We Are Monsters

by Brian Kirk

  Eli snuffed the incense stick against the base of the bamboo stand. His hands were damp and trembling; his heart fluttered irregularly in his chest.

  Such a long time ago, he thought as he put away his cushion and left the room, turning the lights off on his way out. Leaving, he hoped, the ghosts behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The sun was slow to rise; it lifted sluggishly into the sky as though still pondering the absurdity of last night’s dreams. It was a pastel yellow, round and cartoonish, casting a mellow warmth that dried the morning dew and gently awoke the chirping insects from their slumber. Rays of white, hazy light streamed through the Spanish moss flowing from the ancient oaks lining both sides of Sugar Hill’s winding entrance road. The smell of honeysuckle perfumed the air, accented by a richer scent of wet clay.

  Normally, these were the days that convinced Eli that all was right with the world. It was nature’s way of telling us to take it easy. To chill. To cast aside our petty problems and understand that everything was going to be okay. But, today, it felt like a facade, a trap. A siren song luring him towards a place of danger, inviting him to let down his guard when he needed to be fully alert.

  Projections, Eli, he thought wearily. You’re just projecting again.

  But as he crested the hill and saw the great spire of the main building thrusting skyward, it failed to instill in him the usual sense of profound purpose. Rather, it caused his concussed head to throb.

  He pulled into his assigned space and parked. His fingers were trembling. He reached into his pant pocket and pulled out a dime and two quarters. He checked the other pocket—empty.

  His heart began to race and his stomach turned sour. Time accelerated and the car walls closed in. He saw the frantic look in his eyes reflected in the rearview mirror and cringed.

  Then he remembered the change drawer. He flipped it open and there it was—the Xanax pill, its oval shape and orange appearance providing the calm assurance the morning sun no longer could. He crammed it between his teeth and chewed, relishing its acrid taste, its promised potency. He exited the car, feeling confident in the fortitude of his medicated mind.

  He had been away for a full week, his longest leave of absence since his sabbatical to India over two decades ago. He knew the timing was poor with the board meeting approaching, but it couldn’t be helped. He hadn’t planned for a riot-inducing police siege on the hospital. Unfortunately, he thought, I wasn’t able to prevent it either.

  Eli felt oddly detached from the hospital as he made his way through the side entrance. It felt like he’d been away longer than a week. Like changes had been made in his absence—the floor plan altered, the walls given a fresh coat of paint. It reminded him of returning to school after summer vacation, not knowing what the new semester would bring.

  The nurses, normally quick to offer a jubilant hello when they first saw him, were hesitant as he approached. Strangely shy.

  “Well, hello ladies. How are we this morning?”

  The group of three nurses grew silent, as though caught gossiping. “Just fine, Dr. Alpert. Welcome back, sir.” Their curt formality was out of character.

  He walked closer. He saw guarded expressions, but felt a buoyant sense of camaraderie regardless. The Xanax was beginning to take effect. He stopped and stared at them, a bland smile forming on his face. “What? That’s all I get? After spending a whole week in the hospital.”

  “I thought you was let out on Wednesday,” the nurse said. It did little to make Eli feel loved.

  “Well, I was, but…” He scanned their impassive faces. What is going on? he thought. He almost felt like hanging his head and pouting in an attempt to garner sympathy. He resisted the urge. “Anyway, it’s good to be back.”

  They murmured in agreement and found other things to do.

  From down the hall he heard a door close. It sounded like the one to Alex’s office.

  Jerry, he thought. Oh God. He had exchanged messages with Alex, but had yet to actually speak to him since his brother’s death. His murder, according to the police. He could understand if Alex wanted a bit of privacy.

  He peeked in as he walked past. Alex was at his desk with the phone in his hand. Eli felt a deep sense of compassion for the pain he must feel. The shared pain that he himself felt over Jerry’s death. He vaguely realized that the Xanax was responsible for this increasing sense of openness and euphoria. But what did that matter, so long as the emotion was justified? He continued down the hall, passing his own office, ambling along.

  Breakfast was just ending and patients were shuffling back to their rooms or to morning sessions. “Morning,” he said to each of them as he walked past.

  “Morning,” a few muttered back.

  “Ain’t morning to me, commie,” said one.

  “Fuck your mother,” said another.

  Each response made him smile.

  He passed Randall’s room and paused. He peered in and saw him sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the empty space before him. Such wasted potential, Eli thought. Then he had an idea.

  He went back to his office and retrieved his key to the supply room. He opened the door and looked around, not noticing the conspicuous absence of the neural imaging equipment. He was too focused on finding a particular item, which he located in the far-back corner, leaning against the wall—the acoustic guitar. He grabbed it and hurried back to Randall’s room.

  He knocked on the door and entered. Randall slowly turned his head. His eyes were half-lidded and glassy, his lips sunken in. “I’ve got a request,” Eli said, pulling the guitar out from around his back.

  “Huh?” Randall said. He smacked his toothless mouth a couple of times and mumbled, “Huh-uh. I already took ’em. I already took ’em today.” Then he saw the guitar, and his eyes opened in delight.

  Eli handed it to him. “You still do requests, don’t you?”

  Randall strummed the guitar, playing a series of full-bodied chords. Then his fingers picked the strings like a banjo, faster than Eli would have thought possible. Just as suddenly, he pressed his hand against the strings to dampen the sound. “I’ll play any damned thing you want to hear!”

  He broke into a brief medley, blending the songs together: “Sweet Home Alabama”, followed by “Midnight Rider” and finishing it off with “The Seeker” by The Who. He riffed hardest on the last song. Eli thought for sure he would snap the strings.

  The strumming faded away, and once again Eli was struck by the drastic change that music produced in this patient. Just moments ago the man had been nearly catatonic. Now he sounded like he was ready for the recording studio. Eli applauded.

  Randall cradled the guitar and bowed his head at Eli’s reaction. “So, what do ya want to hear?”

  Eli crossed his legs and thumped his lips with a finger as he thought about it. “I was always a big Beach Boys fan.”

  “Ah,” Randall said, returning his hands to their playing positions. He began to strum the opening to “Sloop John B”, one of Eli’s favorites. Then he began to sing in a clear voice inflected with boyish emotion—this was what Eli had come to refer to as Randall’s authentic self. The one before the disorder. It was better than listening to Brian Wilson himself.

  Eli watched enraptured, losing himself in the music, the Xanax stripping away his usual inhibitions. He joined Randall in the final chorus, their voices rising to full volume as they sang about feeling so broke up they just wanted to go home.

  Eli felt hot tears burning the corners of his eyes. He hadn’t ever considered the last lines from a patient’s point of view. But hearing Randall bellow out each lyric with such heartfelt passion, Eli knew that he too perceived the significance beyond which the Beach Boys had originally intended. It felt like a moment of understanding. A moment shared.

  Eli composed himself. He looked at the concrete wall to keep from crying. “You kn
ow, Brian Wilson, the lead singer and songwriter for the Beach Boys, suffered from mental illness. Spent years in a mental health hospital like this one, actually.”

  “Yeah?” Randall was gently strumming the guitar with his eyes closed, quietly humming to himself.

  “He did. You know, it’s always interested me, that fine line between genius and mental illness. It doesn’t seem as though true originality can come from a completely stable mind.”

  Randall shook his head in pleasure and continued to strum.

  “Why do you think that is, Randall?”

  Randall quieted the strings. His bloated face, with its sunken lips and protruding cheeks, made him look like a frog. He scratched a patchwork of boyish whiskers that would never form into a beard. “Well,” he said in his raspy voice, “I guess it’s because they have access to the thoughts of God. The only people who can get away with that without being called crazy are preachers. And I’m not sure that they actually do what they say they do. Talk to God, I mean. They’re the really crazy ones, you ask me.”

  Eli leaned over his knee. “What do you mean?”

  Randall began to play again. The strings squeaked as he switched chords. “It’s the ideas, the songs, the music—they don’t come from the brain. It’s more like the brain is a radio antenna. It picks up on the songs and ideas from a higher source.

  “I guess most people are just tuned in to a channel that lets them see the world a certain way. The normal way. And all the people gifted with genius, they’re able to tune in to a channel set to a different frequency where God plays DJ. In their mind they hear angels sing, but it don’t always sound like you see in the movies, with golden harpsichords and what have you. It sounds like Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana too. It looks like street graffiti and comes in the form of pornography. People just don’t ever relate that with God, but that’s what it is.

  “But I guess it’s enough to fry the mind, sometimes. Or maybe it’s just so different from what people are used to that they call it crazy because they don’t know what else to call it. It’s genius, but it’s crazy too.”

  “You’re right,” Eli said. Their conversations always seemed to veer towards this general point. “Half the patients were put in here because they claim to talk to God. But preachers do the same thing and they’re put in positions of power and praised. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but it’s an interesting insight.”

  Eli pressed his palms against his legs and prepared to stand. Randall stopped playing the guitar and extended the neck towards Eli for him to grab. Eli took it away and Randall’s eyes glossed over, that sparkle began to fade. He slouched forward and began gumming his lips.

  Eli paused. “Hey, why don’t you hold on to this?” he said, knowing that it was breaking policy. “Just try and keep it quiet, okay?”

  “For real?” Randall’s gaping smile revealed red, puckered gums.

  “Sure, why not? Listen to the angels for a little while. Let me know what they say.”

  He handed the guitar back and Randall’s eyes began to shine.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Alex heard Eli talking with some nurses in the hallway.

  The phone had not been his friend lately, bringing nothing, it seemed, but bad news. He was relieved nonetheless by the timing of this current call. He saw Eli peek in through the window just as he pressed the receiver to his ear, and blew out a pent-up breath as Eli moved on.

  “I understand congratulations are in order, Dr. Drexler. Chief Medical Director. That’s got a nice ring to it, wouldn’t you say?”

  It was Bob Bearman, the chairman of the board. He had been surveying the hospital during Eli’s absence, assessing its condition. The Bearman family had made their money farming peaches before getting into politics. The man had no formal experience in psychiatry, but that hadn’t kept him from obtaining the hospital’s highest rank. As he said, “Let the shrinks handle the madhouse. Leave the business to the businessmen”. And it was through this mentality that many of Sugar Hill’s decisions had historically been made.

  Fortunately, Eli’s regime had made Sugar Hill one of the most successful state-run hospitals in the nation. But “times they were a-changin”, and Mr. Bearman hadn’t been especially discreet about the board’s pending decision to out Eli and replace him with Alex. The word had spread like wildfire throughout Sugar Hill while Eli was away.

  “Well, thank you, sir. I don’t know that it’s been officially announced, however.”

  Mr. Bearman sounded like he lived with a peach pit perpetually lodged in his gullet and was constantly attempting to clear it from his throat. “Oh, don’t give me that unofficially, officially horse jizz. You’re our guy. All that’s left is pure formality.”

  “You mean telling Eli.”

  “Eli’s been out nursing a damn headache because he couldn’t keep the crazies under control. I got more pressing problems on my plate than worrying about him.”

  Mr. Bearman’s heavy, congested breathing filled the line. His chest phlegm quaked. “Look, I won’t lie. This is going to cause a stir. Especially in light of recent events. We need to get out ahead of this thing. We need to decide how this thing’s going to be scripted out, and you’re going to play a big part in that.”

  “Certainly. I’m happy to do whatever’s needed.”

  “That’s good. That’s what I like to hear.” Mr. Bearman rattled the peach pit around in his throat. “I have it on good authority that you’ve created some kind of miracle drug to cure mental maladies.”

  Alex sat straight up in his chair. A painful electrical current coursed through his entire body. Goddamn Steve!

  “Well…”

  “Look, I know it’s hush-hush…”

  Yeah well, it’s too bad your lips are looser than a geriatric nymphomaniac.

  “…but that’s going to be what gets us through this temporary period of turbulence. We need you to put it to work.”

  The painful electrical current came back for a second pass. “I’d be happy to, sir, but the medicine hasn’t been formally approved for consumption. I’ll need to conduct successful clinical trials before we take it to market.”

  “Sure, that’s fine. That’s what I mean.”

  Alex slumped forward, relieved.

  “I’ve got that all taken care of.”

  Alex lifted his head. His body snaked upward like a cobra to the tune of a charmer’s flute. “Well, that’s great.”

  “You’re damn right it is. Now all you got to do is prove that it works. It does work, don’t it?”

  The stronger formula and heavier dose had effectively cured Jerry before he’d been…what? Killed by a man who wasn’t there, accompanied by a dog that was dead. Problems for another day.

  “Yeah, it works all right. It’s unbelievable, actually. Groundbreaking. It regulates levels of a particular neurochemical compound located—”

  “All right, all right. Look, I don’t need all the damn scientific details. I just need to know that we can rely on you to make this work. Do I have your assurance?”

  Alex knew that his professional future with Sugar Hill hinged on his answer to this question. And that this was likely his last real opportunity to get his medicine approved for therapeutic use, which would alleviate all his financial troubles. “You have my guarantee. So, where will we be conducting the test trials?”

  “Where? What do you mean, where? Seems like you have a perfectly suitable test lab right there.”

  “What, here?”

  “Yes, there! You do work at a mental hospital, don’t you? You do have patients to treat, don’t you? Well, treat them. That’s what I’m talking about. You start to show positive outcomes for your patients. Groundbreaking results, as you said yourself, well then we got ourselves quite a nice story to tell. Eli will be old news. That poor girl getting herself nearly killed won’t matter so mu
ch. Especially when her assailant makes such an astonishing recovery. That’s the story we’re going to write, you hear me? And you’re going to be the damn author.”

  “You want me to test the medicine on Crosby?”

  “He’s your patient, ain’t he?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  Alex’s mind searched for an excuse and came up empty. Crosby was as good a candidate as any. But he was a news story. If something happened to go wrong, there was a chance it could go public. But publicity seemed to be what Bearman wanted, assuming that it would all go well. Which it would. The formula had been fixed. It was a matter of maintenance, which he would be on hand to administer.

  “Nothing. It’s just that he recently committed an assault. Charges may be filed against him. Wouldn’t it be better to work with someone a bit more stable? You know, hedge our bets a little?”

  “Look, either your medicine works or it doesn’t. You say it does. Then it shouldn’t matter who we choose. That Crosby fella makes the most sense from a political standpoint. Plus, he’s put up in solitary confinement, so you have an isolated space to perform the tests without getting any interference from other patients. It’s the most controlled environment you’re going to find.”

  Bearman cleared his throat. “Listen, Alex, I don’t think you fully appreciate what we’re doing for you here. Frankly, I’m surprised to hear any reservations from your end. Just do your job and everything will be fine. Or maybe we should be looking for someone else.”

  “No! No, no. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I am very grateful. This is all great, really. I just… Things have been crazy lately.”

  “I heard about your brother. Killed by an orderly, from what I hear. That’s another knock against Eli, you ask me. Hiring a killer to protect hospital staff. Not such a good move.”

  Devon couldn’t have done it, you big, fat malignant fucking tumor! “Yeah, well, I’m honored to have your trust and to be given this opportunity. I won’t let you down.”