”You can’t call me at work,” I said. “This is highly unprofessional.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I got something special. Never seen anything like it.”
Angel wasn’t much for hyperbole. He’d done this for years. If he said he’d never seen anything like it, and he’s calling me at work about it, it must be special.
“I’m listening.”
“I got a new source. They have something… amazing.”
“Green?”
“Of course. That’s what you pay me for. I wouldn’t risk it.”
I nodded. I’d never had a problem working with Angel before, and he was usually great at proofing his sources. I’m a collector, not a monster.
“What do you have?”
“Honestly, I don’t have the slightest idea. But I’ll bet my ponytail you’ll love it.”
That, if anything, was interesting. Not the ponytail, but the offer.
I’ve always had an interest in the macabre. I feel an amazing sense of control when people talk to me, or visit my house, not knowing what I keep in the dark collection room. It makes me feel like I’m stronger and smarter. Like a fox among chickens, confidently strutting among them. It brings me the confidence I need to do my job, and it earns me the money to support my lavish lifestyle.
I’ve been collecting for years. It started with leftovers and vestigial parts. Milk teeth and tonsils, just these… useless little things that were thrown away. A discarded umbilical cord was my first step up, and when I got my first parasitic twin, I was ecstatic. It was all supposed to be discarded and thrown away, but to me it turned into a wonderful collection.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve expanded into two rooms. Shelf after shelf of discarded organs and enough bones to construct a complete human skeleton from dozens of people. I have six different human hearts, three brains, eight pairs of eyes. Organs who couldn’t or wouldn’t be donated. Some from the young, some from the old. Some healthy, some sick, some disfigured. I prefer the latter, they make for more interesting pieces.
But they have to be “green”. No grave robbing, no illegal harvesting, nothing unethical. Either willing or dead, and nothing marked for donation. If someone needs that heart, I don’t want it. But a pair of eyes with heterochromia from someone who peacefully passed? I have a place for those. I’d honor those. Maybe get a little rotating platform.
I didn’t just want to have volumes of organs though. I wanted variety, and most of all, rarity. I worked with a few doctors and morticians over the years, but most were squeamish and uncomfortable. I could rarely get anything, not to mention anything fresh. But a few years ago, I started talking to Angel.
Angel works exclusively online. I know he has a vast contact network, but he works mostly in North America. Mostly the east coast, but sometimes in the Midwest. I know he has certain illegal dealings, especially in the high-end wine trade, but he always played it straight with me. He has the proper documentation and can prove to me not only that the organ is what it is, but that the patient is either dead, unharmed, or consenting. Green.
As I say it out loud, it sounds so brutal. That’s not what this is about. This is about control, and that delicious warmth in my chest. It feels like being Clark Kent, knowing that all that stands between you and the complete ruin of everyone around you is social convention, mercy, and a pair of glasses. I got the big ‘S’ right there. My trophies.
That day when Angel called me, I had no idea what to expect. So when I got an e-mail with 20 attached images, my heart was racing. I grabbed a glass of dry white, dimmed the lights, and spun my chair around.
It was an unknown patient. Dead of blunt force trauma, possibly some kind of traffic accident. No one had claimed the body, no one seemed to know who they were. But this person, this anonymous nobody, had some really strange features. During the autopsy, Angel’s contact reached out to see if we were interested in some (lovingly named) “leftovers”.
And the pictures they showed me, well… it gave me the shivers. I had no idea what I was looking at.
Wonderful.
It looked like a human organ, but it was either smoke damaged or… almost fermented. Less than 6 hours out of the body, and almost completely black. It looked like it was wrapped in some sort of seaweed, with little barbs holding it all together. I had no idea what I was looking at, and I was already salivating over it. This was going to be preserved and given a proper placing, for sure.
“They say this is a second heart” the e-mail read. “A piggyback heart. A growth added on top of the regular heart, to help combat heart disease. But I’ve never seen anything like it, those are usually added surgically. This is organic. It has no name. My contact wants to study it, but they’re willing to send it off once they’ve done preliminary scans. Not gonna lie, this will cost you. It is not damaged. Eucalyptus fresh, green as grass.”
I had to have it. This was a unique find, as close to mint as I could get. I wanted to know all about it, and I wanted to have this… this trophy. It deserved my admiration. I didn’t even try to play it cool. I knew Angel wouldn’t try to rip me off. I just asked him to name his price.
Angel got back to me the next day. He hired a courier and assured me the package’d be delivered within 36 hours. He sent me more pictures, along with a few links to the accident. Some guy in a raincoat hit by a truck, didn’t look like much. Angel didn’t want to say too much, as to not reveal his sources, but it looked legitimate.
For an entire day, I was like a kid waiting to open a Christmas present. A genuine, unique type of organ in my collection. I had a few rarities, but this? This was different. This could be something new. This would elevate me one step over the other collectors.
Of course there are others. What’s the point of a collection if you can’t brag about it?
When I got home, there was this nervous 20-something outside my door, tapping her foot. She just handed a cooler over and ran. No confirmation if I was the right person, no code word, no notification, nothing. Angel usually has more professional people. Getting a delivery from sketchy people makes you look sketchy in turn, you know?
But I brought it in and opened it up. I prepared myself and cut the foam open. Still ice cold, with vacuum packaging. Marked with Hatchet Pharma, like most of Angel’s deliveries. Can’t miss it with that icy blue plastic wrapper. It’s a pain to open though.
I put on my gloves and started preparing a preservative jar. I had a few jars that would work while I got something fancier for the showroom. Even though I’d done this literally hundreds of times, I was visibly nervous. My hands were shaking
When I cut the bag open and reached in to grab the organ, I immediately felt a sting on the tip of my finger. The barbs were sharp. Bringing it out into the light, I finally got a better view of it.
The thing was bigger than my fist. This was not just a “piggyback heart”, this thing was an entire organ in and of itself. It was a dark hazelnut brown with black veins. Some sort of dark green skin flaps covering up the edges. Parts of it had these sharp barbs, some sort of keratin. I’d never seen anything like it. I could tell that it had a structure similar to a human heart though, it had clear connections to the pulmonary artery. But with just a quick look, it looked more like a… dragon fruit.
It was glorious. I couldn’t wait to find out more about it. I gently placed it in the preservative, trying not to prick my fingers again. I was very pleased. My finger hurt a little though.
I spent hours in my lounge chair, just looking at the thing in the dim light of my collection. A mild teal spotlight, casting a sharp contrast. Even with a temporary preservative jar, I had it on a rotating platform so I could see it from every angle. I still couldn’t tell what was the “right” orientation. What was the front and back? It was impossible to tell. It barely looked like, well, anything.
I fell asleep in that chair, waking up just past midnight. I shut the lights up and got ready for bed. I didn’t even think about the ache in my fingertip, where the barb had punctured my skin.
I fell in and out of sleep all night. I had a fever, and by morning I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. I’d gotten up to use the bathroom a dozen times, and I was sweating buckets. The sheets were sticking to my body, and I was drooling like an idiot. My feet were wet from sweat, leaving stains across the floor. I barely had the energy to stand, and my balance kept failing me. The only point where I felt truly alive was when I was getting up from the toilet and fell over. My warm cheek against the cold bathroom tiles was the greatest thing I’d felt in years.
I managed to crawl into the kitchen. I called in sick for the first time in years and fell asleep leaning against the kitchen island. I kept blinking in and out of consciousness.
I probably sat there for a few hours. I woke up with this big chemical-smelling puddle under me, and my robe was covered in mucus. I tried to call for help, but I was too weak to hold the phone. I just remember smearing gross across the screen, and the face recognition just refused to work. I couldn’t get a fingerprint either.
I sat there all morning, just trying to muster the strength to move. I had bouts of panic, thinking I might not ever recover; that this would be it. I would feel my pulse hammering, and I could physically feel my heart moving. Despite my body giving up, my heart was as strong as ever. A bit too strong, it felt like. It hurt like hell.
I managed to get some water from the tap, but I couldn’t keep it down. I kept slipping and falling over, bruising my knees and elbows. It was a goddamn miracle that I didn’t crack my head open.
I woke up on the kitchen floor, sometime in the afternoon. The sky was gray outside, and I could hear rain smatter against the windows. I managed to sit back up and grab some orange juice from the fridge. Just getting back up on my legs was exhausting, and I found myself wheezing for air.
Sitting there, chugging a jug of orange juice, all I thought about was getting through this. My head was starting to clear, but my chest still felt weird. I hadn’t even noticed my finger. My entire fingertip was just one big boil that’d burst sometime during the day.
I managed to stumble into the shower and dump all clothes into a pile. I was covered in cuts, bruises, and these big, discolored circles on my legs. I looked about as good as I felt, but at least I was back on my legs. Shaky legs, but still.
There were still smatterings against my window, but it sounded more intense. I didn’t think about it at first, I was just concentrating on staying upright. I’d clean the mess in the kitchen once I felt better, this was probably just some temporary thing that needed to get out of my system. Food sickness, or some kind of bug. I didn’t even think about my latest collection piece, I keep those two lives very separate.
By the time I stepped out of the shower and into a fresh robe, I kept having these flashes. It was as if the lights were turning on and off. It took me a few seconds to realize it was coming from the window.
Looking out, my breath stopped.
Something was moving past the window, casting a long shadow across the floor. Then, something else moved. Again and again, big shadows whooshed past the window, their large shadows making the entire room blink.
I took a step closer, blinking. For a while, I couldn’t see them. It was as if they were there, and at the same time, they weren’t. But when they were there, they were there in horrifying detail.
They were the size of large dogs. These pale, winged, six-fingered beasts. Round, beady eyes, reflecting what little light slipped between the clouds. Like insects flocking to a lamp, they swarmed around my windows; fighting to get a look at me. Carefully, they tried to pull at the window frames, probing for a weakness; a way in.
I just stood there, looking at them. It felt like my heart was about to cramp. One of them clung to the window staring at me, unblinking. I couldn’t comprehend it.
I just closed my eyes and started hitting my head, over and over. Like trying to beat the image out of my skull. I groaned in frustration and felt my pulse rise.
When I finally opened my eyes again, they were gone.
I slowly backed away from the window, as if trying not to knock over a house of cards. As my heart snagged on something, a barbed pain shot through my lungs. At the edge of every heartbeat, they came back into view; blinking in and out of existence. One moment, all I heard was rain. The next, they were clawing themselves in. They were there, and at the same time, they weren’t.
I needed help, but my phone had run out of batteries. I splashed my face with cold water and stepped away to check on my collection. I had to get a closer look at this mystery organ. There was a kinship there, one sick heart to another.
It was oozing out of the jar.
The preservatives had turned a solid blue, and the organ had swelled. It had doubled in size, and the little barbs had turned long and soft; like tendrils. But the strangest thing was what it’d done to the rest of my collection. The other jars were also swelling, some preservatives turning blue, cracking the glass, and dripping onto the floor.
As my pulse rose and fell, seemingly at random, I could see flashes of the organ moving. One second it was trying to break out of the jar, the next it was just sitting there. Much like the creatures outside, it was both happening, and not, at the same time. My head was flashing hot and cold, and I could feel my legs buckling. Maybe it was all just the fever. Maybe nothing was wrong. Maybe I was still on the cool bathroom floor.
The warmth and cold that pulsed in my head made it hard to stay upright. The floor felt crooked, but I think it might just’ve been me. I hurried back into my living room.
For a moment, it was all quiet. Then, a torrent of sounds, faces, scratching claws and leathery wings slamming against the windows. Then, a heartbeat later, all quiet. Over and over again, it was as if another world tried to beat itself into my mind. Two realities, trying to fit into my head at once.
Slamming, scratching, screeching. It could go either way. It felt like a part of me was balancing on the edge of a knife, ready to fall one direction or the other. Screech. Scratch. Slamming against the windows with hopeless abandon.
But there was another noise. A voice.
“H e l l o.”
I stepped into the hallway. I could see the shadows from the window behind me come and go with my irregular heartbeats, but there was a strange metallic noise coming from the front door. I turned the corner.
There was something standing in my hallway.
And a moment later, it wasn’t.
My door was open, and also broken, hanging loose from the bottom hinge.
A dark, towering creature. It was there, and not. Large enough that it had to tilt its’ head to stand upright. With his impossibly long arms and fingers, he held a simple paper bag, dripping with blood.
Then, he was gone. My breathing slowed. I just stood there, trying to calm down. Everything was fine. Door closed, gentle rain tapping at my windows.
Then, the paper bag was held up against my face. The creature was looming over me. The winged beasts outside were going crazy.
“Give him what he wants!” a muffled voice from inside the bag pleaded. “He just wants it back! Please, just give it back to him!”
I fell backwards, crawling desperately. My sweaty hands slipped on the hardwood floor, scratching my palms, and losing traction. It took the creature no more than two steps to catch up to me, holding the bag out towards me.
“It’s not yours to keep!” the bag screamed. “You got your own!”
There was no doubt in my mind. Forcing myself to stand, I crashed into my collection room. Knocking over jars and trophy cases. Little boxes of teeth, little stands of mummified fetuses. The jar with the strange organ had cracked, leaking a blue thick fluid onto the floor. It was a mess. It was all just a big, disgusting, chemical mess. I grabbed the organ, feeling the soft barbs. Little tendrils, tickling my arm.
I stepped back to the large creature and held out the organ. It turned its’ bag inside out, as something soft splattered onto the floor. Something meaty, and human, with a ponytail. A decapitated head, trying to breathe; opening and closing its’ mouth like a trout.
I dropped the organ in the bag.
The next moment, I was alone. A broken collection. Formalin and alcohol running rampant over the floor. My feet barely avoiding the broken glass.
And just outside, the rain gently tapped against my window.
I haven’t experienced anything like it since. The floor wasn’t crooked, and the door was fine. No scratches on the windows, no blood stains, no nothing. And still, the organ is gone.
I haven’t been able to get back in contact with Angel. It’s like a line was cut, and I haven’t heard from him since. Something must’ve happened. I have my suspicions, but I don’t think I can handle that path just yet. It still feels like I’m one bad thought away from stepping back into that dark world. Like the winged creatures are still looking for a way in.
I was sick for days afterwards, and I looked awful. I’ve since contacted a medical professional. They have found some “irregularities” with my pulse, and I’m waiting for x-ray results. I don’t wanna sound too alarmed, but the doctor brought in three other people to consult with.
I know this story doesn’t make me sound all too sympathetic. I’m no saint, and to a lot of people, I guess I come off as a bit of a creep.
But if you can just put that aside for a bit and think of me as a human, then please.
Pray that the results are normal.