Amelia Gray: Museum of the Weird

“I decided I might try and eat my toes,” Olive said, closing her eyes. “But now that I’ve started, I don’t think I should move.”

Roger pushed himself off the wall and knelt down next to her. He unbuckled her silver belt and reached with it under her dress. He looped the belt around the top of her leg and tightened it. His hands were not shaking.

“Sit on the loose end,” he said, pushing it under her. “I hope that works.”

“You brought flowers,” she said, blinking.

“Olive,” he said. “You cut off your toes.”

She looked down at the bowl. “Are they still toes?” she asked. He thought about the metal drums heating in the sun, bouncing in the back of the truck as he paraded their human contents across town. “I don’t want to look at them,” he said.

She touched her leg. “Let’s drink grapefruit juice,” she said. “We should really get you to the hospital.”

The metal drums, hot blood clinging to moist gauze pads. “I’m thirsty,” she said.

“You have no toes on your left foot.”

“I’m thirsty,” she said. She looked at him. She seemed very reasonable.

“A little juice,” Roger said. “And then straight to the hospital.” She nodded and motioned to the kitchen, where Roger filled two glasses with juice.

“I was considering a stew,” she said. He put a glass of juice into her hand on her lap, wrapped her fingers around it. “Chop, braise, stew. I bought the carrots this morning. I already had potatoes and broth. You would need a bit of flour first, and butter. I have those, too.”

The juice glass trembled and spilled onto her lap. “Cooking makes me feel better,” she said.

He looked around for another bandage for her foot. “I don’t cook,” he said.

“I can’t feel my leg.”

“That’s normal.”

“You should try it,” she said. “Cooking. Then we’ll go.”

Roger sat back on his heels. He was worried, but proud of himself for remembering proper tourniquet procedure. He had saved her life. She might thank him once she was in a better frame of mind.

She raised her head and shook it, opening her eyes briefly before closing them again. “A stew,” she said. “I promise, after stew.”

“I don’t know how,” he said, but she didn’t seem to hear him. He picked up the flowers he had brought her, ruined now, though when he put them in the sink they still brightened the room.

My first week on the force and that crazy guy starts killing men, digging into the chest cavity — with an actual bonesaw, we think, the cut is so clean — and removing a rib. We nickname him God to be real clever. My girl Lisa thinks I’m joking when I tell her this and when I insist it’s true, she throws me out. The devout type; I should have known. Meanwhile this guy’s on the loose and looking for victims. Usually homeless guys. We found one last week in an alley, frozen to his own blood and stuck to the ground. No calling card from God, just a wound that looks like a shotgun blast at first and more gruesome on closer inspection.

And that’s another thing — no other marks. I can’t figure it. We run toxicology tests. We go over them with a blacklight, we check every inch of skin and hair with agonizing precision. Sam, the morgue tech, says precision in this business is usually agonizing. No strangle marks, no bruises, no chemicals beyond the ones typically cruising through a bum’s veins. No organs harvested. I half expect these guys stitched up, it’s such a clean job. Other than the blood, I mean. Sam says it’s divinity, or a spell, but I think that’s bull. I think it’s cold in those alleys, and God is working fast.

Two things happen to bust everything wide open. This sicko, he gets a guy in a house. He gets him, safe and warm, in his own bed at night. This will baffle me when I find out about it but I don’t learn about it when the other guys do, because my girl Lisa chose that moment to pull a sneak attack on me and bring a priest home for dinner. Some poor sap is missing a rib, bleeding out on his 350 thread-count Egyptian cotton, and I’m passing the asparagus to a guy in a plastic collar.

* * *

This is Father Matthew, Lisa says. She serves fish sticks with mayo and pours the iced tea. Father Matthew spends some time looking pleased with himself. He says, Lisa’s been telling me some interesting things about this case you’re working on.

I say, Yeah. I say Listen, the boys aren’t sure it’s a serial case yet and we don’t want copycats, so don’t leak it to the press or anything.

Father Matthew holds up his hands. He says, What is going on with this world.

I tell him, This guy God, he’s got a bonesaw on loan and he’s cutting into men and taking their ribs. Homeless guys.

Bonesaw? says Lisa, dipping a fish stick into a pile of mayo. And he calls himself God, Father Matthew says.

Yeah, I say. Well, tell the truth, that’s what us guys down at the precinct are calling him. Kind of a code name, you know.

Nobody knows his true name, Father Matthew says.

I say, Yeah.

He puts down his glass, says, Naming God is a very serious thing. Yeah well, I say, He’s everywhere, right?

Sure, he says.

Even in serial killers, right?

I thought you didn’t know he was a serial killer, Lisa says. Father Matthew holds the edge of the table. It’s not a name you just throw around, he says. It makes it sound like you respect him.

After Father Matthew leaves, I do the dishes for Lisa and crawl into bed just as she’s finishing her vespers. All the doors are locked, the windows are bolted, and I have a chair propped against the front door. Just in case God’s watching and he wants to make it personal.

We’re safe, Lisa says. I asked for protection.

He won’t get in tonight, I say.

She says, I think you worried Father Matthew a little with the respect thing. She kisses me on the cheek.

Worried myself a little, I say, truthfully. What I don’t say is, God’s a clever bastard and I do respect him. He’s everywhere.

When the waiter brought a plate of hair to the table alongside Beth’s soup, it was difficult to be polite about it. Still, Beth felt the need to be polite, because it was a nice restaurant, and she was on a date for the first time in months, and with a guy she actually liked. His name was Dave and he smelled like shaving cream and the subway.

From the way Dave looked first at the plate of hair and then at her, Beth couldn’t be sure if he had ordered it for her, as a surprise, while she was in the bathroom. He had been talking earlier about the exotic locations he had visited in the previous year — Bali, Peru, some island near Madagascar — and she assumed that interesting foods and customs were a part of those voyages. Dave had a disarming smile and an easy way with words that had made the night go quickly until that moment.

Beth dipped her spoon into the soup, a tomato-cream bisque that she had ordered with a sidelong glance at Dave, hoping he wouldn’t think her uncultured for skipping over the more adventurous carrot ginger gazpacho. Dave had ordered a salad, which had not yet arrived, giving him time to focus his gaze on her. She put her spoon down.

“Please,” Dave said. “Eat. Don’t wait for me.”

“Would you like to try anything?” Beth said. She hoped Dave would go for the hair, which lay clumped on its plate directly between them. In fact, it wouldn’t be entirely clear that the plate of hair was meant for her, except that the waiter had bowed at her when delivering the plate, and had murmured to her his wishes that she enjoy her meal; despite, she assumed, the fact that her entree of squab would be arriving later. Beth wondered for an uneasy moment if squab was not actually a small bird, as she had figured, but a plate of hair.