It is late, and I lie on my side outside my taught white sheets on my small hard bed, sweating. I stare at the darkness where one wall of my room lays hidden. Another wall is against my back, and the other two are much too close. I have been staring at the darkness that hides the wall for hours. Every now and then I roll my eyes back into my head, so far back that it hurts, until I see lightning at the corners of my sight. I find this comforting. I have always found the lightning comforting, ever since being put in this place. The lightning reminds me of better days, of my childhood, when I used to duck beneath my covers at night and rustle the sheets to see the white snap of static electricity flash by my feet.
It is hot in my room. Cell, really. They like to call it my "room", but I know what it is. I’m not that crazy. It is hot, and I welcome my sweat. It will cool me down. Natures air-conditioning, I think to myself. I almost laugh at that, but I know better. Laughter at this time of night is not welcome. It would only confirm their suspicions. And I know better than to do that. That would mean more supervision, and more supervision would mean less freedom, less freedom to try again. And I wanted to try again. I needed to try again. Because this time I would finally succeed. I would be free at last. Free. I closed my eyes and rolled them hard. The lightning flashed. I breathed deeply and listened to the sweat seep from my body. Freedom was near. I fell asleep smiling.
My name is Shawn, but they called me "Earl" in here. It’s a joke, really. "Earl". Just another joke. The people who run the place like jokes, and "Earl" seems to be their favorite. I had tried to tell them that my real name was Shawn. Shawn Foster. But "Earl" just seemed to stick. Eventually I gave up telling them my real name. Eventually I gave up telling them anything at all.
"Rise and shine, Earl." The voice came from the wall. I snapped my eyes open, unaffected by the sudden brightness of morning, and focused on the rectangular hole in the steel door, where a pair of thin red lips was framed like some Andy Warhol painting. Then the lips began moving and the voice came again. "Get up, Earl." Crisp white teeth flashed as the lips parted in a smile, then disappeared.
I didn’t move. It wasn’t because I wanted to start off the day being difficult. I knew better than that. I couldn’t move. They had strapped me to my bed at lights out, and even though I had managed to twist and contort to finally lay on my side, I was now thoroughly immobile. That’s what two attempts at freedom had gotten me. The rectangular hole snapped shut and I closed my eyes, but not tightly. I knew the lightning only came at night. And during the day I comforted myself with eyes wide open, hunting the holographic amoeba that floated elusively in front of my eyes. No, I closed my eyes now not because I needed comfort. I closed them because I needed to think straight.
The owner of the thin red lips opened the door, walked over to me cautiously, and stopped a few feet away. When I opened my eyes I could see the uncertainty in the man’s eyes, like a bird at a window bird-feeder, still unsure wether cats could pass through glass.
"You’re awake. Good," said the lips. "It is time for your medicine. Then you can get up and start your day."
By "medicine" he meant Thorazine, a tranquilizer meant to keep me calm, manageable. Lately I had been making a habit of attacking anyone who looked at me. So Thorazine had been prescribed. I really wasn’t a violent man, just determined. At first the medicine didn’t work. I still managed to slap the orderly in the face. Not hard, I really didn’t want to slap him at all, but hard enough to make it real for the orderly. So they upped my dosage, as I expected. Then I managed to shove the female nurse rather roughly down onto her bed. Again, she was unhurt. I actually felt ashamed seeing her fear, her eyes so brittle. But I knew it would get me what he needed. They increased my medication again. Now, one dose of my "medicine" would decimate my senses. If I took it, and they gave it to me three times daily, I could count on only vague memories of the day. But I didn’t take it, of course. At least not yesterday, and not today. I figured six pills should do it. Six and I would be free.
It took a moment for the male nurse to unstrap me from the bed, but soon I was sitting upright. I was still immobile in my special "pajamas", but I was able to let the excess blood drain from my head and find its way back down to the numbness in my legs. The nurse quickly put the Dixie-cup holding the Thorazine to my lips.
"Down the hatch, Earl."
I rifled my head back and let the pill drop to the back of my throat. I coughed and swallowed and coughed again.
"Let’s see," said the nurse.
I opened my mouth for inspection and belched. The nurse pulled away and crushed the Dixie-cup in his hand. "That wasn’t very nice, Earl." But when he looked back into my mouth, he seemed satisfied. The pill was gone. "Now lay back for a little while until you feel better. I’ll come get you in thirty minutes for breakfast."
I flopped back onto my bed and waited. I desperately wanted to scratch my nose, but my "PJ’s" weren’t that accommodating. I wrinkled it and the itch moved to my forehead, just as I expected. A quick wiggle of my ears and I killed it as it ran down my cheekbone. That’s what happens when you are bound in a straight-jacket twelve hours a day. You find ways of doing things you never imagined were possible.
I closed my eyes and tried my deep relaxation. I really hated deep relaxation, but I needed it. In thirty minutes I had to convince everyone, even myself, that I was swimming in six feet of Thorazinet. Limbs, lungs and lips, I reminded myself. Limbs loose, lungs lazy, lips lifeless. No sudden moves, no quick breaths, and no, absolutely no tension in the lips. Those would be telltale signs that my medicine wasn’t working. And I needed everyone to believe that I was responding healthily to treatment. I opened my eyes and tried to see nothing, ignoring the spinning, pulsating amoeba that lured my eyes to focus. As they say, life’s a stage, and in thirty minutes I went on, for one last time.
Later that night, after a slack-jaw, prone-where-I-was-placed uneventful day, I lay on my back, again on top of my taut white sheets. I didn’t yet fight the pressure of my straps to lay on my side. I preferred to face upwards, for I knew that beyond the stained panels of the drop ceiling of my cell, up, up, perhaps through three or four floors, there was the sky. I hadn’t seen the sky, not in its entirety, in almost a year, almost since being put in this place. But tonight was different. Not just because I hadn’t wasted energy struggling against the straps, but because I was confident I would see the stars, at least in my dreams, just before my final escape.
My jaw ached, and I was careful not to move it too quickly. I didn’t want to break anything. At least that was one benefit of not having to talk all day. Nothing would break. But it still burned, throbbed. I tried to think of the pain as a "last", as in "last piece of pie", "last piece of the puzzle", last pain I would ever feel. "Last," I thought, and it steadied me.
It was very late when I finally moved to begin my maneuvers. This was how I knew I must be insane. No one would do what I did, and keep doing it most every night. No one that was sane, that is. But my sanity was not important to me now. I needed to maneuver to my side so I could retrieve my medicine without choking on it. And to do so meant dislocating my shoulder again. I squeezed my lids closed and lightning flashed at the corners of my vision. Flashed and then struck. Pain flared from my shoulder as ball and socket dislodged from each other. Then the lightning was gone and I was staring at the wall once again, still strapped down but with some slack to spare as my arm hung low and loose.
Then my tongue went to work. It too had to contort unnaturally, twisting and curling amphibiously. It darted and jabbed and finally found its intended target in the back of my mouth. It was a small slit, wide enough to fit one finger into, for that is what had slashed the slit into the flesh behind my last molar where my wisdom teeth had once been. And beyond the slit was a small pocket, scraped and torn open by that same finger when no one was watching. It was in that small pocket that I had been hiding my pills, my wiry tongue deftly slipping the capsules past the slit and packing them there in the span of time it took most people to swallow. Over the last week I had practiced with my food until my tongue was trained to grab, curl, insert, grab, curl, insert. Now I had six perfect pills placed in that pocket. Now I needed to unplace them, for they would be my escape, my redemption from this Hell.
But unplacing them was not as easy as I had imagined. And I had imagined it many times, had envisioned this moment so often in the past several weeks that some nights, after I had gone to sleep, I was surprised to wake up the next morning. It had become so real. But now my plan for escape was in jeopardy. After dislodging three of the Thorazine pills and exuding them carefully onto my pillow, I suddenly felt the sting of medication at the back of my throat. And when my tongue probed the pocket where the three other pills lay, I could taste the bitter chemicals. One of the capsules had broken open, probably from stewing in the sweltering heat of my mouth for the past two days. I knew this might happen, but I had hoped it would be the last, or next to last capsule. At least then I would have enough of the poison to do the job. Now I wasn’t sure if three would do it.
My tongue speared repeatedly at the three remaining capsules, digging and dragging out as much of the spilt Thorazine as it could. I foamed and chomped like a horse at the bit, swallowing whatever fell into my mouth. Then suddenly there came a small pop from behind my last molar and the remaining capsules were spat from their bloody pocket, landing on my tongue. Without hesitation I quickly scooped up the three pills from off my pillow with my lips. The blood mixed with Thorazine tasted like tequila. I stared wild eyed around my room, but I could see nothing save the darkness that surrounded me. I thought for a moment about what it would be like to die. I thought of Glenn and Jane. Then I swallowed.
How had I come to this? How had I traveled this far from my once normal life to end up here, this final destination, my body disfigured as I lay on my side, pulled and smeared like Play-doh, my mind disembodied from the horror of what I was doing? How? I knew how. I knew why. I could even still remember when. I wasn’t really insane. I knew that too. This was all my choosing. All of it. I was in fact very intelligent, or at least had always considered myself so. I was smart enough to know that every action has a reaction, every habit leads to a consequence, every moment in one’s life is a choice. Even this, here, now, was a choice, and surely reactions and consequences would follow quickly. In fact, reactions were already occurring. My mind was being seized by the chemical overload of too much Thorazine. My skin was next to go. With no feeling on the outside of my body, I began to feel things within that I never felt before. Capillaries were coursing with blood, seething and pulsing. Muscles were twitching. Organs constricting. These were the reactions, and more were to follow. The consequence, of course, would be death.
"And what of it?" I thought aloud, surprised my mind could still think at all. What of death? I knew, of course, that soon I would know. But I still wondered. As if in answer to my unspoken question, images began to flash before my eyes, each one crisply focused only for an instant, before another flash brought yet another image to replace the first. Over and over, flashing again and again. Children playing at the beach, my mother’s face when I was a child, a hawk against the sky, a woman’s hands. Faster they came, one after another. Fire. Dark clouds. Blood. Rain on glass. A little girl. I saw each picture perfectly, even as they rushed so rapidly past each other that I became vaguely aware of a secondary image they were creating. Faster and faster. Then the pictures became horrifying and unreal. Red-eyed demons. Licking tongues. Trembling flesh. A fiery Hell. Faster these new pictures flashed until they sped into a steady stream of movement, and a singular image began to take shape. A blur at first, but then more defined. The image slowly came into focus, and soon a beautiful young woman stood before me.
Jane.
I vomited. Paralyzed by the overdose of Thorazine, I could do nothing as the contents of my stomach seeped into my pillow. Amidst the watery wreckage were three undigested capsules. "Maybe it will be enought," I whispered before I fell unconscious.
