Spare Ribs (A Short Story)
Wednesday, 8. August 2007, 03:52:38
His chest had been completely blown out ...
The explosive concussion of the bullets had first ruptured his skin then driven the flesh apart, shattering bone, pulping heart, lungs and muscles before severing his spinal column as they exited. They’d ended up embedded in the wall behind Vic, against which he fell. He left a psychotic abstract artist’s rendering of fresh blood, bone chips, meat and the remains of internal organs behind him as he slid to the floor.
Through the haze of shock and agony – and the astonishment that he wasn’t dead from such a brutal injury (something that never changed, no matter how many times he’d received a ‘mortal’ wound) – part of Vic’s mind wondered at how something as simple as going to a bank had descended into a visit to a charnel house.
The two men (masked, of course, one in a stocking, the other wearing a beanie with rough eyeholes cut into, which had failed to really obscure his face), brandishing sawn-off shotguns had burst in, popping the bubble of civilization with one blindingly fast slamming open of the doors. They’d demanded money, commanding everyone in the bank to get on the floor and don’t fucking move.
Although he was – for all intents and purposes – unable to die (or, at least, he hadn’t yet), Vic had moved – reflexively – when they burst in, some instinct causing his muscles to jig of their own accord. But whether toward the gunmen to attack, or away to retreat, Vic didn’t know, since conscious thought had all but fled the instant they’d turned their weapons his way.
Now – lying amid steaming heaps and pools of his own insides – Vic stared through burning eyes, breath forcing its way in hot gasps to ruined lungs, watching through the film of blood that clouded his vision as one of the gunmen shoved a bag towards a fear-struck teller, telling him to fucking fill it! As he did this, the other gunman cast his cold eyes over the rest of the horrified customers and staff.
Some whimpered, some cried, some let outright savagery cross their faces – appalled that their worlds could be invaded in such an horrific manner – while others, still, actually fainted.
However, none acted against the gunmen.
None dared, with the consequences of Vic’s sudden movements plain for all to see.
Vic’s face had contorted with the sheer suffering it caused him to simply move his head down to look at the ruins of his chest, although he did note with some faraway part of his mind that his view was closer than normal.
After all, now lacking supporting bone-structure, his torso had folded in upon itself.
He wasn’t surprised that he could move, though – or feel at all, for that matter – because he knew that meant his spinal column was already repairing itself. He could tell by the way his legs twitched and jerked spasmodically, sending unbearable shoots of nerve-pain out as they did so.
Feeling a horrible cold due to the massive blood loss, yet blinking his eyes since the heat steaming up from his ruined chest felt as though it was scalding them, Vic watched as the mince of his wounds pulsed before him.
As ever, such massive repairs to his body induced more pain than the actual cause of the injury (for some reason unknown to Vic), and it was all he could do not to cry out as his bones shifted of their own accord, his heart throbbed back into place – spraying blood everywhere as fast as his body could regenerate it and knitting itself together as it went – and his lungs desperately tried to empty themselves of their bloody contents, coalesce and refill with air before Vic passed out from lack of oxygen. Although he as much as couldn’t die, Vic still required oxygenated blood going to his brain to retain conscious functioning ...
Vic was nearly – quite literally – blue in the face before his lungs had restored themselves enough for him to snatch a tiny gasp of air. Small though it was, redolent with the sickening copper tang of his own blood, Vic welcomed it, but welcomed more the release of the terrible pressure that had built up in his brain that came with it. In many ways (that distant part of Vic’s mind thought) the lack of oxygen from having your chest blown apart was worse than the actual trauma to your torso.
Suffocating was so much more debilitating when you couldn’t die from it ...
At the speed his body was healing, Vic was already coming out of shock, and his thoughts started to cohere. He forced his eyes away from the ruin directly under them, blinked hard several times – trying to clear them – and looked around the bank ...
As if someone were slowly turning the volume of a radio from nothing to full bore, the shrieking of the baby gradually caught his attention, even through the blood pounding in his ears. But – although he could hear it – he couldn’t see it.
The second gunman, the one ‘guarding’ the first from the terrified bank patrons, whirled on the baby that Vic couldn’t see, threatening to shoot it if the infant’s mother (or father, or whatever – Vic couldn’t see who it was around the counter) didn’t shut it up.
The gunman’s words were guttural, hanging in the air with deadly promise.
Vic found that he could move now ... slightly, anyway. His body had rebuilt itself that much, at least, and let him know this by tripling the excruciation he was being subjected to.
Desperately, he looked around.
He still couldn’t move well enough, though, to attack the gunman – to stop him from killing the baby. And he surely would, given how trigger-happy he’d been so far. Although ... without a doubt, the sight of Vic moving to attack, with his chest still looking as though a cannonball had torn through it might have caused the gunman to, at least, pause. However, Vic simply didn’t yet have the strength necessary to even stand, let alone go on the attack.
There was nothing he could do ...
... and the baby continued to shriek ...
The gunman was obviously readying himself to shoot again – this time, child and parent both ...
Looking down in a panic to see how far along the repairs to his body were proceeding (though he had no difficulty feeling them), Vic’s eyes caught the appalling sight of his ribs.
They were still a mess, of course, hanging loosely out of his chest, horribly white where blood, mucous and other glistening detritus didn’t coat them. Beneath them, he could actually see his own heart beating in his yet-to-completely-close chest ... faster and faster now, almost obscene as it pulsed there, glazed in body fluids. His lungs had the appearance of macabre entities – seemingly sentient in their own right – almost separate from Vic’s control as they pushed their way back to where they belonged of their own volition, wheezing in and out, bubbles of blood popping with each breath, sending up the sour stench of his own insides to assault his nose. Blood vessels whipped like tiny snakes as they tied themselves together, the dim bank lights making them look like slick strings.
Despite the agony – despite the desperation of the situation – that remote part of Vic’s mind watched the process with an absurdly detached fascination …
… fascination through which the baby’s renewed shrieking cut …
… like a shotgun blast through the chest.
Frantically, Vic scanned the immediate area. He couldn’t get to the gunman yet, and – with all the noise caused by the baby – the gunman wouldn’t be able to hear Vic’s feeble-voiced command to stop. He needed his voice back, but, of course, getting his voice back was a low priority in the healing process compared to his heart and lungs. And Vic hadn’t gotten there, yet.
But … he needed it to distract the gunman ...
He needed something to stop him from shooting that baby ...
He needed ... something ...
And a hideous inspiration seized him.
Steeling himself for the extra excruciation he knew it would cause, moving as fast as his trembling muscles would allow before his nerve failed him, Vic reached up with one blood-slicked hand to do something he’d never done before ...
His body let him know that it didn’t want him doing this, surging spasms of pain racking him with every inch he moved, and he nearly dropped his hand back to the floor in exhaustion and agony before the healing process had sped along enough for him to be able to keep going ...
Why, that detached part of his mind wondered, was he even thinking that he should do something?
Because I can, he told it.
Knowing that what came next would be far, far worse than the torment he was currently enduring, Vic’s quivering hand closed in on his ribs. Thrust up at obscene angles, they moved inwards of their own accord towards his lungs, attempting to wrap around them as if fleeing from Vic’s agony-induced claw ...
He could see them moving faster now, as his body prepared to meld the broken and fragmented bones with those that were still, basically, whole. It was as though a hungry vacuum existed inside his chest, sucking them inwards, a prelude to the muscles and nerves and blood-vessels further knitting themselves together ...
One rib in particular seemed to lag behind the others, as if realizing Vic’s intention, but frozen by the knowledge ...
Before it could advance further ...
... Vic broke it off.
A fierce exhalation escaped him at this, and either that – or the horribly crisp sound of Vic snapping his own rib out of his own rapidly-healing chest – was somehow heard at just the moment of silence when the baby took a breath to ‘refuel’ for its wailing. The gunman turned towards Vic, ready to attack whatever he found the next threat to be ...
... and froze.
It was as Vic had hoped. The sight presented to the gunman was impossible. By all rights, Vic should be dead, the gaping hole in his chest proof of this. Instead, the gunman was faced by a terrible, shocking torso that writhed with a life of its own as it healed before his eyes.
Despite the shotgun blast in the chest – despite the gunman having seen him splattered against the wall with his own eyes (indeed, despite him having caused it) – despite everything he knew about the world telling him that it just couldn’t be possible ...
... Vic was still alive.
Before more than half a second could pass, Vic took advantage of the gunman’s sudden shock.
His arm almost contorted as he drew it up ...
... and – with the strength of someone driven almost mad by pain – hurled the piece of his own rib at the gunman …
Blood flew from the rib as it careened through the air, spinning like a boomerang, propelled with the strength of Vic’s desperation ...
... before it embedded in the gunman’s eye.
His scream was enough to blot out that of the baby, enough to make the other gunman drop the now-full bag, the money spilling out onto the floor, some of it wafting throughout the room to settle in pools of Vic’s blood. The other gunman glanced directly at his fellow gunman for a second, unsure of what was causing his partner-in-crime’s distress ...
... before looking directly at Vic.
And – though it was plain by the look on his face that he was just as horrified as his partner had been and simply could not accept the evidence of his own eyes … even though the gunman could plainly see that Vic was still alive despite his atrocious wounds ... despite the fact that he was aghast at the sight of Vic’s chest frantically squirming to heal itself, the muscles pulling themselves back over his still partially-exposed rib-cage, the skin moving back to where it should be as he watched – though he gaped in dumbfounded shock ...
... he raised his own gun …
Vic steeled himself for the second assault, but could do nothing to steel himself against the fear.
In all his along life, Vic had been hurt – many times – sometimes far worse than now. But he’d never been hurt like this twice – never received two such wounds as bad as this in rapid succession – never had a second devastating wound before the first had finished healing ...
His ability to heal was as phenomenal as it was inexplicable ...
... but surely it must have its limits ...
Vic had no idea what a second shotgun blast would do, and – perhaps more painful than the sensations of healing that crawled over his body – was the thought that, after such a long, long lifetime ...
... he might actually die.
The shots cracked throughout the bank, the loudest of car backfires.
Vic’s own still-healing heart, not yet completely covered over by his still-healing ribs, tore as it jumped with the sheer shock of it all. A jet of sour blood struck his face through the hole in his chest ...
But the shots hadn’t come from the shotgun …
The bank guard – one of those forced to cower from the gunmen initially – had let loose his own weapon in the gunman’s moment of distraction. As his pistol steamed, the sound of the shots echoed around the bank.
The bullets had caught the gunman in the back, and – within too short a time, it seemed, for life to leave someone – the gunman had fallen to the floor.
The second gunman, now on the floor, was still writhing, moaning (and – despite being half-conscious – occasionally screaming), as blood and vitreous humour flowed from his right eye-socket where the chunk of Vic’s rib had embedded itself.
In the seconds that followed, when everyone was too stunned to move and nobody knew what to do next ...
... Vic was not quite sure what he saw …
From out of nowhere, tactical response police burst in and things moved with a blur.
The C.E.R.T. quickly secured the situation so that paramedics could enter the bank. Ascertaining that the most serious injuries were to Vic (based solely on the horrifying organic abstract on the wall behind him, the chunks of meat fanned out all around him and the mess that would forever stain the carpet on which he lay), they rushed to him first.
However, by that time, he was almost completely healed.
At least (as his body continued knitting itself together inside), there were no visible signs of injury to him.
Vic forestalled their curiosity about just where the blood, bone fragments and tissue pieces had come from by pretending that he was in shock, staring at nothing, unresponsive as they checked him over and transferred him to a gurney headed for the hospital.
“For observation”, they told him.
Though he gave no outward sign of having heard them, Vic warily thought, “And experimentation, ultimately – once they find out what I can do”.
However, that detached part of Vic’s mind decided (working for him, now), that he wouldn’t be staying around long enough for anyone to discover his miraculous ability.
After all, he’d had a lot of practice over the years at that sort of thing – at escaping before his ability could be documented; at not leaving any trace behind for people to figure out that there was someone among them who could heal from just about any wound in minutes.
As Vic was wheeled outside, the possibility of such attention began to seem frighteningly likely in the actinic bursts from the assembled media’s still-cameras and the unyielding glare of video camera lighting. Chilling memories surfaced in his mind of inhuman experiments he’d been subjected to a long time ago. Experiments aimed at finding the secret of his ability to heal – a secret Vic, himself, didn’t even know.
No, he definitely wouldn’t be staying around ...
As Vic was taken past the media, the assembled police rushing to and fro in ordered chaos, the medical personnel and those people who had arrived simply to gawk at human misery, Vic saw two people enter the bank. They were dressed in white coveralls and carrying large black bags.
Forensic police setting up.
Knowing that the fate of the dead gunman was to be studied for evidence of just what had occurred that day, Vic’s determination to leave the scene as soon as he could doubled.
But there was one thing he had to know first ...
Vic looked around (still feigning shock) to ascertain what had happened to the gunman’s partner.
As the door to his ambulance was closing (he would – he figured – escape en route to the hospital), Vic saw the gunman who’d become so intimate with Vic’s own rib, being loaded into his own ambulance.
The shard of Vic’s rib was still jutting out of the gunman’s eye, but was now held in place by bloodied bandages while the gunman drooled under the combined effects of anaesthetic and shock.
In the bank, Vic couldn’t be sure. But in this view ...
… he was.
There was a curious pulsing to the piece of bone. Unnoticed (as yet) by the paramedics, the rib seemed as though it was pushing itself deeper into the gunman’s eye.
Of course, they hadn’t dared to simply pluck the offending piece of bone from the man’s eye – that would be done during surgery. However, in the rush to get him prepared to be taken to the hospital, the paramedics hadn’t seen what Vic had.
Damn, Vic thought.
This is gonna make things more complicated.
In the seconds that he’d watched the gunman before the door to the ambulance he was in had been closed, Vic had become certain of one thing ...
... the piece of his own rib that was embedded in the gunman’s eye ...
... was healing
Copyright © 2007 by David Scott Aubrey
All Rights Reserved
3,006 Words
This short story is a work of fiction. Any and all names, characters and/or incidents are either products of my imagination or are used fictitiously. Where any such resemblance may exist to actual persons (living or dead), actual events or locales, it is purely coincidental.
Please don't assume that my characters speak for me or carry my own opinions on various matters in any way, shape or form (though some might - you never can tell).
(47%)
WIDGETIZE
Spaggyj # 14. August 2008, 12:00
clean # 15. August 2008, 00:13
Surprisingly (to me, anyway) I've got a couple more stories for this character floating around in the back of my head somewhere. When they float to the surface, I'll post 'em.
Spaggyj # 15. August 2008, 00:15
clean # 15. August 2008, 00:35
(Okay, it's probably the monkeys ... )
Spaggyj # 15. August 2008, 00:44