Craigslist Job

In May, 2014, I had just returned from Utah.

I had been lured to the mountains by a lover, now former, with the prospect of living cheaply, happily in the snowy Mormon paradise that was Hoytsville. The plan was to work at resorts in Park City as ski instructors, but the relationship went bad quickly and we broke up. She left me there. After the ski season ended, I returned to Los Angeles with what little I had left.

I went back to the apartment my ex and I had first rented. Two friends of mine, Elizabeth and Alex, and Elizabeth’s tiny dog, Demeter, or Demi when you called her, sublet it while we were away. We all lived together for a little and they consoled me. Everyone could tell how sad and broken I was. Elizabeth gave me weed and cigarettes and a hug when I came back. I watched a lot of TV and did a lot of crying. They let me stay in my old bedroom and they gave me some space when I needed it. My ex was off experiencing being single again and had sex with some of my friends. I was broke and sad in Los Angeles, but at least I started to take the time necessary to heal. I needed to find something to give me some money, some way of making it out of my dead-end situation.

I figured, I might as well try to make some money and return home, but all of my former clients I contacted told me they had nothing for me, nothing at all. The apartment’s lease was ending and I didn’t have enough money to get another one or to even get myself across the country, back home. I was desperate, so I took the risk and began to look on Craigslist for work. There was very little at the time, so I looked in every category for work, steady or otherwise. But it was almost as though all of Los Angeles had tightened its belt. There were no jobs to be found that I could qualify for, except one. It was a particularly intriguing ad because it required little experience with high reward. It read:

Wanted: Someone To Crack My Back!!

Will pay $1000 to someone to come over and give me an informal massage. I am an old man and I don’t like to leave my house as I am injured, so you’ll have to come here. I don’t want a masseuse because they advise against back cracking, but it absolutely must be done. My back is aching and it needs to be cracked! Please put me out of my misery!

I reached out immediately with an email. Would he mind a man? How long of a session did he want? Could I come over now? I am a relatively normal sized man with strong, big hands, I told him. I could pick him up and shake him, or press on his spine from behind. I could help him stretch in all sorts of ways. For $1000, I would touch an old man. I told him I was available immediately. I supplied my phone number, and he called me quickly. His voice was low, almost at a whisper, but I could make out the address and told him I would arrive soon.

He lived at the top of a hill in SilverLake in a beautiful house made from dark, dusty wood. I had to park my car on the hill, facing down. I made sure to pull the parking break. I showed up close to dusk and looked out at the twinkling lights below. There were beehives dotting his property wrapped in velvet-leaved vines, and the house had an unobstructed view of the reservoir and city below. The path to the house took you far away from the street, and instantly the sounds of the city melted away for a peaceful quiet that seemed to radiate from the house. The beehives even were silent.

I walked up the path to his front door and noticed an abundance of small idols on either side of the path. They were carved from the same dark wood as the house. I think they are called Tiki and they appeared to be everywhere. Even as I drew close to the house itself, I could see that two large statues guarded the entrance, all carved from the same material. The house too, even seemed to have hollow eyes; its windows faced the path and formed an informal face. I took note, how it all seemed to fit very nicely. The old man who called me had taken the time to make his space his own. From one of the windows, I noticed a stooped shadow move out of view.

I knocked on the door, but there was no answer at first. Daylight was beginning to fade, so I rang the doorbell as well. It was an intercom system. As my finger left the button and the tone began to ring through the house, I heard the crackle of a return. It was the same soft voice I had heard on the phone and it whispered, “Come in. I’m lying downstairs. We'll begin as soon as you're ready.” The mechanical lock on the door unlatched audibly and I pushed the door open into a small foyer.

There was a single light above, recessed into the low ceiling. On either side of the door were shelves laden with Tiki. Hundreds of their tiny bodies and faces facing everyone entering the building. I stopped to look at a number of them, and didn’t notice a man on the couch in the next room, visible through the wide-set port.

There were barely any lights on in the building. He was watching television in the dark when I came in. He was smoking pot, couldn’t have been more than 25, and his dusty blond hair shielded his eyes. If he was looking at me, I couldn't be sure, but I felt his gaze nevertheless. I asked him if he knew where I should go. He told me his father was the one who had requested my services. Did I want water? Did I want a hit? The smoke was quite thick and acrid, unlike the pot I was used to smoking. I asked him who his father was to have all these statues. His father was a director from Germany, he replied. The old man was the world’s foremost expert on Tiki. He noticed how intrigued I was. Yes, I said, I couldn’t help myself. “Of course not, no one can.” He replied in the same soft way as his father. “Why don’t you go down stairs? I’m sure my father is waiting.” He pointed me to a door, and I entered.

The stairs were stained a dusty red and there was no light in the short stairwell. It led sharply downstairs; each of the seven stairs was steep and creaked beneath my step. They let me out into a large, open room. The wall opposite the stairs was entirely made of glass and it looked out over the city. The lights from below shone in through the glass and bathed much of the room in shadow. In front of the windows, on a table that could have been a gurney, lay the man who requested my services. I walked forward towards him, and noticed a number of other small tables next to him.

“Please, one moment” he whispered. He was lying on the table on his side, face away from me. Getting up clearly hurt him and took a lot of effort, nevertheless he sat up, still facing away from me, and I immediately saw how horribly curved his spine had become. His back bent so terribly that his chest seemed to have caved in on itself. It looked awful, and it suddenly made sense as to why he whispered - the vicious kink of bone prevented his lungs from filling fully. In the shadow, he looked like he was carved from the same dusty material the house was made from. His bald head looked at the floor, and he had wrapped a sheet around his waist. Finally, he took a wooden mask from one of the tables next to him and put it over his face. I never saw what he looked like. He lay back down on the table, on his side so that he could look at the city. “Now’s ok” he said, so I approached.

I walked up to where he lay on the table and stood behind him. “You look like you’re in an awful amount of pain, why call me? Why not just go to the hospital?”

“Because”, he whispered, “This is not something that I need a doctor for.” Through the mask, his voice was even lower and I could not make out his eyes. The dark brown mask had a perpetual carved smile. The eyes were mere slits and so looked dark in the high contrast. I could not tell if he was in pain, but his voice never raised above a whisper. “I only need you to press on my spine for me, from the inside.”

“I’m sorry?” I took a step back. The man sat up, and swiveled his body around towards me. In the light, I could see that what little hair remained was a dusty blond too. It was thinning on the top of his head and he showed it to me while trying to face me and speak. The mask obscured his face, still, and so he never quite faced me when he spoke.

“I need you to crack my back, and straightening me out with your hands and knees won’t cut it. I need something drastic, which is why I am paying you so much.”

“Sir, I refuse to do anything sexual – “

“This ain’t sexual, it’s necessary.” His voice was soft but full of anger. He reached out his right arm and took in his hand an object from one of the tables next to him. He held it up to the light and I saw for the first time that there were medical tools all around him. I realized the floor around the table was covered in a tarp, and there were blades of various sizes on the different tables. “But if I wanted you to do something sexual, you wouldn’t have much of a choice, would you?” He pointed the scalpel blade forward, not quite in my direction, his face hidden by the mask, head still bent towards the floor. I exhaled. Suddenly, he turned – both his head and his body, so that he was looking at me, blond hair hanging around his mask. His carved wooden smile was hollow and his eyes were black. The whole room was carved from the same material, and his body was hidden in shadows. He approached me, scalpel out. I backed away towards the stairs.

“You’re going to crack my back, and I’m going to pay you $1000 and there’s nothing you can do about it. Now get over here and get ready.” He turned away from me suddenly and walked back to the table and climbed atop. Still sitting, he hissed at me. “Come around to the front. I need you to pay close attention.” He gesticulated with the knife, and I came closer.
I stood between his seated body and the great glass windows. The light from the city flickered across his naked torso. I could see the wisps of a beard beneath his mask. He was still holding the scalpel and I always kept it in sight. He brought the blade in front of his mask, and then lay on his back as best he could, a wrinkled crescent of ancient flesh.

“You need to act quickly, or else I’ll die” he whispered. Then, starting at the left side of the stomach beneath his gut, he took the scalpel blade and drew it quickly over his pale skin. It slid open noiselessly, and blood began to leak down the sides of his body with satisfying drips on the tarp. He entrails spilled out the bottom, as if all the tension keeping them bound up inside his body had been released. They spilled out partially slopping against the side of the table and onto the tarp covered floor. “Quickly, boy!” He hissed, “You must act quickly, or else!”

I put a hand atop his sternum and my forearm across his knees to try to flatten him out. It didn't work. Though his masked was carved with a broad, deep smile, my failed flattening clearly brought him great discomfort. He wailed beneath the mask, as drops of blood covered me. He cried, “From the inside! You must do it from the inside! Quickly! Quickly! You must crack me from the inside!”

I released his masked head and thrust my arm deep into his abdomen, beneath all the viscera that threatened to explode if his skin was peeled back any further. When my hand entered his chest, he seemed to calm down and get happy again, almost.

As I groped my hand inside his chest, I found that nothing was quite connected. I stood above his body and felt about awkwardly inside, looking for the spine, and while I found it, I couldn’t quite seem to find the connections for any of his organs, as if they had been stuffed inside haphazardly. This masked man’s face watched me the whole time as I sought to locate the kink in his back.

He cried as I worked my fingers up the inside of his spine. His masked face lashed out from side to side, writhing and whining. His hands pounded the metal table in pain. Tears and blood mixed in the air. I pushed in deeper until, suddenly, both his arms snapped back to his body from flailing and his large boney palms came to a rest around my forearm. He contorted his neck longer, pulling the vertebrae out of sorts. I could hear the snapping of sinews, while under my fingers I felt his spine elongate. The disks expanded, puffed up, and fell out of place, giving his whole body the sound of a vine quickly growing, spinning, breaking. His long gnarled fingers gripped my forearm so tight that blood began to pool where his nails bit deep into my skin, threatening to tear the flesh right from my bone.

His face had twisted up now, and it was clear, through the pain, he was studying my form with hunger and anticipation. The deep hollow eyes of the wooden mask stared into my own, and while I kept one arm steady across his knees, the other hand remained firmly within his chest. I would push at any moment and crack his spine, but his carved smile remained locked with my own. I searched those eyes for any hint of the pupils behind their shadow but I found none. I wanted to tear the mask off and see the pain for myself. How could anyone possibly endure such torture? I had to see his face, I had to see it at the final moment when I broke his spine once more and set it back into place. I began to lift my forearm from his knees when he spat and cried out, “No! Don’t you dare look! Break my spine or else I'll swallow you whole. I’ll eat you right now if you move either of your hands away." I looked down at where my hand had entered beneath the old man's stomach. True to his word, it looked like a cruel mouth with torn, chapped lips, but it was only when I felt the sucking of the entrails on my arm that I realized his body did in fact want to consume me. If I moved my arm from his knees, I would lose my leverage and those flaps of skin that hung about could wrap around my arm and drag me down, drown me inside his rib cage.

I pushed down hard. He cried out and wailed. I was sure his son would come down, but nothing of the sort happened. Blood sprayed on the windows as he resisted. I pushed harder and harder. I began to sweat. The cuts on my forearm from his fingernails deepened and my blood flowed freely down my arm. Our blood mingled in his chest. I felt dizzy, like I would pass out at any moment. But I also knew that if I did I would be consumed, either by this strange corpse or by one of the spirits that dwelt in this place. I pushed with every ounce of might I had until there was a small crack, and then a larger snap.

The masked man’s hands instantly went slack as his spine snapped back into place. I saw his chin for the first time and I swear the carved smile on the wooden mask was larger than it had been. He lay straight for the first time and I pulled my hand from his bloody carcass with a sucking noise, like the cavity was attempting to fill itself with what was around, or like lips around a finger. Quickly, those hands sprang back to life. The wrists, elbows, and shoulders extended and rotated out of their sockets. The arms picked up pieces that had been cast aside and stuffed the man’s entrails back under the skin. Both hands worked inside his chest to straighten everything out, and then both grabbed fistfuls of the skin that lay ripped at the cut and pinched the two sides together. An arm flew by my face and grabbed a common stapler that lay unused next to me. With low clunks, it pressed metal fasteners deep into his skin. And without much noise at all, the wrists and elbows slid back into place, and the masked man sat up in front of me. Between deep deliberate breaths, he said, “Money’s on the coffee table upstairs.” in a surprisingly normal toned voice. He turned on the gurney and stared out at the city. He didn’t say anything to me. He didn’t take the mask off either. I walked slowly out the room and upstairs with the sound of his heavy breathing reverberating through the house.

The man’s son could not be found, but there were more and more Tiki everywhere, covering every surface it seemed. The TV remained on, playing static. I found the money beneath a smirking Tiki on the coffee table. I pocketed the cash and walked out of the house. I just wanted to be out of there. Night had fallen, and now the silence that hung over the house seemed unnatural, knowing.

The moon was high and it cast deep shadows. The lawn was thick with tiny Tikis. I dipped through the many beehives and the blinking lights of the city below to my car outside, careful not to step on the small idols that stood between me and my exit. In one of the eye-like windows, I think he watched me leave.

I think I got ripped off.