We Are Monsters

by Brian Kirk

  “Goddammit,” he said, bracing himself against the counter with both hands.

  “What?” Rachel asked, sounding concerned. He saw an opportunity in her tone of voice and let the silence stretch. After several seconds, she asked again, “Honey, what is it?” Over his shoulder he could see her straighten and begin tugging on her hair.

  “It’s Jerry,” he said. He turned and faced her, marshaling his most sympathetic expression. “He’s had another episode and has been committed. They’re holding him at the hospital.”

  “Oh no. What happened?” Rachel said. She had set aside the coffee cup and was now fiddling with her sleeve. Alex poured himself a cup of coffee and took it to the table, huddling over the mug with a heavy head, as Rachel had before.

  “I don’t know. That’s all they said. I guess I’ll find out when I show up.”

  “But…” Rachel scooted closer to Alex and placed a hand on his arm, “…is he okay?”

  Alex shrugged. “Depends on how severe it is. They’re not likely to give him another work detail, that’s for sure.”

  “What? But, that’s terrible. How could they do that? They know Jerry. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  Alex sighed. He placed his hand on hers and squeezed, then looked into her eyes. “I’ll do everything I can.”

  As boys, Alex had always looked up to Jerry, his older brother by four years. They shared a room until Jerry became a teenager, and it had felt like an exclusive clubhouse where Alex was the initiate, becoming indoctrinated in all the secret ways of the world. Jerry had introduced him to comics, which they would read together, huddled under a tented bedsheet with an electric lantern, rooting on Batman, the Hulk and Hawkeye as they brought justice to a miscreant society.

  Inspired by their cartoon superheroes, they had set out to form their own real-life dynamic duo. Jerry had created costumes to conceal their alter egos. A black ski mask for him, with zigzagging lightning bolts etched onto each cheek. And, for Alex, an old pair of tighty-whiteys turned upside down, with crude holes cut out for the eyes. Jerry was Bolt Lightning. And, due to the faded brown stain that ran down Alex’s forehead, he was called the Streak. Alex was too enthusiastic about their escapades to realize that he was literally the butt of his brother’s joke.

  Their first mission was to rescue the neighbor’s cat, which Jerry had planted in a tree. It was an old, overweight Cheshire that had been declawed. And when placed upon the branch, had fallen contentedly asleep.

  Jerry pointed up to the limb of the old elm, maybe fifteen feet aboveground, struggling to keep from laughing at the sight of Alex’s eager eyes framing his wash-resilient shit stain. “There’s nothing I can do. The electric powers of Bolt Lightning will set the tree aflame. It’s up to you. This is a job for…” he paused, biting the side of his tongue, “…the Streak!”

  Alex had been overcome with excitement. Unfortunately, his climbing abilities were not up to the task. He was shimmying out onto the limb holding the snoozing cat when he slipped and fell, pinballing off a branch below and breaking his arm on the ground.

  Still, the first thing Alex asked for when he returned from the hospital was his mask. Disgusted, his mother had thrown it away. So Jerry made another one. To Alex’s delight, the new one had an even darker streak.

  As they grew older, Alex’s admiration for his big brother slowly turned to envy, as the vast differences between the two became more pronounced. Jerry was their father’s son: handsome, charismatic, athletic. Popular at school and successful in sports. Whereas Alex appeared to have emerged from another gene pool altogether, always buried in a book, more interested in science than chasing skirt.

  Their father would take them fishing and Jerry would reel them in, one after the other, while Alex organized the tackle box and dissected the worms. After school, the house was always filled with the gregarious laughter of Jerry’s friends, while Alex would stay holed up in his room, reading the Encyclopedia Britannica for fun.

  Still, Jerry would make a point to include Alex in his endeavors, asking him to join in on a pickup baseball game or catch a movie. Even inviting him to high-school senior keg parties when Alex was only in the eighth grade. But by then Alex had either lost interest or was intimidated by Jerry’s activities. He was clumsy where Jerry was coordinated, shy where Jerry was sociable, weak where Jerry was strong.

  The last time they played catch, their father interrupted after watching from the window, too agitated for words. He spent the next hour working to correct Alex’s form. Trying to teach him not to throw like a girl.

  When Jerry left for Ole Miss on a full baseball scholarship, their father cried. Later, he got drunk. He started with a small glass of rye whiskey before dinner, then poured another, this one slightly larger. By the time dinner was through, he was on his fifth glass, the amber liquid shimmering just below the brim, a single cube of ice quickly succumbing to the drink’s fiery heat. By then, Mr. Drexler had stopped crying, but his eyes were still rimmed with red, and his grief had turned to aggression.

  “You got some big shoes to fill,” he said. They were sitting at the four-top kitchen table with three place settings. The empty space in front of the fourth had felt like a memorial. There was a crescent-shaped water stain where Jerry’s glass used to go. His mother was clearing the table, sniffling. She had been crying all day as well.

  “I know,” Alex said. He didn’t know what else to say. His brother had only been gone a few hours, and the mood in the house had already changed perceptibly. It had darkened. The familiar sights and sounds of each room now seemed foreign, inhospitable. He was beginning to feel like a stranger, as if he had learned he was an orphan and no longer welcome, and would soon be asked to leave.

  “What do you know?” his father said, sneering, taking a large sip of whiskey and hissing against the burn. “What can you possibly know when all you do is sit in your room by yourself, doing what? Reading about a bunch of stuff other people have gone and figured out? Try living a little. You don’t want to waste your whole life reading about the experiences of better men.” His hands clenched into fists and he grimaced like a man preparing to fight. He chewed his tongue. “Boy, you’ve got big shoes to fill. I want you to know that.”

  “Don, please,” Mrs. Drexler said. She opened her mouth to say more, then exploded into tears and buried her face in a dirty dish towel. Her crying was not quiet. It was the apotheosis of sadness, great heaving wails that sounded like a wounded water beast. It overwhelmed the small kitchen nook, cramming itself into every corner.

  “Damn it, look at your mother,” Mr. Drexler said. He began to squirm in his seat and his face began to twitch, turning darker shades of red as he worked to rein in his emotions. “Look at her, damn you.” Then his lip curled in and he began crying again himself. An ugly, unpracticed cry after decades of disuse.

  “What do you want from me?” Alex stammered, raising his arms in supplication. “I miss him too.” Then he broke down as well, as much from fear and confusion as from sadness over Jerry’s departure.

  The three of them sat and cried together, each harder than the other. But the crying did not bring closeness. It felt more like shame. Like they were all exposing sides of themselves they never meant the other to see.

  Finally, Alex pushed away and put himself to bed, falling asleep to the sound of his mother crying and his father’s slurred, angry speech. The experience awoke something in him, however. A new sense of determination. Not to follow in his brother’s footsteps, exactly, but to push himself to the limit of his own potential. And he found that potential to be immense, rising to the top of his class at school, winning national awards for his projects in science.

  Still, it hadn’t been enough to win his father’s respect. He remained an outcast in his own home, even as he began earning the admiration of his instructors and accolades from the science community for his pronounced intellect.

/>   Then, they received the call. It was from Jerry’s college roommate. Jerry was acting strange. He was losing weight, behaving erratically, violently. He was convinced that there was a conspiracy on campus, that it had all been a trap to lure him in and control him. To get information from him. Information that only he had.

  The night Jerry had left for college was nothing compared to the night he came back home. To Mr. Drexler, the world had lost coherence. The shy science nerd was excelling and the promising sports star was self-destructing. It was like a personal insult from God. It was also the night Alex decided to begin studying psychology, igniting the chain of events that led him to his present place.

  Alex patted Rachel on the hand and squeezed it again before letting go. “I should go. I’ll keep you posted.”

  Rachel grabbed his hand and looked at him with her large, expressive eyes. The look was like telepathy, a show of silent support.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, giving a deep nod that suggested she meant for more than just Jerry. “Call me as soon as you can. Okay?”

  “I will,” he said, and kissed her cheek. Then stood from the table and set off for Sugar Hill, a half-concealed smile on his face.

  Chapter Seven

  Sugar Hill rose before him as he crested the hill, its central spire reaching up to pierce the leaden sky. The narrow lane leading off the main road towards the facility was lined by cedars and large oaks draped with flowing strands of Spanish moss. It was the oldest mental health facility in Georgia, first established back in the early 1800s as a plantation for a wealthy farmer. The man’s wife had been from humble beginnings and grown eccentric under the weight of their wealth, supposedly showering gifts like pearl necklaces and frilly lace cravats upon various farm animals that she had grown affection for. When the husband mistakenly butchered her favorite cow, which she’d raised up from a calf, and had it served for supper, she snapped, falling into a bleak, babbling despair that she never could recover from.

  As penance, the man granted his plantation to the state. His wife needed treatment, and he wanted her to feel at home.

  While the facility had been expanded to accommodate hundreds of patients (thousands during a grim period of overcrowding that was largely omitted from its written history), the architecture remained true to its origins. The main building was red brick with white accents, two-story with a columned entrance and a wide front porch featuring rocking chairs. White picket fences fronted the facility. The taller, wire-mesh ones with razor wire were farther back and harder to see.

  The staff parking lot was around the side, with a special, card-access entrance. The facility offered the impression of genteel charm, but it was as guarded and secure as any state penitentiary. And, at times, could be just as dangerous, if not more so.

  Alex took a deep breath before sliding his card through the entry slot and punching in the passcode. Remember, back from vacation, he thought.

  Inside, Sugar Hill shed its architectural ancestry, taking on the sterilized appearance of a traditional hospital with white cinder block walls and green-flecked linoleum floors. The staff entrance was deceptively quiet. It led down a short hallway, lined with written warnings and security instructions, to a large steel door with electronic locks. Once through this security entrance, however, the final buffer between the patient’s realm and the outside world was removed and the chaotic sounds of insanity echoed from within its inner depths.

  Alex strolled past the security desk, offering a curt wave to the two orderlies stationed there.

  An elderly African American patient wearing a loose-fitting hospital gown was walking the hallway. She offered Alex a gap-toothed smile as he passed by, then stopped and spoke to his back. “Swoosh! He goes, he goes. Swoosh, he goes!” she said, sliding her hands together and shuffling her feet.

  He kept walking as her rambling voice and discordant two-step faded to a murmur behind him. He turned the corner and opened the door to his office, a small room crowded with bookshelves surrounding a wooden desk covered with paperwork. The only form of wall art was the framed psychiatry degree from Emory. A whiteboard was crammed into a corner, featuring a red triangle bordered by half-erased acronyms.

  Alex dropped his briefcase and checked his messages. Eli wanted to see him. ASAP. So did Angela.

  He checked his appearance in a handheld mirror that he kept in the top desk drawer, and set off to see his brother instead.

  He found Jerry in the dining area, hunched over a tray of uneaten eggs, shriveled sausage links and scorched toast. His head was hanging down, hiding his face behind a curtain of unkempt hair. The room was filled with the sounds of clanging trays and incoherent chattering, but Jerry seemed deaf to the chaos around him.

  Alex sighed and sat across from him, crossing his legs and resting an arm across the table, drumming his fingers. “Jerry,” he said. There was no response, so he said it again, then slapped his hand against the table a couple of times and shook Jerry’s breakfast tray. “Hey, Jerry.”

  Slowly, Jerry raised his head; a string of saliva was rappelling from his bottom lip down to the collar of his paisley gown. His eyes were glazed, but a glimmer of recognition caused him to furrow his eyebrows and lean closer. His mouth attempted a feeble smile before going slack once again. He mumbled something that sounded like “I’m humble pie”.

  “Hey, brother,” Alex said, shielding the disappointment from his eyes. “How you doing?”

  Jerry checked over both shoulders and then leaned as far across the table as possible, planting an elbow into the plate of scrambled eggs. “Where’ve you been?” he asked in a low, conspiratorial voice. He reached out and grabbed Alex by the wrist. “Are you part of this?”

  Alex sighed. “I’m sorry, I’ve been away.” He placed his hand on top of Jerry’s and searched his eyes. “Part of what?”

  “They’ve got me locked up. Like a chicken. They took my eggs. Now I’m in a coop.”

  Alex ran a hand through his thick, wavy hair. The same shade of black as Jerry’s, except shorter. “Jerry, you’re not locked up. You’re just being held for observation. You’re sick again, and we need to get you well. I’m going to get you home just as soon as I can. I promise.”

  “No, that’s not it. I saw.” Jerry emphasized his statement by pointing to his eyes. “The big one knows,” he said, scanning the room again. “He tried to kill me.”

  Alex studied his hands. They’ve got the dosage too low, he thought. Damn it, Eli.

  “Well, I’m going to get to the bottom of things. Okay? We’ll get you back home as soon as we can. Just try and relax.”

  Jerry opened a packet of cigarettes laying on the table and lit one, inhaling deeply and blowing rank smoke into the air.

  “Shit, Jerry, you can’t smoke here.” Alex grabbed the cigarette from Jerry’s mouth and dropped it into a cup of orange juice. He looked up and saw the large orderly, Devon, rushing over and waved him off. Devon paused, assessing the situation, then raised his hand and walked back to his place along the wall.

  Jerry watched Devon walk away, then turned back to Alex with narrowed eyes. “What have they told you? What do you know?”

  “What do I know?” Alex said. He swirled the cigarette butt in the juice cup, turning the orange liquid grey. “Let’s see. I know that today is Tuesday. I know that Santa Claus isn’t real. And I know that running over your wife’s dog is not the best way to get laid. As far as the conspiracy involving whatever it is you think you’ve seen, I know that it’s due to a chemical imbalance occurring in your brain that we’ll correct with a combination of medicines.”

  Jerry laughed, stretching his pale skin across a gaunt, skeletal face. “The medicine just makes you blind,” Jerry said. “If you don’t want us to see, wouldn’t it just be easier to cut out our eyes? Take them with you. Look through them and you’ll see what I see.”

  Alex frowned. The primary pur
suit of his research was working to understand the nature of psychotic perception. In order to do so, he first had to gain a better understanding into the nature of regular perception, which was an enigma. Where did consciousness come from? From the mind? From a nonlocalized source? No one knew. Cognitive mapping studies had failed to find a source for conscious thought. And the mind was incapable of unraveling its own mysteries.

  What really comprised the core of his theoretical work, however, was trying to understand the biological need for altered states of consciousness. Why did the mind have the capacity to create delusions? To hallucinate? To perceive the unreal? And why, so often, did such altered states appear to the perceiver as the actual reality? A world more real than this one.

  While at Emory, Alex had been intrigued by a grant-funded study into the effects of certain hallucinogenic compounds. As a top student in the psychiatry department, his inquiries had granted him an invitation to participate in the research, to assess the study from a therapeutic point of view.

  The central compound under examination was a potent hallucinogenic called dimethyltryptamine—a naturally occurring neurotransmitter found in almost all forms of life, including the human mind. It was believed to be produced by the pineal gland, released during REM sleep and times of extreme stress, such as in the moments before death. An endogenous drug responsible for dreams and death’s white light. When concentrated amounts were injected into patients, it produced profound states of altered consciousness. Ineffable experiences that seemed to result from a scrambled mind. Except…

  Except many of the reports featured similar descriptions. Strangers with dissimilar backgrounds were having shared experiences. Life-altering experiences featuring complex geometric patterns which participants invariably referred to as the “true fabric of reality”. Wild journeys to other dimensions where contact was made with alien entities who possessed primal wisdom. Encounters with an energy field described as the God source where participants reported feeling perfect love and understanding.