DR JANUS

Dr. Janus addresses the medical students who are watching the operation: "We will now remove the patient's arms and replace them with giant crab legs." He plunges a pair of tongs into the large tub of dry ice with startling panache and removes the giant crab legs to illustrate his point, then returns them, and prepares to cut.

"No," says the senior doctor. "You will circumcise the baby, and nothing else."

Dr. Janus considers removing the senior doctor's head and replacing it with a fat steaming turd of his own design, but instead merely grumbles "Dammit. I hate my job," and proceeds with the circumcision.

"I can't stand these anti-science bastards much longer, Benton!" He exclaims to his brother via telephone. "Do you know what they had me do today? A circumcision! A circumcision, Benton! We're talking the modern equivalent of drilling a hole in the head to release evil spirits! All my talents are going to waste in this god damn place!"

"I seem to remember the time you drilled a hole in over thirty people's heads, Dirk."

"For Christ's sake, Benton, that was for science. Anyway, they were paid over thirty dollars each. And they were homeless--who cares?"

"I'm not criticizing you, Dirk, I completely agree. Listen, are you really that sick of your job?"

"I'm that sick and more-they won't let me perform any experimental, unnecessary, counterproductive, or demeaning operations on anybody--to say nothing of simple surgery for the sake of pure art. Let me run this by you--a human being with giant crab legs for arms--what do you think?"

"Brilliant, Dirk. Your talents weren't meant for the likes of those pigs. Listen, I want you to buy a plane ticket here tomorrow. I've got a position you may be interested in."

"Well, you know what I want to hear…"

"I guarantee you the opportunity to do unnecessary brain operations."

"Excellent."

Dirk did take that plane to Benton's home, and when he got there Benton took him to what, it would turn out, would be Dirk Janus' heaven.

Benton: "The private prison business, Dirk, is like Uncle Sam giving the private entrepreneur a nice long blow job-Dirk, I'm under contract from the federal government to run this prison however I like-I have carte blanche!"

The tour begins in the workroom.

"So, I strike contracts with other companies to move their business from the public sector, where they have such binding constraints as the minimum wage, equal opportunity, affirmative action and labor laws, into the private sector--specifically this prison, where we employ the prisoners, under the guise of rehabilitation, at any number of things--raising hogs, cleaning sewers, making toys, shoes, hats, even women's lingerie--all for only 17 cents an hour!"

The lingerie is being produced in the room they walk through at that moment. Dirk's eye catches a small, pale man with glasses and a wispy, featherlike presence sewing together a lace bra, and looking for all the world like his heart is at that moment breaking with memories of paradise. In those eyes Dirk would, if he was that sort of person, but he is not, see the small man's sad life projected as if forty feet tall in a movie theater: the unassuming, shy man's nearly pathetic history with women from his first ecstatic experience with a girl from college whose panties were simple white cotton--the soft, tender feel of her skin, the touch and the taste of her lips, holding each other and watching the sunset, fucking and kissing and masturbating each other and the feeling of waking next to another naked human being, which is of course the most glorious feeling on God's green earth--to his infrequent but wondrous later experiences, the variety and the ecstasy, all brought back to him with this small piece of cloth he stitches, which at the same time reminds him of the prison substitute for love: getting raped in the ass by a large angry murderer.

Benton notices the same man: "Imagine the vicarious thrill running through that convicted rapist's head as he makes and fondles hundreds of those a day…." He giggles.

Dirk: "Listen, this is fascinating, but how does it relate to me doing unnecessary brain operations?"

Benton: "Dirk, I want you to be the new prison doctor."

Dirk's eyes well with tears of joy and gratitude: "Oh….oh, God-yes!"

And so began Dirk's career as the first medical artist.

He was, in fact, allowed to fasten crab legs to people on the flimsiest of excuses: "I'm sorry but you know what happens to people who bring drugs into the prison," he'd say, while high on Demerol he personally stole from the medical supply room, some of which he sold to the guard, who sold it to the man who was now staring with total incomprehension at his new appendages.

The punishment for rape was that Dr. Janus would simply "Get inside that brain, poke around, see if we find anything interesting." He usually did, and soon half the prisoners were missing various parts of their brains. Benton of course was elated at this because removal of nearly any part of the brain makes a person a lot easier to keep under control.

The punishment for murder was exposure to any number of cruel and unusual things: anthrax, Agent Orange, AIDS, asbestos, liquid nitrogen, lethal doses of marijuana, LSD, and PCP, or perhaps, if Dirk was feeling festive, a pigment to turn the skin red and green temporarily.

Many things could merit punishment and if no punishment was merited many things could be invented to merit punishment. It didn't take long for Dr. Janus to complete all his dream projects: He switched two prisoner's brains, he switched arms and legs in a variety of positions, he took a white man and removed his legs and arms, replacing them with: left arm: a black man's; right arm: a Hispanic's; right leg: an Indian's; left leg: a Chinese woman's. Janus installed a helium producing device in the largest man in the prison's voice box. He removed one lung, one kidney, the spleen, and the appendix from one man, then rerouted the intestine to exit through the mouth, removed several yards of it, sewed up the anus, and removed the gonads. "There!" He exclaimed "A miracle of modern efficiency! This man is now completely streamlined, and possesses the minimum amount of tissue needed for survival." It didn't take long before he saw the error of this statement and removed the arms and legs as well, which he sewed onto another man who became the first octolimbed human being. This, Dirk realized, opened up a whole new avenue, and he began installing extra lungs, stomachs, kidneys, spleens, and yards of intestines; double, triple, quadruple anuses, and more gonads than any man could ever use at once.

Janus was also the prison psychiatrist, charged with either getting the men to cope with their new appearances or getting them, through hypnosis or drugs, to not notice. Dirk did not like this part of the job, as he would have preferred to simply lobotomize them so they didn't care either way, but he also felt that lobotomizing every patient would, while effective, be very boring, and would perhaps be counterproductive for future operations.

Janus was talking with the rapist who he had previously seen making lingerie. Not that he would have recognized him anyway, but the man now had three eyes, a prehensile tail, and was being used to see if human skin could be turned into reptile skin. So far it couldn't, and the man just looked to be suffering from leprosy, but due to hypnosis he did not notice any of it.

Dirk: "So, uh…..shit I don't know. Oh, I got it--why do you rape?" He sometimes had a hard time coming up with questions for the prisoners. Some semblance of actual psychiatry was required for reasons Dr. Janus did not care to understand.

The rapist, whose name was Moody, replied: "I only did it once. I was just….it had been so long. I don't have much luck with women…I was crazy with lust, I couldn't help myself. I feel more regret for it than I ever thought I could feel of anything." He scratched his arm, not seeming to notice the large piece of skin which fell off when he did. "I spend every moment of every day wishing I hadn't done it. Not for my sake--for hers! God, I can't believe I did that to her--I held her at knifepoint and violated her! I'm going to hell. And I deserve it. I am an evil man."

Dirk: "Can't get women? What kind of an idiot are you? Listen, man, getting women is easy." He hit a button on his intercom system. "Nurse--come in here." To Moody he said, "Watch. You don't even have to pay attention to what they're saying."

The nurse came in. "Yes, Dr. Janus?"

"Hello, Dana--how are you today?"

"I'm Dianne."

"Exactly! I really understand your viewpoint."

"What?"

"Tell me more."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I know! Isn't it terrible? Hey, would you like to go for dinner after work?"

"You're completely insane," she said, and left.

"What the fuck?" He instantly turned on Moody. "God dammit, you fucking sick rapist bastard! If you hadn't been here that pussy woulda been mine! Obviously you freaked her out with some sort of rapist secretions of yours. That's it! I'm stopping up all your pores--see how you like sweating out of your tongue for the rest of your life, sickie."

"What!?"

"Oh, don't worry, you'll only live for half an hour or so."

It turned out to be exactly 26 minutes and 45 seconds, which Dr. Janus knew because he timed it on his brand new watch which was, through some principle of movement which Dr. Janus refused to understand because he was a medical scientist and not a physical scientist, automatically recharged when you walked and could be taken to a depth of 1000 meters without any problems whatsoever, although the deepest it ever got was the bottom of Dr. Janus' tub, because he was a busy medical professional who had no time for scuba diving and other such things. Instead of scuba diving he decided to repeat the operation to stop up pores on a few more people and see who could die the quickest. It turned out to be Armin Azzmarak, a second-generation Pakistani who was convicted of Manslaughter and sentenced to two years, and who died a mere 17 minutes and 3 seconds after having his pores stopped up, beating the closest competitor by a full 3 minutes and 12 seconds. "Amazing," Dr. Janus said while merrily painting a gold star, signifying 'first place' on the dead man's chest, "I thought one of those people would have lasted the longest."

Sadly, no paradise is permanent due to the qualities inherent in it, and Dr. Janus' was no different. The prisoners were, of course, not allowed to see family members in their new states, and soon there were complaints, and more complaints, and just when a full investigation was being planned by the state government, Benton came into Dirk's office and said "Dirk, the end has come." They left quietly, locked all the doors, and got into Benton's private jet which he had recently bought just after he liquidated all his bank accounts and stock interests. They flew to an island in the South Pacific they had purchased jointly, and began plans for the future while government officials stormed the Benton Janus Private Prison to find over four thousand deformed, debilitated, mutated, refitted, rearranged, backwards, upside down or inside out men with amputations, reverse rehabilitations, loss of ability for fornication, undulations, alterations, agitations, hallucinations, no circulation, concentration or observation, without heads, legs, thighs, eyes, feet, seats, nose, toes, or clothes--they found men with more parts than they'd ever need and less than they started out with and some things that were just plain weird, but they could find no one responsible for the carnage. It was impossible even to say that Benton and Dirk were not there as the men present were long past recognition and no records had been kept other than Dirk's medical files, which had no names, only numbers. The prison was covertly burned during the night and all those on record as being at the prison for any reason were considered deceased.

And Dirk and Benton began construction on the newest building on their island, to be used for the express purpose of medical experimentation on people abducted from various places around the world.

One day Dirk found a large iguana on the beach and briefly recalled the failed experiment to turn a human's skin into a reptile's. He did not remember that the man's name had been Moody, and he could never have known that Moody's last thought was not about the sensuality he so regretfully recalled or about his mother baking apple pie, but that a man like him, who had always tried to do good, who had donated money when he could to charity, who had once nursed a sick kitten he found in the street back to health, who had sat by his mother's deathbed and held her hand and cried when her last breath escaped her and her eyes rolled up into her head, who had had one horrible moment of weakness which he was never able to forget or forgive himself for, that a man like him should die, not only while this man, this evil monster lived, but at this evil monster's hands, and that this was certainly the most tragic of all possible worlds.

THE END

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