[WBBS Home] [Table Of Contents] [Previous Story] [Next Story]
Ahhh, yes. Amazing thing, that. That when something unseemly has to be done it no longer seems quite as distasteful. Especially if it helps one achieve what one wants.
Hi. Since you will soon, like all the others, succumb, I can tell you about what I have done. I can tell you about he who will soon bring you to your knees.
I have been in hospitals for as long as I can remember. I always knew that I was fine, but for some reason I always had to prove it. They would strap me to the walls or bed until my thrashing subsided; they didn't know that it was not me, that it was only the others moving around in my veins. But this they did not care about when i tried to explain. Why didn't they understand? Their others worked in the cafeteria, brought fresh bedclothes, pushed food into their ugly, sucking mouths. Mine simply wanted to move at times. Mine only wanted peace and quiet in which to lull me to sleep. Why is this so wrong? We are only different, you and I.
Anyway, I would have to quiet myself and push back who I was. I would be fed their pills and spend long hours in small rooms filled with padding and white, and then spend long hours in small rooms filled with books, earth tones, and oak, listening to some small stuffy man tell me how screwed up I was and how much he cared about me. Gradually I always became tired. The calming, and somewhat exhilarating speech would go and I would lapse into a sick apathy. I didn't care about resisting anymore. I would begin to seem interested in the stuffy man and the oak. I would be able to take my own pills with everyone cooing around me like approving parents to their infants. I would work in your laundry or kitchen, feign interest in folding clothes and being given my own room, while all the while the loneliness kept me strapped to the walls in my head.
Then one day you would give me a small apartment somewhere, give me a job at some laundromat or hotel, and tell me that I was better. And I would agree and smile at you around the hole in my heart. You would give me a bottle of pills and wish me good luck and I would thank you and hate you, but I would go and try to do what you had told me. I would go to your work, take your pills, live in your house and exist in the void you gave me. Thanks, thanks a lot. But soon I would begin to feel disgusted by it all. I was fine, I had known that all along. I'd skip days at your job. Your house began to smell bad. The pills would run out. Everyone would start to look at me strangely through the backs of their head again, and I would pray for the blackness of tomorrow.
then, when i was most alone, my friends would come back. That's how you can tell who real friends are, you know. They are concerned about you and talk to you when you are alone in a dark, smelly room. They tell you about their day and ask about the wallpaper. When you tell them that it's not yours they laugh and tell you that they like the green lights anyway. They move the furniture around you and shield you from the windows and things that will kill you. They don't mind when you throw up at the pain in your head and the distorted plants that grow in the pots on the shelves. They stick with you and always come back when you most need them. When the razors are sharpest and your beard is gone down the drain--they talk to you then. They want to know your hurt. That's also when you would see me again. See me again and strap me again and the process would start again. But I have changed all of that.
The library I worked in this last space held the answer. You know that I replaced the books on the shelves, but you didn't know that my friends showed me the book. The book with the answer. Way back, behind all the shelves, behind all of the lights and old National Geographics, it waited for me. When my eyes couldn't see, the others guided my hands to its old, worn spine and pulled it from under piles of nonsense. I have no idea what else is in the books. For i turned right to what I needed, something to throw at those people who had never caught anything from me before. The book said that this curse would take time and that you would not realize what was happening until it was too late, until the eclipse was upon you. That's fine, I can wait. All I do is wait. It is better to wait for something than nothing, don't you think?
What? Oh yes, that's how it happened. But my finger is a small price to pay for revenge. It really isn't all that bad once you get used to it. A piece of your finger one day, skin off of your thigh the next. Just keep eating until they all go, the book said. My friends help me chose the part. Nothing life-threatening; not much use to enact a wonderful revenge when you will be too dead to watch it overtake someone.
It will be soon now! I have seen the signs. I have watched the ghastly contorted faces and bruised hands. Signs of madness. The smell of schizophrenia washes over me whenever I open my front door and let your outside air in. You are going fast indeed! Each day a piece of my flesh for a piece of your mind, a fair trade in my opinion.
I can tell that you don't believe me. But I have already eaten today, my left ear this time--gone the way of the right one, and I know that you will know only when you are gone, only when the hands of insanity have a firm grip on your throat. That thought pleases me. Like the cat and the bird playing a game in the garden. Stalking, pouncing, ripping, dying. The bird can escape if only it realizes. You could not even if you did.
Shake your head at me and tell me that you are worried about me over your great oak desk. Do you think that your pictures of words will save you from the madness I bring? Already your head is pushed into an hourglass figure and your hands are two claws when they grasp the slimy worm of a pipe between your raw, bleeding lips. You will not last much longer. Your straps and pills will not save you. I have eaten the tip of my tongue before. I have cauterized it like they have shown me. I can eat the rest of it tonight, and tomorrow, when you cannot talk, come begging to me for forgiveness, beg me to call off my terrible curse. You never know, I may consider it. Or I may laugh at you and watch my blood mingle with the anguish and terror on your face. That's fine, call for your people to return me to my padded void. None of that will help you.
ha! The smells grow stronger! Your orderly, poor man's head like a chunk of ill bled beef, and his friend with ears intruding on his eyes don't have much time. You can leave me locked in here tonight, trussed up like a farm animal. I have my friends to keep me company. I wonder where your friends will be when you are alone tonight?
Walk from my door and walk from my screams! I know where you will be tomorrow! You will be down at my knees, releasing me from my bonds with fingers not caring what their brains tell them and barely-conscious drool oozing from your eyes. You will all repent tomorrow for the sins you have committed against me. They always repent tomorrow. They always repent too late.
The story REPENT is Copyright 1998 by Valis Keogh.
The collection of works called Fish Eggs For The Soul is Copyright 1998 by Brian Rickman.
Copy edited by Sara Fawbush, editor of The Young Writer's Collection.