I unlocked the door, and opened the shed. I turned on the light, and there was a sign on the snow blower that said "Broken. Do not Use."
I stared at the snow blower, knowing damned well it wasn’t broken. I maintained all the equipment. I had just greased the blower and changed the plugs in it a month ago. I had just used it three days previous. There was no fucking way in hell it was broken.
I tore the sign off from it, and gave the starter cord a mighty yank. The engine turned over easily. Way too fucking easily. I popped the cover off the top of the engine, and saw the spark plug had been removed.
I stared, wondering why the fuck my father had gone and pulled the spark plug. I poked around for several minutes, trying to find the old spark plug I had just replaced, but apparently, he had taken that one as well.
I sighed, and glanced at my watch. I had about one hour before the school bus showed up. I grabbed the snow shovel, and trudged back outside. I managed to clear the front porch, the walkway, from the front porch, and the driveway out to the road. I wasn’t able to clear the entire back porch, but I did manage to catch the bus.
When I got home from school, I finished clearing the snow off the back porch. I also cleared the minor drifting that had occurred on the edge of the driveway while I was at school.
Once I was inside the house, my father was in a dangerous mood. Everyone steered clear of him. I went to my bedroom and worked on homework until it was dinnertime.
Dinner was tense. Nobody said a word, and everyone ate in a rush. My father retired to the living room, and my sister and mother started clearing dishes. I tried to ask my mom what the problem was, but she just shook her head and disappeared into the kitchen. Oh, joy. Here we go. Might as well take it head on, mother fucker.
I sighed, and headed for the living room.
I collapsed on the couch, and stared at the TV while I waited for my father to speak. It was almost twenty minutes before he said a word.
"Make it to school on time?"
I almost sighed, and stopped myself. "Yes."
"Clear the snow this morning?"
"As much as I could."
He nodded, and stared at the TV for a while.
My mother came in, and sat down on the couch. She started reading a magazine.
"Didn’t you promise me that you would have it done before school?"
I had anticipated this question. You could see it coming a mile away. Not that I would be able to give the right answer. I could feel the anger growing. I kept it in check. "Yes, I did. I didn’t know that the snow blower was broken. So I cleared as much as I could by hand."
"Don’t you think that clearing the snow includes the back porch?"
I glanced at my mother. She was ignoring this conversation. At that moment, I wondered why she put up with him.
I clamped down on my anger again, and stared at the TV. "I cleared as much of the back porch as I could. I finished it when I got home from school." I sat silent for a few moments. I asked a question before I could stop myself. "What’s wrong with the snow-blower?"
He smiled at me. "Nothing, now. I fixed it."
I nodded. "So what was wrong with it?"
His smile widened. "Needed a spark plug."
I felt my temper growing again. I was being set up, and I loathed him completely at that moment. I had just changed the spark plug several weeks ago. "What was wrong with the old one?"
"Gapped wrong."
Fuck if it was. I knew how to gap a goddamned spark plug. It isn’t fucking rocket science. There was nothing wrong with it this morning. There was nothing wrong now. I was being set up. Fine, we’ll ride this one out. I could feel the anger within me, but for once, I felt resistance. Underneath the anger was a solid wall. I sat contemplating it, while no emotion showed on my face.
"So, doesn’t clearing the snow also entail clearing the back porch?"
That solid wall I felt within myself was resolve. I was not going to give in to him this time. I didn’t give a shit. I was being set up and knocked down in some stupid little game he wanted to play.
I restrained a smile. "Yes, it does."
He nodded. "And you didn’t clear it."
"No I didn’t." I hoped the smile stayed out of my eyes. I was struggling to keep all traces of it off my face.
"So you lied to me when you promised that you would have the snow cleared."
"No I didn’t."
He looked at me blankly for a moment. He wasn’t expecting that answer. He sat up in his chair, and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
"You mind repeating that?"
I glanced at my mother. She was looking at us guardedly over the edge of the magazine.
"I didn’t know the snow-blower was broken when I promised that."
"So you broke your promise, but that’s not a lie?"
I looked at him evenly. "No, it is not. I used the shovel instead, and cleared as much as I could before school. I thought missing school would be irresponsible, so I finished it after school."
He stood up from his chair, and grabbed me out of the chair. He threw me, and I stumbled across the room and landed in front of the television set.
My mother was still watching us over the edge of the magazine. I rolled over, and sat up.
"You broke a promise, and that’s not lying, you worthless little fuck?"
"I didn’t lie to you."
He walked over, and crouched down on the carpet. "Say that again, I dare you."
I felt my resolve hardening. Fuck him. "I didn’t lie to you."
"How the fuck is breaking a promise not a lie?" He backhanded me, and my head rocked backwards.
I looked straight at him, and refused to look away. I saw my mother set down the magazine. She was apparently concerned. "I didn’t lie to you. I had no idea there was a problem with the snow blower."
"Well, if you’d take better care of things around here, you’d have known. You always do shit half-assed. I thought you’d outgrown this lying stage by now." He leaned in close, his voice barely a whisper. "You broke your promise, so you lied to me."
I stared directly into his eyes. "I did not lie."
He backhanded me again, and I could taste blood. His voice lowered even further. It was dangerously low. "You lied."
My eyes never left his, but my resolve was not weakening. My mother stood up. My father never looked away from me, but held up his hand to stop her and growled, "Stay out of this."
I simply looked at him steadily. I understood I should have been deathly afraid. He was beyond furious, but I just did not care. "I did not lie."
He grabbed my throat, and throttled me. I let him. I didn’t fight. I just stared at him, my lungs burning. "You’ll admit you lied or I’ll strangle you right here in front of the goddamned TV."
My mother grabbed him, and tried to haul him off me. She managed to tip him off balance, and together they tumbled backwards. As I gasped for breath, my father rolled over and got onto his knees.
As he reached back to backhand my mother, I managed to croak, "I guess I lied."
That was the one thing that could break my resolve. I was not going to watch my mother get beaten to protect me. I did not want to be protected, and in that moment, I resented her very deeply, but that’s irony, isn’t it? Her love for me forced her to act in a dangerous and desperate situation. That same love forced me to bow to his will.
He didn’t break me.
My mother did.
He turned towards me, smiling sweetly. "I’ll have to think about your punishment."
He stood up, and walked over to his chair. He sat down, and watched TV.
My mother looked at me sadly.
After a few minutes, shell shocked, I walked out of the living room, and up into my room. I couldn’t believe that as a graduate of the School of Infinite Patience and Control, I had weakened so easily. Was it weakness, or was it that I was trapped in the end? After a half-hour of chasing this logic merrily around in a circle inside my hea
d, I stood up with finality. Perhaps endurance was never enough.
I opened my closet, which smelled vaguely of piss despite the fact that it had been a long time since I had graduated the School of Infinite Patience and Control. I pulled down my gun case that carried my .410, and a box of shells.
I loaded a single slug into the breach, and placed the butt of the shotgun on the floor. For those that have never contemplated the finer points, some tips. Suicide via shotgun is much harder than it looks. It’s awkward as hell. The shot’s dicey to start with; you want the slug to actually hit the medulla oblongata or at least sever the spine at the base of your brain at the back of your throat in order to maximize the probability of a quick kill. Otherwise, you may just be performing a rather crude frontal lobotomy if you just shoot the roof of your mouth. The point is a quick death, not to mangle the shit out of yourself and survive.
So your head is tilted downward, your teeth on the gun barrel, with the sick taste of oily gun lubricant in your mouth, cold blued steel on your tongue and roof of your mouth, meanwhile you’re fighting a gag reflex. You have to stretch awkwardly down and try to push the trigger with your violently shaking finger, as tears streak down your face. You can hear your sister’s radio playing the current top forty as she’s working on her homework. You can hear the TV downstairs. Life goes on, but for you, it’s about to end.
And realize, that while your family will grieve, life will resume for them too. Not immediately, but slowly, they will pick up the pieces, but eventually they’ll pack up your belongings, and six months or a year from now, you’ll be no more than a memory and a few pictures and other mementos left scattered throughout the house.
Part of you wonders if your tears will rust the gun barrel, and as you press on the trigger, nothing happens. You press harder, and then you stand up, realizing that you never clicked off the safety. How’s that for a sign that maybe this ain’t such a hot fucking idea?
You shudder, and put the gun on the bed.
That was my first suicide attempt, but no one will hear about it for years.
The Forsaken Soul
"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity." ― Edgar Allan Poe
The doc looked at me closely. I sat in the wheel chair, watching him in return. He nodded to the nurse’s aide, and she left quietly, closing the door.
He looked down, and shuffled some papers. "Good morning."
"Morning."
"I’m Doctor Parson."
I nodded.
"What’s your name?"
I pointed at the file. "Ryan Turner. I would think you would already know that."
Joe Cool told me to knock it the fuck off. I ignored him.
The doc smiled patiently. "Do you know why you are here?"
I started to point toward the file again, and the doctor rolled his eyes. I clamped my mouth shut. Joe and SOB told me to cooperate. Blind stubbornness may be entertaining, but it was not going to help me at all. I asked those two fucks what the loony tuner here would think about the two of them and their little conversations inside my head. They shut the fuck up.
I sighed. "Sorry doc. You are just doing a job, and I am being stubborn just for the fuck of it. I have had a rough go of it recently. Let’s start over. I am about to be charged with some heinous crimes, and you are going to evaluate my mental condition. Determine my frame of mind, etc et al." I gave him the current date, and told him who the sitting president was, and gave him my full name again.
He nodded thoughtfully. "Not your first evaluation, since you seem to know the drill." He dropped the pen, and leaned back in the chair.
I pointed at the file. "As you are probably already aware, I have a history of mental illness. Clinical depression, fugue states. History of suicide attempts. Personality disorder, not otherwise specified. Lousy childhood. Daddy didn’t love me, mommy was an enabler, so I was fucked from the get go."
He nodded. "So what do you expect of me here?"
I thought for a minute. I wanted to be stubborn. I wanted to be uncooperative. "Well, doc, I expected the usual drill. Test my ability to follow an object…" I held up my index finger on my good hand, and traced a square in front of me while following my eyes.
I dropped my hand. "Maybe test my motor coordination, but this sling might interfere a bit. Then test my memory and processing faculties. You know, give me three unrelated objects to remember. Pencil, orange, shoe. Then ask me a bunch of logical type questions."
"Like what?"
"Eh, usually start out with some math. Four times eight equals thirty-two. Count backward by sevens from one hundred. One hundred, ninety three, eighty six, seventy nine, seventy two, sixty five, etc. Maybe say the alphabet skipping every other letter. A, C, E, G, I, K, M, etc. Then a diversion, like maybe what I think is causing high gas prices. Unrest in the Middle East, China as a growing economic power. Then you want the three objects to see if I retained them in memory. Orange, shoe, pencil. I probably have them out of order, but no big deal. Then you make some notes. Then you ask about my medical history, psychological treatments, upbringing, etc. Then you ask about the time in question, what was going on, how I was feeling, etc. You slide in some tricky questions along the way, see if maybe I am getting subliminal messages from the toaster or TV or something. You nod thoughtfully. You make some notes. Then you ask some hypothetical situational questions; see if I can make moral judgments between right and wrong. I go back to my room; you write a report that determines my state of mind at the time in question. That’s about it, isn’t it?"
The doc grabbed his pen, and twiddled with it thoughtfully. "Yes, that’s the usual drill."
He stared at me for a few minutes. "So, since you know the drill so well, and you are obviously very bright, you could answer these questions in any way that you see fit. For example, if you want me to think you were nuts on the night in question, you could convince me of the fact, couldn’t you?"
I blinked. "Probably."
He flipped through the file. "You’ve been an in-patient before. So you could probably convince me you are currently experiencing a paranoid schizophrenic episode, couldn’t you, if you wanted to?"
"Probably. Would be harder to convince you of the fact though. Given my history, and the MMPI results, you would probably have trouble buying that fact. It wouldn’t be my first choice if I wanted to skew your report."
"Well, isn’t an insanity defense in your best interests?"
"Only if I’m guilty of what I am being charged with."
"So you didn’t do it?"
I sighed. "All I know is that I am under arrest for resisting arrest, but I have not been arraigned on anything yet. That and they keep asking me if I know anything about the kids. The only thing I know is what I saw on the news before I was arrested."
"So, you can’t tell me where we can find the kids?"
I sighed, exasperated. "No, I do not know what happened to them, or where they are."
"They think you do. They think you’re responsible. Is it a lost memory, a fugue state that you had, maybe?"
He had just verbalized my biggest fear. I controlled my reaction, and kept my voice even. "No. It has nothing to do with me."
"You seem awfully certain. Don’t you question whether you are capable?"
I looked away for a second, thinking, before looking back. "Doc, I’ve never hurt someone before. I can’t imagine why I would do so, even if I couldn’t remember afterwards."
He nodded, chewing his pen for a moment, and then made some notes.
"So, back to an insanity defense. If you were going to convince me that you were insane at the time, what would you try?"
"Paint a picture of stress. Easy to do. The reason for depressive episodes are as common as a housefly and about as boring. Complain about finances, marital problems, and trouble at work. Report trouble sleeping. That’s easy to back up with the nightmares. Complain about blank spots, I have a history of fugue states, which you’ve already mentioned. Play up the p
ersonality disorder, claim psychotic tendencies. Inability to sympathize with others. Tell you stories like I used to tear wings off flies when I was a kid. Makes your job easy. You can tie it all in with my mental health history, and decide I was having a dissociative episode at the time. Hard to prove otherwise. Fits together like a nice, simple puzzle. The depression thing would be a nice easy slow pitch that you could hit without much thought. Mania, schizophrenia? Not indicated. You’d see through that bluff."
He nodded. "Yeah, I see how I could buy that. However, you didn’t do that with me today. Why not?"
I thought about it a minute. "One, I could have fucked it up and you might have seen through it. Two, you are just doing a job. Three, I didn’t do it. That’s the biggest reason. I don’t need an insanity defense."
"Word is, your case is a slam dunk. An insanity defense might have helped."
"Only if I did it. If I plead insanity, I admit to having done it as a defense. I didn’t do it."
"Do you think you could have done it?"
There it was again. The uncertainty that I was hiding. I stared at the wall. "Well, until somebody tells me what exactly happened and why they think I did it, I’ll have to go with ‘Fuck if I know’."
"Well, Ryan, I think we are pretty much done here. What do you think my report is going to say?"
"Pretty standard. Review of history. Summary of today’s discussion. Conclusion will be that although I have a history of mental illness, and still have problems, I was of sound mind and knew the difference between right and wrong. So tell me doc, you think I did it?"
He looked at me, and then looked at the desk. He started to say something, and then stopped. "It’s not my job to figure that out."
I shrugged, and he rang for an orderly/guard.
~~~~~~ *LP* ~~~~~~
My lawyer, Rob Stevens, tossed his briefcase on the windowsill, and sat down. "So, how’d it go this morning with the psychological evaluation?"
"Interesting."
"Think you are sane?"
I shrugged. "As far as the judicial system will be concerned."
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