The Merchant

It was in an abraded, echoing warehouse, awash with a garish neon light where he would make the exchanges. Nondescript white vans and black sedans would clear the rusty hangar doors. Sinister hulks in leather jackets would climb the steel mesh stairs and place thick manila envelopes on the plywood desk.

*

He felt intense pride whenever he handed over a white cooler with a red cross emblem. His father had died because the system had failed. All that would've taken for the seven year old boy to be able to play with his papa once more, was a piece of flesh, a meager liver.

So he had set out to negate the injustice, saving those condemned to die. The rage and vengeance that swelled in the murkier, more corrupt recesses of his heart whenever the unyielding, acrid pain of his loss was reawakened – by triggers inconsequential to anyone else: a child's merry shriek, a model train in a toy shop display, the sweet smoke of baking chestnuts drifting from the street stands - were placated, ever so briefly, by an image of a different seven year old boy reunited with his parent, although the knowledge that the reunion took place in a private hospital room with genteel pastel walls, overfilled with state of the art equipment and fragrant flower arrangements, tainted the sense of accomplishment which every collected envelope brought.

*

The cracking of bones would beckon his attention sporadically, or the strangled profanities of the disgraced surgeon who would have adeptly separated the precious living jewels from the cadaver.

*

He loathed the antiseptic stench, because it reminded him of hospitals, of healing. The carcass and entrails left on the makeshift operation table after the doctor's ministrations were beyond healing, beyond the very concept of humanity, which left him with a disquieting feeling of disgust feuding with a fleeting notion of piety. The relentless waves of remembrance castigated him: the bones had once belonged to a person, a son and a brother who was no more because of him. But one mother's agony, one sister's sorrow nursed a dozen joyful families.

He fought the ominous premonitions of banishment and perdition which immured his mind whenever he tempted a robust, healthy aspirant to bargain away a dispensable organ. It would never be just one, nor would there be any payment. Shadows of guilt flashed across his mind's canvas, but he quashed remorse, for all the joyous little boys.

*

He would hand out the last container, the largest and heaviest, void of all markings. The thug would balk in disgust – the content would not be designated for a transplant.

*

He was always unsettled by the concept of cannibalism, both nauseated and morbidly curious: what would be like to take a bite of the ultimate forbidden fruit? The ambivalence of the warring impulses was spinning him on the thin ledge between wrong and right, barring prediction of his fall. He was a merchant with the four sides of the same coin – life and light, and death and depravity.

*

He would make his way out to prowl the run down neighborhoods, the destitute streets, the seedy taverns, where he would flash a potentate's ransom at any man who would still harbour memories of employment and home, of a promised future, and hopes for his fortunes' change, so yet another seven year old could smile.

Disclaimer and legal stuff: This is a work of fiction. The characters, natural and legal entities in this text are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance with real natural or legal persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. I, the author, assert and retain all moral and material rights on this work under the provisions of the Copyright and Related Rights Act (ZASP) and any other applicable law (in a nutshell: have fun reading, leave the rest to me).