“It’s an icebox question,” I laughed, lowering myself back onto the bed.
“A what?”
I felt the needle slip into my arm as easily as if it had found a hole made for it. There was that disturbing feeling of something foreign jetting into my body as he plunged down on the syringe, and the drug rolled into me like fog. Almost immediately, I felt warm and heavy, a dribble of sticky pancake syrup.
“You know, like does the light in the icebox really go out when you close the door? Didn’t you ever think about that when you were a kid?”
“Well, yes,” he hesitated, wondering about the connection.
“What do you do when I’m not there to see you do it? Do you even exist when I don’t think of you?”
“Just relax, Mr. Stadler,” he motioned, and the interns came toward me, towering walls of crisp white.
On went the electrodes with their jelly, the mouth protector, the close-fitting cap, the chinstrap.
“Doctor,” I mumbled. “Will I remember you?”
“Yes, Mr. Stadler. You will. You’ve been through this procedure before.”
As I slipped into unconsciousness, I thought I smelled ozone, sharp and acrid.
Then, blessed light.
* * *
Oh God, not her.
She stayed the longest of all.
And I could barely stand to look at her.
She’s built like a cheerleader, with curves that caused neck injuries just looking at them. Nice ass, perky, high-school tits.
Then there was her skin.
The entire surface of her body was a scab, a thick, crusty wound, constantly healing, but never quite.
Unlike the nude man, she moved about, though never getting close to me. And she didn’t speak. But when she moved, the sound! The sound set my teeth on edge, because it was rough and grinding and sandpapery.
Fissures and faults cracked opened on her body when she moved, exposing something underneath as deep and glistening as her skin was thick and dry. The angry red of that raw flesh gave way almost immediately to cloudy yellow tears that trickled down her body.
She was a monstrosity.
She didn’t seem to notice me as she paced across the confines of my cell, her feet rasping the floor.
I’d tried talking to her, but the most I got was a slight glance, an inclination of the head, a flick of the eyes.
I had no idea how long I’d been there or—
Oh, yes. The shock treatment. I’d—
Forgotten.
Shaken, I launched into my mantra of names, reciting aloud, enunciating each slowly so that both mind and tongue wouldn’t forget how to pronounce them.
The scab woman stopped her pacing, turned to face me, startling me so that I broke off mid-name.
Her face moved, her cheeks stretching and bulging, her mouth contorting as if in pain.
Her eyes blazed at me.
There was a tearing sound, horribly loud and strangely intimate.
A rush of fluid spilled from her lips, streamed down her chin and neck.
Her lips stretched across her face slowly, with a sound like someone pulling a hunk of bread from a crusty french loaf. Teeth, shiny and moist and gummy pink, flashed between them.
A smile.
Suddenly, my head spun. The electric smell of the treatment room buzzed inside my nostrils, and my stomach tightened.
I think I screamed before I threw up, before I fainted.
She stood over me and smiled that wound of a smile down at me, fierce and triumphant.
* * *
I awoke in the infirmary—sort of a strange place to have inside a facility that’s basically a big infirmary itself—and the nurses were not happy. A violent one in here usually spelled trouble. I had injured two staff members on one of my first visits years ago.
This time I was the one who’d been hurt. Didn’t remember how. I must have fainted, gouged my head on one of the jacket’s buckles. Pretty nasty, especially considering that I hadn’t been found until the next morning. And head wounds bleed a lot.
At least I thought it was my blood. I hadn’t been able to get a good look at the cut. They had me strapped down pretty tight
No one to talk to here, even though it was the first time I’d seen real people in days. They were real, I guess, even though they all looked so nondescript, so plain, so—
Forgettable.
Dinner was fed to me—couldn’t be trusted with my hands free for a moment, much less possess a spoon—by a bored bull of an orderly. Large kid, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four. Looked like a college ball player who had learned the hard way that those professors really were just passing him so that he could catch the winning pass in the Rose Bowl.
Quick, efficient and neat, he slid the soft, grey starchy food into me in just ten minutes.
After, it was lights out. I saw the shadow of the guard outside the infirmary as the orderly left. Then, the loud click of the lock engaged.
I wasn’t sleepy, but I no longer fought the drugs they snuck into me.
The bed spun, threatening to throw me against the walls, and my stomach lurched uncertainly.
It passed, and I slept.
* * *
But not a long or particularly restful sleep.
I awoke and there he was, standing in the corner.
The third of my nightmare visitors.
With disgust, I noticed the smell. It was pervasive, overwhelming. I was at its mercy since I couldn’t even reach up to cover my nose and mouth.
It was like someone had emptied every bedpan in every bathroom in the hospital there in that room. I tried to breathe through my mouth, but it did little good. I drew the odor in with every breath, shed it with every exhalation.
The air in the small room seemed to ripple with its foul load. Unable to bear it any longer, I leaned my head as far over the side of the bed as I could without breaking my neck, vomited my dinner.
I lolled there groggily for some time, my head inches from the puddle I’d just let loose. Still the odor of excrement filled my nostrils. As I pulled myself back onto the bed, I caught sight of his silhouette in the corner.
His outline was rough and lumpy; misshapen. Not the smooth, true lines of a real person.
He moved.
A cold chill swept through me when I realized that he was coming toward me.
I rustled the covers, clinked the buckles and clasps on my jacket in an attempt to gain the attention of the—probably sleeping—attendant outside my door.
My voice, however, seemed locked in my throat.
My movements neither brought the orderly nor stopped the figure, which was now at my bedside. The overwhelming odor flowed from it in waves. Its proximity made my sensitive stomach spasm in anticipation of another bout of vomiting.
It took a moment for me to see its form distinctly, but when I did, I would have rubbed my eyes in disbelief had I been able.
Its body was a bulging, twisted mass of dark material, glistening in the thin light that leaked in under the door.
Shit.
Without warning, a hand emerged from the blackness, grasped me.
I screamed at its slick, warm touch, thankful then for the heavy leather of the straitjacket. Its flesh squished and slurped as it squeezed my arm, and I realized, sickeningly, that it was attempting to get its arm under me, to lift me.
To embrace me.
I didn’t struggle as it lifted me to my feet, drew me close. The jacket dropped jingling to the floor, and I felt the creature’s warm putrescence press through my paper-thin gown.
A part of me seemed resigned to this, calm and accepting, even grateful.
Its embrace tightened, and instead of being uncomfortable, I found myself actually sinking into the form. The sensation was both repelling and strangely soothing; as pleasant as stepping into a hot bath.
As I oozed into it, I began to feel slightly dizzy, light-headed. Drunk almost. Then, even the sensation of him being there—the thick
ness, the warmth, the overpowering smell—disappeared as I sank deeper.
I felt as if there were nothing now, and I was hovering over a deep chasm.
A part of my brain screamed at me from a distance, which seemed farther and farther away.
It had nearly consumed all of me at that point, but my hands clutched at its chest as if hanging onto a doorframe. This purchase, however, was slippery, gave way.
I found myself, somewhat against my will, pulling back, retreating from that warm embrace. The more I pulled, however, the harder it became. Like quicksand, its body held me as I struggled.
It tried to squeeze me into its form, enveloping me in its arms. But I caught them, slick and muscular as two snakes, and we wrestled.
With the strength that only the truly desperate can muster, I wrapped my ankles around the foot of the infirmary bed and leveraged my weight against its body. With a terrific squelching, I wrenched myself from it, flung it from me. It spun across the room, splattered against the wall, lost all form and slid to the floor.
I stood there for a moment, stunned, dripping with shit, covering my eyes, in my nose, down my throat.
But I remembered.
I am Chris Stadler.
I remembered everything.
Wobbly, I fell to my knees, and my head smacked the floor wetly. Barely conscious, I retched what little there was left in my stomach into the mess that was the room. When there was nothing left, I continued to vomit, until I was sure the only thing coming out of me was blood.
* * *
You’d better believe that the doctors, nurses, orderlies and the poor people that had to clean up that mess wondered how a person could be so full of shit.
I was accused of deliberately “retaining stool,” as they put it, and placed on a modified, high-fiber diet along with plenty of monitored potty breaks.
I didn’t fully understand what happened that night, but I was changed. I felt different somehow, more aware of myself, who I was, where I was.
I remembered for the first time in years what had happened.
I was put there two years prior by my only living relative, my great-aunt Olivia Hardison, because of a supposed advanced degeneration of my memory, similar to Alzheimer’s disease. I had been under the impression that whenever I forgot someone, they ceased to exist. Doctors call this object permanence, and it’s something that babies experience, then grow out of.
I was put there because I forgot.
But now, I remembered.
I knew that I needed to see my great-aunt.
And something told me that she wouldn’t be very thrilled to see me.
* * *
Night again. Whatever they were giving me had made me so regular that I was exhausted.
I replayed in my mind what had happened and why. One thing was apparent. The reason for placing me here—that people and things I forgot disappeared—was not a delusion. I knew that. It really happened.
And, I could control it, had controlled it, used it like a power.
But why did my aunt have me committed?
Why were they so hell-bent on keeping me pumped up on drugs?
What could I do to get out of here?
* * *
At about 2:00 a.m., she returned.
The straitjacket dropped from my body, fell to the floor.
So did my institution-grey pajamas, and I was nude.
She moved toward me, chilling in her aspect and intensity.
Crackling like dry toast, she knelt, and a thrill of perverse exhilaration raced through me. She hunkered on the floor, then stretched out. In a parody of enticement, she ran her hands roughly over her scabrous form, flakes falling from her curves, a sound like sandpaper over wood.
Then, she slowly opened her legs, spread them with all the abandon of a centerfold.
I could scarcely see in the dim light, but as her legs parted, that horrible tearing sound came from between them. A vertical gash opened where her sex should be, deep and red and wet.
I nearly jumped when she reached out, grabbed my naked leg with her rough hand, pulled me down. Initially, I resisted, but I succumbed.
I sank slowly to my knees. Her legs encompassed me in their strong, craggy embrace.
I nearly passed out with revulsion and pleasure as I entered her.
It seemed to last forever, the thrusting, the grunting, the tearing and rasping.
As we neared climax, she put her mouth to my ear, and in a partially recognizable voice, gasped, “Remember!”
There was an explosion within me, and I passed it into her.
As I watched, she became a new woman, complete, healed and whole.
And as shockingly beautiful as she had been hideous.
She smiled at me, but I couldn’t see the color of her eyes in the darkness.
I rolled off her, and a wave of exhaustion swept through me, more profound than anything I had felt in the last several days.
I was swept away.
* * *
When I awoke, I was covered with rust-brown dried blood.
She was gone.
I stood, very wobbly, and looked out the tiny window of my cell.
Although the lights were as bright as ever in the corridors, there was no one about.
No one.
I frowned at this, and pressed my face against the glass for a better look.
As I did so, the door, to my astonishment, moved, swung open without a sound.
For a moment, I stood there—naked, cold, covered in flakes of dried blood—and did nothing. Then, I took two tentative steps into the bright hall.
I half expected a team of orderlies, doctors and police officers to round the corner and club me back into the room. Then, it’d be a return to the drugs and high-fiber diet for me.
But no one came.
Confused, I walked farther down the corridor, out of the secure wing, past the nurses station, past the administration offices.
No one was here. Not even the other patients.
I was somewhere near the lobby of the infirmary when I realized what was going on.
I’d forgotten them. All of them.
They were gone, as gone as if they’d never existed.
This didn’t make me feel as great as I might have hoped. Although a big part of me was glad to be rid of them, another big part was dazed and lost.
I had to see Aunt Olivia.
I smiled at my reflection in the infirmary’s glass door; a demonic figure, nude and red and leering.
With a purpose, I padded slowly down to the staff lounge for my first unattended hot shower in more than two years.
* * *
A canvas laundry sack was the closest thing to a suitcase I could find, and I filled it with everything I could. Toiletries and aspirin, canned foods, office supplies. The employee locker rooms turned out to be a treasure trove of money and clothing. I left with more than $4,000 in cash, an assortment of credit cards, and a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that seemed made for me.
Slinging the heavy sack over my shoulder, I went outside into the parking lot and looked back at the facility. It was, in my estimation, the most unassuming building I had ever seen. Low slung, one story, with minimal glass, and bricks that blended with the wooded surroundings. It seemed architecturally designed to fade into the background and be forgotten, along with its inhabitants.
I had also found the keys to a ‘12 Dodge Dakota, which took me some time to identify among the parked cars. I hoisted the laundry bag into its bed and climbed into the cab.
I started the truck, pulled out of the parking lot.
I remember you, Aunt Olivia,
I’m coming to see you.
I think you’ll remember me.
* * *
PART TWO
The road wandered into town, seeming as surprised at the town’s existence as was Chris. He slowed down immediately, the truck’s tires fishtailing on the newly paved road.
MISSION SPRINGS, the crooked, brown road sign
read. POPULATION 234.
Chris sat there for a moment staring at the sign, the truck idling amidst the dust raised by its abrupt stop.
Mission Springs. The memories came rushing back.
“It’s the family curse, my dear boy,” Aunt Olivia had laughed. “Or the family blessing. It all depends whether or not you’re on the receiving end.”
Anger flashed within him, as bright as it had the day she’d spoken those words.
“Memory is your protection. Remember those dearest to you, and they’ll live forever unchanged. Forget your enemies, and they will disappear as certainly and as permanently as if they had never existed.”
In the end, Chris had broken ranks with his domineering great-aunt, for a reason or reasons still unclear to him. Something had happened, something the old woman didn’t like or couldn’t tolerate. So, she’d committed him in the institution.
Coldness stirred in his stomach at the return of these memories. If the old lady was capable of kicking his ass once, she could do it again.
But he had to know…to remember.
Lifting his foot off the brake, he rolled into town with the road.
* * *
He had no clear idea of exactly where he was going, but the house and its surroundings leapt out at him, dragged more memories from the clogged recesses of his mind.
He’d played ball there, on the side yard, as a kid. The big oak in the front still supported the tire chain his uncle Frank—an unexpected chill as that name surfaced—had hung long ago. In the dormer, high atop one of the Victorian house’s many gables, was his old room. There was the mailbox he ran to every afternoon to wait for the rare and precious letters from his father.
The house was still and picturesque. Autumn had come with its palette of reds and browns. Morning sunlight flooded the expanse of the property—some fifty or sixty wooded acres—giving it a golden, lush aspect.
His heels clumped up the half dozen steps that led to the huge, wraparound porch. A hammock swung sullenly in the early morning breeze. Children’s toys were scattered here and there, a fine coat of dew sparkling on their surfaces. Stepping over them, he hesitated, wanting desperately to turn back, to run away and truly forget this place and the other memories it held.
The End in All Beginnings Page 7