Dregs of Society

by Laimo, Michael

  What happens after one experiences a nervous breakdown? When we can no longer tolerate the panic, the anxiety? Do we die? No, of course not. No one has ever died from anxiety.

  No one has ever died from their own anxiety.

  But they have through the command of someone else's.

  Women were an enigma to Shane. He never understood their thinking. Conflicting and elusive. Anne Devot possessed these qualities, and it didn't surprise Shane one bit when she didn't show up to their next scheduled rehabilitative triad.

  Shane had an odd feeling (by the pompous look on his face) that Allis had been using Anne for some odd, ulterior motive. Perhaps therapy was his initial intent, but her sanity—and Shane's, for that matter—was of no ultimate concern to the good doctor. There was something self-serving in it. Shane wanted to know what it was.

  Before he sat down, Allis said, "I was fucking her."

  "Anne?"

  "Who else?"

  "I don't know. You could very well be sleeping with many women."

  "She was very passionate."

  "So why did you stop?"

  "Did I say I stopped?"

  Where was this going? "You look...sad. Let down." A guess.

  Allis paused, grin pursed with defeat. Front exposed. "She stopped because she was afraid."

  "Of what?"

  "Her husband."

  Shane felt his heart flutter, a knot in his gut. He prayed the anxiety didn't show in his voice; Allis would capitalize on it. "Did he find out?"

  Allis shook his head. "No."

  "Why was she afraid of him then?"

  "Because there would be no hiding that she was pregnant."

  Shane's stomach turned. "With your child."

  Allis nodded. "Her husband had a vasectomy years ago. She wouldn't have married him otherwise."

  Shane was stumped. "Why?"

  "She's deathly afraid of childbirth. Even more so of abortion. Anything that has to do with her uterus. An odd and quite distinctive fear, I'd say. Freudian? Perhaps, but quite unique in the sense that we're talking about a woman, purely heterosexual, who would rather die than have something alive growing inside her."

  "You must've known this before you slept with her."

  Allis nodded. "The issue was discussed quite extensively in therapy."

  "So why weren't any precautions taken?" Shane, exploring personal territory. And taking a chance.

  "Because I wanted to exploit her ultimate anxiety. I wanted to see how she'd handle it."

  "Is she...?" He didn't want to imply an adverse reaction to Allis' secretive misdeed.

  "She's safe. And she will live."

  Shane stared at him as if in a spell.

  Allis leaned over. "Shane, it may be time."

  "For?"

  "For you to face the devil, and kill it."

  Fatigue, exhaustion, heart palpitations, chest pain, rapid pulse, dizziness, faintness, distorted vision, hyperventilation, aching muscles, cramps, stiffness, irritability, depression, insomnia, nightmares, loss of memory, lump in the throat, nausea, diarrhea, depersonalization, increased sensitivity to light and sound, stiff neck, burping fluids, numbness, tingling, tinnitus, jitteriness, tension, sweating, trembling, facial twitching, frequent urination, apprehension, unwanted thoughts, a fear of going crazy.

  The mind is a powerful thing.

  Allis crossed the professional line once again, this time by offering Shane to join him in indulgence: Dewar's and sodas, cigars. Then, the sharing of a joint—a sweet mellow cannabis that filled the air, their lungs, their minds, all softened with influence. The drugs, alcohol, it made Allis quite even-tempered, his talk of the devil and anxiety loosening into a comfortable chatter of sex and its pleasures.

  "The THC in marijuana bonds to the GABA emitters in the brain, the serotonin producers. It arouses them, thereby increasing more of the pleasure-inducing chemical, elevating our awareness and the level of satisfaction we experience, regardless of the stimulus. When sexual incentives are introduced, the intensity of joy experienced reaches astounding levels, to a point where orgasm seems ecstatically impossible, yet achievably desirable."

  After an indefinable amount of time, curiosity got the best of Shane.

  "So how do we defeat the devil?"

  "You wish to gain complete control of your mental health then?"

  "I'm highly intrigued as to your motivation, Dr Allis. The whole process that's led me to this point. Surely you don't expect me to back down now?"

  "Quite honestly Shane, I've yet to decide if I want to show you how to do it."

  "Because?"

  "Because it's major-league stuff. Not for the unprepared."

  "So you're saying I'm unprepared then?" Allis—clearly exercising his twisted vernacular. All part of the process.

  Allis smiled. "No, I'm not.

  "Then?"

  Allis' eyes were like stone pebbles. "It involves Anne Devot."

  "The mother of your child."

  "You could say that."

  "What about her?"

  "She's in the house. Right now. Been here for a couple of days."

  "Where?"

  "In a room. She's hunting down her devil."

  Shane felt giddy, the walls of the room oscillating. He wasn't sure if it was anxiety or the pot. "So...she was prepared?"

  "She had no choice but to be prepared."

  "I'm prepared, doctor. Show me how to kill my personal demons."

  Mommy, there's a monster in the closet!

  Yes, baby. There is.

  Slowly, Allis led Shane upstairs. He spoke of nothing as they moved down a long hallway, past a number of closed doors into a bedroom on the left. The smallish space took Shane by surprise, empty except for a solid pine chair bolted to the hardwood floor. He questioned the purpose of the stark environment.

  Silently, sneakily, Allis answered, pressing a cool wet tatter of cloth against Shane's nose and mouth. Harsh vapors seared his nostrils and lungs, burned his eyes, weakening his call for panic. A curtain of blackness seeped into his blurred sights, ran deep into throat and lungs, sending the world into chemical shadow. His heart, pounding in tempo with a rushing headache. Legs turning to sodden tea-bags. He collapsed on the wood floor, saying to himself: this is no anxiety.

  The abrupt glare of the television screen flashed into Shane's dreamscape—a free-floating world where monsters are willingly defeated by simply thinking their demise—causing him to cast off the final moments of his stupor sooner than he wished. If it were only that easy to stamp out the iniquities of the mind, Shane thought, then the world would be free of the devil and the fears it sheds upon its rightful seed. In a powerless attempt to move he discovered the cool tight grip of metal shackles about his wrists and ankles, link chains connecting them in a marriage of confinement. The sound of the television had yet to be turned on, so it seemed, the chaotic image of static snow enough to convince him that a signal may soon be coming into view.

  He was right.

  Shane shuddered when he saw the face of Richard Allis on the screen, the loose features telling the tale of a man who at last unearthed a cure to his own anxieties—had defeated the devil, taken command of his own state of mental health. Damn, he was smiling, and despite the crisis at hand, Shane had to smirk at the crooked teeth, mussed hair, flushed cheeks. Eyes, wild and black, snake-like. It had taken months, but the doctor had finally broken his stone composure.

  The image of Richard Allis spoke, no designation indicated, as if the message could have very well been intended for anyone happening upon it:

  "There is indeed a much greater fear than fear itself, of worrying with respect to those things that never happen. Now, the fear of those things that DO happen! That's one damn scary possibility! Be prepared. I am going to make it happen. And when we're finished you will thoroughly understand that anxiety means absolutely nothing at all when the body has something real to be terrified of.

  "Can you think of something that really scares
the fuck out of a person? I can..."

  The screen went back to snow. Shane watched the hectic display until his eyes teared and dried on his cheeks. He squirmed, the restraints tightening as he ineffectively fought their grip.

  Time passed. Minutes. An hour. More.

  Dizziness tickled his brain; he imagined himself a prisoner on a boat, unable to recapture his equilibrium. Again blackness crawled in from the corners of his sights. If it weren't for another scene on the television blinking into view, he might have surrendered to it.

  At first he had trouble theorizing as to where Allis might have concealed the camera, but quickly realized that the image of the person restrained and struggling in the bolted chair was not of himself.

  It was Anne Devot.

  She wore a stark white tee-shirt that ran long to her knees. Feet naked. Hair tossed and disheveled. Eyes squeezed shut, teeth clenched—a combination of attributes signifying an abandonment of hysterics, a submission to a rational acceptance of predicament. Her spirit had been split open, Allis now prodding and poking it with venomous fingers.

  How long did Allis say she was here? A day? More?

  Before her was a table. Shane could see a puddle of clear liquid on its surface. In the foreground, on the floor, a plastic tumbler lay on its side. On the wall in the background hung a sheet, red letters sloppily spray-painted upon the white surface:

  Is the lesser of two evils the best course of action?

  Shane yelled for help, for himself, and then for Anne Devot. But the house swallowed his pleas, and he nearly shouted his voice away until his thoughts ran ragged. What if Allis kept him here forever? Would he die of starvation? His stomach purled at the mere thought of sustenance, and he knew it must've been twenty-four hours since he'd last eaten. Periodically Anne looked directly into the camera, and Shane conjured up a variety of questions. Could she see him? Did she know that he was watching her? Certainly she assumed Allis to be the voyeur, no? His thoughts fell away like worms, sluggish and slippery, difficult to hold. Nothing steadfast or certain.

  With nothing else to do, Shane continued to watch Anne Devot. Her head turned from side to side. Staring at a point beyond the camera's reach. A door?

  Time passed.

  Anne nodded off and slept for nearly an hour when something startled her stiff. Her eyes darted open and quickly pinned an unseen spot. They followed something across the room until a man wearing a rubber clown's mask came into view. He wiped the spilled liquid from the table with a small towel, then retrieved the plastic tumbler. He filled it with what looked like water, set it on the table before her, then placed a small white pill, oval shaped, next to the glass. In the silence of the scene, Anne's tears returned, her mouth a twisting, soundless barrage of curses. Allis (Shane assumed the masked man to be the doctor) was stoic in his actions, creeping behind Anne to free one hand from its bind. He stood at the side of the view, pointing to the glass—and the pill.

  Clearly, Shane realized, all she has to do is take the pill, and he'll release her.

  But what exactly will the pill do to her?

  With her free hand, she knocked the glass over. The contents sprayed the table. The pill dropped unseen to the floor. Shane could see Allis shake his clown head with dismay, ignoring a screaming Anne as he grasped her wrist, twisted it behind her and refettered it.

  Then he did something interesting. Sidling up beside her, close to her ear, he must have spoken, and for the briefest moment pointed to the camera. She looked, stared straight into it, tears pouring from her eyes.

  She shook her head, slightly, and mouthed the words, I'm sorry.

  Allis walked to the camera, and the image went back to snow.

  Eight hours later, the scene repeated itself. Exactly. Anne refused to take the pill. Allis pointed to the camera before shutting it off.

  He never came to Shane's room.

  Shane was very hungry.

  Every eight hours, like clockwork. Two more days. Anne grew haggard, clearly frustrated. Shane's hunger turned to starvation, the discomfort choking him with bitter acids, then agonizing his gut with pain after the acids dried up. In a semi-hallucinatory state, he couldn't be certain if Allis had fed Anne anything, but he had strong doubts. He wouldn't let her touch the water unless she took the pill; that much was clear. Another day without water and they would both die.

  In the next session, Anne took the pill.

  This time clown-masked Allis nodded, as if congratulating her accomplishment. He walked from the camera's view, leaving it to catch Anne Devot in the apex of anxiety, crying, tongue swollen and dangling from her mouth like a damaged kidney, body limp with fatigue, hunger.

  Anticipation.

  An hour later, Shane saw the first droplets of blood. Two stark red spots where the tee-shirt gripped her inner right thigh. More blood came, like water overflowing a sink, running along the front edge of the chair then dripping to the floor, splattering her legs, her ankles and feet. She thrashed, doubled over, face contorted in agony, arms wrapped around her lower abdomen, hiking the shirt up to her hips, revealing the blood and gore between her legs, the pre-birth of her self-aborted fetus oozing out her once sanctified uterus.

  The deed completed, the camera went dead.

  Allis, mask free, came into Shane's room soon thereafter. Shane used every last bit of energy to peer up at the doctor. "Where is she?"

  "Downstairs."

  Worrying about Anne's welfare was important to Shane, but secondary to his own destitution at the moment. "She did it for me, didn't she?"

  Allis nodded. "I told her you'd starve watching her. Ultimately, she did what she had to do."

  "She saved my life."

  "Barely."

  He wanted the conversation to end. "I need food, water."

  "And you shall have it," Allis said. He stepped from the room, only to return moments later holding a small metal sauce pan. The thought of nourishment made Shane's mouth water, regardless of—

  First he saw the red smears lining the inside edges. He prayed for sauce, raspberries, anything but...but...

  Allis said, "Time to kill your devil."

  Shane closed his eyes. Allis held the pan down on his lap.

  He took a deep breath, and without thinking once of his anxiety, used both hands to feed Anne Devot's abortion into his eager mouth.

  There is no greater pleasure than to experience vicariously the anxiety of others.

  Richard Allis, Ph.D.

  Big Bertha

  The final patrons of the evening had barely finished their desserts when Tommy Blake politely and professionally informed them that the restaurant would be closing for the night. He took their check, then retrieved their coats from the bar and ushered them out, holding the door open and offering a congenial smile before locking up behind them.

  He pulled the key from the lock, spun around like a top and pumped his fists. Yowza! It was time! He sped across the restaurant towards the cellar door, looking down into the musty depths where paradise awaited.

  He'd paid his dues, and after putting in a full year at Antonio's Ristorante, had become head chef. Longer hours, yeah, but lots of benefits.

  The closing process had become a rather simple routine for Tommy, and he'd bragged he could do it blindfolded, lights out, with no one to guide his Johnson & Wales butt around the restaurant. The folks up at the Culinary Institute didn't teach the 'art of closing', but they as hell should've because that was the kind of stuff that really mattered when it came to playing the part of Head Chef at a fine establishment like Antonio's. Of course cooking good meals mattered quite a bit—really all that mattered to Antonio—but to Tommy, getting things wrapped up quickly so he could spend a few succulent moments with the hostess—the boss's wife—in the cellar, well that was what really mattered.

  Twenty wooden steps ran straight down into the cellar, with another forty feet running back to the rear. Light bulbs hung like beehives from every other crossbeam, half of them burnt out, the ot
hers hardly guiding the way so you'd have to feel around just in case one of the busboys left a chair in the way.

  And then, crouched in the dimmest and furthermost corner of the cellar, lived the grandmamma of all meat lockers: Big Bertha. A Carper 34 (the 34 being the degrees in Fahrenheit the locker adamantly maintained), the ancient wooden dinosaur bragged nearly two hundred square feet of space, nearly three times that of those presently utilized.

  It didn't house a thermostat—didn't need to, it stayed at 34 degrees—nor a window in the door. It also lacked the safety features mandatory on today's units, most specifically a safety plunger permitting anyone trapped inside to easily escape should the door unexpectedly close. But Bertha, she did sport a helluva lock, and like a tiger on a leash, her door had to be tethered to the hook in the adjacent wall when someone ventured inside for a fresh cut of steaks, or a tray of meatballs. If you played dirty and didn't heed this simple precaution, well bucko, the door could easily get caught up in the slightest draft and swing shut, locking you within its grasp. Of course, it was against today's regulations to retain such a monstrosity without the appropriate safeguards, but hell, it was cheaper for Antonio to pay off the inspectors than to fork out the big bucks for a new state-of-the-art fridge.

  "Anne?" Tommy's eyes stretched wide in search for Antonio's wife. He stopped at the bottom step, brushing aside a mesh of webs, gazing across the gray cellar: shelves and shelves of canned goods, sauces, vegetables, rows of liquors and beer, stacked chairs, tables, aprons.

  He untied his apron and tossed it atop a bar stool. "Hey Anne..." he summoned, whispering in playful response to the game of hide and seek he figured she'd decided to play. Damn, wasn't it irritating enough when she played her silly games? But damn again if she wasn't so freaking hot those times she pranced out wearing something good and sexy—like last night, when she appeared from behind a stack of crates wearing only an apron, her perky breasts sneaking out the sides like two fresh pastries.