Seeing Is Believing

The elderly physician had been loved by many, and there was great mourning when he died. Some said he was a miracle worker, an angel from above sent to rid the world of birth defects and childhood maladies. His glory would live on for long after he was gone - or so it was said.

The people who disagreed were in the minority, and the stories they told were generally written off as hearsay, the rants of jealous contenders. No one in their right mind would seriously believe kindly old Dr. Gleemen to be guilty of the sordid crimes of which he'd been accused.

The pizza kid wasn't so sure. He'd been given his nickname so long ago, his real name had nearly been forgotten. Form the time his baby teeth had grown in, pizza had been his obsession, and just the whiff of pepperoni would make his eyes glaze over and his mouth to start watering.

"Pizza! Pizza!" he'd cry to anyone who was listening, and if he was lucky, he'd be rewarded with a great gooey bite of the stuff, mozzarella cheese streaming down like orange yarn. He'd eat it until he got a stomachache and still beg for more.

Six years ago, when he was nine, a second child had been born to his working class family - a little girl named Rainbow. He'd never met her. She'd taken but one breath and then closed her eyes forever. Or so his parents had told him, and he'd had no reason not to believe them. There had been no funeral, no casket - only a brief memorial service. She'd been born horribly deformed, his mother had told him, and God, in his mercy, had whisked her away to a better place.

Right after the memorial service, the family had taken a vacation to Disney World - a week in the Florida sunshine to help them heal from their recent sorrow, his parents had said. And while meeting Mickey Mouse and riding in the Small World boat, he really had enjoyed himself and shoved the loss of his little sister to the back of his mind, like a dreaded homework assignment.

It wasn't until his sophomore year in high school that he'd begun to wonder whether there might be some truth to the rumors, after all. It was whispered Dr. Gleemen bought newborns with birth defects from their parents and kept them hidden away, where he performed gruesome experiments on them. One day, the kid decided to investigate. He rode his bicycle to the Gleemen Medical Center and walked to the back door.

He pushed the door open and entered the pristine hallway. The walls had been painted a glaring white, and there was a row of evenly spaced brown doors on each side. He recognized the scene from the many commercials he'd seen growing up, commercials in which children threw crutches and braces to the side and walked away as if nothing had ever been wrong with them.

He went to one of the side doors and pushed it open. Inside the room he saw a child sleeping in a hospital bed, surrounded by state of the art medical paraphernalia. He opened each door on both sides of the hallway, only to find a similar scenario behind each one. He rode the elevator to the second floor and checked each room to find nothing amiss.

Unsure whether to feel relieved or disappointed, he returned to the first floor and was about to leave the building when he saw a space in the wall open and a woman dressed as a nurse emerge from the opening. Glad he'd worn a disguise, he pretended to be absorbed with his watch until she'd walked down the hallway and left. As soon as she was gone, he made his way to the part of the wall from which he'd seen her appear.

He felt around with both hands until he felt the seemingly solid wall give. He pushed until he had enough room to move beyond the opening and found himself standing in a very narrow space, facing an elevator. Consumed with curiosity, he pressed the button beside the elevator and, when its door slid open, he stepped inside it.

Once inside, he noticed a button labeled 'B'. How bizarre, he thought. I had no idea this building even had a basement. He pressed that button and felt the elevator move. When he reached the bottom and the elevator door opened, he found he was standing in another narrow space, facing another white wall. Expecting another secret opening, he felt around on the wall until he felt it give.

The stench assaulted his nostrils right away, almost making him gag. Holding his nose, he stepped forward and found himself inside a large room which looked like some kind of laboratory. Lining the walls were large cages, each of which contained a child - or at least, what might have once been a child. Here were youngsters who'd had animal parts - the webbed feet of ducks, the dexterous hands of simians - sewn onto the ends of their arms and legs. The transplants had failed, of course, and the tissue had become necrotic, causing the strong odor which had sickened him.

In one cage were a pair of conjoined twins which, on closer inspection, turned out to be normal identical twins who'd been sewn together at the waist. As they were identical, the graft had taken, and the scars of the surgical stitches could still be seen.

In the far right corner, he found what he was looking for - a cage with a small card attached to the front on which was written his family name and the word 'Phocomelia.' The creature inside the cage was far smaller than a normal six-year-old girl. She was completely naked, as were all the others, and her limbs were very short. They were really just stalks with hands and feet attached. She moved about on all fours like an inquisitive Dachshund. The pizza kid's stomach churned as, in his mind's eye, he saw an exhibit from the freak show of a long-ago traveling carnival. 'See the dog woman! Half woman, half dog!'

He looked closer and saw that, indeed, a fleshy appendage hung uselessly from the child's hindquarters. As he approached the cage, she saw him and immediately shrank into a corner, whimpering. It wasn't a human sound at all, but rather the terrified cry of an animal about to be eaten. He knelt beside the cage and called her name, softly.

When Rainbow heard his voice, her fear turned to curiosity. She'd never heard a human voice before. The old man had never spoken to her as he'd taken her from her cage and carried her into a small adjoining room which contained only a machine with a recording of loud, guttural growling and barking sounds. He'd played it for her until she'd imitated the sounds, then rewarded her with treats. The younger man who'd replaced him did the exact same thing.

Now she felt herself lifted from the cage and carried out of the room and into the elevator. In the pizza kid's arms, she rode up to the first floor, then was carried down that hallway and outside. The kid gently placed her into the wagon he'd attached to his bike, and within seconds, she was enjoying her first bike ride.

When the ride ended, she was lifted again. The kid slid her body onto a soft pile of clothing among the boxes in the garage. He pulled an old coat over the top, creating a cave that emanated the sweetness of old ladies who frequently powdered themselves—a light rose motif that played ironically well in the deep recesses of Rainbow's ancestral brain. The pizza kid lifted her head to help her lap water from a hubcap. He broke bits of pepperoni and crust into bite-sized pieces and left them where her tongue could reach them. Much later, she heard him practicing his orations like songs. Like monks chanting in the distance, they were a comfort.

As he rehearsed for the drama club's upcoming production, the fury he felt increased. How could they have done it? How could they have sold his baby sister to that madman? So what if her arms and legs were too short - she was still their daughter! Had the trip to Disney World been worth it to them? He supposed it had, he concluded grimly.

After awhile, he heard a noise that sounded exactly like a dog barking. He opened the door between the kitchen and the garage to see Rainbow standing there on all fours, panting and waving her behind back and forth in an attempt to get the sewn-on fleshy appendage to 'wag'.

How'd he do that? the kid wondered, kneeling beside the child to take a closer look. He grabbed Rainbow's hands and stood her upright. On her abdomen was an indentation which appeared to have been the site from which the evil physician had taken the skin to fashion the 'tail'.

Feeling as if he were about to be sick, the kid ran to the trashcan beside the road. He held himself over it while his stomach heaved. In a few minutes, he felt a tug on the bottom of his jeans and turned to see Rainbow standing there, looking up at him. After a quick glance around to see if anyone was watching, he scooped her up and carried her back to the garage.

They need to see this, he told himself. They need to see exactly what he did to her. He wrapped a blanket around her to keep her warm and carried her into the living room. He knew they'd be home in a couple of hours, and he was going to be sitting right there, waiting for them.

While he sat there, he talked to her, in hopes she'd respond, but she just stared at him with uncomprehending eyes. He wondered whether she was mentally handicapped, in addition to her physical anomalies. At one point, she jumped off his lap and scampered to the door, where she stood scratching and howling. He guessed what was wrong and carried her to the bathroom, where he held her over the toilet while she urinated.

At last he heard the unmistakable sound of the car's engine switching off, followed by that of slamming doors. His mother entered the house first. She saw her son and fainted dead away. His father, who was standing right behind her, caught her. After settling her on the sofa, he turned to his son with blazing eyes.

"Just what is the meaning of this?" he demanded. "Tell me, boy! Where did you find that thing? Why did you bring it into my house? What are you planning to do with it? Do you think you can keep it as a pet? Huh? Answer me, boy!"

Rainbow squealed in terror, an inhuman sound, and struggled to get free. Her brother placed her on the floor, where she scampered away, in search of a hiding place. The pizza kid watched her, then rose to meet his father, his arms folded in front of him in defiance.

"That 'thing' is your daughter!" he yelled. "You lied to me! You told me she died, but you sold her to that monster to use in his horrible experiments. Your own flesh and blood! How could you?" His eyes were as cold as steel as they pierced his father's like shards of broken glass.

"We did it for your own good, dear," said his mother, who'd begun to come around. "What would it have been like for you, to grow up with a sister who looks like that? Would the other kids have wanted to play with you, or would they have laughed and made fun of you? Would you have had any friends? What we did was for the best," she insisted.

"Dr. Gleemen was able to apply the knowledge he gained by experimenting on her to find cures for other children, children with the potential to be completely normal with one or more simple operations. Now that he's gone, his son is continuing his life-saving work."

"But how could trying to turn her into a dog help other kids?" He looked at Rainbow, who was cowering in a corner, her eyes still wide with fright. "And I saw other kids who were even worse off than her. Kids with empty sockets where their eyes used to be, kids with their arms and legs gone, kids with body parts rotting away! It was awful!"

"You should have just left her where she was." His father's voice sounded weary, sad. "It's too late to do anything for her now. She belongs with others like herself. You'd better take her back where she came from before anyone notices she's missing."

"She belongs with us." The pizza kid walked over to Rainbow, picked her up, and carried her back to the sofa with him. "We're her family - the only family she has. It doesn't matter what she looks like. She needs love, just like anybody else."

His father's only response was to stalk away. His mother just sat there, looking at him and shaking her head. With a heavy sigh, the pizza kid stood and carried Rainbow back to the garage, where he returned her to the makeshift bed he'd put together for her. After school the next day, he went to the thrift store and bought training pants and dresses in toddler sizes. He figured they'd fit Rainbow. When he got home, he took her into the bathroom and gave her a bath and washed her hair. Dr. Gleemen had cut it close to the scalp so that it looked a bit like a shag carpet covering the top of her head.

After putting the clothes on her, he spent several hours trying to teach her to walk upright. Because of the shape of her feet, all she could do was to scoot along at a slow rate. She kept protesting, wanting to return to all fours, until at last the kid gave up and let go of her hands. The dress's skirt presented a problem until he tucked it into the training pants.

Rainbow didn't like wearing clothes and tended to shed them the first chance she got. Usually, the kid would come home from school to find her naked. She'd gotten bolder about exploring her new living quarters, dumping out the boxes and littering the garage floor with their contents. She loved the rose-scented coat and clung to it for hours at a time.

The night of the drama club's presentation arrived. The pizza kid's parents were in the audience, along with all the other parents. Having practiced his lines often, he recited them perfectly, and there was loud applause when he finished. He saw tears in his mother's eyes as she clapped.

That night, he went to bed without checking on Rainbow to make sure she was all right. The next morning was Saturday, and when he went into the garage after breakfast, he couldn't find her anywhere. He tried not to panic as he moved boxes and clothes around, but after a half hour of searching, he still hadn't found her.

I'll ride around and look for her, he told himself. She can't have gone very far. He jumped onto his bike and rode all up and down the street. Seeing no sign of Rainbow, he moved on to the next street, and then the next.

Six streets over, he came upon the site of an accident. There was a police car and an ambulance; he saw a man in tears telling the policeman over and over again he hadn't seen her. The pizza kid saw a body on a stretcher being loaded into the back of the ambulance. The body was covered by a sheet, but the face was uncovered, and he saw it was Rainbow's!

The ambulance took off, and he followed it on his bike. He watched as it parked in front of the emergency room entrance, and his sister was taken inside. He got off his bike and entered the emergency waiting room, where he went to the receptionist and asked when he could see his sister.

He had to wait hours, of course, and when he was finally allowed back, he was asked many questions. Where had he found her? What else had been in the room with her? What specific condition had she been in? He answered all their questions and was eventually allowed back into her cubicle.

She'd been lucky, they'd told him. Only a few bruises and lacerations. They'd had to tranquilize her, as she'd acted like a wild animal, biting the paramedics as they'd tried to examine her. Now she lay asleep, curled up on the hospital bed, her hands and feet tucked beneath her body. All he could think about was how peaceful she looked.

When he got back home, his parents didn't ask where he'd been, and he didn't offer any explanations. To him, it was as if they were strangers, and he didn't understand how they could live with themselves, how they could carry on as if nothing had happened.

The physician in charge of Rainbow's treatment amputated her 'tail' and then referred her to the foster care system. The pizza kid's parents were arrested and charged with sale of a child, and the kid went to live with his grandparents on the other side of town. The police department announced the Gleemen Medical Center would be investigated.

Before the investigation could take place, the medical center burned to the ground because of a mysterious fire. Luckily, the children on the main floors were rescued in time, and although a few of them suffered minor injuries, they all survived with no permanent damage. In his cowardly attempt to escape, young Dr. Gleemen suffered a blow to the head and was knocked unconscious. He died of smoke inhalation.

None of the basement's inhabitants survived. DNA tests were performed on the charred remains found inside the cages, and the lengthy process of matching the victims to any surviving relatives was begun. The pizza kid thought it was probably best they had perished. After all, what kinds of lives would they have had to look forward to? he asked himself.