Shadowplays

by W. D. Gagliani

  Then he stumbled back to help the patient whose fingers were about to strike the bell once again.

  3

  It just wasn’t fucking possible.

  Xavier had sent the idiot on his way with his stupid magazines and rushed back to the end of the stacks.

  No music, no glowing light, no pervert raping a woman.

  4

  Xavier sweated through the remainder of his day, measuring. Lacking concentration, he found himself constantly forced to start over. Each range resembled the others. He kept count religiously at first, but halfway through a range he would catch himself staring at the books, suddenly unable to remember if he had counted out a ten-foot length or not, and whether he had clicked the counter. He stopped in confusion so often that he considered fudging the results. But no, if this was Fedderman’s test and he already knew the answer, then lying would ruin his status.

  He took a break before his assigned lunch period, hoping to refocus his wandering mind.

  But the waltz replayed in his head, crazed and distorted, bringing about another pinpoint headache. The music’s pitch seemed to change, but Xavier could no longer remember if it had or if he only remembered it so. Either way, he faced the rear of the room with anxiety, wondering if he would hear the music again, and asking himself what he would do. His hands trembled as he manipulated the ribbon and counter, and he gave them up gratefully to eat the two dry bologna sandwiches and milk packed for him by the kitchen staff - working, he was now entitled to a “bag” lunch.

  The afternoon dragged on without incident, but he continued to see the gray-haired man brutalizing the cringing, crying woman.

  Returning to his ward after work, he prepared for the night’s activities.

  After the blank-eyed staff members cleared dinner trays from cafeteria and bedsides, injections and pills were administered by musclebound orderlies and scowling nurses. Then his ward was locked down. Xavier lay in bed, tense, awaiting the sounds.

  Not long after, feet shuffled as the dance resumed, as patients sought each other’s beds and sexual release of all kinds. He heard squeals, muffled screams, panting, giggling, the occasional slap or fist smack, and the crying. Always the crying. He wondered how many were the victimizers. He wondered again how long it would be before someone decided his face was handsome, or his body desirable. He held the sharpened pencil in his hand.

  He would not succumb. He would not be victimized by the Night People.

  He wondered, as he heard the sounds of violent rape and torture, if what he’d witnessed at the back of the library was part of the pattern here. He tried to squelch it, but the music played on and on in his head. He caught himself dozing and willed himself awake, his eyes leaden and his breathing rapid.

  Nearby, a strangled cry indicated yet another penetration,

  another submission, another personal invasion. Xavier cried, and the tears soaked his pillow like soft summer rain.

  5

  Morning brought a therapy session with Dr. Howard Kohner, Fedderman’s disciple and subordinate. Xavier had spoken to Kohner during a half-dozen such therapy sessions, in which Xavier’s thoughts and dreams were minutely investigated. Xavier wondered why Kohner never wanted to talk about his nightmares.

  “Nightmares are nothing but dreams strung on a negative energy framework,” Kohner had said once, dismissively. Xavier had no idea what he meant. “What we normally describe as a nightmare is nothing other than an image of self-knowledge wrapped up in our own negative energy and served up as reality within a fantasy context.”

  Today Xavier wanted to scream: You don’t have a clue what reality and fantasy are, you sonofabitch, until you sit where I’m sitting right now and hear what I hear at night.

  Or see what I saw in the library.

  Kohner expounded on the connection between dream and waking states, eventually bringing the one-sided conversation back to Xavier’s case.

  “You seem to be making much progress here,” he said, gazing at Xavier over his half-glasses. His shark’s mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth split in a disturbing grin. “Dr. Fedderman’s told me about your new position. I’m hopeful it will help you avoid the kind of incident which resulted in your present, er, stay here at the Institute.”

  Xavier had only the vaguest recollection of the incident, but he would forever be considered unstable by anyone who knew.

  “As you know,” Kohner continued, “we hope therapy will help you discover the roots of your problem and overcome them. Our course of therapy is specifically designed to-”

  Xavier heard the sine-wave rhythm of Kohner’s voice. It joined the gentle up-and-down, ebb-and-flow rhythm of his thoughts and the two synchronized and departed.

  His fist beat the day’s first woman until she stopped whimpering, blood trickling from her nose. Her bruised, fear-filled eyes shit tears that ran into the blood. With little preamble, he ripped the hospital gown from her torso and exposed her young woman’s breasts, the tiny nipples gnarled and inverted like elephant skin. He wanted those nipples erect, but he couldn’t beat desire into them, so instead he grabbed one between his thumb and forefinger and pinched brutally until she squealed, sliding to the floor below him. He snatched at the soft breast, his long fingernails digging into her flesh, bringing more squeals. “Verdammte Sklavin!” he screamed into her face. He tore the remainder of the gown from her and lowered his trousers, making sure first to have the pistol in his hand. He spread her thighs with the gun barrel, then mounted her and positioned himself so as to drive his throbbing erection into her folds. The muzzle resting on her forehead to silence her, he thrust cruelly into her dryness until he climaxed, spurting his thin semen over her loins and stomach. He stood, threw the ripped gown at her, and raised the gun as if to hit her, laughing as she cringed away. His boot forced her to scoot toward the door, where someone dragged her out. He checked his watch. It was almost time for the next patient. He would begin her therapy in a slightly different manner…

  When Xavier awoke with a start, the doctor had wound down and seemed not to notice. “Let us continue next session. I think we’re already making measurable progress.”

  Xavier nodded and mumbled, still feeling the echo of an erection in the folds of his trousers, and edged toward the door.

  Kohner smiled his shark’s smile.

  When Xavier burst out of the doctor’s office, he caught Kohner’s secretary and the head nurse, Miss Donovan, huddled over the wood-grained intercom box.

  He stared at them as he walked past, their eyes blazing back into his. As the door closed behind him, he heard their whispers.

  6

  His session had forced a late opening, so he helped two patients find a chess book and a fashion magazine (but he knew its true purpose). When he filed the McBee cards in the Circulation box, he strained his ears. No music. Thank God. He collected his tools from the drawer and resumed from where he had stopped yesterday. Before the music. Before…

  He stretched the ribbon, worked out a kink, then began from the next range’s left-most section. His knowing hands measured and recorded automatically, while his mind flew to the session. What had Kohner said while Xavier dozed?

  Xavier remembered the dream he’d had - nightmare? after Kohner, he wasn’t even sure what a nightmare was - wondering. He wasn’t watching merely the action, he was the man who raped the women in a long succession. How did he know? He wasn’t sure. But did the therapy help him forget, or remember?

  As he measured, he felt his mind lulled into another rhythm. An hour dropped away from him like unwanted ballast, and then a sharp pain sliced into the back of his head, a filleting knife’s flexible blade probing through the coils in his brain.

  He dropped the counter and ribbon, leaning into the shelves to keep himself from falling.

  A Strauss waltz filtered back to him, softly at first, then increasing in volume until it echoed in his brain pan, a distorted calliope.

  When he could open his eyes, he headed down the main a
isle. He knew where his feet led him, almost like a duty. He wanted to cover his ears, to dispel the crazy carnival sound of the waltz or muffle its scalpel probing.

  From his previous vantage point, again peering between rows of books shelved at the back of the library, Xavier squinted the scene into focus. There was the man in gray, shirt unbuttoned, head thrown back in abandon, grunting pig-like as he rocked. Xavier craned his neck and he saw the man’s victim - a naked woman strapped face down to a gurney, her legs held spread-eagled. Her piteous sounds muffled by a leather gag brutally strapped over her ragged hair provided harmony to the man’s grunts.

  First filled with lust at the sight of the man’s engorged penis ravaging the woman’s anal cavity, Xavier then saw the blood and retched. The man in gray held a pistol to the back of the woman’s head. As his climax approached and his motions increased in intensity, he drove the barrel into her neck harder. Suddenly a shot rang out, nearly covered by the waltz, and the man screamed in ecstasy. Caught in his own web of guilty participation, Xavier’s breakfast spewed acidly, unexpectedly, from his lips.

  Blood spattered the floor before the gurney and the woman’s head flattened like a burst balloon on the red-drenched little pillow, her cries cut off as the man continued his ghastly exercise in brutality.

  Xavier watched the vomit trickle down his shirt front. His teeth felt gritty and sour. The music had begun to skip.

  “Der Plattenspieler! Hans, kommen Sie her!” the man in gray barked. The door opened and another gray-clad man entered at a run, ignoring the woman on the gurney but rushing to fix the stuck record on the gramophone. The hellish waltz began again after a squawk.

  Xavier heard the words and knew they were foreign, but his brain translated them with startling knowledge.

  “Get rid of this meat, Hans! I have to change rooms now, before the next appointment.”

  “Jawohl!” Yessir.

  “And have them clean up this mess as soon as possible. I will want this room again later today.”

  “Jawohl!”

  The gray-clad man stood and straightened his clothes, hitching his trousers and rebuttoning his shirt. It was a military tunic! The insignia, the pistol’s shape, the uniform - all were familiar.

  Xavier couldn’t let these men see or hear him. If the institute fronted a sex and sadism ring, what would happen to him? He turned away while the officer lit a thin cigarette, puffing contentedly as the subordinate ushered in several men in hospital gowns - patients? - who shuffled in to begin the clean-up. He had to alert Dr. Fedderman about what was happening in the library.

  But what if Fedderman himself were part of it? Then what?

  Didn’t anyone hear the loud music? But he knew the muffling qualities of books ranked in never-ending rows of paper and leather and glue. Why, he had barely heard it himself from his end of the room. He glanced down. His vomit had splashed the carpeting, but the dark tone covered it.

  He peered through the gap in the books again, his head lightening, almost losing his balance. His feet leaden, his legs mushy. The music still twirled hellishly like a runaway carnival organ, but it faded rapidly as all the men - the uniformed and the shambling, slave-like cleaners - also turned suddenly faint and disappeared.

  “Jesus!” Xavier swore. There was only dark space now where the woman had been tortured and shot.

  There was nothing there at all.

  7

  Stunned, he turned and almost collided with a woman who had snuck up silently beside him.

  “What-” he gasped. “What are you doing here?”

  “Watching. Like you.” Her voice was a distant echo.

  “I wasn’t only watching. I’m going to report what’s happening here.”

  She barked a laugh. “It’s much too late.”

  “Who are you?”

  “It does not matter anymore. I was one of them.”

  She appeared healthy, unhurt. Until he saw the scar tissue encircling her neck, as if it had been garroted.

  “What’s been going on here?” he asked, whispering.

  She turned and almost floated away.

  “Hey!” he said, but she turned and beckoned. He followed, to a section of books in the center of the history section. “I asked you a question!”

  She nodded, pointing.

  He moved closer to where she indicated on the shelf. A book, bound in crumbling maroon leather.

  “Here is what we wrote. I do not know why or how it came here, but this is the record.”

  He reached for the book. “Record of what?” he asked.

  When she didn’t answer, he turned. She was gone.

  Jesus! If I mention any of this they’re going to strap me down and put electrodes on my temples.

  Intrigued, he took the book back to the safe brightness of the fluorescent lighting.

  Opening the dusty cover, he read the first of many handwritten notes. He lost track of time, and no one helped him find it again.

  8

  The next day he was ready.

  As soon as the waltz assaulted his temples with its spike-like intensity, he made his way to the library’s rear.

  Quiet as a ghost.

  He chuckled. What a surprise this would be. He felt his pocket. Everything accounted for. As he approached, he heard the gruff, commanding voice.

  “Saugen mich, du verdammte Schweine! Saugen mich!”

  Xavier crept closer, but then swung around the last range rather than behind it. Now the gray-uniformed man and his latest victim were before him.

  The book held the stories, in various handwritings, of the women who had passed through these rooms. The tortures, sexual and physical, psychological, that he had put them through. Always someone else had added paragraphs - women who survived one, two, five meetings with him, the Butcher. Who knew their time would come, their next session might be their last. Women who despised him and who plotted against him, but also knew they could never escape. “He is truly a Butcher,” one woman’s shaky hand had written, “and he has butchered many from our village. I fear I am next.” The following entry was in a different hand.

  Xavier had wept as he read the spidery lines, some slanted one way and some the other. The book formed a testament to the human will to survive, to leave a mark, a record.

  Now Xavier had finished weeping.

  Before him, the uniformed man - the Butcher - forced yet another woman to fellate him, his pistol resting on her forehead to prevent her biting (the book explained this). His brutal assault on the victim, covered by the loud waltz, seemed almost silent. When Xavier caught sight of the woman’s eyes from behind the Butcher, he saw lost hope and fading light. Was this her third, fifth, tenth encounter? And would a bullet end her ordeal today?

  Xavier had planned well. As the Butcher focused on his own pleasure, Xavier sidled up behind him and slowly stretched out his doubled leather measuring ribbon. In a quick, smooth motion, he slipped the length of leather over the Butcher’s head and down around his neck, all his strength centered on where the garrotte came together. The man’s surprised gurgle excited Xavier, and he squeezed harder even as the man attempted to bring the pistol to bear on his invisible attacker. One shot, muffled by the music, went wild.

  The Butcher screamed dementedly, mouth open and eyes bulging, and Xavier saw the woman rise from the floor, her lips bloody as she spit out a huge, ragged portion of his member.

  Now convulsing, the Butcher fought for his life while Strauss conducted in the background. Even as the life’s blood drained from his mutilated groin and the leather bit into his larynx and Adam’s apple, he tried to swing the pistol around, more shots going wild but silenced by the waltz’s climax.

  Xavier managed to clasp the garotte tightly in one hand, while with the other he aimed a needle-pointed pencil. One backwards thrust and the sharp lead burst the Butcher’s right eyeball, skewering the optic nerve and entering the brain from below. Xavier felt the softness of the inside of the Butcher’s head and jerked the penc
il in deeper, until the uniformed body spasmed once and collapsed twitching to the floor at his feet.

  The woman, her mouth bloody, clutched something flesh-colored. His own hands, splashed with blood and gore, still grasped the dangling ribbon.

  Xavier saw the room spin.

  When the waltz began again, Xavier screamed and collapsed near the body of the Butcher.

  9

  Dr. Fedderman shook his head. “It was only a matter of time. But I really trusted the therapy.”

  “You tried your best, David,” Dr. Kohner said. “We all did.”

  “Increase his thorazine dosage to 100 milligrams, Miss Donovan.”

  “Yes, doctor.” She administered the drug to Xavier, who lay strapped on the table, his extremities twitching.

  “I’m afraid a lobotomy is the only alternative left. He’s just too violent and unpredictable. And there’s no one left in his family to take responsibility.” Fedderman shook his head again.

  “Doctor, is it true his father was the Butcher of Buchenwald?” Miss Donovan bent down to peer into the patient’s face.

  “I’m not at liberty to say, Nurse. Please follow professional protocol.”

  Just then, Xavier opened his eyes and fixed Miss Donovan with a horrified stare.

  “You!” he screamed as the thorazine raced through his system. “You lied to me! You were one of them! You were not a victim! You don’t belong in the book!” His screeches degenerated into babbling mumbles and his eyes snapped shut.

  “Poor bastard,” Fedderman said.

  “Indeed,” agreed Kohner.

  Miss Donovan nodded.

  And smiled.

  For Ed Lee

  * * *

  IN HIS BLINDNESS TO SEE

  I felt the hatred rise on my face along with the blood, and knew that whatever else might happen, I was going to come out of this alive.

  My tongue was a thick lump of dry gristle and my nose twitched as the hot-flux smell pinched my nostrils shut. It was the same smell, the same feeling that had washed over me while I’d watched the carny mutter over that strange mask, with its pursed purple lips and the grotesque sewn-shut eyelids. It was as if he were following, watching, gazing into my sightless eyes, or - or as if his vision was mine.