copped to carrying the weapon but assumed considering how things played out that they likely would not care about a single frail nurse carrying a medical knife to a potential hostage situation.
Scribbling away into the pocket-sized pad officer Murphy paused Katie for a brief moment to go over her reasoning for attending before instructing her to continue.
“Well, when I arrived it was dark in the house, Oscar jumped out and attacked me. I tried to fight back but he stabbed me in the stomach and” she paused again at the severity of her words.
These cruel events finally catching up with and causing her to inhale rapidly shaking in shock “I think she has had enough don’t you gentlemen” Boothe interrupted the interview, and the officers begrudgingly agreed to come back at another time to finish up, they left a business card with their direct line and disappeared down the hall shutting the door behind them, leaving Katie alone with her least favourite doctor. Boothe took the seat the officers had vacated and pulled it awkwardly closer while half sitting, the noise scrapping on the floor was hard for her aching head to handle but his pudgy would-be-heroic face was causing her a far greater headache.
“What the hell happened to that boy?” Boothe asked the room completely aware that Katie would likely not reply, it was a ghoulish question and one that nobody needed answering right now.
Oscar was gone and the memories of him would now dictate the lore of his life.
“I am just glad you are safe; I saw Bev was here, I am glad the nurses are taking care of you” he carried on speaking to himself as Katie closed her eyes and lay back down in her bed, occasionally wiping tears from her eyes before they could fall.
“I wanted you to know that I requested his body be brought here for the autopsy and further examination, apparently the emergency team at the scene saw no signs of a tumour or cyst large enough to cause such a protuberance from his abdomen. But we can route around and find out more when they are finished photographing him for the police, if anything good could possibly come out of this, I hope you know who you can trust moving forward. I am not the bad guy; I know you think of me as some tyrant. I am just doing the best for the future of this hospitals patience and also doing what I believe is best to guide your career away from these deeply unfortunate entanglements I have seen in the past” he got to his feet after monologuing for what felt like an hour, “I have said all I wanted to say, if you want to find out about the autopsy you have my number. Feel free to call me and we can get together when you feel ready” and with that he took his leave.
Boothe marching out into the world as victor, Katie left maimed and abused, Mary devoid of love in her life her family goes extinct and Oscar a cold piece of stationary slab resting in a fridge somewhere in the gut of the hospital. The boy with the organ now becoming one himself as part of this plain buildings internal diabolic goings on. Katies only concern of the real world now, the events to come, was removing Mary Rubens from her life before the story she told to these officers became cannon and before the mother would most likely come out swinging in defence of her “Troubled” baby boy that simply fell to a disease of the mind and body.
