Flesh at Last!

Reminiscent wonders and memoirs of dream nodded in the surface of wakefulness- they all drained down a gashing ache. A crowbar strike cracked his cranium. He knew, not from recollection, but from the rivets of pain launching familiar signals of agony signatory of the Enforcer hassled with the job of “lecturing” him.

Hungover blood vessels strained and his stomach gurgled with polluted wash. He licked the gaps left behind from fallen front teeth and a broken molar. The compression on his shoulders and wrists only startled the warning signs of his evolving alcoholism.

He used to wear techno-thermal gear made in a factory that makes life jackets for polar bears. He used to fly a helicopter into arctic ravines, and stand mere centimeters from blasting waterfalls of melting ice. The expeditions tag of the “OAO -Arctic- Expedition-18”  stamped over one side of his helmet. His rank read “executive”. Twelve men followed him into the icy cavern opened by the melted ice. Only he came home.

The taste for gut rotting whiskey fluxed as terror veered between his entrails. He tried to open his eyes and failed. He wished he never dared to explore the discovered cavern- if he only knew, he wished he had the choice again to turn around and go home ever since his “recovery” in a Synanon Facility. That’s when the FBI started sending him blank emails- with his name “Dr. Amund  Ramstad”as the subject line. A windowless van followed him to work every day for a week. And every night at 2:45 am- with extreme persistence- a man in a black suit walked past his bedroom window with an umbrella. One morning an envelope fell from the mail slot- he forgot mail slots even existed. When he opened it, he found an information brochure on the Arctic expedition.

But Amund stopped thinking about the days gone by, because he didn’t feel drunken hiccups or the spasms muscular atrophy. He didn’t get to resupply his Winsor… because at the store, there the Enforcer strode the isle, his two hundred fifty pound frame pushing a cart with lettuce and lunch meats, his eyes torn from a pink shopping list, wide and dumb with shock. Amund fell back on his heels and ran out- but something caught him by the collar.

Heat cosseted his exfoliating soles- he woke up as if lightning struck. His eyelids peeled apart like a pomegranate seam. His head hung back. Moths battered under a fluorescent light shining from the black ceiling. His wrists hung in chains from a sheave. He rolled his head around until it drooped down. Oxidising nitrate boiled in a vat below him. Amund barked for help and writhed- but only swung in and out of the cinder light.

The Enforcer spoke into a phone. “I’ll be home around midnight… I’ll make it up to them… love you too. Tuck them in for me.” He hung up the phone stepped into view. Still wearing white tennis shoes and a blood spattered windbreaker with a Browns emblem. A tie poked out from the collar. He held a flashlight and the crowbar. He shined the lights in Amund’s eyes, and then to the control levels for the sheave. Amund demanded release. The Enforcer did not listen. He walked to a nine foot tall crate on a cart, and pointed at the order label.

“It’s written in Russian using Latvian phonetics. What does it say?”

“Please, don’t look- it’s nothing.”

“There’s one way to find out.” The Enforcer jammed the crowbar into the crate and pried panel after panel away ignoring Amund’s protests- until the side facing Amund stood exposed, and the contents unmistakable. Scythe eyes clouded in fog,  encapsulated in charcoal bronze- a Roman-styled statue of a female paladin gleamed in the sculpted sheetware.

Amund to kicked the air like a sprinter breaking record tape.

“Put it back! Put it back!”

“Yup- it's them, alright.” The Enforcer lit a cigarette and offered one to Amund, who started crying out in unintelligible vernacular- as if verses choked his cerebral cortex. His waist twisted until his spine cracked, then spun back the other way. Sweat dripped down the outreached arms of the statue- a whip in one hand raised, and a slave collar opened in the other.

The enforcer blew out smoke that lifted and disappeared in the dark above. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t intend on delivering them to the Boss… I know someone else who wants them.”

He walked to the the control levers and pulled a knob.

“You have to keep them secret! You mustn't let them leave here ever!” Amund petitioned, but the sheave released and he lowered at the speed dictated by the control- slow as to not splash the Enforcer.

The fluid sizzled and foamed as his feet pierced the surface- at first he held his breath and it sounded like he might start laughing, but then his breath bleated like a depressed sheep until his waist sunk, then the curtain of steam and acid mist hid him, and when it cleared only a tuft of graying black hair remained floating in the foam.

The Enforcer repelled the sheave - but the chain snapped and broke.

Wood burned. The Enforcer saw smoke from embers emerging from the statue crate. He placed the palm of his hand over the darkening lumber. The palm of his hand trembled but he felt no pain. He looked inside once again, and whistled- impressed at how the statue didn’t only strike his aesthetic taste, but it grabbed hold of him with irrepressible forbiddance. Now he noticed features not present when he first peeked inside. Patches of mold grew from under an eyelid, and down the extent of her stature. Beads of sweat rolled off the hardened skin. It felt as warm as a sleeping human. The sweat, he sampled- not streaks of moisture compressed by air pressure, but a green oil. He wiped on the wood, and the splinters that absorbed the substance burned to tender ashes.

He repositioned the boards, one after another, until the crate looked almost like how he found it. He reached forts. Each of them issued by the OAO- The Enforcer laughed- Russian defense contractors. He hooked the chain on the cart, and climbed into the forklift when he saw the vat still boiling. He stepped out, certain he shut off the heat once the chain broke.

The heat light was unlit.  The Enforcer tried switches on the control panel- nothing changed. The substance in the vat splattered- and thrashed. Foam spilled from the vat and fluid leaked to the dusty concrete and bled under stacks of crates. The Enforcer stepped up to a platform but it shook and collapsed. Two crates broke apart and revealed two more statues composed with the same extrinsic material, but their stances and appearances varied from the one he planned to steal- but the Enforcer didn’t look for long- for neither shared the humanity duplicated in the crate before the vat. One looked like a bird skeleton with sharp teeth, and the other looked like a suit of insectivorous plants. The Enforcer smelled more burning wood and felt the platform sink. When he jumped away he hit the floor and landed on his knee. The cap popped, and pain ballooned. The Enforcer didn’t take time to mend the pain, the acerbic puddle leaked towards him. He crawled away- but the statue collapsed from the cart into the overflowing Orange and red streaks disturbed its green luster.

More crates fell- The Enforcer saw at last, they tipped over on their own. He panicked as he crawled for the loading dock door. He heard a voice of an ancient court martial, the crackling and syrup splattering, he counted as many as twelve crates. The ones in the acid on the floor started to tremble, as as they did smoke and sharp light seeped from the broadening detriments on the flesh of the statues. The Enforcer felt something intrude his skull- a staggering whisper. The light from the statues did not shine on the floor, or on the other crates, or in the whisps of smoke- only in his mind. They reeked of pitch resin.

The Enforcer climbed up, biting his lip, leaning on a good leg, and stepping in the acid long enough to get to a smoldering lid. From here he reached the chain links he brought to drag the statues to the dock. He truck waited outside. He hooked the chain on the foot of the human statue, and pulled the chain to hoist it back into the crate.

The lid he stood on burned away, he peeled off his coat- the warehouse cold chilled his fat layers- and cover the lid he stood on with it. His first two tries got the statue from the ground, but nails of agony hammered down his knee. On the third try, the statue almost lifted itself- as it left as if it lifted before he even tensed his muscles- and it fell back into the crate. Amund hurried to reapply the burning panels to cover the crate. Each panel he replaced, he took another glance. To his wonder, the statue now looked softer, more colorful, but remained immaculately smooth and absorbed light like a bucket. The statue glared like Athena.

His shoes melted, so he kicked them off and clung to shelf rungs as he shifted across the warehouse. He jumped into the forklift, and drove it to the loading dock. When he got out, he found the crate on the floor laying upside down. He rolled it over, it felt weightless, and contained only burned scales.

He heard the blaming tone once more, and the hard breathes against face plate masks. Something stepped towards him from the dark between box stacks. The Enforcer stepped away, and limped for the door.

“… such lovely flesh.” It uttered.

The Enforcer screamed once he saw the statue limbs stagger towards him. Its stabbing tongue and sharp bones more to him than features on a statue- her scythe eyes grew larger, and sharper than ocular vessels on a living creature. His ears lost their hearing, his nose lost its scent, and the statue seared into his corneas and left behind an outline that squirmed and followed him no matter where he looked- even when he closed his eyes. He heard heart it’s steps scraping against the floor.

He took the door and opened it to see headlights cutting through the winter dark. His own car idled, and drove towards the door. The Enforcer dove to the ground as the truck crashed into the dock- thunder echoed over the nightscape. The Enforcer held his ears, looking inside to see ethereal paws holding the wheel. He crawled into the snow. He heard the statue’s metallic joints bending and ringing- its feet scraping the snow like a shovel. City lights twinkled in the distance. The Enforcer thought he saw heard holiday music coming from his house.

Two warehouse workers arrived when the sun rose at 5:43 am. Both smelled something burning, and found the source coming from Warehouse 12- Neither one had a key, for their boss never gave them one- because he lost it a long time ago but no one ever questioned him, so he let it go without replacement.

The warehouse workers found broken padlocks in the snow before the door and followed a trail of scratches so deep they erased oil stains. Once inside they discovered one body lay sprawled out, his skin and muscle picked away, leaving only copper -reeking organs swelling against his bones. Not an ounce of blood stained the floor. The dust on the crates sat in snowy pyramids. One then looked into the vat, and found another man sealed in cooled bronze.

After calling the police, one of them went back to take inventory, and found twelve crates missing. The police never came. Instead three men in suits climbed from a windowless van introduced them selves as agents of the warehouse owner and entered the warehouse. They put the dead man in a plastic bag, and two suits put on hazmat suits and carried out the bronzed-man. Then they asked the warehouse workers if they saw or know anything. One admitted- to the groan of the other- to hearing voices from the warehouse, and one day waking up with a tattoo that he didn’t remember paying for- the voices claimed to have done it. He showed the suit the markings. The agent explained:

“It’s Russian with Latvian pronunciation- promyvaniye mozgov”. The agent nodded to his two partners. They locked the warehouse doors, and shot the workers- leaving the keys to the crashed truck in their possession.

Headlines read of warehouse workers suspected in disappearance of two men the next morning. The bodies of Amund and the Enforcer never re-appeared.

Homeless population of the city  stood out in freezing winter nights under blankets of snowfall staring up at the night sky, speaking of the alignments of the stars. Though pollution clouds concealed the night sky in a butter yellow haze, the vagrants spoke of correct alignments in the sky. Some froze to death, others disappeared leaving only ashes behind. No one ever figured out what caused them to behave this way or why.