What he says sounds stupid. I write it down here for the whole world to see. It’s stupid, what the doctor says.
Everybody knows why I can’t remember. I didn’t write it down.
His office is shabby. He doesn’t even hang up his diplomas and certificates. The way his office looks says to me that even he doesn’t like it there. Everything looks like it was reclaimed from the Salvation Army before it could be repaired. Even the doctor looks bald, threadbare, worn out.
All he has left now are eyes.
Eyes and a watch.
Eyes and a watch, and a clock on the wall.
His eyes look at his watch, his mouth makes another bored comment, the eyes look at the clock on the wall, then aim down again and look at the watch.
“Well, we’re done for today.”
This time the session went for only six minutes. The state pays him for forty-five.
“Shall I melt his legs?” asks the Misty Man.
I giggle and the doctor opens the door to allow me and the Misty Man to exit.
I have to get this down fast.
It’s night.
Hicks’s voice in the hall woke me up.
I hear him talking outside the door.
The orderly named Boyle answers. They talk angrily about a football game: who should be congratulated, who should die, who should be cast down into Obscure Hell as gross incompetents, as though they were authorities on incompetence.
Actually, they are.
Boyle is Danny’s orderly. Boyle is a body builder with a big belly. Danny is a writer who spends his time thinking of ways to kill Boyle and a book editor named Herb Liselli. Danny will kill Boyle tomorrow. Danny always says that. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes. I think he’s afraid if he kills Boyle, the other orderlies will gang up and kill him. Danny’s crazy though. That’s why he’s locked up in a room like mine. He’s a writer.
He has a good plan, even so. His plan to kill Boyle is very good, but he made me promise not to write it down. He’s afraid Hicks will read it and tell Boyle. I didn’t write it down, so I don’t remember the plan, but Danny promised to tell me again right after he kills Boyle. He told me that once he kills Boyle, he’ll go after Herb Liselli. Once Liselli is dead, Danny doesn’t care what happens. Then I can use the plan.
Boyle swears and his words fade as he moves away from the door. They have decided who the stupid football players are and now Hicks is looking at me through the peephole. I keep writing down everything on my palm even though I know it makes him furious. I don’t do it to make him angry, although I don’t think Hicks believes that.
The door latch clicks.
The smell of the food.
It’s food time and I didn’t even know. The smell. I’m hungry. The smell makes my mouth water.
Hicks pushes open the door with his ass and says, “Lunch time, Nut. Put your imaginary pencil and pad away and pay attention.”
I don’t.
I keep writing.
He pushes me back, pulls me to my feet, and forces a big spoonful of something into my mouth. I want to feed myself. I can do it. And I am hungry.
He digs the edge of the spoon into my upper pallet, making me cry out. He did it on purpose. I see the look in his eyes.
I gag on it. The something that was on the spoon is like a thousand tiny bugs in my mouth. I’m sure it must be rice. But it isn’t like rice. It’s like bugs. Thousands of tough, crunchy little beetles. I push it out of my mouth with my tongue.
“Damn you, you stupid pig!” Hicks drops everything, grabs the hair on the back of my head, and brings back his fist.
The Misty Man asks me, “Now?”
“No,” I answer. “Not just yet.”
Darkness—
I awake to countless aches. They divide, organize, process, and center into several major systems. The Misty Man explores them with fingers of black fog.
There is a swelling over my left eye. My cheeks are swollen, the bones beneath bruised. My ribs ache all over my sides where Hicks kicked me. The ring finger on my left hand, the thumb and index fingers of my right hand, are broken. Black with blood, the skin stretched so tightly over the swelling it shines. My hands hurt terribly.
“Hicks,” stated the Misty Man.
“Yes. This time I know it’s him. I wrote it down. This time I know.”
There is a crusty substance in my nose and on my upper lip. It’s dried blood. “How can I write now? He’s broken my fingers.”
The Misty Man’s power fills my mind. If I can write on an imaginary pad with an imaginary pencil, I can hold the imaginary pencil with imaginary fingers.
I laugh and it’s a howl of power and victory. I can write.
The writing is in my head, and the doctor doesn’t even notice my hands are not moving. Nor does he notice my broken fingers, black and swollen. The dried blood on my lip.
He looks at the clock, looks at his watch. Looks back at the clock.
“Doctor,” I say out loud. There is a smile on my face because he’s got to be excited about me speaking. I know I’ve been locked up here for over three years, and this is the first time I’ve ever said anything.
The doctor looks at the clock, looks at his watch.
I check my notes to see if I really did speak to him, and I did. Maybe it wasn’t loud enough for him to hear.
“Doctor?”
The doctor turns his head toward me, his eyebrows going up. “Yes?”
“I spoke.”
The doctor nods and looks back at the clock. “I told you that you could anytime you wanted.”
Deep red, pus yellow, blackening eddies of anger fill the room, cover the walls, flow through the barred windows, cover the earth.
If the Misty Man should appear this second and ask me to end the universe, I—
“Our time’s about up.” The doctor leans forward and places his hands on his chair’s armrests preparatory to standing.
“What about my hands?” I ask.
The doctor stood. “I noticed you weren’t pretending to write down things. If you’ll remember I told you—”
“No. Look. My fingers. They’re broken.” I held them out for him to see.
“Broken?” The doctor walked over, took each of my hands in one of his, and looked down at them. “How did you do this?”
“Hicks did it. He broke them to keep me from writing.”
“Nonsense. You did this to yourself, didn’t you?”
I don’t think. I swing and smash the doctor’s face with the heel of my right hand. He falls to the floor and I jump on his face, smashing that tired smugness until it becomes nothing. There are noises behind me, a shout, something sharp stabbing into my leg—
In the bed rest wing, splinted and taped, strapped down on a bed covered with a discolored rubber sheet. I study the straps around my wrists and ankles and across my chest. I nod at the wisdom. They are afraid I’ll use the tape and splints to kill myself. Or someone else.
I can’t reach to scratch my nose, my ear, my crotch, or anything. I don’t like being strapped down. It makes me so helpless, vulnerable, dependent.
A sound.
From behind me, out of sight, the sound of a footstep.
My mouth is so dry.
Hicks moves into view.
“Nut, the doctor says you talk now. And what’s the first thing out of your filthy mouth? You tattle on me about your fingers. You know, you’re not just crazy. You’re stupid, too.” Hicks pronounces the word like stoopud.
The orderly looks down at my right hand. With his middle finger he traces along the surface of my splinted index finger. Just the touch makes my finger throb.