Redistribution

Redistribution –n: The act or instance of redistributing or the state of or manner of being distributed again.

(ALICE THOMAS, PLEASE REPORT TO R-WARD, ALICE THOMAS TO R-WARD)

The nasally woman on the intercom echoed throughout the hospital, but was barely heard by the patients or workers who were scurrying around and darting from room to room with morphine drips, needles, and other sedatives. A short woman with dirty blonde hair wearing light purple scrubs shuffled through the crowd of other nurses and made her way through a pair of double doors at the end of the hallway. Her grey eyes were glazed over and fixated to something in the distant while she walked to the front desk where a plump woman with glasses sat, looking frantic.

“Alice! Thank goodness you are here. We a have a patient in Room 5 who needs your help. Where is Reed?” She asked quickly.

“He’s out doing a job for Room 17. Right ear. Shouldn’t be gone too long.” Alice responded in a calm voice. “Give me the patients file and I’ll head down there right now.”

The woman sifted through some papers on her desk until she found a manila folder with the patients name on it and guided it into Alice’s hand. “Ma’am, do you need help getting th-…”

“No, no, Dana, I know exactly where Room 5 is and I can probably get there faster than you, if I wanted to.” Alice smiled a warm smile at Dana and turned on her heel and was gone through the sea of frantic nurses.

A man of about middle-age lay in his white sheeted hospital bed in Room 5. He was sweating immensely and was breathing heavily. A young nurse added a painkiller into his IV and then scurried out of the room just as Alice entered. “Hello, Mr…,” she ran her hand across some bumps on the folder under the Sharpie scribble of the patients name, “Denneman. How are we today?” Alice smiled brightly and stood next to the bed while letting her fingers run across the bumps inside the folder. “Please, ma’am, call me Rick.” Rick Denneman smiled a little and then flinched as he turned his head away from a bandaged up nub where his arm once was.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Rick, I am Alice Thomas, Lead nurse in the Redistribution Ward. It says here that you are in need of a left arm, is that correct?” Alice moved her glazed stare from the pages in the folder up to Rick.

“No need to be rude, ma’am, but is it not obvious? I only have one arm as you can s-…”

Rick stopped short as Alice had taken a seat on the bed beside him and moved her blonde hair out her face to look in his direction. Those grey eyes fixated into distance and not focusing on a particular thing gave Rick his answer.

“No, Rick, I really can’t see. I haven’t been able to since I was six years old, but I assure you that I am the best damn nurse we have in this facility.” Alice chuckled and patted Rick on the leg. “Now, how about getting you that arm.”

Rodrigo Juarez was wanted in three states for multiple counts of murder and grand theft auto. His crimes had led him to the city where he was held up in an abandoned fish market in the slummier part of town. Reed was an expert at tracking criminals, and right now he sat in the rafters of the warehouse looking down on the sleeping Juarez and his cronies. Two of the henchmen were standing near the entrance, loaded AK’s in hand; an easy target for Reed. The darkness engulfed Reed like a modern ninja as he quietly jumped from one to another to get an easy view of his targets. He screwed the silencer on the pistol and knocked out both of the front door ogres before taking aim on the other that lay here and there around Juarez. Putting the gun away, Reed slinked down out of the rafters and made his way over to the slumberous animal.

“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,” said Reed as he kicked at Juarez’s shoe. The Mexican’s eyes flickered open and then bulged when seeing Reed standing over him.

“You filthy motherf**ker, I’ll kill you and your whole family,” Juarez spat and then started to laugh, “The boss won’t be too pleased about this. You kill me and you’re as good as dead.”

“Yeah, well I guess that is just a chance I’m going to have to take.” Reed took out a serrated army knife. “You don’t mind if I take a few souvenirs with me, do you?”

The fish market echoed with Juarez’s screams as Reed took a left arm and a right ear from him. Before putting the bloody appendages in a rucksack, Reed pointed the gun at Juarez’s head. “From the city of New York and under the approval of President McKenzie, this has been an act of Redistribution. Thank you for your cooperation, Rodrigo Juarez.” The gun fired and Juarez lay still. Hoisting the rucksack over his shoulder, Reed exited the warehouse and rounded the corner to his 2065 black Civic and sped away towards the hospital.

“Honey, what was the look on Rick Denneman’s face like when you arrived with his new arm?” Alice was sitting on the bed in her apartment complex that resided in upper Manhattan that she shared with Reed.

“He was very thankful and almost had tears in his eyes.” Reed said from the bathroom as he surveyed himself in the mirror. His muscular body had many scars on it from all of the Redistributions he had done over the years. His dark eyes looked tired and haggard and he sometimes was thankful that Alice could not see how tired he looked all the time. This is what he loved doing, helping people, and Alice would never know the danger he really put himself in to retrieve the appendages for the patients in the hospital. He traced a scar around the top of his right shoulder where he had had it redistributed for him when he was just a teenager, by his own father. Reed quickly trimmed up his beard with his now clean army knife and then slipped it inside his left boot, before shutting off the light to the bathroom and joining Alice in bed.

“Another job well done, babe.” She smiled and kissed his lips with no problem. You would never know that Alice was blind because her sense of touch and hearing was so heightened. Alice could maneuver through a crowd of a thousand people with ease, if she wanted to. Her and Reed said their goodnights and quickly fell into a deep sleep while the muted television flashed in the corner.

Reed awoke sometime in the early hours of the morning. He had a splitting headache and could barely focus on anything. It took him a few minutes to realize he was sitting upright and his hands were tied behind his back. A bright light shown in his face and he could hear muffled voices somewhere in the darkness.

“Where am I? What’s going on? Where’s Alice? ALICE!” Reed called out to his wife but didn’t get a response. Someone blocked the light and Reed could feel the hot breath of someone in his face.

“Hello, Reed, I hear that you did a real number on one of my men,” the man’s voice was raspy and Reed could smell stale cigar and rotten meat on his breath before the man backed away. The light switched off and an overhead bulb illuminated the darkness instead to reveal a small room with garden tools hanging on the wall. Two other men stood burly and muscled by a doorway with dark scraggly beards and AK’s in hand. From across the shed, the cigar-breathed man was standing in a white tuxedo with a black tie, a new cigar lit in his mouth. He had a single scar that slashed from his forehead down over his left eye and then finished about mid-cheek. Slicked back dark hair was tied in a small ponytail while he wore a pair of diamond earrings.

The man puffed his cigar, “my name is Ivan Valdurez,” “I f**king know who you are! You’re the most wanted man in New York City!” Reed spat at Ivan’s feet and hung his head panting heavily.

Ivan backhanded Reed and shouted “YOU FILTHY AMERICAN, YOU LOOK AT ME WHEN I TALK TO YOU! LOOK ME IN THE EYES, MOTHERF**KER!” Ivan had a hold of Reed’s chin and was inches away from his face.

“I just want to know where my wife is,” Reed stared into Ivan’s sinister green eyes, “please…”

Ivan smirked a little and let go of Reed’s chin violently and said “Don’t worry; your wife is safe in my basement. I’ll even let her go, but for a price.” Ivan leaned against an old table and took another puff of his cigar. “I want a hundred grand brought to me in a week from your redistributing services, but here is the kicker,” another puff from the cigar, “you are only allowed to redistribute from innocent civilians. The criminals of this town need a week off, don’t you think?”

“You’re f**king crazy, I won’t do it.” Reed struggled at his hand-ties and hung his head again.

“In. My. EYES!” Ivan said through gritted teeth as one of the doorway henchmen knocked Reed in the head with the back end of his AK until Reed looked up into Ivan’s eyes.

“If you do not do this for me, your wife will die and you will spend a life of misery locked in this shed” said Ivan, “I’ll even be generous and give you until morning to decide the fate of that pretty little blind wife of yours.”

With a motion of his hand, Ivan and one of the henchmen left the shed while the other stood facing the outside, blocking the doorway. Reed hung his head and felt tears coming to his eyes. How will I ever get out of this mess? How I am going to save Alice? All of these thoughts ran through his mind as it had started to rain. Drop after drop tapping on the tin roof of the dinky shed. His eyes watched little ants crawl around on the concrete floor; a group of them were crowded around a dead beetle and seemed to be taking small pieces of it back across the shed to their colony somewhere in the darkness. Reed felt like he could relate to the beetle. He was slowly decaying in that chair and he felt as if he was being dismembered slowly and surely by Ivan and his crew. Moving on, his eyes scanned up his boots where he tried to count the blood stains and droplets. He counted fifteen droplets before his eyes had moved to the top of his boots when he remembered: My knife!

Keeping a close watch on the henchman, Reed scooted his foot back as far as he could up under his chair until it was in close proximity of his bound hands. With all the strength he could muster, Reed lifted up his leg until the top of his boot brushed his fingers. Sweat ran down in between Reed’s eyes and stung while he fiddled with the hilt of the knife with his middle and forefinger. His grunts were kept to a small sigh for fear of alerting the henchman of his possible escape. After what seemed like a century, Reed grasped the knife and pulled it out of his boot while his foot slid back to the front of the chair and regained circulation. He took a few breaths and then started to awkwardly face the serrated edge of the knife towards the  rope and make vigorous motions back and forth, his eyes never leaving the henchman’s back. The rope tore away and his hands were free at last. Gripping the knife in his left hand, Reed quietly rose from the chair and slinked towards the henchman, a ghost in the wind. Reed’s right hand came around and silenced the henchman while his left hand made a quick and clean motion across his neck, the knife making contact with skin. Blood droplets dripped from Reeds knife as the henchman’s lifeless body dropped to the ground. Pocketing the knife and taking the AK of the fallen foe, Reed sprinted through the rain across the grass of Ivan’s two hundred acre estate towards a marbled mansion surrounded by shrubs and other greenery. Thunder clapped overhead while Reed ran around the side of the posterior to look for a back entrance when he spotted a NYC Medical ambulance parked around back. What? Dr. Miles, the head MD of the Redistribution Wing of the hospital was walking towards the pool house with a few other nurses that Reed recognized, duffel bag in hand. Reed slowly crept around behind the ambulance and over to a window of the pool house to look inside.

“Dr. Miles, I trust that the procedure went well?”

Ivan lay on an operating table that had been wheeled in the pool house along with an IV and other medical equipment; his eyes had been bandaged over.

“Y-yes, sir, the procedure went well and the eyes took. She h-has been sedated and is resting for n-now.” Dr. Miles nervously stammered, as he set down his duffle bag of medical tools.

“Good, good. Now, you’re sure that these eyes are going to work?” Ivan was taking off the bandage as Dr. Miles walked over with a bottle of electric blue liquid.

“Yes, I just have to activate them with this liquid and then you will no longer need me and I can be on my way, r-right?” The doctor was sweating bullets as he pulled back Ivan’s eyelids to reveal dark coal-black eyes. Carefully, the doctor put a few drops of the blue liquid in each one of Ivan’s eyes and watched as they started to travel over to the middle where a cornea would normally be located and then stopped and glazed over. Ivan now had oil black eyes with small electric blue pupils.

“Ah! Aha! Yes, YES! This is amazing, Dr. I can see right through your skin to your fragile skeleton! I can see through both of those pretty nurses’ scrubs! I can s-…”

Ivan stopped short of surveying his surroundings with his new X-Ray eyes as they focused on a crouched skeleton with a beating heart in the corner of the room, except it wasn’t inside, it was out. Ivan had spotted Reed.

Reed had just enough time to roll out of the way as Ivan shotgun blasted a hole through the pool house. Dr. Miles and the nurses fled outside and into the ambulance, but not before the doctor tossed a small bottle contained with a reddish liquid at Reed.

“This will deactivate the eyes” shouted the doctor as the ambulance fled away back to the front driveway.

Reed grabbed the bottled and pocketed it as Ivan and a few henchmen cam bursting out of the pool house, AK bullets peppering the ground.

“You cannot hide from me, Reed! I see all! I can see your heartbeat and your blood flowing through your veins!”
Reed ran around the side of the mansion, knocking out henchmen as he went with the AK in hand. One of Ivan’s bullets made contact with Reeds shoulder, bringing him to the ground for a second, before Reed was up again making his way up the front steps of Ivan’s home and gunning the door down. Inside, Reed discarded the unloaded AK and only had time to notice the beautiful grand entrance hallway with red tapestries and old paintings of different mafia’s over the years. There were many artifacts and antiques that sat upon white marble pedestals near the staircase. Reed quickly ran through a side door on his right and was engulfed in darkness after slamming the door. Feeling around on the walls, he found a switch and flicked it. Light spilled out over a long hallway that quickly dropped off down a flight of stairs. Reed barricaded the door as best as he could with one of the marble pedestals and then fast walked down the hall and then down the stairs; his breathing was short and he flinched with every step from the gunshot wound. I know this is where they’re keeping Alice, I can feel it, Reed thought to himself. He made his way to the bottom of the stairs to a dimly lit room with concrete walls; the sound of banging could be heard from behind him as Ivan was attempting to get in. Over in a corner on a rusty metal bed was Alice, asleep in a pool of sweat. Reed rushed over to her and noticed that her eyelids looked bruised and were damp from where her eyes had been watering.

“Alice”, said Reed as he shook her, “Alice, come on we have to get out of here. Please, Alice, wake up.”

A loud bang echoed down the hall and Ivan’s laugh could be heard.

“You can’t hide from me forever, Reed. You may have found your pretty little wife, but you won’t be alive for much longer to even see what I’ve done to her.”

Ivan’s voice was drawing nearer as Reed ran to the opening of the room and stood by the doorway in the shadows, the little red bottle in hand. Ivan was descending the stairs slowly as his shadow was thrown out across the doorway and across the little basement room. As Ivan emerged in through the doorway, Reed kicked the AK out of his hands and pinned him against the wall, squirting the red liquid all in his enemy’s eyes.

“ARGGG”, hollered Ivan, “you f***ing co****cker! No! NO!”

Reed backed away while Ivan slinked to the ground, both hands over his eyes. The liquid had deactivated his latest body modification and now Ivan was blind. Reed took out his knife and held it against Ivan’s neck. Ivan smirked a little and then full out smiled before he erupted into a cackling laugh that echoed around the basement.

“Have fun looking me in the eyes for the rest of your miserable fucking life,” Ivan finally said after his laughing fit, “and one more thing: your wife was a good f**k.”

At these words, Reed rammed the knife in Ivan’s throat so hard it came out the other side and stuck in a small crevice in the concrete wall behind him, pinning his head upright. Tears welled up in Reed’s eyes as he ran over to Alice, the thought of her being raped and helpless against Ivan and his cronies disgusted him. Slowly, Reed picked her up off the bed and carried her out of the basement and then outside of the mansion. He laid her down on the front steps and went out to the shed where he had been tied up to retrieve a gas can he had spotted earlier. Reed doused the front hall of the mansion with gasoline and then doubled back to Ivan’s lifeless body, fished his Zippo out of his bloodstained front pocket and poured the rest of the gas on him. Making his way back to the front door, Reed lit the Zippo and let it drop as the flame met the first drop of gasoline and the whole interior was ignited.

“R-Reed?” Alice’s voice rang in his ears as he turned from the burning front hall and went to kneel down beside her on the steps.

“Baby, oh my God, baby, are you okay? I’m so sorry this happened to you, baby. I’m so so sorry.”

Reed held Alice and started to weep into her hair while her arms wrapped around his neck.

“Reed, I…I can see! Oh my goodness, Reed, I can see you.”

Reed pulled away from Alice as her head was still hung low and looking down at her hands as she turned them over and surveyed her nails. Slowly, Alice raised her head and took in all of Reed until she was looking him in the eyes.

“NO”, Reed shouted and backed away from his wife, “No, no, NO! That son-of-a-b**ch!”

Reed was staring into two sinister green eyes that now occupied the place where Alice’s glazed grey eyes had once been. Ivan had redistributed his eyes into Reed’s wife. Have fun looking me in the eyes for the rest of your miserable f**king life…

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