Succession

Milo Hobbes hated hospitals. The cream-spackled hallways emanated filth, hoards of germs and bacteria tainted what was once white. Tungsten lights flickering faster than the eye can see served to disorient visitors of the ward. Dull headaches plagued guests, paling in comparison to the ails of those they came to visit. Each floor built like hotel rooms for the dying, half drunk on pain medications and slurring or crying or screaming until their lungs gave out. And yet, far worse than the pallor and distant sounds of soon-to-be corpses was the smell. A septic odor of shit and bleach that permeated from floor to ceiling with the faintest tinge of wet mold growing between skin folds of overweight patients and their dirty laundries. The smell hung stiff without central air, a convenience ill-fitted for a hospital full of contagion.

Milo Hobbes had already earned his visitor’s badge from the security man downstairs under the name Milo Richardson. The attending ward only took family visitation and he was on a deadline, though he preferred not to lie and never considered himself any good at it. As a boy, fibbing was an experimental phase that was quickly squelched by his father. Looks like your garden path’s got a gate on it, boy, he would say after particularly poor deceptions that usually resulted in a few whips from the man’s belt.

The guard, with eyebrows thick as his mustache leaving him with a permanent furrow, paid little attention as Milo signed the sheet and took a badge from the plastic display. Milo made a passing remark about whether his box (the one he carried with both hands white knuckled to his breastbone) was allowed on the floor; the guard grunted behind his novella (a harlequin romance by the look of the well-proportioned female on the cover) and let him pass without question.

After a quick ride up three floors in a near empty elevator, Milo stood just outside the elevator doors clutching the box to his chest and surveyed the area.

He’s supposed to be here.

His reservations about the contaminated place started to make his heart race, and he could feel his breath quicken as the elevator doors opened and shut behind him, nurses and orderlies rushing past him with shuffling steps as they went about their rounds. The box in his arms started to buckle and fold from his anxious, tightened grip, though not enough to break what was held inside.

Several waiting chairs stood against the wall near the nurse’s station. A young couple, their faces wilted with grey shadows inescapable in the overhead light, sat with heads hung. They whispered to each other and shot fervent glances to each nurse that entered and exited their periphery. The woman’s shirt, an unfortunate periwinkle, had been smattered with what looked like brown-green paste. Only the sick of a loved one could be worn with such disregard for cleanliness. Her face was blotchy red and her eyes were puffed as though stung by bees; Milo asserted that she had been crying for some time. His regard for the couple calmed him slightly, though his forehead still perspired and his nostrils burned with hospital stink.

A nurse appeared from behind the door next to the couple. She let the door rest on her bent backside as she softly spoke the woman’s name. Carolyn. The couple turned to face the nurse, unashamed of their lackluster hygiene and appearance, and were greeted with admittance through the door. No words were spoken as the couple walked slowly into the tomb. The door remained open.

Milo took his first step forward since getting off the elevator. His curiosity drove him deeper into the disgusting place, craning his neck to see what mysteries hid behind Carolyn’s door. First, he saw the machines. A mountain of beeping hardware a decade old, alive with blinking green, yellow, and red lights. A myriad of tubes and cords connecting monitor to machine and machine to patient. It looked like someone out of a Philip K. Dick story, more science fiction than science fact. Another step. The metal railing of the adjustable bed. He paused, knowing his next step would reveal something he already knew.

First was the pallid hand as Milo leaned slowly forward. The fingernails were long, rigid and jaundiced, offset by blue veins running from each finger up through a withered, rail-thin wrist. Wrinkles wove across the patterned blue in deep lines, impacted with dust and feces (or so Milo imagined). He took his next step forward, the intrigue of the victim overcoming his aversion to the unkempt masses. Before he could complete his advance, a different hand, olive-skinned and soft with youth, grasped his forearm.

“May I help you?”

The nurse, so clean and well-pressed that she could have been a mannequin, wore a stern demeanor as she waited for Milo to straighten his spine. He was leaning at almost ninety degrees; he had not noticed that his hand had found the nurse’s station counter to stabilize his vantage point. Her hand was warm on his forearm, but firm with the assertion that his prying was not welcome. He watched her gaze travel to the shoebox smashed against his stomach, again disapproving of whatever foreign objects were brought into the sterile environment. His arm retreated from her hold and wrapped tightly against the box, finally standing erect, eyes glued firmly to the floor.

“R-r-rih-rih-richard…”

“Richard? Is that who you’re looking for?” she asked. Her tone changed, sympathetic as she patiently awaited his response.

“R-rih-richard-Richardson. L-lah-last name,” he stuttered through.

“Okay, hun, lemme find ‘em for you.” The stutter had made her soft, calmed her inquiries about the box and the man who held it. She had been watching him since he stepped off the elevator, a lost look full of reservation. In the moment she felt regret, upset with herself for not offering assistance earlier and letting herself get worked up over his voyeurism. She felt the need to apologize, but thought better of it when she found Richardson’s name on the patient sheet.

Deceased. 12:43am.

Did he not know the man who he had come to see had passed away? It seemed wrong, a family ward with a family member who had not been informed of the passing? It was already 5:30pm, seventeen hours after the departure, surely someone in the family had told this man that his…

Brother?

Son?

...his relation had gone to a better place.

She found the most reasonable question, “and your relationship to Mr. Richardson?”

Milo’s eyes never lifted from the floor. He seized. Breath quickening and sweat beading on his forehead, he racked his brain for a connection. “He’s-he’s-he’s…” he muttered, almost unintelligible. It had been some time since Milo had experienced the claustrophobic nausea that came from being out in the world, though it shone with paralyzing familiarity. A white vignette clouded his vision, and he gripped the box ever tighter until a sweet fume of rosemary wafted to his nostrils. It came from inside the box.

In a moment, he found his truth. A grieving relative would need no explanation.

“He’s dead, then?”

Her sigh was filled with heartache. She had always received praise for her bedside manner. Her ability to empathize made her the prime candidate for head nurse, though she still waited for promotion.

“The boss is really takin' me up the garden path,” she would lament in the break room to the other nurses.

“I’m so sorry for your loss. We’ve already moved him, with respect to the immediate family.”

“Cousin,” he barked. It startled her, though with his head clearing and the calm of duty setting in again, it seemed a natural transition, “I w-wah-wah-was his c-cuh-cousin.”

She apologized again, though it was of no consequence to Milo Hobbes. He already knew, or had expected, Mr. Richardson to be deceased. None of this would be necessary were he still alive.

He’s supposed to be here.

Milo looked around; he backed away from the nurse’s station looking only at the tile floors.

“Sir, is there someone I should call?” the nurse called out to him, now a few feet away from the desk barrier. She sounded farther away. To Milo, she was. He cursed himself for agreeing to meet here. He rocked back and forth, eyes scanning the floor, watching the shoes of the hospital personnel shuffle by. He counted backwards to himself.

10…9…8…

“S-s-s-ss-seven…” it came out in a whisper, “si-six…”

“Sir, please, let me-”

She had come around the nurse’s station, getting close enough to touch him again. Close enough to comfort him for his loss. In her eyes, he was beside himself. This was a favorite cousin. A cousin that was like a brother. Her arm just about to graze his back in comfort and companionship.

We’re here for you because we understand. We see it every day.

He threw himself forward, yelling, “HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE HERE!”

In an instant, the room swarmed with orderlies. Strapping men built to hold people down while meek nurses, who filtered in behind, injected them with thorazine. The olive-skinned nurse stood frozen, afraid but wearing the air of a hostage negotiator with her S.W.A.T. team behind her.

“Who’s supposed to be here, honey?” she asked, still unmoving.

Milo looked around and shook his head. He knew he had to leave, his mission unfinished. He knew where he needed to be. If not here, then below, he thought. His head shook.

“Neh-neh-no. No thhh…no thank you,” he said to no one.

He walked in shuffled steps to the elevator and pushed the down button. What felt like hundreds of eyes, it may have been a hundred eyes, stared at him He did not dare look back. The elevator doors opened and he stepped inside, turning around to see the staring hoard.

As he pushed the “M'' at the bottom of the panel, he lifted his eyes and saw Carolyn, standing in her doorway, her sympathy abounding towards him as the doors closed and he made his descent. He faintly heard the nurse reassure that everything was okay, that everyone can go back to work, and relief welled up inside him.

The elevator slowed as it approached the basement levels, creaking to a stop on level “M”.

Alone he felt sane again. He tried to fix his box back to its rectangular shape, careful not to damage the artifact inside. Rosemary and sweet sage perfumed out of the cardboard, and Milo peeked inside to ensure the contents was intact.

It was.

The elevator doors lurched open. From what Milo could see, this appeared to be the cleanest ward in the hospital. The walls painted snow white, clear of all buildup and spackle, with silver fixtures so reflective they were almost invisible. The lights were clear white, all singular round bulbs fixed just outside each door in the hallway. It had an antiseptic feel for which Milo was grateful.

About three yards away, a grey fold-away plastic table with a large computer monitor stuck out from the wall like a barricade. Several folding chairs in slick white lined the hall in front of it.

A man, about forty, sat in one of the waiting chairs, elbows to his knees and tapping his foot on the grey concrete floor. He wasn’t a doctor or a nurse, Milo knew, because he wore chinos and a forest green polo. The sleeves pushed up so many times that they wrinkled and padded on his shoulders. His ash blonde hair was messed from multiple runthroughs of his fingers.

This was the man Milo had come to see.

He looked to the elevator as Milo exited. A burst of anticipation caught his breath and he stood. “Mr. Hobbes?”

Milo offered a brief smile that waned as he approached. They were not alone. The orderly behind the giant monitor to his right was so short that his feet barely grazed the floor under his chair, cursed with a diminished stature that both men towered above. He hid behind his screen, counting on those who came here to miss his presence. Milo could see the gusto in his eyes, catching someone in some depraved intention and waiting to pounce.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there to meet you upstairs. They wouldn’t let me stay once they moved him,” the tall man said, his hand outstretched, “Jonathan. John, if you like.”

Milo stared at it a moment, hands never leaving the box, then drifted his gaze back to the man behind the monitors.

“Oh, that’s Carl. He knows. You were expected.”

Milo examined him. The monitor man was the gatekeeper. He opened the doors, held the keys. He didn’t expose intruders, he let them in.

John was staring at the box in Milo’s arms. He regarded it over and over like an hyena waiting for the lion to stop eating.

“Is that it?”

Passion surged in John’s voice. Milo pulled the box back into him.

“W-we…we have to hu-uh-urry. S-sah-sundown,” Milo managed. John looked at his watch, an uncommonly gaudy timepiece that contrasted greatly with his department store attire. A gift.

They traversed the hall quickly led by Carl, the gatekeeper, whose keys jingled to the rhythm of their step. The door, almost at the end of the hall, wasn’t locked. Carl opened it for Milo and John and watched them enter before closing it behind. Milo heard the keys click and grind as Carl locked them inside. John could feel Milo’s unease.

“It’s for our safety. Just in case…” John trailed off as his eyes trespassed the single silver slab, a sheet draped across it. The white silhouette creased around the folds of armpits, chin, around the knees and hips. John approached it casually, not at all affronted by the man under the sheet.

“He hated me. Mom would say he just wasn’t any good at showing affection, but I know he resented every day I lived. It’s ironic, I guess. Not often a father loves his second son but hates his first.”

Milo set the box on a tray of medical tools. He approached John. Even in death, John's father made him feel worthless and alone.

“The tah—the time?”

John referred to his ostentatious timepiece, “five forty-nine.”

“Sunset at five fah-fah…” he paused, frustrated. Then deliberately, “fifty-seven.”

Milo drew the sheet back. The man underneath was not as old as he expected, no more than sixty-five years young with hair jet black. It was slicked back with thick paste, plastered to the dome. Milo could see the flecks of grey coming in debonair like pinstripes on a coal suit. The expression was not of peace, but of brooding. Through it though, he was regal, a quality not shared by his first son whose petulant presence set Milo’s nerves ablaze. Milo grazed the man’s chest, newly shaved and woven together with thick thread. He had not noticed John, who had stepped away from the body and idled a pace behind. The son still feared his father.

Milo found a scalpel on the autopsy tray and slid it under the first notch of threading. The disgust for the sick and dying forgone, death was a clean slate of potential in Milo’s eyes. Where others saw decay, he saw respite. The thread snapped. He spent the next five minutes carefully pulling the threading from the holes in the rubber-like skin, careful not to damage the coroner’s handiwork. He removed just enough to slide the skin back away from the breast bone, exposing some ribs in the process.

“You’re sure this will work?” John warily asked. The betrayal of cold feet. John was reminded of the first time he bought a car, a used 1984 Pontiac Sunbird rancid with stale cigarettes and fast food wrappers. It was all he could afford, but parting with the meager $700 he had saved was enough to show that he was a responsible kid who could make his own way in the world. At the time, his mind had raced with all the other ways his money could be spent. He could go to Rome, one way ticket, and be away from all the anguish of familial guilt. He could invest, like Daddy, and make millions and millions, though he never quite understood the markets and their wavering sensibilities. This would change everything, like the Pontiac was supposed to. If, he thought, if it works.

John drove the sporty coupe home with all the flair of a basketball MVP. His eager young mind anticipating the way his father would react. His father was a stern man who had complicated hobbies that took quiet concentration. John imagined roaring into the drive while Daddy delicately painted a model WWI era A7V Sturmpanzer. His eyes would lift toward the window and, through the garden topiaries, he would see the front bumper of his son’s first good investment. John liked the idea of this. Fixing the car up, maybe even with Daddy’s help, and someday reselling it for thousands more than he had paid. His father would respect that.

The Sunbird rolled only the cobbled drive, popping briskly over the stones. It made a harsh impression, it’s rusting frame against the backdrop of the ornate decadence of the old colonial garden. The house, a tudor mansion with a baroque quality brought over from Britain, had been in the family for generations and, with any luck, he would inherit it as well. He sat in the driveway, staring at his father’s study window, waiting for the moment Daddy would come investigate.

He never came.

John surmised he was not home and, albeit disappointed the reality defeated expectation, knew he would have to wait a little longer before his congratulations were due. What John had not expected was that his father, still in the study focused on painting a particularly challenging model of Union horses with a pull cart, would never mention the car. Over dinner the next several weeks, John had tried to bring it up casually and was met with either silence, or an almost pointed complement of one of his brother’s past achievements.

The Pontiac eventually broke down and was too expensive to repair. Another disappointment. Daddy was right about that car, John thought, even though he said nothing at all.

Two minutes left before sunset, Milo opened his box and set the contents on the table, propped in the crook of the corpse’s elbow. A simple mason jar, about 12 ounces, emerged from the box. It was half filled with liquid and what looked like lawn debris. Tied across the base of the lid were herbs, rosemary, sage, and hawthorn berries. Quaint. John thought he had seen such a thing in home and garden magazines his wife would flip through. Inside the jar, the liquid bubbled like club soda. It was a piss yellow and as the bubbles rose bits of bilberry and astragalus floated with them. There was something else, too, John could tell, as the liquid was not quite solid. Something was swimming between the water, like oil or spirits, breaking bubbles before they reached the surface.

“Is it time?” Milo asked, his stutter replaced with the calm of ritual. John favored his watch.

“Five fifty-seven.”

Milo nodded and opened the jar. The liquid fizzed slightly leaving a white film across the top of the jar. It hummed.

John could hear Milo whispering towards the jar as he slid his thin hand between the first rib and the chest plate of his father’s corpse. An oozy film of blood and mucus swelled up around Milo’s arm as he reached deeper under the bone. John heaved. He hadn’t eaten all day and the bile from his stomach rose up acidic in his throat. He spat brown on the floor, but Milo remained unphased. This was his world now, his mess, his choice, and it made him stronger. He stopped whispering.

“The time?” he asked, arm wedged deep in the dead man’s chest.

John could barely speak through the dry heaves. “Same,” he managed to spit out.

Milo’s arm flexed. It showed a strength beyond his bird-like features. His claw ripped through the innards of the cavity breaking the rib he had so delicately slid past before. A ghastly image presented as Milo tore the man’s viscous heart from beneath his chest plate and plopped it into the jar. The concoction began to spit and wretch, the thin layer of white film inflating to overflow. Milo whirled the tin lid into place, preventing the liquid from further explosion.

Then it stopped.

Resting in murky bathwater, the heart floated gracefully in the jar. It bobbed slowly up and down like a buoy struck with soft tide. Milo had already begun work to restring the corpse together, not bothering to reset the rib into place. No one would notice now anyway. He followed the pattern the coroner had left him, threading everything back into place, back as they had found him. He dabbed the excess blood and fluids off the skin until it returned to its pristine, waxen clean. Milo retrieved the jar, covered the body, and held the heart out for John.

John was trembling. He stared at the heart, watching its cadence. It could not have been real. Something played a trick. Someone played a trick. How much did he know about this man? Milo Hobbes, the witch doctor, the faith healer. When he started this journey, it was nothing more than an inquiry of a desperate mind. He searched the tomes of the internet, catching whispers of a way to bottle success, to box aspiration. It started so innocently with the self-help eBooks. He hired counselors and psychiatrists, found a mentor, and rather than help, his obsession grew. His excuse of paternal abandonment flourished. All his faults, his directionless existence, it was because of the dead man before him. That’s when it stopped being about self-help and started being about revenge. But that’s when Daddy fell ill, his life sentence cut terminally short. Revenge seemed like a silly repast with Daddy so close to killing himself anyway.

But yet the heart in the jar beat. The dead man’s heart was beating in a fucking jar.

Milo finished his rituals and packed up his things. He took some time finding the sink to wash up, scrubbing like a surgeon to remove all the blood from under his nails, his elbow folds, his knuckles. He felt rushed; he had to make the 6:20pm bus to the train station.

“How?” The quiet inquiry came to him.

Milo took up the shoe box under his arm and approached John, observing the jar from all angles.

“When Dionysus died, as a ch-ch-child, the Titans ate everything b-b-bah-but his heart.” Milo tapped at the glass and the heart skipped a rhythm, “so zew-Zeus sewed it into his thigh. And D-dah-Dionysus was b-b-b-born again.”

“So what do I do with it?” John asked, unsatisfied with the response.

“B-b-bury it. Plant fennel where it lay. Eat the fah-fah-fennel. And your fah-father will be reborn in you.”

John felt a deep rage circulating his bowels. He could no longer trust this mad scientist with his warlock charms and his volley of instructions. It wasn’t real. Of course it wasn’t. Fennel? He wasn’t even sure what fennel was. The beating heart no longer mattered. It wasn’t real. And yet he held it in his hands, could feel the vibrations. Daddy’s practical teachings told him otherwise. They told him it was too much extra work. Too much sacrifice. Wasn’t this enough? Wasn’t what transpired tonight enough for this to be over? IT CAN’T BE REAL. But his mind was weak, and his bargaining took over.

“I don’t have time for that! I need this now – I was told that it would be done tonight, not when things grow! I paid for…”

Milo wasn’t listening. He tapped on the door for Carl to relieve them. He had a train to catch.

“Hey,” John approached, “hey, you said this could be done now!” His voice took the tone of a child demanding a promised dessert.

“If you wah-want it n-n-now, t-th-ht-that’s the other way…” Milo wrapped at the door again.

“Okay, so what’s the other way?”

From the words of someone not used to getting their way, Milo was amused. Already this boy had a monicom of confidence he so desired. Milo had been paid in advance; there was no longer a reason for him to stay. But there was no reason to withhold his knowledge any longer, either. He heard the key clunk into the lock.

“Eat it.”

“What?”

“Eat the heart.”

Milo was no stranger to this truth. Cannibalistic cultures often believe eating another’s organs would allow them to inherit their knowledge, sometimes even their personality. Though things like this were never about the truth. Milo knew from the beginning what this boy needed. Theatrics aside, Milo specialized in the craft and artistry of his work. And, anyway, like faith and hope, it was always about the power to believe, not the power actually possessed.

Milo left the morgue unsure if John would dine on his due, but he was certain that John had received what he paid for and would never seek him again. He made the 6:20pm train with several minutes to spare.