My grandmother was a serious woman. She used to take me to the Black River running through the Gorge. When I saw others fishing, she shook her head before I could ask why we never fished.
“There’s more than fish in the Black River, girl. If the conditions are right, if the mist is low on the water and if it’s not too windy, you can see them down there.”
“See ‘what’ down there?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Lost souls, maybe. Something worse. Better to let them be.” I asked why she brought me to the shore where evil things might be and she said, “If we give up the shore, the rotted will take up residence, and then there will be a new shore. They’ll be at your door before you know it. Don’t give up the shore. Understand?”
I didn’t. She walked on along the bank of the river before I could ask more questions. It was her way of forcing me to reflect and think about her basically nonsensical lessons. I picked up a stone to skip instead.
“Drop it, girl,” my grandmother barked. She wasn’t even looking at me. Needless to say, I dropped the stone and nudged it with my toe to the pocket of mud where it’d come from.
My grandmother passed away when I was sixteen. Like most kids on the verge of adulthood, I had trouble processing my emotions. The secret is patience and waiting, in case you’re wondering. That’s how you recover from a loss and a trauma and live with the scar. It’s pure endurance.
I didn’t know “the secret” at sixteen, however, and simply wanted to hurt something, to rage, to make or unmake a piece of the world so that others would know how I felt.
That’s why I threw the rock, hard, into the Black River.
He was there when I turned around, the man without eyes and a grin. I recoiled, and he raised his hands.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said. “I know I frighten people. I gave my eyes away for a greater cause.” He went on grinning and waiting, for me, I guess. I figured he must be a veteran.
“Uh, you just snuck up on me.”
He put on sunglasses with round lenses to cover the hollow sockets. “There, is that better?”
I became annoyed. “I’m not afraid,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “That’s good. There are so many who never want to talk with me. My name is Tenderhooks. What’s yours?”
For some reason, I felt the need to lie. “Frieda.”
He flinched, and his grin faltered. “It isn’t kind to lie.”
“It isn’t kind to sneak up on someone when you know your appearance might freak them out. You could have had your sunglasses on when you approached. Also, Tenderhooks sounds more made up than Frieda.”
The grin retreated like paint over hairline fractures in concrete. He wasn’t fooling me. He was getting irritated, which was fine. I didn’t feel like talking anyway.
“Have a nice day.” I started walking.
“Are you giving up the shore?” He asked.
My back was already to him, and when I turned around, he was gone. A shiver crawled along my arms, a presence. I couldn’t see it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
I wished I hadn’t thrown that rock.
Years went by, and the previously mentioned scar tissue formed, metaphorically, over the hole my grandmother’s death had left.
I was in my late twenties when my father got sick. He’d found out too late for treatment and ignored the troubling signs beforehand. Many men do, apparently. Within a month and a half, he was dead, and so too another chunk of my soul.
He’d never taken me to the Black River, but that’s where I took my grief, fully intending to throw another rock. I hadn’t matured and realizing that just pissed me off more. What the hell was the point of our lives? We drift along and learn we know nothing for sure. Worse, we pass the curse along to another unsuspecting generation. Then we die.
I was holding the rock when Tenderhooks appeared for our second meeting. “Back again, eh?” He wore his sunglasses. He had a few more wrinkles. I would have placed his age at thirty-something last time. Now we were both a little more than ten years older.
“You live here or something?” I asked. His buttoned shirt and dress coat suggested he lived in a manor as the world’s creepiest butler.
“Close by,” he said, grinning - as usual.
“What do you want?” I asked. My patience had apparently lessened since teenagehood. I don’t know how, without eyes, but he seemed to be focusing on the rock I was holding. I suppose I’d been gesturing with it.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” He took a few steps toward the river. We stood on an embankment, and the water rushed by below, cold and dark as death. Tenderhooks knelt and scooped up a handful of pebbles. He scattered them across the surface all at once. The act felt violent and rebellious.
“I want to throw this rock,” I said, “because I’m upset. My dad just died, and I-“
Tenderhooks nodded emphatically. “I know. I used to see you here when you were little. She made you drop the rock. You wanted to fish.”
“You… what?”
“Listen,” he said, “don’t be frightened. I saw you when you used to walk down here. I know she meant a lot to you and that you’re upset your dad is gone. I can help you.”
For a long moment, I could only hear the river and the wind hissing through the remnant leaves of November. His grin returned, and he folded his gloved hands across his stomach. We waited.
I broke first. “Look, I don’t know you. I don’t know what you want, and frankly, you’re creeping me out.”
“I propose a solution to your problem,” he said. “I can help with your grief.”
“Like a therapist or something?” I’m sure he could hear me carefully stepping away.
He squawked, and it took a moment to understand that was how he laughed. “Much better than that,” he said, and he took a deliberate step my way. I had stupidly put myself between him and the river.
“Drugs?”
He shook his head and kept moving closer. The rock in my hand changed its purpose.
“No. Better,” he said. “How does tossing that rock, all the rocks you want, sound?”
Suddenly, I was listening. Still uncomfortable, though.
“It wouldn’t cost you much,” he said, opening his coat. Inside, hanging from loops, were various metal tools that were the opposite of friendly.
I lifted the rock to ready my defense.
He raised his open hands. “Hear me out.” He stopped moving, which was good because I intended to split his scalp on the next step. “I am a collector. No doubt, you have a memorial on your body to your beloved grandmother, etched in ink on your body…”
His assumption hung between us until I nodded. I had a tattoo between my breasts: Two eyeballs looking in opposite directions and an upside down cross, seemingly dripping from their center.
My grandmother was ever observant; she seemed to have an eye in the back of her head. The upside-down cross was my own addition. I added it on a whim. I got the tattoo after she’d died. I wanted to show the universe, God, I suppose, that I thought it was an asshole for death - for giving and taking away.
“This will be hard to explain,” he said, finally ceasing his advance, “but I am a purveyor of tattoos… and the skin that bears them.”
“Back off,” I threatened with the rock.
He did as asked. From his coat, he produced a rolled satchel, which he swiftly unfurled over the rocky ground. There were sharp and shiny instruments and more, medical equipment and syringes, neatly organized. Imagine what an insane surgeon turned serial killer would carry.
I dropped the rock and started to run. The uneven shore caught and twisted my ankle, and I went down. So much for a hasty exit. Of course, Tenderhooks had no eyes, so I’m not sure he ascertained the situation.
“I have a… a gun.” I just barely swerved the obvious lie from question to statement, scrabbling like a crab awkwardly over the stones.
“You can go,” he said. “I won’t try to stop you, and I’m sorry if I scared you. That was not my intention.”
I rose and tried a little weight on the ankle and gasped from the intensity of the injury. I thought it might be fractured.
Tenderhooks seemed to read my mind. “If I may,” he said, “I am a trained doctor.” The way he said that didn’t seem weird at the moment. In retrospect, however, I thought he may have tried to become a doctor, but it hadn’t worked out.
He came over slowly and reached for my leg. I grasped another rock while he felt and eventually rotated the ankle.
“Just pulled muscles. Nothing to worry about. Ice it when you get home. Keep it elevated.” He stood up and backed away. “As for my offer, it stands. I remove the tattoo and a few layers of the skin before applying the parchment to pig skin and placing the whole thing in a jar of preservatives. Then I remove any remaining traces of ink still on the body with a laser.”
“Why?”
The grin. “Just a collection I’m building.”
“But you said-“
“I could try to convince you, but really, it comes down to your temporary trust. You will not be troubled after for your loss. I promise that. I swear to that.” Tenderhooks covered his heart as he swore.
I wanted relief. I wanted to be free of grief. I needed freedom. I didn’t understand the cost. Tenderhooks guided me to my feet and escorted me to a shack within a copse of trees, close to the river.
There was no floor unless dirt counted, and that had sprouted an abundance of mushrooms. We went to a second floor and a room with an operating table made out of a bench.
“This is fucked up,” I think I said.
“It is indeed rudimentary,” he said.
I lay down anyway and he began the work, removing my shirt and administering what I thought was a local anesthetic while I gazed through a grimy, slightly translucent curtain. The first cut, however, revealed the operation would not be painless at all.
I tried to protest, but my mouth wouldn’t work. I could move my eyes a little but nothing else. Tenderhooks had paralyzed me.
He came into view, empty sockets somehow examining me. “I am sorry about the discomfort.” His smile suggested a false apology. “The pain is necessary, you see. Imagine you’re condensing all the dull regrets and feelings of loss into a few moments.” A narrow tongue licked his lips in anticipation of the bloody deed. It was like he was about to savour a meal.
I couldn’t see the tools but I sure as hell felt the pierce and pull of hooks, the fine slicing of a scalpel, and possibly a spatula lifting the skin like a lasagna.
I couldn’t even scream. I moaned and cried while he shushed me and offered discomforting updates.
“I’m stretching the skin.”
“Now, I’m drawing a line for excision.”
“You’re going to feel a sharp pain… for a second.”
I gasped and spittle ran down my face.
He simply left when it was over. No farewells or assurances or post-op instructions. I didn’t know when I’d be able to move again. The answer was dusk. Feeling came back slowly.
I felt the bare space between my breasts before I saw the tattoo, her memorial, had indeed been taken. He’d cleaned up the blood but left the rags he’d done it with in a pile in the corner.
I put on my shirt and left the shack. It was getting dark.
I walked along the shore.
I threw a rock, then three, without hesitation or remorse.
The exchange had been made. He’d been true to his word, and I wanted to regret it. I missed my grief like it was the skin itself. But no more than that. I threw more rocks and smiled.
I left soon after, and surrendered the shore.
I tell you this story, AP Cleriot, because I saw your previous one regarding a man obsessed with skin. That was some time ago. If it isn’t the same person, well, I really do wonder how there could be more people obsessed with taking bits of skin like this.
I don’t care about my grandmother anymore.
I’m thinking of getting a tattoo in memory of my dad, but I’m afraid Tenderhooks will come back. I’m afraid I want him to.
The concentrated suffering from Tenderhooks was unbearable. Will the years of feeling empty be worse?
What momentary brutality would you endure to feel nothing?