Peter Got Shot

Peter died unwittingly about halfway through this story.

He wasn't sure for a time, because his feet were where they were supposed to be and his hands were where they were supposed to be too, and his senses were fine and there was no pain. He didn't notice anything had changed at all. He continued crossing his studio floor and was stopped by a small noise. He turned to the window and saw there was a hole in the glass at about eye-level that he was pretty sure hadn't been there before. He walked past the easel upon which leaned the painting of Luanne and examined the hole visually. He put his finger through it and wiggled his finger. He pulled it out and leaned down to peep through the hole. The building across the alley was dark, but a shadow moved in one of the windows. He wondered why someone would be walking around a dark room.

Whatever it all meant, Peter knew he should tape up the hole because it was going to be a cold dawn. He went to his supplies and picked up his green inch masking tape. At the window he pulled out a couple inches and covered the hole. There was red on the tape. He looked at the roll of tape and noticed his finger was bleeding, probably from putting it through the hole in the window. He turned back to his supplies and then noticed there was red all over the far side of the room. He reached around to scratch his head which turned out to be wet. He looked at his hand. It was dripping with blood.

Something odd was going on. The red all over the far side of the room was blood, and it was almost certainly his. He was no forensic investigator yet he was pretty certain the blood was his. Who else's could it have been?

Yet since he felt perfectly fine, and realizing that some kind of an explanation would be forthcoming naturally, he went the pragmatic route. He took a quick look at the clock. Luanne wouldn't be arriving for forty-five minutes. Certainly he had the time to clean up this mess, and certainly he wanted to, because a woman like Luanne doesn't come along every day, or every nine days either.

He had plenty of solvents for carbon-based paints lying around and he chose, not wanting to stink the place up, Mona Lisa odorless paint thinner. He diluted it one part to twenty and went to work getting the blood off the wall. The stuff worked really well and, since the blood was wet to begin with, he had that part of the room clean in fifteen minutes. He emptied the bloody bucket in his bathtub and decided to take a shower because there was blood in his hair.

Getting undressed, he noticed that the back of his shirt was soaked with blood. He'd thought the stickiness was just sweat! In the shower, the water ran red down the drain for some time. He turned so the spray hit the back of his head and the water bounced onto the ceramic wall and the curtain in crimson. Something else to tidy up. He reached around to scrub the blood out of his hair and felt something very hard there, like the chip of a china plate. He pulled it away and looked at it. It looked like the chip of a china plate, badly made. After some reflection he realized it was a piece of his skull. He tossed it in the bathroom garbage. And yet he still felt perfectly fine. How much can one hallucinate? At what point should one consult a doctor?

He towelled himself off then he felt around the back of his head some more. His finger sunk into something soft and spongy. "That's my brain," he said. "So that's my brain." He looked at his penetrating finger, to which clung fine bits of grey tissue. He was tempted to taste it, decided not to, unspooled some toilet paper, and wiped his finger.

He looked at his face in the bathroom mirror. A small dark spot was upon his temple. He played with this hole a little, but it was so small not even his pinkie could fit into it. The hallucination was extraordinary.

He put on his bathrobe. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, which he appreciated. He sat down in his painter's chair and looked at the portrait of Luanne but chose not to touch it until the subject arrived.

A knock came at the door. The subject had arrived.

Peter went to the door and let Luanne in. Her curly red hair hung helically down her shoulders onto the light blue denim jacket that covered her white blouse and her black skirt. She said: "Well, all clean and wearing next to nothing. Planning to pant first and paint second?"

Peter smiled. Luanne was lucky she was cute. "Come on in. I feel fine."

She came into the room and looked around. She looked at the wall where all Peter's blood had been spattered and said: "Oh my God!" She put her finger up to a point. "Is this a bullet hole?"

Peter went over and looked where she was pointing. Peter could see nothing: but the mood was so perfect! He said: "Lu, look at the back of my head. I think I'm hallucinating something weird." He turned around to produce the back of his head to her gaze.

She said: "What am I supposed to be looking for?"

"Do you see anything funny?"

"Just wet hair. Not funny at all."

Peter put his hand to the back of his head and inserted his middle finger into his exposed brain. "How about now?"

"Are you pointing at something?"

Peter put down his hand and turned around. "Never mind. I'm imagining things. Why are you still dressed?"

Luanne unbuttoned her blouse. Pale skin and a thin white horizontal strip appeared.

Peter said: "Very nice. I haven't touched the painting since past time."

"You may find a couple minutes to do so now." The black skirt quickly unzippered. It's a wonder how they make these things today.

"I am still hallucinating. It's strange, I'll say. I believe I've had my brains blown out."

"I won't tell anyone if you won't," said Luanne.

"I've read about these beliefs before. I never knew they could be temporary."

She, being entirely naked, undid the knot of his bathrobe. "Maybe you should see someone. Soon."

He laughed. "I'm seeing someone right now."

Horizontal they became. She put her hand on the back of his head and he almost lost the moment but recovered. Some thirty minutes later, having done everything twice, she tidied herself up and he pulled on his robe. She posed for the painting, and he painted, in silence. She noticed the green tape over the hole in the window. He was rhyming over the idea of using a fine sable black brush to paint fine sable red hair. His vision was good, his hand was steady, his brain was thinking clearly, and his wife was away till Thursday afternoon.

Though she was posing delightfully, Luanne could still speak. "Are you still interested in that student of yours?"

Peter might have known whom she meant, saying: "Who?"

"You said she was called Rockets."

"Ah, yes, Rockets. Not especially. I don't think I maybe ever was."

Luanne rolled her eyes. "We've been, ah, working, on this painting for two years now. I know what you like and I know how you respond."

"Two years, huh? Two years." Forgetfully he reached to scratch the back of his head and his fingers entered his brain. "I'm still having this hallucination."

"It'll go away maybe. Two years. Our little secret. I think Derek has his suspicions but I think he's afraid to find out for sure."

"I think people are like that. They'd rather not know anything that upsets their equilibrium. Maybe he's happy the way things are and this is the proof."

"I think that's enough for now."

Peter poised his brush midair. "Enough for now?"

"There's something I'd rather do."

Luanne left forty minutes later. Peter sat on his bed, trying to add up the encounters. Every couple weeks it must have been. That's an awful lot of room for mistakes. And yet they'd pulled it off okay so far. But nothing can go on forever.

He got up, stiffly, and went to the washroom. The hole in his head was still there, turning grey around the edges like it had become emaciated. He considered using Patty's hand-mirror to look at the back of his head but decided against it. It was late and he needed some sleep after such a night.

He stripped down and crawled into bed. Yes, he was achy all over. He looked at the tape over the hole and realized Luanne hadn't mentioned the blood on it. It had been dark when he'd been painting.

He put his head on the pillow but he could sense the hole against the pillow. So he slept on his side, looking at the tape.

 

Peter was awakened by a sharp shine of sunlight in his eyes, like a needle to the skin. To the right of the wall that had been covered with his blood and brains the night before, something was reflecting the bright Tuesday sun. He slowly and stiffly rolled his head and tried to reach for something. He was stiff all over. Had he had too much sex the night before?

It took him a good five minutes to get out of bed and stand. His joints felt encased in quicksand. The shiny thing continued its shine. He managed to get down enough to see it was a bullet but he couldn't get down enough to pick it up.

Fortunately the bus was waiting for him at his stop for otherwise he would have been more than ten minutes late. Manager Marie of the short black hair and library glasses said to him, "Morning, Pete. Moving slowly today?"

"Very slowly, Marie. I think there's something wrong with me."

"Oh dear. Can you still work?"

"I think so."

"Good, because we got four boxes of cadmiums from Williamsburg we should get priced and onto the shelves before the lunch hour."

"Aye-aye."

"I have sympathy. They're at your desk."

Peter went to his desk and looked at the boxes. He tried to scratch his head but of course he didn't have much of a head and so his touched his brain which he noticed had become very mushy overnight. He looked at the brain matter that adhered to his fingers, noticing it had turned faintly green and that it smelled somewhat rotten. "When I have the opportunity," he said to himself, "I'll ask Marie if my head smells bad."

He checked off the cadmiums‑yellow, red, orange, chartreuse, green, purple‑against the packing slip and put stickers on them all. He worked quickly that day. Soon he had them all shelved and ready for purchase by the art students.

Given the moment, he found Marie in the back room where the invoices got paid. "Marie," he said. "Can you check me for something?"

She shook her head confused. "Check you for what?"

He turned around so she could see the back of his head which he believed was absent of bone and brain and blood. "How's my head look?"

Her voice said: "It looks like it always has."

"Could you come closer, and give it a sniff?"

"What?"

"How's my head smell? Does it smell rotten?"

"It smells fine."

"You're too far away."

Unseen by Peter Marie got close and smelled the back of his head. She quickly sat down again and said, "Nothing but grease, ear wax, and sweat. Ordinary boy smells. So what's this all about?"

Peter turned around and said, "I'm having this hallucination that my brains have been blown out and that I'm missing the back of my skull."

"How can you hallucinate something like that?"

Peter reached around and shoved two fingers into his brain to scoop some out. Then he held out his hand with its messy green-grey goo and said, "Look. That's brain there."

Marie looked at his hand for a bit then said, "There's nothing there."

"That's what I mean. I can see it clearly. That's the hallucination of it."

"Hmmm. Do you think this has something to do with the stiffness you said you had?"

"I'm getting used to that. I'm adapting."

"Maybe you should go to a doctor."

"Like a brain specialist?"

"I'd start with a good ol' ordinary one."

"I washed my blood off one of my walls last night. It was very messy."

"So who shot you, hallucinatorily speaking?"

"I have no idea. It was through my window. There's a bullet hole and everything."

"Is the bullet hole real?"

He thought for a moment. "I'm not sure. But wait it was pointed out to be that there was a bullet hole in the wall where I thought my blood was."

"Your wife pointed it out?"

"No, not my wife. A friend."

Marie smiled. She knew what he meant. "I think you should go see a doctor."

"Maybe I will."

Peter left the shop promptly at five-thirty in order to be at the art school by six. His body seemed weighted down and his feet were moving like they were going through mud. In the classroom studio he slowly arranged a bowl of fruit and pencils willy-nilly on a stool in the centre of the room. Then he sat and rested, feeling his liquefying grey matter moistening his collar.

In the came, one by one or in pairs, eight women and five men, Rockets coming in (gratefully) last. Her blonde hair was tied in two ponytails and she was wearing a yellow dress. She looked quite fetching. They settled down and Peter got up unsteadily to say: "Okay, class, we're going to do some simple life drawing plus some foreshortening. I'm feeling a little under the weather, so please get on with it. Five minutes this round."

He sat down again. While they drew with their Crayolas he tried to judge his difficulties. His thinking seemed straight enough but his legs ached something fierce. He reached down to scratch his left ankle, lifting his cuff to do so, and noticed it was all covered with unattractive and soft purple splotches like they were filled with coagulating blood.

The five minutes were up. He walked around the room, looking at the drawings, and stopping beside Rockets to make a kind comment even though her drawing was nothing special. He got out: "Rockets," then his stomach lurched uncontrollably and he felt something cold running down his thighs. It was runs.

 

Two days later, Peter was waiting, in the bathroom, for his wife Audrey to come home from her American Psychiatric Association conference. His feet, calves and thighs were a wet putrescent shiny slick green-brown gelatin into which foreign objects such as tweezers and pencils could slide sleekly. The runoff from his brain's decomposition had happily stopped but it seemed his eyes had melted down such that his cheeks were wet with yellowed vitreous; despite this fact, he could still see clearly in a mirror that eyes no longer nested in his eye sockets. And then there was the other problem.

"Hello-hello, I'm back." Peter was about to respond when she said, "What's with the boxes of diapers?"

"I'm in the washroom; come in if you dare." How he managed to speak after his tongue had dissolved and been piecework swallowed is something we may never know.

"What's wrong?" she said as she went to the door of the bathroom to see him sitting slouched on the toilet in a diaper and a t-shirt.

"To make a long story short, three days ago I got shot through the head and now my whole body is rotting and putrefacting away."

"You don't look like it."

He got up and staggered past her. "Look in that garbage bag," he said, pointing into the bathtub.

He watched her open the bag as an outrageous stink filled the room. She reached in and pulled out a crumpled diaper soaked with rotting liquefied internal organs in reds, greens, and yellows. "This looks good as new," she said.

"No, no, no," he groaned as he made his way into the living room where the bullet hole was. "You're not seeing it, that's all."

Audrey took a seat on the couch. "You're hallucinating again, like five years ago, when you thought you were a machine, because your father died."

"Oh, that wasn't real. It wasn't real like this."

"You swore it was real. You walked around thinking you were a robot for three days."

"It was partly a joke, because of my grief."

"We went through this. It was all clear as day. It wasn't grief. It was guilt."

Peter felt some former flesh just below his right knee give way and peel free of its tendons like an overcooked chicken thigh.

"I'm falling apart, Audrey. You've got to believe me."

"No, I don't. All you have to do is think of what you're feeling guilty about. Five years ago you had to be made of something other than your father's flesh. So now you're guilty of something else and you think deep inside that the only cure for whatever you're feeling is to be shot and killed."

"It's very different this time. Look at this." He took some hair in his hands and easily pulled the skin away from his skull. Air got between, and his head looked like it was three inches taller. He pushed down his pate and flattened it out again.

Audrey shook her head. "All you just did was to pull on your hair and look at me incredulously. There's nothing physically wrong with you. So what are you feeling guilty about?"

Peter looked left and right. "There's nothing for me to feel guilty about."

"Is this about Rockets?"

"What rockets?"

"Your student."

"Oh. No, there's nothing there! Nothing is happening! I'm innocent! It's not that!"

Audrey got up and walked away and back again. "Think deeply about it. Diapers won't fix this."

Peter rubbed his arm. A fistful of goo came free.

 

After Mass Sunday, Peter, not despite the fact that he had lost 90% of his soft tissue and inner organs, recalled the odd look Luanne had had on her face when they had shaken hands. Thinking this was an invitation to communication, and with Audrey out shopping, and having taken off his dressy clothes soaked as they were with decayed vomitus, he called her. As the phone was ringing, he examined his hand with its tendons, muscles and bones nicely exposed, as if he'd been the model for Gray's Anatomy, figs. 523-525. He was getting used to his hallucination.

"So, what's up?"

Luanne said: "Derek knows something. He asked about you. I thought he'd forgotten all about you."

"What did he ask?"

"It was out of the blue. He said: 'Seen Peter lately? Is he still among the living?' like he was making a joke. And I had to say I saw you at the Momen Gallery Friday night. And he was puzzled by this. 'You sure it was him?' like."

Peter looked down to where his peter used to be. "Purely coincidence, I'm sure."

"He knows something. I'm feeling so guilty."

"I'm not. We've been so careful, hon."

"Maybe I talk in my sleep. Do I talk in my sleep?"

"I'm never slept with you in that way."

"Oh right. Maybe I talk in my sleep. I can't explain this guilt. Sometimes Derek frightens me."

"How frightening can he be with a name like Derek?" Peter chuckled despite his lack of anything to chuckle with.

"That's out-of-bounds, you know that."

"I know. Well, keep me informed. I have to go decompose some more."

"Is that still going on?"

"What rots first, tendons or ligaments?"

"Probably tendons. Whatever connects muscles to bones. Which is that?"

"I could look it up. But ... I'll know in the next day or two, by experience."

Peter hung up the phone and located the bullet he'd found on Tuesday. It looked like a serious bullet. He put it up to the hole in his temple and he saw that it fit in snugly. Missed me by that much.

 

By Friday, Peter knew that it was tendons that connected with muscles, for they were hanging like limp ropes off all parts of his bones, not that anyone seemed to see save himself. At the supplies store he worked deftly away stocking the shelves with paints and papers. Marie seemed to have forgotten he'd been hallucinating altogether. So, when she told him she was going off with her girlfriend to dinner and a movie and that Peter would be left to lock up the shop, she did it with a smack on the slick white cartilage of his shoulder as if to say: I have confidence in you.

He sat at the cash register, watching the clock. At ten to six, Rockets came into the shop. She went to the pencils, picked up a set of 24 Staedtlers, and got to the register. "Hey," she said.

"Rockets. Nice to see you. Need supplies?"

She licked her lips. "Pencils for the weekend."

She leaned against the counter. She was very female to see in glory. Peter felt melancholy for the life he'd once lived, and the parts he'd once had.

She said, "Would you like me to flirt with you now?"

"How so?"

She stared at his pants beneath which Peter knew there was nothing at all. She said, "Nice package."

What a kidder. "If you only knew," he said.

"Nice."

"Do you want some erasers too?"

 

A week and a day later, Peter had taken to polishing his naked bare bones tidy. The bleach didn't burn. He skeletally sat down to watch some Netflix with wife Audrey.

"Still the same?" she asked.

"I'm right and everyone else is wrong."

"You've been reading my seminar notes."

They watched some Longmire.

He said: "It's strange being just a skeleton."

"So much guilt. So much guilt."

"You like that trope a lot, don't you?"

"It's the key to all mythologies."

"Let's go to bed."

"I don't have the strength."

"I weigh very little."

"Okay then."

Peter was looking at his hand-bones later. What a piece of work is a man. Oh what to eat for breakfast tomorrow.

 

Friday week evening, Rockets arranged a little art show of Peter's students at a tiny gallery in a scuzzy part of town. Though it was part mockery, she sent out invites to all who might be interested.

Peter polished his bones till he could see his skull reflected in them. Audrey dressed in blue.

Rockets offered them wine. It all seemed very fake, with seven-figure prices attached to three-minute sketches.

Then arrived Luanne.

"Hello, Peter," she said.

"Luanne," said Peter.

Suddenly, Derek was there too. He looked straight at Peter, puzzled.

"Peter?" Derek said.

Peter said, "That's it. You shot me. You really did."

Peter collapsed to the gallery floor, exhaled his last, and gave up his ghost.