FRAGMENTS: By Kevin G. Bufton
Monday, December 5th, 2011Below the harsh light of the table lamp, Gareth manoeuvred the tiny shard of bone with delicate skill. Deftly manipulating it into place with a pair of customized tweezers, specially modified for the task in hand, there was not the slightest hint of a tremor in his strong fingers. He applied a tiny amount of adhesive, before slipping the fragment into place amongst its brothers and making his final minuscule adjustments with the tip of a dentist’s scraper.
Only when he was satisfied that everything was as it should be, did he allow himself the luxury of leaning back and letting out his breath in a long, loud exhalation. That was it, he thought, the final piece. He had finally finished that which he had set out to do.
The fruit of his labours lay before him on the baize covered table. Seven and a half years of painstaking work that had taken its toll on his eyes, his posture and, he sometimes thought ruefully, his sanity. But not his hands. His hands remained strong, their long, dexterous fingers failing to betray the long hours of intricate toil to which they had been put.
As he ran those same fingers through his thinning hair, absent-mindedly stroking the thick-rimmed spectacles resting on his pate that he was now obliged to wear, he found himself thankful for that. He was also thankful that his latest article had been completed.
It was not much to look at – just a small, shallow bowl about six inches in diameter and about half as deep – but it was unique. There was nobody in the world who possessed one of these and he already had a number of buyers interested in it. He mouth moved in a crooked semblance of a smile as he considered the bidding war that would inevitably unfold once he revealed his creation to the world. He was confident that it would fetch at least six figures, perhaps as many as eight. In either case, it would be justification enough for the time he had spent on it.
The bowl had been constructed, from over six thousand individual fragments of bone – human bone. Each piece had been sourced directly by Gareth himself and carefully documented. Provenance was an essential part of any sale, but particularly so in the macabre world of hand crafted objects in which Gareth peddled. He had once sold a bible bound in human skin to a collector and had managed to secure double what the man had originally offered by providing video footage of the hide being harvested from a medical cadaver. The film had been destroyed following the sale, of course. Gareth had no compunction to keep hold of it, having no need for such grisly trophies himself. His thrill came as a sense of pride in his work and this bowl was his magnum opus.
Whilst he waited for the final piece to dry he pored through the accompanying documentation, treating himself to a small dry sherry as he did so. This was immaculate work, a combination of crime scene photos, autopsy reports and, when all else had failed him, location shoots of him procuring the necessary raw material. All in all, it had cost him a small fortune and the better part of his forties, but it would pay for itself a dozen times over.
Minutes slipped into hours as he tied and bound the paperwork, neatly arranged in chronological order, and interspersed with his original designs and photographs of the work in progress. He checked his Rolex, purchased with the proceeds of his last sale, and started in his easy chair. The final piece would have dried by now. It was time to give it its final polish, rubbing it with degrees of increasingly soft cloths until it developed a fine sheen and looked at though it had been hewn from a single large piece of smoothest ivory.
He turned the bowl over in his hands and felt his heart lurch in his chest at what he saw. There was a gap. At the very base of the basin there was a tiny indentation, barely one inch square, where a flake of bone should have been. After all this time, Gareth could not believe it. He was rarely moved to emotion, but he felt a burning in his skull as he surveyed the imperfection.
This would not do! Taking care with the bowl, he ran back to his carefully bound tome of provenance documents and flicked through until he found the page he was looking for. He turned backwards and forwards around the target page, his mouth dry and his eyes darting from one detailed description of recovered bone to another. When he realised he had neglected one single, solitary fragment for his meisterwork he did not howl in rage, or beat his fists against the walls. This was not a time for profitless anger.
Instead he sighed, replaced the bowl on his table with all the gentle grace befitting of a holy relic and stepped into the hall. He put on his thick, hooded coat and reached into the small bag that rested beside the radiator, pulling out a roll of velvet and a handful of sterile plastic containers, lined in cotton wool. It was cold outside, hardly the night to go harvesting, but he didn’t really have a choice. He already had a sale meeting planned for the following morning and he had work to do.
Whistling grimly, he unrolled the velvet and hefted the claw hammer that lay in its folds, enjoying the weight of it in his hand.
Then he went out to hunt.
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© Kevin G. Bufton 2011
Kevin G. Bufton is a thirty-something father, husband and writer, in that approximate order, from Birkenhead on the Wirral. He has been writing short horror fiction since 2009 and his first solo anthology is due for release in 2012. He blogs on an irregular basis at http://buftonsblog.wordpress.com
