A Pound Of Flesh

A Pound of Flesh In my business, there are many types of rag-and-bone men, from the simple recycler right down to the ones who remove scrap metal from vehicles. It is an industry where each person takes care of his own business and leaves everyone alone. One man’s trash might be someone’s gold bonanza. There is no need to kick a fuss about price hikes or complain about competitors until our ears drop off. Simply put, we work best on our own. As for me, I am quite happy with what I do. It keeps me well fed and provides me a nice warm roofed house to go home to. Some of my friends think that my business is a tad on the morbid side of things but hey, someone has to do it and it is me, Jonah August. On my name-card – yes, I know it is bloody antiquated to have one – it says Jonah August, Renderer. No corpse too big or too small. Yep, you have heard it right. Corpse. That is the ‘morbid’ part. What I do is a service. You know the Periodic Table? I break the human body into all its wonderful mineral compositions, calculate their worth based on them and give the approximate cash to their loved ones (who end up benefiting from their loss). As I have said, someone has to do it. ~*~ Now, cremation is still de rigueur and I do not really mess around with the companies doing it. Whatever they are doing, they are doing just damned fine. I am just providing more, so to speak. In cremation, the body gets the extreme barbeque treatment and is rendered down to just ash and a few bits of bone. I do more as in that I put the corpse in a machine that separates fat, water and the minerals. Of course, at the end of the day, the fat and water go somewhere else (to a couple of companies who deal with waste-

filtration) and the minerals are sold to manufacturers who need them. I am just giving people more choices to remember their dead. Like any other business, I get all sorts of people walking in with their corpses on toll. Normally, they have their dead still clad in their everyday wear or hospital smock (if they are picked from the hospital morgue); they come in, red-eyed and sobbing quietly into their tissues or handkerchiefs. So, I try to make their time in my office a pleasant soothing one, with piped music (some long-dead musician named Yanni) and some nibbles (chips and stuff), while I pull out my sales-pitch and do my best persuading them. Most of the time, they take the offer straightaway. I will analyze the corpse first, checking for implants. Silicone is the worst. Totally screws up the machines big time. If the body has been modified or altered in some way, the composition will be different. Extra iron or gold in the sorters. Then, if the corpse is certified clean, it goes right into the machine. On busy days, I have about five or six machines cranked up. An acquaintance questioned me once where I had gotten the money from, either to give the sad folks or to make the machines. I told him in a flat tone that it came from an old scientist friend of mine who passed away and the friend stopped asking me. I did not care if the acquaintance (not the scientist one) was a cop from the nearby precinct. He just stopped asking and I suddenly found myself with a box of vials filled with precious minerals. Like the caring citizen I am, I placed the box of vials on the doorstep of the house of Mister Cop Acquaintance. I work best alone. Questions simply distract me from my business. ~*~

My girlfriend (or ‘female companion’ as she calls herself) finds my work intriguing. So much so she writes poetry about it and recites them in seedy dives downtown. Weekends find her lingering around in my house, bathed in jasmine. She is dressed in lacy white and her hair, straight and long, is also bleached white. Only her face and the rest of her body are dyed permanent black. She fancies putting on yellow-amber contacts for effect. At least, she is not as bad as the wingfreaks who want to be real angels and the butterflies who think they are very fashionable (not). She lisped to me once that she was a moth. When I told her that she was not an insect, she retorted that it was just an identifier. Apparently, a long time ago, there were people who dressed in black and were called goths. The trend seems to have reversed itself and now, there are moths. She cornered me, after a morning of sex and sweaty sheets, only to recite me a new poem. A pound of flesh for gold, Transcending death’s vicious sting, We become immortal. Admittedly, it was not her best effort. I nodded and smiled my appreciation while she brushed her white hair and sang to herself about angels. ~*~

I ended up thinking about her poem for the whole bloody week. But my work had to continue; a few people had turned up at my office, wanting to render their dead parents down into minerals. I was quite pleased though. This showed that business was picking up, not to mention I had gotten new contacts in the manufacturing industry, big jobs who indicated to me that they wanted more minerals and metals. One poor sap wandered in with his dead mother still nicely wrapped up in her sleeping gown and cardigan. She looked beatified. I sat him down, pouring him a nice hot cup of caf and took out the plate of chips. He took the cup and simply stared at his hands. I nibbled on my tob-stik, marveling at the taste of beef jerky and tobacco. “I want to render her down,” he started to speak, haltingly. He looked really young, probably in his early thirties. “Sure, I will do that,” I said soothingly and poured more caf. “Has she gone through any surgery or body mods?” He stared at me as if I was an idiot. “No, no, no. Mother never believes in such nonsense. She says that the body is a temple.” And you are rendering her down? I mused, munching on my snack. I looked at the dead woman in my couch. She was only a day dead. Rigor mortis had stiffened her limbs. Her hair had been neatly arranged into a bun. “So, you will render her down?” The boy asked and I frowned. “You an addict or something?” I growled and he shrank back into the leather armchair. I have an intense dislike for ‘dicts. “You want to fund your addiction or something?”

“No, no!” He shook his head vigorously, confused now. “I just want to donate the money to the angels, you know? They helped me once… when I went through a bad patch.” He sipped his caf and stared at his hands again. I noticed that his fingers were scarred with multiple cut wounds. Ah, the angels. Everyone has been talking about them lately. Winged people, helping other people. The stereotypes. I have done some reading in my spare time. Angels seem to occur frequently in the ancient religious texts. Hours later, I produced a tray filled with vials of minerals and metals. The boy looked at the tray, at what his mother once was – and started to cry. Me? I do not do well at emotional situations and merely handed him a tissue for him to blow his nose. Then, once he had said his farewells to her, I gave him the cash which he took with some hesitation. “Well, go ahead, kid,” I said patronizingly. “Go and do a good deed.” He lifted his head up and stared straight at me. He had clear blue eyes. He bowed slightly and walked out of the door.

~*~

By the end of the week, I had accumulated enough metal to be shipped to a factory owner. I made quite a fair bit of cash and ended up buying two slabs of steak, plus a bottle of red wine.

Only to find out that Lith was not at home; a note told me that she was having a poetry recital at the Isis, the theme being ‘Isolation’. The Isis tends to play host to moths and wannabe poets. The mood is often on the dramatic side, with alcohol consumed in copious quantities. The type of response you get for a dive with peeling walls and mildewed floors. Oh well, I had two juicy steaks to eat and a quiet (lonely?) night to myself. I dreamt of a winged blonde woman chasing me with a big stick and haranguing me about rendering human bodies into minerals and metals. I woke up, cursing the grogginess.

~*~

Nevertheless, I walked into my office, feeling like a piece of overly tenderized beef. Poured myself a big cup of caf and sat down on my armchair. It was still early in the morning. But you never know with early mornings. Sometimes, I get a group of people waiting for me outside my establishment. I barely started reading the morning broadsheets when a woman walked in. She had auburn hair, about average height and had a patrician’s face. Not the kind of woman I would like to meet or have sex with. She had the attitude of a schoolmistress about her. She wore a white shirt and floral skirt. A large wrap on her shoulders, making her appear a little hunchbacked. She was carrying a nondescript bag in her hands and dropped it onto my table. It landed with an audible ‘splat’. Something moist was in it. Luckily, the bag was not porous.

“Render this,” she said clearly and I looked at her face. She had such a stern face. I glanced at the large wrap. Something caught my eye: a grey-tipped feather peeking forth from under the wrap. Suddenly, I had an awful flash-memory of the dream. It was going to turn into reality. “Umm,” I started by saying, smiling. Putting on my Jonah charm. “I only render human corpses. No animals.” She looked at me as if I was something stuck on her shoe. “This is a pound of flesh,” she had such a cold tone. “Will you do it?” “Um, let me see the content in the bag,” I tried to play for time. Here in front of me was an angel. In disguise. An angel in disguise! I opened the bag … only to see my face staring back at me. The five-o-clock shadow on my jaw. The eye-bags. The charming smile. Things began to spin wildly around me. The angel became many angels, all of them looking at me with contemptuous eyes. I staggered back and fell heavily into my armchair, covering my face with my hands. When the shock finally receded, I opened my eyes, knowing that perspiration had drenched my shirt and I was about to hyperventilate. The woman was gone. I stood up, my legs turned to jelly. I ran out of my office, wanting to ask her questions. She should not have been gone for long. I headed straight into the street, scanning everywhere for her. She was not around. People milled around me, going about their business.

Movement in the sky. I gazed up, seeing a winged figure aglow as it moved steadily heavenwards. I continued to look at it, raindrops pelting my face. ~*~ Of course, I am still hanging onto my business! I am providing a damned good service, am I? No angel is going to tell me what I should or should not do. Ironically, there was an influx of people right after her visit and I was kept busy for the whole day, consoling distraught folk and rendering the corpses of their dead loved ones. Oh, she left a feather in my office. I kept touching at it. Silicate? Calcium? The feather felt like a bird’s. I felt an urge to render it down to its component bits. But I did not. It is on my table, taped just above the desk calendar. I also remember Lith’s poem. Strange how things fit. They call it ‘synchronicity’. I merely call it ‘coincidence’. I have resolved though to donate a portion of the money gleaned from the renderings to the angels. How that is going to go to them will be a mystery. I wonder if she would pay me a visit again.