subrosa: the adventures of bill chase chapter_20

Chapter 20


I had the feeling that this sort of thing had happened too many times. It was a grave cycle I was trapped in. My brain could not possibly survive many more head injuries. I had little chance of maintaining a proper perspective if my head kept receiving brain damaging lacerations. Soon I would be questioning my thoughts as to whether or not they were proper neurone firings or firings impeded by damaged brain matter. I feared the possibility of my plight if my brain was somehow wrong. Maybe there was a chance that I was misleading myself and that the world man had made for himself was, in its peculiar way, valid, but because my mind depended on my brain, I was misreading the signals I received through my thwarted senses and thus could not understand the way things functioned. It was an awful possibility. I attempted to picture it. I was lost and vulnerable. What I perceived I saw around me could be something entirely different than what was actually around me. My trying to reason with it could be a perversion of, or a deviated blinding delusion of, how things were. A sound mind might not be capable of reason. Maybe we depended on our mental inability to be dull enough to struggle with, and through our painful existence.

But I refused to believe. I knew enough to know that I could not be that badly wounded. Man was obviously a demented creature. I had seen enough to understand that. I was not the first to deviate from the norm in belief. Healthy humans deviated from the well rutted path of consciousness obliteration. There was the possibility that those other deviants were mutants also. I had no way to know. Maybe mad was the natural way for humans to be, and by some freak of nature or intervention, a few humans in a society would mutate to be conscious beings. They would end up fighting a hopeless battle against stupidity. The mass of madness would dilute the little floating islands of consciousness until the islands were saturated and submerged in pointless confusion. The mass of man was running blindly on a path compassed only by ignorance. The path was so trodden that any suggestion to deviate from the flow, the race to death, was shunned. In a world of blind madness, consciousness was an unhealthy mutation that had to be destroyed. Either the misfit mutant would break down to accept the soothing doctrine of madness, or the mutant would have to be stamped out. On rare occasions, a mutant would be destroyed by blowing his relevance out of proportion and making him into a deity to be misunderstood and idolised.

I did not want to believe what I was thinking so I opened my eyes to see if the world was still around me. Something was wrong. I could feel restraint. An ugly face loomed down at me with vacuum eyes.

"You’re a lucky man."

I had the feeling he was lying to me. I could not believe any good fortune would accompany his presence. A pain tore through my face.

"Jesus Christ, who in hell are you?" I demanded feebly.

"I’ve been appointed to be your lawyer."

"What?"

"I’m your lawyer."

"I heard you, asshole!" I shouted in frustration.

"What is your question?"

"Why do I want a lawyer?"

I was almost crying from my pain and confusion. I felt they, whoever they were, were trying to break me. I was not making any sense out of what I was perceiving. Was I being tested? I could not bear having a stranger’s face stare down at me when I had no way of escape. I wanted to understand my inability to move.

"It’s your right to be represented by an appointed lawyer if you can’t afford to pay one, and since you are a vagrant with no money, you have been appointed a lawyer, who I am, and it is my job to defend you until they prove you tried to kill the young man and his girl."

"Where in hell am I?"

"No need to get excited; you are in the safety of the hospital," the whitewashed face that glared down at me explained.

My mad intruder must have just graduated from university. His body was frail like an old dying man but his face was that of a terminally ill youth. His eyes were dark against his translucent white skin. By the way his suit jacket sat on his body, it looked like his ribs had caved in against his lungs. Little beads of sweat formed below his receding hairline. I could not help thinking that the only thing he had to hold onto in his meagre existence was the multitude of complicated theories of law that had been branded on his pliable dull brain.

"Get your ugly face away from me!" I screamed. "Go away. Why the fuck can I not move? Let me out of this damned hell hole!"

My appointed lawyer smiled down at me from his position of power. I was starting to hallucinate that he was a venomous, blood-sucking slug, waiting to drain the life out of me so that he could have enough strength to endure his trying existence a few hours longer.

"There is no use fighting. You aren’t going anywhere. You are strapped in. And there is a guard at the door. When they let you out of here it will only be to go to jail to await your trial. It should be an interesting one too; I’ve never tried to defend a derelict who tries to kill a rich, young man and his girlfriend. I did an assault case once."

"Who’s what? What are you on? You are terminally insane; the whole bunch of you are deluded blind bastards."

My lawyer’s frail narrow face formed a weak smile, like a rubbery zombie amused by a sundial.

"A rebel without a cause. Or should I say a lunatic without a reason. Maybe that’s the angle we should take. We’ll try to convince the jury that you are a victim of society. Your suppression has driven you insane. Maybe there is treatment they could give you to make your mind healthy. I wonder if they still use shock therapy."

I could not believe what was happening to me. It was crazy to be where I was. It felt like I had been thrown into the dark ages. I could remember walking with Kathy late one night only to be ripped out of that space and time to be reborn as a victim and a killer locked into the concerns of angry and vengeful creatures. I was suddenly part of their endless act play, plugged into a role for which I had not rehearsed. I doubted if they had any idea who I was or what I was or even that I was; they did not care. They needed someone or something to fill the role in their play and I fell into the audition. I wondered if they would discover that I was one of the mutants they were looking for or if my new role was complete enough to overlook my credentials. Everything seemed disconnected to me, through me. Nothing made sense. I wondered if I was in hell. I did not believe there was a hell but I was convinced hell could poison the spirit. Maybe my hell was other people. Why was I strapped down and subjected to the sounds of mutes? The drone of my lawyer’s hissing voice leaking into my ears made me writhe in agony.

"What is wrong with your wretched withered brain? Quit torturing me with your stupidity. Take your rotten sack of bones out of here. Go away. Now."

He thought I was funny, a strange event at the circus to gawk at.

"A real fighter, you are. It’s a shame that the fight is over. But you’re lucky they shot you before you killed the girl; if you’re a good boy, your sentence might not be too long, twelve years, and they might let you out in ten. Unless we can use the insanity approach. We’ll see."

"Where’s the girl: I want to see her."

I struggled in my confines.

"Let me out of here!" I screamed in rage. "Let me out!"

"That’s good. We might do all right with the troubled youth insanity approach," my over friendly lawyer said as he moved to leave. "I’ll come back when you’re feeling better and you can tell me your story."

"Piss off, asshole. Stay away from me. Let me out of here!"

I was hyperventilating as I panicked and struggled blindly trying to break free. I was trying to fight off the sick feeling of defeat when I felt a prick in my arm.

"That will calm him down."

I opened my eyes to see a man and woman in angelic white. I was sure I was close to death and having to deal with the inbred hallucinations associated with my fatal condition.

"You need to rest while you heal," the man said.

"Let me out of here," I shouted with fading energy. "Let me out of this godless hell hole."

The woman’s sad smile was the last thing I remembered as I was involuntarily shrouded in sleep.



by Joanne B. Washington

read on. chapter_21



© 2001 | the jose wombat project