Don't Eat Meat - Part 1

“Ey Larry old buddy, what’s crackin,” The voice was streetsy, thuggish and intimidating to the wasted electrician, as he practically stumbled sideways out the dive that he’d been drinking in. Two men caught him as he toppled over in their direction, rough calloused, hands, with sausage fingers and way too many rings. Throwing an arm over each shoulder, the two practically dragged their inebriated acquaintance down the sidewalk and into the first alleyway they came up to. It wasn’t very wide, but it was dark and full of cover, something that would work for the two large men’s advantage. Releasing their grip, the Italians leaned Larry up against one of the two walls when they’d made it a sufficient distance into the alleyway, before the first of the two, the one who’d called out to him in front of the bar delivered a stern shot to his stomach, rings and all.

“How ya like that ya fuckin bag of shit!” Spouted the man angrily as his rings dug deep into Larry’s intestines. Had he been more sober, he probably would’ve felt it severely, but the drinks he’d had lessened it and he still doubled over. The second man grabbed his shoulder to prevent him from face planting- not that he wouldn’t have wanted to see it, but he needed to keep him standing- and delivered a sharp knee to Larry’s abdomen. It was almost directly where the first thug had hit him, and now Larry definitely felt the pain as he coughed blood all over one of the man’s sleeves. Which it was, doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is it infuriated the two, and one of them left the alley the way they’d come to pay Larry a little lesson in respect and humility. Meanwhile, the second let the drunk tip over to the side and collapse onto a pile of garbage bags, his body crumbling from the blows.

“Think your gunna get away wit something like that eh, faggot?” Asked the first man as he returned, a clear bottle of liquor clenched in his fist. “What’re you gonna do wit dat Tommy?” Asked the second, but the first simply motioned for the drunk to be stood up, and the other thug did as he was told. After all, Tommy had seniority here, and this was supposed to be his run, his chance to show the boss he had what it took to teach a man a lesson.

“Fifteen grand Larry, FIFTEEN FUCKIN GRAND! Ya know, I don’t know why Sal gave you dat much dough, but what I do know is dat you’re gonna pay up Larry. Oh yeah, you’re gunna fuckin pay you slimeball faggot,” Now the man was pouring the bottle of liquor on Larry’s head, soaking his torso with the flammable liquid as he spout hateful and vulgar words. Maybe it was because of the blood on his sleeve, or maybe he just felt it easier to hate Larry so he’d be able to complete the mission set on him by his boss. Either way, when the bottle was empty and Larry had been sufficiently doused, Tommy produced a single golden zippo and popped open the top.

“Ain’t gunna lie to ya Larry, this is gunna hurt like nawbodys fuckin bisness. Hopefully you’ll die, but you probably won’t. Drunk fucks like yous are never lucky,” Striking the flint produced a flame, and with that flame Tommy held it before the liquor covered man’s face, whilst his partner in crime squeezed behind him and started on his way out of the alleyway. “I don’t want no part in this fuckin shit Tommy,” He called back as he disappeared from the entrance.

“Eh…fuck ‘im” With that Tommy turned and started to follow his friend as Larry toppled over again onto the trash bags, but just when he thought Tommy was about to leave, the Italian thug tossed the still lit zippo behind him, and Larry caught sight of it’s flame as it flickered in the air for a second. The next second all he saw were flames, and all he felt was an intense burning across his body. Luckily at the end of the alleyway was a walkway, right along the Wallabout Bay. And this was where the police would find him, floating on his back and screaming for as long as he could as the burning continued even without the flames. A screaming that wouldn’t stop until he was injected with a bit of morphine on the police’s boat, and which would haunt anyone walking down that walkway for the rest of their miserable existences. ‘What a way to go’ they’d say, but no one knew that Larry would sadly…survive.

Larry lay motionless on the plain white hospital bed for what seemed like ages. Horrible scars covered his once mediocre body, all had been attempted to be grafted but to no avail. Surgeons described it as a ‘mystery of science’ because even though the blood types were right, the skin just wouldn’t be accepted. A plethora of monitoring devices were connected to his skin, along with a long breathing tube which went through his mouth and down his esophagus to the lungs. Doctors were on stand-by, knowing that at any minute the weakened man could just up and die. Sometimes one would have a cardiac arrest when confronted with as many third degree burns as he had, not being able to withstand the increase in heart rate.

But that was really the least of their problems as Larry had been left in the bed for months now, periodically receiving skin grafts which all seemed to backfire on him. Unbeknown to the doctors there was a third party complicating things within Larry’s body. A new bacteria unknown to the modern medical world, something that had been at peace within Larry’s body since the ‘accident’. Sedated by the tons of medicine that was being constantly fed into his body via the translucent tube at his side.

It was the x-factor behind Larry’s ability to survive, or at least to have made it as far as he had now, and it was at this very moment, as Larry was wishfully dreaming of a co-worker in his coma that the bacteria ceased to sustain his life. Flat lines blared on the machines in the room, calling a doctor and nurse set who desperately tried to resuscitate him. It took less than thirty seconds and a syringe full of atropine for their efforts to be rewarded with a heartbeat, so they smiled and the doctor returned to his duties, leaving the nurse to tend to their patient.

Maybe a half hour later, the nurse noticed his eyelids fluttering as the eyes beneath circled in a crazed fashion. She had been checking his IV when she noticed this strange occurrence, and as she leaned closer to observe the eyes closer, Larry’s hand shot up and gripped her by the neck, his eyelids suddenly shooting open revealing dastardly bloodshot eyes.

It was like she was a Nazi and he were a Jew as he tightened the grip progressively and she writhed in pain, swinging her arms out wildly knocking over various things. But Larry wasn’t in control of his own body, one might say it was a flight or fight reaction, others might even say it was just straight reflexes, but whatever it was he soon realized his error and released the nurse from the death grip. Gasping for air, she collapsed to the ground as Larry sat dumbfounded at his actions. Had he really just tried to choke a hospital worker? Was he actually in the hospital? Last thing he could remember was being handled roughly by two of Sal’s goons…and the Bacardi 151.

Images of fire mixed with the sound of laughter filled Larry’s head, causing his eyes to glaze over as he propped himself up on his elbows, a numb pain running up through his arms. He was suddenly shook from his memories and glared blankly at the middle aged doctor who’d grabbed him, both hands firmly on his shoulders, but yet Larry could barely feel them… The nurse was coughing and sputtering nearby, and the doctor had a look of rage in his eyes as he forced Larry back down, much to his distress.

“No, please no I want to go home,” Pleaded the burnt man on the bed, his entire upper body horribly scarred, and so far with no cure in sight.

“You suffered through a lot of pain Mr. Fitzgerald, you body must be undergoing extreme pain, there’s no way I can let you leave in this state. Just fall back, relax, let the drugs do their job,” And so that’s what Larry did, as the morphine ran it’s course through his system, his eyes drooped and eventually shut as the doctor hurried to the nurse. At the sound of “What the hell happened?” Larry was out like a light.

While the victim slept, the big boys played, and in the office of the hospitals administrator was where the doctor now found himself, hands fidgeting in his lap as he tried to keep his posture straight and his eyes on his employers. The last thing he needed was to lose this job; after all he still had to feed three children and his wife, no matter how much a horrible hag she was.

“So it says here he wasn’t feeling any pain?”

“Y-yes sir, that seems to be the case,” The administrator laughed amiably at his employee’s distress, amused by his overwhelming power in the building. Hell, if he wanted to he could probably walk on down to that babe in comatose and have his way with her. It’s not like she’d notice, and the employee’s wouldn’t tell or it’d be their fuckin jobs.

“Well I don’t see a problem here then. If he doesn’t feel the pain, why don’t we just let him leave?” His employer’s lack of medical knowledge frustrated the doctor to no end, was he seriously running a hospital, and was he really in charge of all this? Of course he was, accountants always get the best jobs with the best cash, no matter what they may entail. Everyone needed to make more money, and more money was the topic of discussion even now, the doctor soon realized.

“His wounds are very severe, there’s no way he can’t be feeling pain from them. It has to be the morphine, either that or…”

“Or what, doctor?” Special emphasis on the title, he knew how much the middle aged man hated the fact that this overweight numbers man was in his chair.

“Or it could be a condition. I’m sure you’ve heard of it, CIPA? It’s supposed to be an inherited disease, but…”

“Isn’t that the one where people can’t feel any kind of pain?” The doctor nodded in response to his superiors question before continuing.

“Anhidrosis, can be caused by Anticholinergic drugs, such as the atropine we used on the patient to resuscitate him after he flat lined. I don’t know if it’s possible, but maybe he has CIPA and it was this that caused it, we’d have to do a few tests to see if my theory holds up, but if it does it could be a scientific breakthrough!”

“Well then. What the hell are you waiting for? Get testing that man, right now! But if it’s not CIPA, and I hope to God for this mans sake that it isn’t; I’m letting him go,” Said the fat man gruffly, much to the doctors dismay before shooing him away with a swatting motion of his hand.

Fucking idiot. Muttered the doctor on his way out. This little ‘conference’ was followed by the start of a series of tests, the first of which was to test how badly this insensitivity was. Once the morphine he’d been given had dried up, and Larry was wide awake, the doctor came inside and sat down on his bed with him, explaining to him his theorem and the possible outcomes of the tests he was going to perform. Happily the electrician agreed, welcoming any type of test that would help him leave this dastardly hospital sooner, he was starting to feel sick from all the drugs and the overall smell. Or so, that’s what a nagging voice in the back of his head was telling him. To start, the doctor sat Larry up, much to his disbelief, and removed a portion of his bandaging to probe his burns with a gloved finger.

“Do you feel any pain Mr. Fitzgerald?”

“No, all I feel is this weird numbness, but I do feel your finger,”

“Excuse me? You do feel my finger?”

“Yeah, it’s sorta like if the spot your poking was asleep, that’s kinda what it feels like but I can definitely feel your finger,” This was intriguing to the doctor, and as he performed the rest of his tests the results showed that this was something far different from CIPA.

“I-I…I don’t know what to say. It’s something else, something that I’ve never read about in any medical journals,” Said the doctor as he pleaded with his superior to allow him to conduct further testing.

“And I’m supposed to care? Do you realize how much money we’ve spent on that bum in the room over there? His immediate family doesn’t visit him, his insurance is getting flakey, and we keep getting these fucking investigators from the insurance company. We just can’t keep him fucking drugged up in that bed any longer, if he feels still but isn’t in pain, with the absence of drugs, I don’t see why he should be kept here,”

“For further analysis! Please, you’ve got to believe me, this could be a startling discovery, it’ll be in every medical journal from here to Australia, hell this’ll probably reach National news! There’s definitely something wrong with Mr. Fitzgerald, but what it is we don’t know, and it would irresponsible to release him under such conditions,” For a second the fat man actually sat in silence, debating in his mind with the inner banker, and the inner humanity. Truth was, the boss hadn’t yet lost his sense of feelings, and really did want to contemplate helping this poor man. But times were tough, it’s a depression after all, and he just couldn’t have that fucker taking up an extra bed.

“No,” He said finally “Bandage him up, give him some medicine, call him a fucking cab and get him the hell out of this hospital,”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Do you want to fucking test this idea doctor?!” Strict words were all it took to put the doctor in his place and remind him of his pay grade, so to speak. Sure, he’d love to help the man and find out what it was behind his mysterious illness, but the truth was he loved his job more. Who’d ever heard of an unemployed doctor writing in any medical journal… anywhere?!

“Alright Mr. Fitzgerald…the uhh, my superiors have informed me that if you can feel my fingers, but not the pain that you’re somehow okay to leave. I don’t agree with this at all, especially in the state you’re in,” Said the doctor as he carefully unravelled Larry’s bandaging, revealing the horrible burn scars he’d suffered at the hands of his cruel attackers. “So if you ever need any help, my card’s right here,” He continued, slipping a thin business card into the mans pant pocket along with a bottle of prescribed pain killers, the only article of clothing that he had left after the incident. “I’d really like to know what happened though, and just in case I’ll be stopping by every once in a while to check up on you. There’s something unique about your…condition,”

Condition? Does he think I’m fucking diseased or something?

“And if you’ll allow me to, I’d like to conduct more tests on you. In the privacy of your own home of course, if that’s fine with you,” Larry seemed to contemplate the offer, but the nagging voice at the back of his head was callin the shots and he shrugged his shoulders dismissively.

“Dunno doc, seems to me I’m fine and dandy, so I’ll just be headin out. If I need more of these candies though,” He shook a nearby bottle of pills lightly, his pink and swollen flesh of his bicep jiggling slightly at the movement made the doctor sick and he looked away to reach for the new roll of bandages. The cringe of the mans face made Larry slightly uneasy.

Is it really that bad?

The thought was shook from his head as the doctor began to apply the new bandages, and did so in utter silence until he was finished, right up to the man’s face, leaving space where it was required for him to see and breath, eat as well. “Now, I wouldn’t recommend leaving these on for too long, if they start to get pussy, or you feel the bandages sticking to your skin a lot, you should probably remove them. Call me and I’ll replace them for you,” Mumbled the doctor as he rolled him to the elevator and then down to the first floor in a wheelchair. At first Larry was opposed to the idea of having to sit, but the doctor forced him to, reciting hospital policies and all that jazz.

At the front entrance, the doctor said a final farewell, to which Larry didn’t reply and simply headed out the door and into the warm summer air. New York smelt great this time of year, or at least it did in Central Park. A cab had already been called, so Larry climbed inside and told the staring cabbie his address.

“Jesus fuck man…you look like hell!” He muttered as he started up the engine and pulled away from the curb. Fifteen, twenty minutes tops, Larry recited in his head, until we get home. If the cabbie was disturbed by Larry’s lack of social spark, he didn’t show it and took his money matter-of-factly. “No tip?” Larry slammed the door shut.

Fuckin’ prick.

They thought in unison, as Larry marched up his apartment’s front steps and through the front lobby, while the cabbie gunned it down the street. People shot the wounded man glances as he waited for the elevator, hushed whispers were spread and Larry just tuned them out, shut them out like he always had all his life. The words still bounced in his head from the past though, too feeble and weak to defend himself from them.

Ding!

Thank god for the elevator as Larry strode inside. A lady and her young son were waiting for the elevator as well, but when Larry got on first, they stood at the door for a second before turning and pressing the call button again. “Yeah, fuck you too you bitch,” Spout Larry just before the door closed shut, much to the dismay of the lady. But she had it coming in his mind.

Insults continued to boil in his mind as he rode the elevator up to the top floor. Few residents called this level their home; some having lost their jobs couldn’t afford their rent, whilst others hit it big and moved on from the shithole. Larry was stuck. As he approached his door and removed his keys from his pocket, the number and general feel of the apartment felt alien to him, like part of him had never seen these brass stamps on the door, or the eye sized hole below them. Yet, another part of him recognized it as home, as it had been for the past five years…and then it was gone. The feeling of alienation replaced with a feeling of warmth and shelter, a strange tenderness which still in the back of Larry’s mind felt strange.

Shrugging off the strangeness, Larry ploughed on into the apartment and was greeted by a foul smell emitting from the kitchen. It was leftovers from months before which having not been cleaned were now being devoured by maggots. What once was a couple of tasty looking burger paddies was now a feast for the fly larvae as dozens of adult fly’s buzzed just above. The sheer magnitude of the disgust that Larry felt is hard to put into words, and as he dumped the entire pan into the nearby garbage, he held back a very close gag and sealed the bag closed extra fast. The fly’s that were left would have to be dealt with later as Larry hoisted up the garbage and took it to the garbage chute.

Later he would be found in the depths of his apartment, scanning his bandaged body with sad dreary eyes in a full body mirror in his bedroom. It looked bad, but really how bad could it be? The doctors had told him he’d suffered severe third degree burns all across his upper body, and the doctor who’d bandaged him had looked away when he shook the bottle of pills.

I’ll sure be a hit with the ladies now.

He thought as he started to peel off the bandages, desperately wanting to see the disparity of his situation. Would he really be that grotesque? Maybe if he was he could put pictures on the internet and…the thought faded with the first appearance of skin. It was pink, and glazed with a thin layer of puss. Releasing his hold on the bandages, Larry began to prod the small space of skin on his stomach, feeling it’s tenderness, albeit a distant and cold tenderness. But a tenderness nonetheless.

His search continued with the rest of his body, unwrapping himself like some sort of twisted Christmas gift and giving his wounds ample attention. By the time he’d peeled off all the bandages and stood half naked in front of the mirror, his mind was a mixture of pride that he had survived such horrible atrocities, and disgust at the image before him. Even his face was unrecognizable, and his scalp was spotted with hair like it was playdoh shooting up from holes in his head, only most of the holes were blocked, and the others were slowly being blocked. Something he realized thanks to the strands of hair attached to the wrap that had enveloped his head.

It all took a lot out of him though, and after deciding finally to throw on a shirt, he collapsed on his nearby bed, not even bothering to clean his puss covered bandages on the ground at the foot of the bed, instead welcoming the relief brought on by his own, familiar bed. Yes…familiar.

When he awoke over a day later, the first thing that hit him was a severe bout of hunger pangs, which stung him angrily like a hive of bees. Larry literally had to peel himself, thanks to the puss, from his bed to go to the kitchen, and once there he began rifling through his cabinets. Neighbours wrote later that they’d heard the bangs coming from his apartment, but thought nothing of it at the time.

By the time he was satisfied he had a meal he could really sink his teeth in, everything in his kitchen was on the plate before him, most of it not even cooked due to his lack of patience and the pain of extremely severe hunger. A hunger he’d never felt before. Carrying the large pan – yes he used a cooking pan- into the living room, Larry plopped himself down on his good ‘ol couch and used the nearby remote to flip on the TV. A Vikings game was on, something Larry enjoyed very, very much and he tuned to it immediately to enjoy his seemingly delicious meal before him.

Before half time Larry had finished the platter and as the cheerleaders – Larry’s favourite part of the game – got out to center field, he was busy blowing chunks of uncooked spaghetti noodles and cursing his lack of preparation. Sure, it was the lack of cooking that would be anyone’s first guess at his sudden up-chucking, but in all honesty there were dark forces at work in Larry’s body. Manipulating, destroying, some might even say evolving, and Larry noticed something was wrong when the toilet bowl began hissing. Pain shot through his body, starting first just above his stomach and then working its way up his body to his throat, and then mouth.

With a shrill scream, Larry gripped his throat in pain and coughed desperately into the bowl, joining with the bits of dissolving food bits a couple sprays of blood, from wounds deep within his body. Had he known what exactly was happening, he wouldn’t have believed it as his stomach was slowly changing into something that was totally unique in it’s own right, and with it came a more powerful acidic base in his stomach’s acid, which was what had caused both the pain and the chipping of the porcelain bowl in the toilet, something Larry found out immediately after flushing.

With the pain in his throat subsiding, Larry spit out a few more globs of blood for good measure and inspected the toilet bowl closer, going so far as to bring his face inches away from the toilet seat, the one that had been here since he’d moved in… At the dastardly thought, Larry withdrew his head and began to wash himself up, first his hands then face and finally he dried him self off with a nearby towel. A final look in the mirror, and Larry returned to the living room, full of despair at his increasing appetite and seeming inability to quench it. It felt to him like he were a starving Ethiopian, the type you’d see on Christian help program commercials like the one with the bearded old man, or the fat women. His bones felt weak and meagre, but at least the pain that had flooded him through his throat was now none existent. Plus one for Larry.

For better or worse his screams were heard, by none other than his single neighbour, Dan. Dan lived next door in the apartment beside Larry, had for quite some time now, but the two were never very close even with their proximity. For awhile the two had actually been at odds, Dan being a loyal Packers fan and Larry being the devote Viking. He’d missed the latest Vikings news though, and Dan hadn’t yet heard about Larry’s terrible ‘accident’. Both were bounded by fate at this one particular glimpse in history, as Dan angrily marched the short distance down the hallway and slammed his fist against Larry’s door.

“You fucking batshit Viking! Shut the fuck up in there I’m trying to watch the Packers kick some ass!” He yelled out, and through the thick partition Larry heard him crystal clear. It was like some sort of animalistic urge took control of Larry’s body, and whereas he previously wouldn’t have even rose to the thought of hounding his neighbour, he now shot to the door from his staggered stance in the living room, and Dan was appalled when the door opened up.

“Oh my fucking god…Larry? What the hell happened to you?!” Asked a legitimately concerned human being as he looked over the slightly older man’s devastating scars. All he could do to avoid vomiting was to stare into his eyes, and the more he did the more it fuelled Larry’s boiling anger.

“Hey Dan…” He practically whimpered, it sounded a lot like a dog when they whine without the high pitch and put into words. Literally, the sound of his voice made Dan’s knees buckle as he was overcome with pity for the poor, burned soul. “Been in the hospital for a couple months now,”

“Oh my god, I didn’t even know. Larry…I’m so sorry for disturbing you, really I am,” Dan was turning, ready to run to the hills and man the harpoons to fend off this fiendish foe. Honestly, that was how bad Larry looked to him at that particular moment.

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone really knows. I wasn’t visited very much in the hospital…wanna grab a beer? I got the game on…” His neighbour shook his head a little too early, and a little too fiercely for Larry’s like and it added wood to the fire, as the animalistic instinct within him continued the puppy dog routine. All the while the same sentence repeated steady through his mind, growing stronger and threatening to envelope Larry as he looked on with the eyes of a predator.

Lure him in…get him close, strike him down.

“S-sorry Larry, I really gotta go. Fuck…” Turning, Dan may as well have sprinted back to his room, sliding inside and locking the door quickly, every single bolt on it. Larry watched from his doorway until the younger man disappeared back into his room, and then returned to his, the pain of hunger suddenly striking him again in the very core of his being. It wasn’t just his body that was starving, it was his soul.

[END OF PART 1]