CHAPTER 4
Jason
December 15
Her
eyes flickering with decreasingly less wattage, Nurse Stewart sat at her desk
trying to marshal and focus enough energy to both finish her shift and drive
home safely. As it was 11:53 AM, the
former would be easy. The newest intake nurse, a young girl with good education
credentials though only a small amount of experience, had replaced Nurse
Stewart at noon on Fridays for the last three weeks and had drawn the older
woman’s annoyance by cutting her arrivals razor thin, usually almost exactly at
noon, a habit of behavior that irked both Nurse Stewart and Nurse Mathis to no
end. Nurse Stewart suffered the most;
nearly always exhausted by the end of her long shift, she hadn’t the rested
patience to chasten the girl about being late.
She liked the young girl, though she had the annoying habit of calling
Sandra Stewart “Sandy,” a shortening she’d always disliked. Still, the girl exuded pleasant energy and
attitude and was, defensibly, very young, probably no older than 22.
Cutting it close again, she hadn’t shown up yet. Getting more and more impatient, Nurse
Stewart rapidly tapped her left fingers on the desk, thinking of the inevitable
adolescent crying fits she’d soon experience.
After a final check of her clean and organized work station, she rose,
grabbed her coat and waited for her relief.
Both sleeves freshly into it, Nurse Stewart reacted with disbelief as
the double doors slid open and two stern officers came in with another
patient.
You’ve got to be kidding me, she thought, as she took off her coat
and pitched it down onto her chair. She
hadn’t met these two men, either. She
began to wonder if the hospital had committed to accepting patients from
different states and the officers that came with them.
The two officers brought in a handcuffed, agitated and
wild eyed 20 or 21 year old powerfully built, muscular male of 185 pounds or
so. His physically dominating presence
made her think he’d played football at some point, probably in high school and
maybe in college. A man like that didn’t
put muscle on without a purpose. There
was too much of a forceful air about him to think otherwise. His muscles weren’t cosmetic; they were
practical and meant for functioning and she easily understood how, in an agitated,
violent state, handcuffs for those muscles would be mandatory to protect all
involved. What appeared to be good looks
were slightly obscured by matted hair and what looked like a recently wet shirt
and jeans. As the two officers neared
the desk, her nostrils were blown away by an incredibly potent, pungent,
acerbic, dizzying stench of alcohol that made her instantly slightly
recoil. The young man was drenched in
it…no, he was closer to drowning in it.
His very presence invoked a stiff shot of 100 proof coagulated in a
nasal nightmare of who knows what that could only excite the most chronically
ill, boozed up people on the planet.
“What’s
up, guys?” she asked, waving a hand before her face, the international “that
really stinks” communication. Her
irritation spilled into frustration over not knowing these two officers. Jokes aside, the patients that day must have
been coming from different parts of the extended area. She didn’t bother introducing herself to
these two men.
“Domestic
dispute,” one of the officers answered.
“Had a gun and threatened to shoot his father. The father called in SWAT to disarm
him.”
“A
SWAT team arrested him?” she asked, alarmed.
“Did he shoot his father? Did he
shoot anyone?”
“Fortunately,
no. He put the gun down. If he’d lifted it even a little, he’d be dead
right now.”
The
young man noticeably cringed. Nurse
Stewart couldn’t read whether it was out of fear or anger. Emotions seemed to be roiling over his face,
shooting in and out of his brain. His
eyes showed a powerful combination of agitation and exhaustion, far more
intense than her own current, similar sensations. Though not unusual for patients to appear
erratic in such a situation, his mannerisms seemed less situational than
aggressively chemical. A lot depended on
what led to the problem to begin with.
More than anything, he seemed stunned, almost in shock.
“Has
he been talking?” she asked.
“No,
he hasn’t said anything.”
“But
he smells wonderful,” the second officer wisecracked. “Reminds me of the department Christmas party
two years ago. Remember?”
“Yeah,
but not as bad,” the first added with a laugh.
Not amused and with a fuse shortening by the moment,
Nurse Stewart lectured, “That’s not a very compassionate way of looking at it,
guys.”
The first officer smiled. “No harm intended. Just trying to keep things
lighthearted. We have a tough job.”
She
understood but still wished the officers hadn’t said anything. Patients often remembered those kinds of
comments and held grudges, sometimes out of anger but more often out of
despair. Being freshly and usually
painfully introduced into brutally tough, life altering situations, patients
were often greatly hurt being mocked on the way into treatment. It was hard enough being mocked on the way
out. She had heard several patients
relate such moments, innocuous to most, malignant and devastating to the
wounded.
Nurse
Stewart timidly moved close to Jason, doing everything she could to keep him
calm.
“Can
you tell me your name?” she asked him gently.
His languid yet intense eyes met hers but he didn’t reply.
“His
name is Jason Martin. We got information
from the father,” the first officer said.
“What
did his father say?”
“Other
than ‘Jason’s a bum and a criminal and a violent offender who deserves what he
gets’, not much.”
She
frowned. “Do you believe any of that?”
The
first officer shrugged. “I don’t
know. We’re treating it as a domestic
dispute and not a violent crime but we’re not going to take any chances. He’s very revved up.”
Taking Jason gently by the elbow, she said, “Let’s
go,” to the officers and led them all to her nurse’s station. She felt his powerful biceps on that arm
flex. His body twitched and sagged and
twitched again. Nurse Stewart, feeling
sleep the best and safest medicine, gave him an injection of Haldol, which he
didn’t resist. His body relaxed and
swayed slightly; he seemed a really big child about to doze off in his mother’s
arms. Realizing him too tired to fill
out a checklist, she decided to see him to his room; asking the officers to
hang tight, she went to her desk, grabbed a clipboard, attached a checklist and
a pen for later and returned.
“He’s
safe,” she told the officers. “Now If
you would both please walk him onto the unit with me and remove the
handcuffs.”
“Are
you sure?” the first officer asked skeptically.
“Yes,”
she replied with assurance.
They all walked to the big iron door, Nurse Jones
opened it and they entered the unit, Jason staggering, his eyes opening and
closing, the officers almost dragging him along. A different pungent stench greeted her
nostrils, the stench of ammonia, and she inferred that someone had thrown up or
possibly urinated in their bed. The
whole area reeked. Shaking it off, she
led the threesome down the hall and opened the third door on the right past the
two rooms where Christopher Thompson slumbered and Terry Day, popping in and
out of sleep, suffered. Once inside, the
first officer removed the handcuffs and asked Nurse Stewart again for her
assurance the situation was under control; once more receiving the affirmative,
he left the room with his partner. She
moved Jason to one of the beds, wrote his name on the checklist and put the
clipboard and the pen on the stand next to the bed, certain he would figure out
upon waking that he needed to fill it out.
The Haldol did its work and Jason was out like a light a few seconds
after his head his the pillow.
Her
initial diagnostic guess screamed a Bipolar Disorder mixed episode or possibly
psychotic depression. Agitation mixed
with exhaustion, extreme energy concurrent with extreme fatigue, strong
symptoms in two different directions. He
would seem scary to many, possibly most.
Maybe he really was scary in his regular life. Maybe he was sweet but misunderstood. Maybe he was a victim. Maybe he was all those things. Whatever the facts, he was wounded and she
could only feel sorry for him. Moving to
the door, she took another look at him on the way out. What would happen when he woke would be
interesting but that was up for Head Tech Pederson and Nurse Mathis to
experience. Making her last march of the
day to the Unit A tech office, she informed Sue Pederson of Jason’s situation along
with her own personal insights. She
didn’t bother looking at her watch as she left the unit. It was after noon and she wanted to get the
hell out of there in the worst way.
With a final, large yawn and stretch, she tottered
back to the front desk, where the young intake nurse beamed at her work
station.
“Hi, Sandy!” she said,
brightly, a final irritant in an irritating shift. The idea of quizzing the girl on whether
she’d gotten there before noon or not fled Nurse Stewart’s mind like the
proverbial rat leaving the sinking ship.
She just wanted to get home.
Grabbing her purse from behind the desk and her coat from where the girl
had lain it on the desk top, she headed for those cursed double doors.
“Going home?” the young girl asked. Nurse Stewart repressed making a “No, duh!”
face, instead replying: “Yeah. I’m going
to go home and sleep for a year.”
December 14
A bitterly cold
20-degrees, not counting the slight wind chill, reigned at 8:33 that
morning. A hard snow that turned to
sleet the night before and lasting into the early morning had left large
pockets of snow and dangerously heavy ice over the neighborhoods where Jason
Martin, insulated as well as possible with a long sleeve shirt and jeans, began
his first day of a new job for an aptly named company called Kilimanjaro
Incorporated, lawn and garden, thusly named because the owner had climbed the
mountain on a trip to Tanzania once and relished the idea of people forever
knowing it. Attempting his best
maneuvering, Jason jostled with an expensive snow blower equipped with an
engine powerful enough to make you think, if you decided to sit on it and point
it in the right direction, you could drive it to Chicago in a few hours
flat. After several failed jobs and a
failed apartment stay, the 20-year old had recently moved back in with his
father, who agreed to let Jason stay there provided the young man get a steady
job, some consistent income and eventually find an apartment where, unlike his
last attempt, he could achieve successful independence. Jason’s stay at his father’s rented
condominium demanded those condition be met.
His mother, who had died when Jason was 6 months old, wasn’t an option.
So much on the line had left Jason stressed and edgy. He hadn’t felt well for several years
now. Jobs came and went, his father
infuriated to the breaking point with each failure; hence, the ultimatum. Succeed now or else. Fail and sink into the abyss. Proud, tough and intense, Jason’s experiences
had left him shaken, bitter, and angry.
He had always been a winner…until recently. Now he just couldn’t get it in gear, the
gear that used to turn like a perpetual motion machine rusted and stuck more
often than not these days and no amount of tapping or rapping or pounding could
get it to going again. The pattern made
consistency impossible. Well, he had
another shot and the first step was that morning.
Kilimanjaro Incorporated boasted long-term contracts
with various houses in the area. In
winter, that service primarily meant snow blowing driveways, the labor Jason
performed that morning. The very first
driveway he worked on had a slightly uphill gradient with a wicked tilt to the
right. Though he didn’t know it, it
would be the hardest driveway he plowed all day, if he lasted that long; bad
luck fated it to be his first, and his final.
He met his trainer only an hour before, a skinny, goateed, nervous man
around 25 who had already smoked two cigarettes like lightning and downed two
Mountain Dews like a fish that morning; barely started, the guy complained in
frustration with Jason’s work.
“No! I told you to keep the snow off the
neighbor’s yard!” the man bellowed, pointing aggressively to the house they
were working at. “We’re being paid to snow blow THIS man’s driveway, not to
blow snow and ice all over THAT man’s yard.”
The driveway edged the
neighbor’s property; the difficult terrain and seemingly limitless power of the
snow blower made it practically impossible to be exact and not blow a little
snow that way, a mortal sin to the trainer, who evinced the same attitude
during summer with grass seeds. In his
defense, the lack of a contract with the neighbor meant potential trouble for
the company should the neighbor choose to complain over any overlapping service
from next door but who would make a big deal over having a little snow blown on
their property, especially because plenty of snow from the last month rested
their already? The trainer, that’s who. To him, properly coloring in the lines proved
vital, like the contracted driveway had red snow and the neighboring
green.
A slide mechanism moved
the blower’s discharge chute from left to right depending on which direction
the snow was to be blown in. Only an
inch from Jason’s right hand, the touchy mechanism operated with great
sensitively, making Jason’s job even more perilous, drawing the trainer’s
criticisms at multiple spots. Several
times, small amounts of snow had flown from the discharge chute into the
neighbor’s yard though, to Jason, not nearly enough to be a major problem. My God, who gave a shit if the trainer
complained about nothing in a world where jerks complained about everything? But Jason was stuck in the trap of the
employee with the employer; like it or not, his job was on the line and
everything else with it.
Despite the criticism, he
literally plowed ahead as best he could, throwing his full weight, a muscular
188 pounds built as a football player in his high school days, behind the heavy
machine. The blower hit a hidden icy spot under a thin layer snow and slid a
foot to the right. In trying to steady
it, Jason’s right hand hit the slide mechanism; the chute shifted a hard right
at a diagonal angle and poured a huge pile of snow in the neighbor’s yard
before Jason could shift the chute back to the left. His trainer seethed.
“What the hell are you
doing?! I told you I get in big trouble
if a neighbor complains about big piles of snow ending up in his yard,
right? Right? Understand?
Do it again.” He finished with an
aggressive point towards the house they were working on.
Jason hated being
there. He hated this kind of work. He was doing it all for the money, money he
had to have; he hated money, hated what it did to people, hated what it turned
people into. The world of finance wasn’t
honorable or moral and their money took no skill or courage to acquire. His father was all about money, all about
making it and all about keeping it.
Considered a pillar of goodness for having wealth, his father wasted no
effort in lording it over Jason whenever he wanted to make Jason feel small and
useless. Jason resisted all he resented
with as much strength that comes from the power of conviction as he could
muster. Now he was being yelled at by
some puny jerk doped to the max on caffeine and nicotine at 9 fucking AM. A warm flush surged to his cheeks and he
defended himself with a low grumble.
“It’s not all over his
yard,” Jason said firmly, doing his best to control his volatile temper.
“It’s
on his yard enough!” the trainer replied with a raised voice that peaked in a
squeal, “so let’s do it right! Come
on. I’m being as patient as I can with
you.”
At
that point, Jason couldn’t give a rat’s ass about a few extra flakes of snow or
a mound or a fucking mountain, no matter where it all ended up, and his growing
agitation swelled over the trainer’s obduracy of something that didn’t matter;
no, the guy was either too conscientious or flat out crazy. Was that the way the company worked? From experience, Jason had trained himself to
mentally check out of what he considered stupid. That meant that morning’s nonsense; no matter
how great he risked his father’s wrath, he couldn’t bring himself to care. However, he also couldn’t bring himself to
quit. Maybe he could get through it all
with indifference. Maybe. He needed the job. He had to keep the job. Simple as that. Jason agreed with his father’s view that a
man should work for everything he attained but he flinched over his father’s
seeming obliviousness to his situation, that something had been wrong for some
time, turning a young man who had always made his father proud with unbroken
successes into a shell of his former self.
Success through high school, whether with sports or grades, had come
easily. Now, he…just couldn’t; couldn’t
get his head together, couldn’t progress in life as he needed to.
WHY CAN’T I DO THIS ANYMORE?! he’d often
scream to himself over his lack of functionality. It crushed down upon him every day.
Stiffening his resolve, he finished the far right of
the driveway with no problems and turned the machine to the left to go back
down. Unfortunately, in his agitation,
he forgot to immediately slide the chute to the right. It kept left and sprayed snow over the part
of the driveway he had just cleared with a little more again going into the
neighbor’s yard. His trainer went
berserk.
“No!
No! No! You not only got…you fucked up
the line you just cleared AND you somehow got MORE snow on the neighbor’s
lawn. I just don’t get it. Are you stupid? Yeah, you’re stupid. Only someone really stupid could manage to do
all this.” The trainer turned his back,
scratched his fingers over the back of his head and threw both arms in the air
in contempt.
STUPID?
The word hit like a right cross in Jason’s mind. Yes, he had heard it right, heard it from a
pathetic little worm he didn’t like or respect.
Game over. His neck
stiffened.
Yeah, you’re stupid, thundered in his mind. He
needed the job, he needed the money but he needed his self-respect more. Stupid.
Fuck it. He wasn’t the stupid
one. He clenched his fists, his face
etched into a hideous scowl, and moved towards the trainer, who still had his
back turned, the occasional insult pertaining to Jason and the trainer’s lot in
life muttering out in thick bursts of cold air.
Jason got to within a foot of the trainer, who turned and almost fell
over backwards due to the closeness.
“That’s all,” Jason said, his
voice growing in intensity, his mind racing like a runaway train moving faster
and faster, the wheels burning the track hotter and hotter. The insults were over. The
trainer thought he was quitting.
“Done? You’re quitting?” was the shocked reply.
“No
one calls me stupid…no,” Jason said, his blood boiling, his rage now
uncontrolled.
The
trainer moved closer. “How stupid can a
person…”
Vesuvius
blew. Jason’s right hand, quick as
lightning, found the man’s throat and grabbed hold of it like a vice. The two stood in unequal struggle, the
muscular Jason throttling his skinny opponent easily, the older man squirming
trying to break the iron grip. In his
rage, Jason reveled in his foe’s wide- eyed look of terror as he realized he
could kill the man if he felt like it, strangle him or break his neck if he
chose. Jason shoved hard and sent the
trainer tumbling, the soft snow and ice on the driveway making it easy to send
the man off his balance and down to the ground. Landing on his left side, stunned both by the
impact of his fall and the pressure put on his neck, the trainer lay still for
several seconds before slowly coming to his hands and knees. Jason stood a few feet away, ready to deliver
a remorseless kill shot that would break the guy’s face. Grabbing his throat and coughing, the trainer
suddenly snapped back onto his feet and just as quickly slipped down onto his
chest. Rising again, making sure he
stayed upright, he minced backwards down the driveway, not daring to take his
eyes off Jason.
“You’re
gone! You’re gone!” he croaked
hysterically, flapping his arms like a hyperactive child or disoriented
mallard, pointing wildly in several different directions. Jason stood in a defensive posture, the
short-term impact beginning to give way to the long-term ramifications of what
he’d done. The trainer stomped
ludicrously to the company van parked across the street, his skinny body
swelling like an emaciated bullfrog, his head turned towards Jason the whole way. He leapt into the driver’s seat, rolled down
the window and, assured of his safety, shouted,
“Good luck getting home,
ass hole! Fuck you!”
He revved the engine hard
and loud and floored the accelerator before shifting the car in gear. The tires kicked up slush for three feet,
spun uselessly until gaining traction, and rocketed forward, sending the van
racing through the neighborhood and out at forty miles an hour, the car sliding
left and right several times on the way.
Jason stood alone in the driveway.
Defeat set in quickly. He felt
like he’d raped the boss’s wife. He
tried to get angry again but couldn’t.
Black despair seeped in slowly like a crawling tarantula spreading
across his face. The despair grew
greater and greater and he felt more and more tired. He had been tired when he started the
morning. He had been tired the last two
years. Bending forward, his hands met
his knees, the freezing cold weather a growing hindrance to his senses. He couldn’t deflect or overcome the
unpleasant feelings anymore, couldn’t fight them anymore, couldn’t survive them
anymore. Overwhelmed, he began to shake
with cold and exhaustion, his hands digging into the material of his jeans. He lived five miles away. How would he get home? How was he going to explain this? His father loomed in his mind like a mighty
Titan over a powerless mortal. He’s going to kill me. How am I going to explain this?
Resignation
mixed with fear and turned to dread. His
last chance came and went. His death was
coming. It was coming now. Today.
I
can’t explain this. He won’t
listen. I’m going to die…
, No. He wasn’t going to explain it…not if he could
help it; NEVER if he could help it. He
sat down on the edge of the driveway and, with stubbornness cultivated through
athletic training, committed to not moving.
He closed his eyes again in meditation, praying, begging, to freeze
solid in every pore of his body. He sat
shivering for over ten minutes with no intention of ever moving again, his
coatless arms only sporting his long sleeve shirt worn for work purposes
providing no succor.
“Hey! Get the fuck up!” a guy not much older than
himself shouted as a joke from the window of a pickup truck as he drove
by. Quickly flushed with fresh rage over
being disturbed, Jason snapped to his feet and ran towards the car fully
intending to chase the thing down and have it out with the asshole inside. The driver tauntingly slowed down just enough
to entice the infuriated Jason before mockingly gunning the engine and speeding
out of reach without so much as a slide.
Jason roared as he stood helplessly in the middle of the suburb’s now
empty, sludge covered street. He
couldn’t just sit and die now. His
masculinity and his pride, two things that had carried him through his world
for years, had manifested too prominently, as had his adrenaline from his
ridiculous, dog-like attempt to chase down a moving car. His “blood was up,” as the old expression
went. Six miles lay between he and his
father’s condo, an easy car trip being out because his father had driven him to
work that morning; he imagined the clean, attractive unit as a filth ridden
prison in a filth ridden town in a filth ridden country. Well, his blood was up so he chose to face
his father and, if his father gave him any crap, he’d defend himself with his
fists. Twice before, their relationship
had become physical and he would do it again if he had to. Hopelessness had no place in his heart. Rage and pride became his motivators.
Focused
by that aggression, he began to jog in the direction of his father’s
house. Though a haul at six miles, he’d
run longer distances, even a half marathon he’d barely trained for with a
friend. Since his teen years, exercise
had become his salve, his coping strategy against the inundation of
increasingly dark moods and restless energy that increasingly invaded his
physical self. Addicted to effort,
unflinching in his self-torture, he’d grown into a powerful workout warrior, a
jogger and a weight lifter, a cardio junkie and a pursuer of physical strength
in constant competition with himself. He
played football and baseball, excelling in both, an outside linebacker in the
former and a first baseman in the latter.
His self-torturing workouts resulted in a strong, lean, fit body to go
with his handsome face. Built for combat
and contact, he relished physical endeavors.
Now, he channeled his
inner warrior into completing the six-mile run, his jeans only a slight
encumbrance and his long sleeve shirt finally a less bulky benefit. After slogging through four tough miles in
the icy, dirty white and gray sludge that pervaded everywhere, he came to the
town’s biggest street, Carlton Ave., and stopped, deciding it way too early to
go to his father’s condo. His father
wouldn’t be home for hours but he couldn’t bring himself to sit in that place
alone, awaiting his fate, for so long.
His muscles ached and his head throbbed but his energy remained
powerful. Much too powerful. His mind raced, his moods remaining a
bloated, swollen conglomeration of aggressive agitation. Rest an impossibility, he felt the only place
where he would be comfortable, the only place that made sense, was his
gym.
Breathing
deeply, he girded his body and jogged lightly towards his gym, just over two miles
down Carlton Ave. He trudged on the side
of the road through the cold and the snow until he reached his destination
around forty minutes later. After
showing his membership at the front desk, he went to the men’s room to check
himself. He tolerated his moist jeans
and shirt and slicked back his moist hair with a few quick run throughs. What gave him pause was the dark, furious
space where his face usually was; an eclipse seemed wedged in between it and
his usual expression. He felt weak and
exhausted yet fiery and determined.
Leaving the men’s room, he mounted a cross training cardio machine and
worked it for the next two hours, took a small break to get a drink of water,
then did another two. Shortly after 3
PM, he couldn’t exercise another second.
He looked at the gym clock. His
father would soon be home and awake for several more hours. Jason chose not to go there. His father would probably question why his
son hadn’t come home from his wonderful new job but Jason didn’t care. Now where to go? The local mall in the opposite direction from
where he’d come down Carlton Ave., closer to his Dad’s condo, seemed the
obvious choice. He’d have to walk there. Very slowly.
He arrived just after
4:30 PM and began to walk around, the two-story structure heavily decorated
from top to bottom for the Christmas season.
Hands in his pockets and his head mostly down, he ambled along, mostly
oblivious to the stores but not the people.
He heard the laughter and would glance up now and then to see the happy
faces, the women with arms interlaced with those of boyfriends and husbands,
their free hands carrying bags with Christmas packages that would soon thrill
overjoyed children. Sometimes, those
little children would be with their mothers or fathers or both and their
parents would play games and employ tricks to deflect the purchases of gifts
meant for them, sending them with one parent to buy candy apples or frosty
treats or playing hide and seek and telling them to go hide, under the parent’s
watchful eye, of course, until the other parent would return with presents
safely tucked away. Older people
strolled slowly, mostly with looks of joy, no doubt remembering Christmas’s
past. Not long disgorged from school,
teenagers, laughing and doing silly things, populated the mall like salmon
coming home to spawn. Even the employees
were bubblier than usual in anticipation of Christmas, more talkative and
jovial to not only the customers but to each other in their regular banter and
on cigarette breaks. Jason heard all of
them; heard their laughter, felt their happiness and hated them. Hated all of them. Happiness all around him and it made him sick
with despair; none of that happiness was for him.
He
walked past the stores on the first floor, took the up escalator to the second,
walked past those stores and the food court, took the down escalator back to
the first floor and repeated the process dozens of times. Under a high glass ceiling, an enormous
fountain, equipped with three tiers and water spewing high enough to be level
with the second floor, dominated the center of the mall surrounded by kiosks of
goods that ringed it like frogs on a pond.
The base of the fountain had places for sitting and Jason, eventually
tired of moving, sat down. A television
set at one of the kiosks barked something about luxury cars with images of
silver and red sports cars rotating on platforms modelled by smiling,
attractive yet tastefully dressed young women; Jason couldn’t resist being
sucked in, his body in place of the pitchman, smiling and happy, selling cars
somewhere, anywhere, something he would never pursue in real life. He sat mesmerized, like a child, and never
wanted to look away, never wanted to leave.
Time passed like the executioner sharpening his axe. Jason looked up through the glass ceiling and
saw the darkness.
Near
closing, the mall crowd thinned considerably and nearly everyone had gone
home. The teenagers had moved on to some
other ridiculous teenage pursuit in some other place. All the parents with little children had long
since gone, the kids no doubt already tucked into bed. The old people had gone like whispers from
lips long faded. Only a few younger
couples, and the occasional wanderer like himself, were left. The mall had a “last call” kind of atmosphere
and a few people were fast walking to hit their favorite stores for one last
quick purchase before leaving. He looked
at his watch: 8:45 PM. Fifteen more minutes
and he would have to go home. His
father, an airline pilot by trade, often had an uneven schedule but not lately,
altering his work regimen to include only local routes. He would no doubt be waiting for Jason to get
home so they could talk about his first day at his new job, a job certain to
ease pain and cure all problems between the two…How could Jason tell him he’d
failed? He had never known his father to
be soft hearted or generally understanding.
Perhaps that soft spot had hardened forever when his mother died. Jason had never asked and his father, being
allergic to introspective conversation, had never told him anything. He only knew his father had no tolerance for
anything he considered failure, whether in himself, his son or anyone
else. That was the guy possibly fully
awake and waiting on the couch with a hangman’s noose ready to lynch him if he
arrived with the bad tidings that were now inevitable.
The seconds ticked away
to his forced homecoming. He stared at
the kiosk with the car commercial, his last connection on earth, the last sane
thing in civilization.
9 PM came and the kiosk
worker proceeded to close for the night.
Jason wanted to plead with him to keep his television on, no matter that
it kept rattling off the same infomercial so many times that Jason had the entire
shtick memorized. His life hung on that
television set, on those women modelling the cars; the woman in the blue dress,
moving from left to right, the smile on her face changing from smiling to
neutral then smiling again; the woman in the red dress looking back and forth
from the car to the camera repeatedly without moving her position, left hand on
hip, right arm extended with right hand upturned, mouth open in a toothy,
rigid, unmoving smile; the woman in the green dress, moving like the one in the
blue dress, a close lipped smile with dancing eyes bewitching Jason as she
performed. The same pitchman for all in
his smart gray suit and his slicked back black hair excitedly and hyperactively
spouted information about the car’s engines and designs, first the silver, then
the black, then the red, and how any one of them would be a wonderful Christmas
gift and so on and so on. Jason felt he
knew these performers, now his only friends.
He needed them. Suddenly, the
screen went black and the kiosk worker took the proceeds from his cash register
away. Footsteps approached him. The deep voice of a mall cop tolled over
Jason’s shoulder:
“We’re closing up. Time to go home.” He looked up at the man’s smiling face and
stood with effort, his mind turning slowly like a rusty wheel. His bones creaked and his muscles screamed
from the insane workout he’d subjected himself to. He put his hands in his pockets and, head
down, shuffled towards the main entrance.
The double doors slid open. He
paused, took a deep breath and stepped outside, a blast of freezing cold air
and thick snow smacking him in the face, the surrounding area dark save for the
haunting patches produced by the outside lights at the mall’s fringes which
illuminated the blizzard that poured down.
He stood just past the door for a half hour, watching everyone leave,
then walked across the parking lot and decided to look for a comfortable spot
where he could sit down. He walked to a
large dumpster, moved to the side facing away from the mall and sat, facing the
wind and snow, at its base, his rear crunching into the mix of snow and
ice. He didn’t know the temperature but
it bit hard, a wind chill that must be below freezing. He curled up with his arms folded around his
knees and decided to die. The wind
shredded his face and whistled in his ears as he shivered uncontrollably. The cold invaded his bones; he opened his
mouth for the world to hear his chattering teeth. He contemplated taking off his shirt to speed
the process but, seized by a powerful, confusing force, he reconsidered. The force, his survival instinct, screamed to
find shelter, to deflect the wind, to reach inside his clothes and rub his arms
and his legs until he felt warm and safe.
He rejected the impulse for as long as he could until he couldn’t
anymore. Angry and sad and exhausted and
defeated, he slowly rose, his numb hands on his numb forehead, rubbed his arms
and legs as fast and firmly as he could, cursed himself a coward and began to
shuffle in the direction of his father’s condo, occasionally kicking the soft
snow in front of him, the powder exploding into tiny, imperceptible
grains.
Moving in the general
direction of his father’s place, he wandered for hours, stalling for time,
nearly frozen into insensibility as he finally neared the place, isolated in a
corner of the neighborhood so remote no would notice it once the sun set if the
lights weren’t on. To Jason’s relief,
they weren’t. Now he only wanted
shelter, any shelter. He crept
stealthily towards the front door, opened it with his key and stood in the
doorway. His senses stretched out as far
as he could stretch them, checking for the smallest sound as if the slightest
creak of the floor would bring his father rushing towards him with a baseball
bat threatening to smash his head in. As
his father never turned on the heat no matter how cold, the air felt only
slightly less frigid than outside, a tomblike combination of empty freeze and
dead quiet. He stood there for a minute
until as assured of his safety as possible then tip toed towards his room. A slight creak on the wooden floor glued him
in place for several seconds; when the roof didn’t cave in, he noiselessly
entered his room and shut the door gently.
Uninterested in taking off his clothes, he burrowed into the sheets of
his bed. The noose tightened around his
neck as he drifted in and out of a light, terrible sleep. It stretched all the way from his father’s
hand several rooms away.
Jason woke several times
in the night. Each time, he checked the
digital clock on the end table next to the bed.
12:13 AM. He dozed off and dreamt
of being beaten up by someone he’d never met.
1:32 AM. He stared at the clock
for a half hour. His stomach hurt and he
shivered with cold. 2:55 AM. He sat up in bed and held his aching
head. His mind raced then collapsed into
darkness then exhaustion. Too much
energy. Too little energy. 4:16 AM.
Dread flooded him as he awoke.
Almost time. 5:28 AM. He would hear his father soon. 6:15 AM.
He heard the stirring in his father’s room. He counted each second from then. At 486 seconds, he heard the shower; 973
seconds later, the footsteps approached.
His door opened and his father, 49 years old, six feet two, firmly built
though a bit overweight, fully dressed for work in his pilot’s uniform strode
purposefully inside. A faint smell of
whiskey drifted to Jason’s nose.
“Time
to get up and go to work,” his father said.
“I have a couple of short flights and layovers. I’ll probably be back around 4 PM or
so.” He transitioned. “You must have got home very late. How was your first day?”
Turning
on his side away from his father, eyes facing the pale white of closed closet
doors, Jason murmured: “I quit the job.”
He
spoke too softly to be heard. “What was
that?” his father asked.
“I
quit the job,” Jason repeated just loudly enough to hear. “I quit it.
I’m not going back.”
Under the covers, Jason readied himself. Few things disgusted his father; people he
considered purposefully unemployed muscled close to the top of his list; Jason
being unemployed muscled all the way to the top.
“What
do you mean you quit your job?” his father asked with rapid contempt and
practiced disgust from conversations about Jason’s other failures. To his father, the work world was so
easy. You get a job, you dedicate
yourself and you do it. It’s a damn
job. Everybody has one. Why can’t his own son get it right?
Though
exhausted from lack of sleep, the lack of rest also made Jason’s agitation
quick trigger. His muscles flexed and
his fists clenched. He continued staring
at the closet doors and muttered slowly:
“The trainer insulted me so I left. I’m not going back. That’s it.”
“What
did he say to you?”
“He
called me stupid.”
“Who
cares if he called you stupid?!” his father roared, incredulously, striking
Jason with a verbal uppercut.
“Unbelievable. What did you
do? We’ll correct this right now. You’re going to go back and beg for your job
if that’s what it takes. Get up.”
Jason
sat up sharply and faced his father.
“I’m not going back to someone who called me stupid! I’m not stupid!” Being prepared for a fight became
insignificant. He wanted one. The “sense of craziness,” as Jason called it,
the motivation that fueled his workouts and his athletic career, took over.
“Well, you’re acting stupid!” his
father, now agitated, roared again. “Get
up! I’m sick of paying your goddamned
way!” He shook his head and looked at
his watch. “I don’t have time to take
you back there. I’ll have to call a God
damned taxi to come take you to work.
Tell them you’re sorry and ask for your job back. Tell them you’ve been fucked up lately or
whatever reason you want to give. They
can drive you back when you’re done.”
Jason sneered at his father and rumbled with thunder.
“Fuck you!” he shouted. He’d just declared war, a war that had been
building for a long time.
“No,
fuck you!!” his father shot back, aggressively pointing at his son. “You’re a fucking bum and I’m fed up with you
and your fucking freeloading!” He waved
his hands at Jason. “The free ride is
over. I’m going to work like a
responsible person and you better be out of here by the time I get back or I’ll
call the cops to carry you out.” He
stomped out of the room, stomped into the hallway and stomped out the front
door, slamming it shut in the process.
His
inevitable crossroads reached, Jason felt so overwhelmed with emotion he almost
passed out.
I’m so tired, he thought. Just let me sleep, please. Just let me sleep. Moments later, he got his wish. A hard surge knocked him unconscious.
He
slept hard, dreaming an altered version of what he’d fitfully dreamt earlier
only this time, instead of being beaten up, he authored the punishment. In his dream, a group of people came, all
strangers. He was with them yet apart
from them, the same yet different, though he wasn’t aware of it until he had
killed one of them, a smiling man, one of the flock. Jason bludgeoned him to death. No blood or terror burst through in the act;
he just went too far and it was done.
Once finished, the realization of death, his death, hit hard. He’d crossed the line. He spent a short amount of time ruing it,
wishing that it wasn’t so, wishing he could go back but he couldn’t. He tried mixing with the strangers again,
trying to smile and laugh, trying to be one of them. Maybe he could hide it, live the life of a
cool “bad guy,” maybe even eventually tell someone he’d killed, the culprit in
a murder mystery, the predator in the flock.
Maybe he could live with his guilt.
Did he have to go to jail forever?
Yes. He knew it. He’d murdered and his life was over. The world he now inhabited could only end in
prison. That was his path. He left the group
and appeared in the police station an instant later. He confessed and was led to his cell...
He woke hours later. Though he hadn’t had a long sleep, it still
refreshed him enough to reset his internal clock. Then his reality came in a flash and, aided
by the ever present, unabated cold, withered him to where he seemed a corpse in
a morgue though without the painless peace of death. Fully alert to his situation, he began to
panic. Springing from bed, he instantly crumbled to his knees with a
panic attack, his forehead pressing firmly into the carpet, breathing
shallowly, his body shivering without the small relief of the flimsy bed
covers. Eyes closed, he gathered himself
enough to stand and, far from wavering, shot up erect and firm like a man turned
to stone, the corpse in rigor mortis, hard as bone. What could he do? He had to get out. To where?
He had nowhere to go. Friends
and relatives had long since withdrawn support or faded from his life. He stared into his destiny. He was going to die. Now.
That day. In just a few short
hours. That would be it. It was the end.
What…can I do? Dazed, he left his room and shuffled out
into the hallway, needing to feel his way along the wall to keep steady,
empathetic to fictional zombies, a fresh member of the living dead.
He
heard the wind howling and the windows buckling as he entered the kitchen and
checked the thermometer set in the kitchen window: 26 degrees, which the howling wind would no
doubt drop close to zero. He looked at
the clock: 10:12 AM. He paced and fidgeted.
I have to leave and I have nowhere to go. I’m going to freeze to death.
Last night, he desperately had wanted to freeze to
death but his subconscious survival instinct wouldn’t let him. After sleeping, his conscious and
subconscious minds were in sync. He
wanted to live. He desperately wanted to
live.
What
were those places? Homeless
shelters. Homeless shelters like…what’s
the name…what’s the name…WHAT’S THE NAME?!
Salvation Army. That was one of
them. They take people in, right? He rapidly groped around for the phone book,
dug it out of a drawer, and called the number on his father’s home phone.
“Salvation Army, may I
help you?” a female representative asked casually.
“Yes. I need a bed for tonight. I have nowhere to go,” Jason intoned
dully.
“Okay, we currently have
a 35 bed waiting list. I’m afraid we
won’t be able to get you in tonight.”
“I have nowhere to
go!” Jason croaked, the noose around his
neck restricting his throat.
“I’m sorry. None of the people in front of you have
anywhere to go, either,” she replied.
“I am going to FUCKING
DIE! Do you get that?! Do you understand that?!”
The line clicked as the
woman ended the call. The full horror of
it was becoming surreal. Every domino in
a worse case scenario had fallen. He
laughed then felt stupid for doing so which made him laugh harder. All he’d had to endure in his life, all the
times he’d done as he was supposed to, all the times he’d been the good
kid. Now, he would have to get out and
he’d die in the ice and snow and cold…
No. No!
The end wouldn’t come with him timidly freezing to death. He committed to taking a stand. He chose to fight. Adrenaline began to rush. Anger began to surge. Another old memory came up. He remembered a rare time at home when, as a
young child brimming with the curiosities of life internal and external, he’d
searched his father’s closet for anything interesting he could play with. Aside from the usual boring contents of
clothes and shoes, the kind of stuff that he had in his closet, one object
piqued his interest. An enormous gun,
the type of which he didn’t know, rested upright in a back corner. He approached it cautiously until within
inches of it, the gun almost as tall as he, and contemplated playing with it
for a few moments before thinking better of it and leaving. He’d been told that guns were dangerous and
believed it but, if his father had a gun, could they be all bad? He put it out of his mind and never thought
about it until now. Would his father
still have it?
Checking his father’s
room upstairs, Jason found it in the closet, a large, double barreled
shotgun. He felt like a child again,
approaching it cautiously, then moved aggressively and snatched it up, the
barrel so heavy it dipped almost to the floor, the stock uncomfortable in his
hands as he’d never even picked up a gun before. He remembered what they did in the movies and
fiddled with it for a few seconds. The
gun snapped open revealing two pink covered bullets or shells or whatever they
were called. Satisfied that the thing
was loaded, he snapped it back into place and carried it slowly downstairs.
A great instinct of
uncertainty flared. He didn’t want to
kill his father. He didn’t want to kill
anyone. He didn’t want to die, either. What could he do? Die out in the cold or make a stand. What else?
He would call his father. He
could do that. Maybe another option
would come. Maybe a kind of diplomacy
could win out. He propped the gun
against a wall, walked slowly to the phone in the kitchen and dialed his
father’s number. The five second wait
terrified him. His father’s voice came to his ear hard and impatient. Clearly, he was having a day. Jason heard the airport noise in the
background.
“Hello?” his father
asked. Jason could tell he was
moving. Maybe he was late for one of his
flights. Jason paused. His life could still go another way. No, it couldn’t.
“It’s me,” he grumbled
lowly. He pressed the phone hard to his
ear until it hurt.
“I didn’t hear you. Who is this?” his father irritably and
distractedly responded.
“It’s me!” Jason shouted.
“Are you in my house?
Where are you? If you’re in my house,
get the hell out now!”
In that moment, Jason
committed to blowing his father away.
His father’s anger made it a done deal.
His forceful and concentrated reply came as he bobbed his head
excitedly.
“Yeah, I’m in your house, mother fucker, and I’ll be
in your house when you get here because I’m going to blow your fucking head
off! You better call the cops to save
your ass or come armed because I am.
I’ve got your gun.”
The pause on the other
end lasted for several seconds, leaving only the airport noise audible. Jason imagined his father’s shock and
surprise over the connection. He reveled
in it. The phone on the other end
clicked off. Jason felt the overwhelming
exhilaration of terror and adrenalin.
The die had finally been cast.
Now it was a matter of going through the final motions.
He meant everything he
said. it. It all ended there. A violent reckoning joyfully marked the end
of the misery his life had become. He
envisioned his father’s head exploding with a blast of the shotgun, leaving
nothing but a headless, mangled corpse.
No more family, no more future, no more worries. No more freedom but who cares about freedom
in the world when you don’t even have freedom in your own mind? He just wanted to relax, wanted the pain to
go away and stay away. Just done with it
ALL. That meant he had to do what he had
to do to save his life. If that meant
life in prison, so be it.
He toted the
gun around for a few minutes like a neurotic hunter. Legally, the term “temporary insanity”
described him perfectly. If a knock came
at the door, he’d blow a hole in it without hesitation, whether he thought his
father there or not.
He paced into the
kitchen, went to the kitchen sink, and splashed water on his face. Breathing deeply, he smelled alcohol for the
second time that day. His nose guided
his eyes to a glass of dark brown whiskey on the countertop. The smell of the glass reeked of
memories. Never having known his mother
due to her death early in his life, the only parental experience he’d had
consisted of fatherly contact and there’d been very little of that as his father
frequently moved them around in his job as an airline pilot as Jason grew up,
taking different routes that made his father a global traveler; Jason,
meanwhile, largely grew up in different daycare centers in different cities all
over the country. In his travels,
Jason’s Dad had amassed a large, impressive collection of foreign liquor from
all over the globe. Since he’d been old
enough to comprehend such things, Jason had identified his father as a hard
drinking man. As both men got older,
Jason’s Dad began to settle down, taking fewer and fewer long distance routes
while spending more time around his growing son. Jason couldn’t remember a time spent with his
father when the man didn’t have a drink in his hand, a dark brown substance
that smelled of alcohol. At first, it
supplemented what good times they had, times when they were able to laugh and
have fun and his father could pat him on the back after some accomplishment at
school, whether academic or athletic.
Then, Jason began to feel badly and function badly towards the end of
high school. Then, the laughs turned to
subtle, cutting remarks, remarks of disappointment from his father for Jason
not getting the job done in whatever fashion, usually academic or social, the
latter coming from getting into a few fights at school, fights that landed him
in detention for short periods. His
father became angry and Jason became angry.
Whatever harmony existed between the two men faded; Jason’s father
increasingly saw him as a loser, someone that had had every advantage and
seemed committed to ruining it all; Jason increasingly saw his father as a
drunken old abuser, a man that wasn’t there for his upbringing and had no right
to challenge or insult him in any matter due to his track record of
achievement, much less over matters that occurred when Jason tried at something
but couldn’t succeed because he didn’t feel well. Every time, the cutting remarks and insults
came from a man with a glass full of that dark brown fluid in his hand, that
damn whiskey that turned decent men into abusive monsters. Then came the occasional shoving
matches. The dark brown liquid went from
hand to table then back to hand when it was over, Jason double teamed by his
father and a distiller of poison, a poison he never drank and swore he never
would.
His mind returned to the
present. His father had left but the
dark brown liquid, it’s rich color and foul stench Jason had come to associate
with everything vile and detestable, remained.
The reflected sun from the kitchen window made it look sublime, its
power to destroy the families of men majestic as the golden light made the
liquid a gorgeous, deep amber. Stinking
of almost holy success, it whispered the taunts of a million victories.
With fury, he grabbed it
and threw it as hard as he could towards the light, trying to hit and shatter
the sun, succeeding only in cracking the window and shattering the whiskey
glass into a dozen pieces that flew in every direction, a few of the tiniest
hitting him in the face near his eyes, a splash of the stinking, stinging
liquid splashing his face and shirt.
Enraged like the liquor was his own blood, he whipped his head towards
his father’s immense liquor cabinet which took up most of the wall across from
the kitchen in a small dining room.
Moments later, he violently jerked open its two large doors. Before him were dozens and dozens of bottles
of every shape crammed into every crevice in a rainbow of colors, some
expensive, others not. Though his father
usually only drank whisky, he collected everything else. German Lager, Australian Ale, various kinds
of Schnapps from Austria and Switzerland, vodka from Sweden and Russia, Mexican
Tequila, rum from the Caribbean, Kentucky Bourbon, gin from England and France,
Scottish whiskey, rice wine from Japan and China and many others, all picked up
from the many years of travel his father had logged as a pilot. A World War lay in front, enemies from dozens
of countries across the globe lined up against him. Time to strike a blow for his freedom.
Picking up a bottle of Kentucky bourbon, unaware and
uncaring of its cost, he hurled it against the living room wall as hard as he
could, the bottle exploding like a detonated hand grenade, the liquor
splattering like paint pitched from a brush.
Bottle after bottle followed; most broke on the same wall, some slammed
into the ceiling, some of the thicker bottles thudded off and landed unbroken
on the sandy, carpeted floor. A bottle
of tequila cracked the living room’s one window. A very expensive bottle of French Cognac
followed and smashed a large hole in the window’s lower right side. Grabbing a delicate container of Scotch, he
set it down gently and put the heel of his shoe right through it, shattering it
easily, ignoring the pain of a broken shard that slashed his lower calf. The carnage continued for the next ten
minutes until all the bottles but one, a bottle of Jamaican Rum, were
destroyed. The pulverized walls and
ceiling reeked with thousands of dollars of substances while the thick carpet
drowned in saturation like the massacre of a defeated army saturates the earth
with rivers of blood.
Jason took the bottle of
Jamaican Rum and the gun and sat down on the floor, his back propped against
the wall facing the front door, the gun in his lap. He’d never had a drink in his life; not one
beer, not one glass of wine. Now, he
didn’t care. Ripping the cap off, he
chugged half the bottle then poured the rest over his head, running it through
his hair and over his face, laughing the entire time as the cream oozed down
his chin and to the carpet in tiny drops.
He laughed uncontrollably at the absurdity of it then paused and began
to cry. His body bucked and his chest
ached as hot tears flooded copiously and made tracks in the fresh cream that
thinly caked his face. Gasping
uncontrollably, he lowered his head until it touched the gun’s steel
frame. Absurdity bred humor. Horror pushed both out. Horror grew from pain. He snorted runny snot back into his nose then
wiped it and his eyes with his left hand as he cradled the gun in his right. He
took several moments to collect himself, breathing deeply, until he became
calm.
The calm only lasted a
moment. His uncontrolled moods flared
back into agitation and rage. He
transitioned back to warrior, killer, destroyer. He became less focused on his last stand and
fixated on making it his father’s. He
stood, seized in a fresh ecstasy of terror and bloodlust, his panicked mind
incapable of pulling him back from the edge.
His right hand closed hard on the shotgun’s handle. His left hand closed hard on the barrel. Focused on the front door, he envisioned the
man that would be walking through it, the man he had long ago loved as fully as
a devoted son could, the man he looked up to as the god of all things, the man
he trusted to guide and support him the whole way. All gone, never to be again. Now, only the reckoning remained, all
accounts settled with buckshot, death and prison.
So be it, he assured himself a final
time.
The
next few minutes passed in one count of time eternal; three knocks then came to
the front door.
He’s here...
Mad joy came in the
moment. Jason glided to the door,
shotgun in his right hand. He opened the
door with his left. Four men in black
body armor and black helmets ringed the driveway in two tiers just beyond the
door; all four men pointed assault rifles at Jason’s head. Four fingers on four triggers readied.
“Put the gun down!” the
man nearest him boomed.
Jason
had reached the biggest crossroads of his life.
Raise it. Just a little and it’s over…he pleaded with himself.
The
survival instinct struck again. The
warrior failed, defeated, humiliated, captured.
“Whoa! Whoa!” Jason
called reflexively, lowering the gun gently to the floor then raising his
hands. He hadn’t chosen life. He had chosen to avoid death.
“Down on your knees,
hands on top of your head!” the man nearest shouted as he advanced. Jason lowered his head and closed his eyes as
his hands were twisted behind his back.
An infinite darkness engulfed him.
EPILOGUE
And so, four of our black
snowflakes, four of the dreaded few, came home, the home where dying minds
burned in Earthly torment, the building a mausoleum, the rooms graves, the beds
tombstones. For some, the journey ends
there. The promises of childhood, the
moments of laughter, the hopes of life and love to come, the moments of
happiness when life seemed livable, a future possible, dashed forever, lost
stories never to be told, lives lost in the annals of time.
For
others, including our foursome, there was hope, hope that partially came from
youth, their brains not given time to progressively deteriorate from unchecked
black snow, the filthy levels of mental illness. With medication, counseling and proper coping
skills, they all had chances to breathe, probably not able to live the lives
they wanted, the kind of social interactions and victories dreamed of by most,
but able to live, nonetheless. For the
most cursed, the place was death. For
those with a chance, the place was hope.
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