The Suicides Of The Seraphim
As soon as she heard the slap of manila against the receptionists’ desktop, Dara, who had been leaning against a counter in the back room picking at her nails, stopped mutilating her cuticles and made her way to the front of the office. She had worn her new blue scrubs to work today, and as she passed the full-length mirror near the bathroom, stole a glimpse of herself and silently admired the pre-washed brilliance of the light blue hue against the chestnut shine of her tied back hair. Cutting through an empty exam room, she approached the red counter where appointment charts were placed when ready to be seen by the doctor. A single chart lay there. “7:45 is up. We’ve got an 8 and an 8:15 and then we’re done,” said the receptionist upon seeing Dara. “Nice. I’m going to start mopping as soon as this one is out then.” Dara replied. “Don’t know about you, Dar, but I can’t wait to go home, been here all damn day, and what a day it’s been. You know Sugar Walker? The nice chow mix that’s been coming here for years? Died today, got into some rat poison the father put in the garage. How awful, the son found the poor thing dead in the backyard; they brought the body to us this morning to be cremated; so sad. You know, they oughta ban that shit, they make it taste sweet to animals, doesn’t matter whether it’s a rat or a dog or a giraffe.” “yea, they should, that stuff is terrible. Antifreeze, too” “Ugh”, the receptionist exclaimed through yellowed teeth, “So exhausted. Got a nice bottle of sangria, some ice cream, and a down comforter waiting for me at home. Who needs a husband when you’ve got those? Ben and Jerry are the only men I’ll ever need!” Dara laughed politely. The receptionist looked around while pushing up her glasses, ducked in towards Dara, and whispered. “And to make things worse, Rich has been on all of our asses about overtime. I mean, if you don’t want to pay us girls up front for putting in overtime, then hire some more damn help.” Dara smiled, not wanting to take sides. The doctors and the receptionists never got along. A diverging of personality types, she thought. The technicians were always sort of trapped in the middle, though Dara avoided involvement whenever she could. Noting Dara's apprehension towards that particular topic of conversation, the receptionist snapped her gum and changed the subject. “But enough about this place, let's hear about you, doll, any boys in your life?” Dara played with her hair nervously, looking down as she smoothed the end of her pony-tail against her shoulder. “You know the answer to that question”, she said. The Receptionist shifted her weight in her worn computer chair and repositioned herself while briefly inspecting the admittedly rather unremarkable composition of Dara's plain, lightly freckled face, her quiet reserve, her disarming humility, her dark sometimes troubled-looking eyes that reflected a permanent kind of injury. When sneaking out for cigarette breaks, she would often catch Dara looking blandly into space with a dejected, unsettling expression on her face, as if she was momentarily drugged by the skeleton thoughts crackling in her private furnace of a mind; hidden things, mysterious stigmas that she carried like ball and chain with her always, but never dared reveal. The Receptionist smiled kindly, “Listen Dar, high school boys are a bunch of chumps anyway. You just wait till college, they're gonna have to pry 'em off you.” She winked. Embarrassed, Dara forced her mouth into a weak, appeasing smile. “Anyway, here you go, dear.” The receptionist said, handing her the folder. “Thanks Nellie.” “You got it sweetie. Oh, and by the way...” she looked around and ducked in once more to whisper, “watch out for this next guy, he’s a real asshole.” And with that, Nellie gave a nod and wheeled back towards her station to answer the ever ringing phone lines with that enthusiastic and contrived sweetness she had come to master in her long career of administrative assistance. Dara eyed the front of the chart before calling the patient in. ‘Skittles’ Chambers, owner, Bruce Chambers. Feline, domestic short hair, aged 2 months. Dara flipped open the chart to see why Skittles was there. “Skin irritation, hair loss, flaking. Sex unknown, doctor to determine”, was scrawled down in pen underneath today’s date, Tuesday October 18th. Tuesday nights were typically slow at the animal hospital. Dara worked nights, and this Tuesday night was no exception, it was slower than usual even. Sometimes there would be emergencies to break the repetition, like a hit by car, poinsettia ingestion, or a seizure, but usually it was just check ups, surgery releases, vaccinations, medication renewals and other boring diagnoses. This appointment looked to be one of the latter, but at least it was a kitten, and that was always fun. Dara opened the door to the waiting room and took one step in as to be in full view of all the clients. “Skittles Chambers?” she called. A fat, brutish man who had been watching the TV through squinted eyes sat up with a groan. What a large man, Dara thought, much larger than he had looked sitting down. He continued watching the TV for a few moments while Dara stood in the doorway. He didn’t look at or acknowledge her, she just stood there waiting for him. How incredibly rude, she thought, but she took this time to scrutinize his strange appearance. He looked about forty-five, and had an undoubtedly intimidating air about him. His weathered, caveman brow, rounded, shiny nose, and fat lipped under bite all fell above a thick, wide jaw. He had greasy, dark brown hair and his whole body looked like it had some sort of dirty film covering it, a kind of slick filth all over his rough skin. He was dressed in a paint splattered t-shirt that had what looked like months of brown sweat stains leaking out from the armpit regions, and a stretched neck hole that hung loosely below his neckline, displaying tufts of curled chest hair. The dirty denim cut-off shorts he wore matched the shoddy condition of his shirt, only the shorts had more oil splotches than paint spots on them. Beneath the shorts were his pale legs, dense trunks of muscle that had bloated blue varicose veins snaking all around them. I wonder if his legs are like that because he’s so fat, Dara thought to herself. The man finally shifted his focus from the T.V. to a dented, partially ripped cardboard box beside him. He let out a snort of breath and picked up the box, which he then held against his massive and distended belly while walking towards Dara. She averted her eyes immediately. His presence bothered her and she wanted to avoid confrontation. “Right this way.” She said. He made no response. There were three exam rooms, all identical in design. Each had a front door for client entrance, and a back door that the doctor’s and staff used, which lead to the pharmacy and the rest of the behind-the-scenes hospital facilities. She led him to Exam room 2 and shut the front door behind them. The man walked to the stainless steel examination table and placed the box down on it. “The Doctor will be right in to see you” she said to him. Again, he made no response. Dara went to exit the room through the back door and on her way out she leaned over the box and smiled, expecting to see a cute and fuzzy playful little kitten. What she saw instead shocked and terrified her. Hunched in the corner of the box was a hairless shivering, tiny gray ball of coarse, folded, flaking skin. Dara gasped inaudibly, shut the rear door behind her, and a surge of momentary disbelief immediately coursed through her body. In her year at the hospital she had never seen anything like what she had just saw. “What the hell even was that?” she thought to herself. Since she had only been able to glance into the box for a second, Dara immediately questioned what she had seen. “Maybe it was the lighting in there.” She thought, “It couldn’t have been, that thing looked more like the elephant man than a cat. Maybe my contacts are getting dry.” She rubbed her eyes. “Appointment up?” Dr. Dubato’s voice questioned from his office. “Yea” Dara meekly replied, her brain still reeling. Dr. Dubato shuffled a few papers and then stepped outside of his office and tugged his pants higher up onto his stomach in an unmistakably arrogant way as he walked towards the exam room door with his stethoscope in hand. “You know I shouldn’t have to ask you if there’s an appointment waiting” he said, “it’s your job to inform me as soon as there is.” Dr. Dubato was the head veterinarian and owned most of the hospital. He was a short and stocky 56 year old Cornell graduate and had the notorious reputation of being a pompous ass of few words. The employees, including the junior doctors, were all secretly terrified of him. He liked to intimidate, and when his subordinates stood up for themselves in the face of his criticisms, he got a minor thrill out if it and would curl his lip in a wry smile and make some dry comment to end the dispute without anyone actually having to apologize. “I know I’m sorry it’s just that my contact was messed up for a minute there.” Dara said in defense. Forgetting his chiding of her, The Doctor took the chart from her hands and entered the room, greeting the client with a robust “Hello there”. The door shut behind him and Dara lingered in the pharmacy in case he needed her to hold or restrain the animal while he took blood. After a couple of minutes, the door opened and Dr. Dubato re-emerged holding a glass microscope slide in his gloved hand. Dara tried to look busy organizing pill bottles so he wouldn’t say anything about not paying her to hold his counters up like he always did when he saw her leaning against them. He went over to the microscope, squirted mineral oil on the slide, and put it beneath the microscope to look at. He studied the contents of the slide for a few seconds and then threw it out and re-entered exam room 2. Dara intently watched him do all of this, anxiously curious as to what was going in there. After another few minutes, Dr. Dubato exited the room with the small, deformed kitten in his gloved hand, confirming the accuracy of what Dara had seen. Dara heard the front door of the room slam as well, signifying the departure of the kitten’s ghastly owner. “Get a pair of gloves on” Dr. Dubato barked. Stunned, Dara pulled 2 gloves from the box above the sink and they snapped out, releasing a puff of powder. She put them on and followed him to the back of the hospital. He cradled the kitten’s shivering torso in his hand. Its legs dangled down between his fingers, it’s dark, wet eyes glared out from folds of skin that all but swallowed them. On a thin neck its huge head bobbled weakly with a pathetic and admirable feebleness. It remained absolutely silent, seemingly dazed by the invasive fluorescent lighting of the hospital. “Wh…What’s the matter with it?” Dara asked cautiously. “This kitty’s got the mange.” Dara had seen cases of sarcoptic mange, but nothing like this. All of the animals she had seen infected with mange had come in with small patches of inflamed areas, all had been grown animals, and all had been cured in a few weeks time with the bi-daily application of an antibiotic cream. Dr. Dubato placed the cat down on the examination table in front of Dara and walked into the pharmacy to get something. It was then, when she was able to get up close to the kitten, that Dara noticed something she hadn’t before. It had oozing, red sores across its underbelly and behind its ears from scratching itself raw. Never had she seen the whole body of a creature utterly infested with and ravaged by mange, never had she seen such a young animal with the affliction, never had anything looked more in pain than this little cat did right now. Dara swallowed and looked at the chart again. “Skittles” was just 2 months old. It must have been infected from the day it was born for it to get this bad so quickly. It shook out of instinct from having to endure the horrific, blinding agony sharply existing in every second of its miserable life. She could just imagine those filthy mites burrowing in the moist, tender skin of a freshly born kitten. Dara looked down at it with a gloomy sympathy. The kitten lifted its head towards her, seemingly with all of its strength, and a quiet mew escaped its soft pink jaw. She smiled down at it and felt like crying, she felt like holding it in her bare hands and pressing it to her face and embracing and protecting it and loving it until either could take no more. That’s when Dara looked up and saw Dr. Dubato holding what she dreaded, that unmistakable electric pink. Her stomach dropped and a hot panic struck her heart. Dara normally didn’t think Euthanasia’s were all that bad; the family all around their old pet, which usually had some incurable ailment. She would hold the disease ravaged body of the animal while the doctor would feel out the spongy distinctness of a sleepy vein in which to delicately inject the euthanasia and the breathing would slow and the heart would peacefully stop and the trusty beast would depart amidst his loving, tearful owners. But at this moment she abhorred the image of that syringe, filled with a deceptive neon pink fluid that looked more like liquid candy than poison. Fucking death serum, fucking killing, murderous chemical cocktail, she thought. She wished she could kill them all, those parasitic colonies beneath the kitten’s skin, robbing its nutrients, sucking its blood, leeching its life force. It’s so unfair, she thought. She wished she had the power to restore the gray form in front of her to the youthful appearance of a healthy kitten. She would give part of her life to be able do this; she would give up something, anything if only she could save it. Dara looked into Dr. DuBato’s eyes. “Why?” She asked. “The mange is on every inch of this kitty’s body. It would cost thousands and take months to cure. The owner just isn’t willing to do that and would rather put it out of its misery. Now come on.” Dr. DuBato picked the kitten up in his still gloved free hand and walked to the X-Ray room in the very back of the hospital. Dara followed him in and he closed the heavy lead door behind them. He placed the kitten down on the X-ray table and motioned for Dara to restrain it. “Why are we doing it back here?” Dara questioned, a notable shakiness apparent in her voice. “Its too young, its veins are too thin for the needle. We’re going to have to inject through the sternum and directly into its heart and it’s going to scream and I don’t want any of the clients to hear.” Dara felt something in her shrivel and contort. A violent reflex oppressed her body and a storm of unrest settled over her sinking mind. Dr. DuBato bit the cap off the needle and flicked the upturned plastic body with his fingers to release the air bubbles stuck to its walls. He motioned for Dara to restrain the animal. Goosebumps cascaded over every inch of her body. She could feel the fury inside her swell. She picked up the kitten and it relinquished itself to her with complete trust, still shaking in her hands. It has no idea what’s about to happen, she thought, it has no idea. She could feel the alligator texture of its painful, bloated, leathery skin through her gloves, the slippery yellow surface of its hot, red sores. She laid it on its back and held its two front legs in her hands. At least it wont feel pain anymore at least it wont feel pain anymore at least it wont feel pain anymore. Dara felt disgusting; she felt like throwing up, she couldn’t breathe. A heinous vertigo overcame her. She went blank for a second and then it came, the kitten’s firmament shattering cry. A sound so ear-splittingly high pitched and terrible had never touched her ears, waves of terror flooded over her as the desperate, achingly forlorn shriek echoed off the walls of lead and penetrated her head a thousand times over. The kitten struggled with all of its frail might in her firm grip before it went limp. Dara stared ahead vacantly and slid her hands away from the body. “How do you do this” she asked. Dr. DuBato sighed, put the cap back on the needle, and regarded Dara with a rare sensitivity. “After a while, you learn to keep your heart out of it. It’s just too painful otherwise. For every animal I save, there’s a hundred that I can’t. You’ve just got to do what you can, save what you can, and not think about the rest.” Dara nodded her head catatonically, hearing the words but unable to comprehend them. “Anyway, wrap up the body and put it in the freezer. We’ve still got 2 more appointments to get to.” “Is it male or female.” Dr. DuBato furrowed his brow in concern and looked at the underside of the lifeless body. “Male.” He said, and left the room, heading towards his office. For what seemed like hours Dara could do nothing but stare down at the dead kitten. She couldn’t move or speak. Thoughts rushed through her mind and held her body captive. She had been there when they cut a collar out of a dogs neck because its owners hadn’t bothered to buy a larger collar and had left its puppy sized one around its neck for so long that the dog’s neck had grown around and swallowed the constricting collar so that it had to be surgically cut out of its throat. She had been there when that grandpa brought in his grandson’s pug puppy that had gotten into and devoured a bag of chocolate chips and was so poisoned by the toxins that it just kept seizing and throwing up until it finally died. She remembered how she had been instructed to wrap its body up and how the liquid chocolate wouldn’t stop leaking form its mouth. In order to prevent the chocolate from dripping out of its mouth and soaking its funeral dressings, she had to empty its stomach by pressing on its ribcage so that the all of chocolate in its stomach would drain and spurt out of its mouth. This wasn’t like those though, this was far different. All were terrible, but despite their tragic ends, at least those other pets had known some form of happiness in their life, they had known the love, care, and attention of an owner. They had known the feelings of being wanted and comfortable and taken care of during at least a portion of their existences. This kitten had known nothing but excruciating pain its entire short life. From the moment of its malevolent birth, it had been subject to the worst of torments. “I bet you would have been so pretty if they would have taken care of you.” she whispered to the lifeless body, choking back tears and subduing the lump of absolute sorrow lodged in her throat that intensified as she suppressed the overwhelming urge to bawl. She could feel the tears welling in her eyes, those huge heavy types of tears that carry a burden in their wetness. Petrified, Dara looked away and swallowed. She wouldn’t let herself cry, she had the night to get through, she couldn’t break down now, they needed her. Stone faced and still shaking, Dara went into the next room and came back with a plastic bag, a sheet, and some tape. She picked up the body and placed it on its side in the trash bag coffin. She stared down at the kitten once more, snapped a sprig of holly from a nearby office plant, and placed it over the kitten’s chest where the needle puncture was. She sealed the bag with tape and began wrapping the small, dreadful package in a worn mauve sheet. If only they had brought him in sooner. Bruce Chambers, yea that was his name, that monster. She gritted her teeth and though of that fat disgusting fuck with the 2 shadowy, recessed sockets that housed those cold, frightening, evil gray eyes. She never remembered hating anyone as much as she now hated him for what he did to that poor, defenseless animal. Dara's whole body seethed with a burning hatred like she had never felt before. She could feel her angry blood flowing like fire in her veins, she could feel it gushing into and reddening her cheeks. The worthlessness he undeservedly and tyrannically ascribed to that blameless creature was unforgivable. That’s it, she thought. She would secretly look his address up on the office computer and go to his house and do something terrible to him. She would slash the tires of his car or tie a brilliantly trenchant note to a brick and hurl it through a window of his house. On behalf of Skittles and the horrible pain he was made to endure she would plot revenge. By this time Dara’s breaths were labored and she was on the brink of emotional collapse. With rage in her glassy, trembling eyes, she looked upon the still bundle of death. “No…no…no….., what the hell was she thinking? Revenge would accomplish nothing. Bruce Chambers had probably been abused as a child or had some other great misfortune or absence of guidance in his life to make him so hideous, cruel and unfeeling. Still, she thought that should make him more sensitive. She just wished that for one second, Bruce Chambers could be put in the place of that kitten and was able to feel the pain and torment it had constantly felt. Maybe then he would have given a damn, maybe then he would have gotten Skittles the care he needed. And what the hell kind of name was that even. “Skittles”??, what a FUCKING STUPID name, she though. This little kitten was a martyr, deserving of a noble name, not a common and generic one inspired by a goddamn candy. Lamb she would call him, for He had suffered unnecessarily and carried the burden of agony all through his short life. He was an innocent, condemned by the passive ignorance and cruelty of a heartless other; a mere prisoner of circumstance, tortured and brutalized by conditions of an inescapable environment. Lamb had given his life so that another didn’t have to; everything about his existence had been selflessly sacrificial. Dara took a marker and wrote “Lamb” in script on the bundle’s outermost strip of white tape. She picked it and carried it to the freezer. Dara stood over the open freezer and pressed the quiet parcel to her chest. She lifted the lid and an icy gust of breath rose from inside the large freezer and shrouded her in a light, cold fog. She bowed her head and closed her eyes as the freezer fan hummed. Unable to lay the weight in her hands to rest just yet, and scarcely remembering a prayer from her brief Catholic upbringing, Dara spoke a solitary and partially improvised eulogy aloud to herself. “By…by our own fault we have lost the beautiful relationship which we once had with all creation.” Her voice began to quiver as she held back the tears. “Give us the grace…to see all creatures as gifts and to treat them with respect for they too are an equal creation.” She could hold them back no longer, salt streams poured from her pale green eyes. “This is for all those who are suffering as a result of neglect. For the chained, the cold, the starving, for the infested, the beaten, the tormented. Let him be the last of them. Rest in peace, Lamb.” The crematorium would make their rounds in a few days. Swallowed by an incinerator and turned to gentle white ash, Lamb would soon be forgotten by all but her. She alone would carry his memory, she alone would remember him. She couldn’t stop crying, didn’t know what to do, the sadness wouldn’t cease. Dara hadn’t believed in god in some time, but at this moment she could do nothing but pray. She prayed to the energy, to the molecules and atoms, she prayed to the forces, to the winds, she prayed to the planets and the minds and the voices and the powers. The painful futility of helplessness reigned her as she lowered Lamb into his temporary frozen grave, and all she could feel was a heavy, revolting grief, and the haunting feeling of bad dreams in nights to come. Dara shut the lid of the freezer, took a deep breath, wiped the moisture from her leaking, red eyes, and walked to the front of the office.
Copyright © 2006 Mangano Laura |