How May I Help You
by Valerie Patrick
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
I take the white tissue away from my eye hoping I caught the stray lash causing the sting; however, I spot the viscous pink of blood. I hesitantly close my lashes over the tissue again just to see more of my ichor staining the white. I try the other eye with a shaking hand for the same result, only stickier and darker. About to excuse myself to go to the bathroom and get a better look at what could be causing such a worrisome reaction when an elderly man, around mid-70s, wearing a worn ball cap with the original racist name for a baseball team and the same jeans he’s had for the past four decades approaches the desk.
“Excuse me, miss, you look like you need something to do”, he jokes with a gaze that’s hungry to see a young girl smile under him.
“Yes, of course.” I just barely force my lips to upturn at the edges. “What do you need?”
“Can you come with me?” Like his face is stuck in his predacious smirk.
“Sure.” I allow myself one more swipe of the tissue under my bottom lashes to catch any blood hanging on and try not to worry too much about the deeper pool flooding the white before following him over to his computer.
“Now what do I do from here?” he asks not sitting down but choosing to loom over me as he gestures to the default wallpaper of the public screen.
“Well, that depends. What are you wanting to do?”
“I want to check my emails. I’m waiting to hear back about some… lucrative opportunities.” A chuckle prowls out from his chapped lips.
Not wanting to explore the possibilities he could mean, I begin to tell him how to choose a browser before he interrupts: “No, no, I’m not going to remember any of this, sweetheart. Can you just do it for me?”
“Sure.” My tight smile makes a return as I consider whether bending over, squatting, or sitting in the position he’d vacated would make me least likely to be taken advantage of by a wandering mind. I go for a slight squat and hope this will be over soon so I can clear my blurry eyes once more. “Alright and from here, you login with your email address and password.” I stand up and begin to leave.
“Well, now wait just one moment, missy.” His wrinkly hand grabs my shoulder more tightly than someone his age should have the strength to. “What’s my password?”
I bite down on my tongue and take a deep breath before telling him, “I’m not sure, it’s something you chose. How about you try a few different ones and see if any of them work. I have to be available for other patrons now.” I walk away before he has a chance to ask any more of me and head straight to the restroom.
I choose the single-stalled family one to prevent run-ins with patrons who might ask me how to flush. I grip the sink as I meet my own gaze in the mirror. The blood is welling up along my lashes as if holding back tears. I cup cool water in my hands and rinse out my tiring eyes, trying not to panic at the rouge circling the drain.
“Excuse me, is someone in there?” a voice rings through the door as if it could be locked and marked occupied without a person inside to make it so.
“Yes, one moment.” I quickly wash my face once more to get rid of any evidence.
“Hello? My son really has to go.”
I open the door to a mother with a child who is definitely old enough to use the men’s restroom right next door, but I flash another strained smile and squeeze past them to my place at the front desk.
I have just enough time to sit down, rub my eye again, and feel it come loose and plop out into my hand before a middle-aged woman with a sharp bob haircut dyed unnaturally blonde comes up and tells me the printer ate her change, and she demands a refund for the 25 cents she inserted. As I’m attempting to come to terms with the fact I am holding a part of my body, feeling all the cold sliminess of it, she snaps her fingers in front of the eye I can still see out of, and I shove my organ inside my cardigan pocket while telling her we’ll figure out what’s going on.
She is still telling me in a sharp tone that she knows what’s going on, the library is trying to scam her, when I pull out the papers she printed from the machine and ask if they’re hers. Instead of admitting her faults, she says those weren’t there before, and she’s still never coming back.
I just nod and walk back to staff the desk when I feel my ankle slip, tilting my foot at an unnatural angle and making me trip. I catch myself in time and notice my foot got left behind, so I quickly pick it up, apologize to no one in particular, and hobble back to my chair. By the time I can sit down and try to reconnect my foot, one of my coworkers is standing in front of me to ask if I know where the extra receipt paper is.
This particular staff member has been working here years longer than I’ve been alive.
“Um, yeah, one moment,” I say. I brush a hand over my face and push back my hair to find a handful of it left tangled in my grasp. I toss it in the trash can and limp over to show them the receipt paper is in the cabinet labeled for it. I ask them if they remember how to insert it, and they gaze at me blankly. “Okay, let’s go do it together.”
They lead me to their desk, and I try not to notice the strands of my hair trailing behind me, little auburn worms peeking up from the ground after a great rainfall. I go through the motions, reminding them which way the paper goes in, and then I encourage them to do it while I stand, well lean, by. Despite being shown the proper way seconds prior, they put the paper in the wrong way and ask why the machine isn’t closing. I flip it over and tell them good job anyways then try to collect my hair on my walk back. I toss the entire tangle of it in the trash before a kid comes up to tell me their parent needs help finding a book. I ask the wide-eyed youngling which book it is, but they shrug and walk away, coughing into the open, not showing me which aisle their parent is down.
I get up to take a quick glance down each one until I see an overweight, panting, middle-aged woman taking up the entirety of a step stool waving me over. I make sure to perk up my voice. “Hi there, are you looking for something?”
“Uh, yeah,” she says way louder than necessary for how quiet the space is and my proximity to her. “I don’t remember the name of it, but it’s about Jesus.”
I offer to show her where the religious books are, but she tells me to just bring them to her despite them being one aisle over. “Well, there are a lot, but we can get you situated over there so you can look through them all?”
“No no no none of that, just bring me the best one.”
I give a hint of a smile and say, “Sure, one second.” After scanning the shelves, not knowing much about the books’ differences, I bring her back one that seems fairly standard.
“You know what, nevermind, I’ll go somewhere else.” As she tosses the book on the floor and stands up with a grunt, knocking other books off the shelf to get some purchase to pry herself up.
I lean over to pick up the one I suggested and see my nose melt off next to it. I add it to the pocket with my eye and head over to collect the casualties of the woman heaving up off the stool. I’m heading back to the desk to place all the books on a shelving cart when someone waves me over and asks if I’m busy. Shifting the weight of the books onto my hip, I ask what they need.
“My library card number doesn’t work. Look.” As they proceed to attempt typing numbers in and none of them appear on the screen.
“Oh, you have number lock off, that’s all.” I press the associated button and tell them to try again.
As I watch them type it in to make sure nothing else is needed, I feel the books collapse out and on top of my hand, smushing it into the floor. I collect the stack and wipe off the gristle of blood, skin, and nails smudged on the back cover. As I’m sorting them onto a cart with one functional hand, a woman with her mouth hanging open to reveal a perfect set of dentures, stark white against her papery skin, and a vacant stare in her crinkled eyes tells me she has a book ready to be picked up.
“Of course. Do you have your library card on you?” I ask politely, leaving the books behind.
“It’s for Nancy McClain,” she tells me, her eyes still goggling at nothing.
“Okay, sounds good, I need to scan your library card first.” I try to ignore that one of my cheeks feels slightly lower than the other and pulls on my jaw.
“It’s M-C-C-L-A-I-N.”
“I can also use your ID if you don’t have your library card on you.” And splat goes the skin of one side of my face on the desk. I watch as it pools out over the clean marble, jiggling, looking very similar to a thawed chicken breast, bits of white fat around the edges.
“Do you have it?” she squawks.
“Let me go check.” I scoop the skin into the trash and the hair already in there sticks to it as I wipe away the leftover blood with the sleeve of my cardigan. I bring over the newest James Patterson in large print, fourth one this year. “Is this it?”
“Oh yes, you need my library card, don’t you?”
“Yes, please.” The other side of my face, having little to hold on to, starts to slip.
“I think I left it in the car.”
“Okay, do you have your ID?”
“Also in the car.” She starts to take one step per minute before I tell her I’ll look her up this time and have her confirm some information.
As I’m typing up her name, the other half of my face sloughs off and lands on the keyboard, making me gather up the mess and backspace the keys accidentally pressed. “Okay, can you confirm your address?”
She tells me her birthday, June 3rd, 1935, and I double-check that information instead before checking out her book and watching her leave the building at a pace fitting her age.
I attempt to collect my bearings with a deep breath and take intel on how much of me is left when someone else taps on the desk. I open my one eye to see the organs of my torso in a pile on my lap, intestines circling the beige of my pancreas, my stomach and kidney smushing into each other, the grey of two lungs caressing the near brown of my liver. The stench I’m not sure how I can still smell is enough to make tears composed of my vital fluid spill over and drip off my cheekbone.
“Do you guys still have Covid kits?” The man taps on the desk again to get my attention.
“No, I’m sorry, they stopped supplying us with them,” I say and accidentally crunch on a tooth that has slipped out of place. I begin spitting teeth into my good hand, using my lazy tongue to maneuver them out of my mouth that is beginning to overfill with sticky saliva and salty blood.
“I called earlier, and the librarian told me you had some.” He raises his voice, but my ears, sliding toward my neck, make him sound warbled.
“I’m not sure who would say that. We haven’t had any for a month now.” I hope he understands the slurring speech I’m capable of in between coughing up bits and pieces of my crumbling esophagus.
“This is why your job won’t exist in ten years. Useless.” He storms out as the remainder of my body pools onto the carpeted floor.
A man with ruddy cheeks approaches the skeleton slumped in the office chair and claps the remains on the shoulder. “Hard at work or hardly working, huh? Hey, do you have a moment to help me print off some photos from my phone? Now don’t scroll down too far.” He winks with a chortle that bounces off the walls and surrounds him.
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