Psycho Candy

by Steven Hunter

  The nurse smiled at the orderlies. "Give her another twenty minutes for the pill to take effect then come back and take her to Professor Nowes' study. He's expecting her."

  As the nurse turned to leave the room Candy called after her.

  “Hey nice make up job by the way. I take it the concealer is to hide the rest of your evil features?” her voice trailed of lamely.

  The orderlies smirked briefly before turning away. Candy sighed and flopped back down onto the bed and closed her eyes.

  When she opened them again, the orderlies were again standing over her and the straps around her arms were being undone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A MEETING WITH THE PROFESSOR

  Candy stood in fresh gown, now dressed in paper slippers, with a smile on her face.

  Despite the heaviness of the wooded door that led into the professor’s office she was undaunted. Her recent past had made her apathetic to the future. She had been waiting she supposed at least five minutes to gain entry into the professors room, and when the call came to "ENTER!" she turned the door knob and pushed her way into the room which was guarded outside by two beefy orderlies who sat in straight backed chairs at either side of the door.

  Heavy looking wooden truncheons sat across each lap and Candy noticed hand cuffs attached to the leather belts they wore over their uniforms, along with what she supposed was some kind of alarm and a spray she thought was probably mace.

  "This is my study, my sanctuary. What do you think?" the professor’s question caught her off guard. He was not the demon she was expecting. Candy surveyed the room, appraising the wall lined with books, theoretical manuals on thought, mixed with treaties on chemical biology. She spotted a fictional novel on his desk, and when she looked up her eyes met those of the professor, who indicated the book with an air of acceptance.

  "We all need a break, don’t we Candy? May I call you Candy?" he asked.

  "Only if I can call you something." Candy replied.

  "Certainly. You may call me Randolph," Randolph let out a small laugh, "if Randolph is suitable to you? I’d like us to be on first name terms. Much more civilized that way. Much more… trust!"

  Despite her situation, Candy felt herself liking the man in front of her. He wasn’t much in the looks department, she assessed, and yet his eyes at least appeared kind, his tone jovial. He was overweight, she noticed. Yet with his white beard and gentle smile he appeared to Candy as a modern day Santa Clause, a myth who dispensed medication instead of presents, and all year round instead of just once every 365 days.

  "Well Randolph, you could start by telling me where the hell I am, and what I’m doing here?" Candy tried to keep the urgency from her voice. She was trapped, and the fat man facing her was just trying to placate her obvious distress. He wanted answers.

  And much worse than that he wanted to understand.

  "What can I tell you Randolph? That I wanted to kill all those people?" Candy spied a packet of smokes on the table in front of her and indicated with a nod towards them.

  "Of course, smoke away my friend. Would you maybe care for coffee? We could have it here in a minute," stated Randolph, focusing his whole attention on Candy.

  He lifted the packet and drew out two cigarettes, then handed one to Candy, lit his own and proffered her a light. The flame from the Zippo lighter, the kind which ran on petrol, fluttered in the breeze from the window behind Randolph, which sat slightly ajar. Candy accepted the light gratefully with a nod of the head.

  "What the hell happened at the court house? My lawyer, Johnson, they said he'd disappeared. Has anyone found out where the hell he is?" asked Candy.

  Her concern surprised Nowes. Psychopaths very rarely experienced any kind of empathy for others, and from what he could gather the woman sitting in front of him was a grade A psychopath. She didn't frighten him in the least however.

  Firstly his massive, if slightly (very if he was being honest to himself) overweight figure could easily swat away an undernourished little girl like the one who sat in front of him.

  No Randolph believed the only threat in the room was he himself. "I'm afraid Mr Johnson was found dead in a dumpster around 3 o'clock today. I am sorry Candy. I understand you were quite fond of each other?"

  "He did his best for me. He helped me, even if he didn't believe me, he believed in helping me. I owed him one. I guess now I really do."

  "Do you have any idea who may have wanted to hurt Johnson?"

  "These Gods and Goddesses I told the police about. They killed him. I saw it all. They bled him to death in the courtroom. They... FUCK!" Candy took a moment to compose herself and when she raised her eyes she found the professor staring at her strangely.

  "Did you say he was bled to death in front of you? Bled to death, that is what you said, am I correct?"

  "You know something don't you? What I'm saying. It's true isn't it? They found him bled to death, right? Right? So then you have to believe me. You have to believe what I'm saying and I can get the fuck out of here and get back on with my fucking life!"

  "Well, maybe we're all just getting a bit too far ahead of ourselves here. Let me order us some coffee and we'll talk the whole thing through okay."

  "It was the Gods, they took over the court, they were there and they did it, she did it, the fucking goat and-"

  Randolph raised a hand to silence her, as he waited for his secretary to pick up her line. Stupid bitch if she keeps me waiting much longer she's gonna find herself out of a job. Randolph smiled at Candy. And how the fuck does that crazy bitch know he'd been bleed to death. She couldn't have done it as she was in here and it certainly didn't happen in the courtroom... I think someone other than this loony cunt, Candy James s would remember. So how did. . . or maybe it was someone on the outside. Maybe she has a partner and he was supposed to take care of the lawyer. And anyone else she desires. Maybe I should- it was then that the professor noticed the "Hello. . ." coming from the other end of the phone line.

  "Ah yes, bring us some coffee with fresh cream and sugar. And perhaps some scones and jam too, as we may feel peckish. Thank you, my dear. Okay. Bye now."

  With a smile he replaced the handset and once again turned his attention to Candy. There was the audible sound of a clock ticking in the background, and Candy gazed into the corner of the room where sat a grandfather clock. She hated it instantly, the relentless monotone of the pendulum's swing as the hands went round.

  There was a knock at the door and Randolph the professor gave a hearty, "Come in!"

  An orderly wheeled in a serving trolley adorned with coffee, cream, cakes and sugar. Candy noticed the sugar was in cubed lumps, and it made her think of other things.

  "Let’s get straight to the point, Candy. Why did you do it? You’re going to be staying with us for a while and it’s our job to try and make you better. But we can’t do that without your co-operation, can we now?" the question left no room for argument.

  "I was set up!" even as she spoke these words she realized how futile they were, they wouldn’t believe a word. They were psychiatrists. It was their job to disbelieve.

  "Who set you up, Candy?" asked Randolph the professor, and this time Candy could discern a counterfeit compassion in his voice.

  For the first time since meeting the professor she cast out with her ability (expendable we're expendable, drug and dissect, drug and dissect) and felt the emotions within Nowes' mind, the greed and hunger for the experiments he wanted to perform on her. Candy could read it all. She was nothing to this man except a human Guinea Pig. It hurt her heart, and made her mind squirm with uneasiness (drug and dissect experiment now hurt hurt hurt). Yes, she had misread the professor.

  "Go fuck yourself!" she replied, as she surged for the coffee pot, upending it with delight over the knees and chest of Randolph, who screamed in agonizing pain.

  One of the privileges that Randolph had permitted himself was a lock on his office door, a privilege he would soon come to regret as Candy leaped to her
feet and turned the key, locking the door from the inside. She picked up the letter opener from Randolph’s desk. The door knob rattled, and she heard shouts from outside in the corridor, which were replaced with a thudding that reverberated throughout the door and spread into the plaster of the walls.

  Candy held the opener, (A bronze affair that she took great delight in) and placed it to Randolph’s neck.

  "One move and you’re dead. And it’s a little piece of my soul back. You understand fat boy?" whispered Candy in the professor’s ear.

  "Yes…."

  "What?"

  "Yes, yes…Yes!"

  "Now I wanna know. Was he found in the dumpster dead, because he had bled to death?

  “I...I don't-" The professor stammered. Candy pressed the point harder against his neck, puncturing the flesh and blood began to seep from the wound. The thudding against the door continued.

  "Listen buddy, I don't have time to fuck around here. Either get a grip and tell me what I want to know or next time I'll stick it in your eye."

  "YES! YES, OKAY, HE WAS BLED TO DEATH!" Nowes sobbed as he fell, released from Candy's grip, to the floor.

  The door burst open, and before Candy knew what was happening six orderlies threw her to the ground. As the needle went in she felt the sharp pain and was in a strange way grateful, as this was her own pain, her own feelings, and for the moment she could concentrate on the hurt, before it gave way to blissful relaxation. The drug took hold and Candy was carried from the room.

  "Where are we going?" asked Candy, her voice and tone deadened by the injection.

  "Going to make you better. Don’t you worry. The doctor will take care of it all," an orderly replied.

  Candy was carried down a maze of corridors and locked doors, until the reached a set of double doors which swung inwards. Three nurses were there already, waiting. (Fry her up real good. God, she’s pretty, might see her after, before she wakes up...) these were the thoughts of the nurses around her, brought to Candy by her thought-voice. The drug had really taken hold. Her legs were like jelly set in lead weight and so when she was loaded her onto a stretcher it was all she could do but comply. The third nurse, a woman of Japanese persuasion, held no thought, yet Candy could sense the brutality of her feelings.

  Candy was unloaded from the stretcher and laid upon a bed and tied down with belts, her hands and feet held in place by leather cuffed restraints which fastened in a similar fashion to the belts.

  One of the nurses, the Asian lady tapped menacingly at a needle. "This won’t hurt a bit. Just relax."

  A cotton set of ear muffs, attached to wires was placed on her temples, and a rubber chew placed in her mouth, and Candy turned her head again to look for the woman with the needle but she was gone. Where the hell had she gone and what the hell had been in the needle?

  "Clear!" she heard a voice say, then a sharp painful jolt passed through her brain. Her eyes rolled into her head and for a minute she felt a pitiful sound arise in her throat, unable to escape past the rubber chew.

  "It’s not having the right affect. We may have got the voltage wrong!" The nurse cranked up the dial and Candy again felt a shock rise through her temples. The pain was excruciating, yet a laughter rose in her throat, from somewhere deep inside her.

  This was child’s play in comparison to her experience of past, the living knowledge of pain that lay in her cells existing as a glue to keep her together, keep her head high enough to breath.

  The last jolt hit home and as her back arched in a convulsive warping she caught a flicker of a chrome black figure and the sight of a smile not really there.

  Then it was gone. Replaced with a void of pure white, a blinding electrical glare. She was naked, except for the brightness that shone upon her, reflecting from her limbs and torso. She stood in the centre of a prison cell, a cell made of light, and she stood upright, weighing the pain against two handles. She felt that if she could only let go of the handles then she would be alright, however her hands felt stuck, as if glued, and she realized with a panic that she was dying, this was what it would feel like to die, she had no breath, this was it, the final moment and somewhere inside she sighed as the light in the cell gave way to an opening, where another light, daylight, broke through and she felt herself lift, up into the summer sky above.

  Rhythmic drumming counted the seconds of her ascent, and she gazed below at the rolling fields of green, the winding river, then turned her head towards the vast expanse of space.

  Through the clouds she saw a man, saw the wisdom in his eyes, a good natured Native American, and she felt a brush of saviour pass through her disembodied spirit. He was speaking, speaking to her, with a kindness of voice that Candy had never before heard. He held out his hands and Candy took them in her own and she asked him then what she should do.

  Smiling, he said, "Break on through Candy, break on through, break on through Candy, break on through…

  “. . . To the other side. . ." the orderly broke into tuneless whistle, a bad rendition of a classic Doors song.

  Candy opened her eyes. Staring back at her was the now, not-so kind eyes of Professor Randolph Nowes.

  "So Candy. We meet again," said the professor, his tone in line with that of every comic book villain ever televised.

  Even through the burning pain inside her skull, Candy managed a bitter laugh. "Pretty fucking cliché line, Randolph, no?" she uttered.

  Her tongue felt like lead dipped in sulphur.

  "Well, now. What say we get you ready for the ward. And of course you’ll be needing some pain relief for that treatment we just performed. We aren’t butchers after all."

  Arm and leg restraints were removed from Candy, and she was helped to her feet. The electroshock therapy room’s door was opened and Candy was escorted into the hallway.

  For the first time she sensed the despair, could feel it reflected in the sheen from the polished tiled floors, could see it highlighted in the faces of every visible patient, who hung from the lime green walls like nightmarish paintings, the artist a cruel and terrible God.

  "What was in the needle the nurse was going to give me?” Candy asked suddenly, the memory flooding back with such intensity that she refused to ignore its importance.

  "Which nurse are we talking about here, Candy? We have a great many nurses working in this hospital as you shall come to see," answered the professor, a little too dismissively Candy thought, (they did it on purpose, no anaesthetic they wanted you hurt, to feel pain) her thought voice whispered to her.

  Candy smiled at the professor. "I think you know damned well who I'm talking about, don't you. The nurse with the anaesthetic. You never gave me one did you, you bastard?"

  "Now, are you seriously suggestion that you went through an entire E.C.T therapy session without anaesthetic? It's preposterous. I'll have someone look into that straight away. If that is the case then you'll need some very strong pain medicine, and I do hope you'll accept our utmost apologies. Perhaps tomorrow you could even talk me through the experience. It was of course done without any kind of pain aid when it was first used, however things are different now Candy, here in the year two thousand. We aren't the barbarians everyone thinks we are," Randolph stopped a passing nurse, took out his notebook, scribbled something quickly inside it and handed it to the nurse who hurried away note clasped firmly in her hand, "I believe what you are telling me Candy. Again, I do apologize. I have sent word for the nurse responsible to come to my study immediately after I am finished showing you around. Due to our error-"

  "Severe fuck up I'd call it."

  "Yes, well, slightly less elegantly put, but yes, well anyway, due to our eh, fuck up, we aim to make you very comfortable during your stay here as a way to make up for it."

  "Is that because I could sue your assess?" Candy asked, a smile forming on her lips.

  "Yes. I suppose we would like to avoid that. Not that suing us would do you much good. The lawyer got you the best deal he could have before his untimely de
mise and I don't see what you'd do with a wad of cash while stuck in a mental institution. By all means though, you are fully within your legal right to contact a mental health solicitor and speak to him about your well being. That unfortunately is the only right you have."

  "What do you mean?" Candy asked.

  "You've been found clinically insane and locked in a mental institution. As soon as you were classified insane and walked through those doors all your civil rights as a human being no longer exist. Of course we do have codes of conduct here, rules to follow and such like. But I'm afraid that's the way it is. Call a lawyer if you don't believe me, although what you see me standing to gain from lying I'll never know.”

  "Shit. Fucking Johnson. Never fucking mentioned this once," Candy sighed, "Okay, fuck it. Make me comfortable. What did you have in mind?"

  "Well for a start, you'd get your own room-"

  "With a lock on the door?"

  "So long as my staff have access to opening it at any time they wish. Why, if you don't mind me asking, would you want a lock on the door?"

  "Have you seen the nut jobs in this place? I'd feel a hell of a lot safer sleeping knowing I've got a lock between me and them. And also I don't want to be strapped to the bed like those poor fuckers in one flew over the cuckoo’s nest-"

  "Candy," Randolph laughed, "that film was made in the sixties for goodness sake. We understand that people with mental health difficulties experience problems sleeping and can find themselves with low energy. Whilst we encourage them to be active we let them sleep when they want, without any kind of restraint I can assure you."

  “What about the leather shackles I was subjected too when I arrived? You telling me that that was a figment of my imagination? Or did I just time travel back to the sixties for a few hours?”

  “That, I am afraid is a regrettable yet necessary precaution. When a new patient arrives who we have been told has. . .eh. . .shall we say. . .extreme anger issues relating to whatever particular illness they are suffering from, we have to make sure the staff are safe whilst the medication regime is gently introduced. As you proved, it isn't always one hundred percent effective, however, the past is the past and at the end of the day, you are not a prisoner here, you are a patient and you are here to get well.”