Just to See Hell

by Chandler Morrison

  It’s raining and April is sitting in her driveway, watching the wiper blades flick back and forth and back, not wanting to go inside but not knowing why.

  She keeps replaying Walt’s voicemail.

  She listens to his voice telling her he’s thinking about her.

  That he loves her and hopes she had a good day.

  That he wants to have dinner with her tonight, that he wants to talk about the wedding.

  He ends it by telling her he loves her again, and it’s so genuine, so pure, that it makes her cry.

  She keeps playing it until she can’t bear it and then she shuts the car off and goes up to her front door, fumbling with her keys, ignoring the bouquet of white roses on the porch that have become soaked and ugly in the rain. She doesn’t look at the waterlogged note to see from whom they came. Probably Walt.

  Definitely not Lance.

  Lance isn’t sentimental like that.

  As she opens the door and goes inside, she tells herself that she likes that about Lance...his gruff, unromantic and temperamental demeanor, but she can’t be sure.

  She doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact that she likes him because he’s big and muscular and good in bed.

  She doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact that she likes him because he treats her like shit.

  Closing the door behind her, April is suddenly cold. Freezing.

  It’s here.

  It’s out.

  It’s watching her.

  Not bothering to take off her jacket or shoes, she goes upstairs and crawls into bed and pulls the covers over her head and tries to tell herself it can’t see her there.

  But she knows better.

  Her brother calls later that evening and she answers and says, “I can’t really talk right now, Derek.” She’s sitting on her patio sipping brandy and trying not to think. She wouldn’t have answered but she knew he would have just kept calling.

  “You can never talk,” Derek says irritably. “Five minutes, okay? Please.”

  April doesn’t say anything. She takes a sip of her brandy, then another, then downs the rest of it and lights a cigarette.

  Derek sighs. “Listen,” he says. “Everyone is worried about you.”

  “I don’t know why. Everything is fine.” It’s forced but she tries not to make it sound that way.

  “Walt came over today.”

  April’s fist clenches. She sucks hard on her cigarette and waits for Derek to continue.

  “He said it’s been over a week since he’s heard from you. You’re never there when he stops by and you don’t answer your cell phone. Every time he calls your office they tell him you’re with a patient and that they’ll tell you he called.”

  She knows that’s what they tell him. That’s what she tells them to tell him.

  “I’ve just been really busy,” says April. “I’ll call him.” She goes inside and into her living room. She sits down on her couch and, deciding she no longer wants the cigarette, crushes it out in the ashtray on the coffee table. It’s shaped like a heart and she wonders absently why she would ever buy such an abomination. She wonders what kind of person she used to be, and more so, what kind of person she’s become.

  There’s a pause on the other line. Rustling, and then what sounds like someone else’s voice. She can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. “You don’t sound good,” Derek says. “You sound like you’re...depressed.”

  “I’m not depressed, Derek.”

  Another pause, more rustling, and then, “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’m a psychiatrist, in case you’ve forgotten. I think I’d know if I were depressed.” There’s venom in her voice so she tries to amend it by saying, “Listen, really, I’m okay. How, um...are you? How is...your life?”

  Derek sighs again and then says, “It’s fine. Did you hear about Jack?”

  “No, what about him?” she asks, not really caring.

  “He was in the hospital. He was sleeping with his assistant and her husband beat the shit out of him. He says he might never walk right again.”

  “That’s...a shame. Is he still sober?” Again, not really caring.

  “Not anymore. He lost his job and he’s living with his mom. He’s always drinking and I think he’s doing drugs again. You should maybe call him, or something. Get coffee with him. He’s not doing so well.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that,” she lies. She really doesn’t want to see Jack. She’d probably just end up sleeping with him again and that’s not what she wants right now.

  After one final, awkward pause, Derek asks, “April, really...are you all right?”

  “Yes, Derek. I’m more than all right. I’m great. I’m just tired. I’m gonna go, actually. I really need to take a shower.”

  “Yeah, okay. Well, if you change your mind...”

  “Change my mind about what, Derek?”

  Capitulating, Derek says, “Whatever, I’ll let you go. Have a nice night.”

  April hangs up without replying and then calls Lance.

  Lance stands in front of April’s bedroom mirror, inspecting the marks on his tan, muscle-rippled back, while April lounges in the tangled sheets upon her bed, watching Lance as she casually picks his skin out from beneath her fingernails.

  “I’m bleeding,” Lance says.

  “Cry about it,” April answers, more cruelly than was her intent, and she reaches for the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand.

  Lance sits down on the edge of the bed and swipes the pack of cigarettes from April’s hand, takes one out and lights it, and then tosses the pack back at her. She looks at him with a strained expression of meek contempt as she lights one herself.

  “You’ve been a real fuckin bitch lately, you know that?” Lance says, turning on the television and switching to ESPN. “The fuck has been up with you?”

  April lies back and rests her head on the silk pillow. “Are you really that upset about the scratch marks? I was coming...hard...and I...”

  “I don’t give a fuck about that,” says Lance, not taking his eyes from the TV screen. “That’s actually kind of hot. I just mean your attitude. You’ve had a real fuckin attitude and it’s been pissing me off.”

  “I’ve been...stressed,” April says. She glares at his bleeding back and says defiantly, “Deal with it.”

  Now Lance stands up and looks down at her, face red, jaw clenched. The game has been forgotten. “The fuck did you say to me?” he seethes through his teeth.

  Grinning, April says again, “Deal with it. Fucking deal with it. Get the fuck over it. You’re...”

  He cuts her off by backhanding her across the face. Her head jolts to the side and she cries out.

  “Don’t you ever fucking talk to me like that again,” Lance says, his eyes burning.

  April slowly turns her head and looks back up at him. “Fuck you,” she spits, and he hits her again, harder this time.

  “I don’t like doing this,” Lance says, “but you need to know your fucking place.”

  April tenderly touches her fingertips to her reddened cheek and winces. She looks down at her cigarette, which has fallen to the floor and gone out, and for some reason the sight of it brings tears to her eyes and she begins to weep. “Fuck me,” she says in between sobs. “Just...shut up and fuck me, okay?”

  Lance stares down at her for a few more moments before he violently seizes her throat with one hand and squeezes her breast with the other, and then he complies.

  April cries the entire time. She cries hardest when she comes, and isn’t able to calm down until it’s over and Lance wordlessly dresses himself and then leaves. After that, April just sits there in her bed and feels it watching her, and then she finally begins to laugh.

  “There has to be something more than this,” April says into her phone. She sits huddled in her bed, phone to her ear, watching the rain slide down the window pane like the black mascara tears that run silently down her stricken face.

  “I don’t know,” she says.
“Just something...more.” She lights a cigarette and then looks down at the crimson lipstick ring around the filter.

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” she says irritably. “What I mean is...I just...Jesus, I don’t fucking know. This just can’t be it.”

  She listens and watches the smoke drift up to the ceiling that’s beginning to yellow.

  “Yes,” she answers, “I know that. But what’s your point? What is that going to solve? It’s not going to make any of this go away.”

  She listens again, clutching the phone tight enough to whiten her knuckles, and then replies, “The grime.” She looks disgustedly down at her skin. “It won’t clear away the grime. Don’t you understand? I’m submerged in it. I’m so fucking deep. I am...too low. I....I have to look up just to see hell.”

  She pulls the phone away from her ear and looks down at it and realizes that it’s dead, and she can’t remember how long it’s been that way.

  The director of the Midian Mental Institution for the Criminally Insane stares tiredly at April and tells her there’s nothing he can do.

  April stands on the other side of the director’s desk, looking down at the clipboard in her hands, biting her lip. “I can’t,” she says. “Not him. There’s a...conflict of interest. It would be...unethical.”

  The director drums his fat fingers on his desk and says again, “I’m sorry, but there’s really nothing I can do. My hands are tied, here. With Ethan and Kyle both out on leave, I’m incredibly shorthanded. Everyone has to take on extra patients, that’s just how things are going to have to go for now. It’s not permanent.”

  “I’m fine with taking on extra patients,” April says, trying to keep her voice steady. She sits down in one of the leather chairs across from the director. She puts the clipboard on his desk and folds her hands on her lap and says, “I’ll take five more in place of him. Give him to someone else.”

  The director just keeps shaking his head. “Dr. Diver, please stop making this difficult. All the paperwork has already been done. He’s been officially assigned to you.” He pauses, shuffles through some folders until he finds what he’s looking for and then says, “It says here that he’s quite docile. Rarely speaks, even during his weekly therapy sessions. Seems disconnected and perpetually distracted.” He looks back up at April and smiles a fake smile. “You’ll be fine. And who knows? Maybe you’ll be able to make some sort of breakthrough with him. You’re a very talented psychiatrist, April. I have faith in you.”

  “Technically it’s against the law,” April says quietly.

  The director’s face darkens and his lips curl into an ugly frown. “And who’s going to report us? You? Don’t test me, April. My buttons don’t like to be pushed.”

  April thinks to herself that there’s a fat joke somewhere in there, but she just says, “You misunderstand, sir. I’m just...being precautionary. But...”

  “‘But’ nothing. He’s yours. Have a lovely day, Dr. Diver.” He slides the clipboard back across the desk and returns to his paperwork, ignoring April’s continued presence. After a few moments, she gets up and takes the clipboard and walks out of the director’s office.

  She tries to tell herself that it’s not that big of a deal, but she keeps thinking about the crime scene photos and she has to run to the nearest restroom to vomit and weep.

  April sits in the chair with a notebook and a pen and looks at the patient, who’s lying on the couch with his hands clasped on his stomach, staring blankly up at the ceiling. It all feels so terribly stereotypical, and she thinks he knows this.

  As much as it nauseates her to admit, he’s more attractive than she’d remembered, with his hard features and longish wavy dark hair and emerald eyes behind his horn rimmed glasses. Something in April’s loins stirs and she crosses her legs and looks out the window.

  A long silence passes, and then finally April looks at the tape recorder on the little table next to her and, after a brief moment of deliberation, turns it off.

  “They told me you don’t say much during these sessions,” she says.

  The patient doesn’t answer; he just keeps staring, seemingly unblinkingly, up at the ceiling.

  “But I’m hoping,” April goes on, “that you’ll have some things to say to me.”

  Still no response.

  “I knew Helen Winchester,” April says. “She was my friend. She was my fucking babysitter when I was a kid.”

  The patient twitches, and then with slow, languid stiffness, sits up and looks at April. “No she wasn’t,” he says.

  “The fuck she wasn’t. She used to watch my brother and me every day after school, and she...”

  “I believe that she was your babysitter,” the patient says, his cold eyes boring straight through April’s skull. “But she wasn’t your friend. You did not know Helen Winchester.” His voice is flat and dead.

  April blinks and clenches her fists. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you did not know Helen. Maybe she was your babysitter. Maybe you thought she was your friend. But you didn’t know her.”

  “You...”

  “Do you think that I killed her.” There’s no inflection in his voice; his tone is so dry and lifeless that the question comes out sounding like a bored, observatory statement.

  April narrows her eyes and taps her pen against the notebook. “Would you be here if you didn’t?”

  The corners of the patient’s mouth twitch slightly, as if a smile rose and died on his lips in the matter of a millisecond. “By the standards of your society, I belong here. But not for murder.”

  “Then why do you belong here?”

  He takes off his glasses and wipes the lenses on the cuff of his sleeve and then puts them back on, eyeing her passively. “I didn’t kill Helen.”

  She opens her mouth to speak and her chest fills with air, readying for an angry outburst, but then the patient says, “Are you happy, Dr. Diver.”

  The question knocks the wind out of her and she involuntarily slumps a little in her chair. She brushes a lock of hair from her face and says unevenly, “Why would you...ask that?”

  “You don’t look happy. You look like you’re...dead inside.”

  That’s a good way to put it, April thinks in spite of herself. Maybe I am. I need to shower. I’m covered in grime.

  “It amuses me, watching you people,” the patient says. “The doctors, the nurses, the orderlies...you’re all so miserable. You’re living the only kind of life you know how to, and you are...dissatisfied.”

  April wants to retort, but she can’t, because he’s right. In her case, at least, he’s right. So instead, she says, “I’m going to...I think I need to up the dosage of your medication.”

  The patient is unfazed. “You’re all trying to make me into some kind of zombie,” he says. “All the fucking drugs. But you can’t kill me any more than the world already has. I’ve been dead for a long time.” His mouth twitches again, and this time comes closer to a grin, but it is wretched and sinister and it vanishes with merciful brevity. “A long time,” he says again. “Just like you.”

  It’s sunny and unseasonably warm but April doesn’t feel any better about anything.

  She sits across from Walt at a table on the Ladderhouse patio, watching the waitress take another couple’s order and wondering if she’s prettier than she is.

  “You look tired,” Walt says. His voice is soft and concerned and this irritates April almost to the point of shrieking, but she forces a smile and tells him she’s fine. He looks away and sips his beer, some sort of high-brow hipster specialty brew, and she wants to tell him to stop being such a pretentious pussy and just drink a Budweiser or something, for chrissake, but she just looks away, too.

  The restaurant patio overlooks the narrow Villa River and the heavily wooded forest on the opposite side of it, and Walt says, “It’s such a pretty view, don’t you think?”

  With a hand she prays Walt doesn’t notice is shaking, April takes a long
swig of her vodka gimlet and then says, “Yeah. It’s...beautiful.”

  Walt meets her gaze again and says, “So, um, you’ve been busy at work?”

  April shrugs.

  Walt looks down at his lap and says quietly, “They always tell me you’re busy when I call you at your office or the hospital.”

  “I told you not to call me at work.”

  “You haven’t been answering your cell phone.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve...been busy.”

  The waitress comes over to their table and April still can’t figure out if she’s prettier. She shifts in her seat and looks over the railing and down at the river and pretends to be deep in thought.

  “Are you guys ready to order?” the waitress asks in a cheerful voice that sounds stupid and fake, like a cheerleader out of some dumb teen movie.

  “We’re just going to stick with the drinks for now, thank you,” Walt answers in a genuinely pleasant tone that April finds even more annoying than the waitress’s airheaded squeak.

  The waitress says with inflated buoyancy that that’s “no problem” and to “just holler if they need her”, and April seriously contemplates pitching her glass at that freckly tan face, but it’s still half full and that would be a waste.

  “What was I saying?” Walt asks April after the waitress bounces jovially away. He sips his beer again but keeps his eyes on April, as if he’s afraid of her.

  “I don’t know,” April lies.

  They’re quiet for a while, just drinking in silence and looking out over the valley. A finch lands on the railing and chirps at Walt, who smiles, and April envisions herself grabbing the bird and stuffing it down her fiancé’s throat.

  She sighs and lights a cigarette. She stares forlornly at the burning tip and then says, “I really need...to shower.”

  “You said you showered before coming here. You texted me and said you might be a little late because you had to jump in the shower.”

  April can’t figure out if he’s being accusatory, or just innocently confused. Either way, he’s right...she did shower before coming here. But a fresh, thick layer of sticky grime is once again upon her, had started collecting as soon as she left, and she wants it off her. She scratches at her neck, then her arm, and then says, “I guess I just...need to shower...again.”