Tango in a Box, Part 7/8
So the next time I go to see Johnny in prison, Sir’s not there, but he asks, first thing, did I find out about the anatomy classes.
I tell him it takes a long goddamned time to get to anatomy class.
That’s followed by this wretched silence, and I’m racking my brain to see if I have any memories of swearing at him like that, but I don’t find any.
I cram my hands between my knees and watch them, all twisted up. It’s still quiet, I mean, between us, so I start smudging my right toe with my left toe.
Johnny says, “Sit up for chrissakes.”
My right hand is so far under my legs, it’s pulling my right shoulder across in front of me. I yank both hands up and they go straight to tuck my hair behind my ears and my ass slides down the seat until I’m almost like him.
The problem is, Sir wants organs. Not for him, for other people, like when you donate your organs. Only he’s not planning to donate.
You can see that Sir missed out on some basic biology courses. What’s going on in Johnny’s head, I don’t know.
The bodies you cut up in anatomy, well, they’ve been dead a while.
So Johnny explains to me, from his usual slouch, feet planted about hip-width apart, his ass at the edge of the seat closest to me, his hands resting on his thighs, he says, “Yeah, but someone’s gotta know how to take the organs out.”
Am I awake? My mouth wants to say something awful, you can tell by the way it flaps, by the way my brain has to perform an emergency shutdown to prevent word formation.
Regret, hope, they’re still a few steps ahead here.
And I can’t believe I’m suggesting this, but what I hear come out of my mouth in the end is, “There’s an easier way.”
I’m thinking of foster mommy number three and her perfectly manicured nails and high cheekbones. Before I met her, her hairdresser had burnt the skin off the right side of her face, and the skin transplant that followed was the opening of a new vision of perfection. The drug companies, they’re greedy for meninges, those little membranes around the brain and spinal cord, just right for the medications used in those skin transplants. Next came the eye tucks, courtesy of the muscle membranes of some butchered corpse’s thighs.
Vital organs are so picky about when they’re taken from the body. A chunk of thigh will wait on you for a good bit of time before refusing to help out. The image of me, slicing some corpse’s thigh and digging out the muscles, is making me forget where I am.
Of course, I have my own plan for all this, and it’s got nothing to do with anatomy. And, like I said, nothing to do with lawyers. Physics, that’s where we’re going to find our solution.
Think of everything being made up of little atoms. In humans, the atoms that make us up keep changing out. Every seven years, they're completely changed out, you're not just replacing parts, you've got a whole new car. The atoms that are in me now could later be part of you, or part of the table we’re sitting at.
Really, if you follow the panpsychic implications of all this--and that's physics panpsychic, nothing to do with Madame Belaire--, you're in a constant dynamic with all the conscious particles around you, particles residing in both animate and inanimate objects.
Technically, Johnny should be able to convince the walls to just let him pass.
I just haven't figured out the logistics yet.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment