An Incident at Saint James Infirmary

Written By: Paul Grammatico

Chadwick Pierce embodied the very definition of a modern misanthrope. His indifference toward others was clear during his court trial, where he faced twenty counts of first-degree murder—counts he claimed he was innocent of, even though he knew deep down he had proudly committed every single one. His reason for these brutal acts was that the world was already too crowded, and removing these deeply flawed humans was a benefit to society.

Whether it was bad breath, flatulence, gluttony, speaking unkindly, or invading someone’s personal space, he believed killing was justified by any means—be it a knife, rope, candlestick, rock, revolver, or simply throttling his victims. He saw himself as doing the world a favor.

Besides, he argued, what these fools were doing was all deadly sins—at least, according to the Good Book.

When the jury arrived at the guilty verdict for all of the counts in what had to be a world record of a mere twenty minutes, the judge, a man in his very late sixties with a bushy white mustache that was a stark contrast to his thinning frost-colored hair, decided to take matters into his own hands and sentenced Pierce to death. He theatrically rose from his seat, placed his bluish, varicose-veined hands upon his grand wooden desk, and looked down at Pierce with his slightly milky gray eyes.

Pierce felt like he was staring death in the face as the judge opened his mouth, revealing yellow, saliva-stained teeth and sagging, sallow skin that loosely wrapped around his face like a poorly fitting, rubber alien-looking Halloween mask straight out of Peter Jackson's Bad Taste. He asked if he had anything to say to the family of his victims, but silence was all his victims offered in response.

The judge decided that the crimes he committed were so heinous and animalistic that the sentence for his penalty and repentance, for which Pierce offered none, was warranted; it was patently obvious—the sentence of death.

"Defendant, rise," the judge commanded. Pierce pulled his massive bulk out of his wooden chair, which took some effort as the oaken seat was several sizes too small for his posterior.

"Since you have taken the lives of others," the judge said through his thick white beard. "The state will take yours. You will be executed in a new way that has been brought here. A type of execution that will benefit society, which you have harmed severely. You will be taken to Saint James Infirmary in downtown Saint Louis, where your organs will be harvested and donated to those in need of transplants. Do you have anything you would like to say to the court?"

Pierce shuffled his feet and tilted his head toward the judge. "If that is my fate, I will gladly accept it, but with one request: I would like to be given a local anesthetic instead of being put under. I demand that I witness my own demise."

"That can be arranged," the judge stated. "Your execution will take place at precisely noon tomorrow. Bailiff, take the prisoner away."

The judge slammed his gavel, ending the proceedings.

***

The Saint James Infirmary, immortalized by many blues singers, notably Louis Armstrong, stood stoically at the corner of Market Street and South Broadway. Its marble facade, complete with columns and an archway entrance, looks like a relic from the early twentieth century, having stood the test of time for over a century.

Pierce was transported through these dim, ancient hallways on a stainless steel gurney, its wheels squeaking like nails on chalkboards. The constant, disturbing noise overwhelmed the orderly pushing the condemned man, as his pained expression and clenched teeth would reveal.

Strapped on his back with the top of his head, wrists, and ankles secured with thick, heavy brown leather, Pierce's face showed nothing but a blank stare, unfazed by the annoying noise from his transportation. A simple white sheet covered his body and the straps that restrained him. Pierce stared at the weakly lit greenish hue of each of the shop lights that passed him by. These would be some of the only lights he would ever see on this planet.

The gurney pushed its way through the gray, metallic double doors, where blinding hot white lights greeted Pierce and his orderly. Pierce's sight tried to adjust to this massive change as his eyes struggled to make out the fuzzy shadows on his sides in his peripheral vision.

Pierce wondered if his eyes would be the first thing they took from him. A shiver ran down his spine as his body temperature dropped as if he were dipped into a deep freeze. A surgeon, along with the various nurses and other specialists, looked down on his soon-to-be-harvested body.

"Mr. Pierce? I am Doctor Oswald Walsh," he introduced himself firmly but slightly muffled as he spoke through his white cotton mask. "I understand that you would prefer to be injected with a local anesthetic rather than being put under. I can assure you that we can make that happen."

Doctor Walsh nodded to the anesthesiologist, who produced a large syringe with a thick, heavy-gauge needle.

"You will feel a hard pinch to your neck, Mr. Pierce," the anesthesiologist stated as he grabbed the side of Pierce's head and plunged the needle into Pierce's thick neck. Pierce could feel the liquid flow through his body, quickly deadening every part of his torso and limbs as it did its job.

A scalpel was handed to Doctor Walsh, and he proceeded to slice open Pierce's torso.

Pierce could feel a slight pressure as Walsh just below the neckline and continued to slice all the way down just above his bladder. Walsh and his masked assistants pulled Pierce's outer epidermis, starting from the top of his sternum to the beginning of his groin.

Doctor Walsh moved down to his hips and pointed down into his open cavity. He reached down and, with the scalpel still in hand, began to cut away and pull up an organ above his bladder. Once it was freed from Pierce's body, it was lifted from the cavity—Pierce's pair of kidneys. Pierce pondered upon them—no more would he be able to filter the shit and poisons that he would consume in the various forms of alcohol he consumed in copious amounts. He wagered that they would be useless to anyone as a nurse took the pair of kidneys and placed them in a sizeable red and white cooler filled with ice and closed it up.

Walsh then moved up the open cavity, placed his gloved hands, now encased in blood and greasy viscera. Walsh took his scapel and cut away at the various arteries and veins thatPierce could feel, but it wasn't painful or uncomfortable until he pulled out the prize of Pierce's liver. Another useless organ, Pierce thought. All the drinks that were laced with heavy alcohols of various proofs he had poured down his gullet in his life. It was a miracle that it didn't have various holes or dissolve altogether. Now it was the next derelicts' turn to imbibe and drown the organ in various toxic concoctions and finally put it to death like the long-suffering entity it had become. It was a shame that he couldn't have done it himself, and alcohol would have been his demise. It would have been far more fun than this tedious exercise. Walsh took Pierce's sizable organ and gave it to one of the nurses, who placed it in a cooler, just like all the others that had been and would be.

Walsh then moved up a few inches from the liver to the middle of his chest and dug into Pierce's cavity. At first, Pierce thought the good doctor was aiming for his breathing apparatus, but, much to his surprise, he sliced away at the various red and blue cables that pumped and spurted the metal-smelling maroon, staining the doctor's scrubs, and crawled up to his surgical mask and cap. The dark colored sherry was quickly clamped off by the assisting doctors and nurses, ending the vascular geyser that erupted from Pierce's cavity. Pierce knew what was emerging from his fissure as Walsh held up the centrepiece of his existence like a newborn released from its nine-month prison womb—his former beating heart.

He thought of the crimson organ and thought of his hands. It was said that a human heart is the size of one's fist, and with his massive meat hooks for hands, the organ looked similar to the grisly pulp his hands turned into as a result of the numerous piss-drunk bar fights he would engage in, with his appendages being the aftermath of the various black masks of dipsomania. His heart of darkness and the hands that engaged in strangulation, utilizing in holding various firearms and cutlery that ended the lives of various beings. God save the donor who places this dark, beating meat muscle into their thorax. No doubt its blackness will infect its next victim as it did him.

It was taken to its frosty preservation chamber. Pierce was amazed that he was still alive, still breathing. Where the good doctor was diving next was unknown to him. He was surprised that his lungs weren't taken first. Perhaps they were black and useless from the two-plus packs a day of Lucky Strikes, his favorite brand of cigarettes, or that his breathing sacs weren't in demand at this moment. Sorry, friend, we have no use for these right now. Come back later. Walsh might be teasing him, leaving his lungs for the bitter end, the pièce de résistance, the final course on the menu. As Walsh moved toward his sizeable skull, a loud and monotonous beep flooded his mind and began pounding into his brain endlessly, annoyingly making his eyes blur. The eyes that had witnessed many horrors—his beatings by his father as he struck him with a belt, paddle, or whatever he could grab, his mother's anger and her beatings—though they weren't as vicious as his father's. His older brother bullied him and variously beat him until he was old enough to defend himself, since his parents were useless.

His eyes could testify against his serial slayings with gun, knife, or bare hands, in an attempt to soothe his anger and frustration, a result of his abuses and failures. Walsh's hands reached toward Pierce's face.

Mr. Pierce?

Mr. Pierce?

***

Pierce's eyes refocused. He looked up to see a group of physicians and nurses gazing down at him, the CKG machine continuously beeping."So glad you could join us, Mr. Pierce," a muffled man's voice came from beneath his surgical mask. "I'm Doctor Walsh, the physician who will be performing the surgery on you."

Walsh nodded to the anesthesiologist, who placed a large face mask over the patient's face.

"Count backward from ten."

Pierce tried to fight off the vapors of sleep, but his efforts were useless before he reached the count of eight. His eyes closed into darkness—a darkness that would last forever, with never a light in sight.

As a child, Paul Grammatico was forbidden to watch graphic films and was restricted to edited TV. He learned about horror secondhand, through stories from older friends and siblings. He also spent vacations in a desolate cottage, grew up in houses with creepy basements, and lived in an apartment with a “full-torso apparition.” Inspired by these experiences, Paul is a multi-award-winning screenwriter with an affinity for the weird and unexplained.