Fossil Lake II: The Refossiling Read online

  Two young men raised their hands.

  “God help the future of medicine.” He stood and waited for the chuckles to subside. He was about to continue when a young lady in the front row raised her hand.

  “Yes, Miss Douglas?”

  “This patient of yours wouldn’t happen to be our old friend ‘Bert,’ would it?” she asked.

  Ottermole smiled. “It would, indeed.”

  The students stirred in their seats. Bert Granchi had been bouncing in and out of the state insane asylum for years, and was often used in Ottermole’s classes to demonstrate the array of psychiatric and neurological impairments human beings were subject to, for Bert possessed each and every one. As these future doctors were all apt to treat Bert at some point in their careers, Ottermole had been allowed to relax some of the requirements of confidentiality, in the interest of the future of medicine. Besides, Bert had been persuaded to sign a release of information form upon each admission. The fact that he thought he was signing an autograph seemed to have never occurred to the admitting nurse. If it did, she had not let on.

  “What did he do this time?” Mr. Franklin asked.

  “The usual,” Ottermole said. “Internet harassment, phone harassment, threatening, inciting others to threaten, having a melt-down in the food court at Skyways Mall because he saw the picture of a celebrity with whom he imagines he has an on-going feud on the cover of a magazine. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “You think his mother will agree to the lobotomy this time?” someone asked.

  The laughter was heartier than for any of the teacher’s jokes. “She has already begun the process of obtaining his release,” Ottermole said. “I’ve never understood why she continues to do that every time he gets sent away, given that she can’t even stand to live in the same state with him. For some arcane reason, she won’t allow him to stay in our custody long enough to receive any real treatment. Does she really hate him that much? I have to wonder.” Ottermole sat on the edge of the desk again. “I don’t mean to imply that I agree with Mr. Johnson’s opinion that a lobotomy would be called for.” He grinned. “Nor, in fact, would I necessarily disagree.”

  More merriment.

  “The fact is,” he continued, “Bert presents with such an array of symptoms that we can’t prescribe effective treatment without more extensive testing and observation than can be accomplished in the few days we are able to keep him. In our previous discussions, we’ve provisionally diagnosed him with the entire DSM-V, including several varieties of malignant tumors. The most popular diagnosis seems to be fetal alcohol syndrome coupled with borderline personality disorder with narcissistic traits, but without more testing than his mother ever allows for us time for, we can’t be certain. Had I the opportunity to hook him up to the proper equipment, I could possibly discover where, if anywhere, he is unable to process sounds outside his restricted comfort zone, and prescribe the appropriate treatment.”

  “Are you suggesting,” another young woman asked, “that a very limited taste in music can be used as a diagnostic tool?”

  “You’re getting ahead of me, Miss Stevens.” The bell rang. The students gathered books and papers, stood and stretched. “Your answer must wait, I’m afraid. I’m hoping to have some more film of Bert for the next class to help illuminate that very notion. In the meantime, finish reading Chapter Twenty-Three, and be ready for a pop quiz.”

  The Future Doctors of America groaned as they filed out of the room. Ottermole closed the door behind them and took a cell phone from his vest pocket. “I’ll be there at midnight. Will everything be ready by then?”

  He got the answer he was hoping for, and prepared for his next class.

  Ottermole arrived at the Fossil Lake State Mental Health Institute at 11:30 P.M. He signed some papers, then met his assistant just outside Bert Granchi’s room.

  “Are you sure you can remove the implants without leaving a trace?” he asked.

  Dr. Everett Weiss nodded. “I’ll do the autopsy. No one will ever know, at least from that angle. Don’t you think, though, that someone might wonder why he’s in a regular room, unrestrained, with all those hard walls and sharp corners?”

  “Bert has always been much too narcissistic for us to suspect he’d ever do what he’s about to do,” Ottermole said. “Relax, Ev. As soon as you take the implants out of his ears, your part is done, and my niece can rest in peace.”

  “I’ll be in the morgue.” Weiss left Ottermole standing in front of the door.

  He watched his colleague vanish around a corner, then clicked the intercom switch. “Bert? This is Dr. Ottermole.”

  The voice that came from the speaker was high, nasal and whiny. “When are you mother-fuckers going to let me out of this fucking dungeon, you baby-raping cunt-faced asshat?”

  “We will when you repent of your sins.” Ottermole looked in through the glass panel. Bert was on the other side, eyes wide and barely sentient, hair long and greasy, his fleshy mouth surrounded by a Bluto beard that was trimmed off-plumb.

  “What fucking sins, you pedophile kiddie-porn collecting liberal fuckwad?” Bert’s mouth opened wide when he talked, revealing rotten stumps of what once were teeth. “You’ve only got me locked up in here because I said something nasty about the president.”

  “Do you remember Betty Oakley?”

  There was a snort. “You mean that dickless wonder Billy Oakley, who cut off his own balls so he could turn into a girl? Yeah, I remember that uncle-fucker.”

  “She killed herself last week, Bert. You drove her to suicide.”

  The laugh was loud and nasty. “Good riddance. I’ll piss on her grave, as soon as I get out of here.”

  “I know you’ll want to, Bert.” Ottermole took a small device out of his inside coat pocket. He held it the palm of one hand and hovered a graceful finger from the other over it. “But I’m not going to let you. Betty was my niece, you piece of shit, and you are going to atone for the crime you committed against my family.”

  Ottermole turned the device on. Bert screamed from inside the room. Ottermole looked up and down the corridor, but there was no one to hear the agonized cry.

  “What the fuck is that?” Bert screeched, hands covering his ears, stubby fingers digging through the long hair and into the temporal bones. “It’s in my fucking head!”

  “That’s Doris Day, Bert,” Ottermole said. “And there’s more. Englebert Humperdinck. Rosemary Clooney. Helen Reddy. Merle Haggard. Olivia Newton John. Teresa Brewer. Mel Torme. Dolly Parton. Every song I knew you would hate is stored in this little box of mine, and we’re going to spend the whole night enjoying them together.”

  Bert reeled around the room, bouncing off the bedside table, the iron bedstead, the walls, the door. “No! Make it fucking stop!”

  “I can’t, Bert. Only you can make it stop.”

  “How the fuck do I do that?”

  “Figure it out, asshole.” Ottermole pressed the volume button. No sound came from the device, but Bert reacted immediately, flailing about, running into walls and bouncing off the steel wardrobe.

  Bert flung himself across the room and ran into the nightstand, driving the corner deep into his abdomen. He coughed, spewing blood all over the top and onto the pillow beyond. He lurched back and skidded along a wall before ramming his forehead into the wardrobe.

  He leaned back and drove his skull into the heavy-gauge steel over and over. Blood splattered the room, partially obscuring Ottermole’s view through the small window. He heard the distinct crunch as Bert’s skull exceeded its breaking point. Bert staggered back and turned to face the door. The bones around his right eye had crumbled. The orb slipped out of the ruined socket and dangled against Bert’s cheek from the optic nerve.

  “I’ll make you a horror target,” Bert mumbled. He swayed a moment while Ottermole adjusted the device.

  “You ought to enjoy this,” he said. The Village People filled Bert’s head.

  “No!” Bert screamed. “No! Y.M.C.A
.! I fucking hate Y.M.C.A.!”He ran at the cinder block wall and turned his head just before contact, crushing the fingers on his right hand and visibly flattening the skull on that side. He hit it again several times before the blood splatters covered the window. Through the streaks, Ottermole could just see Bert reel away from the wall and fall backwards on the bed.

  He heard a series of gurgles, the staccato noises of a body jerking around on the mattress, then silence. Ottermole waited a long time before looking around. No one had come to check on Bert. There was no staff in the entire wing. Ottermole had seen to that. It was nice to be able to schedule rounds in such a way to provide him the solitude he needed to accomplish minor tasks like taking revenge on poor Bert Granchi. He put the device in his pocket, rubbed those remarkable hands together and walked away, whistling.

  Weiss looked up from the autopsy table the next morning and smiled at his friend. “I’ve never seen a human being deform their own skull so badly,” he said. “It looks like a jack-o-lantern that’s sat on the porch for way too long after Halloween. It’s a shame we can’t write this up for a medical journal.”

  “What did you do with the implants?” Ottermole asked.

  “I picked one up off the floor, where he’d dislodged it.” Weiss held up a small device that looked like a dead wasp. “Just took the other one out.”

  Ottermole took the device between his finger and thumb and dropped it into a pocket. “Keep one, if you like. Who knows, they might come in handy again, one day.” He went to inform the family of Bert Granchi’s passing.

  Bert’s mother seemed more relieved than upset. She declined to claim the body, and wouldn’t even consider driving the fifteen hundred miles to arrange a service. Bert wound up in the little Potter’s Field the institute maintained behind the softball field.

  Ottermole and Weiss watched the grounds keepers fill in the grave and wander off, the chaplain close behind.

  “How much coffee did you drink this morning?” Weiss asked.

  “Two pots. You?”

  “About the same.” He unzipped his fly. “Time to get rid of this load.”

  “Amen, that.” Ottermole followed suit.

  They pissed on Bert’s grave a long, long time.

  LEVIATHAN

  Richard Leavesley

  In the deep dark I swim

  Aware of monstrous creatures moving in.

  I dare not look back in case I see

  A tentacle reaching out to me,

  Or open jaws and misshapen fins!

  Faster, faster I try to swim

  Before some huge tongue can drag me in

  To some dark maw or serpent’s beak!

  That’s when I completely freak!

  I panic and begin to thrash!

  The horror nearly at my back!

  Can’t think, can’t breathe

  I fade to grey...

  …as jaws slam shut and tear me away…

  THE TUB AND TAKAHASHI

  Gregor Cole

  Takahashi was stuck in his bathtub.

  He had been for several days from what he could make out. He hadn’t slipped or fallen and hurt himself. He had simply nodded off then awoken to find himself unable to get out with the water cold up to his chin.

  His feet poked out at the other end.

  He wiggled his toes.

  It made him laugh.

  The water rippled under his mouth.

  It was like the water had frozen, but it hadn’t. He hadn’t damaged his spine as he wouldn’t have been able to move his feet or head. It was like the water was holding him in, keeping him immobile in the tub.

  If only he hadn’t made fun of the old woman in the fish market. He hadn’t meant to laugh so hard at the giant hairy mole on her nose.

  He just found it funny.

  He didn’t mean to point either but there was an attractive girl working on the crab stall. The old lady said the Sea Witch would have retribution. He had laughed the threat of a curse off. She mumbled and coughed over him, waving a fish head in his face and it was all he could do to stop himself pushing her into a tub of live crabs.

  The cute girl rolled her eyes and went back to work as Takahashi fought off the fishy woman. It had been an ordeal, yet funny none the less.

  He wasn’t laughing now.

  Takahashi turned to drink some of the water. It tasted of weak lime bubble bath. It choked him a little and some came out of his nose. He spluttered in the water, unable to move.

  The water had its hold on him.

  Takahashi lived and worked alone, there was no one coming to help him out, to pull him free from the water’s icy grip. There would be no one passing for a cup of tea or popping in on a flying visit. He was stuck.

  Why had the water decided to hold him?He had done nothing to offend the water, he had nothing but the highest of respect for water. His own father was a fisherman many years ago back when he lived on the island. When he moved to the city he had bought a fish tank and fed the fish every day and cleaned the tank once a week.

  He loved the water. But here he was, a prisoner in his own bathtub with the murky water his shackles.

  He looked around the room and his eyes locked on his cute octopus bath towel hanging over a rail in the corner. The octopus smiled at Takahashi and it made him sad inside. What he wouldn’t give to be able to get out of the tub and towel off the cold water from his skin. To be wrapped in the thick warmth of his octopus friend right now would be amazing.

  But the idea made him sad.

  He looked back at his toes.

  He wiggled them again but doing so didn’t cheer him up this time.

  The cute octopus had made him sad.

  Takahashi woke up with the sound of the postman shutting the gate outside his apartment and he began to shout. Due to the building being right by a motorway the construction of the apartments had required sound proofing.

  The postman didn’t hear a thing.

  The apartment above him was empty and the apartment below was occupied by some death metal guy.

  He was out most of the time.

  When he was in the guy listened to loud music and head-banged in every room or slept in piles of pizza boxes on a smelly couch.

  Takahashi didn’t like the man.

  He smelt of cheap incense and weed.

  He coughed out some of the stagnating water he had swallowed while trying to raise the alarm. The octopus smiled at him.

  Takahashi was starting to dislike his friend the cute octopus.

  There was a rubber duck floating around in the water with him. He used to love playing with that duck. Takahashi tried to move his hands to play with it once more, but nothing. The water wasn’t letting go just yet.

  The duck had floated up by his face and it was all he could do but watch it bump into his bottom lip. Takahashi blew air out of his nose and it slowly span away to the middle of the bath. He then wiggled his toes to send ripples towards the duck, sending the plastic water fowl back to his face.

  This game kept Takahashi going for three days.

  He had stated to notice that his skin was wrinkling and becoming white on an alarming scale. The skin around the joints in his ankles had swollen and aged dramatically in the week he had spent in the water.

  The top layers of dermis had started to peel away and formed a film of scum on the water. He didn’t like to drink it anymore.

  The film had coated the side of the bathtub forming a ring of dirge as the water level had dropped slightly. It had slightly discoloured as it had dried into a mucky brown. He could feel it rotting on the back of his head, in his hair.

  From what he could see the water had started to bleach all of his submerged flesh.

  Some parts of his waterlogged body had changed to a horrid blue colour and he was aware that his stomach had bloated out somewhat.

  The bathroom had started to smell a bit from the foetid water.

  He was rotting in his own filth.

  He had tried not to shit
in the bath but he couldn’t hold out for as long as he had liked.

  He felt his bowels give and a tear rolled down his face; he had never felt so alone and helpless.

  The octopus on the towel smiled at Takahashi as he cried and uncontrollably shit into his watery tomb.

  Faecal matter bobbed next to the rubber duck like little logs.

  He decided to stop playing the rubber duck game at this point.

  Takahashi stared at the cute octopus.

  The cute octopus stared back.

  He was starting to hate that smile.

  The idea of towelling himself down now was the last thing on his mind. The colour of the water was now a rank brown. It had bits floating in it.

  The ring of filth around the bath was now a good three inches thick and the majority of his body had absorbed a large amount of the water. He was swollen and bloated out and stuck.

  He was finding it harder to breathe with the size that his neck had gotten. His breaths were shallow, rushed.

  He knew the end was near but he had made peace with his god; but not with the cute octopus.

  Then it happened.

  His arm was moving.

  His arm could move.

  It was heavy from soaking up so much water but he could lift it and Takahashi started to smile for the first time in so long.

  He smiled at the octopus.

  The octopus smiled back as if to say “good job, buddy.”

  His bloated hand wrapped around the edge of the bath, the rotten skin splitting down to the bone as he leaned over to lift himself up. He could move. The bloating around his throat muffled his shouts of triumph, not that anyone would be able to hear with the combination of soundproofing and the man downstairs’ death metal.