subrosa: the adventures of bill chase chapter_21

Chapter 21


It was a delirious sleep of horror. It was a destructive chemical demented mode of my brain. I was kept on drugs for so long that I could not decipher the difference between being awake and being asleep. I was at the mercy of the enemy and the drug they used to subdue me. They must have been deriving pleasure from torturing me; I could see no other reason why they had not just killed me. I was not able to live under their control.

"Why am I alive?"

I thought that I might have said that aloud because I heard the resonance of the vibration in my head. Maybe some of what I was starting to perceive was of the world I had to survive in when conscious. Maybe the drug was wearing off and I was going to be moved into a new dimension of imprisonment. It felt like years might have passed.

"You have to be alive to be brought to justice," a voice said.

Justice? How it saddened me when I heard man playing God. Playing God or inventing God to justify their acts of judgement. Madness was their only catalyst for reasoning. Man invented meaning as he went along through time. He wanted to delude himself into thinking he was doing the right thing or at least doing something. He used religion to close the blind on the window of perception; now he was trying to fumble his way through life with no light.

I focused on two men. Products of beliefs. One was a registered law enforcing, justice defending, cop ape in uniform; the other looked like he was the same product but without the official regimental status packaging. The plain clothed, square jawed, law enforcer had a note pad. I could sense he wanted incriminating information. He would service the people by condemning another criminal to imprisonment.

"You’ve go quite the spirit," said the man in the suit. "What is you name, and where do you live, or do you have a permanent address?"

I did not respond.

"Do you have a job? What is you citizenship?"

I did not respond.

"What drove you to want to kill the young man and his girlfriend?"

"His girlfriend?"

"Okay, maybe it was a slut he picked up at a bar but it’s not for you to make character judgements and go about slaughtering those that don’t meet your standards," the cop spit out.

"You fucking mad bastards!"

"Definitely a danger to society, this freak. We have to make sure we put him away. We can’t allow this kind of animal on the loose," the cop said to the man in the suit for the benefit of my insecurity. "How many people have you killed so far, Sonny? Are you on a special mission? What’s the name of your cult?"

"What do you bastards want for me?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all," said the cop. He wore a very strange smile, like he was just caught with his thumb up his ass and could not pull it out. "But the people will want to see you brought to justice."

"Vicarious blood suckers. Your justice means nothing. You use it to justify torturing and killing."

"You have an attitude problem punk," said the cop. "You would live longer and would have lived freer if you had learned some respect for your authorities."

"Fuck yourself, moron."

I was already stewing in their pot. Nothing I could say would change it.

He poked his finger in the cut on my thigh. "How’s the leg feeling? You’re luckier than your victims. In case you’re interested in your achievements, the young man lost four of his front teeth and has a broken jaw, a broken rib and a punctured lung. The little tramp has an ugly gash between her nice tits. She still hasn’t come out of shock. We can’t even talk to her. It hardly seems right that you only have a scrape on your head, a little hole in your shoulder and a tiny cut in you thigh." He poked me in the shoulder to remind me of the wound.

"Piss off, asshole."

"You’ve never learned to respect you superiors, have you?" the cop declared and pressed his thumb harder into my shoulder as he pressed his menacing face into my face. "We don’t like scum that don’t show respect. Understand?" he blurted wetly into my face.

"Brush you teeth, you stinking ape."

I was close to passing out from the pain he was causing me but I did not want to give him that satisfaction. The door to my cell opened and in came a woman in white. She might have been the angel of mercy.

"You gentlemen will have to leave now. He needs his rest."

"Yes Ma’am," said my two interrogators. They both smiled a deranged facial contortion and slithered out of the door.

"How are you doing?" my angel of mercy asked as she approached with a tray of food. She put the food on a table that she rolled over top of me. She cranked my bed up so that I was in a sitting position.

"I have had better days."

"And you will again. We can start making it better for you by taking these restraints off if you promise to be good."

I forced myself not to scream at her. I did not want anymore of the torturous sedatives they used to control me. She looked at me queerly.

"Why were they put on?"

"Because you were a raging demon when you came to the night you were brought in here. You were a danger to yourself and anything and anyone around you."

"I can not believe that. I can not remember anything?"

"You had a bad head injury and were in shock. No one knows what a person is capable of when their brain has been altered."

"Well, I am all right now. Let me out of my restraints."

"You’re not all right; you’re far from it, but the doctor said the restraints could come off."

"Okay, then take them off. I will be civilised," I lied. I had no intent to become civilised. Civilisation had become a terminal illness, a disease that would kill an unaccustomed soul like me.

She untied my restraints. Being free to move made me feel more relaxed.

"How’s the girl that came in with me?" I asked.

"Kathy?"

"Yes, Kathy."

"She is doing better. I talked to her just a while ago. She asked about you."

"Why does everyone say I tried to kill her?"

"I don’t know anything about the case. I stay out of police business."

"They seemed to be a different breed. I think they are not well."

"But we need them."

"They make us believe that."

"Maybe."

"Did Kathy say anything else?"

"Only that she wanted to go home. Open up."

"I can think of better things to eat. What is this?"

"This is not a four star hotel. You need solid food and you eat what we give you. If you don’t do as you are told, we’ll kick you out," she explained as she poked a fork full of something into my face.

I chewed methodically, like an imbecile being force-fed.

"She’ll be released soon. Maybe today."

"How do I get released?"

"I don’t think that will be too easy. I think you’ll be taken away and put behind bars as soon as the doctor thinks your brain is well enough."

"What do you mean?"

"Jail, to wait for trial. But I wouldn’t worry, if Kathy’s your girlfriend.
Maybe if you could talk calmly to the police and your lawyer you could explain yourself."

"No. I mean about my brain."

"Oh, you had a bad concussion, bruised the front and back of your brain."

"You know something you are not supposed to tell me. What is wrong?"

"I can’t tell you," she said and poked more food into my mouth.

"You have to tell me. It is my brain. I want to know what you have been doing that makes you think there is something wrong."

"I haven’t been doing anything, that’s the doctor’s job."

"Is your name Cyndy?" I asked reaching out to touch her nametag.

She watched my hand that wanted to touch her.

"Cyndy, who has been doing what to my brain to come up with the conclusion that it is not quite right?"

"The doctors have to do tests to see what the damages are," Cyndy explained.

"I think my brain is working fine. I think it works much better than most."

"Oh."

"Do they think that if my brain works that way it does, it was injuries that made it that way?"

"Of course; what other reason could there be for your brain to give such an unusual amount of, ah, high readings, I’m not allowed to discuss it."

"What?"

"Sorry."

We both felt we had said something we should not have but neither one of us quite knew what the other had meant.

The conversation stopped as if it had not existed. A part of us had been shut off to cover up the hole that was a passageway to something we felt safer not believing. That something that might be there, looming and lurking about, ready to burst out into the open to wreak havoc on insecurities better not seen.

Cyndy forced food into my mouth as if we would both die if the slop was not ingested. Her uneasiness worried me. I wanted her to trust me. I wanted to trust her.

Her blouse was open enough for me to see her firm beautiful breast, so I found myself staring at them as I tried to reason. I was drawn in by their sanctuary. I wanted to crawl inside of her.

She smiled when she noticed me admiring her cleavage but did not miss a beat in the food processing rhythm.

When the eating ceremony was over, she gave me a sponge bath. It was a moment of luxury. Just as she was finishing and I was getting the courage to kiss her, the doctor came in.

"How’s our fighter?"

"He’s good," Cyndy answered.

"Do you think it’s safe to have him unrestrained?"

"I don’t think he’s too dangerous, and the guard is outside the door. I don’t think he’s going to jump out the window."

"We’ll keep an eye on him today and see what happens," the doctor decided.

He did not seem concerned about my violence erupting, so I guessed the brain tests he had tried did not reveal anything too unhealthy. I wondered if he even thought I was the killer. His concern seemed to be in a different direction. I wondered if he suspected he knew something.

"I need to do some test on you without sedatives in your blood. Do you think you can do without?"

"If you give me any more drugs, I will have to kill you."

I did not mean to sound threatening but the doctor did a double take to make sure I was not sincerely hostile. I wanted my perspective to be understood. I had the feeling the people I encountered were seeing things through a different looking glass than I was. I did not want the doctor to do any more testing with my head. I did not want him to know anything was wrong with my brain. I did not want me to think there was something wrong in my head. I wanted the doctor to stop staring at me with his puzzled look.

"I need to pee and I do not like to do it in the bedpan."

"Cyndy can help you; if you aren’t shy."

He seemed a little uneasy as he watched me struggle to my feet. He noted something on my file and left.

Cyndy helped me out of bed and over to the washroom. I had not noticed that I was sharing a room with three other people until I passed their beds on the way to the toilet. I guess I had not been conscious enough to realise anything about my surroundings. All three of them were watching me as I passed and all three of them smiled when I looked at them. Their gentle melting acceptance of their frail conditions saddened me as I somehow felt their regret.

"That’s the fighter," said the big black man to his neighbour when I was entering the washroom.

"He’s no dummy," chortled the old man in the next bed. "Taking the pretty lady in to help water the horse."

I wondered if the old man suspected that I could manage the task on my own. He was right, if that was what he thought, but I did not want the doctor worrying about my mobility so I had to act our lameness. After I had urinated, the nurse guided me back to my bed.

"Maybe it is not a good idea to leave me here alone if my brain is unstable. You should stay with me and talk to me. Touch me and reassure me that everything will be okay."

"I’ve got temperatures to take and blood pressures to investigate, so I’ll be tied up. You should rather try to rest than try to come on to the nurses. If you need something, you can buzz us."

I was sure she like me and wanted to kiss me but she left me.

I did not want to sleep or rest. I wanted to leave the hospital. The awful
dread that my assailant would get out of the hospital before I did and find
Kathy plagued my tortured mind. I wanted to find the monster before sleep
overpowered me. When night had settled in and the hospital had become
quieter, I crawled out of bed and crept to the closed door and opened it
just a crack to watch the security guard. He seemed to be a pleasant fellow
with little concern for the world around him. It looked like he was having a
silent conversation with himself. I could not picture him as an officer of the
law but maybe he was. Whatever he was, he would have to use the
washroom or get a coffee eventually. It amused the other patients in my
room to see me waiting in the crack of light, acting like I was a master
criminal.

After what seemed near an eternity of waiting, the guard got up and
wandered off.

"Going for a walk?" the old man asked me.

"I am going to find us some girls so we can have a party," I answered.

"Sounds good. We’ll be waiting."

I stuck my head out the door to survey the population situation. It was
dead quiet. After a deep breath, I ventured out and adopted a wandering
attitude to make myself look aimless and harmless, which I soon discovered,
I was. It was a big hospital. What did I expect to find? What was I going to
do if I found it?

I opened a door and turned the light on. Everybody was asleep or dead.
Most of the rooms I ventured into, everybody was asleep. It made it easy
to check faces. In one of the rooms, the light was already on when I
stepped in.

"Hi, ladies."

They looked up at me from their card game.

"Are you people not supposed to be in bed?" I inquired.

"We’re old enough to know when we want to go to bed, Sonny."

"Well then, good. If you are old enough to know when to go to bed, then

you are old enough to go to a party down the hall."

They agreed. I gave them the room number and told them they would
have to hurry to get there before the guard got back.

I left them to continue on my mission. The next room I came to was the
room I was looking for. When I turned on the light, I saw the face that I
had kicked with intention to maim, the night I ended up in the prison for the
ill and wounded. He did not have any roommates.

I walked up to my assailant and just watched him breathe. His face was
in bad shape, much worse than mine. I had only a cut and a fading bruise
on my forehead; my mad friend was wired up to keep his jaw on. I parted
his lips to see his teeth. He was missing a few.

He grunted and opened his eyes.

"Sorry about your teeth."

"Fua aff ou assurd. Aut ou unt?" he growled.

I took my fingers out of his mouth so that I would not impair his speech.

"I could have lent you a Penthouse magazine so you could have
masturbated. It is not friendly to rape someone."

"Fuck off, you asshole."

"Did your mommy tell you not to touch yourself? Was that it? Do not
believe everything mommy tells you. Or Did you want to prove you are a
real man? Is that how your daddy does it? Stabs your mommy when she
does not want his ugliness smashing against her? Or are you just sick? A
dumb ape with the body of a human."

"Fuck off."

"Are you an idiot? Did you escape from an asylum?"

He was not amused with me. We stared at each other in silence for a
while. My hatred shifted slightly towards pity as I thought I perceived his
pain and confusion. I decided I did not want to kill him. I mostly decided not
to kill him before going to see him, knowing I would not get away with it. As
I stared at him, I imagined it was beyond my nature to kill. It reminded me
of a Shakespeare play where Macbeth was supposed to kill his uncle but
could not, so his wife did. Maybe Kathy might kill him. I would help her if she
wanted to. But we were not in a play.

"You are a fool."

I turned to leave.

"They’ll put you away to rot for killing that slut."

He thought she was dead. Maybe he would be less sure of himself if Kathy
showed up unexpectedly in his bombastic court trial. I turned around to look
at him again. He was definitely a mad man. I looked at the teeth marks in
his hand. I sensed his hatred and suddenly wanted to smash his body into a
formless, bloody mess. I held my feelings. I stared into his eyes searching
for some hint of redeeming quality but found none.

I stood silently beside his bed.

He reached up and grabbed my hair. "My father is a multimillionaire
businessman and owns half of this fuckin’ city, asshole. He owns you. Who
do you think they’ll believe in court? Not you, you scum. A jobless maniac
killer who rapes little girls and can’t afford a real lawyer. You’ll rot in prison."

I could not see how he could be right about court. I did not know much
about their stone-age hypocritical justice game but unless he could get
Kathy out of the way, he had no argument.

He finished his speech by spitting in my face.

I smashed my forearm against his chest. He was forced to let go of my hair when I hit him in the side of the head. He was gasping for air but his smile was still there. He was daring me to kill him. I wanted to. I slammed the palm of my hand into his testicles and held them as tight as I thought I could without them breaking.

"If I ever see you again, I will either kill you, or rip your nuts off," I promised him.

"I’ll come visit you in jail," he squeaked out.

I left him.

As I walked back to my room, I contemplated the danger of being drug through the rack of justice. I could not take the chance that they would discover I was one of the mutants they were looking for and use my case to display the dangers of genetic manipulation. They would try to incorporate me into their system by throwing me on the treadmill of the media and slowly sap the life out of me. I did not care for dying as a religious sacrament in one of their trial performances.

I had to find a better way to live. I did not want strife as my focal point.

"Shit," I said when I looked up and saw the guard standing by the door to my room. He was watching me walk towards him. "Hi," I said when I got closer.

"How’d you, where’d you?"

"Just went for a walk to see if my leg still worked. Do not worry, I will not tell anybody that you left your post."

"You’ll have us both up Shit Creek, running around through the halls as if you’re a free man. Don’t even think about leaving the room again.
Understand me?"

"Sure. Thanks, pal."

"Don’t pal me. Get your sorry ass in there."

The guard opened the door and dragged me into the room.

"What the hell is going on here!" he yelled. "Get the fuck out. Back to your rooms, now! This isn’t no fuckin’ hotel."

With frowns on their brows, the three ladies packed up their cards and left quietly. The guard looked like he was going to have a fit but only because it was his job to be stern and in control. He did not seem to enjoy having to be mean. He would probably be a very diligent guard and not leave his post again until his shift was over.

He made me wonder if people were more like the masks they wore, the masks of their jobs and duties, their clubs and churches, than the nameless being that wasted away behind the acting. Humans were just empty without the stuffing. There was nothing relevant going on, on this wet stone flying around a big ball of fire.

I watched as my roommates climbed back into their beds.

"Get your ass in the bed."

I smiled and made my way to bed to drift into my first non-drugged sleep in many days.



by Joanne B. Washington

read on. chapter_22



© 2001 | the jose wombat project