Ouroboros

Can I take a moment of your time to tell you about the most fabulous little creature?

Now, you’re probably thinking it’s some rare bird with bright multicolored plumage that lives in the mysterious heart of the Amazon, or perhaps a cuddly bright-eyed marsupial that looks like a living teddy bear, and obeys and dotes like the most loyal lapdog. You’re wrong on both accounts. However, if at the end of my introductory question, the image of a small brown retinentia leech from the Mississippi bayou entered your mind then you may give yourself a pat on the back.

So what’s fabulous about an ugly, drab, parasitic little worm? Well, I’ll tell you. If you took this leech, put it in a maze, and rewarded it with food when it swam its way through after a few mind-numbing hours, you would have:

1. A very happy leech.

2. A miracle of biological science.

Now stay with me. I’m going to take your happy leech, and blend it up, blend it into a fine grey paste. I’m then going to take my 50cc’s of liquidized leech, and feed it to its leech friends.

Why have I done this you may ask? Maybe you’ll even hate me for taking your beloved leech away from you. And maybe while you plot ways to take revenge on me for the innocent little life I’ve so cruelly taken away from the world, you’ll miss the miracle I’m manifesting. You see, I’ve just put all those cannibalized leeches in the same maze, and they’ve solved it within mere minutes.

They did this because someway, somehow, they’re able to access the memories of their blended and consumed brethren. We have no idea how this happens or what evolutionary advantage this provides them. But I can tell you this.

They’ve made me extraordinarily rich.

1. What I do.

In my sprawling, lavishly decorated, New York City penthouse apartment, I keep one dark room locked at all times. Inside are jars upon jars, stacked up to the walls, of these leeches. When I’m called out to a job, I pluck one out, pop it into a lithe glass vial, and head to the Mortuary.

I park my beetle-shell black Benz around the block and sneak around to the back door. This is the only time you won’t see me dressed to impress, don’t want to arouse suspicion after all. Inside I’ll find my client’s dearly departed sprawled out on an unflattering aluminum slab spot-lit by a ghastly array of fluorescents. My aide Alex stands beside the body, performing a blood draw, or if it’s been sitting for a while, a liver biopsy. I’ll leave the leech to his lunch while Alex and I have a cigarette.

Alex is young and wiry, with thin lips that twist into a mischievous smile when our conversations inevitably take a turn for the macabre. He’s wearing his usual thick black rubber apron, with gloves to match. I don’t know if it’s fumes of the embalming liquid eating away at his brain‘s social filter, but these conversations so quickly go off the rails, and soon we’re discussing all of the “frogs” he sees wheeled through here week in and week out. Dissections, infections, and gas-filled offal that flatulate post mortem. All of it gives him a sick thrill. I’m sure as well that I’m the only person in his life he can talk to about this. I’m not even sure that he has anyone he talks to about anything. Who knows how these people get so twisted up, all I do know is that he can keep a secret.

We return to the leech, and I liquidize it, Alex then takes a blood draw from me, and infuses my blood with the grey paste, which is then transfused back into me. It’s not pretty or pleasant but it’s profitable.

Memories trickle into my conscious about halfway through the transfusion. Smells come through first. The scent of soaps, colognes, and food. I breathe deep, and in my mind's eye I’m at a dinner table, or a bar bathroom, I’m somewhere new, looking around the world from behind the eyes of a freshly passed person. These images flitter through unfiltered, and once they’ve settled, I can start to apply my typical deductive process.

Usually, it’s quite simple. I bring to mind the feeling of terror and see where my borrowed memories take me.

With one recent recall, I saw my husband standing over me with rage blazing in his eyes and bloody fists. He lunges towards me and grabs my throat. My face feels red hot and I’m clamoring for breath, my eyes are bulging out, and my long nails are tearing at his wrists and chipping.

I pull myself away from the memory. I dab my eyes, drying away the very last of her tears. I know the bastard’s name and address, as well as his face, and pretty much everything about him. I look back at the woman on the slab. She’s pretty in a fragile way. Thick brown curls that refuse to settle flat against the table. Her face is pale now with red tendrils of broken blood vessels around her eyes and nose. But if I concentrate, I can see her alive in her bathroom mirror. Beautifully made up, deep blue eyes made bolder by mascara, and perfect pursed rose petal lips.

I give Alex his usual cut, $1,500, and then head to my appointment with the family.

Let me tell you now that I do not work with formalized law enforcement, and what I do at every level is felonious and ethically inappropriate. I market myself as a forensic medium (Stephen the All-Seeing), because any detective in their right mind that could do what I do would be bound by every manner of miserable moral code to work themselves to death, or divulge their methods. I enter the family homes dressed in garb befitting my mystic profession, usually a dark head wrap, and a gold patterned silk robe with gaping cuffs.

Then I start the show. Maybe I’ll pretend to conjure, perhaps we’ll do a seance, I’ve even used a Ouija board on mornings when I’m too hungover to sell it. I’ll give them a hint to the truth. “I see trouble in the home”, “I see the anger in his eyes”, “I can’t breathe”. I then tell them that the spirit is at peace. Maybe I’ll throw in some personal details from the memories to really hit it home with them “Mom, don’t worry about me, I’m at peace, I love you. I’ve gotta go now, Grandpa and I are playing Chinese Checkers on the porch, we’ll see you later.”

They cry, they thank me, they pay me $15,000 for my trouble. And I drop a hunk of ribeye into the leech jar. Win-Win-Win.

2. What have I done?

It’s the morning of April 16th, 1982, and I’m hanging out my window having a cigarette and half-listening to the news in the other room. I’ve let my hair grow out. It’s become a valuable prop for me now. When I focus I subconsciously brush it out of my face, and it makes me look very thoughtful, considerate even. From the living room, I hear the crescendo of news graphics. “MURDER IN MANHATTAN”, New York State senator David O’Malley has been found dead in his study, shot in the back. I ash my cigarette and turn to the TV. This could be an extraordinarily lucrative opportunity. The phone rings and Alex is on the other end, “Good Morning, Stephen, I assume you’ve heard the good news?” His voice is rich with the typical sense of sardonic delusion. But it was indeed good news and my mind was suddenly swimming in the cashout this gig could get me. My profession and track record were well known amongst the well-heeled bereaved, so there was a good chance my name would get passed along. I’d charge my usual rate of course, but leaching from important people gives me access to all sorts of valuable information.

It was around noon the next day when I got the call, much sooner than I expected. It was his wife. Even in the depths of her grief, her voice lilted and curved in the most beautiful stately way. She sounds young, maybe in her mid-thirties, there could be a book deal in her future, and, I’m sure, a new man after a year or so.

“Now, I’m not usually the type to buy into this woo woo business, but you have to understand my husband's death… Well I think I know who killed him.”

“You do?” I asked ever so innocently.

“Yes, but I have to be sure before I go to the police. My husband surrounded himself with powerful men you know,” she paused for a moment, “This conversation is confidential, isn't it?”

“Completely.”

He was killed by a high powered pimp she thought. A man named Oliver Morrow. A financier socialite whose reputation as a procurer of female company for the rich and powerful was an open secret in the inner circles of city government. She had recently harbored suspicions that her husband's dealings with him had sordid connotations, as he became a near-constant presence at every fundraising event/dinner they held since they were introduced earlier in the year.

My mouth was practically watering, an inside look at the seedy dealings of the political inner circle. If I wanted to open up a side business in blackmail I might have a wealth of clientele soon available to me.

Her request was simple, validation of her conspiratorial theory, I gave her my usual “We’ll see what comes through”, because after all, if any delectable details were uncovered, you can be sure that I’d only pass along the scraps.

I gathered a few large leeches and set off in the usual way.

The senator's body was large and bloated. What was once a strong clean shaved jawline in his youth had slumped with age into a bedraggled jowl that bordered on the amphibious. So unfair what time does to people, but at least it treats us all equally.

The transfusion began, and after a few minutes I was hit with a strong smell of cigars, then the taste of cognac.

I feel empowered I must say, I almost wanted to stop just to bark at Alex for no reason at all. He had a temper, the swell of his anger buzzed through me. This wasn’t a man who’d be easily scared, so I followed those feelings of self-satisfaction.

I was with Oliver now, after a fundraising dinner, we were sitting together by ourselves in a conference room tucked away from the banquet hall, my hand was on his lap.

Again I see myself with him, we’re in my study this time. We’re kissing, and I feel his muscular hands moving over my back.

This has taken quite the turn I must admit.

I take a moment to collect myself. An unexpected vice, but not an unusual one I suppose. I feel a wave of rage crash over me again. I sit back in my chair, close my eyes and follow it deeper.

I’ve got Oliver by the throat and I throw him to the ground. I tell him I’ll ruin him, turn the operation inside out, I turn around to hide the tears in my eyes. I hear a gunshot and stagger, I don’t feel pain, only intense pressure, and a terrible chill.

What happened? Hang on… I do feel there's fear here. I’m terrified now. My gut drops and I lose the ground from under me. I’m alone in a white room somewhere far away, there are diagrams of the body written in Spanish on the walls. A man in a lab coat says in a detached voice that I’ve tested positive. My eyes go white with rage. My insides are burning.

I reel myself out of the recall and tear out the IV. Alex looks at me alarmed.

I leap from the chair and brace myself against the examination table. Blood bellows from my arm and slides down to my wrist in thin spurting crimson ribbons. I know it’s all over now. I’ve lost at my own sick game.