by Allyson Bird
“That was no way to treat a good woman, Jake, no way at all,” Geoff said, shaking his head and looking down at his own wedding ring. As he left, Geoff felt that he was being watched with rather more interest than was respectful at a funeral. He looked up and saw that Frances St. Germaine was looking at him in a funny sort of way, with a quizzical look. He repeated his words to the sheriff as he left the graveyard, and he glanced back at Frances.
“That would be no way to treat a good woman Jake, no way at all.”
No sooner was Vince locked up for cutting off his dead wife’s hands and feet (and sewing up her mouth), but he was thrust into yet another set of bizarre circumstances. Vince met Nurse Gladeye. (He had named her that as soon as he had set foot in the asylum property, on account of the fact that her pretty brown eyes seemed to look east then west, but not at the same time.) Here he was in Mount Sinai Asylum, given to the grateful people of Madison County with the capacity to keep over five hundred raving lunatics in varying degrees of lunacy. To be honest, most were in the state pen because of cost cutting measures: the doctors were expensive, so Mount Sinai only had about fifty inmates.
Nurse Gladeye (her real name was Penelope Maple), called for vast amounts of drugs just in case Vince gave her any problems. A portable case was handed to her containing almost every sedative known to man, and more besides. Penelope had her own reasons for wanting Vince Taylor malleable and quiet that night and it didn’t involve cocoa and sleeping.
She had her own set of special inmates that lived on Mallet Ward (lived being too generous a word to use as they barely survived), and she didn’t want them disturbed. On Sanderson Ward, soon-to-be-comatose-Vince—when Nurse Gladeye got round to him—thought he could hear the baying of a dog.
He stared at her; well—he tried to look her in one of her eyes, and then down at the case.
“What’s that?” He looked apprehensive.
“Nothing to worry your head about, young man.” Gladeye put an arm around his shoulder and gently guided him down the white corridor to a set of very shiny metal gates. The howling started again and Gladeye nodded sternly at an attendant by her side. The attendant went off to see what all the commotion was about.
“Now, young man, let’s get you settled and get you your supper.”
She licked her ruby red lips and Vince swore he saw her salivate at the same time. She wiped her mouth, smearing her red lipstick, then put the case down for a moment. She never let go of Vince once, and held him like he was some sort of prize rather than a mad appendage-cutter. How she found the door lock Vince didn’t know, considering she was holding him so tightly, but she managed to put the key in the small hole with great dexterity and then she turned it.
Vince felt a cold chill run down his spine and bile rose up in his throat, as if he had just taken a mouthful of Tennessee swampland. All the decay of the black, swamp bottom stuck to his tongue and came up through his clenched teeth. With the hissing sound of a coil of cottonmouths he threw up all over Gladeye who, from shock and repulsion, kicked him sharply—and effectively—in the crotch.
Between spitting out the vile, black bile and holding his balls—and between the ineffective groans of a man caught in a gator’s grip—he tried to fight off two attendants who appeared on the scene like screaming white banshees from the swamp.
“You can’t get away with that, aren’t there rules about that sort of thing?” he spluttered.
Gladeye’s gaze roved over the ceiling. “There are no rules that protect you in here, Vince Taylor, after what you did to your wife—no rules at all.”
That was all he needed. Of course there would be no rules for him. They would all have it out for him after what he did to Mary.
At least he had a cell to himself; it was a dirty cell, the only concession to cleanliness being new sheets and a new slop bucket—and a sink—no mirror though. Locked up and the key thrown away and all Vince could think about was whether the sheets really were clean or not. He sat down on the grey-and-darker-grey striped blanket and was at least thankful that they had put him in a cell on his own.
Within a minute he was a quivering wreck in the corner of the cell for there, on the corner of the bed, sat Mary. As real as if she had never been buried. All the stitches had been picked from her mouth:
“I was just about to say before you sewed my mouth shut, that I know who my killer is.”
“Jeez—Jesus, Mary, you just can’t be back again.”
“I can and I am,” Mary said, looking around the room with disdain. “No mirrors in here, Vince and I wanted to see how I was turning out…being dead and all.”
He could see how she was turning out and it wasn’t good at all. Her skin had taken on an even-more-marbled grey look, and he thought he could see the squirming of something moving under the skin near her mouth. It didn’t bear thinking about. And what came next made his recent bout of sickness look like baby puke on an angel’s bib. He thought he had been vilely sick; what Mary did now, was the most disgusting, the most hideous, heinous, down-right hostile thing he had ever seen her do in her life. (And on top of that he remembered she was dead.) She vomited on him—all over him. He wasn’t bathed in swamp slime here. (Well, if grave slime was swamp slime, he was.) There Vince was, sitting in the corner, covered with every fat maggot from Mary’s grave, every meat-eating worm, every insect that had ever chewed down to the bone. Mary was laughing and that was not all: Gladeye was standing at the doorway with a big smile.
Vince pulled the blanket off the bed as Mary stood up with only the smallest crack of the bones in her spine. Vince tried to wipe the slime from his face.
“Did you see that—did you see what she did?”
Nurse Gladeye turned her head at an odd angle to look at Mary.
“Come on Mary, let’s put you away for now, don’t want you scaring the rest of our family.”
Mary obeyed with a look of confusion as Gladeye stepped back and made way for her to pass from the room. Vince heard the key turn in the door and turned to the wash basin, placing his hands on the sides. He began to weep.
They left him there all night, and at daybreak the cell door opened and a fresh, young attendant stepped inside. He stared at the filth and beckoned for Vince to follow him. Vince rose wearily from his filthy sheets and was led to the shower block. He had heard all about shower blocks in prisons and loony bins. What now? he thought.
The hot water revived him, a little, and the strong-smelling soap washed the stench from his nose. Thankfully the shower block was empty and only the young attendant was there, who faintly reminded Vince of a distant cousin. The attendant looked like a young John Malkovich (before he got inside his own head).
Vince Taylor had no notion of just how Mary had risen from the dead again, or how she had got into Mount Sinai Asylum. What had Gladeye to do with anything? That crazy-assed woman should be locked up, but not with me, he thought. Why did Mary leave when she told her to? Mary had been the good wife, but she had never done anything he had wanted her to do for him; well, not below the waist anyhow. Why did she go when Gladeye told her to?
Once out of the shower and into clean inmates clothes Vince was escorted back to a different cell down the row. He could see a cleaning squad enter room 133 and he was relieved he wasn’t going back there. Vince was still shaking; he felt cleaner now, but it didn’t stop him from putting his hands through his hair and feeling in his ears again, just in case. He had checked all the other orifices at least twice in the shower. He sat down on the bed to contemplate his dire situation.
Milo was the young attendant’s name. Considering the asylum could hold so many inmates Vince was surprised to learn, from Milo, that there were only six other inmates in his wing. They were all there for crimes beyond comprehension.
Milo’s calm and apparently docile nature lolled Vince into a state of passivity that bordered on sleep. Milo sat down on the bed next to Vince. His deadpan pale face, short black hair, and shy nature made Vince wonder if the
orderly had ever heard of sunbathing, surfing, and watching scantily clad girls in tweenie-bikinis—Vince studied the serious face again—perhaps not. He looked like he should join Frances St. Germaine and become an undertaker, or maybe a corpse.
“Who else is banged up in this wing then?”
Milo took sudden, great delight in the revelation.
“There’s Slouch, he killed his father after his dad wouldn’t let him borrow his Buick. Slink, who did for every dog in Ferry Creek and ate them. I’m a cat lover myself. There’s Adler—got to killing people who could play jazz better than him. Then Winster, Whaler, and now you.”
“What about Winster and Whaler?”
“Winster set about his business copying the Boston Strangler but he was from Cleveland, and Whaler put poison in cans of beer and killed sixty people.”
Vince sat back on the grey blanket. “So they’re all killers then?”
“And have you got a problem with that, Vince?”
“One fucking big problem—I’m locked up with a load of mutt-murdering, poisoning-bastard, copy-cat-killing psychos and I hate jazz too.”
“Well, I can say I’ve had many conversations with these gentlemen, and they have all been pretty civil to me.”
“You’re not female?”
“No, I most definitely am not.”
“You’re not related to any of them?”
“No.”
“Do you like jazz?”
“Er—no.”
“Obviously you’re not a dog, and you look like you don’t drink beer. What’ve you got to worry about?”
“And you’re point is, Vince? I thought you’d probably get on with Winster with what he did to the fairer sex.”
“Jesus—Milo! Do you think I wanted to do what I did to my wife? After all—she was already dead.”
“Would you like to talk about that, Vince?”
“Who suddenly turned you into a psychiatrist then?”
“I just thought—I just thought….” replied Milo.
“You do too much thinking.”
Milo fiddled with the keys in his hand. “You know, I think it took a great deal of courage to do what you did.”
“Get out Milo. I ain’t proud of what I did to Mary and I don’t need no hero worship, and by the way what nickname have you given me?”
“I haven’t as yet but was thinking of Franken—”
Before he could finish Vince dragged him off the bed, opened the unlocked door, and stuck his boot up Milo’s ass. Vince pointed at the door, at Milo, then at the lock, indicating what Milo should do, before he did any more damage.
The six inmates on Sanderson Ward were kept away from one another, especially at shower time. Milo would accompany Vince to the cubicle and step aside to give him some privacy. In fact he usually waited for him quite patiently, holding Vince’s towel; Vince took his time. He let the hot water pour over his shoulders and down his back. The steam rose to the ceiling, trying to escape, just as he should be doing. In the three days he had been there he had hardly heard a sound from the other inmates. Perhaps they were all too drugged, which made him wonder what Gladeye had in mind for him and why it had not happened yet.
Sometimes he heard the occasional drift of jazz music down the corridor, or a soft knocking on the door. At other times he thought he heard Mary’s voice and yet he still had not been seen by any doctor to say he was mad. Well—he must be—to do what he did to Mary.
Frankenstein.
Milo was going to call him Frankenstein, but Vince knew that he was no doctor who had made a monster from dug-up body parts. He was Vince Taylor, a man just trying to get a little peace and quiet.
Milo was quiet again too, today. Yesterday, Vince had turned around to find Milo unusually close to his shoulder, as if he was trying to sniff him. Today Milo kept to a reasonable arm’s length and looked a little timid.
“I’ve left you some books on the bed,” said Milo in a hushed tone. He backed out of the cell as if he had already disturbed Vince’s reading. The door clunked shut.
Milo had put three books on the grey blanket. Vince picked the first one up, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
“Piss—taker,” he muttered.
The next was The Green River Murders, still in the dust jacket but well thumbed. “Thinks I’m starting an apprenticeship now.” The last book was small and dainty, with a dull red cover and gold edging. He read the title. The Divine Comedy by Dante. Good. He had no idea who the fellow Dante was, but he liked the sound of the title and settled down to read with the faint strains of Elvis coming from down the corridor. An hour later he began to nod off and fell into a troubled sleep.
It seemed to Vince that he had only been asleep for a fraction of a second, but the dream was real enough. He dreamt of a dark, dismal wood. He was struggling up a hill. Before him lay three terrible beasts—a leopard, a lion, and a wolf. The wolf was coming down the path towards him, saliva dripping from its mouth in that hungry kind of way that dogs do. But this was no dog, just the biggest fucking thing Vince had ever seen, twice as tall as himself and twice…no, make that a thousand times uglier. As it drew closer Vince backed up: not too much, mind, because he didn’t want the wolf, the leopard or the blasted lion to think he was afraid. No, not Vince Taylor. He wasn’t fucking afraid of anything (except dead Mary and Nurse Gladeye.)
The wolf crept closer. Vince backed up some more. The wolf came even closer. Again, Vince backed up, and then he could see amid the dark shadows that the wolf had something in its mouth. Vince froze; the wolf dropped something at his feet—a hand—and what’s more, it was Mary’s left hand. Vince recognised it from the gold and silver wedding ring, third finger. The wolf merely sat there on its haunches and smiled. Next thing Vince knew, there was Milo with this huge wolf-thing, stroking it and the leopard and lion were strolling round and jumping up at him like two fairground puppies (the leopard and lion were much smaller than the colossal wolf, so that was all right then).
Milo picked up the grisly remains of his wife’s hand and walked off with all animals in tow up the hill, into the dark woods. Now, what was that all about? Vince turned on his heel and scooted down the pathway away from those dark woods. He stumbled in his nightmare and woke himself up.
He struggled to open his eyes. The book had fallen to the floor. Vince sat up and as he did so his hand slipped under the pillow. He felt something cold and pulled it out. The object was not in his hand long enough to leave a smear of blood or anything. He was horrified and began bouncing the thing from hand to hand—then he finally threw it against the wall. It wasn’t in his hand long enough, no—but just long enough to leave scratches on his skin—five deep scratch marks.
The door creaked and Milo stepped over Mary’s hand, gold and silver wedding ring and all, but turned his nose up in disgust, and deposited a tray of porridge on Vince’s lap.
“You put that there, Milo. You—wormtail shit, didn’t you?” The tray was shaking on Vince’s lap.
“I don’t think so, not my style you see. More Gladeye’s thing, if you ask me.”
“Well. I’m not asking I’m telling. It was you Milo, you shit.”
“Would the person who is considerate enough to bring you breakfast in bed be putting that under your pillow?”
Vince threw the tray aside, jumped up and pinned Milo against the wall. “If you didn’t put it there how did you know it was under my pillow? Crud. How?”
Milo spluttered, indicating he needed to speak. Vince relented, a little.
“Things are always found under the pillow; roses, love letters, teeth. For glory’s sake the tooth fairy puts stuff there!”
Vince slammed him again. “Admit it, you’re a liar—a damned liar!” Then he let go.
Milo choked and spluttered again. “D-Damned?... I think the only one who is damned is you, Vince Taylor. After all, I’m not the man who sewed his own wife’s mouth up, not to mention what happened to her hands—and feet. If anyone is going to Hell—” Milo
pointed at the book, “it’s you—you’re suffering, in fact if you don’t repent you’ll stay here. No little side trips for you, no roundabout course of retribution, straight in and no—will he go to purgatory first? Straight in—no toll charge, no forgiveness, no nothing! Except burning in the eternal fires of Hell. No Elysian field, no rejoicing with your loved ones (because of what you did to her), just the eternal damnation in the eternal fires of—”
“You said that already.” Vince kicked him hard in the mouth—it seemed the only good way to shut up his ranting.
Vince heard a noise behind him: just before the lights went out for the second time in the last twelve hours.
On wakening, he felt drowsy and was loathe to open his eyes. Perhaps nurse Gladeye had given himself something from her magic bag? He had a crashing headache. He saw Milo sitting on the end of his bed, nursing a buggered lip, with his eyes full of reproach and yes, pity.
“You can still make it out one day—if you would only embrace the possibility that what you did was very, very wrong.”
“I know I did wrong,” replied Vince.
“Do you really mean that, Vincent?”
Vince couldn’t work this guy out. One minute, for God’s sake, he seemed to admire what Vince had done to his wife, the next, Milo condemned him.
“No one ever calls me Vincent, except Mary and my mother. D’you hear that, Milo?”
“Yes, Vincent. I mean Vince. Did you read any of the books?” Milo asked.
“Yes, that Divine Comedy, but it didn’t make me laugh. I just fell asleep and had the worst goddamn nightmare.”
“Really, Vince, what sort of nightmare?”
“One about a blasted wolf, twice the size of me or more.”
“And was there a lion and a leopard there too, Vince?”
“What?”
“The Divine Comedy is an allegorical tale, it isn’t meant to be funny.”
“You’re right about that, it ain’t funny at all. What’s with you? Yesterday you said it took a lot of courage to do what I did.”