Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories Read online

  Deborah Sheldon, a professional writer from Melbourne, Australia, writes across the darker spectrum of crime, noir, and horror. Deb’s short stories have appeared in many well-regarded literary magazines and anthologies. Her published fiction includes short story collections, novellas, and novels. Other writing credits include television scripts, feature articles, radio plays, award-winning medical writing, and non-fiction books for Reed Books and Random House.

  Visit her website: http://deborahsheldon.wordpress.com

  Deborah Sheldon’s titles published

  by IFWG Publishing Australia

  Dark Waters / Ronnie and Rita (novellas, 2016)

  Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories (collection, 2017)

  Perfect Little Stitches and other Stories

  By Deborah Sheldon

  This is a work of fiction. The events and characters portrayed herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places, events or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the publisher.

  Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN-13: 978-1-925496-38-3

  Copyright ©2017 Deborah Sheldon

  V1.0

  Stories first publishing history at the end of this book.

  This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Printed in Palatino Linotype and Signo.

  IFWG Publishing Australia

  Melbourne

  www.ifwgaustralia.com

  For Allen and Harry.

  …the bright day is done,

  And we are for the dark.

  Iras

  William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

  Table of Contents

  Perfect Little Stitches

  When This You See, Think of Me

  In The Company of Women

  Across The White Desert

  Sarah Jane Runs Away With the Circus

  What the Sea Wants

  The Sundowners

  Flight Path

  A Faithful Companion

  Will o’ the Wisp

  Fair-Haired Boy

  Species Endangered

  Nocturnal Fury

  A Haunting in Suburbia

  Griselda Gosh

  The Brightest Place

  Angel Hair

  Stagecoach From Castlemaine

  Delirium of Negation

  Post hoc ergo propter hoc

  The Again-Walkers

  Perfect Little Stitches

  Angelo De Luca took up the scalpel and opened the cadaver’s thigh, from hip to knee, with a single stroke. There was very little subcutaneous fat. Using firm, continuous passes of the scalpel, Angelo pared through the muscle within seconds and exposed the femur without scratching it.

  “Very nice, as usual,” Gary Mathews said. “Ah shit, you know what? I just went and notched mine at the hip-end.”

  “At the lesser trochanter?”

  “I think so, yeah, the top bit that sticks out a little.”

  Angelo De Luca glared across the stainless-steel table at his new assistant, Gary Mathews, who was harvesting from the cadaver’s other leg. Gary had started his working life as a butcher and still acted like one, even though the meat now was human, and therefore precious.

  “If you would put your mind to the study of anatomy,” Angelo said, “and learn about the attachments of soft tissue, you wouldn’t keep making these basic errors. Haven’t you read the books I loaned you?”

  “Relax. Most of the bones we get are in shit condition anyway.”

  “That’s no reason to damage them further.”

  Gary sneered. “Even with this bloke? He’s almost ninety. How good are his bones going to be? Swiss cheese. The poor bastard who gets these femurs will bust them in half on his first step from the hospital bed.”

  Angelo could not trust himself to speak.

  Whistling, Gary returned his attention to the cadaver’s thigh, slicing briskly towards the kneecap. Angelo heard the muted snicking sound as the scalpel contacted the femur, over and over. Oh, how Angelo despised Gary Mathews with his uncouth footy-beer-and-barbecue personality, his ginger hair sprouting thick as fur over pale forearms, his skin freckled and wrinkled as if he had been pressed out of dough and left in the sun to crack; Gary Mathews, the jovial, under-educated idiot, the very antithesis of everything that a funeral director ought to be.

  Angelo felt the familiar stab of regret.

  This funeral parlour, De Luca and Son, had been named after his father, Giovanni, and himself. It was supposed to be Angelo’s legacy but his own sons had not wished to continue the family trade. Once Papa Giovanni had died, money became tight. Staff members—those who are not relatives—expect and must receive full pay and entitlements. Then there was the outstanding balance of Sofia’s stupendous medical bills. Bankruptcy had loomed.

  Until the arrival three months ago of Angelo’s saviour: Heather.

  Once Angelo had agreed to her unusual business offer, Gary Mathews was made the sole member of Angelo’s staff, without consultation, by Heather the Body Wrangler. That was what she actually called herself, Heather the Body Wrangler. Angelo did not know anything about her apart from a mobile number.

  Unlike organs such as the heart, certain tissues including bones and skin are still viable for transplant after death. Heather would pay up to four thousand dollars in cash for a complete set of usable parts, removed surreptitiously, from a young and healthy corpse. Age and medical conditions lessened the remuneration on a fixed scale. At the very least, a diseased and elderly corpse meant a few hundred dollars.

  The money had staved off the bank manager.

  Yes, Angelo would go to jail if the police found out, but morally, it made irrefutable sense. Living patients either died or suffered permanent disability without these transplants. Voluntary donors were scarce. When cadavers would be wasted anyway, burned to ashes or buried to make worm shit, what was the harm in first recycling their viable parts? No harm at all.

  As long as the relatives never found out.

  Because realising that your loved one’s remains had been pillaged, defiled and dismantled would have to be the worst kind of unimaginable horror. Dear God, if such a fate had befallen Sofia…he could hardly bring himself to think of it. And so, occasionally, when Angelo could not sleep, he feared that he had made a pact with the Devil. A widower for nearly a year, he would turn to the empty side of his bed and weep to Sofia for forgiveness.

  Now, Gary Mathews gazed at Angelo across the naked and muscle-splayed cadaver on the stainless-steel table, waggled the scalpel and said, “Mate, you couldn’t cut butter with this bloody thing. Just let me go get my boning knife.”

  “No.” Angelo’s moustache quivered as he fought to maintain a neutral expression. “Our deceased clients are offering the living a wonderful gift. We will not desecrate them with implements intended for the carving up of animals.”

  Gary dropped the scalpel to the stainless-steel table and put his fists on his hips. “You know what’s going on? What we’re doing?”

  Angelo flushed. “Yes, of course.”

  “Nobody has signed any rele
ase forms. Every document is forged. What we’re doing, right here, is some seriously criminal shit.”

  “Please continue with the harvesting,” Angelo said. “Once we’ve gathered the long bones, we’ll move onto the saphenous veins, ligaments and tendons. I’d like your help to sew the PVC pipes inside the limbs, and to remove the skin and heart valves, if you wouldn’t mind. After that, I’ll take the corneas myself, thank you. Please take your break at that point. Embalming will begin promptly at three o’clock.”

  Gary stared back, nostrils flared. Angelo decided to continue with the removal of the femur. For a time, the only sounds were the flit of his scalpel, the steady drip-drip-drip of the tap into the scrub-sink.

  “Nobody is giving anybody a gift,” Gary finally said. “We’re stealing these body parts. We’re stealing them for money. I’m a grave-robber and so are you.”

  Gary unfastened his bloodstained apron, flung it across a bench, and peeled away his latex gloves. He headed to the exit of the preparation room.

  “Where are you going?” Angelo said, hoping that the bastardo had quit.

  “To the boot of my car,” Gary said, “for my knives.”

  Oh, she was beautiful.

  She was the first cadaver of the day, this warm spring day that had followed a long, torturous night of rain and shrieking wind. Angelo slowly unzipped the body bag the rest of the way.

  A child: such a beautiful young child.

  Her jet-black hair lay in a halo of ringlets about her pale face. Angelo wanted to weep. The forensic pathologist must have been similarly affected. Following autopsy at the Coroner’s Court, the typical cadaver arrived at Angelo’s funeral parlour in disarray, tacked together as roughly as a hessian sack, but not this child. The forensic pathologist had taken great care. The single incision from throat to pubis had been closed using small, neat sutures, as precise as any of Sofia’s hand-sewn embroideries. Had there been an examination of the brain? Angelo couldn’t see any sign. He smoothed back the ringlets framing the child’s forehead. And yes, hidden away within the hairline lay the tidy stitches circumnavigating the scalp.

  According to the paperwork, the cause of death was inconclusive. Teresa-Kate, eleven years of age, had died in hospital three days ago from an unidentified infection that had first paralysed her, and then triggered multiple and catastrophic organ failure. More than likely, she had acquired the infection from the bite of an unknown animal, probably a dog. The included body diagram showed a large ‘X’ on the upper back. Angelo put down the paperwork.

  Gently, he turned the child onto her side. Just above her right scapula, into the tissue of her trapezoid muscle, lay the bite mark. Could the paralysis have been symptomatic of some new strain of rabies? But Angelo was no microbiologist. If the experts at the Coroner’s Court were unable to establish an exact cause of death, it was not for him to speculate. He zipped the bag closed and placed Teresa-Kate in the refrigerator unit. Then he washed his hands and retired to the lunchroom, where he washed his hands again.

  As he ate his sandwich, Angelo perused his work diary. He had spoken to Teresa-Kate’s parents that morning. Anglicans, they wished to hold a home viewing before the funeral and burial, which necessitated an open casket. Teresa-Kate was already so perfectly preserved that Angelo’s embalming and cosmetology skills would render her almost life-like. After lunch, he would ring the family’s priest to discuss and confirm details of the service. Satisfied, he had just started on an apple when Gary Mathews shouldered through the lunchroom door.

  Dropping the pizza box onto the table and sitting down, Gary said, “We’ll get the whole four-grand out of that kid.”

  A chunk of apple nearly stuck in Angelo’s windpipe.

  Gary folded a slice of pizza in half, and crammed most of it into his mouth. A Hawaiian pizza, of course: a disgusting abomination that turned Angelo’s stomach.

  “She’s perfect in every way,” Gary said, talking as he chewed, “young and in good nick. This time, mate, we’ve hit the jackpot.”

  “No,” Angelo said. “No, we haven’t. You’re wrong.”

  Gary stopped chewing, raised an eyebrow.

  Angelo said, “Haven’t you read the report? Seen the biohazard tape on the body bag? She died of a disease that sounds very similar to rabies. Her soft tissues could infect every single transplant recipient.”

  “I’ve already called the Body Wrangler,” Gary said. “We’re doing the kid.”

  Angelo felt blood mottle his cheeks. “If it has to be done, fine, I’ll do it myself. You’ll not go anywhere near her. You and your boning knives can burn in hell first.”

  Gary shrugged, kept eating his pizza.

  Teresa-Kate lay naked on the stainless-steel table. Her arms and legs were thin, hairless and unblemished, pre-pubescent. What might she have done with her four-score and ten? That would be the question to torment her parents until the release of their own deaths. And in a lesser way, that same question would also haunt Angelo. Since going into business with Heather, Angelo dreamed about many of his harvested clients, each one berating him and wailing for their missing body parts.

  Enough.

  He was a professional.

  And according to protocol, he had to first take the leg bones.

  He picked up the scalpel. The multiple bulbs of the overhead light beamed bright and white. The tap over the scrub-sink dripped in a steady beat. It was almost 9 p.m. Gary had been sent home hours ago. Angelo had arranged to meet Teresa-Kate’s family priest tomorrow morning to discuss details of the funeral and burial.

  The harvesting would be now or never.

  As softly as the kiss of a downy feather, he touched the tip of the scalpel to Teresa-Kate’s hip without breaking the skin. A moment passed. He held the blade over her anterior superior iliac spine—the outer crest of the pelvis—where, beneath the epidermis, dermis and layer of subcutaneous fat, the attachments lay for the inguinal ligament and the sartorius muscle. One deep and decisive cut, following along the length of the femur, was the starting point.

  Angelo could not do it.

  Sofia came to mind, back when she first became seriously ill, confused, trying to cut rolled pastry on the kitchen bench with her hands as if her fingers had become knives. Leading her away, Angelo had shown her some of the framed embroidery she had made over the years. Placated, Sofia allowed him to administer her medication. Look at my nails, she had said. Tesorio mio, watch me as I rend the world.

  These had been the last complete sentences she had ever spoken to him.

  After forty-two years together, God, how he missed her.

  Now, Angelo sniffed, scrubbed at his tears with the heels of both latex gloves. Then he pressed the scalpel into Teresa-Kate’s left hip and dug in deep, slicing down towards the kneecap. He worked quickly, efficiently. After next stripping the tibia and fibula, he moved to the other leg, repeated the procedure. Then he deboned her right arm, her left arm. The meat of Teresa-Kate’s flayed limbs lay shockingly red against the pallor of her torso. From the box of PVC pipes, he found the lengths that would fit. He spent the next hour neatly reconstructing Teresa-Kate’s body, using suture as translucent as fishing wire, making stitches so discreet that they brought Sofia’s best handiwork to mind.

  At close to 10.30 p.m., Angelo packed up his harvesting equipment. No matter what Heather the Body Wrangler demanded, he would not take this child’s soft tissue. She had died from a rabies-like disease. How could Angelo claim to be helping the living if he deliberately offered up corneas and tendons that might carry infection?

  It was time for the embalming procedure. He measured and mixed the chemicals. An incision near her collarbone exposed both the carotid artery and the jugular vein. One small incision in each, and he would insert the tubes: one to drain any remaining blood, the other to fill the circulatory system with embalming fluid. He pressed the tip of the scalpel into the c
arotid artery.

  Teresa-Kate opened her eyes.

  Angelo staggered back, dropped the scalpel.

  The girl sat up, gazing at him, blinking dopily as if coming awake from a deep sleep. The sclera of both her eyes was black, as black as a fathomless pit.

  “Dio mio,” he said, and tried to cross himself.

  Teresa-Kate looked at the stitched wounds along her arms and legs, gaped at the line of sutures down the midline of her body, and gave a silent scream. The stretching of her mouth peeled back her lips, splitting the skin across her teeth. Her incisors, pre-molars and molars were long, fanged: no longer human.

  Teresa-Kate leapt from the table.

  As she came at him, Angelo grabbed a stainless-steel instrument tray and struck her across the face. It slowed her momentarily. He hit her again, and again. When she staggered, dropped, he picked up the bone-dust vacuum and brought it down onto the crown of her head, cracking her skull. She sprawled across the floor.

  Angelo watched her for a long, long time.

  When she still hadn’t moved, his senses began to return. He put down the vacuum. The first thing he realised was that he had wet himself. The second thing was that, somehow, Teresa-Kate had been alive and now she was dead.

  Angelo groped for a chair and sat down.

  The dead coming back to life, he had read of such things occurring from time to time in faraway places like Zimbabwe, the Philippines, and Venezuela, where the deceased wakes up during their funeral. But no, this was not a misdiagnosis, a case of some poorly-trained doctor confusing coma with death. At the Coroner’s Court, Teresa-Kate’s internal organs had been removed, inspected, weighed, sliced, and then tumbled together into a plastic bag, which was then sewn up inside her abdominal cavity. Good God, her brain had received the same treatment.

  She still hadn’t moved.

  Incrementally, Angelo slid from the chair, approached. He used the tip of his shoe to turn her over. This time, she was definitely dead. One side of her face was smashed into a pulp of ruined skin and splintered bone.