I have always loved the written word. When I was a child, I could escape into books. Movies always paled in comparison to books where my imagination was so much richer.
I read this story early in high school. I could FEEL what was happening in it. The experience of this story was so powerful to me, it truly awoke an awe of the power of the written word.
I hope you enjoy it!
“The Oven” by Luigi Fellini, published in Poweredge magazine, 1st vol, 1st ed. 1987
It was the smell of last week’s bits and pieces of chicken batter, sizzling on the bottom of the oven that finally brought him to. Actually, they were only involved indirectly because the radio shack smoke detector was the object bolted to the ceiling making the incessant monotonous beeeeeeeep. He blinked and inhaled chickeny-smoke scented air. The linoleum had left an indented pattern in his cheek. He wondered how long he had been out for. Heat billowed out of the open oven door, warming him, making him feel better, yet somehow still afraid. Urine stained the floor and the front of his trousers—he had peed his pants as he lost conciousness. As he lay there, he struggled to remember what had happened. He found himself sleeping on the kitchen floor more and more lately. Wetting his pants. Waking up with tears running down his face that made little wet spots on the floor. Lately he’d been waking up with thoughts of fire in his mind. Dreaming of hell. And liking it. He wanted to be there. All because of the cold attitudes and feelings. Bad vibes were a common thing in the world outside of his kitchen. No one understood. No one cared. No one except his favorite appliance. He wished he could make love to it.
Suddenly he sat bolt upright, rubbing his eyes. Almost regretfully, he shut the oven door. The smell of burning chicken skin was still lingering in the air, the smoke detector still detecting. He blocked out the fears and the noise and began thinking about his childhood. His mouth hung open and his eyes glazed over as he entered his trance like state. As a child he was too innocent to be tainted by the outside world. Too blind to see. Too ignorant to see what was happening to him until it was too late. By the time he discovered the truth he was already a part of the society he hated. A role-player. A participant in life’s game. His lower lip began to twitch, then quiver, and finally both lips curled back, revealing the learing face of a man insane. Both eyes were dark, empty orbs. Twin windows of nightmare, black as all space. In this state time stopped and he discovered infinity. Slowly things began to fade back into perspective. The reek of urine interwoven with the smell of smoke. Long ago the smoke alarm was cut silent. The avocado cube he was leaning against still pulsated with warmth, the hot coils inside bathing the kitchen in an eerie reddish glow through the shatter-proof pyrex window built into the door. With all the lights out in his apartment, the place seemed like a tomb. The stillness was disturbing. The red light and all the shadows around him reminded him of a photographers darkroom.
A thought that was once in the farthest depths of his brain began rapidly surfacing. By the time he completely perceived and understood the thought, it was an order he would obey without question or hesitation. Raising his left arm above his head, he groped for the silverware drawer. Metallic eating utensils rattled against each other as the drawer was urgently tugged open. Fingers moist with sweat grazed across various members of the silverware collection like alien tentacles searching for prey, finally wrapping themselves around the desired piece—a long, wooden handled knife. Seven inches of razor-sharp steel blade, curved upward slightly at the tip. Almost subconciously he realized the oven was still on. He felt the heat of it’s presence behind his back, and he knew it was too late for even the stove to help him now. He sat stunned, unaffected by the warmth.
For several minutes he squeezed and gripped the handle of the knife, exploring every centimeter of it’s smooth wood. Sweat formed in beads across his face and his hand began to tremble, the muscles in his arm cramping slightly. It was time. Clutching the knife, he held his right hand in front of him, turning the palm upward. Sitting Indian style, the blade was placed against the skin of his hand and he closed his eyes, letting his thoughts take control. Pushing hard and driving deep, the blade cut through each epidermal layer, each artery, vein, and each layer of muscle almost instantly. He struck bone and then pushed the blade forward, toward the tips of his fingers, savoring the pain as the steel scraped along the hardened calcium surface. He inhaled deeply and watched wide-eyed as blood pulsed from the open wound. It looked black in the glow of the oven. Working quickly, he filleted the tissue from his right hand as best he could. He carved the meat from each finger until his hand was no longer an explosion of nerves and pain but merely a faintly tingling extension of his body. Occasionally he chipped into the bone a bit too far, striking marrow that foamed yellow fluid. By now there was quite a pool in front of him as well as dozens of droplets gone astray, tainting the sides of the cupboards, the old norge refrigerator, and of course the stove. Leering madly, he transferred the knife fro his left hand to the bony claw of his right and began to inflict the other organ. It was a bit of a struggle with his left hand, but he would manage. Each time he introduced the knife to the skin of his left hand, chunks of it fell to the pile of bloody pulp that sat in his lap, joining shavings of calloused skin, bits of fingernail, and small chips of bone. Joy wracked his body. Involuntarily, he urinated again. Dropping the knife, he held the hideous atrocities that were once a vital part of his sense of touch up to his face. Blood seeped from great wounds along both wrists. Already he was legally dead. He had lost the maximum amount of blood long ago. Something else drove him along now. Something similar to the same electric current that powers ordinary household objects like sewing machines, blenders and stoves.
Arms that felt like lumps of dead clay brought the two hands together and the metacarpals of each clicked softly. Deep in the bowels of his mind he began to think of heat. He shifted his legs, spilling some of the refuse that littered them onto the floor. The oven was a forgotten thing now. Absorbed in the fantasy of self-combustion, he began rubbing his “hands” against one another….slowly at first, then building up speed and friction. Heat slowly generated and his arms became less numbed. Faster and faster, his hands a blur of stained ivory. A trickle of drool ran down his cheek and deep inside he could feel it building, slowly at first and then unstoppable in momentum. He was scraping his hands against one another so fiercely now that his entire body vibrated and shook. A scream of agony and pleasure bubbled for a second or two in his esophogus while sparks flicked from the ends of his fingers. As his final breath passed through his throat in the form of a screaching howl, fire licked around his digits then seemed to catch on something, as if his very life blood had suddenly become a volitle mixture of explosives. Liquid fire coursed through his arteries, causing every living cell in his body to become engulfed in flame. In the time it takes a camera flash to pop, his existence was flooded with a heat comparable to that of a nuclear meltdown. Before he could finish his scream he was a soulless cinder of ash.
The police discovered his remains two days later after a neighbor had called complaining of the smell. Upon entering his apartment they discovered a rotting corpse laying in the middle of the kitchen floor. the heat of the oven had done wonders in helping with decomposition of the body….an apparent suicide with no note left. In the lap of the body was a crusted knife which the victim had used to peel the skin from both hands and all ten fingers. A day later during the autopsy the conducting coroner would notice several small burns along the insides of each of the victim’s fingers.
Reprinted as is, misspellings and all!
Tafe.life 