Slowly, inexorably, I’m turning into a pirate.
I’ve lost one of my legs above the knee. Never ask why. I’ll not speak of it.
What’s left of my family — Mom, Jenna, Mom’s boyfriend Doug — sit around the table I bought from Grandma 10 years ago.
Tonight, I wore my new prosthetic and the sweatpants I’d cut into shorts so everyone would feel sorry for me.
I made brisket.
None of them asks about the new leg, or casts a passing glance its way. They do, however, gaze at the brisket, lips smack-smacking at the steaming meat still simmering in one of grandma’s old Fiestaware bowls.
The scent of the brisket does little to mask the stink of those rotten avocados I didn’t have the energy to toss in the outside garbage. It was enough to strap on the new leg and clean the kitchen. So now my apartment reeks of brisket and rotting avocados and something much fouler. I know they think it’s me.
In actuality, the culprit is in my ass.
Still, the family consumes my brisket with the ferocity and occasional excited sounds of starving scavengers.
Afterwards, we shuffle into my living room. All their shoes chuffing across Grandma’s Turkish rug send dust motes into the air. In the amber cast of my floor lamp they twinkle like gold dust, which would be a beautiful image if many elements of the situation were different.
To wit: my asshole itch has become unbearable. I can’t scratch it. Maybe if I head to the couch, to the arm — but Jenna, goddamn Jenna, beats me there, flopping down at the couch’s edge, placing her hand on the arm on which I intend to sit. She always usurps my moves, ever since we shot out of momma connected to each other at the shoulder.
We were a rare and special pair. Only 30% of conjoined twins are male and female. And that horrible girl tore off me. It wasn’t the doctors. They came into the picture because she ripped herself away, and the doctors had to fix us. Dear Sister Jenna did this, Jenna-Jenna, head full of henna, who inherited grandma’s double-wide, while continuing to milk momma for the social security.
I turn to the other side of the sofa, but Doug is there, and it would be strange and uncomfortable if I were to jam my junk on the sofa arm so close to his grizzly face.
I’ll have to ignore the itch, I decide.
More dust — or dead skin and dandruff — jettisons into the atmosphere when I plop myself down on the couch between them.
“I’ve got the timer set for the coffee,” I tell everyone. “Should be about ten minutes, and then I’ll bring out the coffee cake. It’s quite good. I got it at the Mexican bakery. They were nice enough to deliver it, too, you know, since I can’t drive these days.”
They murmur about coffee and about cake, but not a damn word about why I can’t drive.
I hate them.
They hate me.
Which came first? Was it always there? Or did grandma’s death infect them with a greed so heady and seductive they’d rather I died so they wouldn’t have to feel guilty about cutting me out for no reason other than grandma didn’t approve of my lifestyle? Which was strange since I have no lifestyle. She was just a mean old bird who needed an enemy.
Mom, seated in my club chair, futzes with the remote control while Jenna and Doug watch.
I ponder my next moves. First, I'll excuse myself to go into the bathroom where I'll let the shadow out of my ass. To combat the attendant stench, I'll burn a match and breathe through my mouth. Then, the prosthetic comes off and the shadow assumes its rightful place. Finally, I'll make my big entrance, walking without crutches or a prosthesis. I'll open with, “I’m guessing you’re all curious about the horrible smell..."
My family and Doug will gasp at the sight of the swirling leg-shaped mass where my old leg used to be. Gasp they will! Reality as they know it? Gone!
When it’s good and ready, it’ll release itself and do its work, beginning with Jenna. Soon enough, Grandma’s fortune will be mine.
All that brisket slows me down. I need to gather strength to begin the journey. Meanwhile, the family chats about the baseball playoffs and Mom switches channels trying to find a game. She catches me staring and offers a bland smile.
I wasn't looking at her, but at the corner behind her chair, where the shadow once dwelled; remembering how we met.
***
Nobody in my family picked me up from the hospital, so I took the bus home. I live alone in a small apartment on the second floor. There is no elevator, so it took me ten minutes to get upstairs.
For an entire week, I stayed on the couch because there was no TV in the bedroom, and I found the noise comforting. Whenever I had to get up, I’d have to choose between the crutch, which I hated due to a lack of upper body strength and armpit chafing, not to forget the bruising and bleeding, or else strap on the prosthesis, a difficult job, and painful, due to my skin rejecting it.
In order to show my family how bad my life had gotten and thus compel sympathy enough so they'd cut me in on some of grandma’s money, I decided to plan a dinner party. Invitations were sent, the menu was planned. But my apartment was in ghastly shape. I needed help.
I hired a guy off TaskRabbit who was the lowest bidder who didn’t look dangerous. His name was Justin, and in his online picture, he wore a monocle and a friendly smile. The smile was comforting in that it seemed authentic, and the monocle told me he was precise in whatever he undertook, from apartment cleaning to affecting a vintage fashion style.
Upon his arrival, I noted the bright yellow gloves peeking out of his jacket’s chest pocket. Also, his monocle was smudgy. Also, his smile had been replaced by a grim line dotted with blisters. Beyond that madness, his N95 mask had slipped off his face and rested on his clavicle like a fuckin’ ascot!
Usually, cleaners bring a bucket and a mop, sometimes a vacuum. All Justin brought was a bundle of rags arranged as a hobo’s bindle. He’d even tied them to a stick.
“Where’s the gear?” he had the temerity to ask me, me the employer.
Before I could reply, he issued a hacking cough. With an open mouth!
“Cover your mouth!” I hadn’t meant to shriek. It escaped like an errant fart —surprise, motherfucker! — and banged around the room until consumed by the stunned silence.
Afraid he’d run off before any cleaning was done, I said, “Apologies, I’m a germaphobe.”
He nodded. The monocle dropped off, landing on the filthy rug, but Justin didn’t appear to notice. “I’m all up-to-date on the shizzwhats.” He mimed needle shots in the upper arm. “My problem is allergies.”
“Um, I have some supplies under the kitchen sink, and there’s a mop in the pantry.” My crutch and working leg thumped around as I turned a half-circle, resigned to fetching the Windex and 409 myself. If that monocle was still on the floor when I got back—
“I see you got only the one drumstick, lad,” he said in a weird — now Cockney accent — coming around to stare at my missing leg, which I’d not attempted to hide, favoring those sweatpants I cut into shorts.
He followed his rude observation with a banging sneeze. This time I leaped at him, crutches advancing with ill intent, prosthetic hitching back in memory of past physicality. I aimed to kick this punk in the ass and forcibly close his mouth with the rubber crutch tip.
But Justin had other ideas. His eyes bulged unnaturally. He sprang out of my reach. Whatever agility enabled this move was gone in seconds, when his body wracked in every direction like something was trying to escape him.
I got my balance and calmed myself. Wouldn’t be of any use if I fell.
Justin staggered around the room, gasping and retching as though summoning a hairball. He bumped aside my club chair and scudded into the corner, clapping a hand on each wall. His face turned purple, so I clomped over to the phone to call an ambulance, and was in fact raising the phone to my ear when Justin made a sound, loud as a car’s backfire, then sputtered with great oily wheezes until he threw open his mouth and yacked. A gallon of liquid splatted into the corner.
At first I thought it was vomit, but too dark, black-dark.
Then, I understood. He’d puked up a shadow.
The same height and general size as Justin, it mimicked his death throes, twisting, spinning, convulsing, until its progenitor fell dead to the floor, and it froze in place.
The ambulance guys mumbled something about a stroke or an aneurysm when they wheeled the dead body out of my apartment, snarking about the general uncleanliness and terrible smell. I wanted to tell them Justin was going to fix all of that, but they were gone as was most of Justin.
His shadow remained in the corner. I stared at it for hours and days, days and hours, daring it to twitch, feeling watched. In desperation, I sprayed it with 409 and used one of Justin’s rags to wipe it away, but nothing changed, and it would not move.
Until one night it did. I was watching a Columbo marathon, all logy from painkillers. The phantom leg phenomenon was hitting me hard. I kept trying to scratch an itch that wasn’t real, in between bouts of intense pain, and memories of nerve-endings, of flesh, of wholeness.
As I fake rubbed what was not there in hope of relief, I saw a tiny bubble pull away from the wall, then collapse back. This first glimpse was out of the corner of my eye, so I pretended to watch Columbo nail the perp while simultaneously clocking the shadow. More bubbles expanded, contracted, until dozens of them burbled like soup simmering.
It was time to run, but how? The crutch had fallen to the floor. In those moments of desperately groping for it, the shadow finally extricated from the wall and swooped at me!
I screamed, cringed, protected my face. Columbo disappeared. Lights went dark. It whirled around me. A putrid bouquet of soggy peat and human excrement assaulted my nose. The air iced up. My skin prickled. My thoughts got dark, too. I was going to die as Justin died, a purple-faced ghoul deflated on my rug. But it never wrapped me in its cocoon, as was my fear.
Instead, it occupied the space where my leg once existed.
I won’t bore you with details of our cohabitation, our quiet understanding, or its intense power. Let’s just say, I didn’t require crutches or a plastic appendage to walk. I’ll also admit, sadly, that anybody in my building who’d ever wronged me, soon regretted it. If a person cared to investigate, they’d note the cluster of unexplained aneurysms in my general vicinity.
***
Mom has found a contest show. Everyone opines about the skill level of the optimistic dance troupe.
"I wish I could dance like that," I say, ending on a sigh.
It's delightful, the tension. No, 'poor dears,' or 'you'll dance again, just differently.' There was only a gripping silence while the TV audience clapped wildly.
Time to let Justin out of the hole so he can take his rightful place. I excuse myself to the bathroom. It takes me two minutes to get off the couch. Nobody offers to help. Everybody keeps their eyes on the TV, but I know they watch, especially when I straight up hop one-legged across the room.
Five minutes later, I’m ready for the grand entrance. I’ve replaced the cut-off sweatpants with Angus Young-style black shorts. I want to look my best. For good luck, I run a finger over the separation surgery scar on my shoulder. It’s still tender after all these years. Regret prods me. How did we all come to despise each other? Avarice? All I know is that if the tables were turned, and I’d inherited the double-wide and all the money, I’d share.
A deep breath, a last glance at Justin’s shadow, and I enter the living room, surprised to see everyone huddling by the front door with their coats on.
“No coffee? No cake?” I ask, forgetting for a second that I don’t give a fuck if they drink coffee or eat cake, because the point of tonight is—
“No, it’s late, and traffic, blah-blah, you know, but it was really delish, bro,” says Jenna, eyes glued to her phone.
“I’m glad you cook,” Mom mumbles. “Valuable skill. Can’t have the sugars, though. Cross I bear.” She unlocks the first of my three deadbolts.
“Sorry about your leg,” says Doug, gaping at the dark vortex that’s resolved into the perfect copy of a cartoon pirate’s wooden leg. The only giveaway to the illusion is a slight cloud pulsing around it.
The coffee timer dings, which no longer matters. A surge of hot power ignites my non-existent nerve endings, followed by the bubbling.
“Huh, that’s different,” Doug says.
These are the last words he — or anyone who ate my brisket tonight —utters, except for me.
At the tripartition of Justin’s shadow and subsequent assault on my greedy family, I giggle and yell, “That’ll learn ya good, maties!”