by James Murphy
Chapter 14
(eleventh day of fasting)
On the morning of the 21st day of his stay on the Seventh Floor James was confronted by Ron once again. Ron had a bit of a sullen look on his face when he sat down to talk with James.
“I had another dream about you last night,” he said a bit uneasily. “I dreamt you were in the desert hunting. You weren’t hunting game though. You were hunting the Devil.”
James took it lightly.
“Ron, I’ve been hunting demons for as long as I can remember. Maybe I’ll catch him. Wouldn’t that be something!” laughed James.
James’s humor didn’t bring any comfort to Ron. He just began to tense up inside. It took him back to the frame of mind he lived in while he was in combat. It was a frame of mind that welcomed adversity and aggression. It was a frame of a mind on the prowl. What was so staggering to Ron, though, was how the spirits of good and evil seemed so definitive before James. Good and evil were always real to Ron. He always believed in a higher power, and existence beyond our realm, but the vivid ideas of good and evil in his dreams were built around obscure principles. Who was James? Why is the spirit flowing so strongly in this demented location? Nothing made good sense to Ron, but he couldn’t help but feel the crushing weight that James was feeling at the same time. If he only knew what James knew, maybe he would be more at ease. Ron couldn’t take the tension of his dreams anymore. His dreams were as gripping as the presence of James before him. Both seemed to be stitched together with a hint of psychedelic euphoria. The cyclical patterns of positive and negative energy weighed on Ron just as they did James. Ron never asked for this, and much less expected such an experience in the mental ward of Good Samaritan Hospital. He was simply conditioned to feel such energies. All that time spent at war heightened his awareness towards the energy of good and evil. He could feel wavelengths and frequencies that only he and James could sense. Whatever Ron felt in the presence and at the thought of James was too raw to be a psychotic delusion. He distanced himself from James for the rest of his stay on the Seventh Floor.
Ron came to the Seventh Floor trying to solve a problem, a mental issue, and it only got worse. It’s a lot like when you put an animal in a cage. Their emotions build and build until they boil over. Deprivation from justice and commonplace is no cure for any illness, especially psychological ones. The brain must be at peace. It cannot be starved of the exercise and function of compassion and humanity. When the brain is deprived of commonplace, your scope of reality begins to get twisted as you have no proper frame of reference. Only the soul and spirit within a man can fight to preserve what he knows is right. Sometimes that means detaching yourself from all of your Earthly needs. James did just that, but Ron seemed to be an innocent by standard, blindsided by James’s spiritual journey upon the Seventh Floor. Ron’s final dream began to spark emotions of bewilderment, emotions that he worked so hard to detach himself from when he came home from battle. It was that wild-eyed feeling that both Ron and James fought against to achieve the inner peace they so desired.
For James that inner peace was imperative. He knew not the particulars of his ultimate purpose, but from what he gathered from every acquaintance made, he could not possibly succeed as a warrior if he remained bound by any Earthly desire. He gave up on validation from Dr. Chode, or any of the professionals. He gave up on freedom from the Seventh Floor, because he had transcended everything they tried to pin him down with. Those physical hells of battle in our realm are so driven by rage-filled emotions, emotions that grip the spinal column and twist out from the senses anything that is familiar and comfortable. All that is left is detached, empty mania. Emotions are what make any animal dangerous, but James did not need to be dangerous. He needed to be powerful, and that is staked in whole by a combination of knowledge and patience. A man who is slow to anger is more powerful than the mighty. Moving beyond the grip of emotions marks the highest degree of mental strength. You must know your strengths and weaknesses as well as your adversary’s strengths and weaknesses. Knowledge is power. Furthermore, power comes in the patience of looking past all your emotions of wild-eyed bewilderment and executing calculated reactions. The state of mind James had achieved up to this point was no small feat. He detached himself from all his Earthly fears of privation by depriving himself one of the most integral ingredients in sustaining human life: food. He fasted and it elevated his state of mind until he felt connected with every great spirit known to man throughout the history of humanity. He put faith in those spirits, and it was faith alone, faith in himself and his God, that prepared him to wage war upon the greatest evil he would ever face.
Chapter 15
(twelfth day of fasting)
The 22nd morning of James’s stay on the Seventh Floor began strangely. James woke with a pounding head and a racing heart. He felt staggered in time and space, and it took him a few deep breathes before he could gather himself. He felt the blood circulate from his head back down through his limbs and body. Slowly, he rose out of bed. There was an eerie feeling in the air that was making the hair on the back of James’s neck stand on end. He walked down to the end of the east wing while the rest of the ward was eating breakfast. James watch the sunrise, and the sky turn from orange to blue. He stayed there for a while and contemplated his existence. There was a hitch in the air that provoked a philosophical side in James. He separated the sensual from the transcendental. Then once they were isolated, he unified them. He decided only two forces composed our realm: Consciousness and energy. James thought about the fundamentals that made him who he came to be. He walked the timeline of his life from a young child, to a young man, to being a patient on the Seventh Floor. He thought about how specialized his thought process had become as he began to get more and more detached from all the fundamentals of what the average citizen calls reality. It was the first time in a few weeks that James began to think about these things, and as he did he began to feel depressed. How long would he wait for this great battle if it was not the one being played out against Dr. Chode? James could feel the bile in his gut begin to back up into his stomach and thought this would be a good place to end it. He turned about face and walked back down the hall. As he passed the nurses’ desk he met the acquaintance of a treacherous grin clothed in a black silk suit.
“I am Silas. How do you do?”
The sight and sound of Silas curdled James’ empty belly. James could smell a strong desire for the sensual life on Silas’s breath. It was thick and harsh like garlic flavored kerosene. The energy that Silas gave off seemed to creep and lurch in time with the Seventh Floor. It was sleazy. Silas was sleazy. His presence sent off a jolt that disrupted natural harmony in the mind, body, and spirit. He had the same condescending stance as all professionals. James would have never guessed the man to be a patient, but he heard the nurses gabbing about him, and James soon concluded the improbable to be truth in the flesh. Silas landed on the Seventh Floor after being picked up by the police. No one knew exactly where he was from, but the authorities had their eyes on him for a few months. He had been hopping from town to town, city to city, preaching how he was the second coming of Christ. He had the persona of Charles Manson, and as he preached with great grandeur, a clear, colorless liquid oozed through the air-waves making all who listened drunk with greed and lust. As James walked away, he could hear Silas talking to a young, attractive, female patient
“We need more women like you in this world. God intended us to live lives of pleasure, and you look like you could supply a supple supplement of that. Don’t listen to the people in here. You have a gift, but if you listen to these people you will never put it to good use.”
Silas was no dummy. He knew how to get what he wanted out of people. He wanted everything. He wanted every luxury sewn from another man’s back and wanted everyone on Earth to desire the same thing. He made no effort himself. He never toiled or labored. He hardly knew what activity was, but any challenge to the man’s self-worth, and he made no rese
rvations in cutting a man down as low as he could take them. Everything that was righteous in Silas’s eyes was a means of immediate gratification. Sex, money, drugs, lavish meals were the only purpose to live. The higher pleasures in life, anything ethical, was meaningless to Silas. His message was simple. His message was not a simple life. It was to live for whatever brought pleasure in the moment. That all sounded very attractive to everyone he ever spoke with, but Silas could care less about the quality of life his message delivered. He had a different motive. He had no desire to truly sustain the good in the world. He wanted a world of cripples. He wanted a world that feared any privation from indulgence.
Silas’ message was convincing, but it lacked any virtue that could define it as righteous and holy. The authorities didn’t like him, but he didn’t break any laws until he arrived at James’ town and began his cunning deliverance of women, forming a cult that had the smell and stature of a prostitution ring. Silas was like a combination of Jim Jones and Charles Manson. James began to get angry and irritated as he listened to the conversation behind his back. He took a look over his shoulder, and saw Silas whisper something into the young girl’s ear. James watched the man’s lips move with a devilish look in his eye. His sly eyelids tensed. They cut right through the girl down to her soul. Silas seemed to see the weakness in her mind and spirit. He spoke his words with a velvety tongue. When they landed at their destination they seemed to sooth and intrigue the girl all in the same moment. The whole sequence of events burrowed deep in James’ skin. It antagonized him. He could hardly bear it to see such a devil play with the minds of such innocent people. He was as repulsive as Dr. Chode.
Silas delivered his slimy message with so much class and grandeur that the authorities thought the Seventh Floor was the only reasonable place for the man until any definite decisions could be made of his fate. He flapped his lips with peeled eyes as his brow wriggled and contorted like a snake. He moved with so much splendor, that he was disgusting to every nerve in James’ body. He moved his hands, arched his back, and stuck out his chest as if to say “I am the classiest man who ever lived.” Silas presented himself without any degree of couth or comfortable level of body language. He was the embodiment of everything that James found vile in society. He preached his message of wealth and pleasure without ever batting an eye at the sacrifices made to achieve such luxuries. James began to feel the rage and hate he felt in the slaughter house. To James, Silas was the slime that infected everything right and good in the world. He was the Bastard that spread the myth of greed and personal gain. Every sound that came out of his mouth was pompous to the point that the listener couldn’t even think for themselves. He took a deep breath before he spoke, and as he spoke his words with a self-absorbed tone, dragging every syllable, declaring, “Every man is weak. He should find his strength in a strong, sexy woman.” He was a paralyzing parasite that burrowed a cavity in the mind of everyone he met and made them believe in the malicious fallacies of evil and corruption. He could tell you everything you wanted to hear, and could bring substance to his myths. James was transcending deep into the spirit world by this point in his fast, and he could sense something about Silas.
James could sense a supernatural power within Silas. All the persuasion in Silas’ voice, and the fruition in his movements struck nerves in James that he didn’t know existed. James could feel something about Silas that was demonic. He was intelligent and at least as dangerous as any man who may have walked the Earth before him. Naturally, he and Dr. Chode got along famously, but he was not to be released until a proper assessment had been made. Silas separated and elevated himself from the rest of the patients on the Seventh Floor. Free or detained, Silas was out to make a point, and let his presence be known. His disposition was so self-righteous and self-indulged that anyone with any degree of innocence and clarity could see right through the bullshit. For the first time in his 22 days on the Seventh Floor, James was in the company of person at least as repulsive as Dr. Chode, and that man was Silas.
Lunch call came and James sat in the cafeteria with a book in hand, 12 days into his fast. Silas picked up his tray and spotted James from across the room sitting by himself. He walked over and sat down opposite James.
“I don’t believe I caught your name this morning when I said hello.”
“My name is James,” he replied, disinterestedly.
“Well James, you look like a lonely soul, and I don’t see a plate in front of you. May I ask why?”
“I’m fasting.” He said
“Well that’s a fabulous waste of effort if you ask me. Like this hamburger for example, enjoying such a thing is what pleases God, don’t you know. It’s not caviar, but it’s so succulent. To think, such a beast gave up its life to please my appetite, is wholly satisfying. I like tasting all the juices. That lets you know it was a living, breathing creature at one time.”
“What I crave is intangible, a higher level of consciousness. Did it ever cross your mind that the greatest gifts God gives are those things that cannot be held, or in your case, tasted?”
“You might be on to something James. What do you say you and I should be friends, pal?”
“I don’t like you. I don’t like the way you look. I don’t like the way you smell. I don’t like the way you walk, talk, or treat people, and I really don’t like your opinion on life. So, well dude… count me out.”
James turned his attention to his book and remained in his seat. He’d be damned if he let Silas get the best of him. Instead, James sat there coolly until Silas became so uncomfortable that he was the one who got up and left. It was a simple exercise in psychology. James wasn’t about to let a vicious man like Silas get the upper hand in their relationship. James could have easily gotten up and walked away and shown Silas how much he disliked him, but instead James sat there until Silas developed a subliminal fear of James. James set the tone when he gave no ground. He had been playing this game with Dr. Chode for weeks. Now Silas was the primary antagonist intersecting James’ road. Silas was just another patient, but he wasn’t just another patient. Silas lacked that element of ignorance that qualified so many of the patients on the Seventh Floor as innocent. He was a well-educated man, or at least appeared that way. He was too smart to be casually ignored, and he was a bit too obnoxious to be easily ignored. He was a thorn in James’ side. But, the three weeks James’ had spent on the Seventh Floor had conditioned him to strive beyond all instigation Silas brought forth, and maintain inner peace and quiet control of the power struggle that was beginning to brew between the two men.
Night fell, and James slept uncomfortably through the night with demonic nightmares. He saw himself locked in a small room with a dim flickering light, and a voice hissed over the intercom. It spiked the nerves with a deep desire to strike fear in the man, but James never broke down and cried for help. The whole way through his dream, he stood tall, and found comfort from within. The fear of mortality had been surpassed through his fast, and he knew his soul was safe with the Lord. Temptation was the only pit-fall that James could have fallen to. There was nothing tempting about his dream though. It was shear wrath, pride, and intimidation. James eased into the discomfort and rode his inner-peace all the way into the morning. He woke before sunrise, drenched in sweat. He crawled out of bed and walked down to the lavatory, and took a cold shower. He focused on the chill that penetrated his skin and let it soak in deep until he began to shiver, then turned off the water, grabbed his towel, dried off and got dressed. He walked down to the lounge and turned on the television.
James was beginning to understand just what he was supposed to fight. It was everything that Silas preached. James began to believe that he was to save his fellow patients upon the Seventh Floor. The critique and criticism of Dr. Chode coupled with the deceptions of vice delivered by Silas brewed a matrix of evil that James felt compelled to stand up against. He had the right set of eyes to see the fall of the Seventh Floor before it happened. Ron couldn’t help him with th
is one. James was on his own.
The patients were called to breakfast, and to James’ surprise, Silas walked into the room and sat down next to him.
“I have a little something for you since you’re fasting,” Silas said, as he pulled out a can of snuff. “I know how much you like it,” he said with a devilish grin. James thought back to the many nights he sat out on Sweet Grass Hill fireside with a rip of tobacco between his lip and gum. James wondered how this man knew such things about him. Suspicion filled James as he began to suspect the worst.
“I don’t think you know me well enough to understand what I like and dislike” James said, “but I know exactly what you are up to.” James rebutted.
“You know me? Ha! I have smoked the finest opium in the East. I have drunk the boldest coffee of Arabia. I have tasted the lust in Amsterdam. I have bathed in the greed of Las Vegas.” He seethed. “I am Silas, the Anti-Christ!”
Chapter 16
(thirteenth day of fasting)
Upon Silas’s final interjection of haste, James was ripped from his realm and the reality of the Seventh Floor, and was spat into the spirit world. James found himself in a cave. The air was cold and dank, and there was no light. Chills ran up and down his spine. He could see nothing as he strained his sight in the darkness. He could hear water slowly drip as the eeriest voice pierced through the blind darkness.
“I am Silas. You know no pain like the pain I inflict. You will feel it. There is a way that I will shed my mercy upon you. Denounce your God and I will light your cell and deliver you to that despicable comfort you call home,” Silas cried through the darkness. His voice was the most discomforting hiss. It penetrated with a bitter bite more ferocious than the frigid air. It reached down into James’ soul and shook with all the evil Silas could muster, but James was not rattled. The voice that hissed in that cave would have bewildered any man not as spiritually mature as James, but he dug deep for peace in his soul which he honed under the paw of Dr. Chode while on the Seventh Floor. James believed deep down inside that good would always prevail. He began to grin as he remembered an old Townes Van Zandt song that played on the radio in the butcher shop and brought a little peace and courage to him. James began to sing. “Salvation sat and crossed herself, called the devil partner. Wisdom burned upon a shelf, who’ll kill the raging cancer. Seal the river at its mouth, take the water prisoner. Fill the sky with screams and cries, bath in fiery answer.” As James sang, a technicolored light began to shine from below like in Ron’s dream when James was braiding his rope. James followed the light, leading him out of the cave and into the star-lit desert. He was stunned with amazement as he walked beneath the vast expanse of stars. A twinkling constellation caught his eye. It was Scorpio. Scorpio began to talk to James, and asked him if they could wander the sky again like that night on Sweet Grass Hill. James said he couldn’t and began to explain to Scorpio that he was hunting evil. Scorpio understood and wished to give James a blessing. He asked if James would only close his eyes for a second. James thought it was a small request for something such as Scorpio’s blessing. James closed his eyes, then opened them. When he opened his eyes he was stunned with what he was seeing. Scorpio had blessed him to be the fiercest hunter in all the desert. Scorpio had turned James into a 6 foot long Scorpion with a sleek black exoskeleton and the gnarliest of a stinger and pinchers. They were barbed and serrated, grizzly to boot and hard as diamonds. James was delighted, and the joy within him began to bubble, but he was sure not to let his emotions get the best of him. He knew he had to remain sharp.