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She should have called him siegfried
"She Should Have Called Him Siegfried" - Excerpt
Hagen Patterson comes into posession of a new object for his formaldehyde collection:
Hagen’s cell phone rang and ripped him out of his cataloguing. His heart rate increased as he fumbled in the pocket of his lab coat. Did Alissa call him back? He frowned at the display that read “Ivan.”
“Hi, Ivan.”
“Hey, man, what’s up?”
“Nothing special.”
“You gotta come over and it’s gotta be right now. I’ve got something for you.” Ivan’s voice dripped with wicked anticipation.
“Where?”
“The hospital, back entrance as usual.”
“It’s pretty late.”
“Come on, man. And bring me a new round, will ya?”
Ivan hung up without waiting for a reply. Hagen sighed at his phone, then took a bottle of milky-white Ivan-mix from the fridge.
Still wearing his lab coat, Hagen drove to Ivan’s hospital in his fifteen-year-old Toyota. He parked a block away and walked towards the huge hospital castle. This was the place where his potion client Helena had almost died. This was where, day by day, life ended and began in pain.
Years ago, Ivan had made Hagen a fake ID, and Hagen opened the delivery entrance door with it. Hagen checked his watch as he entered, eleven p.m. He yawned and walked through the corridors towards the hospital’s archive, careful to avoid the security cameras.
Hagen used his ID card to get into the archive and the lights flickered on automatically. Ceiling-high racks filled with patients’ files from the days before computers slumbered here. Hagen reached the far end of the archive and knocked on a supply closet’s door, two--pause--three, and Ivan opened.
“Ah, finally,” Ivan said as he grabbed Hagen’s arm and pulled him inside the room.
Ivan, a young Gregory Peck in blond, had an angular, male, yet soft face with deep blue eyes that gave him a Hamlet-like air of tragic melancholy. His eyes had a slight feverish glow to them and dilated pupils. Ivan suffered from constantly elevated body temperature--a side effect of the potion that Hagen brewed for him.
“Got something for me?” Ivan asked and let himself fall into the farther of the two plastic armchairs in the supply closet. A small table stood between the chairs. Nothing more would fit into the tiny room. It had no window, only white bleached walls and always stale air.
“Sure,” Hagen said. He produced the Ivan-mix bottle from his pocket and put it onto the table.
“Are you getting enough sleep?” Hagen asked.
“Sleep’s for losers.” Ivan grinned.
“Is that so ... Every time I give you a new dosage, I understand less why you’re taking this stuff. You know that it’s not good for you.”
“Doctor’s habit and forbidden stuff is the best. I really don’t get it. How can you manage not to take any of this precious, heavenly stuff that you brew?”
“Occupational hazard. If I took it, I wouldn’t know what I’m mixing anymore.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing, man.” Ivan unscrewed the bottle’s cap and took a sip. “Argh, although you could improve the taste of this shit.”
“I’ll put in a little strawberry flavor next time. And I do know what I’m missing, a strong hallucinogen that fries a few million brain cells every time you take it.”
Ivan chuckled.
“You all right? Seriously, you look awful, man.”
“I love you, Hagen; you’re the only person who ever tells me that.”
Ivan giggled and Hagen grinned.
“I’m fine, but I need an anti-love potion. There’s this nurse who I did a few times; she thinks that she’s in love with me. She’s the worst groupie I’ve ever had. I’ve got to get rid of her. I’m serious, man; I need you to brew me something for or, more correctly, against her.”
“I have a potion like that. It’s pretty strong though, invokes depression.”
“I don’t fucking care. I have to get rid of that broad; she’s killing me.”
“Okay, next time we meet.”
“Thanks, man.”
Ivan giggled again. The potion started to work and his eyes became unfocused. His left hand jerked, spastically, and a moan slipped from his lips. Hagen watched with morbid fascination.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“Colors, they’re blending into each other ...” Ivan’s speech was slurred.
“What else?”
“A house in the woods, a villa, there’s a guy who’s holding a girl captive. He’s abusing her. She’s so young ... Oh, my God ...”
“Stop that. A story like that was just in the news.”
Ivan laughed out loud; drugged, stoned, and pleased. He suffered a laughing fit and couldn’t stop for a while. Hagen waited. As he did so often, he wondered why he didn’t want to experience anything like that himself.
You know why, Hagen; if you took that stuff, you’d lose control and you dread nothing more than that. He frowned.
“What’s wrong?” Ivan asked.
Impressive, Ivan registered and interpreted facial expressions even under the influence of the potion.
“Nothing. Why did you want me to come here today, only to give you your next dosage? Selfish bastard,” Hagen said affectionately.
Ivan raised a finger into the air. “Nope. Got something for you, too. The supplies you asked for and something else ... Hehe.”
Ivan reached under his chair and produced a plastic box where he kept his stash of stolen drugs. Hagen smiled. They were a formidable team. The things that you could do with a combined stash of chemicals and medicines were divine.
Ivan opened the box and took out a small plastic bag. He threw it to Hagen, who dropped the bag into a pocket of his lab coat.
Next, Ivan took an object wrapped in white linen, a part of a torn bed sheet, from behind his chair. He placed the thing onto the table between them with exaggerated care, and with drug-slowed fingers, he revealed a new piece for Hagen’s formaldehyde collection.
Hagen gasped and Ivan chuckled with satisfaction.
“Ha, I knew you’d like it.” Ivan fidgeted in his seat like a kid who had given his mom the perfect present.
Hagen stared at a woman’s hand inside a large glass jar. The hand had been severed an inch above the wrist, a hint of slender arm still attached. The woman had been in her prime. It was hard to guess from the hand but she had been under forty for sure. Fire had burnt and marred the little and ring fingers and the side of the hand, but the two other fingers and the thumb were intact and hovered in the yellow fluid with such elegance that it made Hagen squirm. The slight bend of the fingers, crowned by still lacquered, long, elaborately manicured fingernails, sent a tingle into his own hands and a sting through his privates.
He turned the jar around and around on the table to look at this emblem of female sensuality from all angles. The sight of the burns intensified the tingle in his fingers, a sweet sting of lustful pain, paling before the wounded beauty.
“How did you get this? And what happened to her?” Hagen asked.
“Some house fire in town a few days ago; it was also in the news. A couple and two kids burnt, only one child survived. She,” Ivan pointed at the hand in formaldehyde, “was still alive when they brought her here. I haven’t seen her though, wasn’t on duty. She had third and fourth degree burns to over seventy percent of her body and died hours later. She had an organ donor card. They took her apart and the rest landed in the morgue so I took the hand just before the remains were taken to the crematory; nobody noticed.” Ivan beamed proudly.
Hagen held his breath for a moment. “You took the hand yourself?”
“Sure. Sawed it off.” Ivan giggled.
“You’re mad.”
“No, I’m a surgeon; she wasn’t the first corpse that I’ve worked on.”
“Have you stolen body parts before?”
“No, that was a first, and, man, it was exhilerating!”
“Why did you do this?” Hagen asked, still completely baffled.
“Whew, you don’t like it?”
“No, no, I love it. This is fantastic; it’s totally perverted, but my greatest present ever.” He laughed, embarrassed. “But why, why did you do this?”
“I thought you’d like it. Why else?” Ivan said, half beaming, half not understanding Hagen’s question.
“Ivan, this is crazy; this is necrophilia, desecration of a dead body. This is a crime, and it’s gross. And you did that to do me a favor?”
“Oh, come on, she was dead. They burned her body to ashes an hour later. It didn’t hurt her. They had totally cannibalized her body. She was empty. She was thirty-eight and in brilliant shape. They harvested all of her organs. Now how gross is that? Why not take her hand? Why not put it in formaldehyde and give it to someone who’d cherish it and hold it dear? That way a part of her stays alive. Sort of ...”
Hagen stared at his friend. He tried to take his mind off the image of a harvested human female body with a pried open rib cage, without a heart, kidneys, liver ... he didn’t know what else they would take.
“Well, I don’t know what to say ... thank you. I’ll cherish that hand, I promise ... What was her name?”
Ivan giggled in his doped state. “Man, you should hear yourself talking. You act as if that hand was holy. It’s just a hand of a dead housewife-chick who had the bad luck to die from a fire.”
Hagen squirmed. Ivan’s words hurt worse than a beating.
“Ah, ah, I can see it. Your obsessive streak is coming through. You’re nuts, Hagen. How do you do that? How can you elevate things like that? Like your slut Juliana. She doesn’t want you, man. She’s spitting into your face; forget her. What you need is a good fuck and ...”
“Shut up!” Hagen shouted so loud that Ivan jumped.
Then Ivan chuckled, his pretty face distorted by the potion, his left eyelid fluttered, the well-formed blond brow above it twitched. “Oops, sorry ...”
“Damn it, nothing is holy for you. You pull everything and everybody around you into the dirt. You’re a monster,” Hagen said, calm again, stating facts.
Ivan’s grin looked insecure and defensive. “We should stop analyzing each other. We always fight when we do that.”
“Agreed. Well, thanks for the present.”
Hagen wrapped the cloth around the glass jar again. He had to hide the sight of this divine hand from the profane man in front of it.
“What was her name?” Hagen asked again.
“I’m not sure if it’s wise to tell you.”
“She’s dead, Ivan. Without a name, this is just a hand. I need a name and you will tell me her name.”
Hagen stared fiercely at his friend. Ivan looked at his hands, kneading them. The fire, the scorn and the mockery vanished from his eyes.
“Colleen Hardwood, her husband was John Hardwood. Her two kids who died were called Irene and Malcolm. Her daughter Lana survived. She’s ten years old and is now living with the grandparents.”
Hagen took a deep breath to calm himself, so terribly aware of his power over Ivan. To be loved means to have power over the one who loves you, like Juliana had power over him. Well, he, in a way, loved Ivan too. So what did that mean in terms of power?
“Thank you, Ivan; really, this is a great present. I really appreciate it.” Hagen smiled at him.
Ivan visibly relaxed and grinned back in his drugged state. “Glad you like it. I knew you’d like it.”
With the tension gone and under the influence of the potion, Ivan fell asleep in his chair ten minutes later. Hagen spread Ivan’s body as comfortably as possible over the table and the two chairs and covered him with an old blanket that lay behind Ivan’s chair. Then Hagen tiptoed out of the hospital with the severed hand of Colleen Hardwood under his arm.
end of excerpt.
She Should Have Called Him Siegfried © 2012 Regina Glei
About the cover artist:
Naoyuki Katoh is a noted Japanese science fiction artist since the 1970s and has contributed to many science fiction/fantasy magazines, novels and games. He did the outstanding cover art for all of Regina's books:
"She Should Have Called Him Siegfried."
