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And I never forget...
I mean, I can't imagine what it's like to be locked up. Claustrophobia. I'd probably crack. But I make a point, when I go to the interview, to have the guards sometimes just take me to wherever the guy is and put me in the cell with him. And go away. Not lock the door, that would be too realistic, but walk away down the tier so I can hear the footsteps fading with the echo and feel the solidness of the walls and the floor and the ceiling. Smell the sweat and the dirty toilets and all the metallic smells and the hopeless sounds of the place and imagine what it would be like to live your life here. I do it once in a while. To remind me. Every time I give up on a guy and put the warrants out on him this is where he ends up. I try not to forget...
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One day when Barry Delta
thought he was being so good, so good- Janice walked out on him. It started ten days before with a click, the sound of her toothbrush going into the little stand by the sink as Barry entered the bathroom. The click was a more solid sound than usual, harsher than what he was used to. He was surprised he could be so sensitive to certain things. Then he foggily connected her force in plunking down the toothbrush to the possibility that she might be bothered by something. He rubbed his head and leaned against the wall.
"Something wrong?"
"Two years," said Janice, leaning close to the mirror, inspecting her eyelids. "I have to be honest. It's bugging me." She did not look at him.
"Oh.."
Nothing else came into his mind. He rubbed his head some more, hopeful, and sleep-stumbled out of the bathroom to the kitchen to get coffee. He tried to think clearly. No luck.
But it didn't matter, at least not that first day. They left it at that: The hard click of a toothbrush. There was no sense starting on a bedrock issue thirty-five minutes before worktime. Not for something Barry knew would take a lot of time and care, much more than he was able to give right then. Probably more than he was ever able to give.
Able or willing?
He tried not to upset himself, thinking.
One Sunday afternoon
he was sitting in his apartment sipping wine with a promising up-and-comer, a dancer with a local company who part-timed as a clerk in a bookstore. She was a little foul-mouthed, even for Barry, but the girl had a body. He'd often wondered what it would be like to plunder a trained figure like that and things were looking good. This was the second date. But Barry hadn't fully explained his line of work to her yet and this quiet inopportune Sunday afternoon his telephone unfortunately rang.
"Barry shweetie..."
"Ellen. Not now. Where are you?"
"Where you put me, lovey. I'm behaving."
"Doesn't sound like it."
"Do you love me, Barry?"
"What...?"
"You love me don't you, shweetie... Why don't you show it?"
"Ellen. Settle down. I'll come see you this afternoon. Don't leave."
"I won't leave. Nowhere to go."
"Who got you the bottle?"
"Nobody."
"Is 'nobody' still there?"
"Barry, sweetie, mmmm, kiss, kiss..."
"Cut it out, Ellen. Come on now, for your own good. Who knows where you are?"
"Little friend of Ellen's. He won't tell."
"We're gonna have to move you. I wish you wouldn't do this. I'm running out of places. It's still two months 'till the preliminary."
"You love me, don't you Barry-pie...?"
"Bye, Ellen..."
"Love me...?"
"Get off the phone. And don't call anyone else."
"Say you love me first. Love me?"
"Bye, Ellen."
"Love me...?"
"Love you, okay."
"Say you love me, sweetie, it's so lonely here...can't stand it."
"I love you."
"So lonely..."
"I love you, Ellen. Hear? You're a loved person."
"You love me?"
"I love you."
"Oh, say it again, baby. Say it more. I gotta...I need it, baby.""
"I love you."
"You love me."
"Yes," Barry said. "I do."
Barry hung up the phone, regretful that he'd broken his no-home-phone-number rule for just this one time. For Ellen. Who needed protection, mostly from herself.
The dancer sat up straight, put her glass down and reached for her shoes, looking at him with distaste.
"You're f***ing wierd," she said.
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Hospitals are the
observatory/holding tanks used by the robot control creatures. The Delta machine speaks in its metallic voice:"Stay here a while. Relax. Once you get back on the meds you can come out again." But I have no intention of killing myself with chemicals again, no intention whatsoever. I still have my blade, undetected in the disgusting entry charade of this machinery pigsty. The nurses move with android efficiency. Let them manipulate, tie me down and study me. I have been observing. I will find a way out.
"Look. I can't let you out of here until the doctors say. And they don't say."
"I am normal. It is cruel to be keeping me here among all these poor creatures when I am perfectly normal."
"You're not normal. Word is you were out on the street selling pills. Yours, no doubt. That may be normal for you for whatever reason, but it's not allowed, see. Something's up. And with you when something's up, people, women, get hurt. So no chances. No discussion. You get better, take your bug juice, or you rot here. That's that."
The monster now uses the correct language to describe his terrible actions. Rot. Decay. By some method he continues to look into my mind even when he is away. He knows what I am feeling. The devices are everywhere. In me. On me. On me! My watch! Digital mechanized horror...
Devices are everywhere, but they are not necessary in my case. The clever creatures have invaded me with a simple machine attached to my wrist. I dare not try to remove it for fear of an explosive. The only thing will be the instrument, my last hope. At the changing of the nurse/guard this evening I will make my move. Suitcase left foolishly under the bed. Stab it. Stab it, stab it and kill it. Destroy it where it sits, attached to my arm, evil roots cutting the skin, snaking through my body. Stab it. Stab it and kill it, kill it...
When you were a boy
your father taught you an all-purpose slip knot.
You learned it and used it well all the rest of your life. But when you were a little boy you boobed on it once, learning that first time, and your father clipped you on the ear. You didn't cry, you'd learned by then not to. When you grew up you smuggled drugs with three other guys, driving the truck across the border like a trooper. When you were caught you protected your friends and honourably went away for a longer time than would have been fair, had your three compadres shared the misfortune. When you got out you took your parole officer to the farm to see what you could really do and when you didn't close the tailgate of the truck in just such a way your father clipped you on the ear, you, a man of twenty-seven. Mr. Delta watched, trying not to show, wanting to look away. He saw what the problem might be.
When Delta sat down and talked with you in your little apartment with your week's supply of congealed campfire stew on the stove and reminisced about your crimes, he said:
"Steve, there was a time in this country when a guy like you could have really made it. I mean, the kind of b**ls you show, you would have been good in a war or something."
But you cocked your head and made like you didn't understand.
Up north.
Not many people know of it but there was a bit of a war up there. A hell of a lot more than we expected, anyway. nothing like the South Pacific, of course, but just the same, they were shooting real bullets. There was a lot of our bases up there. Men and equipment. It was one of the places they thought the Japs might try to invade if they ever got around to it.
One day they hit us by surprise with divebombers and torpedo planes. Crazy sons-a-b****es who didn't seem to care about getting killed. Made a lot of our boys jumpy. Lot of 'em'd volunteered for the northern run because they thought they'd never see a hostile. Lotta ships' companies thought they'd never have to fire a gun in anger and a lot of 'em never trained. Too bad. Damn near turned into a disaster.
Anyway, we were sailing in a convoy and when the attack came we were in a line of about ten ships abreast that stretched maybe seven or eight miles across. The planes just started at one end and kept going as long as they were in the air. We were about number eight or nine, so by the time they got over us they'd already dropped their bombs so they just rattled a little machine-gun at us and we answered back. I'd been topside and got trapped in a hatchway. I couldn't get across the deck and down the engine-room hatch without stepping into gunfire, so I stayed where I was.
I just waited and ducked whenever they came until it was just about over. I don't think there were more than three that passed over us anyway. I was watching a buddy of mine on the nearest AA battery pepper the b*****ds as they went by, following 'em close, think he hit one of 'em too. On the last one over he started firing as usual. I was following the plane as best I could to watch for smoke coming off him when my buddy stopped firing. I looked over at him. The back of his head had disappeared. He slumped backwards off his perch and was hanging in the gun harness, leaking brains out of his head onto the deck. Holy f**k. Not something you forget the look of. I didn't want to, but I couldn't take my eyes off him. I was going to toss my lunch when I realized that even though the plane had passed us by there were still rounds hitting alll around on the deck, kicking great dents in the gun-barriers. I looked and there were muzzle-flashes on the next ship in the line, still firing at the plane, long out of range. The stupid sons-a-b***hes were so ill-trained and stunned that they were shooting sideways. At us. Friendly fire they started calling it in the Vietnam era. Back then they didn't give it a name that the newspapers could use particularly. Censorship and all that...
Whatever. It killed a guy. And then I went kinda crazy. Ran out to the gun. I guess by then the danger had passed because the shooting about stopped but I didn't notice. All I could think about was getting that gun working. I unstrapped my dead buddy and laid him on the deck. Then I swung the gun around and started shooting at the ship. I kept shooting 'till the magazine was empty. They had to tear me away from the thing.
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