Psychostasis

by Ezra Blake

  They were wrong about everything.

  “Ain’t nobody up there listenin’,” he slurs, kneeling before the stage. “Really. I been nothing but faithful my whole life.”

  In church confession, he spilled the same sins every week and Father Reiner’s response was always the same: say your Hail Marys. Pray more. We’re here to help, if you help yourself.

  “I keep askin’ God to make me feel sorry an’ make me stop wanting the things I want but—”

  “What do you want?” Ivan prompts.

  The spotlights paint violet splotches across his vision. He gazes up at Jake, hanging limp on the crucifix, struggling to keep his eyes open and mouthing I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  “If you decline to share, I’ll explain for you.”

  Ash bites his trembling lip.

  “Perhaps this is common knowledge.” Ivan says. “Ashton is—”

  “I love you,” he blurts. “I loved you since I first saw you at the bus station and I was too dumb to ever say it. And if the Bible is all true an’ all I don’t care if I’m going to hell, ‘cause I’m not sorry.” He sucks in a deep, painful breath. His hands are numb. He can’t make fists anymore, but he’d rather live without hands than die without ever kissing Jake again.

  Jake’s eyes drift shut. Above him, Chris and Ivan mutter to each other. His ears are ringing; he can’t hear them until Ivan raises his voice in irritation and says, “He’s already here, darling. If you have an alternative, now’s the time to tell me.”

  “I don’t know,” Chris says. “But this was a mistake.”

  “The time for indecision has passed.”

  “The others, maybe, but he didn’t do anything. How am I supposed to—”

  “I’ll do it.”

  All eyes turn to Jake.

  “Let me down,” they say. “I’ll do it.”

  Jake shuffles up and down a beige hallway, counting the linoleum tiles beneath his feet. White, white, white, black. There, in front of the nurses’ station, someone ran out of white tiles and broke the pattern. They couldn’t have picked a worse location.

  Aside from the tile, everything here looks the same: beige walls, locked windows, blue plastic chairs with no screws to swallow. No one has much to say except Mrs. Nicole, who leads psychoeducation groups. “Self care is not eating chocolate or skipping work to lie in bed. Self care is exercise, leaving the house, and taking your medication.”

  But Jake isn’t ill. He’s not like these people. When he gets out, after a week of safe nothing, he tells his father the things his therapist wanted to say but couldn’t: his home life is the problem. He’ll take the pills and get better once he’s out of this goddamn house. His parents agree. It would be good for him to live alone, and besides, they’re planning four months in South America this spring.

  A year later, Jake quits his second, shittier corporate job and flushes his Lithium down the toilet, and for a few ecstatic weeks, he feels alive. Sure, his diet is pizza and he doesn’t sleep, but self care is about doing what’s right for you, not what’s right for the people who stifled and ignored and abandoned you your whole life.

  Mrs. Nicole said everyone needs a hobby, and Jake’s is roadkill. He walks along the highway each morning and fills a garbage bag with bits and pieces of dead animals. He has four or five bags in his freezer on any given day. His craft is improving. It’ll make money as long as he sticks it out—and in the meantime, when they cut the power for nonpayment and everything rots, he gets in touch with his college buddies. Yeah, Rose knows a guy who wants to make some cash. Sure, they’re down for a party. Jake’s the only person they know with a house to himself. They can do anything there.

  They leave when the drugs run dry, but it doesn’t matter because Jake fills his freezer again and again. He takes four tabs of acid and befriends everyone he meets in hyperspace. When he’s tired of bits and pieces, he buys a live gerbil and sticks it in the freezer, and they say no, no, but you can’t trust space demons anyway. And after the ferret, the guinea pig, and the neighbor’s tabby cat, they shut up. When the party is over, around mid-week, Jake wraps a blanket around his neck and sleeps with his stuffed animals for nineteen hours.

  It’s good for a while. He’s never alone. But even when he’s tripping balls, guinea pigs can’t talk and Tabby only purrs. People still leave when he runs out of cash.

  Then he watches the news.

  It’s a bad idea, they say. You’ll regret it. When he’s tossing the idea around in the shower, they catch it and wag their inky fingers and say Jacob, you’ve glimpsed True Reality. You should know better.

  But in True Reality, you make your own meaning. And murder would mean something.

  After his third consecutive night lying awake with his dead friends, Jake sits on his junkyard patio and watches the dirty Philadelphia sunrise, and they say, Fine. If you want a mission, we’ll give you a mission.

  “I admire you,” he says. Every breath is tight and thin, spun out like spider silk between his splayed arms. “That’s why I answered his ad. I wanted to be like you. I just couldn’t go through with it.”

  “You don’t want to be like us,” Christopher says.

  “Let’s hear him out, darling.”

  You’re ready, if they’ll have you. You don’t care what it takes.

  “I’m ready,” he says, “if you’ll have me. I don’t care what it takes. Just let me finish what I started.”

  Chris and Ivan share a few hushed words. Elliot is swaying, fists clenched. Tears stream down Ash’s face. It hurts to watch, but he’ll feel better in a few minutes. It’s all part of the Plan.

  “Doctor Skinner,” he says, because Chris is shaking his head ‘no.’ “I’m begging you. Let me kill him and I’ll be yours forever. My entire life has been leading up to this.”

  Easy, now. Don’t scare them off.

  “Your entire life,” Ivan repeats, a note of laughter in his voice.

  “This is a bad idea.”

  “My apologies, Christopher—have you changed your mind? You’d prefer to kill him yourself?”

  Condensation drips from the ceiling and spatters on the hard floor. Tears drip from Ash’s chin.

  “I didn’t think so,” Ivan says. He retrieves a claw hammer and steps onto the stage.

  Breathe deep, messiah.

  The thick stake wiggles out from his wrist. Jake exhales a long, pained hiss, and Ivan moves on to the stake piercing his twisted ankle. When he tumbled down that hill on his first hunting trip, when he snapped his arm jumping out his second-story window, when they nailed him up in the first place—nothing compares to the agony of scraping iron on tendon and bone. He sobs and bites his tongue bloody.

  Then it’s over, and he falls hard on Ivan’s shoulder, gasping. He clings. Ivan dips him down and lies him flat on the stage. Long steady fingers, blunt nails against his scalp. “Did you torture the animals, I wonder? Skin them alive, break bones?”

  He shakes his head.

  “There’s no time like the present, Jacob.”

  Jake shakes his head again. He drags himself upright and sits with his back against the cross. He slips a few inches. He feels raw and wet, but he can’t tell whether it’s sweat or blood. He might have scraped off some skin while he struggled.

  And that’s child’s play to these people.

  “Not him,” Jake says.

  Compensate. Impress them.

  “But I’ll torture Elliot. This is his fault anyway. I’ll…” he trails off. The specifics evade him. He squints at Elliot’s battered body, assessing him as a canvas, but he’s never been good with blank pages. “I’ll cripple him. Cut his tendons, to start. Just lemme gut Ash, keep it simple. Please.”

  Ivan cocks his head, and for a moment, Jake’s sure he’s seen straight through the monologue and into his brain. But then he rises, shuffles through a plastic crate, and returns with a hunting knife. It’s solid, gleaming violet in the spotlights.

  Ash is curled on his side, cradling h
is stomach and convulsing with quiet, chasmic sobs. Jake wants to tell him everything—just wait, I love you, I have a plan—but every time he opens his mouth, they lasso his words and shove them back down. Take the knife, they say. Do it. Do it.

  So he takes the knife. He flexes his wrists, thanks God they still move, and clamors to the ground.

  Chris hugs himself and Ivan leans against the stage, every spring coiled, ready to strike at the first sign of disobedience. Elliot steps out of his own pain just long enough to pay attention. He’s calculating. He knows what happens next. Jake kneels under the blue light and rolls Ash onto his back.

  “Hey,” he says.

  Ash smiles a little. Black ink leaks from his eyes and pools around him in a living, pulsing Rorschach blot. Never mind that Jake always fails that test.

  “Everything’s gonna be okay, Ash. We’ll stick together. I’ll see you in, uh…”

  Ivan says, “Do it before I change my mind.”

  He nods jerkily and presses the quivering blade to Ash’s belly.

  “It’s okay,” Ash whispers.

  Jake cuts.

  Ink pours from his stomach. It spreads and spreads until it’s drenching the room in void, and inside Ash is void. Nothing.

  Nothing, and a satchel of pills and a black pistol. Jake shoves wrist-deep into his guts. All light and sound is sucked into the vacuum.

  They stay that way for a small eternity, Jake in Ash, floating together in a wash of black.

  Time stops. Sinking, sinking…

  He’s underground. Above him, ancient stone and roots and worms, damp and living and dead. He cocks the gun in slow motion. If he doesn’t move—if he can only loosen his grip on himself, stop clinging to his thoughts—the two of them can live in this moment forever, both half dead. Nothingness is safe. Loneliness is beautiful when you’re alone with the best part of yourself.

  Then he thinks.

  He can’t help it. He thinks, I’m here for a reason—

  —And he is no longer there, and his reason is gone.

  He swings around, aims at Ivan, and pulls the trigger.

  Black tar explodes from the barrel and slams into his chest. It coats the room in sticky, empty void droplets and everyone is frozen; everyone stares.

  Ivan doesn’t recoil. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even close his eyes.

  Then, slowly, the droplets begin to dance. They wiggle and swim and draw together like iron shavings to a dozen magnets. They coalesce into black puddles, and the puddles sprout legs. They sprout arms and ember eyes; they grow longer and taller and laugh, and then Ivan takes a step forward and Chris wrenches the gun from Jake’s hand. He flings it across the room. It smacks into the wall and falls, empty, to the ground.

  No more bullets.

  Christopher slams his fist into Jake’s jaw. Before Ivan can stop him, he’s landed four solid punches and Jake tastes teeth.

  The shadows loom and laugh around him. Take a bow. Cue applause. It bores into his skull and expands like a lead balloon, crushing everything in its path.

  Little messiah is saving the Earth!

  His eyes bulge in his head. He sucks in another hoarse breath and Chris punches him again. Again. Plastic crinkles somewhere behind him, followed by the tell-tale rip of fibrous tape.

  Deliver the package!

  Then he’s blind. They wrap something over his eyes, tight, too tight; they shove something huge and spongy into his mouth. He tries to scream. Ivan says, “Hush, Jacob. You need some time alone to think.”

  Begin the rebirth! HAHAHA!

  Plastic sucks tight against his face when he tries to breathe. Jake did this once before, stuck his head in a shopping bag and wailed for his parents to rescue him, but they didn’t. They don’t. He’s on the verge of unconsciousness when they finally punch holes where his nostrils should be.

  CONGRATULATIONS, MESSIAH!

  Tape. Heavy tape wrapped around his chin and over his skull. Squeezing, throbbing, round and round. They crush his ears against his head, crush his rolling, sightless eyes into their bony sockets.

  YOU DID IT! YOU WIN! HAHAHAH!

  Smell of leather—hide tanning, ritzy shoe store stench. A sheathe of damp, bulky rawhide slips over the tape. It tightens and tightens until his face goes numb and if he vomits now, he will die.

  Jake flaps his arms and makes two weak, bloody fists. He can’t stand and his strength leaks out through the holes in his wrists. He’s blind, deaf, mute, trapped. He rolls and flounders and jangles the padlock at the back of his neck, jams his nails under the hood. The pressure only obstructs his labored breath. He squirms and screams until his limbs tingle and his lungs seize.

  Then he lies still, gasping, waiting for something worse to happen. His heart pounds in his head. Faster, faster; he can’t suck in enough air to compensate. The darkness takes on a razor-sharp clarity. It spreads to encompass everything in existence. He’s alone. It’s just him and nobody else.

  Slowly but surely, the blackness condenses into consciousness. No psychedelic stage dressing marks the transition. They emerge from nothing: hundreds of long, slender figures with jutting jaws and cigarette eyes. Jake stares into the Void, and the Void says:

  It’s funny, messiah. Give us a smile.

  Like switching off cruise control—Chris cradles his bloody hand and briefly wonders who did this to him. Ivan crouches to eye level and says, “Show me.”

  He offers up the injury to Ivan’s touch, his gentle flexion of each joint. Pain shoots up his arm.

  Ivan hums as he bends the ring finger back to its original position. It’s been crooked since he first broke it all those months ago. “You should know better.”

  Chris sits on the floor and looks at his hands, which are shaking again, and then at Elliot, whose face is slack with bland, sluggish grief.

  “This will have to do for now.” Ivan rips a strip of duct tape from the roll, doubles the sticky side on itself, and wraps Christopher’s ring and middle fingers together. “Even a strong man can break his fingers throwing punches.”

  “He almost killed you.”

  “I’m here,” Ivan says.

  “He tried to—”

  He pulls Chris close and buries his face in his hair. “I’m here,” he says.

  When they part, he’s drawn to the mass of intestines bulging from Ash’s slit belly. “Where did the gun come from?” He asks.

  They lock eyes for a split second, and then Ivan wipes all emotion from his face and says, “Plenty of time to ask questions later. We aren’t finished yet.”

  In his peripheral vision, Jake slinks toward the corpse and fumbles around its guts. He smashes his fists against the concrete and shakes his head, rattling the padlock on the back of his neck. He clings to the body as though his warmth can somehow fill its veins and make the blood pulse. It’s wretched, yes, but hasn’t Christopher done the same?

  Ivan plucks the rope around Elliot’s neck, sending a weary shudder through him. Chris steps carefully across the bunker, toward the gun. “I have heat lamps for his feet,” Ivan says. “Or perhaps you’d prefer to waterboard him first. It could be therapeutic.”

  He picks it up, opens the chamber. No bullets. No misfires. No stupid mistakes to be made.

  “They’re scared,” he says. His voice is barely audible over the clank of Elliot’s manacles and his constant, grating agony.

  “Weren’t you?”

  He slides down the wall and sits, facing Elliot, whose spine straightens and slumps as he slowly hangs himself. His paraffin skin is glazed with moisture. Living bodies are far too variable. They drip, secrete, and slosh around. He misses the morgue’s industrial freezers. It’s all the heat and fluid and breath that’s the problem, but a freezer would fix them.

  He tips his head back against the stone. The ceiling drips. For a moment, his mind flits to that perspex shower in Naples, the cinnamon steamed milk. Ivan’s hands.

  “They’re kids,” he says. “All of them.”

  �
��Elliot is twenty-three. Plenty of time to accumulate karmic debt, if you fancy the notion.” He crouches to Elliot’s height, mops up a drop of saliva with his thumb, and smears it across the kid’s bloody lip. “They were curated with you in mind. Ashton consented. Jacob was unexpected, but you heard what he said, after dinner. He killed small animals. The telltale sign of a fledgeling psychopath.”

  Across the room, Jake is pressing viscera back into Ash’s abdominal cavity. It’s slow, clumsy. Every time he stuffs a loop of intestine inside, another squeezes out.

  “And this one is quite the sinner.” He ruffles Elliot’s hair and rips the tape from his mouth. “Would you like to share, or should I?”

  Elliot bares his bloody teeth.

  “There’s nothing you could tell us that we haven’t learned already. You’ve been under surveillance, you know. Medical records. Location data. Stefan took an intensely personal interest in you.” He trails his hand down Elliot’s abdomen, brushes his knuckles into the humid junction of his thighs. “Understandably so. You have much in common.” Ivan slips a finger inside him. Chris knows because every muscle in his body clenches.

  “I was lying,” he rasps. “My webcam is just—”

  “Yes, we have footage as well. I reviewed some last night. A shame what happened to your mother. Did she fall, Elliot, or did you push her? I couldn’t make it out.”

  He shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut. His swollen, purple lips drip blood.

  “I wouldn’t blame you. She must have been insufferable. You were always searching for caregivers but you never hired one. Why? Were you afraid your secrets would escape the family?” Ivan asks. “A truly dreadful state of affairs. If only your brother had been there to care for her…”

  Elliot slumps forward, into the noose, and holds his breath until veins bulge from his forehead.

  “You take after him.” Ivan prods his bare hip and sets his body swaying back and forth. “Care to explain how he ended up in prison?”

  He squeezes his eyes shut.

  “It’s public record. Hardly a secret.”