Dead Things Are Gross

I was listening to the audiobook "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" by David Sedaris. At one point, he was talking about a time in his life when he became obsessed with death. He worked in a lab that did autopsies. He made it sound fun and exhausting and insane.

Just in passing, Sedaris mentioned a medical text book called "Medicolegal Investigations of Death". In it, he saw a picture of a homeless man's corpse covered with fungus. He tried to write a poem about it.

I immediately stopped the audiobook, and wrote down the title of this book. "Medicolegal Investigations of Death". Sounds groovy.

Later, at a computer, I looked the book up on various websites. The latest (3rd) edition of the book, brand new, cost US$277. No. No, I simply can't buy that.

"Known as the bible of forensic pathology" Amazon promised me. Damn you.

So I checked the online used bookstores. There was a 2nd edition copy of the book available for US$170.

No, I said. No way. Not a chance. Not in a million years.

Two days later, I ordered the book.

(Today, to write up these comments, I searched Amazon and Chapters -- the fourth edition is out. And it's selling for US$102. Goddamn it. When did that happen?)

* * *

Things I Have Learned From Reading Most of the First Chapter of "Medicolegal Investigations of Death" (2nd Edition)

Rigor mortis isn't useful in determining time of death, as there is a lot of variation with onset and departure. In fact, rate of decomposition itself isn't always a useful way of learning anything.

(A gruesome picture demonstrates this -- a man and a woman were murdered at roughly the same time by "a mentally deranged son". Mom was murdered in the cool basement and Dad was murdered in the warm attic. His body is bloated and purple, while she looks very ordinary.)

Rigor mortis is caused by lactic acid and other chemicals building up in the muscles. That's what makes the musculature go rigid. Old people, young children, and invalids often don't have a lot of muscle fibre, so rigor may be weaker in their cases.

Warmer temperatures cause rigor to occur faster. A colder temperature (eg. refrigeration) delays it from happening. Seizures, strenuous activity, or a high fever just prior to death can cause lactic acid to build up in the muscles, and thus cause rigor to occur sooner.

Rigor mortis will disappear as soon as nine to twelve hours in extremely hot temperatures.

Typically, rigor is noted for investigation purposes because it might be a sign that a body has been moved. For example, say I murder someone and leave him sitting in an office chair for a few hours. Then I dump the body on a street corner. His body would have rigor indicating that he'd been in a sitting position.

* * *

Obese bodies decompose faster.

I can't decide if this is good news or bad news.

* * *

After you die, your digestive juices start working on your own body. In other words, once dead you start to digest yourself.

* * *

Livor mortis is how your blood pools after death, going in the direction of gravity. So, if you're lying flat on your face, your blood will pool in your face -- except those places where your face is pushed hard against the floor. Those pushed parts have compressed the capillaries and the skin will appear white. The rest of your face will be purple.

(There is a gruesome picture in the book to demonstrate this. A man's face is purple and bloated, except for a large white patch running from his forehead, down the side of his nose, to his chin. Well, I assume his face is purple. All the photos are black and white.)

This pooling of the blood is also known as "lividity". Fixed lividity occurs when the blood pools and becomes trapped in place. It's trapped because of the gelling of the blood and the constriction of fat.

* * *

"Drying of the scrotal skin is sometimes mistaken for bruising."

(There is a gruesome picture of a penis, with purple balls. But in order for us to get a better look, some tweezers are pulling on the "scrotal skin".)

* * *

It was around this point that I felt queasy and gross and decided to put the book to one side. Much to my surprise, I am no longer immune to the effects of grossness. I have aged, and become sensitive to such matters.

Still, I'm thinking about painting a portrait of a dead man's face, described as follows:

"Postmortem destruction by rats, followed by mummification. The body was found resting in a relatively dry place in winter too cold for blowfly activity. Death occurred about fives weeks prior to discovery of the body."

Evidently rats like the soft, wet bits of the face -- the eyes and the lips.

Ew.

Tinker Bell Economics

I was having an argument with someone online about economics. I argued that the economy is based on the "Tinker Bell" principle. When Tinker Bell is hurt, Peter Pan turns to the screen and says, "Everyone clap, and Tinker Bell will come back to life!" Everyone claps (supposedly) and she comes back to life. Everything is good.

I got this Tinker Bell economics idea from President George W. Bush. When the terrorists attacked, he was asked by the media, "What can people do?"

Go out and buy big appliances, he said. Keep on spending. That will keep the economy going.

This struck me as total madness. That's how we can make a difference? Buy maxing out our credit cards? Is this really how the world works?

Lately, on the radio, I've been hearing people saying the same thing. We're having hard economic times, reporters say. What can we, as individuals do, to fix it?

Go out and spend, the economists answer. Have faith in the economy. That will make it healthy again.

This kind of talk reminds me of "planned obsolescence". Back in the day, big corporations realized that if they built things that break quickly, consumers will have to buy more. They spoke about this concept in public. Seriously. It was no secret, even though it was insane. The makers of crap believed people would be overjoyed at the notion of items that break and having to buy new crap. Eventually they realized their error and took the concept underground.

The notion that the economy is fixed when they tell us all to buy crap -- will the eventually go underground too? Because it's inherently offensive.

It all seems insane to me. And because I am a temperamental type, I vented online in a forum. Economics is bullshit. This isn't a science. The economy is make-believe. It's all nonsense. Tinker Bell is a poor role model.

Someone of a stabler mind stepped forward to tell me I'm wrong. Economics is a real science. Obviously I had no idea what I was talking about. I am a mad man. Shut up, retard.

Well, maybe. I thought to myself. Maybe I am full of shit. So I did a search on "Tinker Bell" and "economics" on Google and found loads of webpages that critique modern economics in exactly the terms I use.

Have faith in the economy, and it will recover! Lose faith and it will collapse! Keep spending! Keep taking out loans to buy things. If you don't BUY, civilization will DIE.

The weirdest part is some economists aren't mocking the economy when they say this. No sir. They're merely describing the economy. It's all Tinker Bell. Now how can we work in this mass-hypnosis model of capitalism?

One writer speculated that people attacked the Bush administration, and this destroyed the economy. People were so eager to get him out of office, they were too harsh. This caused a lack of faith. And that's why the sky is falling.

This sort of thinking becomes very strange. If you genuinely believe in Tinker Bell Economics, you have to be very worried about what you say and do. Because if you tell someone the economy is bad, and they believe you, you could bring down the whole economy -- you could start a panic.

Is this why economists so often fail to speak English? If they're understood, they could cause chaos. An economist in Brazil is overheard complaining about the price of nuts, and the next thing you know the markets crash and the streets are red with blood.

So you have to be optimistic at all times. Fake it. The cheery smile on your face will keep everything stable and sane. This explains so much about North American politics and culture that I worry I have stumbled on some sort of secret. Feign happiness. Keep up a good front. Ignore problems.

Soon they will take me away -- to prevent me from bringing down the entire system.

If there are any sensible economists out there who understand these things, could they reassure me that money isn't make-believe?

Fly Straight Up

Every time I tried to fly straight up in the air, as high as I could, I'd hit an electric barrier of pleasure. It prevented me from going any higher. My plan was to fly off planet earth into outer space. I've never managed to do it. So far.

(This is in my dreams. I can't really fly.)

Hitting this barrier isn't unpleasant, but annoying. It feels like being zapped with tickling electricity, and the dream always ends shortly after that.

Were other dreamers experiencing this, I wondered? Were they flying straight up and getting zapped? Are dreamers trapped on planet earth? I put the question to lucid dreamers on the Internet. None of them had experienced anything like this. It seemed the problem was unique to me.

This was disappointing. I want the dream world to have rules consistent for everyone. Dream should be a place. Lately I feel dream is just another way of thinking about things, where thoughts and ideas become concrete objects and events.

One night, a few months ago, without really thinking about it, I tried flying straight up again. I hadn't planned on it. Just one of those things.

Only this time, It was different. There was a hole in the sky. It looked very much like a heating duct opening. I flew up it, and grabbed the edges. A young woman I know from work was standing there. She leaned over so I could see her breasts. She was also offering me the hem of her low-cut blouse. I grabbed it; she stood up, and in so doing so, pulled me up into the room.

She said, "How many times do I have to tell you there's nothing up here?"

But looking around, I could see she was wrong. There was a lot up here. It looked like a luxurious condo apartment, full of amazing furniture. On one wall, I saw a huge portrait of a young boy's face. Instinctively, I knew that I'd painted this portrait. The boy's face was partially covered with branches.

I woke up.

Why would that woman lie to me? There are things up there worth seeing. Was she the one keeping me from flying into space? Was she the barrier, now in the form of a person?

Clearly something had changed. Now there was a hole in the barrier and a new world to explore.

* * *

While working out on my elliptical trainer and thinking about all of this, I closed my eyes and I listened to music on my iPod. Recently I've discovered this odd and fun way of listening to music: pretend that the music is depicting actual events, much like the music of a Bugs Bunny cartoon reflecting the actions of Bugs and friends. Bugs Bunny tip toes, and the music tip toes. He slams Yosemite Sam in the face with a shovel and the music crashes.

So I closed my eyes and imagined actions for the music, letting the mind movie unfold in front of me. I pictured flying up that hole in the sky and entering that apartment again.

This time, the woman is not my coworker. She's a woman with an octopus for a head. And she's vomiting continuously. The vomit is a thick, slimy green. It comes out of her in a constant flow. We fight in time to the music. But it's a tie. I try cutting off her tentacles with a knife. They keep growing back.

Weird. Interesting. Maybe I should paint a portrait of a woman with an octopus for a head. Later, I surfed the Internet looking at photos of octopi and pondered all of this.

Clearly I had to get up through that hole again, up into that apartment. There's a lot going on up there. I decided that, if I had a lucid dream any time soon, I would try flying up through the hole in the sky, and see where it takes me this time. Maybe I would encounter this octopus-headed-woman-monster, but it was worth the risk.

* * *

Last night:

I'm in some kind of warehouse and I decide to fly straight up. Above me, I can see the same vent hole in the sky/ceiling. Great! The only problem is flying up there. When I jump, straight off the ground, I end up struggling in the air, dog paddling. And slowly drift back to earth. I can't achieve the height necessary.

A warehouse worker sees me struggling. He's an older man with a scruffy black beard. He bends down, puts his hands together, and holds them out.

"Step on my hands, and I'll give you a boost!" he says.

We try this, but it doesn't work. I still can't get the height I need.

I see a flight of stairs nearby, and realize I can climb up the steps and jump off the landing.

"I can fly better if I jump off higher ground," I explain to him.

I know this from years of flying in lucid dreams. Diving off a chair or a balcony or a cliff ledge always works much better than simply jumping up. I soar instead of dog-paddling.

The warehouse worker seems startled by this stairs suggestion. And I get that weird feeling I get when a dream character behaves in a way I don't understand or expect. Who are these people in my dreams? Why would a dream character be startled by something I say?

I get to the top of the stairs and I'm ready to jump. Wait. What if I'm not dreaming? But I quickly shake the idea. I was just swimming in the air two seconds ago.

I jump off the steps and soar through the air. Soon enough, I'm at the vent. But this vent doesn't lead to a luxurious apartment. Instead, it's just a vent -- a narrow metal tunnel. I try to climb inside, but it's too small. When I get my head in, I feel my body lengthen and distort, pulling into a spaghetti like strand. I'm slurped up into the vent. It's a very weird feeling.

The next thing I know, I'm in a shopping mall. It sort of looks like the Sears at Carlingwood. There are two employees there, two women. I'm walking along, wondering what's going on. The female employees walk with me. A woman's voice comes over a loud speaker system. She lists off a number, and then an effect.

"One, disco lights. Two, purple light. Three..."

After she lists off some more, I tell her to stop, and she does. I realize that all I need to do, to make an effect happen, is say the number.

"One!" I say, and the lights go into disco mode. A disco ball appears and spins, casting light reflections on all the walls.

"Two!" and the lights go purple.

Then I try random numbers. "Nineteen!" I say, and there's this loud bang, like a gunshot. I laugh in surprise.

I've walked down a hall, the two employees going with me. They seem both baffled and bemused by the goings on. There's a door at the end of the hall.

"I want a beautiful naked woman to come walking through that door," I say.

The door opens, and in walks a fat, plumber-like man in a shirt too small for him. I laugh at the sight.

I go through the door, and I'm outside some kind of apartment complex. There are stairs and multiple apartment doors nearby. Still lucid, I wonder what I should do. Maybe if I found something interesting to look at, I think to myself.

Often in lucid dreams, the simplest patterns can be complicated and hypnotic. I once spent most of a dream staring at cracks in a sidewalk.

While pondering this, I find a plastic toy on the steps. It's an action figure best described as "rock man" -- a cartoon like "mountain", that has arms and legs sticking out of it, and a face on the rock. The arms and legs are muscular, and the toy looks somewhat macho. Looking it over, I see a little latch on the head. Flicking it, I realize the latch can is a spring-based catapult for pebbles. You flick the latch and you can shoot pebbles at targets.

Then I woke up.

I could tell you what some of this means. But where's the fun in that?

* * *

Lately I get this feeling that watching a movie or a TV show is like having a dream that someone else wrote for you. This might explain a recent study that discovered people who grew up watching black and white television sometimes have black and white dreams. They've learned to dream in a certain way.

If dreams are a way of organizing and compiling thoughts and experiences, we should be careful what kind of films and TV we watch. Maybe your brain is being structured by bad sitcoms. That would certainly explain the numerous dreams I've had involving Star Trek The Next Generation.

What about writing? If you read about someone else's dreams, have you experienced their dream? Has reading this changed your brain in some indefinable way?

Six Eyes Scratched Out -- fiction

This is yet another Vincent story. There are one, two, three other stories. This fourth story will be the last one for a while, because I'm having some trouble writing the fifth one.

To be clear, I didn't write all of these this week. They came out of my brain over a period of several years.

As always, any feedback (good, bad, or indifferent) would be appreciated.


Six Eyes Scratched Out
By Nikolaus Maack

A drunk laid out six silver dollars on the bar. He put them down in a row, careful to keep them all buffalo side up. It was eleven in the morning, and the bar had just opened.

Vincent watched the drunk with a patience that only saints and bartenders have. The little man with the silver coins was in his sixties. He was withered and worn. His hands shook. It took him a long time to get the coins just so.

“What the fuck is this?” Vincent asked gently.

“Beer please,” the man said. “Not domestic shit. I’m feeling fancy. A nice brown ale. Do you have New Castle?”

“Do I have New Castle?” Vincent repeated. “Marky, I have beers you cannot even imagine. This is not just a bar. You are in a living beer museum. Now what the fuck is with the coins?”

Marky stared at Vincent with practiced indignation. “It’s money, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s money,” Vincent said.

“So I’m paying for a beer, right?”

“That you are, Marky. But these are silver dollars. I don’t know shit about coins, but they’re probably worth more than a dollar apiece. There’s a pawn shop down the block, you could hock them.”

Vincent picked up one of the coins with his fat fingers. The coin was heavier than he expected. He turned it over, and saw a face in profile - with the eye scratched out. It was the face of an old Indian, with feathers in his hair. Maybe the coin had been attacked with a knife point. There was almost a little hole surrounded with tiny scratches. Someone really worked at it.

Vincent put the coin back in the row, heads up. He flipped over the other five coins - six faces in profile, each with the eye dug out.

“Pawn shop wouldn’t take them?” Vincent asked sympathetically.

“It’s still money,” Marky insisted.

“Did you scratch the eyes out?”

“What’s with all the talking? I just want a beer. And it’s still money.”

“Right,” Vincent said. “It’s still money.”

Marky sat back on the bar stool, crossing his arms on his chest, looking like he just won a critical point in a debate.

“Does your mom know you stole these from her purse?” Vincent teased.

“I didn’t steal them, I found them.” Marky uncrossed his arms, and began emphasizing his words by repeatedly pointing at the coins. “Fair’s fair, they’re mine. Finders and keepers! Losers and weepers! Who said life is fair? Nobody ever said that. Life is not fair. And that’s what I’m saying.”

He crossed his arms again, triumphantly.

“Oh, the coins are yours,” Vincent admitted. “No fucking doubt. But you want to make them mine, so I want to know a little about their history.”

“History,” Marky said, trying to think. “Well, they’ve got Indians on them.”

“Right.”

“Like cowboys and Indians,” Marky said. “When I was a kid. That’s history, right?”

“I was thinking more recent history,” Vincent said. “Like where the coins came from.”

“The mint,” Marky said. “That’s where coins come from. Government makes them. Commemorative coins and such. They sell them on TV. Saw it myself.”

“Who do you think owned the coins before you?”

“No idea.”

“Why do you suppose he scratched all the eyes out, like that?”

“Can’t say. Don’t know.”

“You’re not curious?” Vincent asked.

“Not really. It’s money.”

“Marky, you’re missing the bigger picture here. They’re not just coins. What we’ve got here is a mystery.”

“I just want a beer,” Marky said quietly.

Vincent pretended not to hear him. “Look. See these coins? Someone took the time to scratch six eyes out of six coins. That takes a lot of fucking time. They damaged the coins and now they’re worth a lot less. So stabbing the eyes out meant something to whoever did it. Yeah, the coins are still money, still worth a dollar each. But why would someone do that? Doesn’t it make you wonder?”

Marky looked at the coins as if seeing them for the first time. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Now that you’ve come to mention it, why would somebody do that?”

“Maybe we could figure it out together. Solve the mystery.”

“Okay, sure. Only, could I have a beer, first? It helps me think.”

“So where did you find the coins? That might help us figure it out.”

Marky let out a long sigh. With some reluctance, he said, “Well… To be honest and such… I found them on a tombstone, in the graveyard. They were in a blue bag. Some kind of cloth. I think I’ve still got it.”

He dug around in the pockets of the sport jacket he was wearing. It was too big for him. The jacket used to fit him, but he shrank inside of it over the years. Out came some scraps of paper and some lint and a photograph of a cat. (“That’s my cat,” he explained.) Some more bits of paper came out. And then finally a small blue silk bag with a yellow drawstring. It looked quite fancy.

“They were in this bag,” he said, putting it down next to the coins. “And the bag was sitting on this tombstone. I sometimes cut through the graveyard, on my way home from social services. It’s quiet, with the dead people, and I like it. I like quiet. So I’m walking along and I see this bag, and I say, ‘What’s that?’ (Only I say it to myself, not out loud.) And I go over and I pick up the bag, and it’s heavy. I open it up and there’s six coins inside, so I look around and nobody is watching me. So I take the bag and stick it in my pocket. That’s what happened.”

“You took these coins off a grave?” Vincent asked.

“Yeah, right. Sitting on a tombstone.”

“So they must have been some kind of offering to the dead person. I think I’ve heard of people doing that before. Coins on graves.”

“You mean like flowers or something. To show respect and such? I guess so. Don’t people usually put flowers on a grave? Wouldn’t that make more sense?”

“Maybe the person left the coins on the grave because they owed a debt to the dead person, wanted to pay it,” Vincent said.

Marky thought about this for a moment, but he looked like he was pretending to think, strictly for Vincent’s benefit. “Dead people don’t need money,” Marky said with an odd certainty.

“They don’t need flowers either.”

“That’s true. But I can’t buy beer with flowers,” he hinted.

“So let’s say the coins are some kind of tribute to the dead person. Like flowers. So why scratch out the eyes like that? What’s the point?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think, Marky. Think of an answer.”

“I’m no good at thinking.”

“Well, then, just take a fucking guess.”

They were silent for a moment. Marky leaned on the bar, holding his head in his hands, staring down at the coins. He seemed depressed as he leaned there. His eyes, typically not very bright, clouded slightly as if turning inward.

He sighed, resigning himself to something. “So, okay. I’m just guessing. But maybe, the guy who died, buried there, was like, somebody’s father. I think it was a man’s name on the grave.”

Marky poked one of the coins with his finger, then put his fingertip on it and moved the coin in small circles, as if caressing it.

“And so the son, who is still alive, is mad at the dad. But, you know, he thinks he owes the old bastard something. Like flowers. Or money. Or just respect, right? Maybe a payoff. A bribe. Something to say that they’re square. Fuck off, all debts are paid.”

Marky picked up the coin and held it tenderly in his palm. He muttered to himself, “My dad was all about money. Counted every fucking penny. Miserly son of a bitch.”

“So maybe this son,” Marky continued, “he wants to pay the dad back. Settle accounts and such. So, he gets these coins, right? Orders them on TV. And he wants to give them to his dead dad.”

His voice had changed. The wheedling, silly voice of a drunk was slipping into something else. Harder, serious. He became a different man.

“Only, the eyes,” Marky continued. “The eyes of the Indian, can see. That bothers the guy, you know? The eyes can see the dad is a fucking prick. And the kid… Oh, he’s old now, but he still thinks of himself as a kid… He’s tired of seeing his father. The memory of him, in his head. He can’t shake that. The dad beat the kid all the time, maybe.

“So, what I’m thinking? The son takes a knife - a really big one, like a kitchen knife, maybe. And he carves the eyes out. It takes time, just like you said. And carving the eyes out is to say, ‘Dad, I respect you, but I can’t look at you. Because if I look at you, I’ll be judging you.’ So he cuts out the eyes.”

Marky mulled this over for a moment. “And that’s why he put them together in the bag, too, maybe. Like a bag over the head of the Indians. Of course the coins came with the bag, so it was convenient to just dump them in there. So the Indian heads are blind, and hidden too. Like, when you love someone and you can’t see what a fucker they are. Unconditioned love, right?

“So the coins on the grave are one last big ‘Fuck you, Dad,’ but at the same time a kind of love and ending to the shit.”

Marky brightened up suddenly. “And then the best part is? I come along, I take the coins, and I can use them to buy a beer!”

Vincent didn’t smile or laugh. Sensing this little joke didn’t go over so well, Marky’s smile faded away into a grim little frown.

“So how long you figure it took the guy to carve out the eyes like that?” Vincent asked.

“Pff. I don’t know. Hours, maybe?”

“And you said you saw the coins on sale on TV?”

“Right.”

“How much were they going for?”

“Can’t remember, exactly. But if I had to guess… I think it was a set of ten coins for, like…. Thirty bucks, maybe?”

“So what do you suppose happened to the other four coins?” Vincent asked. “Ten in a set, right?”

“Well, I guess the guy wanted to just scratch out the eyes. Maybe the first four, they got too scratched up and such. Broke the coins, maybe, he was so mad, scratching at them and…. Maybe he couldn’t see because he was crying and angry? It’s got to be really tough, doing that kind of thing. Maybe the coins were too messed up, not good enough for his old man. So maybe he just threw those four away.”

Vincent nodded. “You’re a good guesser, Marky. That sounds exactly like what happened.” He started picking up the coins and putting them in the blue silk bag. “So you wanted a New Castle, right?”

“That’s right,” Marky said. “New Castle. Same beer my dad used to drink. He loved the stuff, for some reason. He was English, maybe that was it.”

Vincent left the bag of coins on the counter, and went off to find the beer. After a few seconds with his bald head in one of his many bar fridges, he found one. Vincent cracked the beer open, and poured it into a tall glass.

Once the beer was in front of Marky, Vincent picked up the bag of coins, and held them in the air for a moment. The two of them stared at it. Neither of them said anything. Then Vincent quietly put the bag into a slot at the back of his cash register.

“My old man,” Marky said, shaking his head. He picked up the beer and took a sip. “Fucker’s been dead two decades, he’s still in my head. Not the kind of guy you can pay off with six lousy dollars. He’d never take it. Not in a million years. You can’t bribe a memory into going away.”

Vincent shrugged. “That’s why we bury the dead, right? Sometimes six feet fucking down isn’t deep enough.”

Something in Marky snapped, and he leaned forward suddenly, whispering with a strange viciousness. “You know, everyone thinks I’m just a silly old drunk, right? Everyone. So, that’s what I am. Because it’s easier, being what people expect. I don’t want to confuse them. Or myself, I suppose. I’ve been assigned a part and I play it. But Vincent, I want to tell you a secret - I’ve got depths. I am not a shallow little pond in the goddamn woods. I am an ocean. Dive into me, swim straight down, and there is no bottom to what’s down there in the dark.”

“Me too, Marky,” Vincent said. “Me too. Everyone is like that.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Can I have another beer?” Marky asked. Somehow the glass in front of him had emptied itself. “I don’t have any more money…”

“Marky, we are both oceans of depth. But your role is the silly drunk. And my role is the hard-assed bartender. No beer on credit.”

“Fair enough,” Marky sighed, smiling slightly.

Marky sat there through the afternoon and into the early evening. Vincent left him to it. Marky talked to other bar patrons now and then, and sometimes they bought him a beer. But for the most part Marky just sat there, staring at the cash register. He kept thinking about the silver coins, kept thinking how they weren’t quite good enough.

* * *

After closing the bar, Vincent strolled over to the graveyard. He knew which one to go to - the one near social services. It wasn’t too far away.

The sun was just coming up. Vincent was tired, but this wouldn’t take long. He wandered around, reading tombstones, whistling to himself a little. It wasn’t that hard to find the grave. He knew the name to look for. Marky was from the neighbourhood.

Vincent dug a hole with a large serving spoon he’d taken from the bar kitchen. Then he dropped the coins in, bag and all, and filled in the hole. He was careful to smooth over the dirt and scuff it a little. He didn’t want anyone coming along and digging up the coins.

Vincent looked at the tombstone idly, and snorted.

“Give Marky a break,” he said to the stone. “Fucker’s been through enough.”

Then he wandered away. He was satisfied by his good deed, but mostly just tired from a long day of tending bar.

Hot Wet Opera -- fiction

This is the third Vincent the bartender story. Reading the first and second stories isn't absolutely necessary, but it couldn't hurt.

Hot Wet Opera
by Nikolaus Maack

Now and then Vincent gets into an opera kind of mood. So he spins the radio dial away from oldies rock to the classical station. Somehow they're always playing opera, right when he needs it. Vincent tries to limit opera to the early afternoon, when his bar is quiet. He doesn’t want to upset the patrons too much. Some people find opera painful.

Not that Vincent gives a shit what a bunch of no good drunks think, but those no good drunks are steady customers. You've got to cut them some slack. That's how bars like his stay open.

"Rain does it," Vincent said philosophically, talking to one of his anonymous waiters. "Always the rain. Something about rain and opera just fits together. Like sex organs -- a cock into a cunt. You know? Opera and hot, steamy rain. Like today. The kind of rain that makes you wish for a large breasted woman in a white t-shirt to come walking down the street. The rain feels good, and you just know she'd be smiling, letting her clothes get soaked with wet. She'd be so happy and hot and wet, she wouldn't care who’s staring at her tits. She might even encourage looky-loos. Am I fucking right?"

The anonymous waiter nodded, although he wasn't really listening. He was reading a spy novel at the far end of the bar, waiting for his shift to start in an hour or so.

Vincent liked to talk. And he paid his waiters well. They were meant to be wallpaper, until they were needed for something important. (“Like fucking ninjas,” Vincent once said.) Vincent often spoke just to hear what words would come out of his mouth next, improvising with his voice. The anonymous waiters all learned when to grunt agreement, when to shake their heads. And when to really pay attention.

"Not that I need tits in my life right now," Vincent said. "Christ. That's the last thing I need. All you need is love? Bullshit. You want love, it helps to have some scratch. What, are you and your love going to sit in the park and that's it? You have to take love out for dinner. Maybe to a bar. Not a shit-hole like my bar - some place fancy. And it's not because love is a greedy bitch. Not at all. You want to show love you care. And how do you do that? Throw some money around. Make an effort. Okay, I’ve got the money for love. But the will? The effort? Forget it. I’m happy in my laziness."

Half-way through his love speech, the door to the outside world opened up, and a man in a trench coat stepped in. Vincent pretended to pay him no mind, and kept talking. The man had a closed umbrella in his hand, but it hadn't helped him much. The warm, misting rain had soaked him through. The guy was tall and skinny, and being soaked made him taller and skinnier. His jacket had been open, and his blue dress shirt clung to him. The guy's hair was gray and stubble short, and water beaded on his head. He wiped his brow and wet sprayed on the floor.

There were a few drunks in the bar, actively ignoring the opera. They sat in one of the front tables, muttering to each other. Besides that, the place was empty.

The tall, skinny, wet man drifted over to the bar and sat down. His face was accountant like. Someone who sees things and counts them, without understanding their true value. Tight, without any generosity to the face -- just the absolute bare essentials required to have a physical appearance.

"Vincent," the man said, in way of greeting.

"Has it been a month already?" Vincent asked. "Time. You watch it, and it crawls. You turn your back on it, and it sprints. I think my calendar is broken. It’s supposed to tell me what day it is. Instead it tells me approximately what month we’re on."

The man put his hands on the counter and spread them out flat. His fingers were long and thin, stretching out as if to take hold of the entire bar. He titled his head to one side, listening to the radio.

"Opera?" the man mumbled.

"People shrieking nonsense in foreign languages, set to music," Vincent said. "Incomprehensible to the mind, but the heart and the guts get it. The bones get it. That's the weird thing about opera. It sneaks past the brain and into the meat. Kind of like you, Charles, in a way."

"Yes," Charles said, tilting his head slightly the other way. "Suppose so."

There was a long silence. Vincent's eyes twinkled as he looked upon the man, upon Charles. Vincent let the silence play out. Charles just stared at the bar top and waited. How long could he stretch out this moment, Vincent wondered? Hours? Days? Charles rarely spoke. Vincent could barely shut up when he tried. He liked to give Charles some silence and see if the man was tempted to fill it. Charles rarely did.

"I have the package for you," Vincent finally said. "That's why you're here, right? For the package? Your monthly program of self improvement?"

"Yep," Charles said. "That's right."

Vincent reached under the counter and pulled out a large, brown, unmarked envelope. He put it in front of Charles, between the two outstretched hands. The hands crept on to the folder like two spiders, and then sat atop of it, as if testing the surface for stability. Then the spiders collapsed flat, resting on the envelope, pinning it to the bar.

There was another long silence. Vincent savored it a little, biting his lip. The opera on the radio soared and fell and soared again.

"Were you talking about love, when I came in?" Charles asked.

"I think so," Vincent said.

Charles titled his head again. His brow furrowed slightly, in remembrance. "I was in love. Once. Before."

Vincent knew what Charles meant, but he couldn't help himself. "Before?" he asked innocently.

Charles had dark, empty eyes. A shimmer of red flashed through them now, and the flat features of his minimalist face curled into something demonic. Charles pulled the words out of his throat like bloody coughs. "Before I started killing people for a living."

And then his face went flat and blank and empty once more.

"Takes all kinds," Vincent said airily, feigning indifference. He didn’t like delivering these kinds of packages. It had nothing to do with him. He didn’t even open them. All the same, it was never pleasant, somehow, handing them over. That they passed through his hands caused him some grief. Still, there were certain sacrifices he had to make in order to stay in business.

There was another long silence and they both just sat there. Vincent got an order from the barflies. He poured a pitcher of beer and gave it to the two drunks at the front table. They paid cash. When he came back to the bar again, Charles was exactly as he left him, staring blankly at the bar top. The silence stretched some more. Charles wasn't leaving. So Vincent let out a long low sigh.

Did he want to go down this road, he wondered to himself? Oh, what the hell. Give it a go. See what happens.

"You were in love?" Vincent asked politely.

"Her name was Christine. She was a poet. Studied at the university. Published. I tried to read her stuff but I never got it. Never could figure out poetry. Her parents were wealthy. She didn't need to work. Could pursue poetry full time. Christine had red hair. Kept it short. Eyes were green and caught the light so they shone like cat's eyes. Never seen anyone else with eyes like that. Except for her."

The speech suddenly stopping was almost as startling as the fact that it started at all. Vincent had never heard Charles say so much one go. He'd expected playing midwife to the story would be an all day experience. But Charles seemed chatty, which was entirely out of character.

"Where'd you meet her?" Vincent asked quickly.

Charles leaned his head forward and closed his eyes. "Coffee shop. I was working the cash. Just a kid. Nineteen maybe. They were doing a poetry night. First time ever. Set up a microphone in the corner. Christine and her friends came in, read some poetry. Can't remember what her poem was, exactly. But it gutted me. Everyone else read these awful political poems. Stuff about consumerism. Eating meat is bad. Christine was a silly, social girl. Butterfly. But when she read her poetry, she was a hawk. Her eyes. Green eyes, locked on me. Her poem was for me. And it was filthy. Almost porn. She talked about her cunt. Her need. Her hunger. For me. Christine wanted me, and she let me know it with her words."

Charles opened his eyes and inhaled deeply, as if smelling perfume off the small of a woman's neck. Or maybe the musky scent of a woman's privates.

"I went up to her after the performance. It was strange. She was shy. Surprised me. After what she'd done. That she would be shy. Made me want her more. Maybe it was a game. Not shy. Pretending. But no. She was shy. Not shy when she recited a poem. Shy in regular life. Complicated girl. I wanted to fuck her. That she was so complicated - I wanted her more. Everything. Marriage. Kids. Settling down. I just met her. Hadn't touched her yet. And I was already thinking about forever.”

Charles rubbed his eyes with his fists and muttered, “Fuck." Then he sat up and stared at the bar top again.

Vincent poured a glass of water and put it down in front of the killer. Charles took a long skinny hand off the brown envelope. There was a sweaty hand print there. Charles looked at the print for a moment, and then wrapped his fingers around the glass and brought it to his mouth. He put the glass back down, and then put his hand back over the sweaty palm print on the envelope, hiding it.

"Went home with her that night," he continued. "Back to her place. No idea what she saw in me. Said I was intense. Said she could see fire in me. Danger. Guess she was right. I never saw that stuff in me until she told me it was there. Made me crazy for her. Somehow she could see me. No one can see me. Mister Invisible. Mister Blank Piece of Paper. Mister Nobody."

The rage simmered in Charles' eyes again. But it was different. Almost tender.

"I fucked her like a bull attacking a matador. She fucked back, step for step. Kept up. I don't understand how she knew me. How she saw me. How she could step into my life right away and suddenly be the centre of it. My whole life. Her. Right away.”

Charles wrapped his hands around the envelope, holding on to it tenderly. “I strangled her. That very night. She scared the hell out of me. My feelings for her. So strong. She could have made me do anything. Anything at all. I wanted to live with her forever. Never out of my sight. By my side. I could tell she wanted the same. But I couldn’t do it. What she did to me. What she did to my heart. I loved her. It made me weak. It made me strong. I strangled her. I think, even as I did it - fucking her and strangling her at the same time - I think she knew why I was doing it. I think she wanted me to do it. To kill her.”

He picked up the envelope and slipped it into an inside coat pocket, then took another sip of water from the glass. All the passion disappeared again. Charles was blank once more.

“Killing someone,” he said, “means never having to say you’re sorry. Murder is the greatest gift you can give someone. Every killing, a mercy killing.”

Vincent whispered, “You don’t believe that.”

“No, I don’t,” Charles admitted. “I don’t believe in anything. I used to believe in something. Before. When I found out what I believed in, it scared me. I killed it. Couldn’t deal with it. Couldn’t accept it. Too much. Too powerful. Like coming face to face with God.”

“You can’t kill God,” Vincent said.

Charles snorted a laugh. He looked up from the bar top and stared Vincent in the eyes. “I kill God. I do it all the time. Going to do it this weekend,” and with two fingers he tapped his coat pocket where he’d stashed the envelope. “God can’t hide from me. I’ll shoot the fucker like a dog in the street.”

“You could stop,” Vincent suggested.

“Can’t stop. Not an option. Then I killed Christine for no reason. The moment defined me. It is who I am.”

“You could be someone else.”

“No. Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I stop, it will hurt too much.”

Tears were leaking from Charles’ eyes. They ran down his face. But he wasn’t crying. His face remained expressionless, cold, blank. The tears just flowed. He raised a hand to his face in wonder, touching the stream of tears with his finger tips, then staring at the wetness. He showed the wet tips of his fingers to Vincent.

“Nothing good can come of this,” he said, and he stood up to leave.

“I’m sorry,” Vincent said gently. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Not your fault,” Charles said. “The rain. The opera.”

And he turned and walked out the door.

“Assassins,” Vincent muttered sadly to himself. “They’re all hopeless romantics. It would be touching if it weren’t all so goddamn pointless. I’ve never met a killer who wouldn’t make a good romance novelist.”

Then louder, in his usual tone, Vincent said to the anonymous waiter, “Can’t separate some men from their pain any more than you can take away a leopard’s fucking spots, am I right?”

The waiter still had his face buried in his book. “Absolutely,” he said, not looking up.

Vincent listened to the music for a second and then sneered. “Who put this fucking opera on? Jesus Christ. It’s music for dead people. No one listens to this shit.” He turned around and spun the dial to an oldies rock station. “That’s better. Fucking Christ man, don’t do that.”

“Sorry boss,” the anonymous waiter said. “Won’t happen again.”

“Damn straight,” Vincent said, snorting in contempt. He took the half-full glass of water off the bar, and dumped the contents in the bar sink. “Fucking opera.”