subrosa: the adventures of bill chase chapter_22

Chapter 22


I hated being trapped. I can remember back in the place of my conception, I always felt trapped. Walls always crowded me. I had no place to go. I was just waiting.

I often ran in my concrete world. There was never anything to run for; nothing could be attained any quicker with frantic aimless running through endless corridors, but I had the delusion of getting away if I ran past the point of exhaustion. But I was only running in circles. Escape was a far bigger jump than I had anticipated. It was a leap that took me out of a world of assumed certainties, into a seemingly chaotic world of madness with another set of assumed certainties.

The past was so unreal now, clinging like barnacles on my brain. The past was a parasite that made my soul heavy. I felt no less alone in the underground institution than I did in the hospital. A little safer.

I tried to escape from my dreams to face the physical world that was the agent of my senses. As I gripped my consciousness, I knew I was in a bed that was in a hospital that housed me because of my bodily injuries. I remembered being dragged out of my dream state to have my vital signs measured earlier in the morning but I could not maintain consciousness and sank back into an exhausted sleep.

My need to urinate was what finally made me determined to grab control of my being. I felt something on my lips.

"It’s true. The sleeping beauty awakes when kissed by his prince."

I opened and focused my eyes when I recognised Danny’s voice. It did not look like Danny. It looked like a beautiful sister of Danny’s.

"Is that you? Are you a woman now?"

"I’m still a man where it matters," Danny said putting my hand under his skirt and onto his crotch. "I never got a chance to show you my drag outfit before. I used to wear it often but in the last while I’ve enjoyed being a man. But I didn’t want the cops to recognise me when I left my apartment. I don’t think they know you’re here. They have you separated into two different stories. The mutant stories are getting a little controversial now. There’s many people not convinced being a mutant is a crime and they’re on talk shows about it and in every magazine and newspaper. The case may go to the supreme court. But in the mean time they are still looking for you and your friends."

"You are so pretty."

"Don’t tease me. On the other hand though, I think you’re better off not discovered as one of them. Some of the contra stories are pretty wacky. There are many religious groups petitioning for server action. They claim it’s the Devil’s work to play God. It’s the same bunch that used to burn rock records after playing them backwards. There’s even call for burning at the stake. There’s a report that one of you was shot in Texas by the cow cluck clan or what ever those farmers for Jesus and hate are called. I’m sure you’ve heard of them; they burn crosses and shoot black people and don’t let homosexuals have jobs in beer factories and they are supported by big companies and most of them are cops in their spare time. It’s much better to not be known these days. There are so many fucked up people. And you never know when you’ll be accosted by one. You’re lucky they don’t know you’re in here."

"Thank God for small mercies, as Betty used to say."

"She’s the lady that took you in."

"Ya, she was. She was the closest thing I had to a mother."

"Why does it say Bill Chase on your card?"

"Card?"

"At the end of your bed.

"That’s my new identity. I bought it from someone that someone knew."

"Someone always knows someone."

"I hope the cops believe it."

"What cops?"

"I can not remember much. I was sedated and they interrogated me.
They think I was the attacker and not the attacked."

"I’m sure it will all work out."

"But I cannot afford to have them connect me with Kathy because of her connection with me the mutant. They know about you and Suzanne. They may be ass holes but so dumb are they also not."

"We’ll figure something out."

"How did you find me?"

"There was a picture of you in the paper. You and your bloody head."

"Did they say I was here?"

"No. But I have a friend who works here and when I asked about you he found out you were here. There aren’t that many hospitals in the near."

"A few though."

"How is your head now?"

"Except for my mutation, I am in perfect order. But do not tell anyone."

"Like me."

"Not as sweet though. How is Lee?"

"She’s good. I talked to her today. She’s staying at her mothers until things are quieted down. I’m meeting her for lunch tomorrow. I’ll tell her I saw you."

"And that I miss her."

"Who’s this Kathy that you mentioned? You didn’t stab her. I can’t believe that."

"She is my friend."

"And this guy attacked you."

"He wanted to rape her."

"But you bit him."

"Kathy bit him and I kicked his face in and his ribs."

"Would you do the same for me?"

"I do not know. I did not know I was like that. Although I remember I was violent against someone else once. It was a unfortunate misunderstanding. We are all violent by nature and my mutation has not excluded me. My mutations do not seem to make me much different in behaviour. I think I know more but I am actually less fit to fit. We are just a lot of Kusper Hausers or what ever that fellow was called that supposedly spent his early years in a cell. Our cell was much better equipped for learning and developing and communicating but our biggest handicap is our ignorance of everyday life."

"That’s easy enough learned."

"I hope so."

"You can’t give up. Not everyone is against you. Your biggest troubles are imaginary. You have to find a niche where you fit. That’s what all life forms do. A rat in the city scrounges for eatable garbage and people like you and me find a place to work and look for friends that have similar interests."

"I do not want to have to live like a rat."

"You don’t have to. Make a plan and work on it. You don’t have to be alone. Most people don’t care if you’re a mutant or not if you respect their position in life."

"That’s something I will have to learn."

"Maybe you’ll have to find a new town. When you do, try to act normal and you’ll do okay."

"You are talking as though you do not expect to see me again."

"That’s Lee. She’s convinced you’re going away again. I think she’s right."

"I had not thought of it, but maybe you are right."

"I’ll miss you."

"I will not forget you."

I got my clothes out of the cupboard and quickly put them on. I opened the window and looked down. It was too far to jump. The other patients started talking and making suggestions. They were all on my side. I had not remembered they where there but they must have heard our conversation. Danny and the others were quickly tying the bed sheets together to make a long rope. It was a big adventure. When the escape rope was completed and tied to a bed, they threw it out the window and stood waiting for me to leave.

"Thank you," I said to them.

I kissed Danny and crawled out the window. My bullet wound hurt like boiling metal on a butterfly. The pain made me dizzy but I did not let it slow me. I was soon at the end of my rope hanging about three meters from the ground. I had to jump. My legs slammed pain up into my chest. I could feel blood coming from my leg wound. I wanted to scream but forced myself to silence.

No one had appeared to notice my arrival on the earth. Looking up at the window, I saw that the sheets had already disappeared. I lay on the ground for a while and massaged my aching shoulder.

"Go."

I looked up once more to see Danny’s face and my ex-roommates waving at me to move on. I smiled at them and struggled to my feet. I was thankful for mass myopia and apathy. There were many people on the street that could have seen me drop out of the window but no one appeared to care.

It was almost a torture to walk but it felt so good to be able to choose my own direction that I put up with the pain. Being in a cage was no place to live. I longed for fresh air and trees. I decided I would go to the island and try to make a plan for my future.
I stepped into a phone booth.

"Hello."

"Hi, my love."

"Bill. Are you all right?"

"Not bad. Almost excellent. Does anyone know who you are?"

"What do you mean?"

"Did you give them your address at the hospital?"

"No. I gave them my parent’s address."

"What did you tell the police."

"They told me I couldn’t leave the city until after the court trial."

"Do you want to go for a walk?

"Are you out?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"I did not like the food so I jumped out the window."

"Where do you want to meet?"

"Ferry."

"Okay."

"Make sure no one follows you."

"Don’t worry."

"Okay, bye."

As I meandered slowly down Yonge Street with my bleeding leg, I thought about Brian. I had no way of knowing if he was alive or dead. If he was alive, I had no way of contacting him unless they caught all the mutants and put us in a concentration camp for observation.

Maybe when the mutant scare was over, we would be able to look for each other. Until then, we would have to stay in hiding.

Most of the people on the street either seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere, or looked like they were a permanent fixture with no place to go and no reason to be. An old man looked like he was handing out change from his hat but when I went to take some he snapped at me as if I had violated his rights. He explained to me about what it was like to be too old to get a job and how he had no money and how he was kicked out of his apartment so they could renovate it and triple the rent so he had no place to live and how it made him mad that people send money to thieving television evangelists and overseas foundations that use up eighty percent of the money before any of the poor people see any scraps of food and how people drive around in hundred thousand dollar cars up and down this very street and do not give one goddam about the thousands of hungry people they step around every day.

I was saddened by his plight and my blind eye to the obvious situation but what help could I be? I was as poor as he was. I told him I was sorry and gave him fifty cents to try to buy off any guilt I might have felt.

"Thank you, my boy."

"Stay healthy."

When I finally arrived at the ferry docks, Kathy was already there sitting on a bench. My heart pounded with the anxious realization that a beautiful young woman was waiting, like a Sunday dinner or a virgin bride at the sacrificial alter, for me. It felt odd that there was another creature, on this fragile wet stone of hostile life, that cared to commune with me. I was terrified and elated. It would make more sense to me if no one even noticed my being. Although I did not wish it, it stuck me as more honest to be alone, entirely isolated form the rest of mankind. But a social animal needs contact with other members of the species to maintain a physical grip on the concrete world.

I found it difficult to direct my mind; I could not believe anything that came into my shattered head. I had violent visions of a woman being opened up with a big knife from her vagina to her throat, like cutting the belly open of a fish to clean it. I had visions of wild beasts tearing at soft flesh. I thought I could see vultures waiting to tear at my flesh. I wondered if the fight to exist and propagate life was an assault against the natural state of empty darkness. It was a chaotic fight against entropy. Being against nothingness. I could not decide which should reign but nothingness did not seem to have much to offer except an end to all the going on about what was little more than nothing.

The universe was just a short break from nothing, a something that could be so as to have the illusion of being, until the illusion ran its course and it was realised by all of being that it all added up to nothing, thus shattering the illusion to burst back into nothingness, out of time and space. Then, of course, since nothing was not a stable way to be, for how can nothing be, something would have to burst into being and end up as a strain on nothingness for billions of years or similar units until it again collapsed on its own lack of stability of being because of its basic nature of nothingness.

But it probably was not anything at all like that. There was probably some reason for existence, like to learn how to be through many trips through various lives to one day attain a well rounded and whole consciousness in tune with all of being, or to become a collective god so as to create a new universe to try once again when this one burned out. Or the old stand by: we are hear to praise God for making us one day when he was hung over from bad moonshine and decided it would be funny to make a retarded species that would have to struggle and fight and kill and watch television and pay taxes to survive.

There were endless possibilities but I could not believe any of them. Belief was madness.

"Hi."

"Hi, Kathy."

We looked at each other for a short time before we could react. I wondered if she was hesitant or uneasy or if it was my own disease I sensed. I often wondered if I tried to understand things too much. I might be finding things in people that were not there until I put them there with my seeing them there. It could be that stupid quantum cat problem.

"How are you doing, Bill?"

"I am not sure. A little lost. I might be doing better if I had a hug."

Kathy stood up and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. It was revitalising. Life seemed less vile when it was shared. I needed healing. If I could not develop a healthier attitude, I would have to turn myself in for extermination. I did not want to be part of the catalyst to destruction.

I tried earnestly to apply myself to the concrete world around me. The first thing I did was buy two tickets for our transport to the island.

"How did you get down here so fast?" I asked.

"Took a cap."

"That would do it."

"Do you know that your leg is bleeding."

"It is nothing serious."

We boarded the first available ferry and stood up at the front to watch the water smashing into the steel hull as the small craft made its way to Hanlen’s point. I pulled down Kathy’s sweatshirt enough to see her scar.

"That will not be too bad."

"It’s ugly."

"But you’re not; you more than make up for a small imperfection."

"You’re silly."

"Thanks."

"Did you want to kiss me?"

"Yes."

We held each other like two desperate teenage lovers hiding from the insecurities of the hard, cruel world. Nothing else was said until we were let off at the island and started walking.

"What happened to your face?"

"I will tell you. After our deranged friend hit me over the head with a heavy blunt object and knocked me to the ground, I managed to maintain a bit of consciousness to get up and kick the fucking bastard’s head as hard as I could. The knife he was trying to open you up with ended up in my leg as he fell backwards. I thought I was going to kill him until I felt I did not want to be a killer. It scared me. But I did not decide not to kill him until my feet were coming down on his chest. The next thing I knew, I was leaning over you, pulling the knife out of my leg and receiving airmail lead in my shoulder. I looked up to see angry apes in uniform, one with an accelerating big black boot destined for my aching head."

"The cop shot you?"

"I guess they though I was going to kill you. I can almost see how they might think that since I had just stomped on the other fellow and was holding a knife over you."

"That’s about as unlucky as you can get all in one night."

"Luckily they did not think I was a mutant, just a killer."

"That is pretty lucky. Only thing worse than a killer is a mutant killer."

"Or to be a dead mutant."

"What makes you a mutant."



by Joanne B. Washington

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