The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination by R.F. Bright Page B
Authors: R.F. Bright
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more natural than stupid.”
MacIan moved closer.
Otis lifted the dead man’s arm away from his body and pointed with the scalpel. “See how the skin is pale and grayish-yellow? Right there. Under the arm where the sun can’t affect its true color. And it feels hard, like wax. And here’s some blisters filled with blood and turned all blackish-bluish-purple.” Otis stared at MacIan solemnly. “They die in peace, them that freeze to death.”
“Can you tell what happened?”
“First, I gotta ask why a guy was out in the weather with no coat and no shoes.” He cranked his head to a skeptical angle, puffing out two questioning lips.
“They’re still stuck in the ice,” MacIan lied.
Otis grinned. “Bet they was. How high that rock he froze to?”
“Fifty, sixty feet, maybe more.”
“I ask because, his leg . . . bag-a-bones. Broke, crushed, smashed. Knee joint pulverized. This guy fell from way up high, way more than sixty feet, and crashed several times before he hit bottom.” Otis illustrated with a hand-puppet version of a man ricocheting down a mountain, adding several disturbing sound effects. He lifted the dead man’s pants from the back of a chair and held them from a belt loop, aiming the scalpel at a spot on the leg. “See these long tears and scratches here, from above the knees all the way down to the bottom?”
MacIan bent to study the pants.
Otis screwed up one eye and thwacked MacIan with his index finger on his metal nameplate. “This sorry sonnova-bitch fell off that mountain and disintegrated the bottom half of himself. Then! he crawled to that big rock to pull himself up outta the snow. Then! he froze dead.” Otis folded his arms over his chest with great finality.
MacIan thought Otis was probably right, but there was something about this little guy that didn’t sort with the situation. “So you do cut people open?”
Otis dumped a cup of strong disinfectant into a tray. “Not officially. Not like I get paid for it. I started here back when people still had people. Went to school right down the road. In my school the coolest guy was the one who made the biggest fool of himself, so I was definitely the coolest. Ended up with a kid and his sixteen-year-old mama. Came here, knocked on the door, hat in hand, begging for any work I could get. The Commander hooked me up.” He paused to shake his head in amazement. “A black teenager, off the street! To this day I do not know why. But I do know this! I’m all about Commander Konopasek. Bit of a, well I don’t know how to say it, but you, you giant-ass mutherfuckka . . . you-will-not-trifle-with that man. Don’t make no difference how big you are. You hear me?”
MacIan bowed his head and put his hand on his heart.
Otis made a face that promised he’d hold MacIan to it and went on with his work. “The doctor we had got fired in a budget thing. Sometimes weeks’d go by and bodies piled up. But I just kept sweepin’ up. Kept my mouth shut. I had a good thing and I wasn’t going to put my foot in it.
“One day, they sent a medical school student up from Pitt who did really good autopsies; he was really good. We were the only ones down here, same age, same sense of humor. So he taught me medical stuff. How a body works made sense to me right away. He said I had — the hands.” He made jazz hands, and continued. “I did a little doctoring on the side. Friends and family. Beer money.
“Then they started them consolidations and nobody came to do the autopsies. And when the guards walked out of the Prison over in Somerset, them psychos came and took everything, including my wife. Me and my boy moved into a room in the back there, used to be a storage. He joined up like everybody else. He’s dead, somewhere over there in the desert.”
MacIan winced.
“I owe what little I still got to the Commander. So when he asked me to carve one up, I start carvin’. Been twenty years. In the bad times I’d do four, sometimes eight, a
MacIan moved closer.
Otis lifted the dead man’s arm away from his body and pointed with the scalpel. “See how the skin is pale and grayish-yellow? Right there. Under the arm where the sun can’t affect its true color. And it feels hard, like wax. And here’s some blisters filled with blood and turned all blackish-bluish-purple.” Otis stared at MacIan solemnly. “They die in peace, them that freeze to death.”
“Can you tell what happened?”
“First, I gotta ask why a guy was out in the weather with no coat and no shoes.” He cranked his head to a skeptical angle, puffing out two questioning lips.
“They’re still stuck in the ice,” MacIan lied.
Otis grinned. “Bet they was. How high that rock he froze to?”
“Fifty, sixty feet, maybe more.”
“I ask because, his leg . . . bag-a-bones. Broke, crushed, smashed. Knee joint pulverized. This guy fell from way up high, way more than sixty feet, and crashed several times before he hit bottom.” Otis illustrated with a hand-puppet version of a man ricocheting down a mountain, adding several disturbing sound effects. He lifted the dead man’s pants from the back of a chair and held them from a belt loop, aiming the scalpel at a spot on the leg. “See these long tears and scratches here, from above the knees all the way down to the bottom?”
MacIan bent to study the pants.
Otis screwed up one eye and thwacked MacIan with his index finger on his metal nameplate. “This sorry sonnova-bitch fell off that mountain and disintegrated the bottom half of himself. Then! he crawled to that big rock to pull himself up outta the snow. Then! he froze dead.” Otis folded his arms over his chest with great finality.
MacIan thought Otis was probably right, but there was something about this little guy that didn’t sort with the situation. “So you do cut people open?”
Otis dumped a cup of strong disinfectant into a tray. “Not officially. Not like I get paid for it. I started here back when people still had people. Went to school right down the road. In my school the coolest guy was the one who made the biggest fool of himself, so I was definitely the coolest. Ended up with a kid and his sixteen-year-old mama. Came here, knocked on the door, hat in hand, begging for any work I could get. The Commander hooked me up.” He paused to shake his head in amazement. “A black teenager, off the street! To this day I do not know why. But I do know this! I’m all about Commander Konopasek. Bit of a, well I don’t know how to say it, but you, you giant-ass mutherfuckka . . . you-will-not-trifle-with that man. Don’t make no difference how big you are. You hear me?”
MacIan bowed his head and put his hand on his heart.
Otis made a face that promised he’d hold MacIan to it and went on with his work. “The doctor we had got fired in a budget thing. Sometimes weeks’d go by and bodies piled up. But I just kept sweepin’ up. Kept my mouth shut. I had a good thing and I wasn’t going to put my foot in it.
“One day, they sent a medical school student up from Pitt who did really good autopsies; he was really good. We were the only ones down here, same age, same sense of humor. So he taught me medical stuff. How a body works made sense to me right away. He said I had — the hands.” He made jazz hands, and continued. “I did a little doctoring on the side. Friends and family. Beer money.
“Then they started them consolidations and nobody came to do the autopsies. And when the guards walked out of the Prison over in Somerset, them psychos came and took everything, including my wife. Me and my boy moved into a room in the back there, used to be a storage. He joined up like everybody else. He’s dead, somewhere over there in the desert.”
MacIan winced.
“I owe what little I still got to the Commander. So when he asked me to carve one up, I start carvin’. Been twenty years. In the bad times I’d do four, sometimes eight, a
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