New American Stories

THE LUCKY BODY by Kyle Coma-Thompson

After they shot the body several times, they cut its throat with a scaling knife; after that, they pinched its nostrils and funneled sulfuric acid into its mouth; while some set to yanking the body’s toenails out with a set of pliers, others fashioned a noose from a utility cord they had found in the trunk of their car. After murdering it beyond all recognition, they hung it.

Before the bullets had their say, and the knife, the body had been a handsome brown-haired white adult male of lean build, standing at a height of 6′1″. From the way it was dressed they could tell it had elegant manners. It might have attended one of the better boarding schools in the upper Northeast, but since then had gained a measure of worldliness, having sprinted through college and burst through the paper target of its diploma into the wilder terrain of the status-mongering world. A series of women had loved the body for its many perfections, but also for the gentleness with which it was inhabited: the warmth coming off its naked length, nights they lay beside it, was a true warmth. Never mind the trickle of some dislodged indiscretion or disagreement had gained in size and force as it plowed down from the heights of their romance to bury them — the avalanche was worth the trouble. The body was kind to them. It had treated them as if they were an extension of itself, and from the openness and understanding with which it explained its feelings they learned just how different men’s bodies were from their own; how, though less complex in many ways, with their ridiculous genitals and frank hairiness, they were harder to grasp for the very fact of their exclusivity and foreignness.

But this body had not made them feel any lonelier for not understanding, and this made all the difference.

Now the body was bleeding. Though its heart had stopped hours ago, blood still sprang from its flesh as they hammered a nail into its cheek or drew a razor blade across its nipple. After all the abuse they had invested in it, it was still there — as intact as it was the day it had been born. One of them stood over the rest as they worked and voiced his admiration: here’s someone who truly wanted to live; just look at how well he holds together.

At this rate they would have to pry him apart cell by cell with tweezers, under a microscope. It had taken thirty seconds to apply mortal damage to the body, surprising it on its way to work, catching a plastic grocery bag over its head and holding it there as the others pounded the contents with a length of pipe, a tire iron, and a crowbar. Nearly half the objects in a domestic setting could be used to achieve a fatal blow, so, as if determined to exhaust their options, they grabbed anything they could put their hands on — any belongings a lesser criminal would simply steal — and these, they threw at him. It was as if they were testing the reality of the objects by throwing them. The bruises and cuts left by their impact were evidence of the ongoing reliability of the physical world. The body lay there as a witness. As proof, it didn’t move.

Soon they were exhausted from the effort involved in the task of killing and rekilling the body. Some had to take a seat while the others kept stabbing and kicking and slashing at it. Soon they agreed to work in shifts. While some slept, others would pick up where they’d left off and continue to inflict damage. The body, being dead, didn’t need to sleep or eat, and in that outstripped their stamina. It had nothing living to keep appeased or alive. Unlike them, who had to break from the act to eat a sandwich or massage the soreness in their arms and lower backs and wrists. Killing was difficult work to extend beyond the normal hours of a workday, but the body, it was still there — they had long ago resolved to remove it from the company of the living. So what could they do but keep to their task despite the irreparable wear and tear it was demanding?

Here was a body unlike the others. They had never beaten one quite like it. Its durability, its unassuming congeniality and composure…it lay there without any sign of struggle, more forgiving of its fate and worsening condition than any of them would have been. Surely there must have been parents somewhere far in the depths of its brain matter who had once loved it, raised it with sureness and generosity, without friction of any inner conflict; who had borne it out of their own bodies and fed and clothed it as their own; and borne it brothers and sisters for whom it felt a sense of protectiveness and responsibility; and when it came time to be a grown body, alone in meeting the steep challenges of an adult working life, they sent money when he needed it and always words of encouragement. The body had walked this earth as one of the lucky, and because of that an ineffable glow radiated from every part of it, and it was this they spotted one day and followed for three blocks and admiring it made plans to eventually snatch it off the streets and mine it for what they imagined was its hidden gold.

But opening its guts with a pair of scissors they had found only a mass of bloody brownish entrails. The same grimy mess they would find in any of them. Maybe this was a trick, they thought, maybe the gold wasn’t hidden in the body’s belly but through a series of internalized deflections had only appeared to glow from beneath its navel. They set about smashing the body’s skull open with a hammer. Brains spilled open between their knees like coagulated oatmeal. Tearing it with their fingers they found nothing. In a rage they stamped on the body’s sternum until it cracked, then, with bare hands, yanked both halves of the rib cage open. It was the same as with the head and belly, nothing. Handfuls of viscera, heart and lungs, spleen, kidneys, liver, intestines upper and lower flew over their shoulders, but after all that frantic effort they were still left with what they’d begun with — a man, maybe age thirty-five, of average weight and height in the shape of a body.

What else was left? Where else could they search? As before, the body lay at their feet. Barely recognizable, but to whom? To them? Because they could still remember how fresh and frank it was in its youth, days ago, weeks ago, years ago, when they had first accosted it on the street, dragged it behind a dumpster and beaten it into a condition of meekness and carried it from the alley to their car. Was this the body they had first noticed long ago on that bright spring day when they were walking along, looking for something to destroy, and had seen him, this man, this person, this body, relaxed, calm, and boyish, stand from the bench where he’d been sitting, to wave at someone they didn’t turn around to see coming? Maybe, maybe not. It seemed so long ago now, they could hardly be held accountable if they couldn’t remember.