Part II
Creativity
Sometimes, I like to write haikus.
People are crazy
With demented perception:
Let’s eat a fetus.
Experienced learning
Doctor T. and I have sessions every week. You remind me with a heavy, irritated buzz. The session lasts an hour, or until you’ve had enough. Doctor T. understands this, and he is a very patient man. We meet today in a small room with large chairs. It is white, everything I see is white. You remind me they do this so that things don’t trigger us.
I know, however, that you’re very easy to ignite.
Doctor T. asks me how I feel about fire, his fingers tapping on the fabric of his chair. The thumps rattle my brain, an earthquake inside my skull so tremendous that I can almost feel my fleshy cranium leaking out of my ears. He notices, but does not stop. Times like these I remember that you are my only friend and you would never do this to me. I could say that I loved you, even. I could say that I felt in awe of you, of this presence so cataclysmically different than my own. You were endearing, enamored with a certain strained gusto that made me feel weak.
You say nothing.
I begin to tell Doctor T. how I feel about fire. I tell him that it is beautiful, the way the flames lap into the air hungry for destruction. I love the way the orange fades into the most peculiar twinge of yellow, sun burnt red. Fire is one of nature’s most destructive forces, only to be tamed by nature’s first true love: water.
Once I have finished, Doctor T. asks me if I know about the fire.
“What fire?” My tongue is heavy.
“Don’t you remember the fire?” He taps.
Doctor T. I do not know about any fire.
Those words do not come out. I say nothing.
A learned experience
A few weeks ago someone started a fire.
The Pale Man
I have been very good lately. Isn’t that a funny thing to say? A grown man…behaving. My veins are speckled with needle marks. My sleep cycle is normal. My wrists do not respond to forced bondage, and you are quiet. Thus, I play a game of cards – alone. I am never alone, though. You bristle inside of me, poised like an angry porcupine. I focus. Let’s focus. We focus. I am not playing any game particularly, but organizing by my own imaginative self-loathing.
The Kings have always wanted to kill me.
Battle between the cards. I managed to escape with minor injuries, but not one notable review. Not one book deal. Not one movie contract. My life was just this expansion of space in which no one knew that the Kings were plotting to kill me. Thus, I sit with all fifty-two cards face up. I am contemplative, fingers braided beneath my chin as I experience the passing of time.
A pale faced man comes up to me. He hovers over me with a numb determination and a small scar on the inside of his eye. We exchange no words. I may have not even looked up at him before his slow moving hand fidgets against my shoulder.
The rule of friendship
Psychotic people don’t make friends.
I like this pale man already, though. He doesn’t speak much. He doesn’t stare much. We both just rest a heavy gaze on my fortified deck of cards. His arm fidgets again.
We are friends.
It is in that instance our understanding bonds us. We understand that we are not normal, rather we are psychotic. That makes us friends. My friend and I do not talk, or even feel the need to. He fidgets next to me, and I allow it. That is how friendship works: a mutual understanding that you can exist among the quirks beyond yourself. My pale friend pleases you, knowing the Kings do not stand a chance against us now.
An addition to my list
His name is Theodore, but he likes to be called Teddy. I tell him that my name is Ezekiel, but he can call me Zeek.
Teddy has a pale complexion, a distended stomach, and a small scar on the inside of his eye – a reminder that this place wounds us. We are haphazard amigos. The product of a malfunctioning nervous system, and a dead beat medical institution. He does not speak much, but merely gestures in slow, sloth movements. We can be found pressed shoulder to shoulder in nearly every instance, mostly because of my own paranoia that he might by trying to say something. As for him…I assume it’s his certain fondness for my attention.
Things we share fondness in:
-Thoughts.
-Sleep Patterns.
-A certain fondness for lists.
-Meals.
-Activity Time.
-Mental restlessness.
A memorable memory
Once, when Teddy wasn’t so shaky, he told me how he came here. The voices, not so much like mine. The electric shock therapy as a young boy, and the dead birds that made his parents worried. Teddy told me about the scar on the inside of his eye, and I listened. I told Teddy about you, about the bugs in my skin, about my new fixation with fire. Teddy and I talked the entire day, watching over the glossy faces of sour Kings. We didn’t mind the blank stare of the television, the blur of another day. As I remember this moment, this bonding moment, you remind me that Teddy doesn’t talk. He doesn’t talk at all really, ever.
The silence
The nurses haven’t stopped asking me if I have been behaving. Have I been a good boy lately? You are distinguishably silent, frighteningly almost, in these moments. When Teddy and I aren’t together and I am alone in my room, I miss you terribly. I beg for you to return to me, the weight of you absent from the rafters of my head. You say nothing. You do not return. I sleep soundly without your nightmares to haunt me. I walk without your shadow following me.
Would it be ironic to say it makes me crazy…
Something not necessarily good
Have you ever done something knowing that it was wrong?
You don’t always willingly do it, but maybe you fall into it like an irreversible water slide. It happens so fast, rushing past you, carrying you with it so that you have no time to stop. Not one second to cling to what you had before you drop into a submersion of water, and for that brief moment you pray you won’t drown. Please, if there is a God, don’t let me drown. You know how you got here, and I knew how I got here. I started this. I climbed the ladder, I waited in line, and when it was finally my turn I took the split second to decide whether or not this was a good idea. Did I make the right choice?
When I stopped taking my medicine I felt fine.
When the Kings started to plot I felt fine.
When I could hear you cooing to me in the most velvet voice I felt more than fine.
It was when they took Teddy that I did not feel fine.
Fire Starter
The day itself was sun flavored. My eyelids hanging lazily, seated in my spot within the recreation room, Teddy’s fingers drummed on the wall. Tap. Tap. The nurses strolled, patted, gossiped about the broken coffee machine. Tap. You hummed vibrantly in my mind, like a caged lion free of its shackles, and I hummed with you. For some reason everyone was going outside – but I was not. The nurses avoided me, even. Tap. Tap. I recall not feeling jealous, but rather curious. Doctor T. would later ask me about this and I would shrug him off, my reasons for not going outside are opaque. Tap.
The beautiful nurse stops, her skeletal fingers outstretched and beckoning Teddy, “Theodore, it’s activity time.”
I scrunch my nose, as if the residue of what those bones had carried reminded my body of weakness. I feel you slither up my spinal cord in the most disgusting way. Tap. Theodore does not answer her, merely fidgets into the wall and then into me – nervous. Tap. Tap. Tap. It is when the beautiful nurse beckons others that Teddy does not feel so comfortable. Tap. He scoots back into me first before I am pulled away like a convict from a crime. You rush into my blood, hot like molten earth. Teddy has stopped tapping, but fidgets in the arms of those who try to force him. He groans, grabbing at whatever he can before there is a rush on him.
He squeals like a pig being sent to slaughter.
You are the reason my hands grab at the nurses, clawing. You are the nagging in my stomach, the ache for relief – freedom. Your trigger finger is flawless. Behave, they repeat. Everything is always stuck on repeat. Help. I grab onto Teddy, breathless. Yet, you – you are the force in me that almost pulls him away. The medication cocktail glides into my blood stream like an angry tide. Before the sleep, however, I can recall you so desperately digging into my insides. Just repetition – to save Teddy, you say.
IGNITE
