A Self Made Monster

by Steven Vivian

  John nodded.

  “It wasn’t the medication, I think, as much as the pressures of writing my manuscript.”

  “You’re writing again?” John instantly forgot about Alex’s odd behavior. “Is it coming along? Are you happy with it?”

  “Sort of,” Alex lied. He had not written a word. But the Eccentric Author role mitigated odd behavior.

  “What’s it called?”

  Alex blinked. “My Life as a Dead Man.”

  “Good title.” The old envy bit into John’s stomach, like a dormant ulcer come back to life. “What’s it about?”

  “It’s—like I said, I’ve only written a chapter or so. But so far it’s about a guy who’s dead but doesn’t behave appropriately.”

  “Does he know he’s dead?”

  “Yes. But he keeps going to work, takes his kids to the ballpark, kisses his wife—”

  “A horror story?” John asked skeptically. He disdained horror fiction.

  “Sort of. It’s gruesome, sure. But it’s also funny.” Alex nodded enthusiastically. Excitement lifted his voice and his mood. He rolled his fingers against his thumb, wished he had a pen to record his ideas.

  “Funny?”

  “Sure. Because he’s dead, and everything’s got extra humor for the deceased.”

  John blinked at Alex.

  “It’s all a metaphor for, uh, for society’s deadening effects, how it sanctions proper behavior and punishes nonconformists.”

  John again hated Alex. “I’m glad we straightened this matter out,” he said officiously. I know the administration will be thrilled to know you’re writing again. It’s been such a damned long time, hasn’t it?” He opened the door and bid Alex good day.

  Back at home, Alex dropped a haloperidol into a glass of beer and began writing. The words came slowly. Alex felt like a clogged water faucet that merely drips. But he persisted. When he got stuck, he bit his wrist and tongued the wound. After an hour, he paused for a cigarette and re-read his work:

  Terrence’s mother was a martyr. Every day, she reminded her husband and her child that she sacrificed. “I gave up my youth for you two, and my beauty, and my promising singing career.” She sighed, ran her wrinkled hands over her leathery face.

  Terrence had never heard his mother sing or even hum. When his father was on his deathbed, Terrence asked, “Did Mom ever sing?” Father shook his head. “Was she beautiful?”

  Another shake. “I don’t even think,” father sighed, “she was ever young, either. Or maybe she just went straight from nineteen to fifty.”

  Terrence was forgiving, however, and he tried to look beyond his mother’s self-absorption and lies. He imagined that his mother sincerely wanted to contribute, to struggle, to sacrifice. Was it her fault that she possessed no beauty or talent to sacrifice in the first place?

  On the day of his high school graduation—mother could not come because she believed she suddenly had a Dowager’s hump—Terrence decided to become a martyr for his mother’s martyrdom. He would be a doctor.

  And he did.

  He treated the poor and the demented, the dishonest and the devious.

  “I’m not in it for the money,” he proudly told his fellow physicians. He loved beating them over the head with his purity, and they hated him.

  Even his mother grew weary of his sacrifices. “I’ve worked my fingers to the bone to put you through medical school. Why can’t you show your gratitude by buying me a car, or a new house?”

  “I’m not in it for the money.”

  “Cheapskate!”

  Nobody cared when Terrence was run over by an ungrateful patient. Few people attended the funeral. Those who attended struggled to hide their disdain, and they criticized him as soon as he was buried. His mother dabbed tears from her painted, bony cheek and sniffed, “All I did for him, and I’m left with nothing.”

  Inside his casket, Terrence chuckled at their complaints.

  That evening, he clawed his way from the grave. His muscles were stiff, and he had to pull the mortician’s stitching and cotton from his mouth. He limbered up with a stroll around the town. Then he went home, got a good night’s rest. The house was empty, as his wife and children were staying with relatives across town. He resumed his practice the next morning.

  Nurse Kane was speechless when Terrence walked into the clinic, and she never spoke again. But she kept working for Terrence—where else could a mute nurse work?

  BUT THAT BASTARD BROTHER OF MINE. When I see him again I’ll pull each finger off his hand. I’m the best thing that ever happened to him. He tried to make his reputation off me, trotting me out in front of his moron colleagues to demonstrate my “progress” from schizo to nearly-functioning citizen. Their white coats, their smug nods, their whispers just out of earshot.

  “I know you’re talking about ME!” I screamed, and my brother patted me on the shoulder. “Not you. Your condition.” His smug smile.

  “Of course, and gentlemen, controlling the schizophrenic’s inappropriate emotional responses takes time”

  “You let me go back to sleep!” I closed my eyes and covered my ears. I couldn’t stop laughing, laughing at them. My bastard brother needed me. I didn’t need him. If he died tomorrow, I’d laugh for a week and then I’d be FREE.

  Alex crossed out the final four paragraphs, paused for another cigarette. The paragraphs were another explosion of drug behavior. The medication had done all it could do. Now it was turning on him. It still helped him concentrate, and it slowed the physical changes: no more suddenly red hair, or feminine titter, or smoker’s cough, or cluster headaches. But its efficacy would wane, and the side effects would increase: dry mouth and throat, sore eyes, the bursts of grandiosity.

  And now, the four paragraphs of ranting.

  Haloperidol had stimulated the withdrawn part of Alex’s personality, dragging it toward daylight. But the withdrawn part was angry. The withdrawn part was again raging at long-dead David.

  After a second beer—no haloperidol chaser—Alex stretched out on the couch and mulled over the writing.

  He liked the character Terrence. But why does he have to be a doctor?

  A doctor: Terrence the doctor was David, his brother.

  Alex laughed like a gleeful child. I couldn’t have revenge in life, Alex thought, so I’ll have it in a book. That bastard minced my brain with pills. Now I’ll mince his life in a book.

  Before nodding off, Alex decided to replace the name Terrence with David. The name reverberated in his skull. The name became a mantra, and Alex chanted it in his sleep. Then he dreamed.

  But the dream was not fiction.

  It was a documentary of the day he was born again:

  On the day he was born again, Alex was visiting David before meeting his publisher. David was using the visit to evaluate his brother’s condition; if Alex seemed too agitated or withdrawn, David would accompany him to the publisher.

  “You seem pretty good,” David allowed. “You’re taking your prescriptions?”

  “Sure,” Alex lied. He avoided David’s gaze by studying his broccoli. Then David’s pager sounded and David rose from the table to call the hospital. Alex was left to play with his food for a few moments. “We gotta hurry!” David called, running past Alex. “Knife wounds, and Vic and Mary are out of town!” David did not want to leave Alex in the house.

  Alex’s stomach twisted. He hated hospitals. David ignored a red light and cursed a slow moving van. Alex was in the back seat, face between his knees. He kept asking David to inflate the tires. “Maybe they’re going flat,” Alex pleaded. “We might get in a wreck.”

  “Relax, Alex. Here.” David thrust two tranquilizers into Alex’s hand. Alex stared at them. “Damn it. You’re meeting your editors in two days. Take them!”

  Alex swallowed them and lowered his head. He was ashamed to be seen like this, and he was angry at David for bossing him.

  David double-parked outside the emergency entrance, told Alex to follow him, and
ran inside. A nurse held up four fingers, indicating that the patient was in room four.

  The patient lay on a cot. His knees were drawn to his bloody chest, and his hands trembled. Alex peeked over his brother’s shoulder at the patient’s contorting face. Alex imitated the patient by contorting his own face.

  “Settle down, Alex.” David put a firm hand on Alex’s shoulder and directed him to a corner. Alex cooperated, but he kept imitating the patient.

  The nurse studied Alex as he waited in the corner.

  “He’s fine,” David assured. “He’s between medications, and he’s meeting his publishers on Thursday.” He winked. “He’s not fond of meeting new people.”

  “I’d heard he’s a writer.” The nurse marveled that Alex could write even his name.

  David turned to the patient, who had rolled onto his stomach. “The poor guy needs some street fighting lessons.” He peeled the bloody bandage from the man’s neck. “Christ.” He bent over to better see the two wounds in the neck. They were deep and long; the ripped red flesh on the neck’s surface contrasted sharply with the white flesh deeper down.

  The patient’s breathing became labored. He jerked his head away from David, and the wounds flexed and foamed like the red gills of a dying fish. “Help me get him on his back, Nurse Kane.”

  David moved to the rear of the cot as Nurse Kane moved to the middle.

  She worked her hands and arms underneath the patient’s belly, and David reached under the shoulders. David nodded, and they began slowly turning the patient over.

  Alex had dropped to the floor and onto his belly. Slowly, he rolled over. When the patient’s right arm got caught behind his neck, Alex’s arm did the same. The patient wailed. Alex wailed.

  The patient twisted free and fell to the floor. Nurse Kane kneeled to help him, but the patient grabbed her head. When Nurse Kane tried to escape, the patient lunged at her and bit off her nose.

  David pushed the emergency button then tried to pull the patient off Nurse Kane. He got the patient in a bear hug and struggled to heave him into a corner—the corner where Alex writhed, as if he too were struggling in a bear hug.

  “Jesus Christ, Alex! Move! Go for help and—” David choked. The patient had his hand down David’s throat.

  Alex stopped moving.

  The patient jerked his hand from David’s mouth; the hand clutched a hunk of wiggly flesh. The patient winced at the flesh, as a child winces at raw fish on his dinner plate. He kept wincing as he ate it.

  Alex stared.

  Thirty seconds later, a male nurse and two security guards burst in. One guard wretched, the other screamed. The male nurse, more used to blood and guts, slapped the guards and told them to help.

  David’s body was on top of Nurse Kane’s.

  The patient and Alex were sitting in the corner. The patient wore Nurse Kane’s blood-spotted cap and sucked loudly at Alex’s bloody neck. Alex ignored the patient and juggled Nurse Kane’s nose.

  One guard pushed the nurse out of the room while the second opened fire on the patient. The patient scrambled to the door. Halfway down the hall he trampled the second guard and the nurse, who were screaming for assistance.

  The patient dove through a plate glass window and fell two stories onto a doctor’s parked car. He rolled off the car hood and ran ten yards before the afternoon sun drove him to his knees. A rancid, oily smoke rolled off him, then he burst into flame.

  Meanwhile, Alex sat in another room, fingering the holes in his neck. The doctors kept asking if he were all right. “I’m fine,” Alex repeated.

  And he really was fine. He could not remember ever feeling so calm. He sat on a cot, surrounded by doctors and nurses, and he was relaxed. The worried stares, muffled talk, and glaring overhead lights did not bother him. “I feel good, truly good.”

  Alex was born again, the blood and saliva of the walking dead mixed with his own. The husk of human personality left behind in Alex’s skin was perfectly content to be a kind of dead man for whom the world of the living—the world of expectations, demands, and disappointments—meant nothing. For most of his natural life, Alex had bitterly wished that he cared nothing for other people, that he could wall himself from their grotesque emotions and maddening motives.

  As a born again dead man, the wish was miraculously granted.

  After a doctor bandaged Alex’s neck wounds, he put a comforting hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to tell you that your brother is dead.”

  Alex nodded solemnly. “I’ll just have to make the best of it.” He glanced at his watch. “Starting now.”

  He stood, thanked everyone for their help, and reluctantly accepted a ride to his brother’s house. He watched the news: the “brutal multiple murders” at the county hospital were the evening’s big news. Officials explained that the murderous drug addict evidently used propellant to immolate himself. The hospital staff tried to forget the incident, and they eventually did.

  As years passed, David often tried to recall that baptismal afternoon. Sometimes when he bit a victim’s neck, images flashed across his closed eyes: David’s bloody unbelieving face, Nurse Kane’s nose, the demented patient baring bloody teeth. Yet the images remained opaque and fragmented, like an often-spliced movie illuminated by a dim projector.

  Now, as Alex woke from the dream, he smiled. The once fragmented images now cohered into a thrilling gestalt. Finally, he could recall the second birth that freed him from the curse of his first birth. Fleetingly, Alex realized that people would be appalled by his gratitudes: grateful for his brother’s murder, grateful for the bite of a fiend. And unspeakably grateful to escape the demands of the living.

  Morality, Alex mused, interests only the smug or the weak.

  Alex was neither.

  Chapter Twenty Three: Deus Ex Machina after the late shift

  Claire Sweet was anxious. She could not find her notes about two books, The Greek Idea and The Ideals of Greek Culture. After searching her apartment three times, she searched her car three times. The Chevy was filled with paper cups, fast food napkins, and candy bar wrappers. But no notes. Claire slouched into the driver’s seat and battled the urge to cry. A cry would release a lot of tension, but she could not spare the time.

  She resigned herself to the fact that the notes were gone. She made up her mind to pull an all-nighter at the library to catch up. As she trudged back into her apartment, the phone rang.

  “This is Mr. Nixon. I need to talk to Claire Sweet.”

  “Speaking—”

  “I need you at work tonight, Claire.”

  “I can’t,” Claire said weakly.

  “I’m sorry. We try to stick to schedules, but I need you here by 5:00.”

  She hung up the phone. “Goodbye ‘A’ in History,” she muttered. She smoked a stale cigarette and cried.

  Mr. Nixon was behind the cash register, ringing up a little boy’s 16-ounce Zip Gun slush.

  “Glad you’re here,” Mr. Nixon admitted. His mood was sour because he had been stuck with the busy afternoon shift. School kids streamed in, shouting, pushing, and buying the candy, pop, and chips they could not safely steal

  Claire took over at the register. As Mr. Nixon removed his orange florescent Zip-Quick apron, he studied Claire’s rear. Another boy, a bag of Cheezie Corn in his hand, followed Mr. Nixon’s gaze to Claire’s rear.

  She turned. “Yes, Mr. Nixon?”

  His toothy grin was vaguely perverse. “Pardon me, but there’s a note stuck to your, stuck on your jeans.” He retreated to his office in the rear.

  Claire reached around and pulled. The note was written on a small square of paper with an adhesive strip. “Hope You’re Well,” the note declared in neat handwriting: Edward’s handwriting. She had been busy that week and had not been to the library. She knew she was avoiding the problem. How, she wondered, do you fend off a boy’s crush?

  “He’s a nice kid,” she whispered to herself. “It’s a nice note.” She tossed the note away, then a re
velation struck her: Edward must have her notes! They had shared a messy table at the library, and he must have mistakenly picked up her notebook.

  She found his number in the directory and called.

  “The number you have called,” the recording chirped, “is no longer in service.”

  Claire decided to visit Edward tonight. Her stomach knotted at the thought, but she told herself to be calm. True, appearing at lovestruck Edward’s door past midnight with heavy eyelids might give the wrong impression. I’ll just have to explain, she thought, that I really need those notes.

  The evening passed slowly. Teenagers did more loitering than buying. The occasional drunk or pothead wandered in for more wine, more cigarettes, or more rolling papers. At midnight, Claire waved wearily as Marsha entered. “Thank God you’re here,” Claire half-shouted.

  “I can tell you’re tired, kid.” Marsha winked as she ran a comb through her graying hair. “Your drawl is comin’ out.”

  “And I’m gettin’ out of here.”

  “Just give me a sec to hit the restroom, OK?” Marsha disappeared into the rear to sit on the toilet and have a smoke.

  A man with unkempt hair and tired, red-rimmed eyes walked slowly down the aisles. He stopped, mumbled, and kept walking. Then he fidgeted before the cooler. Claire fleetingly wondered if he was an incompetent shoplifter. He slowly turned and approached Claire.

  “Pardon me.” He licked his cracked lips. “Do you have any bottled water?”

  “I think you went right by it. Aisle two.”

  “I also need orange juice.” He squinted as a car’s headlights momentarily shone in his face.

  He looked familiar. She had seen him in the college’s AcademicCenter. “There’s orange juice in aisle three,” she told him.

  She studied him as he gathered the water and juice. It took him a long time. He stared vacantly at the bottled water before taking it. When he found the jug of orange juice, he shook it several times, then studied it. Finally, he nodded and brought the items to the check out.

  He pointed at the cigarette display behind Claire. “I’d also like a pack of Dunhills, please.”

  After paying, the man immediately opened the cigarette pack, took out a cigarette. “Got a light?”