Psycho Candy

by Steven Hunter

  “What are you talking about, Cand?”

  “It's just, Jesus, I don't know. I think I'm going insane.”

  “If you think you're insane, then I'm pretty sure it means you are sane, you know. What has turned the would be surgeon into self styled psychiatrist, may I ask?'

  “I saw something, on the television, then in the lecture and there's all these feelings and-”

  “Wow. Slow down. What did you see on the television, then in the lecture, and what feelings?”

  “I think it was a goat and then. . .” Candy stared at the earnest expression on Sarah's face and was instantly glad that she was here. There was no teasing in that look, only concern.

  She knew she could tell Sarah these things. Yet, now that she was fully aware of her friend’s presence, the need to unburden herself began to fade. After all she had vowed to forget these things until her psych check up, and she didn't want to worry her friend unnecessarily.

  “And then...” Sarah prompted.

  “You know what, whatever it was its not important. I guess I've just been overdoing it is all.”

  “If you say so,” came her best friends reply, however the concerned look didn't fully leave Sarah's face.

  “Yes. I mean it. It's just stress and anxiety. Maybe I should spend more time masturbating.”

  Sarah's face again constructed itself into its usual visage of light heartedness. “Or you could just get laid like the rest of us.”

  Candy laughed. She felt better already. The night was again full of promises with Sarah in tow.

  “Well are you going to leave a girl all out here in the cold or do I get invited in or what?”

  “Since when did you need an invite?”

  The two friends exchanged mock kisses and Sarah stepped into the room and fell backwards onto Jenny's bed.

  “Where is the super bitch, anyway?”

  Jenny was the only person Candy had ever met who had taken a disliking to Sarah.

  “She's gone home for the weekend.”

  “That girl has an attitude.”

  “In all fairness you did use her bed for carnal activities without asking.”

  “Huh, like she would have given her consent. Anyway, the bed deserves to see some action.”

  “Yeah, well she asked if you were coming over tonight.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said you'd joined an anti-Semitic group and spent your weekends making pipe bombs and swastika flags.”

  “Ha, you did not.”

  “I did actually. I found out she was Jewish and decided to give her a proper reason to hate you.”

  “I'm Jewish.”

  “Yeah well, she doesn't know that.”

  “I suppose. I mean I don't look Jewish.”

  “I didn't realise Jews had a look.”

  “Well, we do. But I had a nose job to compensate.”

  “That's terrible. I thought you'd be proud of your heritage.”

  “Oh, I am. It's actually a decoy. The way this country is going it's only a matter of time before someone starts handing out yellow stars. This way I get to be an undercover Jew. It's all the rage you know.”

  Candy shook her head. She knew she was being bated and knew that if she continued the conversation she would eventually bite.

  Thankfully, Sarah turned the conversation back to more familiar territory. “Mike Fisher felt my ass on the way down the hall. What a fucking dick. I’m sure he’s a closet, you know." Sarah's whispered tone had a definite conspiring lull to it, which Candy picked up on immediately.

  "Yeah, I’ve fucked him. He’s definitely a homo."

  The resulting giggles were interrupted by another knock at the door. This time however it opened of its own accord and a young man in his early twenties stuck his head around the door.

  "Hey, Rich. We’re just talking about Mike Fisher!" Sarah shouted to the new arrival. "Is he a homo, or what?"

  "Yeah he’s gay," replied Rich, a grin spreading across his face. "I would know. I’ve fucked him twice this semester."

  "Great, now I feel like someone's experiment," said Candy as she settled her chin into her hands.

  “Either that or you turned a guy gay?” suggested Sarah.

  The other two parties appraised their friend quizzically. “What, I'm serious. It happened to my Swedish friend and her boyfriend,” at the others obvious disbelief, Sarah held up her hands in mock disgust.

  Rich completed their trio. They had first met at a party a few months previously. Rich and Sarah had both been flirting with the same guy; some random. The guy had thrown up on Richie's shoulder then turned to Sarah with arms outstretched. Unsurprisingly, both parties had then become instantly uninterested. They had shared a laugh and Sarah had invited Rich back to Candy’s dorm room. Candy had been totally wasted and it wasn’t until the next morning when she woke up with her head rested on Rick’s shoulder that the two were introduced. Since then the three had become practically inseparable, an odd bond of closeness forged through shared desire, vomit and rude awakenings.

  "This calls for champagne," Rich called out, "unfortunately, I’ve only got cheap fortified wine. Any takers?" he asked, removing a bottle of the strong syrupy liquid from his knapsack.

  "I’ll get the glasses," called out Candy in reply.

  Candy retrieved three mugs from the dorm room’s only shelf and as was tradition handed them to their usual users.

  Sarah's was a chipped green affair with 'LIFE HAPPENS – ENJOY THE PROCESS(ING)!' blazoned across it, while Rich had accepted with glee a white mug with 'Worlds Best Daughter' ' written on it. Candy's particular drinking receptacle was a pink vase shaped cup which had started out with no logo on it. However, at some point someone had taken the time to write 'Candy drinks here' across it in red felt tip. No one could remember carrying out the act but Candy was secretly touched that someone had taken the trouble.

  Within less than a minute Rich had filled each cup to the brim, and for the time being the strange events that had plagued Candy's life of late were forgotten.

  "What are we toasting?" asked Sarah.

  "A toast!" echoed Rich.

  "How about - long life and happiness?" suggested Candy.

  “LONG LIFE AND HAPPINESS!” they shouted as the trio clinked their mugs together and drank deeply.

  “Tonight’s going to be a good one," said Candy, "I can feel it."

  "You and your feelings," replied Sarah as she proffered her mug to Rich in demand of more drink.

  Yes tonight will be good, thought Candy.

  She could just feel it.

  The acid flowed like a black magik river through an ever growing expanse of consciousness, painfully ecstatic waves of contradictory bliss that reached higher and higher in her mind that, just when it seemed she could take no more, would climax with an orgasmic shudder throughout the entirety of her body.

  Vibrating speakers blasted paranoid techno to vibrant dancers, beating ineffable rhythms in complete symmetry with Candy's heart as sweat dripped from every pore of her body; and for the moment she was lost in a vortex of atomic confusion. Faces replaced with fractals. Bright lights blinding her to disorientation. The walls of the nightclub spinning, closing in, surrounding her; each new revolution whirling to a higher tempo.

  Scenes and colours merged with imagination and again she caught a glimpse of the horrific apparition observing her, watching her in her delirium.

  Candy recoiled against the image. He was waiting for her. A word, Rubiconeteka, flared up in the confusion of her thoughts, yet its meaning was foreign to her. It’s just the drug, a hallucination, she told herself again, in her overwhelming bid to convince herself that He was just a delusion, a figment of her temporary psychosis. She looked again, and the being was gone.

  She felt an added wetness to the sweat soaked skin of her shoulder, and jumped at the unexpected touch. She turned her head and was greeted by a wide eyed Sarah.

  "Do you want to go and chill?" Sarah shouted,
mouthing the words above the roar of the music.

  Candy nodded her agreement and hand in hand they pushed their way through the crowded dance floor and out into the relative quietude of the corridor.

  "Are you having a good time?" Sarah asked when the dance floor doors had closed firmly behind them; the wooden sound barrier allowing her to be heard above the noise it shielded.

  Candy shook her head. "Pretty fucked. Bit of a Jacobs' ladder.”

  "Come on. Let’s go upstairs and cool down. You can tell me about it then," Sarah said, leading Candy by the hand up the narrow stairway to the club’s chill out room.

  The room was empty, aside from a bored looking barman who glanced at the clock as he wiped down the mirror topped bar, counting the minutes until closing. Sarah ordered two beers as Candy flopped onto a cushioned corner. A feeling of calm overcame her then, and she relaxed into a comfortable warmness as she observed Sarah do a two step shuffle across the black wooden floor and sit down beside her.

  She handed Candy a bottle. "So? What’s up, doc?" asked Sarah.

  "Just a bad hallucination or something like that. It’s hard to say when you’re this gone," Candy replied.

  An image of the being she had seen watching her flared up in her mind’s eye and she recoiled at its viciousness, a taste of bile momentarily creeping into her throat, which she quickly washed down with beer. The combination was not much better, yet the need to just get drunk and block it all out, make the demons go away, seemed suddenly appealing. She would get Sarah to order whiskeys next time. With tequila chasers.

  This was Candy’s first time with LSD. Previously she had taken only ecstasy on her club nights out with Sarah and Rich. Candy remembered the woman's bright green eyes and the warning she had delivered - "This will make you see the truth.”

  Yet it hadn't sounded like a warning at the time.

  She had toyed with the idea of throwing the 'this' away, yet her curiosity had won out in the end, and she had kept the little gelatine capsule with a growing inquisitiveness as to what exactly she would see.

  "It’s this person. Or thing. I’m not sure. He keeps appearing, and he’s watching me, like he’s waiting for something, like he knows me," Candy blurted, feeling relieved for having someone to tell about her fears, "and he’s tall, maybe seven feet, and he’s naked except there’s nothing, you know, down there. And his skin is like PVC, black and shiny. And the worst of it is; he has no face."

  "Wow! That’s really fucked up. What do you mean he has no face?" asked Sarah.

  "It’s like it’s just blank. But he watches you with it, like he’s sensing everything about you. Like he knows you," replied Candy, “and the very worst of it is, is that I think he does have a face, but if I look at it, like right at it, then I'll go completely fucking mad!”

  Sarah stuck an arm around the shoulders of her shaking friend. "Don’t worry; we’ll stick together until you’re back in reality. It’s just a trip. Stick to E next time. You’ll be fine."

  Sarah smiled reassuringly at Candy, yet there was something grotesque about the act itself; as if the curvature of Sarah's lips betrayed something unknown to her. Something unknown to them both. The perceptual deformity was too much for Candy and she looked away, when a sudden thought crossed her mind. “Where’s Rich?"

  She had not seen her friend since their arrival at the club. He had gone off to dance while the girls checked the coats and had not reappeared.

  "He’s fine. I spoke to him just before I came over to you. He’s gone to get some air," replied Sarah.

  "Fresh air sounds good. Let’s get the fuck out of here for a bit. I think I need to cool off," stated Candy, and she took Sarah’s hand and pulled her off the cushioned floor.

  As Sarah put her hand in Candy’s, Candy felt a tablet against her palm. "This should help you chill. Ecstasy cures all babes. Except insomnia. I’m still waiting for that cure," whispered Sarah into Candy’s ear.

  Candy discreetly swallowed the small pill. What would she do without her friends?

  Let’s never find out, she thought.

  The air was crisp and fresh, a welcome change from the heated clamminess of the club.

  "He should be here somewhere," Sarah stated, looking around the parked cars for Rich.

  "He only came out five minutes ago. Maybe he’s gone back inside."

  "I don’t want to go back in yet," moaned Candy forcing playfulness into her voice.

  The air combined with the acid was giving her rushes up her spine and she was glad of the wide open space after a couple of hour’s tight confinement by sweaty bodies. And more than that she did not want to return to the confusion of the dance floor.

  Just in case.

  "Rich! You out here?" shouted Candy.

  Candy attuned her hearing, yet detected nothing but the wind. She turned to shrug her shoulders at Sarah - don't know where he is? - When a loud piercing scream emanated from behind them. Startled, both girls turned towards the location of the sound, somewhere amongst the rows of parked cars that lined the concrete space.

  “What the fuck was that?” said Candy as she turned back towards her friend.

  The emptiness which now took Sarah's place at first confused her. No one would be stupid enough to run towards a scream like that; at least not alone. So she was as equally surprised to see her friend doing just that.

  The world took on a sudden horrifying reality as Candy's understanding of the situation set in with a jolt. Despite her reasoning's best efforts she could not deny what now seemed undeniable; as the unpleasant suspicion she had felt inside the club now solidified itself into worded thought. Like the occasional phenomenon when you know that the phone is going to ring just before it does, and exactly who it is that's calling, Candy knew what she would see when she looked beside her. Still she could not stop her head from turning, any more than she could slow the beating of her heart. It was like her awareness was magnetically drawn towards a single spot, and sure enough, as her head was manoeuvred ninety degrees left, there He stood, a mere arms length away. The faceless being, black as death, his focused nothingness boring black holes deep into her psyche, unearthing all which he had planted. Memories previously unknown were repressed no longer. Instead they burst upwards, into her conscious mind; a fully grown flower of grotesque revelation scattering petals of revulsion as she realised the truth.

  He had put them there. He had tended these roots of understanding. It had been in the club. On the dance floor.

  How had she denied this all to herself?

  The extent of this beings intent suddenly hit her with such force, that she half collapsed under the weight of acceptance; that evil was no fairy tale to scare children into behaving, but was instead something so much worse. Something real.

  She opened her mouth to shout a warning to Sarah, yet instead of words, vomit came spewing from between her lips, and she could only watch as Sarah moved towards the screaming, and what Candy now knew to be inevitable.

  They’re both dead. They’re going to die and all I can do is watch. I’m going to watch them die - she thought again and again, the words revolving through her mind, repeating and recycling, a grotesque loop of understanding.

  She saw Sarah scream, a soundless slow motion gesture as her friend knelt behind a car somewhere near the middle of the row, and before time again re-joined normal speed she sensed a smile from the dark man and screamed herself as her legs again found foot and propelled her through the auto mobile maze, towards the scene of carnage that she knew awaited...

  ...(L.A Document #46) After the spree that would follow, the sequence of events that would later replay over and over in her now overwhelmingly powerful mind, the thing that would strike Candy the most painfully was not the crimes she committed or would commit or the horrific deaths she was to cause and worse yet enjoy; but the tortuous moment when she found all signs of humanity draining from her, the instant that took her innocence - when she watched her friends die. She would remark, without the fa
intest hint of flippancy, that murder was a dirty word but a common enough occurrence; yet that there was no preparation for such events, no justice for the dead and God himself must deem the act permissible. She even went as far as to say that it was one of those bastards who sealed the deal…

  …Blood seeped heavily into Candy’s denims as she knelt beside the fallen bodies. Both the throats of Richard and Sarah had been savagely cut. The word "BAIT" was carved into Richie's forehead. Vomit again rose up in her throat and spilled onto the concrete as a crushing pain enveloped her heart and for a moment she thought she was having some kind of attack, and finally the anguished wailing which had failed her before tore out of her with unstoppable force, just as the ecstasy began to take effect. Tears cascaded down her reddening cheeks as rushing warmth engaged her nerves.

  “Not now, Jesus, NOT NOW!! OH GOD! OH GOD!”

  Confusion overcame Candy’s senses as she viewed the massacre before her with an uncontrollable chemical happiness. It was like a razor had been taken across her mind, an invisible scar which would always make its presence felt.

  The irony of how inappropriate her feelings were given the circumstances were not lost on her, and as she wept she cursed the horrific synchronicity of it all. A lonely knife caught her gaze, and she reached to pick it up. She fondled the blade, finding incomprehensible comfort in the heaviness of the steel; and with a painful calm Candy rose from her kneeling position and cast a gaze across the concrete space that surrounded her.

  The world view Candy had carved for herself was gone.

  A change had taken place. In a few short moments her life had been altered forever. Words were meaningless to her now, for Candy understood something much deeper, an inscrutable language based solely on feelings that had no place in the normality of social consciousness.

  Shrugging off a lifetime’s worth of conditioning, much like a Catholic forsaking heaven, she stalked between the rows of inanimate vehicles, readying herself. Readying herself to kill.

  Each footstep drew her closer and closer towards her intended victim. Candy paused behind a beat up green Ford and gazed for a moment towards the stars. The dark man was looking down at her, yet instead of meeting his gaze, she instead closed her eyes... and for a moment she was back in the club, she was at the bar talking to Sarah, the capsule of acid held tightly in her hand, ready to swallow. She was still in the club, waiting to take the acid, and everything that had just happened was merely a hallucination from the drug... which she was yet to take? There was something very wrong with that reasoning, but if she just opened her eyes surely she would see that... the fantasy dissolved as quickly as it had come. She felt sickened by it.