The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2)

by Mark Reynolds

  Only none of that was true. Jack was real. Her friend and guardian, lover and confidant, protector and … savior.

  And there it was again. Jack was as fallible and confused and astonished by everything going on around him as anyone. Only when the time came, Jack had done what was necessary, saving her and the others, sending them home. How could she ignore his sacrifice by retreating into the same world he had liberated her from?

  She had to return: to there, to him. Before Jack, there was only an endless ribbon of disjointed memories stitched together with sticky, mescaline dreams and gum-covered, LSD nightmares serving only to close the door on a reality she detested but could not escape, and open a window into a reality she longed for but could never hold.

  Until she found the Sanity’s Edge Saloon.

  Caught on the edge of an endless wasteland and a bottomless abyss, the Sanity’s Edge Saloon. Some of it Jack wrote about: the unfinished stairway to heaven, the half-bathroom missing most of the walls, ceiling, and even part of the floor. Then there were the things she knew, the things Jack never wrote down, but which she remembered because she was there. A soapbox left on the roof where Jack editorialized, though never in front of her or the others. And behind the claw-footed tub, the brass frog statue holding towels and soap on upraised flippers, an improbable metal erection jutting obscenely from between its legs. She didn’t have to make any of this up, crazy as it might sound. Some of it was in Jack’s book, written between the lines. And some she just knew because she was there. Jack’s computer was called the Jabberwock; he used it for writing because writing was the way to set the script that the Nexus would use to transform reality, the only way to be free from the Wasteland. He had five tickets out, five stories and no more. He used them to save her, Lindsay, Leland Quince, Alex and Oversight, sending them all away to their new lives. Oversight cost him his ticket out, but he was indebted to her, and refused to leave her behind to face the wrath of Gusman Kreiger. And so he doomed himself, a prisoner in the Wasteland on the edge of all realities until the end of time.

  Was it a greater act of love to sacrifice yourself for another, or to spend your final moments together? She didn’t know the answer to that question, but apparently Jack did. And she hated him for that. With only one ticket left out of the Wasteland, Jack had chosen to save Ellen by sending her away, and dooming himself in the process.

  No wonder you confuse him with a messiah. You might as well just add the line, “But for your grace, I would have no life in me.”

  Kohler eyed her in her silence, his face an all-too-familiar mask of feigned concern covering his predator’s fangs. “You’re back there again,” he observed.

  She caught the faintest glimmer of a smile tugging at his mouth before his finger moved to rub it away. His lips hid rows of small, pointed teeth, straight and white and possibly capped. Rodent teeth, vicious and hurtful. The sight of them made her shrink.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking right now.”

  That your teeth should be snatching chicks from their nests, or chewing through the neck of a baby rabbit killed in its hole.

  But talk like that would only make things worse. And there was always something worse. That realization was the straw that eventually broke everyone, how well she knew. So she gambled, the words past her lips before she could reconsider, bubbles floating above her as she sank below the surface.

  “I was thinking about Jack, about when we were together back in the Sanity’s Edge Saloon.”

  “Would you like to talk about that?”

  If she was careful—helpful, but not too helpful; informative, but not too informative—she could possibly show him one part of her mind, and draw him away from the secret, special places, leaving him to glance at some things while examining nothing. She was not insane. All of it was real, and Kohler would never understand it, and would succeed only in destroying it if given the opportunity. And that, above all else, she could not allow.

  Jack needed her.

  Almost as much as I need him.

  Kohler mistook her silence for willfulness. “We’ve talked about this world of yours before, haven’t we, Ellen?” he prodded softly, his tone less open, more accusatory. “A place where events are manipulated by magic, by … Jack.”

  She nodded, eyes scanning the low-pile rug of Dr. Kohler’s office, thinking only: where does anyone find such ugly carpeting?

  “And there was no one else in this world, is that right?” She didn’t answer, or even nod; Dr. Kohler wasn’t looking for her affirmation. He was thinking out loud, her presence no more integral to the process than that of the furniture or the ugly carpeting. “No authority figures. No commonplace people. No one at all, in fact. Just you and Jack and a few others, like castaways on a deserted island, besieged by a group you called the Tribe of Dust.”

  “They called themselves the Tribe of Dust,” Ellen said. It seemed a valid distinction, but she could not explain why.

  “Just so,” Kohler acknowledged. “But I think the point here is that even these people went away, one by one, until you were left alone with Jack. You told me that you were alone with him at first, and then others came along. And then they started to leave until, in the end, it was just you and Jack and these outcasts—”

  “Cast Outs,” she corrected.

  “—who lived outside of your safe haven, and were trying to destroy it.”

  “The Saloon was breaking down,” she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Give him nothing, she thought fiercely. And fast after that, I wish I was with Jack. Once, in what felt like a lifetime ago, she had only wanted to be away from the Saloon and its crazy caretaker. Now she wanted nothing more than to return there, to know that she wasn’t crazy, that all of it was real, and that Jack was real, and that he loved her still. He did. He must! He wouldn’t forget about her like everyone else.

  Would he?

  “That’s right. I remember you telling me that things were disappearing, that the magic was running out of the saloon.” Kohler tapped his notebook lightly with his pen. “Your fabricated reality was eroding as you began to come to grips with the true reality, the saloon being a defensive mechanism enabling your escape, a world safely hidden within your own mind, governed by simplistic problems with easily rendered solutions, juvenile displays of magic or violence. The saloon served as your escape from the depression and anxiety that led to your breakdown and attempted suicide, a means of escaping the trauma of being attacked by Leonard Tucker, and the fact that you were forced to kill him. It was a way to escape your institutionalization, the drug therapy, the electroshock. The human mind is remarkably complex, Ellen, able to safeguard itself from a variety of threats by discarding facts and inventing fantasies that it then allows itself to believe in and react to exactly as if they were real. Doing so gives the mind the time it needs to heal itself. And as your mind heals, it slowly and methodically deconstructs the fantasy world, ultimately destroying it and forcing you back into reality. The Saloon was destroyed, Jack left behind, all your personal demons slain, and yourself returned back to a normal life. You had the opportunity to reassess your interaction with people through Jack. You permitted yourself to be intimate with him, to be emotionally open and vulnerable with him. He accepted you without question just as you designed him to.”

  Dr. Kohler’s usual fishing expeditions had run their course, and now he was reeling in his nets. Like it or not, Kohler was no mouse scurrying through a maze and she was no lab assistant mischievously relocating the cheese. Dr. Kohler was not so simpleminded or so easily duped. And oh, by the way, sweetheart, you are the cheese. Kohler had satisfied himself with what he had found, and was moving on to phase two: addressing the problem that was Ellen Monroe. He sought out the secret wounds and private holes she thought so carefully hidden, and probed their edges, his examination frighteningly intimate like the cold touch of a metal instrument. He would destroy her dreams; reduce Jack to mind-candy, a dream-lover fading under the light of dawn, a menta
l schism, a coping mechanism to ease her transition back to normalcy. And when it was all done, he would expect her to be grateful.

  And you thought Lenny was the rapist.

  “Doesn’t telling me this make it harder for you?” she asked.

  “I need you to confront your fantasy world; see it for what it is.”

  She would sooner die than let Kohler destroy Jack and his world!

  Wasn’t that how you found yourself here?

  “Did you bring the book with you?” Dr. Kohler asked.

  She looked up, startled, a liar caught in a lie. And not just by anyone; this felt like getting caught by a cop. She remembered that, remembered lying to cops, getting caught. Maybe it was when she killed Lenny. Or maybe it was from before, that gray period of emptiness where she assumed her entire past hid, the unturned pages of a new book waiting to be read and revealed.

  But Kohler was not the gentle reader; he was the obsessed psychiatrist with cold, hurtful fingers, predatory eyes, and weasel teeth. And he had asked her a question that she thought he might already know the answer to.

  She tried to mask her expression, but it was too late; Kohler had seen her hesitation and was curious. He had fingered a raw nerve, much to his delight, and now, just to be sure, he poked it a few more times, attuned to the reflexive jerk and yelp of pain.

  “I believe you told me once that you carried the book with you everywhere, that you’d reread it more times than you could count. I’d like to borrow it.”

  “W-what for?” she asked.

  “I want to read it. I think it might shed some light on your situation, and assist in your therapy.”

  Don’t let him have it! Don’t let him take it away! “I didn’t bring it with me, today.”

  “No?” Her answer left him strangely pleased. “I thought you said you took it with you everywhere? Were you exaggerating?”

  Exaggerating was shrink-speak for lying. Was she lying then, or was she lying now? Either way, he wanted her admission of the deception like some Catholic school priest interrogating a student.

  “I left it with my boss, Mr. Dabble,” she said quickly. “He thought he could figure out where it came from.”

  “But you don’t think he can, do you?” Dr. Kohler asked pointedly.

  She wasn’t sure how to answer, what to say to make the weasel’s teeth let go. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t think you’re being entirely honest with me, Ellen,” he said.

  “He asked to borrow it just this morning,” Ellen replied, shifting in the chair. She uncrossed her legs, the slit in the front of her dress opening across her thigh. “He said he would return it to me tonight. I … I didn’t see the harm as long as it was just for the afternoon.”

  Kohler opened his mouth to reply then seemingly forgot what he was about to say.

  Ellen almost thought to give him more, a brief glimpse higher, but didn’t. It would make him suspicious; if he thought it an accident, he might not recognize the hook inside the lure, too arrogant to credit her with sufficient craft to outwit him. He was an educated psychiatrist; she was the delusional, drug-addicted daughter of a businessman with political aspirations. A rich brat at best, cunning but not clever.

  And it would have been for nothing if Kohler didn’t willingly pursue it. She might be crazy—she couldn’t rule out the possibility—but she wasn’t stupid. He never did anything deliberately unsavory, but her instincts weren’t wrong. Not about Jack, and not about Dr. Kohler. His was not like the second glance afforded the checkout girl with the low-cut top, or the leer given to the college students roller-skating through the park in short-shorts. Kohler was a predator who needed to control. Any patient unwilling to cede that to him would eventually receive the speech that started, “I’m afraid we don’t seem to be making a lot of progress. Perhaps it’s best if we consider a change in your therapy…”

  She sometimes wondered what kind of fucked-up childhood left him with such profound issues. In the dark recesses that no one talked about, Kohler’s needs exceeded ego, hovering on the edge of pathology. His expression, eyes momentarily fixated on her bare skin, objectifying, dissecting her into manageable pieces and discarding what defied his understanding or simply failed his interest.

  He also wore too much cologne.

  “Uhm… I…” Kohler tore his gaze away, collecting his thoughts by focusing on the notepad in front of him, drumming the page with the pen. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m not certain we’re making progress, Ellen. Perhaps it would be best if we considered changing our approach. At Friday’s session, I would like you to bring the book with you. I think it’s instrumental in how you’re coping with the real world, and why you can’t remember your past. At some point, you need to acknowledge that Jack is imaginary. However useful, he doesn’t come from this world.”

  Too often, Kohler talked about this world and this reality, as if this was the only one and he the guide back to it, a shepherd to the wayward. All just psychobabble. There were more worlds than this. Here, she was out of place, no past and nothing to weigh her down or keep her grounded or make her belong. Jack’s reality, the Sanity’s Edge Saloon and the Wasteland, was just as real, just as substantial as her apartment, the coffee shop, the bookstore. Nothing was any more real than anything else.

  At least, not for her.

  The inability to differentiate fantasy from reality is a hallmark of the insane mind.

  “Are you still having trouble sleeping?” Dr. Kohler asked after a brief, empty pause.

  “Sometimes,” she answered, wondering at the shift in course. And when did you tell him you were having trouble sleeping?

  “And the dreams? Are you still having them?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about nightmares?”

  “Sometimes.” Where is this going?

  “Do your nightmares wake you up?”

  “No.” But her response was too slow, too considered. He would know she was lying.

  “Can you describe some of these nightmares for me?” he asked with forced evenness. “Is it an image that you find frightening, or an uncomfortable situation? Or is it just a sense of terror?”

  This was a mistake. He would learn things about her, secrets she did not want him to have. But if she refused, there would be only one conclusion: carte blanche for more severe measures. Lack of cooperation could get her sent back to the hospital, put back on sedatives and mood suppressors, trapped behind padded walls and white non-dreams, her life ticking away like a clock and her no more cognizant of it than a potted spider plant. As for Jack, he would die, forgotten, alone, lost in the maze of her excised dreams, discarded as callously as a bloody clot of cancerous tissue: hermetically sealed, incinerated, gone.

  “I’m always alone,” she said reluctantly. Forgive me, Jack; I don’t know any other way. “Jack is there. I see him, but he can’t see me. It’s like I’m a ghost. I don’t know. In my nightmares, we can’t connect. I can’t touch him or talk to him. Something’s always keeping us apart, or I’m not substantial enough to reach him. We both talk, but he’s only talking to himself. I try to answer, but he can’t hear me.”

  “Besides talking to himself, what is Jack doing?” Kohler asked, seemingly nonplussed. “What about this frightens you?”

  “I don’t know. Feeling helpless, maybe. Jack’s alone, suffering. I can see what he’s doing, but I can’t do anything for him.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s writing. He’s always writing.” The dream from this morning, like so many mornings, came back to her, and she allowed herself to slip into its reality. “He’s alone in the Wasteland. The sun has burned his skin raw and red, peeling away in radioactive flakes. Sometimes he’s blind; the constant burning sun has scorched his eyes. He’s living on insects and garbage, whatever he can find and put into his mouth. And all the while, he’s desperately trying to write on a broken typewriter with missing letters and fractured teeth. His fingers keep working
the keys, battering away at the archaic machine until they’re bloody and swollen. But nothing’s getting written.”

  “And why do you think that is?”

  “He’s out of paper … and ink. And out of time. And maybe even out of his mind.”

  “So why do you think he keeps trying to write?”

  “He’s trying to get home.” And the suddenness of the realization, the vividness of her recall, tightened her throat, brought tears to her eyes. “And I can’t help him. I’m supposed to, but I don’t know how.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “I wake up.” She looked up at Kohler then. “I know you don’t believe me. I know you think it’s just a delusion, but it’s not. Jack is real. He saved me. And now he needs me to save him. Only I can’t. He never told me what to do.”

  Dr. Kohler nodded, scratching his pen upon the notebook, a deliberate effort at hiding his hesitation. “Ellen, would you entertain the possibility that the reason Jack is suffering in your dreams is that he’s served his purpose; that you’re supposed to let him go? It is your persistence in maintaining him, of forcing his continued existence in your mind, that’s causing his decay. He no longer has a function in your life, but because you persist in keeping him with you, he is being slowly and systematically destroyed. It’s your mind’s way of forcing you to let go of that part of your past, of making you get on with living in the real world now that you’re able to accept it for what it is.”

  “Why should I accept this world? Jack’s the only part of my past that I remember, the only part that seems real.”

  “Short-term memory loss is not uncommon after undergoing EC treatment,” he pointed out.

  “But not long-term,” she countered. She was aware of the side effects. Frankly, she doubted she had even undergone the procedure; it seemed more like a reality invented by the Cast Out, Reginald Hyde; one designed to torment her. It was too contrived that the thing she had no concrete memory of was the very thing that would take her memory away. But it was more than that. She had no memory of the hospital at all. There was nothing past her initial moments in the padded cell. She remembered being strapped in a straitjacket, remembered Dr. Chaulmers explaining how he was going to help her with drugs and shock treatment, remembered vomiting. And then she remembered the train coming, the strange conductor with the mirrored bow-tie and eyes like kaleidoscope wheels, the one who lifted her up and took her away to the Sanity’s Edge Saloon. But before that sketchy moment in the hospital, there was almost nothing. Like some character in a play, the director providing only a brief suggestion of her motivation. And action!