Boy Trips Man- Glistening, March, Convulse Fergus stood above Hela. A solemn curtain over his rabbit face.

"So the cop came into Clarke's and told me to move it along. This cop was big. Named Hoffman, a German. And Germans are evil. Designed to kill." Fergus raised his palms, preacher style. "I looked up into his beady, blue eyes and deep inside the pupil, I saw the demon. A silver-skinned beast with glistening red eyes. It waved its pointy tongue at me. And my purpose was clear.”

"Which was what?" Hela asked with one eyebrow raised.

"To save Clark and Belmont from the demons! The demons who had dwelt there for so long!"


A crowd of patients drifted toward the fervor of Fergus' declarations. Elena sat on the tile at Fergus' feet, with her black hair over one shoulder, like the Biblical whore with the alabaster jar. Mona and Markus sat on vinyl chairs on either side of Hela. A few of the zombies detoured their pacing so they could stumble past Fergus and listen.

"My purpose was clear," he continued, "when the shining blue angel appeared in the restaurant window with a saber in each hand. The angel winked at me. Then Hoffman came at me with the cuffs. I could feel the evil coming from him and as a reflex I threw my foot in his path.”

Hela grinned. Elena gasped. Both leaned toward Fergus with wide eyes.

“His ankle caught mine and he fell on the floor with his arms knocking cups from some tables. Broken glass all over the place. Then I realized, “Holy shit! I’ve just tripped a cop!” and ran to the door, but it was way too late. His backup had arrived. They wrestled me to the ground and slammed my head against it a couple of times, then took me down to the station and that’s how I ended up at County, where I found God.”
“That’s it?” Hela sneered.
“What do you mean, “that’s it?” I broke a cop’s ankle! A German cop! And those Germans are indestructible!”


“Ouhhh! What is…euuuu!” Bandana caught a wiff of Leslie as she paced past the nurse’s counter.

“Every day, your name is the same.” Leslie sang dreamily, inflectionless, in a soft and throaty baby voice as she paced the perimeter of the dayroom. “Every day, your name is the same. Every day, your name is the same.”

There should be a hospital-wide pacing Olympics. Different categories. A category for Markus-like strutting. For angry, crack zombie twitch-stalking, like that of Suzy and Anabelle. A Special Pacing Olympics for those who pace in wheelchairs, like Smit and Milton. The power-walk of Elena and Hela when they decide they feel floppy. The bent-wrist, stumbling t-rex pacing category would have a stiff tie between Carol and Leslie.

Leslie had been rotting around here, un-bathed in those same gowns for about 2 weeks now. So yeah, she did smell like shit. And like the cold canned beans the hospital served up on styrofoam plates for at least one meal each day; like spilled liquid Haldol, sterile and stinging; like dirty cunt.

Leslie stopped her pacing and turned toward Bandana. “I w’s j’st, I was just wunning some fabric. I really like,” she paused and smiled, “fabric.”

“FABric!” Bandana said as if the word were a personal insult, her nostrils flared. She grit her jaw. “I’ll give you 5 minutes and if I don’t hear that water running, security give you a shower!”

But Leslie kept on pacing. Singing, “Every day, your name is the same.” An infantile look to her puffy cheeks and bull-legged stance contradicted her swollen, motherly basketball breasts.

“That’s it!” Bandana growled and pressed the red button on the phone in front of her.
It was around 11, so Alicia was just waking up for a shower before lunch. Stumbling into the dayroom, rubbing her eyes, rubbing out her nighttime Valium. Alicia yawned and plucked a clean, but grayish towel from the stack at the edge of the nurse’s counter. She sauntered groggily to the shower room as two female security guards stomped up to Leslie, mid-pace.

It actually didn’t take much for them to get her into the shower. They just lead her by the forearms, steering her as she paced and asked them, “C’ni, can I have some fabric?”


Mona slid her thin lips into a quivering grin. Her lumpy, old pelvis rocked slightly forward and backward.
“Mona, you’re practicing your kegels, aren’t you?” Elena giggled.
“Mmmm…um…maybe.” Mona replied and let her eyelids flutter shut.
“What’s a kegel?” Hela asked.
“You know, there are muscles inside your pussy. When you push ‘em forward and squeeze, it’s called a kegel. It makes you better in bed.” Elena began to breathe heavy. “And it feels good!”

Hela kegeled. The moisture slipping and pounding inside her. She thought of her master’s hot, thick hand around her neck and cock shoving far and tight up her ass. And of Dr. Littleboy, Scrabble games and how he could fuck her in restraints. Of course, of Alicia’s tiny fingers tickling her clit in the sparkling summer morning, when even the metal bars on the bedroom window can’t block out the sun.


A shriek in the shower room. “You brush up against me and touch me and you ain’t got no pannies on, and that ain’t right!” Leslie’s whine echoed off the tile walls. Followed by Alicia’s cackle.
Hela and Elena laughed at that as they kegeled.
“I- I didn’t forget, you reached over my food yesterday.” Leslie went on. “You reached over my food. ’N you look better with clothes on.”
Alicia left the bathroom, in fresh gowns with a towel over her head, which was funny because she’s bald.
When Alicia got to the dayroom, Hela asked her, “Wanna learn how to kegel?”


8/3
7:20pm
Dayroom

Mona sits beside me. She smells like pee.
“I have a problem, Hela.” she says.
“What kind of problem?” I ask.
“I don’t want to go to sleep, tonight.”
“Why’s that?”
“Last night, at about 1:30 in the morning, I wet my bed. I had to change the sheets. How do ya like that?”
Ahh!
“That does sound like a serious problem.” I say, pretending I’m psychologist Kelly.
“It’s my kidneys.” Mona points to her sides. “25 years of Lithium therapy. Now I only have 25 percent kidney function. I don’t know if I’ll have to wear Depends at night, or what.”
Eeeee!


8:30pm
Bedroom

I am heavy asleep beneath that piece of paper, sorry-ass excuse for a blanket. Head is covered.
The blanket is torn from my body. A wave of cold. My eyes pop open. There is a creature with a face of leather and wild, white worms for hair above me. Ahh! It’s Carol.
She clamps her chilly fingers around my wrist and pulls me from the bed, to the nurse’s counter.
“Nancy, time fo’ yo’ medication.” Carol says to me.
“That not Nancy!” Bandana protests. “Who is she?”
“It’s Hela.” Fergus says.


One of those plastic, sectioned-off boxes that young girls keep their beads in, fishers keep their tackle in, held the chemical bits of color, which sugared and baked the minds of the patients in the D-North ward.

Every patient had their own partition of the pillcase. Each with a name, typed and taped to the side of the plastic square. Some squares were brimming, stacked to the top, like the one that said MONA LAWRENCE. Not only holding mood stabilizers and anti-psychotics, it also had synthetic thyroid hormone, a potassium supplement, blood pressure pill, stool softener and multivitamin.

The section that said ELENA CHIN was less crowded, carrying only a high dose of bright purple anti-psychotic and a birth control pill. Hela’s had just a medicine cup full of liquid Valporic Acid, for now. They didn’t trust her not to tongue her pill and spit it out into the toilet. Or let Alicia take it, instead.

“Hey Hela, are you German?” Fergus asked as Hela held her nose and poured the red goo to the back of her throat.
She gulped and shuddered. “Maybe…”
“I only take the Sweet Tarts. These are Starburst. I don’t take the Starburst.” Leslie said to Bandana, pointing at her section of the pillcase.
“Can I have some water to go with mine?” Fergus asked Bandana.
“These aren’t my Sweet Tarts.”
“Take ‘em anyway!”
“Can I have some water?”
“You see anybody else with water?”
“I don’t take the Starburst.”
“Take ‘em anyway.”
“Okay…”
“I need some water, these things get stuck in my throat…”
“I took the Starburst, miss.”
“Good.”


8/4
10am
Dayroom

It turns out Leslie was right. Those weren’t her pills that Bandana made her take, last night. She’s been in bed all morning. I hear she’s having convulsions. Foaming at the mouth and shaking, with her eyes rolled back into her head. I wish I could sneak in and see, but Nurse Turtle Jean is there. I also heard that Bandana got fired. Horray!
  ¶ 11:59 AM