First Night I'm back!
Out of summer boredom, have un-abandoned the mess of a novel that is Happy Hour.
This is a rewrite of a rewrite of a chapter that was one called "Fergus".
Enjoy!
**

I saw Crystelle on the blue line, the other day. I didn’t recognize her at first. Not in that bright red, terrycloth sweat suit, with a neat black layer of fuzz on her head. No, I’m used to seeing her in a hospital gown, her scalp as bald as the moon. So I wasn’t sure if the girl I saw was really Crystelle. I watched her cling to the pole by the door, her meaty thighs swaying, back and forth with the rhythm of the train.

She was short and dark and strong like Crystelle, but I didn’t know it was her until I noticed the eye. That awesome eye: cloud white, without a colored spot or pupil. The eye I used to love to run the tip of my tongue across when the nurses weren’t looking. So slick and salty. Mmm.

Crystelle didn’t see me watching her from the other side of the train car. In my head I wrestled with the idea of getting up from my seat, walking over and saying, “Hey Crystelle, what’s up? How you been since you left the loony bin? Great! I’ve been good, too. Still taking my meds…”

But I knew it wouldn’t go like that. We’d probably both feel horribly awkward if we talked here on the train, as creatures free to enter and exit the sliding el doors as we please. Because we’d only remind each other of the time when we couldn’t, when all doors were locked around us, indefinitely.

This is Washington, the recorded el voice said in his canned enthusiasm. Crystelle got off the train and strode down the stairs to the red line, disappeared below the platform. I was relieved of the inner debate. I had lost my chance to say hi to my loony bin lover, to prove to myself those blurry months at the state hospital really happened and it wasn’t just a trick of my mind.

The train clicked away from the station, the lights of the tunnel flashing, like it was a moving nightclub. I continued my ride up the blue line to Wicker Park, where my boyfriend lives. And yeah, I said boyfriend, not girlfriend or Master. A lot has changed since last summer, when I went nuts. When I saw the net of hexagons spread across the ceiling of my room at Master’s house and the worms slithered out from the 6-sided divides. When the Lake said to jump in her waves and drown and the cops found me howling, naked on the beach. That stuff doesn’t happen anymore.

Most days, I feel sane, a little numb from the mood stabilizers I swallow each morning. But for the rest of the train ride after seeing Crystelle, I was haunted by the lingering muscle memory of what it’s like to be captive: the stiffness of your skin, the painful clenching of your lungs, an inner throbbing, like your spirit is madly pounding at the walls of your body and trying to flee. That’s what it’s like when you don’t hold the key to your exit. That feeling brought me back to the night I met Crystelle.
**

It was my first night at the state hospital. Snacktime. The patients were standing in line for apples. It was such a normal thing for such a strange place. I mean, they could’ve been waiting at a supermarket checkout counter, if it weren’t for their gowns and slippers.

Since I was new, I’d been given my apple first and was sitting alone at a table next to the line of patients. The eating room wasn’t much, just a few round tables and stackable chairs, like a miniature school cafeteria.

That whole place looked like a school: tile floors, institutional yellow walls, fluorescent lights. I watched the line of patients and realized that like in school, they were broken away into cliques. There was a clique of young men at the back of the line. Their eyes were hard, but fatigued. Tornadoes trapped in pill bottles. I could tell they were tough motherfuckers before they got put here. A clique of old ladies stood in front of them, their shoulders and faces twitching from decades of anti-psychotic meds.

At the front of the line were two young women. One was a pretty black girl, around my age. Short and bald, she had this violent energy swimming around her. Yep, that was Crystelle. Her smile flashed like a city skyline dipped in venom. She seemed like she didn’t mind being locked up, the way she laughed and joked with the other patients in line. One of her eyes was all white, a milky marble floating in its socket. I thought that was cool. I’ve got a thing for eyeballs. I wondered if Crystelle liked girls. Something about the mental hospital always made me horny. Hell, something about everything made me horny, back in those days.

The woman next to Crystelle was a little older, maybe in her 30’s. She had ivory skin contrasting her long, black hair and I wondered where her 7 dwarves were. The nurse at the front of the line handed her a crisp, red apple. I wanted to yell out, “Don’t eat it, Snow White! It’s poisoned!” But instead the woman cradled it in her palms, like a trophy and gave her acceptance speech.

“I’d like to thank Dr. Littleboy for prescribing my Xanax, Nurse Bigfoot for this lovely apple and you, Crystelle,” she turned toward the girl with the cool eye, “for waiting with me in line.” the woman wiped a fake tear from her cheek. “Thank you, thank you all.” She spun on her slippered feet, her hair whipped her shoulders, her bathrobe trailed behind her like a ball gown. I could tell she was the queen of this place.

Crystelle, the guys at the back of the line, and even the old ladies all burst out in a wild fit of cackles at the Queen’s acceptance speech. Being locked up sort of frees you of certain inhibitions. Why not laugh like a loon? Everyone already knows you’re crazy.

The big, blonde nurse, who I guessed was Nurse Bigfoot yelled, “Quiet down, or no movie on Friday!” She handed Crystelle an apple and Crystelle, still giggling, followed the Queen toward the tables.

I was hoping they’d sit with me. I needed attention, conversation, interaction to prove to that I still existed. Even when I was locked up and drugged, basic parts of my personality remained: my need to be at the center of the action, to be on display, to have everyone like me and want to fuck me. Later, Dr. Littleboy would tell me I have Borderline Personality Disorder and that’s why I brought home strange men I met on the el train, why I gave myself to my Master and why I would hallucinate.
With a swish of her bathrobe/ball gown, the Queen settled into a chair at the table next to mine. She motioned for Crystelle to join her. They raised their apples to their mouths and bit. I smiled cutely at them and kind of waved, but they didn’t wave back. Instead, they studied me with crooked expressions, like I was a science project or a museum exhibit. The Queen laughed and said something I couldn’t hear. But I read one word on her ruby lips: shot.

I knew they were talking about me. I’d been given a shot that afternoon. I didn’t fight it and make the nurses call the guards to restrain me. I calmly bent over and let them slide the needle into my butt. I was too tired from the Lake, the cop station and the ambulance ride to struggle.

All new patients get a shot, since they’re usually pissed and ranting, “I don’t belong here! Let me go!” The shot makes you too groggy to care about anything, too groggy to be crazy. It makes your muscles loose like boring penises and your mind blank. Like, it didn’t seem to register in my head that for the next few months, my entire world would be limited to this hospital ward, these few rooms and I’d be video-monitored 24/7 by unforgiving, psychiatric eyes.

But I wasn’t seeing any hexagons or worms and I couldn’t hear the Lake calling me, anymore. At least the shot was good for that.

And I can understand now why Crystelle and the Queen laughed at me. At that point, I probably looked all fucked up and loopy with my eyeliner smeared raccoon style, fading blue hair and blood-shot eyes, tattoos peeking out from beneath the sleeves of my hospital gown. A freak dethroned, a prized sex-toy stolen and then tranquilized. My vanity, my ego was blocked.

I can explain it this way: I was a just a creature, then. A violent, but pacified creature. A zoo tiger, or a caged eagle. A creature enjoying her prey, the way her teeth broke the crispy skin of an apple. That single act of violence on that shiny piece of fruit was all I knew and had ever known, in that moment. The crunch, the separation of the apple’s molecules echoed throughout my bones and foggy head. The sweetness of the fruit juice tickled the inside of my lip piercing. I couldn’t care much about anything else but the apple. Not about if Crystelle and the Queen wanted to be my friends, not about if Master was mad or hurt that I was gone, not about if the Lake was disappointed that I didn’t drown in her, after all. My mind was too foggy to focus.

When I finished my apple, I peeled my elbows from the sticky table, meandered around the line of patients, eliciting lusty, glazed-eye stares from some of the younger guys. I guess I looked hot, even in a hospital gown. I tossed my apple core in the trash and headed down the hallway, toward the dayroom.
**

The dayroom is called the dayroom because it’s where you spend most of your day, in the loony bin. Being a state funded hospital, the dayroom was simple, barebones. There was a U-shape of wooden chairs with vinyl cushions, like those in a doctor’s waiting room, only bolted to the floor so patients couldn’t heave them at nurses’ heads while in a psychotic rage. A table was also bolted to the floor, in the middle of the U-shape of chairs.

On top of it was a small and ancient TV set, with rabbit ear antennas. It flicked back and forth between an infomercial and two shiny looking reporters. It slices, it dices, it fshhhhh… warehouse fire on the southwest side, we join Dan Marco on the scene fshhh… save up to 80 dollars a year on kitchen utensils fshhhhh… it’s blazing up good, Carrie. The infomercial man carved a raw potato into a perfect spiral, which faded into flashing fire trucks, then back to a lovely plate of French fries. My stomach gurgled. That apple was not enough.

I plopped down on one of the chairs. A mildew smell rose up from it. I watched the TV. My shot hadn’t worn off yet, so I was still too numb to mind how the screen flashed between two stations. In fact, it made perfect sense to me. The slicing-dicing potato machine and the warehouse fire were definitely connected in some way. The other patients watching the TV seemed to realize that, too: a few old fogies, too crazy and tired and drugged up to stand in the apple line with the others. They nodded and drooled at the potato machine and the fire.

The infomercial’s 1-900 number faded to an image of the burning warehouse and an old Latina woman next to me yelled out, “Jorge, mijo Jorge!” and I knew I’d find the secret soon, how the potato machine caused the fire, when a voice behind me said, “There comes a point when you’re eating state apples and watching a broken TV and you tell yourself, never again.”

I whipped my head backwards to find the source of the voice. It was a young guy, tall with buckteeth and gold eyes. A nightmare bunny standing behind my chair.
“And then it always happens again.” he went on. “You always end up back in the dayroom.”

“Oh yeah? You come here a lot?” I answered, without really looking at him. My eyes had gone back to the flickering TV screen. Fire, potato machine.

“Yup, it’s my 7th time!” the guy said, as if he was proud of it.

“It’s my first.” I said.

“Really? First time here? You look a lot more crazy than that.” He grinned and his buckteeth seemed to grow. They were vicious, bloodthirsty. Animal teeth. Despite my chemical calm from the shot, I felt threatened.

“Who are you to call me crazy?” I snapped. “You’re stuck in here, too.”

“I’m Fergus, the task force against evil. I keep evil out of Chicago.” he beamed.

“What the hell?”

“Let me ask you something, blue-haired girl.”

“My name is Aqua Lula.” I lied. It’s not my real name, but the name the Lake called me when she asked me to drown inside her.

“Okay, Lula, let me ask you something. What if you get out of this hospital and go to a party and this group of people, these well-dressed beautiful people come up to you and they say they’ll give you anything you want, if you let them put their mark on your wrist. Would you do it?” Fergus touched his wrist and widened his gold eyes.

“What kind of question is that? They could get me anything I want? I guess I’d do it.”

Fergus’ frowned and shook his head. “It’s been nice talking with you, Lula. I don’t think I’ll be talking with you anymore.” He began to walk away.

“Wait!” I called. I didn’t want to be alone again. “It’s just a little mark on your wrist. What’s wrong with that? I bet you’d do it.”

“I did.” Fergus thrust his wrist in my face and I saw the rosy, cross shaped-scar. Then he grabbed the back of my chair and leaned toward me. “Hey, you look so familiar. Did you used to hang out by Clark and Belmont? I think I’ve seen you there.”

I rolled my eyes. He’d just given me the all purpose pick-up line for goth/punk/freak chicks in Chicago. It’s a safe assumption that a girl with blue hair, tattoos and a lip ring has hung around Clark and Belmont before.

“I was involved with some bad people down there.” Fergus continued. “You remind me of them. You have those kind of shadows in your eyes.”

“What kind of shadows? What do you mean?” I rubbed my eyes. My fingers were smudged in black make-up.

“Have you heard of the restaurant, Clarkes?” Fergus changed the subject.

“Yeah…”

“I broke a cop’s ankle there.”

“Sweet!” I smiled. Maybe he wasn’t trying to hit on me, after all.

Behind him, an old woman limped out of her bedroom. Her lips pumped up and down, sucking on her empty gums. Wild, white clumps of hair sprung from her head. She had her gown undone in back. I was surprised at how firm her old, brown butt cheeks were. Curly, white fuzz surrounded the crack.

Fergus heard the stick-stick of the old woman’s bare feet on the tile floor and turned around to watch her. The patients in the chairs around me did, too. I got the impression this woman served as the hospital entertainment.

“I run outa pannies. I need some pannies! Size 9 Hanes. Some pannies.” The woman barked at Nurse Bigfoot, who had finished handing out the apples and was now at the nurse’s counter, pouring Haldol into little, plastic cups. It was almost medication time.

“Miss Carol, get back in your room and I’ll bring you some panties.” Nurse Bigfoot said.

Right then, Crystelle and the Queen stepped into the dayroom and stood by the nurse’s counter. They noticed Miss Carol and her undone gown and were howling and slapping their thighs.

“Ohh man, there she goes again!” Crystelle said to the Queen. I gushed between my legs at the sight of Crystelle’s colorless eye, shining under the fluorescent lights like a magical hard-boiled egg.

“I need some pannies. Some pannies. Size 9 Hanes.” Miss Carol repeated and hobbled back to her bedroom. Fergus returned his spacey gaze to me.

“So tell me about the cop.” I asked him.

“Well, I was involved with the Satanic ministry.” Fergus touched the slug-like scar on his wrist. “But then I found Christ.”

“Oh.” I said, disappointed.

“I spent two years in Cook County jail. It seemed God used to favor me. That the strength of my light could burn away the demons, but now…” he trailed off.

“Yeah?” I asked half-heartedly. My thoughts drifted to my Master. I pictured him searching all over for me: in the dungeon, in the coffin, under the bed. Lines of worry and rage pinched his glassy blue eyes. He probably thought I ran away. I wished I could tell him I didn’t, that I never would. I was captured.

“I don’t know if you know this.” Fergus lowered his voice. “But the Beast is growing under Belmont.”

“The Beast?”

“And Satan’s staying at the Abbott Hotel. I went over to visit him, once.”

“And?”

“He told me to go to Clarke’s and spread his word. I was going from table to table and preaching.”

“So what about the cop?”

Fergus grinned, baring his rabbit teeth. “That, I will save for another day. Once you prove yourself to me, Lula.”

“What?”

“Good night.” Fergus said and shuffled toward his bedroom. I noticed the TV had stopped its flickering. It was focused on the infomercial channel, now: a beanpole woman in an ugly, purple leotard was strapped to a torture device/home workout machine.

Behind me, Nurse Bigfoot called, “Everybody line up. It’s medication time.”

I heard the Queen cheer, “Oh goody! Happy hour!”  ¶ 1:53 PM