"Fingers and Finns"
Philadelphia – 1984
Penance exhausted his lungs screaming at the other side of the door, going on about things like 'kidnapping' and 'lawsuits' until his voice was hoarse. If anyone was over there to hear it they weren't very impressed; the boy got no response at all.
He spent a few futile minutes bashing his shoulder against the splintery wooden door. This didn't really weaken the door much, but it did mess up his body. The bare flesh of his shoulder got caught in the door's splinters, and it tore apart like an envelope. It took him a moment to realize this through the haze of adrenaline and angry tears forming in his eyes. Once the anger and panic wore off he noticed the wound and finally gave up on his little tantrum. He rinsed his bloody arm in the sink and then sat down on the toilet seat, pouting, playing with the flayed flesh of his arm until he felt the skin droop down and 'melt' against his shoulder; within seconds the wound vanished.
With a cooler head Penance took stock of his situation: he put his Orioles shirt back on, and then bundled up his hair-coloring paraphernalia and flushed it all down the toilet. He removed the little knife from his sock and nestled it against his stomach, tucked into the waistband of his shorts. Having done all he could see fit to do the boy then resorted to pacing back and forth in his tiny bathroom prison, teeth cemented together and eyes expressionless and cold, like a bed of steel; he had all the countenance of a cornered animal. He turned over possibilities in his mind: that door had to open sometime. What would be waiting for him on the other side when it did?
The worst thing in the world would probably be a cop; all he needed right now was to be carted off to some juvenile detention facility and be subject to their scrutiny. They'd want to know all these inconvenient little questions, like what was his name? And where was he from? And where were his parents? By now Martha had certainly contacted the police back in Baltimore; would his dyed hair be enough of a disguise if the Philly cops decided to check all the regional missing person reports?
Then there was the fingerprinting...
Penance groaned. He'd completely forgotten about that. Of all the advances in technology he'd seen over the years— all those pesky ways society learned to keep track of its most vulnerable, littlest citizens— fingerprinting was the absolute worst. For obvious reasons Penance tried his best to keep up with government identification techniques but fingerprinting absolutely blindsided him. Back in the 50's he spent a few years living with a very well-to-do family in California. They were politically-connected and very keen on the latest fads. One day they brought Penance and all their children downtown and into a stuffy city building where a police detective brought out a kit of ink and some fingerprinting cards. Before Penance even knew what was happening his fingers were stained black and his prints were trapped on a file card. The scheme was part of a statewide 'child ID system', and his fingerprints were quietly shoved into a file for the city records.
And for posterity.
That was bad, but what happened next was even worse. Years later Penance learned that the feds were interested in creating their own database of fingerprints, too, and they built their own collection, in part, from prints provided by the states. Simply put: Penance's real, honest-to-goodness fingerprints were currently on file with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
For someone in his 'situation' that was not particularly ideal.
Not ideal at all, but actually it wasn't really that big a deal. Sure, his prints were on file in California and with the feds— and yes, he was technically a 'missing person' in many states— but his fingerprints were just one set out of many thousands. Many millions, even. It wasn't like some cop could just take his fingerprints and easily match them up to some random boy who 'grew up' in California back in the 1950's. Penance scoffed; this wasn't some crazy science fiction show where they could just shove his prints into a magical computer and have it instantly match his fingerprints to an old set taken over 40 years ago. Granted, if they could do thatthen he would be eminently screwed.
"But thatwould be ridiculous," he mumbled.
All the same Penance really didn't like having his prints taken at all. It was leaving a trail, and it was one hell of a trail, at that. Of course he'd had his prints taken many times since then— heck, Martha made him give his prints just last year, at the behest of Baltimore CPS— but these days Penance made use of a little 'trick' that he picked up over the years. It was a surefire way to thwart any fingerprinting sessions he had to endure.
But it was kinda gross.
First thing's first: no matter what injury Penance inflicted on his fingers— short of cutting them off completely, which he rather wisely didn't consider a valid option— his hands could repair themselves perfectly, all the way down to every whorl and curl of his fingerprints. That said, he learned that there was something special about all those little whorls and curls; they took a bit longer to heal up than almost any other wound on his body.
Now comes the gross part, and it is gross. Penance could fool any fingerprinting kit, and give a 'fake' set of prints out on command. The catch is that he had to slice off the skin of each and every finger beforehand. His fingers themselves healed within seconds, but it took about 48 hours for his fingerprints to completely reform. Up until that time his prints were all jumbled up in a messy little soup of random lines; any prints he gave at the time wouldn't match up with his regular, unaltered prints later on.
Penance groaned again, and he stared down at his left hand, opening and closing his fist. Immortality did weird things to a body, especially when it comes to pain. Being an Immortal gave a person a very different view of what 'pain' is from the average person. After all, once someone had been trampled by horse's hooves, run through with a sword, had their neck broken, been burned up in a fire, or accidentally fallen out of a zeppelin and slammed headfirst into a mountain after polishing-off a bunch of half-filled glasses of absinthe in the dining compartment that he was supposed to be cleaning up, his sense of how much something 'hurts' kind of becomes a little warped.
Yeah. That was the word Penance liked to use: 'warped'.
It wasn't that these things didn'thurt him— far from it— it was just that his whole frame of reference for how much something 'hurt' was significantly distorted from the norm. Most people might not understand the idea, but catastrophic wounds could be a funny little thing (if they didn't end up killing or crippling you, naturally); it's amazing how fast a body goes into shock, and what a good old blast of adrenaline can do to dull the senses. A scrape or a bruise was a constant, stinging pain, but a shattered pelvis or a punctured aorta might be nothing more than a distant, aching throb. All things considered, if Penance had to choose between taking an arrow to the spleen or getting a nasty little hangnail, he'd pick the arrow every time.
The boy stopped pacing. He tilted his head.
"That's kind of messed up," he muttered.
But it was true. And it was also the reason he wasn't too keen on stripping the skin from his fingers at the moment.
Then another thought came to him: he'd been worried about a cop nabbing him when that door opened. But how long had he been locked in this bathroom? An hour? No, it was more than that, wasn't it? If his captor had called the cops on him wouldn't they be here by now? Seems like they would. Penance looked back at the door. He instinctively ran his hand along the waistband of his shorts, feeling the grip of his little knife.
Maybe a cop wasn't the worst thing that could come through that door...
He had about five minutes to mull that pleasant little thought, then the bathroom door suddenly jerked on its hinges; the chair on the other side had been pulled away from the knob. Seconds later the knob slowly turned. Penance grit his teeth and crouched low on the ground, legs braced at the ready like a sprinter. When the door opened he was ready, and he burst through that door like a greyhound out of the chute.
Unfortunately the dog analogy was a little too apt; the spiked collar around Penance's throat made a tempting target, and suddenly the boy found a few strong fingers wedged up underneath it. He was yanked to a halt so forcefully that he nearly flipped in the air and landed on his rear. Instead he went careening into the large refrigerator set against the far wall of the kitchen, bouncing off it like a pinball.
And then he landed on his rear.
He didn't get much recovery time; instantly those large, calloused hands were on him again, dragging the boy to his feet, and even beyond. For a moment Penance hovered in the air, feet dangling inches off the ground, and he stared up at the burly man that held his shoulders tight. He was a frightening sight: as wide as a doorway, and at least as tall, with a fleshy face pockmarked with old scabs and ancient cuts. His faded blue eyes were sunken under mounds of gristly fat, and his thin lips were parted in a deep, vicious sneer. The best way Penance could describe him was a cross between a hardened mobster thug and a stereotypical sea captain.
Although, to be fair, he didn't have a peg leg.
"Pikku paskiainen!" The man roared at him with a voice like a malfunctioning machine press, and his breath reeked of sour alcohol and rotten meat. "This is the slime! What a state he left my kitchen in!"
The boy's eyes widened.
"Finnish?" He whispered.
"For heaven's sake, Vanki!" A soft voice sounded behind Penance. This other speaker's voice was firm, but also very calm. "Put that boy down. Immediately!"
The golem huffed through his nose at the boy, sending a plume of wet snot right into his face. He roughly dropped Penance to the ground, but when Penance turned to look at the other speaker the golem gripped his shoulders tight.
"Pitää vielä!" He growled at the boy. "You will hold still!"
"Not so rough, Vanki," the other man spoke with a kindly, lyrical voice. "By God's grace: you'll pull the poor lad's shoulders from their sockets!"
The first look Penance got at the other man was his shoes; they were simple black things, like a pair of Danish clogs. Above that the man wore a pair of thin black pants with the faintest pinstripe in them, almost invisible in the muted fabric. His slender hands were girded in black suede gloves. He was rakish thin, and his white dress shirt ran tight against his bony chest, all the way up to a birdlike neck, circled in a priest collar.
Penance gaped at this, and he swallowed hard.
"Are you lost, perhaps, my child?"
The priest's face was wrinkled, but not exactly with age. He was relatively young— maybe in his early 40's, but more likely late 30's— and all those lines looked to be more a product of worry, wear and tear than simple aging. Penance knew right away, before anything else, that this man had seen a fair share of the world in his time. The scant hair clinging to his head was a yellowed brown, and his face was thin, like the rest of him. A pair of steel-rimmed, octagonal glasses lay perched upon a pointed hook nose, and the eyes behind them were sharp hazel orbs; they were confident, but also showed a certain cold patience. This man was equal parts 'schoolmaster' and 'explorer', it seemed. But it looked like he had left the 'explorer' part of him behind, somewhere.
Penance thought that the balance did not bode very well for him.
"Father," the golem growled, "I say we turn this little rat over to the poliisi!"
"You were free to call the police when you found him, Vanki," the priest crossed his arms. "Instead you locked him up in there for the better part of two hours."
Vanki looked to one side, and he scratched at his face with a yellow fingernail.
"Well, Ido not involve myself with the poliisi," he mumbled.
"You were free to call me about the situation."
"Hyvä pointti." Vanki shrugged and shifted his weight on those massive feet. "But skulking rats shouldfeel a taste of the panic captivity can bring! And as it was in my kitchen that he trespassed, well, you know that I run things in here as I see fit, father!"
The priest smiled gently, his sharp eyes showing equal parts sarcasm and sincerity:
"So you kept a child imprisoned in a bathroom for that long? I don't mean to criticize, Vanki, but this boy might have as much to say to the police as you do. That's if you see fit to make a complaint to them."
Vanki snarled at this, baring a set of weathered teeth.
"Vanki, do you really want to speak with the police about this matter?"
"Poliisi voi mennä helvettiin!" Vanki barked. "But this idiot boy must be punished for disturbing my kitchen! Such must be the fate of all little rats!"
Penance quickly made his move; the boy spun around, facing Vanki, and he clasped his hands against his chest, speaking to the man with a bowed head:
"Kaikella kunnioituksella en ole rotta." The boy reached behind his own body and patted his backside with one hand. "En edes ole pyrstö." He tapped his chest with one finger: "Nimeni on Penance, ja olen hyvin pahoillani tekemiseen sotku keittiössä." He spread his arms, motioning to the whole kitchen and he shook his head. "En aio aiheuttaa ongelmia."
These words floored Vanki; his eyes bugged, or at least they 'bugged' as much as they could from the large fatty sacks of flesh surrounding them.
"Miten tämä on mahdollista?" He said.
"I'm not Finnish, but I've been to your country before." Penance answered. "Your accent is really nice. It sounds like it's from the west. Is that right?"
Vanki showed those rotting teeth again, but this time they were arranged in a rather pleasant grin:
"Kyllä!" the golem nodded. "Um, Vaasa, in fact."
Penance returned the smile:
"Vaasa? Yeah. That's a really nice city. Vesialueita ovat ihania, siellä."
Vanki's toothy grin spread:
"Ihanimpia," he nodded approvingly, speaking in a reverent whisper.
The priest's face scrunched in a quizzical, but quite amused, frown:
"Well," he said, "it seems our little friend here has more skills to him than the average burglar, doesn't he?"
"I wasn't stealing anything," Penance countered. "I was just passing through the cemetery when I saw a door open. I just wanted to use the bathroom..."
The priest raised his hands to either side of his body, palms open in a friendly gesture:
"Far be it for me to doubt you, my child. I rather believe you, in fact. But, then, it's Vanki that runs our kitchen— with such an iron fist, at that— and so he's the one you might have difficulties with." The priest looked up at the golem with a condescending smile. "Poor Vanki's never been one to trust in his fellow man. Or boy, as it were..."
Vanki looked down at Penance, and for a moment that stern, bear-like sneer returned. He leaned in close to the boy and snarled:
"Jos joskus kokeilla varastaa minulta mitään, Minä hävitän peniksen!" He whispered.
Penance smirked back at him:
"Aloitan varastamalla suuremmat veitset, sitten."
The pair stared at each other, Vanki still growling like a bear, and they remained that way for a very tense ten seconds. Finally Vanki could take no more, and his grizzled lips twisted up into a big grin. The man laughed like a barking seal.
"What's this, Vanki?" The priest asked, feigning surprise. "Aren't you going to 'punish' the little 'rat'?"
Vanki quickly looked up at the priest and cocked his head. He shrugged, shaking his head with a hearty scoff, and then he slapped Penance once on the shoulder. It was a friendly gesture, but the golem did it with nearly enough force to drive him into the floor like a wooden stake.
"Nah," Vanki shook his head. "Kid's alright."
The priest also smiled, and he nodded gently.
"Well, so much for the unpleasantries, then." He looked down at Penance, and he gently tilted the boy's chin up with one gloved hand. "I'm Father Kenaz, my child. Please call me Daniel, if you'd like. I don't believe I've seen you in St. Hubertus before, or even around the neighborhood..."
"Uh, no. Um, no, father, I mean..."
Kenaz held up a friendly hand once again:
"Please: Daniel will more than suffice."
Penance nodded.
"Well, I'm not really from the neighborhood. I'm kinda passing through, you know."
"Passing through? With your family, I hope?"
Penance slowly shook his head.
"Oh," the priest perched his lips, forming an oval shape with his mouth. He clucked his tongue as he walked over to the refrigerator. "With friends, then? I would certainly hope—"
"No. I'm alone."
Kenaz opened the fridge and began rooting through the shelves. He looked up at the boy over the door and smiled warmly:
"With God at one's side one is never truly alone, my child."
Penance crossed his arms and stared down at the cracked stone floor. He couldn't hide the animal sneer on his lips. He was afraid his reaction would offend the priest, but Kenaz seemed more amused than anything. The man brought out a small pack of baloney from the fridge and slapped it down on the counter. He untwisted the tie on a nearby bag of bread.
"You'd be loathe to count even God as a companion on your travels? You must be thin on allies, indeed—"
"I don't need anything like 'allies', father." The boy approached the counter and stood beside the priest. "And, for what it's worth, it's not like I don't believe in God, or anything."
"But you don't believe he is with you, through all the days of your life?"
Penance watched as Kenaz paired baloney circles between pieces of bread. He handed the boy one, and Penance gratefully took it. He took a bite, and he hoped that his gnashing teeth would hide that dark, animal snarl:
"No. That's not it. I do actually believe that God is with me." He swallowed, and then he rolled the next words off his tongue like poison dripping from a fang: "I believe he's been with me through everything..."
The priest took a bite of his own sandwich and leaned against the table.
"Perhaps we can help you the rest of the way, then," Kenaz said. "We could get you to a shelter. Perhaps we might have the authorities find some temporary housing for you—"
Penance stepped back from the table:
"Thanks, but no thanks, father," he said. "Look, the fact is I already got out of that kind of thing. It wasn't a good place to be. Not for me, anyway. If you call the cops on me—"
"I never said I would call the police, my child—"
"Or whatever: if you try to dump me in the system then I'll just get out of it, again. And I'll have to run even farther away from everything, too. I'm good at that kinda thing; no one would ever find me. You'll just be wasting a whole lot of people's time for nothing."
"Saving a young, wayward soul is no waste of time, my child," the priest said. "But, if your heart is so set against taking help—"
"I don't take help, father. I do kinda try to earn it, when I can..."
Kenaz looked at the boy with a quizzical frown, blinking behind his steel-rimmed glasses.
Penance turned to Vanki. The boy tossed him a baloney sandwich and pointed at Father Kenaz:
"Kerro hänelle voin auttaa sinua keittiössä, Vanki." He whispered.
The golem's receded eyes suddenly glimmered. He nodded, clapping his hands together like a thunder strike:
"Ah! Yeah! Father: kid can help out in the kitchen! Sure, why not?"
Kenaz sighed, removing his glasses. He wiped them down while shaking his head:
"For one: the authorities might take issue with that arrangement. Labor laws being what they are—"
Penance again turned to Vanki, whispering:
"Minä voisin 'vapaaehtoistyö'..."
"Ah!" Vanki wagged a finger. "Yes! What if kid is 'volunteer', hmm? Jackboot poliisi won't care about that, will they?"
"And for two:" Kenaz continued, "there wouldn't be a budget to pay him. Even if there were money to do so we still have reason three: as precocious as our little friend seems to be, I would never simply dole out hard cash to a young child so he can go spending it on God only knows what—"
"I wouldn't want money," Penance said. "You could pay me in food."
Vanki again clapped his hands (which made an unprepared Penance flinch):
"Ah, Father! I am getting yet another idea: what if we pay kid in food, eh?"
Kenaz again sighed:
"He said that last one in English, Vanki. Please don't bother..."
The large man drew his lips back, embarrassed. He shirked back against the far wall of the kitchen, grousing to himself. Penance did the opposite, approaching Father Kenaz:
"Look, it wouldn't be for that long," Penance said. "Just until Vanki gets sick of me, at least. And you don't have to worry about finding a bed for me, or anything like that. I can find a place to sleep at night. I just show up, I do a little work, and I'm out of your hair. All it really costs is a few crumbs from the pantry."
Kenaz put his glasses back on. He cracked his knuckles and shook his head.
"I don't suppose you have a typewritten resume handy, my child? Is it safe to assume you at least know your way around a kitchen? And with knives?"
"I've been using 'em all my life," Penance said.
Kenaz again scoffed, and he finally shrugged:
"Well, any other 'qualifications' to speak of?"
"Not really," Penance said. "Except I can probably keep Vanki happy, talking about Finland, and everything. And no offense, but he sounds like he can be a little..."
"Overbearing." The priest quickly looked up at Vanki, standing all the way across the room, out of earshot, and he smiled at the man good-naturedly. "Vanki can be a little... 'enthusiastic' about his domain back here in the kitchen. But then nobody's ever done so much work for so very little..."
Kenaz looked back down at Penance, and he stretched out a gloved hand to the boy. Penance accepted it, and they exchanged a firm handshake.
"Except for you, of course, my child: you're hired."
