No Dogs Allowed

Median Nerve, Brachial Plexus

I considered that carefully. I said, "Teach me."

Mercy's grin was light's egress from a nascent black hole. "Good answer."

She'd laid out a variety of animals at first. Anything from a shrew to a possum to a cat. She didn't want me stinking up one of her other rooms so she'd let me roam the hallways of her intricate basement-that-wasn't-really-a-basement. I figured I would one day discover an end to the bloody maze, but I never had a gap of time big enough to go exploring to find it. I suppose adventure is off your mind when the only thing your life depends on is how fast you can find a mouse's kidneys.

D had laid out textbook on textbook of animal anatomies, integumentary to skeletal, with one too many realistic images to accompany them. Mercy let me scan them over before every animal. Then, she handed me two scalpels and a towel with nothing but a grin to assist.

"We learn by doing here," she said. "Don't worry. There are no wrong answers."

I sunk the knife in and sliced. Blood spurt, gurgled out like fresh pomegranate juice. Metal was acidic in the air. I gagged and shivered. The knife sunk too far and hit something hard and bloated. Something rotted cleaved the scent of blood.

"Oh my, oh dear!" Mercy cried, and gave me a pitying grin. She grabbed my clean scalpel, and swung for my back. The knife cut skin under cotton. I stumbled back and fell with a yell. Blood was a hot and squirming tapeworm wriggling into skin. 

Mercy bent down and said, "Try again."

And, again.

Another year went of me trying to open up every animal imaginable, trying to keep every precious organ intact as I did, hissing a little less at every scalpel that dug its way into my back. Time was my only anodyne, and eventually, the slivers of sunlight from venturing out to school or street races. C1. C7. T2. My spine withdrew nerves like a shriveling tree.

She placed a plate of blue steak before me. Red gushed out of the edges. A human heart on a plate. I tried to trace the shape of it. Coronary artery. Left ventricle. Ascending aorta. Marginal artery. My stomach twisted so tight it threatened to crack altogether.

"I've got a present," she said. "Wanna come see?"

"I hate you," I gagged.

"What's wrong? Not hungry?" She made a heart shape. "Look. It's familiar."

"Stop."

She cocked her head to the side. She grabbed me by my shoulder and dragged me down the hall, towards the last Blue Room at the end of the gray corridor. I tried to tear myself from her grasp, but she held fast, nails in deep.

"10.5 million dollars is a lot to cover, Ghostie," she sang. She made a rectangle in the air. "Every body is just another dollar to offer, another stair to climb. You want to live? You would do that pretty head of yours a favor, and remember that." She tapped my chest. "All you own, is all you owe. You want to live?" She let my shoulder go, but kept her finger stabbing into my skin. "Want nothing that will stop you from getting there."

She pushed the door open. It swung wide to reveal the other side.

On the steel table, waiting beneath the sickly white light, was my mother. 

Mercy placed a scalpel in my hand. 

"Now," she whispered. "Let's talk about that debt of yours."

I screamed up from Hell, and hoped the angels' ears bled from it.

____________________