Last Days Read Online Free PDF Page B

another doorframe, fumbled around for the handle.
    Inside, he found a switch. It was a small windowless room, containing a narrow single bed with a thin, ratty blanket. In one corner was a metal cabinet. The floor was linoleum, a streaked blue. The light, he saw, was a naked bulb, hanging from the center of the ceiling. The walls' paint was cracking.
    Welcome home , he thought.
    He closed the door. There was no lock on it. He opened the cabinet. It was full of stacks of calendars, each month featuring a woman in various states of undress, smiling furiously. He looked at the first picture for some time before realizing the girl was missing one of her thumbs. With each month, the losses became more obvious and more numerous, March losing a breast, July missing both breasts, a hand, and a forearm. The December girl was little more than a torso, her breasts shaved off, wearing nothing but a thin white cloth banner from one shoulder to the opposite hip, reading "Miss Less Is More."
    He put the calendar back and closed the cabinet. Turning off the light he lay in the bed, but kept seeing Miss Less Is More's face contorted with joy. There was Ramse's face too, his mutilated ear just above the car seatback angling itself toward him. His own stump was tingling. He got up and turned on the light, tried to sleep with it on.

    He dreamt that he was sitting at the table again, the gentleman with the cleaver standing before him, cleaver coming down. Only in his dream he wasn't just the man losing his hand but also the man with the cleaver. He watched himself bring the cleaver down and the hand come free and the fingers pulse. The sheared plane of his wrist grew pale and then suddenly puffed, blood pulsing out. He stripped off his belt with his remaining hand and tightened it quickly around his arm until the bleeding slowed and mostly stopped. He watched himself do it, holding the cleaver in his hand. Then he watched himself, pale and holding the belt tight, go to the stove and turn it on, wait for the coils of the burner to smoke and begin to glow. He pushed his stump down and heard it sizzle and smelt the burnt flesh, and when he lifted the stump away it was smoking. Bits of flesh and blood were stuck to the burner and smoldering.
    Then, with his left hand, face livid with pain, he took out his gun and, left-handed, shot himself through the eye. It was a hell of a thing to watch, a hell of a thing to feel. And as soon as it was over it started again, and kept starting until he forced himself awake.

    Gous and Ramse were in the room, the first standing at the open cabinet looking through the calendar, rubbing at his crotch with his stump, the second standing near the bed, looking at Kline.
    "Rise and shine," said Ramse.
    Kline sat on the edge of the bed, pulling his pants on awkwardly with stump and arm. Ramse watched. Only when he was done did he say, "There's new clothes for you."
    "Where?" asked Kline.
    "Gous has them," said Ramse. "Gous?" he said, louder.
    "What?" said Gous, turning stiffly away from the calendar, face red with shame or heat, or perhaps both.
    "Clothes, Gous," said Ramse.
    "Oh, right," said Gous, and picking up a pile of clothing near his feet, threw it to Kline.
    Kline stripped out of the clothes he had just put on as Ramse watched. The new clothing consisted of a pair of gray slacks, a white shirt, a red clip-on tie. The buttons weren't easy one-handed, particularly since the shirt was freshly starched, but after the first three they got easier. He tried to leave the tie on the bed, but Ramse stopped him.
    "Put it on," he said.
    "Why?"
    "I'm wearing one, Gous is wearing one," said Ramse. And indeed, Kline had failed to notice, their outfits were the same as his: white shirts, gray slacks, red clip-on tie. He found himself wondering how Ramse had managed to put on his shirt by himself. Perhaps he hadn't.
    "Let's go," said Gous once Kline's tie was on, and nudged him toward the exit.
    "Look," said Ramse, as they went