DRUNKEN CONSEQUENCES

KATRINA LAYS IN a hospital bed, ruminating over what happened to her, how she got to be here, in this smothering room, connected to beeping machines, wrapped in bandages like an Egyptian Mummy. She is a completely different person from her former self, half the person she was a week or so ago. The tree outside scrapes the window, sounding like fingernails on a chalkboard. She remembers. It comes and goes. The memory of it. The taste of it. The stench of it. Being so cold, wishing for death to come. Blood: The smell will forever make her sick. She is struggling to grasp the totality of her situation – what happened to her, and now the aftermath.

Guilt steals her sleep, gnaws inside her like a virus. All of this because she didn’t stop it in the first instance, she should never have done what she did, getting in the car with a complete stranger. She knew better than that, and now her world has been destroyed beyond repair and ripped apart. If only she had said the three simple words that would have changed everything!

I’M AT THE CHRISTMAS work party at a local restaurant, and everyone is fairly drunk, me included. Not dancing on the bar drunk, just a warm fuzzy euphoric feeling. I’m on the dancefloor with my work colleague Megan, when a tall guy with curly black hair, slinks over and asks me for a dance. Megan pushes him away and mumbles something about us being girlfriends, as she wraps an arm around my shoulder, I can’t stop laughing. He pierces me with the most startling blue eyes I’ve ever seen; they are like glacial ice. Then he saunters off, his shoulders slumped.

“Do you need to be so rude? That guise about us being girlfriends always works a treat though,” I giggle.

Hours later, I accidentally bump into him as I’m coming out of the bathroom.

“Hi, are you having a good night?” he yells above the music in a strong Irish accent.

“Yeah, hi. Excuse me,” I politely answer, trying to squeeze by him.

His arm blocks my escape.

“I just want to talk to you; can I buy you a drink?” he flashes brilliant white teeth. “I promise I don’t bite, unless you want me to,” he chuckles to himself.

This makes me smile, although a shiver passes through me, I ignore it. We sit at the bar, and he buys me a Vodka and lemonade.

“I’m Katrina,” I introduce myself, thinking he is kind of cute in a brooding type of way, he looks to be in his late 20’s.

“I’m Thomas. Nice dress, it suits you,” he nonchalantly says, sipping his Rum and Cola.

“Thanks. Are you here for the work function?” I enquire.

“Oh no, I work around the corner. I’m a doctor. Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are? I love blondes,” he grins, it lights his face, but for an instant, quite sinister – it gives me chills.

“There you are!” Megan yells, grabbing onto my arm, pulling me back onto the dancefloor.

As the evening progresses, I see Thomas everywhere, at the bar, sitting in the booth, on the dancefloor watching me with seductive eyes. It gives a boost to my confidence and self-esteem. In response, and without thinking it through, I display a somewhat drunken gyrating stripper style dance right in front of him, in my ‘Devil wears a blue dress.” My body heating and beating along with the music. I can tell by the look on his face, he is undressing me with his eyes. The alcohol is kicking in and the room is beginning to spin, so I sit down at the closest table. Taking off my heels to massage my feet, I notice someone sit down next to me. Thinking it is Megan, I ask her if she is ready to go.

“Hello again,” says Thomas.

“Oh, it’s you! What do you want?” frustration leaks into my words, and a headache is forming behind my eyes.

“Would you like to dance?” he asks holding out a hand.

“No thank you, I have to go,” I respond, and slowly his face reddens in embarrassment. So, I change tact. “I’m heading home, sorry, I have work in the morning. Nice meeting you,” I say, holding out my hand for him to shake, though he doesn’t take it.

I move away from him, swaying slightly as I walk off to find Megan, my lift home.

“Clay, have you seen Megan?” I ask a colleague.

“She left with some of the others, I think they are going to a bar up-town,” he says.

As I make my way through the throngs of people, it’s packed and I’m freaking out. Anxiety clings to me as I realise, my ride has abandoned me, and now I’ll have to walk home. I grab my denim jacket and head out into the night. It’s raining! Just my bloody luck. I’ve a good half an hour walk ahead of me. There are no taxis or buses this late at night – the joys of small-town transportation! I’m stumbling along the road in the downpour, when suddenly a white Mercedes pulls up beside me, stops and toots the horn. I don’t recognise the car, but I can see it’s Thomas driving. He lowers the window.

“Get in, Katrina, I’ll give you a lift,” he yells through the rain and blustery winds.

KATRINA IS IN two minds. She has arrived at a pivotal point in her life, faced with a dilemma that any normal person would have set right, then and there. When intuition and logic should be kicking in but is inhibited by alcohol. Her head is telling her to get in the car, everything is fine, he seems genuine enough. Plus, it’s 1:30 am, and the rain is falling hard as she stands there debating with her intuition, which should always supersede anything coming from the mind or heart.

The words she should have said, but never muttered, will forever have consequences that can never be taken back. Those signs at the party, she should have noticed at the time, but blatantly ignored. Her course of life could have been amended with three simple words. If only she knew, those words have probably saved a million lives. Katrina is unknowingly bargaining with her life. But she is freezing cold and is drenched through. She gets into the car.

I’M SHAKING FROM the coldness wrapping itself around me. It’s chilly inside the car, and my jacket is useless in this weather.

“Thanks for the lift,” I say affixing my seatbelt into place.

“You're welcome. I’ve just got to put petrol in the car before we head off, do you want anything?” he asks.

“No thank you, I am fine,” I reply trembling, my head is a spinning mess, and I'm feeling nauseous.

While Thomas is inside the gas station, I flick off a text to Megan:

KATRINA: Why did you leave me?

MEGAN: I saw you talking to that guy. I thought I’d leave you to it lol…where are you?

KATRINA: We are at the petrol station. He is driving me home. I will call you when I get there, okay? You know, in case he is a serial killer!

MEGAN: Ha, ha, very funny! Call me when you get home. Who is he anyway?

KATRINA: Thomas. He’s a doctor and drives a really flash Merc!

MEGAN: Stay safe and remember to call me! xxx

After putting the ringer on silent, I pocket my cellphone. The alcohol is interfering with my thought processes, a drunken fog makes everything grey at the edges. The car is speeding way too fast, the motion making my stomach churn. I have a bad feeling growing somewhere deep inside me, but I stamp it down. Suddenly I realise we are driving the opposite way from my house. I sit up straight and look out the window, intently searching for recognisable landmarks. We are heading towards the woods.

“We are going the wrong way,” I say to him, confused.

He looks over at me and reveals the most wicked smile.

“I want to show you somewhere very special to me first, then I will take you home,” he states without emotion.

OUT OF NOWHERE, Thomas suddenly punches Katrina hard in the side of her face, knocking her out. He hopes she will be the one, certain this time his experiment is going to work, the others all died before the experiment yielded any results. Katrina wakes in a sprawling log cabin, deep in the woods. She looks around, her thoughts muddled, and her head feels like a bolder has smashed into it.

“Finally, she wakes!” says Thomas. “Welcome to your new abode. I think you will like it here,” he laughs, leaving the room and locking the door behind him.

I’M LYING HERE, tasting blood inside my mouth, probably from the punch I received in the car. My head is pounding. I’m in a reasonably smallish room, with wooden walls and a wooden ceiling and the only window in the room has been boarded with plywood. The only light is coming from a floor lamp placed in the middle of the room. Looking down at myself I can see why I can’t move. My arms and legs are bound to a contraption which reminds me of a dentist chair. I can move my head, though only slightly.

Drifting in and out of a disturbing fake sleep, I am woken when the door to the room opens, and I see Thomas. He is standing there, looking down at me. Our eyes connect and what I see scares me senseless. He has nothing inside him. He is an empty shell. There is no humanity in this monster. He is black, lifeless, soulless. I yell out in pain when I feel the needle pierce my skin.

“What are you doing to me? Why? Please, I beg you just let me go…” my words fall away, as the drugs pull me under.

THOMAS TAKES HIS time. Cutting, sawing, blood, gore, flesh, stench. He staunches the blood, fixes the wound, wraps it up in bandages. All the while talking to her as if she is awake, and Katrina, a great listener.

“There was a time, I was the best doctor in town, everyone looked up to me. I became the head surgeon in the fractures department at the city hospital. I stopped caring about my patients, when their excuses nagged at me over time. Most of them were there as a direct result of bad decision making, carelessness and genuine disregard for life and use of common sense: skidding off a motorbike, a drunk driver crashing the car into a tree. Then there are the ones that break bones, surfing, skateboarding, falling off fucking horses. People started to get on my nerves. I hated them all.”

As Thomas talks, he administers more anesthesia, to keep her under. He carves off valuable flesh into a skillet on the bench top, for later. He places the dismembered limb into a bucket, readying for boiling – then he will dispose of it. He desperately wants to make this experiment work. Thomas’s delusional compulsion is to know if a body will acclimatize to animal limbs being attached to it. Will the body survive? Will it be able to function as a whole person? The latter being the penultimate question!

I WAKE TO find pain pulsating through my body. I look around, petrified. Glancing down at myself I can see that my right arm is completely cut off, and in its place a blood-soaked bandage. I scream in tormented horror, when I see a monkey arm in place of where my arm should be! Thomas emerges from the darkened corner, where the light doesn’t reach, moving towards me, wearing a diabolical grin upon his face.

“What the fuck!” I yell out incensed by what I see, and I can hear my heart thumping, sonic boom in my ears. I think I’m in shock! “Why are you doing this to me? I’m a good person,” I plead, “I have a family who will be looking for me. I have a mum and dad, and two brothers, Caleb, and Anthony. I have friends, a job, a good life. You don’t have to do this!” tears fall hard and fast, as I urge him to spare my life.

Thomas hovers above me, wipes away my tears with the back of his hairy hand, then sticks a needle in me again. I wake to    my other arm gone too! I try to scream, but my voice is empty. I am beyond horrified, and I can’t comprehend the reality of it. Both of my arms are wrapped in bandages, blood leaking from the wounds, monkey limbs attached to my body. I vomit.

I implore him weakly to let me go home, but he just laughs and slaps me hard across the face. The suddenness of it shocking me fully awake. In this moment I realise, I have to escape before he cuts off other parts of my body. I don’t want my life to end this way.

I have lost all sense of perception, as I drift in and out of consciousness. With no light entering the room, I can’t judge the passing time, I have no idea how long I have been here. The room resembles a surgical suite, with only this chair contraption, a bench, cabinet, and sink. There are tools on silver trays, scalpels, and sharp instruments I can’t identify. An array of saws, drills, and hammers are lined up on the back wall.

I’ve lost a lot of blood; I know this is why I feel so tired and my pain so agonising. My screams return with a vengeance. Now I have found my voice, I yell and plead, trying to reach any humanity he might have left inside of him. But it is useless, he covers my nose and mouth with a cloth, I inhale a sharp chemical smell that puts me out, again.

WHEN KATRINA WAKES, her left leg is gone from the knee down. He leaves her saying he will be back soon. He thinks to himself, this is the longest any of them have lived without their limbs before succumbing to the gravest infection and then death. The knowledge of being so close to the end, excites him exponentially.

Thomas is terribly thankful that thus far (in his delusional mind) the attachments of the monkey limbs seem to be working, though it is too soon to come to a definite conclusion. There is more to be done. But he has managed to get enough flesh for later, an added bonus. His plan is to attach a goat’s leg to the stump of her knee. Only then will he be satisfied. He heads out to collect the goat limb from the butcher in town. Thomas pays an annual fee to have that privilege. Other animal pieces he acquires on the black market.

But he made a fatal mistake, convinced she is no longer a flight risk, he has been careless. The strap on her remaining leg is a little loose. It is a struggle, but she manages to get her leg free. She’s frozen there just listening…he left some time ago and could be back any minute. There is no time to waste. She flops out of the contraption.  

When she drops to the floor, naked, she faceplants the ground, leaving an egg-shaped wound on her forehead that is bleeding and aching something fierce. Her vision is blurred, the pain almost causes her to pass out, as black and white dots flicker before her eyes.

However, she soon realises, there is absolutely no way for her to escape this Hell hole, she can’t crawl, she has lost all control of her body, and with two useless monkey arms and only one leg, it is impossible. She feels defeated, gives up, gives in. Before she lapses into unconsciousness, she hears a car approach, crunching on the leaves and gravel. As she closes her eyes, she sees a pair of black boots in her peripheral…and somebody is calling her name.

I WAKE IN the hospital. My family are there beside me.

After some time, I ask mum, “How did they find me?”

“The police tracked down your cellphone, love. It was in that man’s vehicle. Luckily it was still switched on. You’ve been gone for five days! We thought you were dead. Thank God, they found you. But look at you! I can’t stand it,” mum sobs, running from the room – dad chasing after her.

The doctor takes over, as I watch the world turn black outside the window. I am stuck here, without my arms and a leg. I nearly died! Maybe it would have been better than this! I’m a grotesque monster with monkey arms.

“They found him, but he took his life. There were others, he kept all of their ID’s. You were the lucky one,” he says without thought, then corrects himself, “I mean, I know you are going to have to get used to this new you, but you have your life, you are alive. Obviously, you will need surgery to detach the animal limbs…” he says as a dark shadow crosses his face.

The doctors voice fades away. His words do nothing to comfort me from the nightmare I am reliving inside my head. None of this would have happened, if only I’d have said those three simple words, the ones that would have saved me from all of this. I should have said, “No thank you,” and walked away.