A Fearful Hope (stripper, barnyard animal mind, inanimate)

[freadkrunker]

Originally published in the October issue of “Ditch” magazine in 2005 (no longer in publication)
Transcribed from hardcopy by freadkrunker


A Fearful Hope
By Steven Harris (aka Tainted Sins)


1
The Female Construct


If dreams have a scent, this dream was Autumn. Cold, if that too can have a scent, and the crackle of fallen leaves and cigarettes. You exhale and the world becomes a gray wavering blur through the smoke; a mirage; a mirage of somewhere else: this dreamland within a dream; this land of dragons and fire. And, if too, dreams have a lifespan, this dream goes on forever.

The din of the bar.

The photograph, gray like the smoke. Gray like rain. In the photo, the background is washed away. The girl, too. The girl in the photograph scrubbed with soap and water—even behind the ears. Scrubbed so clean she almost isn’t there anymore. Only her blazing red hair is untouched by the storm stricken photo. And, if memories can have a scent, her hair smells like tulips.

On the bottom of the Polaroid, written in black magic marker, after your second or third drag, you read: SHE IS REAL.

For the rest of your life, this is always the beginning.


2
Awake


“She isn’t real, you know that don’t you? You only have a dream of the photograph, you don’t really have the photograph. You know the difference don’t you?”


3
Black Light


Buried somewhere in the local newspaper is the odd story of women—bankers, executives, teachers, fast food employees—all quitting their jobs to become strippers. This bizarre phenomenon was first stumbled upon when a reporter for the Northridge Daily News, David Hodge, while frequenting his favorite men’s club, The Desert Rose, noticed his ex-wife’s divorce attorney working the poll.

After further investigation, Mr. Hodge discovered that five of these women had attempted suicide. Three were successful: slashed wrists, pills, head in the oven. Two failed: slashed wrists, pills; and were now receiving care at the Brink Street Psychiatric Hospital.
In an interview with one of the new strippers, Candi Kain, A.K.A, Mrs. Margaret Samuels, homemaker, Candi said, “I don’t know. One morning I woke up and I just wanted more. It’s strange, you know. When I’m…dancing… When I’m…stripping… I miss my home, my husband, my kids… And when I’m home, I miss the techno beat, the high heels, the dollar bills… It’s like I don’t belong anywhere anymore, because wherever I’m at I always know I’m supposed to be somewhere else.”

The next day, Candi became the fourth successful suicide: gun shot to the head.
And, despite David Hodge’s arduous search for some sort of link between these women, he failed to notice what was right in front of him: that each girl, when they were dancing, when they stripped, all wore the same brand of lime green thong panties.


4
Eight Men With Metal Hearts


It is my belief that the eight doctors at Brink Street Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Devernon LeGrand, Dr. Andre Lelviere, Dr. Liao Chang-Shin, Dr. Anne French, Dr. Frank Gusenberg, Dr. Thomas Lars, Dr. Henry Lovell William Clark and Dr. Emmett Dalton, are not human. I don’t even believe they’re alive. Metal eyes all of them. Cold gray eyes, every one of them. What are the odds?

The worst part is, I don’t think they even know they exist.


5
Ghosts


You can’t take a person apart with a hacksaw. You cut long enough and you have meat and bone and blood. Who that person was, what they were, is lost in the dissection. Not just the mind or the soul, but the external. For someone else, you are the way you walk, what you say, how you say it, how close you are when you say it and if your breath smells like mints or chili dogs. You are the thrusting of sex, you are the way your eyes move over her body. In the external, a human being is motion and emotion. Summed up, to the rest of the world, you are what they feel.

A true dissection then, would leave behind the walk. It would leave the laugh. Not just the fingers, but the touch. Not just the cock but the penetration. Imagine a lab of test tubes full of dancing, of crying, of walking and talking and flirting and fucking and sucking and hating and loving. Imagine a test tube filled with the way you nodded your head to a song on the radio. Imagine a lab full of you.

Imagine a lab full of someone else.

All these test tubes.

A human being turned into ingredients.

Imagine the way she kissed you poured into a candy bar? How many would you eat before the chocolate made you sick? How many would you buy?

Imagine if the Civil War could be undone.

Imagine if we started selling people again.

Now stop imagining.


6
Note


If you are reading this I am already dead. How did you think I could bear it? Not just infidelity, but infidelity right in front of me. Every morning and every night.

“Put on the lipstick,” you say. “Put on that red, red lipstick!”

And I do and you pretend to kiss me, but you’re really kissing her. I can feel you on her lips. I can feel your tongue in what’s supposed to be my mouth. That fucking red, red lipstick. You won’t kiss me without it. You won’t kiss me. So I throw it out and you buy some more. You put it on me while I sleep. As if I wouldn’t know. As if I wouldn’t feel it when you wake me up to screw her.

Oh, you’ve never stepped out.

Why bother?

She’s right here.

Right where I used to be.

I’m wearing the lipstick now. And when I shoot myself in the face with this shotgun, you can kiss all the brains and blood all over the wall.

Goodbye Davie.

Goodbye from both of us.


7
In Mourning


Davie Jones left his home
All skin and bones,
Narrow eyes, tall and lean
The driver slammed the door to the black limousine.

“Stop driver!” he said. “The light is red!”
And the driver stopped and shook his head.

The graveyard was grass
All gray and green

Davie, standing over the casket,
Flipped through a Victoria’s Secret magazine.
He didn’t mind the glares,
He ignored the prayers.
The songs were sung,
Pretty and brief,
A gift to the mourners to aid in their grief.

There wasn’t a sound as the music died down,
And Davie watched his wife’s casket lowered into the ground.

He hadn’t kissed her,
Not brain,
Nor blood stained wall.

Instead he inflated a woman shaped doll,
And picked the stick meant for lips
From the pocket flattened against his wife’s wide hips.

And around the plastic mouth he drew,
And his girl came back all shiny and new.
And at the funeral Davie tapped his foot
And checked the watch on his wrist,
For standing there waiting,
He surely did miss
The perfect circle
Of those red, red lips.


8
Hangover


“Where am I?”

“You tried to kill yourself, Mr. Heller. We’re here to help you.”

“I don’t like this room. It’s all white.”

“White is peaceful.”

“Why am I tied down?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was in a bar.”

“No. That’s not correct.”

“I was holding a photograph.”

“No. You weren’t. You’ve never held a photograph.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m a doctor.”


9
Pressure


Dahl Heller stared up at the great gray moon that consumed the sky: the white ceiling, pale from the light from the outside hallway. It was never really dark nor ever really light here. The middle, he had been told, is peaceful. Shadows are peaceful. Dahl, tied to his bed, looking up and thinking of the girl in the photograph.

His roommate, a man with a great brown beard, was not tied down.

Dahl craned his neck and watched the nurse roll a trolley of machinery by. Once behind the white curtain that separated the two beds, she was only an outline; a black and white cartoon of a person.

“Time for your vitals, Mr. Heller.”

“I’m Mr. Heller,” Dahl said.

“Give me your arm Mr. Heller.”

“I’m Mr. Heller.”

“Mr. Heller, am I going to have to call security again to hold you down?”

“I’m—“

Dahl saw one outline lunge at another.

He heard the nurse’s cry choked to a gurgle.

The cartoon rubber tube of the blood pressure machine pulled tight around her neck.

Dahl watched.

The nurse clawed at the thin white curtain with her long polished gray nails, tearing strips of it away.

Through those strips Dahl could see her watery blue eyes turn to empty glass.

One cartoon character was laid gently down on the floor.

The other cartoon character got back in bed.


10
Epilogue


Sometime around noon, Dahl sat in the Dayroom watching an old black and white Mickey Mouse cartoon. A middle cartoon, the doctors called it. Mickey was on a train. A steam engine piping out musical notes with each puff of smoke. Mickey danced a cheerful dance with a cheerful smile while hitting a duck over and over on the head with a hammer.

Then the dance turned terrible—a dry kind of terrible.

And the huge wooden mallet in Mickey’s hands turned terrible too.

And the duck screamed…

And screamed…

And screamed…

And blood and white feathers sprayed out of the television set.


11
Godliness


Because of the number of patients currently in residence at Brink Street there were no available offices. Instead, Dahl’s therapy took place in the Dayroom.

He sat on the gray couch.

Dr. Lelviere sat across from him on a white lawn chair. He’d brought in two pink plastic flamingos and set them down next to him.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “pink is just watered down red. Pink is still the middle.”

The janitor cleaned the blood and feathers on the white tiled floor with a mop and bucket.

“Should we do this here?” Dahl said.

“Do what?”

“Therapy.”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

Dahl gestured to the janitor.

“Privacy.”

“All of our cleaning staff have their tongues cut out.”

“Couldn’t he just write it down?”

“They have their fingers cut off as well.”

Dahl looked again. The janitor pushed the mop back and forth with two fingerless palms.

“How are you feeling today Mr. Heller?”

“I have to find the photograph.”

“There is no photograph.”

“I have to find the girl.”

“There is no girl.”

“This is supposed to be a love story, how can there be no girl?”

“This is a middle story. Mild affection is the best you can hope for.”

“What happened to the nurse? Will there be a funeral?”

“In the middle, there is no death Mr. Heller—death just gets everyone worked up. Just pretend she never was here. That’s what I do. I don’t even remember her name anymore and I don’t feel good or bad because of it. That’s why I’m healthy.”

“I think her name was Julia.”

“Who’s Julia?”


12
Purgatory


How did I try to kill myself? There are no scars on my wrists, no gunshot wounds, no stomachache from pills no headache from gas. When I ask they say: We don’t believe in death here. It’s not healthy. So how could you have tried to do something that doesn’t exist?


13
Again


“Why am I here?”

“You tried to kill yourself.”

“How?”

“We don’t believe in those kinds of things. So how could I possibly answer that?”


14
Grass


“There was a girl.”

“Let’s not talk about that again.”

“She was a stripper.”

“You need a rest.

“She had red hair.”

“Take these pills.”

“She wore lime green panties.”

“Swallow the pills.”

“And had red, red lips.”

“The pills.”

“What do they do?”

“How do you feel about public nudity?”
“I’m against it.”

“There are three pills.”

“Oh?”

“The first pill is white and will make you feel more comfortable. We’ll have you strip after that.

“The other pill is white and makes the whole world look like a great endless farm, with fields of gray grass meeting the horizon of a towering gray sky and a gray barn surrounded by a gray gray fence.

“The other pill is white and will make you think you’re a cow. You’ll lounge around on all fours in the Dayroom with no thoughts interrupting your enjoyment of that somewhat pretty landscape.”
“Sounds horrible.”

“Like I said, you need a rest.”


15
Side Effects


You start screaming and it sounds like: Mooooooooooooooooo!


16
Equation


Red Cap Brand Hair Dye #64 + Reynard Brand Black Eyeliner + Artemis Brand Black Leather Thigh High Boots + Fiddler’s Green Mouthwash + Lotos Brand Pink Push-Up Bra + Hephaetus Brand Red Ruby and Silver Necklace + Black Dog Red, Red Lipstick + Rock Candy Mountain Brand Green Thong Panties + Rock Candy Mountain Brand Black Silk Stockings + Augurs Brand Green Tinted Contact Lenses + Corn Dollies Brand Almond Chocolate Bar + Dorian Brand Wrinkle Cream + Dragon’s Teeth Tampons + Sa Brand Cold and Cough PM + Bunnyips Brand Red Nail Polish + Bannik Brand Bath Beads + Eos Brand Ladies’ Perfume + Floating Islands Herbal All Natural Antidepressant = Sylvia.



17
Baking a Girl


The dream had always been an echo of its former self. It was never a rerun because it was always the beginning. It was new in the way only dreams can make repetition new. This time, for the first time, the dream had variation. No more an echo, but a new voice: on the back of the photograph, which Dahl, as far as he knew, had never seen, written by his own hand in black magic marker was the equation. And, if a dream can have a voice, this dream said, “Sylvia.”


18
Inanimate Thoughts


As a bottle of red hair dye, though my thoughts are limited due to the separation of the whole of myself, it is my belief that my application to a woman’s scalp takes over not only the hair, but a bit of the mind too. Like dandelions taking over not only a once green and perfect lawn, but the soil beneath that the roots cling to.


19
Farm


“I need a Corn Dollies Brand Almond Chocolate Bar.”

“We have horse pills.”

“I need Fiddler’s Green Mouthwash.”

“We have pig pills.”

“I need Floating Islands Herbal All Natural Antidepressant.”

“We have chicken pills.”

“I need Dorian Brand Wrinkle Cream.”

“We have sheep pills.”

“I need Black Dog Red, Red Lipstick. Oh, I really do need that!”

“Barnyard animals are happy. You want to be happy don’t you?”


20
Colors


Speaking as a lime green thong I must say that having the closest thing you have to a face wedged up a woman’s butt crack is not as pleasant as most men might think. Especially when the woman dances. When she starts to sweat. I never knew how hard it was to be my underwear. I see other me’s shoved up women’s asses, their waistbands clutching tight to handfuls of dollar bills. Those same waistbands bent in a downward arc like a frown. I wonder if I’m frowning too.


21
An Aside


While the narrator, or rather, partial narrator of this humble offering of prose claims that the story began with the dream of the photograph, as Editor I feel it is my duty to point out his misstep. As you will soon conclude for yourself, dear reader, the dream was merely prologue. The true beginning of this dark tale of ours is no memory or figment of the imagination, but rather the queer incident of the burst of red blood and red stained white feathers from the black and white TV. This first breach, if it were words rather than occurrence, would say in bold lettering: Reality can be kept at bay only for so long.


22
Blank


I do not know I am writing this. I do not know what paper or pen is. Awareness was never my blessing nor my curse. I do not see or know or hear. I cannot read these words as I write them because I do not know I am writing them and I do not know what words are and I do not know what writing is. I am not aware. I am only action. I am a doctor. I help people that I don’t know exist.
I am not an extreme as you may think.

I am the true middle.

I will never know your sorrow or your hurt.

I will never know your joy or your bliss.

Action is the middle. Reaction is the edge. Inaction is death.

Death is not the middle. Death is an extreme, and therefore bad. If we were all dead, who would move from room to room? Who would carry things? Who would say, “How do you do?” and “Lovely weather isn’t it?”

Come then. Be my fat sow.

Be my mooing cow.

Ignorance is near the middle.

And beyond ignorance is me.

I will find a way to bring you here.

I promise you.

I will find a way to fix you.

I will find a way to make you blank.


23
The Silence of The Night Sky


Do you believe God can be born in the body of a deaf man?

They are only allowed to write with crayons. And the only crayons they are allowed to use are brown and black and gray. Dahl looks down at the brown sentence then looks over at the new patient who’d passed him the paper: a tall and skinny man; a frail man; a man who’s milky brown eyes are larger and wider than the rest of him.

In gray Dahl writes: I suppose so.

The deaf man reads this then scribbles frantically.

He passes the paper back.

I am the True Man and the True Woman. From my womb and my sperm the universe was born. I want OPERATION STAR PEACE!!

Dahl writes: What is OPERATION STAR PEACE?

Man has ruined the world. Pollution and war. In 2000 years I must fight Nini, a girl I knew as a boy. In 2000 years she will be a woman and she will be my enemy and I must fight her. Then there will be OPERATION STAR PEACE and the world will have joy again.

In the evening there came a second note, the letters still brown.

I want OPERATION OBLIVION.

What is OPERATION OBLIVION?

There is too much bad talk. The nurses and the doctors are all bad talk. I am True Man and True Woman. I am the devil god. I can unmake the world and be alone and at peace in the darkness.

What about OPERATION STAR PEACE?

FUCK OPERATION STAR PEACE!!!

The following afternoon, in the Dayroom, Dahl saw the deaf man again. He was naked and on all fours and squealing happily.

Joy would never be returned to mankind.

Nor the great peaceful darkness.

Man’s God would forever be only the oinking of a pig.


24
The Second (or Third) Beginning



It was lying next to him when he woke up: a cardboard box the size of a typewriter. Written on the box in black magic marker it said, “SHE IS REAL.”

Dahl tore off the silver duct tape.

He opened the box.

Inside, what, in comparison looked like a great cavernous space, was a single tube of red, red lipstick.


25
Notes


When Dahl wasn’t a pig or a sheep or a horse, sometimes he sat in the music room. The music room was a white room with a few wooden stools, an out of tune guitar and an out of tune piano. The man who was always here had unkempt hair and an unkempt beard. He wore a gray wool sweater and smelled of cigarettes though there was no smoking allowed in the hospital. Once his hair had been blond, but the doctors had the nurses dye his hair and his beard brown.

Sometimes he played the guitar.

And sometimes he played the piano.

On both, he played horribly.

He only played Led Zeppelin songs, and what words he remembered he yelled out tunelessly, and what words he didn’t remember he yelled out anyway.

Every morning we, all of us at Brink Street, sat around a table and, each in turn, told one of the nurses our goal for the day which she wrote in brown letters on a white marker board. Later, a doctor would read the list, and, if one of the goals was too ambitious or lacked all ambition, that patient spent the day as a cow or a chicken.

This man.

The once blond man from the music room, every day he had the same goal: “To make the people here happy with my music,” he said.

Although his goal was lofty in nature, because he played so poorly, he never joined any of us on the farm they called the Dayroom.

And on days when Dahl stumbled on goals that were both mediocre and believable enough to escape the farm himself, he would sit on one of the wooden stools and grin at the folly of the nurses and the doctors. For in those flat notes and that stale bellowing voice that sometimes only yelled, “Something something something!” Dahl began to see a deeply hidden beauty. The something something something that the cold calculations of Dr. LeGrand and Dr. Lelviere would never add up.

This was the singing, as best he could, of an angel.

Something that the measure of art would never find, but that the nature of art stated very clearly: these are notes.


26
Eos Brand Ladies’ Perfume



If I am a scent, then when I am released I am born. The air fills me as if I were s pair of lungs. I start to drift and I am more air than myself and the world is so large around me. But the world is not for me anymore. I am not the perception of the world, I am part of the world. What part of me clings to and drifts from a woman’s neck, from the inner part of her thighs: I am the perfume I used to wear and sweat and the shampoo I used and the hand cream and the sweat of him and my sex and his sex. I am a mixture of confusion. I am real and pleasant on the first date, and I am gone and a painful memory on the last. My life is brief, but perhaps the thoughts of others will be my afterlife and I may continue my musings on what I am now that the rest of me is gone.


27
The Fourth Package


After this morning’s declaring of one’s goal for the day, Dahl walked the white hallways, hoping his stated intention of spending the day drawing smiley faces, but not too wide of smiles, with a gray crayon would keep him off the farm.

Reaching his room, Dahl found Dr. Henry Lovell William Clark waiting for him there holding a brown cardboard box. Written on the side of the box in black magic marker it said: SHE IS REAL.

“Do you mind telling me what this is, Mr. Heller?” Dr. Clark said.

Dahl peered in the box. Inside was a single Dollies Brand Almond Chocolate Bar.

“It is reality,” he said.

Dr. Clark said, “There is no reality here. Once you accept that, you’ll be healthy.”

“Then it is a fearful hope.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is the hope that, if you are right in saying there is no reality here, this chocolate bar proves that reality is breaking through. And it will be here soon.”

“Ah, you see, you make my point. You call your hope fearful. Why would you want to be so afraid?”

“Reality carries with it a terrible pain,” Dahl said. “It can slash you. It can hurt. It can scream at you. It can tear the whole world down if it so chooses. But in such power there always lies the possibility of elevation, hurt is the price we pay for such a thing, but it is a fair price.”

Dr. Clark pulled some white pills from his pocket.

“You’re going to have to spend the day as a horse.”

Dahl reached for the pills and, at the last moment, kicked Dr. Clark in the knee with the savagery of a dog let loose and gone rabid.

The doctor fell with a cry, though the cry was poorly acted.

Dahl bent over and reached into the cardboard box, grabbing the chocolate bar. He went to his bed and reached into the tear on the underside of his pillow. From that he pulled Red Cap Brand Hair Dye #64, Eos Brand Ladies’ Perfume and Black Dog Red, Red Lipstick. Carrying all four products, Dahl returned to Dr. Clark who was still trying to get back to his feet.
Dahl kneeled and looked into the calculated pain of Dr. Clark’s gray eyes..
“This is real!” Dahl said, spraying the doctor with perfume.

“No!”

“This is real!” Dahl said, forcing a piece of the chocolate bar down Clark’s throat.

“No!”

“This is real!” Dahl said, smearing the doctor’s mouth with red, red lipstick.

“No!”

“And this is real!” Dahl said plastering Clark’s head with the red dye.”

“No! No! No!”

Things that are purely physical can never have awareness. They can act, they can do, they can do as they’re told, but they will never know it. But in the light of these Sylvia brand products, there came a momentous spark of something other than the physical.
First it was the perfume. And, like the outlines of a children’s coloring book, that outline was filled in by a thousand crayons of every shade. The external consequence was that, for the first time, the world could see Dr. Clark. And, as is true with everything seen, the world may choose to let itself in.

The chocolate bar, it became the blood. Real and messy and terrifying and monstrous in a way that can both wield power and succumb to attack. This is what we call the soul, if there is such a thing. Or, better put, this is what we call the container of the soul. For, when we die and that spark leaves us, the blood stops flowing and becomes a caked unmoving blackness no longer fit for the circulation of life.

The lipstick became speech. The avatar of the mind. No more preprogrammed words, no more scripts to read from. But words. Real words. Wild and untamed like the mind they came from.
And that mind came with the red hair dye and its dandelion roots. A newly born self awareness. An awareness of the world that had never before existed.
And, although this was a borrowed consciousness, Dr. Henry Lovell William Clark started to scream.


28
Mortal Coil


That afternoon Dr. Anne French found Dr. Clark hanging by a noose in his office. This troubled the other doctors. Suicide, in fact death of any kind was strictly forbidden. Breaking this rule was impossible, yet Dr. Clark had discovered someway to do it.

To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes as written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, when one is faced with a mystery, eliminate all impossibilities, and what you have left will be your answer.
Following this advice the doctors concluded that since it was impossible for Clark to kill himself, one of the patients must have murdered him and staged the suicide in order to avoid spending the day as a donkey or a sheep.
Once this solution became fact, the doctors went back to following the rules and going about their day.

In therapy, the musician, the blond haired man with brown hair and a brown beard asked Dr. French where Dr. Clark was.

“Who?” Anne said.

“Dr. Clark,” the bearded man said. “He’s who I usually talk to.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Clark. Where is he?”

“I’m afraid Dr. Clark doesn’t exist.”

“What?”

“He doesn’t exist.”

“You’re lying!”

“Calm down.”

“You’re lying! Everyone here lies to me!”

“Stop shouting.”

“You’re lying! And I want to see Dr. Clark right now!”

The man with the brown beard spent the rest of the day as a horse in the Dayroom.

And, in the Dayroom, though none of the farm animals could understand it, in color, on the black and white TV, there was Dr. Clark’s face. And he had eyes. Not gray. Not those gray non eyes.

His eyes were blue.

And from the TV he said, “I am real.”


29
Pigs


Dahl spent many days as a pig during his months at Brink Street. One day, though, on that gray farm, a woman by the name of China Richards was a pig as well. She was an overweight woman with stretch marks and large sagging breasts. Her hair was thin and brittle from too many bad dye jobs and perms.

But, at the time, Dahl didn’t give it much thought.

He crawled over and mounted China from behind as casually as, on another day, he might say hello to her. He moved and moved until he felt satisfied then the two went their separate ways.

Some time later Dahl was told that China was pregnant and that he was the father. It was also explained to him that since both he and China had had so much Citralithan (the technical name for the pig drug) in their system at the time of conception, the child would more than likely have a severe learning disability and that he may never rise above the intelligence both parents possessed during their placid lovemaking.

“You are both very blessed,” one of the nurses said.

Later that day China approached Dahl in the cafeteria. Dahl was eating tomato soup that had been processed to look white as a bowl of milk. China told him that when they both got out they could get married. She also told him that upon release and after the baby came, she was going to go to the gym everyday and lose fifty pounds. Then, she said, they could move to New York and she’d be a model like Christie Brinkley and make ten million dollars a year.

“Christie Brinkley makes ten million dollars a year. Isn’t that neat?” China said.

“I don’t think she makes that much anymore,” Dahl said.

“Ten million dollars, that’s a lot huh?”

The thing about China Richards was everyday she picked a new subject, as if drawing it from a hat, and, once she had said subject, she never detoured from it. Dahl didn’t know the name for her condition, but he saw the results. China spoke like a machine gun, and both patients and staff alike moved quickly by or, if possible, took a longer route to avoid her completely. More often than not, though, China would spot and follow them. She’d corner them and barrage them with the same subject over and over again as if speaking for the first time every time, never wavering or influenced by external reactions. Dahl didn’t know if China simply forgot what she’d said a moment earlier or if she was trapped in some maddening skipping record of a brain. Perhaps it was both.

“We’re going to get married and I’m going to make ten million dollars a year. Neat, huh?”

“I’m not going to marry you.”

“I’m going to lose fifty pounds and make ten million dollars a year. That’s neat, huh? We’re going to get married and make ten million dollars a year. That’s neat, huh?”

“Even if you were skinny, I don’t think you could be a model.”

“Christie Brinkley makes ten million dollars a year.”

“Ok.”

“We’re going to get married.”

“No.”

“We’re going to move to New York and make ten million dollars a year. Christy Brinkley makes ten million dollars a year. Neat, huh?”

“I think you should have an abortion.”

“I’m going to lose fifty pounds and make ten million dollars a year as a model. Just like Christly Brinkley.”

A nurse walked in and stopped dead in her tracks.

Too late. Dahl shined his verbal spotlight on her.

“Hello,” he said.

China turned.

“I’m going to marry Dahl and lose fifty pounds and make ten million dollars a year just like Christie Brinkley.”

“That’s nice,” The nurse said, walking out the same way she’d come in.

China got up and followed her.

Dahl sipped the hot white tomato soup from his spoon, listening to the voice fading down the hallway.

“…marry…”

“…fifty pounds…”

“…ten million dollars…”

“…Christie Brinkley…”



30
Shower


Aside from the lackluster pig incident, Dahl had had no sexual stimulation since he’d arrived at Brink Street five months ago. On no particular morning, in a shower that had no shower curtain, in a bathroom that had no lock on the door, Dahl jerked off.

In the middle of the act, without knocking, a nurse entered rolling the blood pressure machine behind her on a little metal trolley.

All Dahl could do was stand there naked with the hot water beating down on him, doing his best to look apologetic.

The nurse eyed his hard-on for a good long while, then looked up at him.

“Finish up,” she said.

“What?”

“If you’re too aroused when I take your vitals, you’ll gum up the whole works. So finish up.”

Dahl looked at the open door.

“A little privacy maybe?”

“Not a chance,” the nurse said. “I have to make sure you really do it.”

“But—“

“I’m not leaving until I see you come.”

So he did what was asked. He masturbated.

The old woman watched, arms folded, with the indifferent boredom only nurses possess.

Dahl came. The white muck swirled in the water and disappeared.

A few minutes later, he sat on the toilet, nude and wet, and the nurse took his temperature and his blood pressure. That done, the nurse wheeled her trolley out the door, stopping only to turn her head back and say, “You’ll spend the rest of the as a donkey for this.”


31
Gymnastics


This girl. This woman child stood in front of him. She wore a junior high school gymnastics team uniform that, at twenty-two, she’d long grown out of. She was Asian and very short and her eyes lacked any kind of focus.

“I’m going home today,” she said.

She said this everyday.

“My Daddy loves me. He’s taking me home and there will be a big party.”

“That’s good,” Dahl said.

“Do you like The Little Mermaid?”

“Not really.”

“Ohhh…” she moaned.

Then she brightened again.

“I like it because it has songs!” she said. “I’m going to be a singer!” This too she said everyday. And then, like everyday, she sang. “Oh say can you see? Oh say can you see? Oh say can you see? Oh say can you see? Oh say can you see?”

One of the nurses took her away after that.

At the cafeteria table, one of the patients said, “She used to be normal. I heard her dad talking. She was going to college. She was a straight ‘A’ student. And then one day, for no reason at all, she woke up and she was like she is now. And now she’s one of us. Just another human ruin. I guess that kind of thing happens sometimes…”


32
Blood


At first, being a tampon is dark and warm and snug. You’ll never feel so safe. Then the blood comes. It soaks into you. The blood of what might have been an entire life. And then you see the future. Tampons see the future. And then, like that future that will never come, you’re thrown in the trash.


33
Synchronicity


No one knows how he did it, but somehow the man tracked down Dahl’s semen that had swirled down the drain and the tampon that was Sylvia that was now so much garbage.

“Since the blood soaked into the tampon,” the man said as he worked, “like a transfusion, the blood becomes hers.”

And, in an alley, in a city so artificially lit it blinded out the stars, the man dumped the semen into an empty can of baked beans. He threw in the tampon and stirred with a gray stick, the tip of which soon stained red. And so began a sad tale in the middle of a sad tale.


34
To Mix a Baby in a Can


To mix a baby in a can
First you have to not give a damn,
For that metal womb is rusty and cold,
No warmth, no breath nor hand to hold.

To mix a baby in a can
First you add the semen of man
Then if will and cruelty you still possess,
You add the egg from our story’s princess.

To mix a baby in a can
You leave it there and let it rot,
First comes the arms and the legs,
Then comes the head and finally the thought.

The birth pains are hollow, made of tin,
This horrible echo, this horrible din.
The baby comes forth, but human it is not.
All tin cans it is made of, stringed together by a godly knot.

The face of this baby, its head the largest of the cans,
Two holes for the eyes, a dent for the nose,
Cans all the way to two cans for feet,
And two cans with no toes.

To mix a baby in a can,
God, all seeing, sees the damnation of man.
A beggar’s dream, he teaches it to tap,
And on its head he places a shiny red cap.

For it is Christmas, and Christmas must mean,
A horrible end for this horrible scene.
On the sidewalk, in the snow
The beggar plays his fiddle
And the metal boy starts to go.

The music plays, and the boy starts to tap,
The crowd watches and the crowd starts to clap.
More Christmas cheer for the people,
And from the people coins are thrown.
But with their purses open, if only they had known.

To mix a baby in a can
Is a plot never meant for man.
So the beggar leaves, but the boy stays here.
Out in the snow,
The rust starts to grow.

The metal boy looks to the sky,
He tells God he doesn’t want to die,
And the people didn’t want to know
And the next day they kick empty tin cans
From the sidewalk below.


35
This Sleep of Death


Dahl’s feet and hands are tied to a metal chair. The ropes are old and coarse. Gray wires burst out like confetti from his forehead, all hooked to gray machines and gray monitors.

“What is this?”

“This is something new or something old, depending which way you look at it,” Dr. Anne French says, her voice large and hollow in the large white room.

It’s cold. It’s freezing.

“It’s cold,” Dahl says.

“This will help you get rid of that nasty dream you keep having.”

“The photograph?”

“The photograph.”

“But I don’t think it’s just a dream. I think it’s a memory. I have these packages…”

“Even worse! Why would you ever want to remember any place other than here?”

She flips a gray switch.

And it works.


8
Hangover


“Where am I?”

“You tried to kill yourself, Mr. Heller. We’re here to help you.”

“I don’t like this room. It’s all white.”

“White is peaceful.”

“Why am I tied down?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”


35
This Sleep of Death


It almost works.


8
Hangover


“I was in a bar.”

“No. That’s not correct.”

“I was holding a photograph.”

“No. You weren’t. You’ve never held a photograph.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m a doctor.”


36
Face of Melting Snow


He is in a bar. More vivid than a dream. More real than a memory. A jazz band plays on stage. There are people and tables and smoke and waitresses. For the first time in over a year, Dahl is outside the hospital. Proof that once the world was more than white walls. Hope that somewhere it still is.

Dahl looks down at the photograph.

“Sylvia,” he says.

Her face is a December day.

Her green eyes burn and her hair is fire.

And so she melts.

This is a photograph of an icicle hanging on the edge of a roof, dripping.

And then the photo melts too much. And it starts to bleed.

“No!” he says.

Her skin, her lips trickle down; color drips to the floor.

“No!”

Colored water douses the flame of her eyes, leaving only ash.

“The packages!” he says.

Then, like the dream, only the red hair remains.

“The red hair,” he says.

The red hair burns itself out.

The Polaroid is black.

And there is nothing written on it.

Not anymore.

37
Swing


A finger taps him on the shoulder. He turns.

“You’re wearing my perfume,” she says.

Whatever’s happened before. How long it’s been. How long it was. If he’s dead or alive. What there was before Brink Street, he doesn’t know. But, across the infinite distance of lost memories, Sylvia stands there.

“What?” he says.

“You’re wearing my perfume.”

“I like the scent.”

“Thank you.”

“Do I love you?”

“Of course you do.”

She looks at the band.

The jazz is wild.

“I like this music,” she says, “It’s like a cartoon jungle.”

“Do you want to dance?” he says.

“You ask me like it’s the first time.”

He takes her hand. “Maybe it is.”

They hit the dance floor and they flip and they swing and they laugh.
Blood pumps.

Hearts beat.

Sweat and eyes and life.

He wants to tell her every beautiful thing she is, but all the words are ragged from overuse by magazines and baby powder. He can’t call her sweet without calling her an ice cream cone too. He can’t call her sexy without calling her a beer commercial. And he can’t call her fast and sleek without calling her the new Volkswagen.

He can’t call her any of these things, so Dahl makes up new words to give to her. “You are vuloo,” he says. “You are roolume. You are tathium. You are desness. You are yeen.” And he says them. He says these nonsense words. And Sylvia fills them up. Her curves and her soft hands define them.

It’s during one of the slow dances that he hears a far off voice.

“It’s time to wake up Mr. Heller.”

“I’ll stay,” he says to Sylvia.

“You have to go,” she says. Then she leans forward and whispers in his ear, “I am real. I am vuloo.”


38
Deception


“There now,” Dr. Anne French says. “Aren’t things better without that pesky memory?”

“What memory?” Dahl says.


8
Hangover


“Where am I?”

“You tried to kill yourself, Mr. Heller. We’re here to help you.”

“I don’t like this room. It’s all white.”

“White is peaceful.”

“Why am I tied down?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“A white room.”


39
One Need in The Night


He lays them out at the foot of his bed all in a row: Red Cap Brand Hair Dye #64, Reynard Brand Black Eyeliner, Artemis Brand Black Leather Thigh High Boots, Fiddler’s Green Mouthwash, Lotos Brand Pink Push-Up Bra, Hephaetus Brand Red Ruby and Silver Necklace, Black Dog Red, Red Lipstick, Rock Candy Mountain Brand Green Thong Panties, Rock Candy Mountain Brand Black Silk Stockings, Augurs Brand Green Tinted Contact Lenses, Corn Dollies Brand Almond Chocolate Bar, Dorian Brand Wrinkle Cream, Dragon’s Teeth Tampons, Sa Brand Cold and Cough PM, Bunnyips Brand Red Nail Polish, Bannik Brand Bath Beads, Eos Brand Ladies’ Perfume and, from the last package, Floating Islands Herbal All Natural Antidepressant.

Dahl watches as he sets the last ingredient in place.

They stay on the floor.

He waits.

Perhaps he’d gotten the mathematics wrong.

He watches for over an hour until, finally, he resigns himself to his bed. Sleepless and confused, Dahl stares up at the pale moon of his ceiling.

“Is this madness?” he asks. “This?”

2
Awake


“She isn’t real, you know that don’t you? You only have a dream of the photograph, you don’t really have the photograph. You know the difference don’t you?”


39
One Need in The Night


Dahl sat up in bed. He looked down past his feet to the floor below. “The difference,” he said, “is vuloo.”

The boots, the stockings, did not so much inflate as they were slipped on by legs and feet he could not see.

“The difference is roolume,” he said.

The tampon, magical in nature, floated up shedding bits of silver and golden sparks before forming, between those invisible legs, a plastic and cotton vagina. The green thong was pulled up and the pink bra was clasped in the back, supporting breasts that weren’t there.

“The difference is tathium, desness and yeen,” he said.

The ingredients rose and swirled and made a light. And in that light Dahl saw that the ceiling was not a great pale moon. It was just a ceiling. But the same radiance that had robbed Dahl of the moon offered him new dreams. Swirling dreams. Violent girl dreams.
Some of the products flamed or faded into those invisible things that make us who we our. Others did not fade. The bath beads became her spine. The nail polish in place of real nails. The contacts in place of eyes, all fire and sight. Her hair, not hair at all, but hanging in strands of liquid color, receding and crashing forth like waves of a red sea.

And those red, red lips that said, in this place devoid of reality, “I am real.”

She was not wholly there—or so it seemed she was not.

She was just the products floating in places where she was supposed to be. But when Dahl stood. When he grabbed her. He could feel her hot flesh that was not there. He could hear the beating of her heart that was not there either.

And he kissed her lips that were far more than mere lipstick.

While they held each other. While they moaned, Dahl noticed two large paper sacks. One to the left of her feet, the other to the right.

“Look,” she said with her floating lips.

Dahl looked.

In the bag on the left there was the gleam of silver and the coarseness of gunpowder. Then Dahl looked in the bag to the right, and he smiled.


40
Just You and Me and The Rain


In the Dayroom there were pig people and sheep people and chicken people and horse people and cow people and donkey people all making animal sounds with human voices.

Dahl walked up to the naked mewing Asian girl, who, at any other time, would be wearing the junior high school gymnastics uniform that no longer fit.

“In heaven,” he said, “you will be a great singer.”

Dahl pulled the girl’s head back by the hair, then ran a long silver kitchen knife across her throat.

Blood sprayed.

The girl mewed and the mewing became a gurgle and the girl coughed up blood all over the tiled floor. You could hear her drowning in it. Then those animal screams ceased and the girl laid down on the floor and died.

“In heaven,” Sylvia said to Dahl’s roommate, “You will find love.”

Then she slit his throat. The blood that sprayed on her gave her form. It turned what was once invisible red.

It went on like this. Each of them working from the opposite ends of the room towards each other. Butchering the animals with promises of heaven, hearing their animal screams.

When Sylvia came upon the man who was deaf. The man oinking, though he could not hear the oinking, Sylvia knelt down and, with her bloody hands, she signed, “In heaven, you will be God.”

Then she cut his throat.

This was a sad business.

And probably not a just business.

Making promises in blood left for angels to keep.

After his tenth or his fifteenth murder, Dahl came upon China Richards. By now he was covered from head to toe in blood. Sylvia was covered head to toe in blood. Dahl could see her across the room. He could see her every red curve.

“In heaven,” Dahl said, “you will be Christie Brinkley.”

He cut her throat.

Then, while she was still drowning in blood, he dragged the knife across her swollen belly and the whole of her insides slopped to the floor. The fetus slopped to the floor. But it was not a human fetus. It was a pig. White and pickled and dead long ago. Dahl pressed his foot down on it and white pus and yellow sewage oozed from it.

When their work was done, as if on cue, Dr. Andre Lelviere appeared in the doorway.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Sylvia was fast.

She was across the room. She slammed the doctor in his white lab coat against the white wall, no longer holding a knife, but a screwdriver.

“You can only hold reality at bay for so long, Dr. Lelviere,” Sylvia said with all the rage of the burning center of the world. “This is what happens on a farm. You wanted a farm. You’ve got your farm.”

“Stupid girl,” the doctor spat. “Inaction is a sin. But you still serve my cause. Death is peace.”

“No,” Sylvia said, “Death is red.”

And she jammed the screwdriver into his gut.

“And so is life.”

Dr. Lelviere’s screams grew more real and more horrible as Sylvia drew a red, red “X” across his face with her lipstick.

“No!” he screamed. “I can’t be red! I can’t be red! I can’t be red!”

His legs gave out on him and he fell.

Sylvia pulled a large paintbrush from the paper bag and dragged the doctor by the hair into the hall, with him, all the while, still screaming, “Not red! Not red! Not me!”

Dahl grabbed a paintbrush and followed.

He saw the nurse responding to the commotion and stabbed her three times in the stomach and twice in the chest. She crumpled to the ground coughing up fits of blood. Dahl didn’t know if she was aware. He didn’t know if she knew what was happening to her, and, honestly, he didn’t care.

Behind Sylvia, Dahl dragged the nurse.

Sylvia, settled now, cut Dr. Lelviere wound wider, opening him up. Blood gushed from his nose in fits. Then Sylvia dipped the brush into her human palette and began painting the white walls as casually as one might paint a fence.

“No!” Dr. Lelviere gasped. “Not my beautifully mediocre featureless dim numb nothing wall! Not from me! Not from me!”

“From you,” Sylvia said, “You’re all red. It’s you that’s all over this wall.”

“No!”

Dahl worked on the nurse in a similar fashion, and, when the human paint ran dry, they’d find a different source. They’d cut open a thigh or an arm and keep painting. And when there was no more paint, or they decided the blood of one person or another was the wrong shade of red, they moved onto their next victim…and the next…and the next…and the next. Leaving each body behind. Some of them dead, some of them still alive and screaming.

Sylvia and Dahl. They stalked everyone who could possibly remember Brink Street Psychiatric Hospital. They hunted nurses. They hunted doctors and patients, even the cleaning crew.

Some of them tried to call security, some of them tried to escape. From the tiny speaker a voice crackled, “Security is loud and chaotic. No security is peace. You want to be healthy don’t you?” Those who made it to the single door in this windowless building, swiped their ID cards and the door said to them, “The world outside is a chaotic mess. Brink Street is peace. You want to be healthy don’t you?”

Those who tried to call for help, those who tried to run, were cut down. By now, Dahl wielded a sawed off shotgun and busied himself blowing people’s heads off, spraying paint all over the walls. But however they died, according to the Brink Street Psychiatric Hospital, they died healthy.

Blood was everywhere. Red was everywhere.

In the music room, Dahl gave the talentless musician a better death than most got. Dahl strangled him with a piano wire and, as the man clawed and kicked and fought for air, Dahl said, “In heaven, you’ll play for the angels.”

Their job done. Everyone at Brink Street dead or hiding, Sylvia laid down on the floor. The blood soaked into her cotton vagina and made it red and slick and hot. They made love there, atop the gore and the entrails. They fucked for hours. And, when they were finished and exhausted, Sylvia said, “Come on.”

The second brown paper bag was still in Dahl’s room, and, inside it, were two large canisters of gasoline. They both took one. They poured it in the hallways. They splashed it on the walls and in the rooms. They poured it on the bodies, dead or living and wounded and crying for mercy,

Brink Street, this peaceful place, was soaked to the bone with blood and gasoline.


Sylvia ripped an ID card off one of the nurses, holding her intestines in her hands and pleading for pardon. They, Dahl and Sylvia, walked to the building’s only door. Sylvia swiped the key card. For them, the door opened.

Beyond the door there was a long wide hallway. But not the kind of hallway Dahl had ever seen before. The walls, the ceiling, even the floor were all made out of fluorescent bulbs protected by thick glass. At the far end of this cheap and sickly lighting was another door. Like a bright tunnel leading to a long dead god.

From the ether, Dahl assumed, Sylvia pulled a cigarette and a book of matches.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” she said.

“Not at all.”

Sylvia lit the cigarette then pressed the burning match to the rest in the book. They all caught and she tossed the book over her shoulder. In one perfect moment, Brink Street was ablaze all at once. The fire roared with all the ferocity of Hell.

Behind them, Sylvia closed the door.


41
Prologue


Outside the second door was the sun. Behind them Brink Street no longer exited. Behind them, all there was was an enormous roaring flame the size of the hand of God.

Before them was the jungle and the city. Tropical trees, but also manmade trees. Trees made of steel with golden and silver leaves. Trees made of iron. And, in some of the larger trees, sections had been hollowed out, and from them men and women peered out their windows.

In the distance you could see the great skyscrapers and the smoke. Buildings strangled by great huge vines. The green vines and the red tipped thorns, wrapped around the buildings, smashing through windows and walls.

Far off, down a dirt path was an old jazz club. Walking down the stone steps, they could hear the faint sound of laughter and dancing. They could hear the faint sound of that crazy jungle cigarette music.

Then, from the bushes, a glint as the sun caught metal. The bushes moved. There was something in there.

Dahl raised his shotgun.

“Don’t shoot!” a strange voice the size of a mouse, but carrying with it a queer echo.

Then, from the foliage, stepped a small boy made of tin cans.

Though neither Dahl nor Sylvia had set eyes on the child before, and though they could not think how it was possible, their maternal instinct told them, without a doubt, this was there their son.

As the boy walked towards them and the fire burned behind them, Dahl thought on this.

Sylvia, the love of his life, was made out of caked blood and cheap dime store merchandise. His son, still clanking towards him, was made out of tin cans. And there was a jazz club in the middle of a jungle.

“This,” Dahl said, “Is the beginning of a good story.”