by Leif Wright
He still missed her, but remembering how she seemed to explode into every room she entered—the Debris of Debbie seeming to end up on every flat surface in every room—seemed to help with the emotion. The kids barely seemed to recognize him anymore, and Chris Jr. looked at him with open disdain. No telling what New Guy was saying about him, how he was filling their little heads with lies about their dad.
He shook his head to clear New Guy out of it. No sense ruining a good feeling with that asshole.
The computer chimed importantly again.
It would have to get over itself. There was no way he was getting up from this chair before James Spader had pulled yet another victory out of his Tom Landry hat. Even New Guy couldn’t ruin that for him. He loved the way Spader seemed to have the ability to focus in on whoever he was talking to, his unwavering stare almost physically grabbing their faces and forcing them to look at him, too. Chris had read somewhere that Spader had a horrible case of nearsightedness and couldn’t see a foot in front of his face while he was filming those scenes, but his laser stare was eminently convincing. Hell of an actor.
Chris practiced that stare himself. He wanted to be the kind of guy who was confident enough in whatever he was saying to stare someone down while he was saying it, making damn sure they listened to every last word and took it seriously. He wanted his eyes to convey that there was an animalistic violence poised just behind his calm demeanor, which was holding the beast in check simply by the power of Chris Jackson’s will. That kind of confidence didn’t need to be good-looking or rich to command people’s respect. That kind of intensity didn’t rely on fashion to make its point.
Last night had been a smash-and-grab, but he was working his way up to the James Spader level, which in his fantasies meant he would set someone down and explain to them the gravity of their situation in measured, even tones, making his emphasis with the power of his stare, not with the volume of his voice. If they tried to look away, he would lean in more intently, tilting his head to make sure he had their attention as he calmly, confidently explained that they had better understand just how serious he was, just how dire their situation had become in that moment of calm, the eye of the storm that was about to wreck their lives.
Next time, though, he would wear gloves. And maybe a Tom Landry hat.
9
DR. HENRY LIPSCOMB PRIDED HIMSELF ON BEING APPROACHABLE, though in his mind’s eye, he knew his Id wanted him to be seen as intellectual—above the fray. He never quoted Freud or Jung; that would be laughably stuffy, even absent the reality that Freud was a medieval hack compared to modern advances in the science of the mind. Instead, he quoted Neil Young and the band Kansas when he wanted to say something profound or profuse.
Behind his desk hung a plaque that bore the signatures of two of the members of Kansas, singer Steve Walsh and guitarist Kerry Livgren. The plaque was a calligraphy representation of one of the lyrics to a song of theirs:
“Hey there, Mister Madman, what’cha know that I don’t know? Tell me some crazy stories, let me know who runs the show.”
Beside the lyrics was the album cover of Leftoverture. Every time Lipscomb noticed the plaque, he sung to himself the next line in the song: “Glassy-eyed and laughing, he turns and walks away. Tell me, what made you that way?”
And for the rest of the day, he’d catch himself humming the song, smiling at the wrongness of having a quote containing the word “madman” while he listened to the tales of people who mostly all entertained the possibilities that they were indeed mad.
It was that song more than anything that led him to switch his major to psychology after a psilocybin-mushroom-addled weekend his freshman year listening to the album over and over again, extracting subterranean meaning from the lyrics that the writers had probably never intended to convey. But to his young, drug-fogged mind, the lyrics were the most profound things he had ever heard, the virtuoso progressive rock riffs perfectly complementing them, Walsh’s voice climbing over the top of that of violinist Robby Steinhardt, punctuating the passion of the poetry, driving home a message that may or may not have been there intentionally.
For Henry Lipscomb, they had touched off a desire to know more about the madman in the lyrics, the avalanche of questions falling one after another. Why were some people crazy? What aspect of society entitled some people to declare some people mad and others sane? Was sanity just an agreed-upon vanity shared by a majority of people whose assent codified it as “normal”?
After all, sanity and insanity were decided by majority rule. Absent a society, an insane person might never need to be studied or medicated; he could just go on his merry way, believing whatever he wanted to believe, never coming crossways with those who believed him insane because of it.
Perception, he knew, was reality. Truth and reality were all in the brain. If the brain saw something, for the owner of that brain, it was real. Sanity, he now knew, was the majority of people who did not see that same thing, thus classifying the person seeing it as insane. Or at least “troubled”. But science, which could never pronounce absolutes, couldn’t shut the door to the possibility that maybe the “insane” were seeing real things everyone else just couldn’t perceive.
Hey, there, Mister Madman; whatcha know that I don’t know?
He knew what his responsibility as a therapist was: to guide the divergent back to the agreed-upon middle, the dispassionate center of the scale, where the majority of people lived their lives every day, not seeing ghosts, demons, or imaginary friends. In some ways, his job was killing passions, destroying the fruits of unfettered imagination to bring the imaginative back to the dull throb of mundane existence populated by everyone else. But his true passion was studying the strange, the out-there, the batty (which, like “madman”, was a word he wasn’t supposed to use).
The woman who covered herself in feces to keep her neighbor’s cats’ psychic parasites from infesting her brain—what trail did her brain travel to arrive at that destination? The end product itself wasn’t as interesting to him; it was the journey to that place that piqued his fascination.
Did she read somewhere about the mouse parasite that could literally commandeer the brain of a mouse and force it to engage in risky behavior designed to attract the attention of a cat, because the parasite’s larvae could only grow to maturity in the intestines of a cat?
From that admittedly strange quirk of nature and evolution, did her mind make the leap to stories that said cats give off an airborne toxin that changes the brains of those who breathe air from their litter and causes them to start hoarding cats? And from there did it lead her to believe her neighbor—a cat hoarder—was emitting parasites designed to invade her brain and cause her to start hoarding cats, too? Who knew? No one. But Lipscomb wanted to figure it out, to follow the trail down the rabbit hole, so to speak, to have the Madman “tell me some crazy stories” and “let me know who runs the show”.
The guy who was about to come in for a session wasn’t nearly so interesting, Lipscomb thought and sighed. Emasculated by a lying, cheating bitch of an ex-wife, his brain was desperately clawing its way up out of the milquetoast hole it had buried itself in, doing whatever it could to reassure itself that he was, in fact, a man. He had first come in because of an overwhelming compulsion to find a biker bar and start a bar fight, which he recognized as stupid and dangerous, yet he couldn’t get out of his head. It was boring. And kind of pathetic, though he would never admit that opinion, even to colleagues.
Chris Jackson was a small, overweight bald man with a midlife crisis piggybacking onto a little man complex. His wife had left him for a younger, stronger, fitter, richer, smarter man, which left Chris questioning the reasons behind his existence. The pedestrian nature of his problems profoundly bored Dr. Lipscomb, but it was a private insurance case, which meant on-time, full-price payment, so he dutifully listened. Well, maybe not listened. But he let the poor guy talk. The answer to Chris’ unasked—and sometimes frequently-asked—questions wa
s simple: She left you for a younger, richer, better-looking guy. It’s not any kind of mystery; it’s evolution. Get over it.
But today, when Chris walked into the office, he looked different. Confident. Proud. Had he gotten a tan? Lost weight? Gotten laid? Lipscomb’s interest poked its head up, like a meerkat hearing a leaf crunch underfoot.
“How are you, Chris?” he asked as the rounder man sat down in the relaxed recliner with wingback designed to make the sitter feel protected. “You look great!”
“Do I?” Chris smiled absently as he wriggled his butt into the chair. “Had a good week.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” he said, peering into Lipscomb’s eyes—another new behavior for a man who every other session had darted his eyes all over the place while talking. “I’ve been doing a little reading online, but I need to ask you anyway to be sure: except for child and elderly abuse, you aren’t compelled to report past crimes, right?”
Well, that was an unexpected question from this otherwise exasperating client. Lipscomb was a well-practiced expert at not showing surprise, but he felt his eyebrows rise anyway.
“I’m only required to report crimes you’re planning to do. Why?”
“Can you lose your license for reporting crimes you’re not compelled to?”
“Not necessarily,” he replied, wishing he had a pipe to grip and puff thoughtfully as he did. “But if I promise you I won’t disclose what you say and then I do, I could lose my license. Unless it’s one of those special cases you mentioned where I’m compelled by law to report.”
Chris’ face lit up. “Good!” he said, leaning forward. “Can I talk about a past crime and know you won’t report it?”
“You have my word,” Lipscomb said. This boring easy money suddenly had become a lot more interesting, which meant he wouldn’t have to chew gum to stay awake during this session after all. Discreetly, he spat out his gum and threw it into the trashcan beside the desk.
“Well, I killed someone last week,” Chris said, a smile showing too much gum over his Chiclet teeth, jamming the extra fat from his cheeks higher onto his face. “It felt so good!”
Lipscomb heard himself cough. He noticed Chris’ face flash a quick smug expression when he did.
“Are you being serious right now?” Lipscomb had never known Chris Jackson to have a personality, much less a sense of humor, but he had already been surprised in this session, so the possibility that this was a weird joke was still open ever so slightly.
“Dead serious,” Chris said, then laughed as he recognized his pun. “I beat her to death with a tire thumper. I think I’m cured.”
Lipscomb sat back in his expensive-but-looks-not-so-expensive lumbar support office chair. It wasn’t that he hadn’t ever heard anyone confess to killing someone; it was just that it was so unexpected from this guy.
“Okay,” he said, clearing his throat. He knew immediately who it had to be that Chris had killed, and that meant this might be their last session beforethe cops came looking for him—the ex-husband was always one of the first suspects. “Was it your ex-wife? I mean, it’d be hard to blame you for wanting to, but …”
“No, no,” he replied, waving his hands impatiently, as if Lipscomb was trampling all over his perfect story with his dumb question. “Just some random lady. I didn’t even know her, but she deserved what she got.”
This just kept getting more interesting. Lipscomb furrowed his brow as he tried to wrap his head around what Chris had just said.
“If you didn’t know her, how do you know she deserved it?”
“I just do. And I didn’t mean to kill her. I just meant to beat the shit out of her. And I did, too. She shit all over the place. But I guess I hit her too hard, because she died right after she dropped the Browns off at the Super Bowl.”
Dropped the Browns …? Oh. It was a metaphor for defecation. Lipscomb adjusted in his seat, willing himself to reassert the role of therapist, to regain control of the conversation while letting the patient believe himself to still be in control. So he would avoid all questions of whether this was a story Chris was making up for some bizarre reason, and he would refuse to react to the matter-of-fact details being blurted out. “Tell me what about it made you feel good.”
Chris smiled again. The corners of his mouth trembled slightly, betraying an inner battle he had to be waging over the morality of what he had done—or at least believed he had done. The tremble traveled to the wattle underneath his double chin.
“I can’t tell you why I picked her,” he said, his voice steadier than the wattle. “But she fucking deserved it. Excuse my French.”
Lipscomb knew the word “fuck” was of Germanic origin, not French. The phrase “excuse my French” was coined back when the English considered the French unbathed hillbillies, their language itself a badge of their backward ways. So when the English used language considered vulgar, they would say “excuse my French” with the intention of using “French” as a synonym for “vulgarity”. But he didn’t think Chris would appreciate the history lesson. Instead, Lipscomb just smiled.
“I tried her back door, and it was locked. So I tried to pry it open, but that shit is a lot harder than it looks on TV, so I just kicked the damn door in,” Chris continued unprompted, as if the story had been building up inside him, dying to rush out. “I heard her grunting in the bathroom, so I kicked open that door too and started bashing her in the head. I never really thought I’d see a gray pussy, but she was on the toilet and there it was, staring at me. It wasn’t as gross as I would have assumed.”
His smile faltered a bit.
“Then she fucking bit me. That just made me hit her harder. It made the weirdest hollow sound, like thumping a pumpkin. Somehow, that sound made me want to hit her harder, bash the pumpkin in, and get all the seeds out of it. When she pissed and shit everywhere, I slipped in it. I wasn’t expecting that. I guess she was already dead by then, but that sound made me hit her a few more times. It felt so good.”
There might be a paper in this, Lipscomb thought fleetingly and unprompted. He wasn’t sure he believed any of this. Sure, the details sounded too specific to be invented, but it wasn’t unheard of for a client to regurgitate a story they had read somewhere or seen on TV and then claim themselves as one of the characters in it.
Besides, it was hard to get too worked up about the old lady, though he knew he should be horrified by what he was hearing, assuming any of it was true.
“What were you thinking of while you were hitting her?”
Chris looked up and to his left. Lipscomb knew that looking away from the dominant hand generally indicated that a person was trying to recall something. Looking toward the dominant hand tended to indicate deception. He made a mental note to watch Chris sign something so he could determine which was his dominant hand.
“I don’t think I was thinking of anything. I mean, before I hit her, I was really nervous. But once I started hitting her, I kind of went blank.”
Lipscomb made a “hmm” sound. Sometimes that was enough to keep someone talking when they had stalled.
“I kept wondering when I would start feeling guilty. But I never did. I just kept thinking about how much the old bat deserved even worse, and I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty.”
Lipscomb desperately wanted to know why Chris thought the old woman deserved to die, since he claimed to have not known her before he started hitting her with a tire thumper. But probing too deeply could shut Chris up, so he had to be sure to maintain the non-judgmental appearance he had so carefully cultivated over the years of his practice.
“Can you tell me something about why you say she deserved worse?”
Chris looked up and left again. Lipscomb was betting he was right-handed.
“I can’t. I can only tell you the part of the story that’s mine. I just know she deserved what she got. Maybe more.”
“How are you processing the feelings you must be having about that? Guilt?”
“N
o guilt. This is going to sound serial-killerish, but every time I’m alone thinking about it, I get a case of the giggles. I can’t think about it without laughing. It was so much easier than I thought it would be.”
“Have you thought a lot about doing something like this before?”
“Only when I was watching a movie or reading a book. It seemed to me that killing someone had to be a lot harder than they made it look, but it’s not. It’s the easiest thing in the world.”
Lipscomb shifted in his chair.
Personality changes this abrupt and complete were generally temporary, and when the reality of what he had done hit Chris eventually, the mental consequences might be profound. He might even have an emotional crash. Lipscomb would have to be careful to not seem judgmental while still attempting to bring him back to reality, because when that crash came, Chris was going to need help.
“How do you think your victim would feel about how you’re reflecting on the end of her life?”
Chris laughed. The shrill, feminine tenor of the laugh sent a chill down Lipscomb’s spine.
“I think she’d be more worried about everyone seeing her gray seventies bush,” he replied. “That thing was disgusting.”
“You don’t think she would wonder why you beat her to death?”
“Oh, she knew why. I made sure of that.”
“How?”
“I showed her a picture.”
“What was in the picture?”
“I can only tell you the part of the story that’s mine. But she knew. She got it. And she got what she deserved.”
10
THE INDIGO SKY SEEMED TO STRETCH FOREVER ABOVE TREES YAWING and dancing in the wind blowing in a late afternoon storm from the river. Everything seemed either darkened by the clouds or oddly basked in the intense orange light that struggled to keep the storm from shoving it into the ground.