by Bryan Smith
Again, I have no idea why this delightful fucking development has come to pass. It takes a while longer yet for the drugs still in my system to lose their efficaciousness. That’s a big word I heard on TV once. Have only a dim idea of what the fuck it even means or if it applies to my particular situation, but it sort of sounds like it does, so there you go. You’re welcome, compadres. That’s what I’m here for, to augment your collective fucking vocabularies. Oh, there’s another one. Augment.
Say it with me now, “Aug . . . ment.”
It means . . .
Fuck, look it up. I can’t do everything. What am I, your fucking nanny?
Anyway, as the drugs do finally begin to lose their grip on me, I become aware of some things, like the fact I’m sitting on the floor with my back against a wall. There’s another wall facing me. It seems way too close. Wherever I am, it’s fucking tiny. And dank. And dreary. And dark. The dark and dreary part I get, despite the last vestiges of the drug fog still lingering in the blob of long-dormant gray matter inhabiting my beleaguered cranium. There aren’t any windows in this narrow space. Kind of hard for light to get in without windows. And if there’s an overhead light, someone’s turned it off. The only illumination at all is coming from the hallway on the other side of the slightly ajar door to my left.
After becoming aware of that door, I stare at it for a time. There’s something significant about the goddamn thing, but at first I can’t pinpoint what that might be. And then it comes to me—Oh, yeah, I’m in a fucking cell somewhere. That sucks. Seems like just yesterday I was a happy-go-lucky guy having a laugh and downing pints at the pub with my friends, and now here I am. How did this happen?
Other revelations follow closely on the heels of that one. The first is that the cell isn’t in some fucking jail. No, that would be far too pedestrian a possibility for the likes of me. I’m somewhere special, a place where they only send the most hopeless head cases. That’s right, so-called ladies and reputed gentlemen, I’m in the goddamn looney bin. That’s why those guys in the white outfits have spent so much time treating me like a goddamn human pincushion. Only now it’s sort of feeling like they haven’t come around in a while. Maybe a long while. I’d probably start to fixate on exactly why that might be at this point, except this is when the reason for the “dank” aspect of the cell hits me—it’s because I’m sitting in a putrid-smelling stew of my own piss and shit.
Oh, and there’s some fucking vomit on the floor. I have no memory of expelling anything from my empty stomach—which is feeling painfully tender, now that I think about it—but the incontrovertible proof I have is right in front of me. A puddle of poorly masticated and partially devoured lumpen bits of white and yellow things that might once have been deemed edible by some sadistic bastard somewhere in this godforsaken facility.
Obviously, I leaned forward at some point and blew chunks. The act of leaning forward probably saved me from choking on my own vomit like some goddamn heavy metal drummer. The hole in my memory suggests this was pure instinct rather than a conscious effort to save myself. It strikes me as highly debatable whether this was even worth doing, but I did it, so here we are.
Anyway, I sit there and contemplate my situation as the last tendrils of that mental fog continue to slip away. I’m thinking clearer than I have in probably a depressingly long time. This again strikes me as not necessarily a positive development. I’m disgusted with myself. Like, all-around disgusted. For having traveled down a path in life that brought me here. One could argue it wasn’t entirely my fault, that I was a victim of forces largely beyond my control, but I know I’m not exactly blameless either. I made bad choices. A long string of them. I lived mostly without malice toward my fellow man, but I nonetheless lived destructively. I can cop to that, at least.
This is all bad enough, but mostly this stuff falls into the category of food for later thought. What most sickens me is my current physical state. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here marinating in piss and shit, but it’s clearly been a while. The more I dwell on it, the more I realize how absolutely awful the stench is. The seat of my pants is absolutely saturated with shit. From the feel of it, it’s mostly been a non-stop spew of diarrhea. The front of my pants is one big, crusty, urine-drenched stain.
Stand back, ladies. I know you’re all clambering for my ass now. The line starts over there.
But I digress.
This unfortunately very clear awareness of the state of myself triggers a new line of thought. Where is everybody? Why haven’t the orderlies been tending to me? I know everyone thinks I’m a murdering scumbag, but a properly functioning mental facility that doesn’t want to get shut down wouldn’t let this happen.
Right?
Right. Fuckin’ A.
It’s then that I finally think again of the slightly ajar door to the cell. My head turns slowly in that direction.
“Huh,” I say out loud, my creaky voice sounding small and scared in the dank small cell. “That’s weird.”
I’m a dangerous murderer. A sexual deviant. At least as far as the outside world is concerned. There’s no plausible reason why my door would have been left open, at least none I can think of. I’m not even in restraints. I could get up and walk out of that door right now.
My heart starts to speed up.
And that’s when someone out in the hallway pushes the door open and enters the cell. I squint against the brighter hallway light framing the figure standing just inside the door until my vision adjusts.
Then I gasp.
“No. It can’t be you. You’re dead.”
But she comes deeper into the room, until I can see her face more clearly. And it’s definitely her. I start to feel lightheaded, as if I might pass out. Maybe that would be a good thing. Maybe this has all been a weird lucid dream, an anomalous blip in the midst of the drug haze, a mere illusion of clarity rather than the real thing. Any second now I’ll slip back into the hazy mists of dreamland, and this time I’ll stay there forever, which will probably be for the best.
This is what I think until Crazy Sue smiles and says, “You’re not dreaming. It’s me.”
Holy fucking shit.
A terrible, cacophonous sound reverberates inside the little cell.
It’s me. I’m screaming.
PART V
HOLY FUCKING SHIT
THE SCREAMING STOPS SHORTLY AFTER it begins. Not because I’m done freaking the fuck out, but simply because I don’t currently possess the lung power to sustain the eardrum-rattling volume. But I’m still screaming inside, where it really counts. My brain is reeling. I feel overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that I’ve only freshly emerged from a drug-induced state of oblivion so all-encompassing I may as well have been fucking comatose. I’m simply not prepared to deal with a revelation of this magnitude.
I sit there panting and trembling in that self-made cesspool of my own rancid fucking waste until a calming insight occurs. This can’t possibly be real. Sue’s body was torn apart. She’s dead as fucking dead can be, no way around it. Thus, if I’m not dreaming, the woman standing before me can only be a hallucination.
A hallucination doesn’t speak well for my overall state of mind, but it makes sense. At this point, I’ll take what I can fucking well get. I mean, shit, I’ve been through kind of a lot. I’ve been injected with so many drugs even Keith fucking Richards would find it excessive. I’ve been institutionalized and dehumanized, judged a monster by others who could never handle the truth of what happened for the simple reason that it’s too fucking strange and not at all in accordance with what most accept as the natural way of things. I’ve lost time, what feels like a goodish chunk of my life. Fucking years. Who knows what else happened while I was lost in that zonked-out state? For all I know, the orderlies might have been butt-raping me on a daily goddamn basis. Or maybe they were pimping me out like what’s-her-face in Kill Bill.
I cringe at the thought.
It seems all too fucking plausible.
/> What all this means, the bottom goddamn line, is that my brain is broken, probably beyond repair. My perceptions cannot be trusted. The things I see—or think I see—are not necessarily real. In that moment, I find this immensely comforting. None of this is real. I don’t have to be scared.
I let out a relieved breath. I smile.
Crazy Sue comes a few steps closer. I don’t even scream this time.
Why would I?
She’s not actually there.
Sue folds her arms beneath her breasts and shakes her head. “Let me guess. You think you’re hallucinating.”
I laugh. “Yep.”
“You’re not, though.”
“The fuck I’m not. There’s no other rational explanation. And you’re dressed like a fucking femme fatale from a 1940s noir movie. You never did that in real life.”
The bit about her outfit is true. This thing that appears to be Sue but is actually a projection from somewhere inside my hopelessly cracked brain is wearing a tight white sweater with the sleeves pushed up, a pencil skirt, and heels. Her hair is styled in a way that makes her look like Lauren fucking Bacall. There’s no trace of all the tattoos she had when she was a real, breathing person. And, oh yeah, she’s in black and white, also just like in an old noir movie. So, there’s no way in hell this classy-looking dame is anything other than exactly what I think she is.
A hallucination.
“You’re not hallucinating,” the definite hallucination insists.
“Am so. And that’s just more proof. That knowing what I’m thinking thing. Only reason you can do it is because you’re emanating from somewhere inside my fucked-up noggin.” At this point, I rap the knuckles of my right hand hard against the side of my head. “Ouch. Anyway, I’m gonna close my eyes now and count to ten. When I open them, you’re gonna be gone.”
Sue sighs and shakes her head again.
I close my eyes. Count to ten.
I open them again.
She’s still fucking there.
“Goddammit.”
She smirks. “Told you I’m not a hallucination.”
“Like hell you’re not,” I say. “You’re just an annoyingly persistent one. Whatever. You’ll go away eventually.”
Sue comes a couple more steps closer. Right in front of me now. That smirk is still in place. There’s something more deeply smug about it now. I feel my first twinge of doubt and with that some of my previous terror comes seeping back in.
“Step off, bitch.”
Sue laughs.
And then she kicks me in the shin. The jolt of pain this sends up my leg is real as a motherfucker. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt anything so intensely. Probably not since before they slapped me in this cell.
Right about here is where I start whimpering and weeping. Shameful shit, really. But I can’t help it. I cringe away from her, press my back more firmly against the wall. It’s like I’m cringing away from Godzilla rather than a resurrected dead babe who looks like a throwback silver screen bombshell.
“Stop whimpering. It doesn’t suit you.”
I whimper.
And I say, “I can’t help it.”
Then, you guessed it, I fucking whimper again.
Sue frowns. “This is not the Phil I knew.”
I surprise myself by laughing. “No shit. That guy’s as dead as you are. What you’re seeing is a shell, a heap of living dead flesh refusing to give up the goddamn ghost for no reason other than dumb instinct.”
Now she smirks again. It’s getting annoying, that fucking smug look. “It’s funny you should use that word.”
“What word?”
She smiles. “Ghost. I am one, you see.”
“A fucking ghost.”
Another nod. “Bingo.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth.”
I roll my eyes. I even start to relax. The absurdity of it all overwhelms the fear, pushes it so far back I temporarily forget I should be afraid at all. It’s like I’m back in time, back in the days before corpses started getting up and walking around the first time, and I’m having one of those maddening circular debate-slash-discussions with Crazy Sue, struggling to make any sense whatsoever of the madness spewing out of her mouth like some kind of toxic verbal diarrhea.
“It’s bullshit. Granted, that kick felt real. I bet if I reached out and touched you, I’d feel warm, living flesh. But that’s the thing. Ghosts don’t have substance. They don’t have fucking physical form. They’re wispy, floating, cloud-like things. They can move through walls and shit. Dissipate like fucking smoke.”
Sue snorts. “Right. And what makes you think that?”
“Movies, of course.”
“And you believe everything you see in movies?”
I shift around on my butt some, frowning as I become more aware of how truly uncomfortable I am on that cold concrete floor. “Well, no, not everything. That would be . . . ridiculous.”
“And you’re not a ridiculous person, are you?”
I sneer. “I see where you’re going with this. Allow me to interject a perhaps critical admission. At this juncture in time, I figure I’m about the most ridiculous person on the goddamn planet. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong about anything.”
Sue laughs. “Fine, whatever. I’ll break things down to your level. Never an easy prospect, but I’ll do my best. Your perception of ghosts, how they behave and what they’re capable of, is based entirely on things you’ve seen in movies. Surely, then, you must be aware of a little paranormal phenomenon called the poltergeist.”
“Um . . .”
She laughs again. “That’s a spirit capable of manifesting in physical form.”
“And you’re a poltergeist?”
She nods. “Yep.”
“Huh.”
Sue squats in front of me. “Listen, I don’t have a lot of time. Please focus. I’m a ghost. For real. This isn’t a trick or a hallucination. I promise. But manifesting at this level requires a lot of energy. I’m only able to be here by tapping into a dangerous vein of supernatural power. And by dangerous, I mean Satan-adjacent. I’ll have to go soon, so I’ll only say this once. It’s happening again. The dead are rising. Some of them are out in that hallway. You have to get up and get the hell out of here.”
And as soon as she falls silent, I hear them out there, that damnable familiar moaning. And the shuffling. It’s getting louder by the second. I gulp as I realize this ghost or whatever is telling me the absolute truth. The fucking zombies are back and if I don’t get off my ass and start moving, I’m gonna be chow for the undead. Never mind that I smell like I’ve been bathing in shit and piss for about a decade and wouldn’t make for a very tasty meal. These things aren’t that fucking picky. I’ve seen the proof for myself. And I’m sure this new wave of living dead has that same singularity of flesh-chomping focus.
Panic surges inside me as I focus on Sue again. “But I don’t even know where I am. Not exactly. This goddamned hellhole is designed to keep crazies in, not allow for easy fucking egress. What if I can’t get out of here?”
She disappears.
I gasp. A trickle of panic pee drips out of my shriveled dong.
I whimper.
Then she’s back again, blinking into existence. But she’s not all the way back. She flickers, like an image from an old movie threaded through the reels of a malfunctioning projector. I see strain in her face and for the first time I kind of start to grasp what it’s taking for her to be here. She’s holding on with everything she’s got. It’s hurting her. And she’s doing it for me. Right about then I feel a super-massive crushing wave of guilt for every unkind thought I’ve ever had about her. Despite that flickering thing, she no longer looks like a refugee from an old noir movie. This is the old Sue I’m glimpsing here. The one I remember. The real one.
A tight smile forms on her fluttering face. “I’ve done what I can to help. I opened every door I could before I came to you. It took most of th
at energy I told you about, but that’s almost gone now. I’ve only got a few seconds. Go, Phil. Get up and fucking go. Please.”
Then she’s gone again.
This time she doesn’t come back.
I turn my head and look at that open door again. It’s really kind of a miracle, isn’t it? I’ve been so out of it for so long I can’t remember the last time I had unimpeded access to an open door. Wasting this opportunity would be an epic-level fucking disgrace.
I hear another creaky moan.
And then another of those shuffling steps.
It takes every ounce of the meager fucking strength at my disposal, but I manage to raise myself to a standing position. My back’s against the wall. I’m panting from the exertion. I feel pathetic. But it’s a start. I’ve got a chance. Probably the slimmest fucking chance imaginable, but it’s better than nothing.
I push away from the wall.
Holy fucking shit, I think.
Here we go.
PART VI
TOUGH TIME AT THE FUNNY FARM
BEFORE I EVEN GET TO the door, I become much more cognizant of how weak I really am. I’ve gotten skinny as fuck during my time in the funny farm. You’ve seen pictures of hardcore anorexics, right? They’re so fucking thin from starving themselves they look like they could go floating away in the breeze at any moment. It’s like that, only worse. I haven’t exactly been gorging on gourmet fucking meals for a while, you know. Or vegging out on junk food while stoned out of my mind on good weed.
Anyway, so now I’m hoping like hell whatever I’m about to encounter in this hallway is as wasted-looking as me.
No such luck.
There are multiple undead fucks blocking the hallway in either direction. Five to my right and three to my left. Now, based on that scrap of info, my next move must seem obvious, right? Wrong, bitch. Sure, there are fewer shambling dead creeps to the left, but one of those motherfuckers is the size of a house. And I don’t mean like some little house on the goddamn prairie. Nope. This undead cock-face is more like a P. Diddy mega party mansion.