Happy Hour

First Night

2005-07-01T13:53:00.000-07:00

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!”

I regret to inform my loyal fans..

2005-04-04T18:17:00.000-07:00

I don't think I can really tell this story for another decade or so.

Right now, I am way to close to the main character and haven't had enough adventures of my own to really authentically write a journey-type story, which is what this novel wants to be.

I will pick it up again, one day. I promise

Now back to writing my usual somewhat erotic magical realism.

Start of "Fergus" Rewrite

2005-04-01T14:50:00.000-08:00

The walls were not white there, as you’d expect. They were more of a stale yellow, like a bathtub that had hosted too many golden showers.

It was my first night. It was snack time. I was at a table in the eating room, munching on an apple, still numb from the shot I’d been given earlier. My muscles were all loose like boring penises. I didn’t even care where I was. I was just a girl in a hospital gown, enjoying the way an apple’s skin was breaking beneath her teeth.

Of course I had these images in my head of Master stomping through the warehouse, opening every closet and coffin. Dropping down to his knees to look for me under the bed or under a table. He’d think I was hiding, that’s all. Trying to earn myself a spanking. I wanted to let him know that I was captured. I would never run away.

I could’ve asked the nurses to let me use the phone. But there was a crooked line of patients waiting in front of them to get their apples. I watched three ladies at the front of the line. One had her bathrobe draped around her shoulders like a cape. She was almost regal, tugging a plastic comb through her long, black hair. The woman behind her was older, gray-haired with gigantic glasses covering half her cheeks. She kept tensing her shoulders up like she was really nervous. Then there was a girl who looked about my age. She was dark and bald and she had this smile that popped right off her face. I noticed that one of her eyes had no pupil. It was all white. Just a milky marble under fluorescent lights.

The three women chatted like they were secretaries at a water cooler. Well, secretaries on lots and lots of anti-psychotic meds. Not thrilled to be where they were, but smiling still. And twitching a little. And wearing booties with rubber pieces on the feet, so they wouldn’t slip on the dirty tile floor.

The nurse passed an apple to the black-haired lady and she accepted it proudly, gently, like she was winning a trophy. With her shoulders held high and her chin up, holding the apple like it was fragile. She turned for the tables and I had three empty chairs at mine. I was hoping her and the other two would sit with me. They all seemed safe enough. And I can’t stand eating alone.

But she sat somewhere else. The old lady and the girl with the cool eye sat with her. I decided to finish my apple quickly, then go in the dayroom.

In the dayroom, there was a u-shape of chairs, all the same. Wooden and heavy with blue, vinyl cushions that smelled like mildew. A few patients were sitting in there. Others were pacing around the perimeter of the room. At the center of the chairs was a little TV. It flickered back and forth between static and two shiny looking reporters. I sat down and watched. “Warehouse fire,” one said, “on Chicago’s South Side. We join Dan Marco on the scene.”

“Thank you, Carrie. This 8-alarm fire has been raging since 3 this afternoon…” It took a second for the shock to trickle through my body, washing my muscles numb. My lungs sped up. I dug my fingernails into my palms and bit my lip, but it wasn’t until I tasted blood did I fully realize that it was Master’s place on the screen.

I jumped because, right then 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 glanced behind me. It was a young guy with buck teeth and gold eyes. “And then it always happens again.” he went on.

“Oh. You come here a lot?” I answered, without really looking at him. I was too fascinated with watching my home on fire.

“Yup. It’s my 7^th time.” He said, as if he was proud of that, or something and sat down next to me.

“Oh. It’s my first time.” I said and sucked more blood from my lip. I started to picture the whips and dildos in Master’s warehouse melting. Was Master in there? Do chains melt?

“Really? First time here? You look a lot more crazy than that.” The guy said.

“Who are you to tell me that?” I snapped and forgot all about the burning warehouse.

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

I laughed. “What the hell?”

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

“I’m Hela.”

“Okay, Hela, 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 tell you they’ll give you anything you want, if only you let them put their mark on your wrist. Would you do it?” Fergus touched his wrist.

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

Fergus’ lips drooped over his big, front teeth. “It’s been nice talking with you, Hela. I don’t think I’ll be talking with you again.” He got up from the chair.

“What? 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. He sat back down. “Hey, you look so familiar. Did you used to hang out by Clark and Belmont?”

“Yeah, sometimes.” I thought back to when I was homeless there and how Master found me and took me to the warehouse. The burning warehouse.

“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.”

I wondered what kind of shadows he meant. I wondered where Master was. Did he get out of the fire on time? Did he start it?

“You know that restaurant, Clarke’s?” Fergus asked.

“Yeah…”

“I broke a cop’s ankle there.”

“What? Why? And how?” I smiled. Maybe this guy was sort of cool, after all.

Behind him, an old woman limped out of her bedroom. She had her gown undone in back. I was surprised at how firm her old, brown butt cheeks were. Not a dimple of cellulite or a stray hair.

Fergus heard the stick-stick of her bare feet on the tile floor and turned around to watch her. I got the impression that this woman served as the hospital entertainment.

“I run outa pannies. I need some pannies! Size 9 Hanes. Some pannies.” The woman barked at a tall, blonde nurse, who I’d heard the other patients call Nurse Bigfoot. She was busy pouring Valporic Acid into little plastic cups. It must have been almost medication time.

“Carol, get back in your room and I’ll bring you some panties.” Bigfoot said. Across the dayroom, the three women I had seen in the apple line were cackling loudly.

“I need some pannies. Some pannies. Size 9 Hanes.” Carol said again and hobbled back into her bedroom. Fergus returned his spacey gold eyes 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. One at Elgin. 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 don’t know if you know this.” He lowered his voice. “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. Most people seemed to like what I was saying.”

2005-03-28T18:25:00.000-08:00

Happy Hour rewrites!

Ohh..things are gonna change:
-First of all, this novel should be called "Hela" rather than "Happy Hour", since the latter is a reference to pill time at the hospital. And I have realized that Hela will be in the hopsital for only a short portion of the book. From now on, it is going to focus more on her journey after she breaks out.
-This whole thing will be rewritten in first person. It seems more honest and real that way. It moves quicker, since in 3rd person I have a tendency to detach myself from the characters and overdescribe the scene. I don't know if this 1st person will be directed toward the audience, or if it's Hela talking to an imaginary friend named Vainy Len.
-Alicia's name will be changed to Crystelle. Crystelle and Hela sounds better than Alicia and Hela.
-There will be many more sex scenes.
-Once I named the master Gustav, I truly knew him. He is an awe-inspiring, yet comical German dude who is also a total creep, but you're not supposed to know that yet.
-His friend who they hide with is not John. I don't like that guy. In the re-write, they will hide with Gustav's cousin Rudiger (Rudi for short).
-There are many more changes in my head and my journal, but you'll just have to read them as they come. =)

Okay, now all I have to do is write it. *sigh*

Free!

2005-03-15T17:41:00.000-08:00

***Author's Note: How do you think the 1st person is working here as opposed to the 3rd I've been using so far? Leave a comment..

I couldn’t fucking believe it. He actually did it. My master came to claim me. He actually got me out of that goddamn loony trap. No more dirty walls and bland food and nasty pills.

We ran our asses off. It was hard to do in slippers. We ran through those mazey hospital halls with the guards’ footsteps right behind us, then out the door to this beater car he had stolen and parked out front.

In the getaway car I rolled down the window all the way, stuck my face out and breathed the yummy summer air. At that point, I felt what a bullet does when it pops from the barrel of a gun. A rush of cold and motion. It was all so bright, it was almost cartooney. I watched the roads and houses and trees swish past the window in colorful streaks.

“I should have locked you two in the trunk.” Master said as the wailing of sirens got nearer, like a gigantic squalling infant was stomping our way, crushing parked cars with each barefoot step.

“I can just hear it now.” My master squeezed his nasals shut to do his best Chicago cop impression, “Ehh..he’s a Cahcazhin male, abaht 6 foot 2, turdy yeahs old, wit a twenny yeah old Cahcazhin femayle, a twenny tree yeah old black femayle, boat of um 5 feet tall and wearin’ hahspiddle gahns…”

Alicia and me laughed at that. Alicia asked Master, “Hey man, uh, what’s your name?”

“It’s Gustav. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Get ready girls, we’re gonna ditch this car about…here!” He cut the wheel sharply to the right, stopped the car and leapt from the driver’s seat. I jumped out the car, too, stumbling after Master across a green lawn. They must’ve just watered it, ‘cuz my slippers got soggy.

“Great. I leave them crazies for these crazies!” I heard Alicia say as she shut the car door and ran to catch up with us. She yelped when twigs in the lawn sliced through her slippers and cut her bare feet.

After hopping from backyard to backyard, over picket and wire fences, past scary guard dogs and old ladies in curlers, Master finally quit running. His long legs stopped beneath him like newly dead snakes.

“This is the house. My buddy John lives here. He should be out in a second.” Master pointed up to a white house with peeling paint. A stack of old tires sat next to the rickety porch.

“John? Oh god!” I said. “Alicia, watch out for this dude!” I cringed and curled my lip.

“Whatchu mean?” Alicia grinned. “I be starvin’ for dick!”

“Uh, not this one.”

The screen door of the house swung open. A lumpy figure in a yellowed wife beater now crowded the doorway.

“John, my man, hear those sirens?” Master began, the excitement boiling blue in his gaze. “They’re for us.” He gestured toward me and Alicia. We were still panting from running. The squalling infant noise got louder.

John narrowed his already pinched slits of eyes and leered. “Mmm who’s this here?” He nodded his chin at Alicia.

“That is Alicia. A friend of my dear slave, Hela.” He placed his big, soft hand on my back. I knew I was sparkling under his touch.

“Kay, come on in.” John said in his slight southern accent. He lifted the knob on the screen door. We climbed the porch stairs. A musky stink of dog hair and cigarette smoke slapped me on the nose as we entered the house.

John’s basement was actually pretty cozy, despite the piles of rancid laundry and dog hair all over the couches. Oddly enough, I hadn’t seen or heard the dog yet. Alicia and John were watching the news to see if there was a report about us.

“The first thing we do is get rid of that hair.” Master pointed to my head.

“Can’t we fuck first?” I begged.

Master smiled, making creases shoot from the corners of his eyes. “Hel, that faded red shag you’ve got growing is much too obvious.” He grabbed my arm and led me into the bathroom. On the sink was an electric razor and what I assumed were John’s whiskers dotting the faucet.

Master slapped my ass. “Now bend over. Over the bath tub.” I did as he asked.

Soon, I heard the bumblebee sound of the razor, felt a lightness overwhelm my scalp and watched clumps of matted hair collect in the bathtub below me in cherry-colored bird nests.

Master petted my newly bald head. The tiny hairs on my lower back stood tall. From the warm shock of his fingers, and maybe to compensate for the lack of fuzz on my scalp.

John and Alicia’s eyes ticked back and forth from us to the TV news, then back to us.

I was on my hands and knees, Master pressing my lower back down with one hand and holding his belt in the other. His fat cock glided in and out of my ass with the wetness of poo and spit, from when I had sucked on him just a few minutes before. I felt his hot thighs slap against my ass cheeks with each thrust. My butthole stung as it stretched around his swollen dick.

“I promise, I promise, I’ll never get caught again.” I breathed between screams.

“Mmm… that’s a good little slave.” Master moaned from deep in his chest. His voice was like whisky and chocolate syrup. He moved his hand from my back, reached around my side and began to rub my clit as he fucked my ass. The wetness gushed out of me, all over Master’s fingers and dripped down onto the icky brown carpet.

The tightness in my butt, paired with the pulsing tickle in my clit was too much for me to stand any longer. I felt a hot swelling inside me. Master cracked me on the ass with the belt a few times and the sting was electric.

“Uhaaaahhh!” I squeaked and the childishness of my voice sent me twitching into a massive cum. My clit was exploding. It felt like it was trying to jump off my crotch.

As my body loosened, Master started to fuck me harder and faster. The force of him tossed me around like a doll. My big, soft ass smacked his stomach. He let out a low and animal grunt. A rush of warmth erupted inside my butt, like the sweetest diarrhea. Master slowed down and sighed.

I pooped out his cock. My asshole was deliciously sore. I rose to my rugburned knees, turned around and looked at my master. His mounds of muscles were laced in sun-light hairs. His eyelids were hanging low over his dilated pupils. His chest heaved gently.

“I missed you, Hela.” He said and half-smiled. Then laughed and pointed to the couch.

Alicia was naked and straddling John, who was sitting. Her short, brown legs barely reaching around his pasty, bulging sides. With a grinding of her hips, she bounced up and down on his cock. She noticed me and Master looking.

“I like big boys.” she said and winked.

Master's Visit Part 2

2005-03-03T14:12:00.000-08:00

Carol stumbled from her bedroom, wringing a pair of dirty slippers in her wrinkled hands. “Socks! Socks! I need some!” Carol yelled, then stopped and let her bottom jaw fall, exposing the toothless gumminess of her mouth when she saw the man with the gun in the dayroom.

“Alright loonies, I’m in charge here, now.” Hela’s master held up the tiger striped gun. In his thick arms, the massive barrel seemed almost toy-like. “I want you all to fuck shit up. Fight, throw things, crap on the floor. You’re psychopaths, aren’t you?”

Hela’s master was greeted only with the unison blinking of glazed over eyes. He pointed his gun to the ceiling.

“Move!” he ordered and fired a shot. Flakes of ceiling tile rained down around him.

Markus stood and with his meanest thug face sauntered calmly to the television table, wrapped both arms around the small, black box then lifted it, dropped it, sending it splintering into shards of plastic and glass against the hard floor tiles.

Elena’s eyes lit up like fireworks. Her black hair bounced behind her as she ran to the bookshelf, next to Carol’s bedroom. Elena grabbed handfuls of paperbacks, last month’s tabloids, scribbled-in copies of donated classics and tossed them over her shoulders.

“Yipeee! This is fun! I like the man with the gun!” she cheered and heaved a dictionary behind her with both hands. It bounced off Carol’s nappy, gray head with a smack.

“Hey, you watch it you Chinaman!” Carol barked and threw her dirty slippers at Elena, who chucked more books at Carol in response.

At the counter, Nurse Jean fumbled with the keys on the phone.

“Hands up, hag!” Hela’s master pointed the desert eagle at Jean. She raised her plump arms. Her lips began to tremble. Behind her, an office door opened. Two heads peeked out, blonde ones. It was Dr. Littleboy and psychologist Kelly.

“Hey, how ‘bout you two stay in there.” Master said with a leer. The office door shut. Master surveyed the dayroom. Elena was still throwing books. Markus picked up the VCR and held it above his head. Fergus kicked over a garbage can. Used tissues and papers spilled out of it like a cornucopia.

Master noticed Alicia watching the whole scene, too. Cackling and slapping her thigh. “Oh and you, baldy. " he said to her. "Go stand by the door.”

Alicia stopped laughing and widened her eyes, the colorless one gleaming white like a hard-boiled egg. She said nothing and ran down the hall, through the eating area, to the door where she stood by Hela.

Master stepped behind the nurses counter, said to the now weeping Jean, “Sorry doll, would love to stay and raid your pill box.” He pressed the buzzer, then started for the door, where two girls, one soft and pale, the other dark and buff bounced up and down in a victory dance at the sight of his baseball cap and gun.

Master's Visit (Part 1)

2005-02-28T18:51:00.000-08:00

The guard hit the buzzer. The tall man entered the hospital office: white walls, desk and metal detector. He didn’t wear his leather pants, as Hela had asked. No, this man who faced the metal detector, now wore a baseball cap and corduroys. Somebody’s uncle. A brother. A neighbor. Familiarity’s mascot.

The guard sat behind the desk, hardly looking up from her food as the glass door shut behind the man. She scooped out the insides of her taco with a plastic fork, as if performing some sort of taxidermy, then shoveled the gut-heap of beef and cheese into her mouth.

“Excuse me, sir.” Hela’s master said.

“Sir!?” The guard clamped her hands where her hips should have been. Hela’s master discovered the guard had breasts.

“Pardon me.” He said and curled his lips into a smile, which had never ceased to juice a pair of female panties. “I am here to visit a friend of mine.”

“What unit?” the guard asked, softened by the creamy tenor of his voice.

“D North.”

“Mnh.” The guard flicked a fragment of lettuce from her sparse, red mustache and rose to her feet. “You’ll need to fill out some papers, but first, step through here.”

She positioned herself on the other side of the metal detector. Her squinty brown eyes darting into Hela’s master’s watery, blue ones. Only this plastic rectangle, this hermaphroditic creature in a poo-brown uniform separated Master from Hela. And he would allow no obstructions.

Fluidly, with no words, his hand rose to the guard’s stubble-dotted neck. He closed his thumb and forefingers on her trachea, pressed down firmly, feeling the muscles pump for air beneath his digits, watching the guard’s eyes bulge, then flutter shut.

She fell gently, almost gracefully, onto the dusty tile floor and landed on her side. “Not dead, just fainted.” Hela’s master thought as he stepped around the metal detector.

“’Scuse me, sir?” a guard asked in the hall. “Where you tryin’ to get to?”

“D North.” Hela’s master replied.

“Oh, down there.” The guard pointed over his shoulder, down the blank, white hall with his thumb. “This place is like a maze n’nt it?”

“Yep.”

“Tha’way, all the crazies can’t escape. Heh heh.”

“Wouldn’t want that.” Hela’s master said and started to walk again. Something cold knocked his leg from the inside of his biker boot with each step.

The guard continued down the hall in the opposite direction, toward the office. Both their footsteps clicked and echoed in the empty hallway like a leaky faucet.

Master knew he had about 2 minutes.

“Hela, you have a visitor.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you Snow White. It’s your prince here to wake you up.” Nurse Jean led Hela down the yellow hallway, into the eating area where her master was seated at one of the sticky, round tables. Something bright and alive to mock the dull, worn walls. Hela shrieked and ran toward him, leapt and landed on his lap, nearly knocking him from the chair.

“No touching!” Nurse Jean yelled and rubbed her baggy eyes.

“You heard her.” Hela’s master said sternly.

“But..but..” Hela began. Her master winked. Hela smiled and nodded, knowing this was not the time to misbehave. Nurse Jean waddled out of earshot.

“Hello little sister.” Master crooned.

“Is that what you told them?” Hela slid into a seat across the table from her Master.

“I couldn’t exactly tell them the truth…”

“Yeah. So what’s with the funny get-up? Where’s the gun and the leather pants?” Hela giggled.

Master lowered his tone, “In my boot. And I thought it would be too conspicuous.”

Hela’s face wiped blank, her eyes steamed up like greenhouse windows, her nipples puckered with waves of thrill. “Which one?”

“Tiger stripes.”

Hela pictured her master’s tiger-striped desert eagle .50 wedged beneath the shiny buckle of his boot. “Goodie! That’s my favorite one!”

“Now get to the door and get ready to run.”

Carol's Sermon

2005-01-03T13:56:00.000-08:00

The patients sat like park-pigeons, slumped and rubbing the nighttime meds from their eyes in a room-wide twisting of fingers. The zombies were still too tired for pacing.

Nurse Bigfoot stood from the chair she had placed in front of the television. “Before morning meeting is adjourned, does anyone have a community issue they’d like to bring up?”

Fergus raised one finger. “When’s the doctor coming in? I need to talk to him about my meds.”

“That is a personal issue. Does anyone have a community issue?” Bigfoot interrupted. “Something concerning everyone on the unit.” A twitch waved through the patients beneath the cold of her pinched, blue eyes.

“I…” Carol paused and rose her old frame to the stance of a prehistoric bird, “would like to say a prayer.”

“Oh no!” Elena poked Mona’s arm and grinned.

“God. Wonder what she’s come up with today.” Mona said.

Bigfoot sighed and with a sweep of her palm, cleared the floor. Carol limped to the front and center of the dayroom, morphing it to an altar. Gowns flapping like Biblical robes. Her white fuzz hair glowing gold in fluorescent light. The patients’ eyes were glossy and expecting. Teeth over inner lips to bite down any gathering laughter.

“And now…this morning’s prayer. The human body!” Carol began with a preacher’s breathy forte. She raised her arms. Her gown rolled up her legs like a morning curtain. The patients’ eyes all darted to her thighs, now exposed, ashy brown and bulging with horse-like muscles.

“As I walk along the shores of Galilee…” Carol marched in place and pumped her arms at her sides.

“Good Lord…” Jeffry said.

“I see a body. A human body.” Carol traced two fingers down her temples, down her cheeks, to her neck. “Blood!”

Alicia cackled. Fergus, beside her whispered coarsely, “Don’t laugh!” The patients’ chests all quivered with stifled giggles, as if stuffed with bees. The lights above them flickered.

“Blood! Runs down my face from the crown of thorns on my head.” Carol’s gaze froze, Christ-like and contemplating something far beyond the dayroom, beyond the nurses’ counter. “Blood! Runs from my sides that have been cut open.” Carol clutched her hips.

“Praise the Lord!” called Fergus. Jeffry shook his head.

“My toenails…” Carol threw her palms up again, “are this long!” She bent and ripped the hospital slippers from her feet, unsheathing her two-inch, yellow claws, shining like topaz stones.
The vinyl seats erupted in creaks as the patients’ bodies bounced in shock. Alicia and Hela howled. Elena screamed. Mona’s jaw fell.

“Carol!” Bigfoot pursed her lips not to laugh. “That is a personal issue. We’ll cut your toenails later today.” The overhead lighting flickered again.

Jeffry pointed to Carol’s feet. “No way. That’s a community issue!”

“And that.” Carol folded her hands at her chest and said gently, “is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Amen.”

“Amen!” Fergus said. The patients clapped.

Boy Trips Man- Glistening, March, Convulse

2004-12-13T11:59:00.000-08:00

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!

Fight

2004-12-01T14:31:00.000-08:00

Behind the nurses’ counter, Bigfoot hoisted her huge backpack onto one thick shoulder. It was the end of her shift. A new night nurse showed up at 8, while visitors were chatting with patients out in the eating area. Well, he wasn’t a new nurse as in it was his first day, but new as in I’d never seen him before.

“Slick Andre!” all the patients without visitors called when he strut into the dayroom.

“Why is he “Slick” Andre?” I asked Alicia, since she’d been here before. I stroked the fuzzy stubble on her thigh while Bigfoot’s blonde balloon of a head was turned.

“Just look at him. He slick!” Alicia pointed to the night nurse. Tinted glasses with thick, tortoise shell rims, a black derby hat. Freshly pressed, but not too fancy black suit. Shiny shoes. A cane that I suspect was just for fashion, since he seemed to walk just fine.

Alicia went on, “Slick Andre, he the pimp. He always wearin’ them antique suits. He lets us stay up late and gives us extra snack. He give you extra meds, if you ask.”

“Let’s ask for some Xanax and we’ll have a really fun night.” I snickered. Alicia grinned back at me, a firefly spark in her colorless right eye.

Slick Andre was talking to Bigfoot. Bigfoot gestured toward me and Alicia. “Those are the new girls. Both have sexual issues. Keep them out of the guys’ bedrooms.” I heard her saying in my mind. Ha ha! If only she knew!

Andre waved and nodded. I waved back.

Getting a sip of water was my alibi to snoop. I always liked peeking at everybody’s visitors. I never see Spiderman out of his room, except for if I’m up at 3am. He’ll be out in the dayroom, trying to climb the walls, ignoring Bandana’s screams. Now he’s talking softly, in short Spanish sentences with 2 weeping women, one older, probably his mother and one younger. A sister? A girlfriend?

Queen Elena’s husband had to be the biggest surprise.

“Hey, Hela. Come over here and meet Steve.” she called to me while I sipped from the fountain. Elena’s thin tan arm was linked around the flannel arm of a barrel-chested man in a trucker’s hat. I walked over.

“This is my husband, Steve. Well, we’re not really married, but close enough!” Elena beamed. Steve thrust his long forehead at me in a silent greeting.

“Steve brought us all these good movies.” VHS tapes were stacked on the table before her. “And we can even watch them tonight since Andre is here. Most nurses only let us watch G movies. I wonder why.”

* * *

After the visitors left, it was snack time. Crackers and peanut butter from a tube with apples, this night. Like every night. But since Andre was on duty, there was popcorn, too. The buttery starch aroma perfumed the dayroom, drowning out the med-farts and cherry reek of spilt Valporic Acid syrup. A line of gown-clad patients with watering mouths had formed. Hela was first, then Fergus.

“So what did you think of group today?” Fergus asked Hela, with his face extra pale and pupils dilated.

“I dunno…staring at a box of tea? That’s supposed to be meditation? It just made me think of how badly I’d like a cup of tea.” Hela sucked her tongue and looked up, trying to recall the taste of honey and lemon.

“I thought it was rather helpful.”

“You would.”

“Ever since I found the Lord at County, I find Him everywhere. Even in a box of tea.” Fergus stuck out his bottom lip righteously.

Hela rose then dropped her arms. “See, that’s what I was getting at when we talked before. If there’s a God, it’s more like a spirit of life that’s in everything. That’s what I meant. You see what I mean?”

“I don’t know, Hela. I guess we agree. I think a pig just flew by.”

Their laughter was covered by the snap of a wheelchair footrest hitting a human leg. Did Milton loose it? It’s always the quiet ones… No, it’s Smit.

“Don’t you cut me in line.” Rosa clamped one hand on her hip and swung her foot like an ax to kick Smit on his hurt leg. Smit, with the fluid lunge of an asp from a tree, bounced out of his chair, landing on his good leg and slapped Rosa’s cheek. Elena, standing behind them, coughed out giggles under her hand. Mona, behind Elena, shook her head slowly, gray hair brushing her shoulders.

Slick Andre sauntered between Smit and Rosa. Thrust one palm full of silver rings in either of their faces. “Now, now folks. There’s popcorn for us all.” he cooed.

“But he cut in front of me!” the wrinkles between Rosa’s eyes were taut and deep.

“I got your momma hangin’!” Smit raised a fist.

“Shut up, white boy!”

“I got your momma hangin’!”

“Shut up, white boy!”

Slick Andre rolled his eyes beneath his tinted glasses and rolled Smit’s wheelchair into his bedroom.

“Rosa. Are you okay?” Elena placed a hand on Rosa’s shoulder.

“I got your momma hangin’!” Smit called out from his bedroom.

“I’ll be fine. That fucker is dead. When I tell the doctor what he did.”
* * *

8/2

Snack Time

Today Smit and Rosa got in a fight. I guiltily admit it amused me, from a circus audience standpoint.

Slick Andre made us popcorn for movie time. It smelled so good, even the zombies stood in line for snack. I was waiting with Fergus, having an interesting talk about God when Smit cut in front of Rosa. I didn’t see, but I heard his wheelchair hit her leg. She told him not to cut in line and then kicked his hurt leg. He’d said to me that he fractured it in a car accident. Yeah right. We all know you jumped off a bridge, stupid.

Pardon me. I’m still sort of bitter from when Smit asked to see my tits.

Anyway, after Rosa kicked Smit in the bad leg, he jumped up out of his wheelchair, like fucking Lazarus or something and slapped Rosa right on the cheek. That ass! Andre stepped between them and broke it up. He’s making Smit stay in his room all night and miss both the popcorn and movie.

Elena and Mona are sitting across from me, reenacting the fight.

“I got your momma hangin’!” Elena is chanting and waving her fist at Mona, who replies, “Shut up, white boy.” in her flattest robotic voice, which makes it even funnier.

“Hey, both of you. Shut up!” Rosa just yelled from the other side of the snack room, where she is sulking and squeezing a tube of peanut butter on her crackers.

Elena and Mona both said sorry. They’re friends with Rosa. Rosa’s a nice lady, usually. Not very crazy at all, just lonely and depressed. Her family has died off, she doesn’t have many friends. No husband or kids. She’s here because she took a bunch of sleeping pills when her boyfriend dumped her. Over the counter shit, so she didn’t die, just slept for a week. Her landlady found her. It all sounds so teenage.

Still, what kind of redneck cretin slaps an old lady? I hope they transfer Smit to a home for the criminally insane.

Mmm, gotta go. My popcorn is calling, “Eat us, eat us, we are delicious golden cornels of yumminess!”

NaNoWriMo

2004-12-01T14:06:00.000-08:00

Allison's Note:

Okay, so I didn't reach 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month, continuing my 21-year losing streak at everything I have ever tried.. =)

I was mostly just using the month as an excuse to start a novel. Which I did. And will continue until you're plucking it off the shelf at your local bookstore.

Now back to Hela and the fun folks at the state hospital..

New Roommate

2004-11-26T13:54:00.000-08:00

Jeffry’s last night on the unit, I couldn’t sleep. Not because of him, or anything. They’d served us each a paper plateful of baked beans for dinner. Beans that Carol’s decrepit intestines weren’t too friendly with. Her ass gas was so thick and onioney, that night, not even burrowing my face deep into the thin, white sheet could mask it. Nancy was so doped up, she slept through it, as usual.
So, I sat in the dayroom. Alone. Arms folded over my gown. I hung my head and stared at my arms. The bright tattoos of flowers and bugs and stars, and the pink stripes of scars running highways between them reminded me of how just a week ago I had the freedom and right to plunge needles and knives into my own skin. And why shouldn’t I, damn it? I grew this skin. I fed my mouth and slept and drank water so I would grow and live. I worked so hard to be alive for what? To be a checkmark on some psych nurse’s clipboard?
“Pssst!” I heard from a doorway across from me. I looked up. It was Jeffry. He was wearing a coat. They’d given it back to him since he’s leaving tomorrow.
“Psst! Com’ere!” Jeffry said and unbuttoned his coat to reveal a smooth, brown chest with thick pectoral mounds and a rippled stomach. He nodded slowly and raised his eyebrows up and down as he circled his nipples with one finger.
I shook my head quickly no. Jeffry’s discharge order was written already. It would take a court trial to commit him and make him stay longer. So he could do what the fuck he pleased.
As for me, I knew that each transgression, my every insubordinate move equaled more time in these jaundice colored walls. I had stopped hallucinating. I had no urge to fuck this man across the dayroom, offering himself to me. Yeah, he’s sort of old and bald, and the smell of fart and institution laundry isn’t exactly arousing. But he’s got a nice body and a working cock. Which is usually enough for me. Maybe the medicines have kicked in. Fuck! I bet that’s it.
“Hey! Psst! Hey!” Jeffry reached down for the elastic waist of his paper pajamas and pulled the front low to expose his thick, dark cock. Nope. I’m still not horny. There’s definitely something wrong here. I’m a little scared. What if when I go home to my master and he binds me in ropes and chains, then pushes me onto my knees and spreads my asscheeks and tries to slide his luscious tool in me and finds I'm dry as a kitten’s tongue. Would he be hurt? Think I no longer love him and want to deprive him?

Bandana is on duty tonight. The very unfriendly night nurse who always wears a bandana over her braids. I see her behind the counter, now, staring down hard at a magazine, gulping from a large, glass bottle of something clear, Vodka or liquid Haldol, maybe and eating mealy bananas. Fuck you, bitch. Those were probably our breakfast.
Bandana doesn’t see Jeffry. I almost wish she would so he’d stop. Each time he grinds that fist up and down his cock, I’m reminded of my new impotence. Bandana doesn’t see me either, though. If she did, she’d give me a shot.
Elena stomps into the dayroom with her blanket thrown across her shoulders like a cape. She winks one almond eye at me and sinks into a chair in front of Jeffry’s door. I don’t think she saw him.
“I am sooooo sleepy!” she swoons and drapes the blanket over her lap. She begins to snore exaggerately.
“Oh Queen Elena,” Bandana croaks, “You best be takin’ yo Chinese ass to bed.”
Elena “snores” more. In a wispy, sleeptalk tone says, “but I’m Thaiiiii.”
“Yo Thai ass gettin’ a shot.” Bandana puts down the banana she’d been chewing. Jeffry sees Bandana get up, blows me a kiss, and slips back into the dark of the room he shares with Fergus. I sort of wonder what Jesus freak Fergus would have done if he’d have woke to me and Jeffry bouncing up and down in the bed beside him.

“Ooh! That tickles! Mmm…I love needles!” Elena giggled as Nurse Bandana jabbed the shot of Thorazine into her bicep. “I’m already starting to feel all zonkty!”
Elena skipped off to her and Mona’s room and I was alone again.
“Hey, you. Little white girl.” Bandana noticed me.
I blinked and with a big scoop of my neck looked around the dayroom, as if it was a pep rally back at my high school in the suburbs, crowded with little white girls, cheering and shaking their pom-poms in between twirls of their long, blonde hair.
“Uh. Me?”
“You wanna shot, too?” Bandana threatened.
“Have you smelled it in there.” I said and pointed behind me at the room where Carol and Nancy slept.
Bandana bit her lip as not to smile. “Yeah, it do stink pretty bad.”
“I’ll go right to sleep if I can have a different room.”
“Your on frequent ob. I'm sposta watch you. Doctor said he’d take you off it, though. There’s room with the new girl. Go sleep in there.” She pointed to Leesha’s door.

Tea Party

2004-11-23T13:28:00.000-08:00

Psychologist Kelly clicked in her white, leather heels to the front of the dayroom. Frosted blonde curls bouncing at her shoulders.

“Heh. Where she goin’. Church?” Markus said.

Kelly stood in front of the TV and switched off the Cubs game. “Time for group!”

“Oh, why thank you, Kelly. I didn’t really want to watch that crappy old baseball game, anyway.” Mona said with a sinking in her jowls. Kelly ignored her. Under her gown, Mona crossed one hairy leg over the other and folded her hands on her lap. “I’m just waiting for the bus.”

Mona turned to Markus, who sat on her left, “Excuse me, sir, do you know when the bus will come?”

Markus grinned and shook his head. “Shoulda been here three damn weeks ago.”

Mona says the bus thing a lot. Whenever we’re waiting around in the dayroom, waiting for meals, for group, for happy hour. Sometimes, she really gets into it. Elena does, too. They leave their bathrobes undone like raincoats, hold their pillowcases over their heads like umbrellas and sit in the vinyl chairs, tapping their toes and glancing at their empty wrists to “check the time”. Mona will say, “Elena, it’s starting to pour out here. Where’s the bus?”

Kelly straightened the collar on her skirt suit, Easter pink. “Today we’re going to work on some coping skills. One good way to calm yourself down when you’re feeling stressed out is through meditation.” She paused to purse her lips and look each of her patients in the eye. “Does anybody know what meditation is?”

“I will only meditate on the word of our lord Jesus Christ.” Fergus said and blinked solemnly.

“Well, meditation does not have to be a religious thing. Though some religions use it. It’s just a way to clear your mind of worries. I have a form of meditation you all can do.” Kelly reached into her bulbous leather purse, white to match her shoes and extracted from it a box of tea. She set the box in the center of the long conference table the patients were seated around in the bare, white meeting room..

“Now, look at this box and concentrate on only the box.”

Hela squinted her big green eyes and leaned forward. “I can mooove it with my miiiind!” she said in an exaggerate, spooky voice. Elena and Mona and Markus erupted in chuckles.

“Hela, just try it.”

“Can I? What flavor is it?”

“No, try meditating on the box. Clear all other thoughts from your head. Let them slide out your ears. Tell that voice in your head to be quiet.”

“Which voice?” Elena winked at Hela and pointed to her head. “I’ve got so many up here!”

“Come on you guys, quiet down. Some of us want to meditate.” Kelly gestured her pink manicure toward Fergus and Milton, who were staring hard at the box of tea.

“Can we drink some afterward?” Hela asked.

“No, I’m afraid not. It’s against the rules.”

“Why?”

“Well, I used to make tea for group time every day, but there was this incident a few months back. A visitor slipped some drugs to a patient in a bottle of Coke. Four patients took it and fell into a coma. So there’s no outside food allowed anymore.” Kelly bit her lip, realizing that Hela had diverted her, once again.

The box was yellow. It said “Sweet Earth”. On the front of the box was a tiny farmer plowing a patchwork field. A glowing orange yolk hung above his head in the cardboard sky. On the back was a list of herbs and in what ways they are good for you. Echinacea- Supports healthy immune function. Ginseng- For energy. Green tea- An antioxidant.

After about 10 minutes of silent staring, Kelly noticed that Milton was drifting to sleep in his wheelchair, head cocked sideways, bead of drool glimmering from the side of his mouth.

“Okay everyone. How did the meditation go?”

Suicide

2004-11-18T19:52:00.000-08:00

I can tell you what happened to Fergus. And why I am here.

It’s like when your computer is not quite frozen. The hourglass icon tips and ticks, the memory crunching, but you press control-alternate-delete, anyway, because starting over is quicker than waiting for things to free up.

It’s like you’re a tourist in Chicago on a cloudy day. Wanting to see the city from the top of the tallest building in the world, but knowing that if you even bothered to ride the elevator up the 110 floors of the Sears Tower, ears popping up to the Skydeck, all you would see out the long, clear windows is 360 degrees of Gray.

And rain is forecast for each day you will be in town.

So you tell yourself, well, that building in Malaysia is taller, besides. If you count the antennas.

It’s like when you sit with your legs crossed on the train. One ankle balanced on the opposite knee, which cuts it’s blood. But you can’t tell, don’t notice your that reclining foot is crowding with icy pins. You eyes are too embossed in the winter sunset, the freezing rain as it stripes the train windows blurry over premature darkening blues and blacks of the sky.

When the train recording announces your stop, slows to the soggy platform like constipation and you have to get up, you step on your good foot, then on your prickly foot and realize that while you forced all your senses into your eyes to observe the outsides beyond your window, you neglected to feel the blood flee from your toes.

You step to the doors as they slide open. You step funny, flinging your ankle with no tactile gauge of how far you are flinging it. You walk like: step, limp, kick. Like a can-can crackhead. Your dead foot bouncing in front of you like a shoed frog.

You wish there were a special room by the train stop for the alleviation of sleeping limbs. A padded space in which you could bang the dozed limb on a soft wall until it fizzled back into feeling.

But there is none such room, so you do your crazy walk across the platform, your shoes tapping out a ka-dunk, ka-dunk rhythm and 50 thousand pairs of mocking eyes and leering camera lenses are watching, giggling at your absurdity and powerlessness. You and your useless foot.

It’s like when the sunless day is so dismal. The artificial glow of night is a whole lot brighter.

Do you get it, now?

Phone Call

2004-11-13T15:53:00.000-08:00

Note From Dr. Yarozik

After reading the progress of this work, Happy Hour, I must warn to please use extreme discretion when crediting Hela with the truth. She has a, let’s say, mutable boundary with reality and is prone to gross exaggeration.

Consider her diagnosis:
Axis I: Bi-polar disorder, borderline personality disorder.
Axis II: Anxiety disorder. Marijuana dependence. Sex addiction.
Axis III: Chlamydia. Heart murmurs.
Axis IV: New living arrangement, loss of job, untimely death of mother, recent sexual assaults, possible homelessness.

Besides, she can't even spell my name right.

Phone Call

After Hela and Dr. Littleboy’s scrabble game, he fed her a fat Valium and sat her down in front of the phone in the hallway between the dayroom and solarium. Hela pressed the numbers she knew so well. The doctor left.

“Hell-o.” a man’s voice answered. Deep, with the bounce of a boy's.

“Hi.” Hela said.

“Hey there, what’s up my little Hel-fire? Where you been?” She heard his lighter flick. Saw him leaned back in the office chair at his desk, taking breath after breath of his hand-rolled cigarette, staring up at the Sears Tower, poking the clouds with it's twin horns of blinking purple. An airplane flies toward the steel devil head and Hela's master, for a moment muses at the prospect of that plane swooping low and crashing, flames and shattered glass, a tumbling of floors like a stack of cards, small bodies plunging…

"I have a request." Hela started with a spaced-out gravity, with a detached bemusement, a funeral tone that snapped her master from his carnage reverie.

"Wear nothing but leather pants and a mask. Fill up your gun. On the cross streets of Montrose and Oak Park, there is a state mental hospital. I am there. Way in the back. In a ward called D-North. Shoot through the locks. Shoot every guard on duty you see. Then chain me up. Carry me out of here. The airport is nearby. We can flee."

"Mmm…to where?" he purred. He thought she was kidding. "Assuming I own a pair of leather pants."

"No, really. They locked me up again."

8/3
Dinner

Before dinner, I finally called Master. He didn't believe this whole thing was true, at first. He won't bust me out of here like I asked, but volunteered to come visit on Friday and bring me a funny book. He asked how it smells here. I told him, like farts.

"I'm homeless in the bosom of my soul. I'm homeless, starving to death." Carol just went off on another sermon. Is standing in front of her fold-out chair at one of these plywood tables, with a far-off, righteous look in her glassed-out eyes, placing one hand above where her heart should be. "I am strong. I'm a OX! I'm a BULL! I'm a, I'm a…DOG!" We all laughed.

"Woof woof!" Markus taunted. We laughed again.

"Miss Carol, siddown!" Nurse I'm-a-turtle Jean just said to her.

Jean is slow at passing out the dinner trays, tonight. I haven't received mine yet. The turtle is probably waiting to give me mine last, since I'm her oh-so-favorite patient here.

Mona and Elena have gotten theirs and from what I can see, this is what's on the menu:
-6 saltine crackers, wheat flavored
-2 slices of American cheese
-Applesauce
-3 2-inch mini dill pickles (which I will try to trade for more applesauce)
-Milk (yuck!)

"Oh goody! Applesauce!" Elena cheered, genuine. I am sitting with her and Mona.

"Oh yay. A full 6 crackers. Won't I be stuffed." Mona said deadpan, lips still, jowls flapping. Big, round glasses bouncing on her cheeks, making Mona into an angry, gray-haired frog in a gown.

Good. Nurse Turtle finally placed my tray in front of me.

"Thanks." I murmered, not looking up then called out, "Is anyone hungry for pickles?"

"Yeah, giv'em to me." this new girl waved from across the dining area. Looking about here, I always flash back to my grade-school cafeteria. Sticky round tables, the sweet reek of packet ketchup and curdled carton milk laid to crust on a seldom mopped tile floor.

I studied the new girl. She is shorter than I am, under 5 feet, but chiseled compact. If Dionysus has designed me thick and soft to consume great quantities of whisky, tough and flexible to sustain bondage sessions in which I am chained precariously with a nullified range of motion, limbs stretched in angles of 90 degrees or wider, joints taut and aching to full extent, this girl was designed by Artemis. The huntress. She was designed to stalk and chase. Bounding on her tight, round chocolate calves. Pouncing, then shredding the muscles of prey with her pointy nails, tinting pink with blood.

The new girl's narrow hips swiveled and cut sharp corners as she twisted around the tables to get to my pickles. She pinched them up with her claws. She left a cup of applesauce on my tray in exchange. How perfect!

"Thanks, Thickums." she smiled. She had the whitest teeth. Small and sharp. Like she is. Bet they'd leave the prettiest purple moons on my neck. The whitest eye. The left eye. The right eye is brown, but the left has a colorless cornea. Wow!

"What did you call me?" I asked. Friendly, not offended. What she said could have been a compliment, for all I know.

"I called you Thickums. You thick, you luscious." she winked her brown eye. My thighs got moist.

"Is that a good thing?"

"Mmmhmmm…" she nodded slowly, inviting.

"Leesha, siddown!" Nurse turtle-ass Jean yelled. The new girl sauntered back to her seat, her tight butt tick-tocking beneath her paper pajamas. I can't see her from here, anymore. Some dude's head is in my way.

A Digression

2004-11-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

http://www.engrish.com/recent_detail.php?imagename=keep-early-hour.jpg&category=Clothing&date=2004-11-09

Dr. Littleboy

2004-11-11T20:54:00.000-08:00

For the month of July, the unit was decorated with red, white and blue paper stars, faded old and taped haphazardly to the gold walls. The U.S. presidents, each in a rectangle with their picture and name, in order of office, were hung among them.

Each day, Markus would displace the rectangle of George W. Bush. Sometimes Bush was up before Washington. Sometimes, somewhere in the center near Roosevelt. Other times, Bush was taped to the side of the television, or under a chair.

But this day, Bush was missing. Hela heard Jeffry yelling about how the toilet in the room he shared with Markus was clogged with paper.

Set next to the stars and the presidents was a tall ladder. A lone workman clung to the top. Shoulders tight, Hela could tell from where she stood at the nurse’s station counter, at the opposite end of the dayroom. She smirked to herself. The worker was probably nervous at being inside an actual loony bin. Expecting to see some Jack Nicholson in a straight jacket bearing his teeth.

Elena was tugging a plastic comb, one issued to all patients upon arrival, through her long hair with long swipes of her delicate wrist.

“Hey, Queenie.” Nurse Jean squawked to Elena. “Your highness, excuse me.” Elena looked to Jean. “Do that in your bathroom. We don’t wanna catch your fleas.”

Elena, not one to fight with staff, rose from the vinyl chair with a whip of her neck, of her black hair, as if to prove that her fleas were indeed, non-existent and sauntered off to her room.
Nurse Jean noticed Hela leaning on the counter. “Get’yer arms off.”
Hela thrust her elbows forward and sneered.

“So you’re ready for round 2, huh?” Nurse Jean said to Hela and would have put her hands on her hips for emphasis, if she had any hips and not simply a light bulb of fat for a torso.
“Just tell me one thing.” Hela removed her arms from the counter. “When can I use the phone?" Hela said out loud, but thought, “you god damn turtle, I’ll eat your eyes.”

Nurse Jean had particularly tasty looking eyes. Shadows below them and bulgy and green, much like Hela's own eyes. Her hair was shellacked extra-stiff to her scalp, her shell on full guard.
"You need to talk to your doctor about that."

"Who is my doctor."

"Him." Nurse Jean thrust one puffy thumb at the young man with the backpack behind her.

"Doctor Littleb-er-Jaros, I need to talk to you. Please." Hela said with a flash of her teeth, and a blush in her cheeks from her accidental slip of the nickname the patients had given him. She knew to suck up to the doctors. They write the discharge orders.

"Sure. What's your name?" the doctor smiled back and the white ice spark in his blue eyes made something inside of Hela's chest jump.

"I'm Hela."

"Hela, that's right. I've been meaning to speak with you. Up for a game of Scrabble?"

Dr. Littleboy was called so, not only for his age but the bulge of his cheeks and the fluff of blonde hair, infant-like sweeping in a soft forelock to frame his eyes.

"Marquis." he said and placed an S on a triple-score square.

"DeSade." Hela giggled.

"Would it be out of line for me to apologize for the pen incident?" Dr. Littleboy wrote 30 points on the napkin. Hela eyed his pen enviously.

"You tell me, Doc." Hela set down a U-A-C-K stemming from the Q in Marquis. Wrote 25 points on the napkin with her felt tip marker. "Would it be out of line for me to write on the walls with my shit if it happens again?"

Dr. Littleboy's bottom lip fell. The roofs of his eyes raised, the pupils engorging in black to conceal the blue. He bowed his head low over the Scrabble board. "If I could watch…"

Intake

2004-11-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

"Spread your knees and squat." the intake nurse snapped on her rubber gloves and stood behind Hela. Hela did as instructed, the nurse patting both hands along the insides of Hela's bare thighs, with a slap slap sound. The metal detector in the background, watching them with a guillotine's eyes.

"Now go put back on your undies and these pajamas." the nurse said, brown skin tinting purple and translucent worms shooting out from her eyes. Colorless tubes in rippled streams. Hela's muscles thumped. She jumped when the worms started wrestling, twirling their bodies in braid shapes over the nurse's corneas.

"Whatta you starin' at?" the nurse glared, squeezing the eye worms into flat shapes.

"Um…I'm cold." Hela said. Which was true. The tile floors froze the sweat on the soles of her naked feet. The air conditioner vents spat snowflakes through the flickering fluorescent light. False light characteristic of institutions.

It’s like grade school, but with strip searches, Hela thought, watching a grid of hexagon shapes spread out in a net across pee-colored walls.

The nurse's latex paws thrust a pair of light blue paper pajamas in Hela's arms. Limp with submission, Hela turned to a room behind her with a wheelchair logo on the door that she suspected was either a bathroom, or a room full of wheelchairs.

"Oh wait, missy. You got a lot of cuts and scars. Come back here. I gotta write those down." the intake nurse called after Hela, pulling open a desk drawer, removing a clip board. Hela walked over to the desk and bent to study the page on which the nurse was writing H-e-l- above a human-shaped outline. Genderless, vague. It waved to Hela with it's empty arm. Her jaw locked up and her green eyes swelled big.

"Now stand up straight." the nurse demanded. Hela stiffened and aligned her vertebrae. Her large, pink nipples stuck out as if acting, puckered with exposure, nervous bubblegum, as the nurse drew an X on each part of the human outline on which Hela had a scar or a fresh slice. X X XX X on the stomach, X X X on the upper thighs, X X across the chest, X X XXXX X XX on the arms, X on the left shin.

"Bike accident when I was a kid. Fell off my bike and got my leg gorged out by a metal pole. Got stitches." Hela explained.

"Mm." the nurse responded and drew an X on the outline's left bicep. "You sho' been busy with the razors." She shook her head and clucked her teeth.

Hela looked down at her nude self. Doughy, cream flesh punctuated with shiny, pink slash scars and newer red lines crusted over in rosy scab. A red X over the rose tattoo that said "Mom" above her heart.

I'm a pink and white marshmallow zebra, Hela thought, with hexagons. The pattern, the grid, the honeycomb of hexagons that Hela had seen on the walls now netted her flesh in 6 sided divides.

"Go put yo clothes on." the nurse barked and waved to the wheelchair logo room. Hela's anus clenched with the deja-vu of being ordered into the attic closet by her master. She would wait, chained there with her arms above her head, the blood pouring down from her fingers and into her arms, draining them to chilly blueberries. She would wait there that way for days. Stomach throbbing and eyes dull from looking at only dark. She would wait there and as the endorphins tickled numb every speck of her inside, she'd bask in the lapis-blue glow of her own desperate energies, buzzing and lulling into exhaustion, chin bowing for her neck, then jerking up whenever a creak cried out from the stairs. His footsteps?

She would wait there and after she'd thought about everything obvious, like death and very young memories, she would then simply dangle and breathe and feel so safe. Locked away like a little treasure. Hovering outside her body.

And how grateful she would be when Master returned and unlocked her wrists for a while, kneading the blue out, the pink back into her palms with his thick, soft fingers. A regal smirk on his lips and a wet look in his fishbowl eyes as he watches the power he has over Hela's body. The power to deprive it, teasing death. To toy with it, take pleasure from it, his treasure well. And how grateful she would be to see him, this hot silhouette in a beam of sexual strength standing over her. Her bottom lip would sink and her tongue would slither out, silver ball in its middle gleaming at his mere reaching for the fly of his leather pants. She would take his cock in her mouth and gulp as it thrust at the back of her throat. A moan would rumble in his Adam's apple as she sucked him, harder and wetter, hoping she'd suck so hard he'd get stuck there.
Hela shut the door of the bathroom behind her.

"Don't shut that door." the nurse said. Hela pushed it back open. Slid the rough paper garment over her skin.

"What day is it?"
"July."
"How old are you?"
"20."
"Are you hallucinating right now?"
"Maybe."
"What drugs do you use?"
"Just weed."
"Do you know where you are?"
"The state hospital. In Chicago."
"Recite the ABC's backward."
"Um…Z, Y, W…er…, Z, Y, X, W…"

Hela watched her clothes and purse being dumped in a plastic storage bin.
"These are going into the vault." the intake nurse told her. "Those earrings, you gotta take them out."
Hela raised her limp and defeated wrists to unscrew the barbells in her ear lobes. She laid them to rest in the nurse's gloved palm.
"The nose one, too."
"But it isn't sharp." Hela twisted the loop in her nostril.
"Fine, fine. Leave it in."
The nurse didn't notice the metal stick in Hela's tongue.

The intake ward was a wood-paneled square room with a few chairs and some small, white observation bedrooms: mattress and camera. Hela sat in her paper pajamas, knees to chest, watching the worms wiggle jolly and fat throughout the honeycomb. They swallowed each other. Goopy fronts of large worms pried open, forcing a smaller worm inside. The honeycomb leapt from the wall and crawled closer to Hela, waving a screen of shapes that threatened to choke around her like an evil blanket.

Beyond a small counter carved in the wall sat the nurse, filling out more forms. A lanky black man in paper pajamas like Hela's limped out from a bedroom, eyes popping and pink, lips jerking in dialogue with an entity seen to none but himself. He looked over both shoulders, said "Wooooahhhh!" and thrashing his skeleton fingers against the air, spun on his slippered feet. Perhaps he saw the hexagons, too.

"Roger, vamoose!" said the nurse. And Hela giggled at the word "vamoose". Wished she had a piece of paper to write it on. The old man limped back into his room, still muttering.
A phone behind the counter rang. The nurse answered it.
"Hello? Yeah, she's here. I'll let you in."

The metal door with the sign above it that screamed, ELOPEMENT RISK. KEEP LOCKED. buzzed like an apartment door and opened to 3 security guards in brown suits.
"D North." the nurse told the guards. They marched to Hela and one clamped his hands on her forearms.

Fergus Saved Clark and Belmont from the Demons

2004-11-08T14:07:00.000-08:00

Fergus hung out with these "Satanic" dudes. They had pentagram marks on their wrists. They’d smoke crack and stand out on Belmont Avenue, preaching the good word of Satan to all freaks that passed.
Now, the waitress at Clarke’s didn’t like these guys. Especially Fergus. Fergus is pretty damn creepy. He has this glow in his eye like an evil toddler, a nose like a rabbit, lips thick like they’ve both been punched. He’s a big guy, too. A nightmare bunny. He’d creep about Clarke’s, never eating there, only waddling duck-toed from booth to booth, stopping at each one, gesturing to his wrist and spewing quick words, which almost always sprouted a pissed-off look on the face of whoever he was preaching to.
Becky, the waitress, hated him, how he bothered her customers.
“You gonna order or what?” she’d pinch one hand on her hip and roll her eyes.
“No, I’m good. Thanks anyway.” Fergus would smile a big, gooshy puppy grin and shuffle off to another booth.
Becky refilled the coffee cups of a young couple, professional types, who Becky, being tattooed and blue-haired, laughed at in her head for being so lame, but still treated nicely because they had the money to tip her well. These two were perfumed with stale smoke-air, which told her they’d probably just come from a bar.
“How is everything?” Becky asked them. The woman, a thin blonde in black nudged her man in the side.
“That creep over there.” He pointed across the restaurant to Fergus, a shadow attacking a table of teenage girls. “The big dude in black. He came over here and he told my wife all this shit about Satan. It freaked her out.” His eyes were pinched to two blue slits.
“Hold on. I’ll tell ‘im to leave.” Becky wedged her pierced lips into a stiff smile.
“Fergus.” She called as she neared the table of teenage girls. A troop of jailbait gothlets in fishnets and corsets and black lipstick. They were giggling at Fergus, one stroking the mark on his wrist.
“You’ve gotta leave if you won’t order anything. You’re scaring my customers.”
“Scared? Hehe! We’re not scared.” One of the teenage girls purred. Becky looked up and pretended not to hear.
“If you won’t go, I have to call the cops.” She said to Fergus.
“Aww, come on!” Fergus winked. Flecks of gold.
Becky sighed, her shoulders climbing and dropping and walked over to the phone behind the counter.

Fergus

2004-11-06T11:14:00.000-08:00

Snacktime. Looking about the dayroom, eyes like a panoramic camera, just watching it. Not quite believing I’ve been locked up again, still hit by this proof. Yes. The dayroom. You are in the dayroom of yet another psych hospital. U-shape of blue, vinyl chairs with heavy, wood frames, too heavy for disgruntled patients to throw. Half the patients, gowned for bed sitting on them, munching apples and staring blinkless at the fuzzy, evening news on the tiny television screen and the other half pacing behind them, marching wearily around the perimeter of chairs.
A young guy sits next to me.
“There comes a point when you’re eating state apples, drinking state Kool-Aid and watching a broken TV and you tell yourself, never again.”
“And then it always happens again.” I answer the boy. I have never spoken to him before. “I’m Hela. Who are you?” I ask. I bite my apple.
“I’m Fergus.”

“So what if you go back to the art school, go to a party and this group of people, these Satanic people approach you. They’re dressed in the finest black leather clothes. They promise you that they can get your book published. They’ll introduce you to the best agents and editors if you’ll just do one thing for them. You’ll get their mark on your wrist. Would you do it?” Fergus touches his wrist.
“No...I’d never follow them, just as I’d never join your church. I don’t believe in affiliating myself with religious groups. I have my own, individual beliefs that don’t fit into any existing religion.” I say.
Fergus blinks twice. His long, black lashes skimming the golden sparkles dripped throughout his pharmaceutically glazed brown eyes. His upturned nose and puffy, bottom lip scream to me about how much he looks like my ex-fiancée.
“You know, from you books you read,” he points to Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, a 760-page monster on my lap, “and from talking to you, I can tell you’re intelligent. But it’s too bad that someone as intelligent as you are should be so worldly.”
“And it’s too bad that someone as intelligent as you are should be a fanatic Christian.” I say. Then ask, “Worldly?”
“Yeah, overly concerned with things of this Earth. With success and sex and money.” he nodded to show he agreed with himself.
“How can you accuse me of these things? I’m very spiritual. You don’t know me.” It occurs to me then how much I sound like a Jerry Springer guest.
“Well, it’s been nice talking with you, Hela. I don’t think I’ll be talking with you again.” Fergus half-smiles and gets up.
“Wait...no. Don’t go! What the fuck is the matter? Just tell me.” I whine and toss House of Leaves on the chair next to me.
“Didn’t you used to hang out on Clark and Belmont?” Fergus’ pupils widened.
“Yeah, sometimes.” I thought back to high school. Me and my best friend Madeline would go tranny-watching there on Saturdays.
“I was involved with some bad people down there. You sort of remind me of them.” Fergus lowered his swollen pupils. “You know that restaurant, Clarke’s?”
I nodded.
“I broke a cop’s ankle there.”
“What? Why? How?” I laugh and lean toward him. Behind him, Carol limps out from our bedroom with her gown undone in back. Fergus hears the stick-stick of her bare feet on tile and turns around to watch. Carol seems to be the main form of entertainment, here. I turn to watch, too. I’m surprised at how firm her old, brown butt cheeks are. Not a dimple of cellulite or a stray hair.
“I’s run outta panties. I need some panties. Size 9 Hanes. Some panties.” Carol barks at nurse Bigfoot, who puts a giant hand to her blonde head.
“Carol, get back in your room and I’ll bring you some.”
Across the dayroom, a couple of patients laugh.
“I need some panties. Some panties. Size 9 Hanes.” she repeats and retreats to the bedroom. Fergus turns his spacey gaze back to me.
“So tell me about the cop.” I say.
“Well, I was involved with the Satanic ministry. See. Had the marks of loyalty.” Fergus touches a finger to vague scars, blurred pink slugs on his wrists and forehead. My eyebrows raise, my interest piqued.
“But then I found Christ.” his fat lips beam.
“Oh.” I say, disappointed.
“Spent two years in Cook County. One at Elgin. It seemed God used to favor me. That the strength of my light could burn away demons. But now...”
“Same here. But I don’t think a “savior” is necessary. What is there that someone could do on Earth that is so bad, they’d deserve hell, forever as punishment? Even killing millions of people...why would God discard a soul he’s created?”
“God is not a fair God.” Fergus folds his hands in his lap and I notice how roughly they shake.
“I think he, she, it is fair. Well, balanced, at least. A dichotomy of good and evil.”
“God is in Jesus.”
“If Jesus existed. I don’t dispute that God would be in him. But God is also in me. In you. In all these people.” I gesture backhanded toward our 15 or so glazed-eye companions. Pacing or watching TV. Crunching their apples, still.
“I don’t think so.” Fergus says.
I leer and bear my teeth. “So tell me about the cop.”

Hela Gets Her Marker

2004-11-02T13:17:00.000-08:00

7/30 (I think) Bedroom

I had to throw a tantrum to get the felt-tip marker to write these things down. I don't know if I can get them out before the shot kicks in and puts me to sleep. Pens aren't allowed here. I explained to them that I'm a writer and if I can't write, I become crazier so it's counter-therapeutic for me to be deprived of a pen.
When I swore to that fat, evil turtle of a nurse that I would scoop her eyes out and eat them, she got out the bag of restraints. I'm restrained quite frequently, on the outside. But by my master. Sexy and evil. It's all in fun. He's the only one I would ever let take my motion. I miss him. Didn't think I would so badly. Already. Every time I eat food or sleep. Or breathe. It is sharing the daily, life-sustaining activities with someone that binds me to them more so than the leather cuffs on my ankles and wrists. The harness, the ropes.
Each time I lie in my itchy, plastic-lined bed here, my skin buzzes with the reflection, the echo, the imprint of my master's moist and glowing flesh. His ocean-blue aura waving through each of my cells. The soft scratch of his orange moustache still uprooting membranes on both of my lips.
When I pass out, like I know I will soon, since my muscles are drooping like pudding, I want to wake up to the freckles on his shoulders. Nestle my temple into the warm ridge between his pectoral and collar bone. A perfect pillow cut out for my head exactly. His armful of fading tattoos will cradle my neck. How he chokes me…oh…
At 8am, his alarm clock will chitter with politics and blablabla NPR. And I'll wake up to it. He will stir and kiss my head and sleep again.
I will not wake up here. I will

Hela Gets her Marker

Hela sat cross-legged, slumped, elbows on her knees and chin on her palms on the scratchy white sheets of her bed. Bored. The sleeping old woman across from her snored and farted, a rising and dropping mountain of geezer flesh abandoned for the dream realm.
The state hospital bedrooms were dull and crowded. Three narrow beds arranged in a triangle shape, two with their headboards against the back wall. A window blocked by grinning, iron bars between them, the third bed crossing before both of them, perpendicular, closest to the door. The third bed was usually given to patients on frequent observation so they could be checked on throughout the night without the other two room mates being disturbed.
Hela was in the third bed. Sitting up because the most common psych ward past time, sleep, was not an option for her. Carol's buzzing throat and unceasing, methane onion farts made it toxic to breathe and much too loud to sleep in the bedroom that Hela and Carol and Nancy shared. Nancy, doped down heavily with antipsychotics, slept anyway. Hela watched Nancy through the cracked-open door of the bedroom, napping upright in a dayroom chair, head bowing to the open magazine on her lap.
This was Hela's first afternoon in the state hospital, but her 5th stay at a place like this. She was hyper. Her mood stabilizer medicine wouldn't kick in for a few days. And she hadn't met any allies amongst the other patients, yet. Wasn't quite in the mood for chatting, anyhow.
Awake and alone to amuse her manic self through the bare, long conscious hours of the institutional day, Hela rocked on her buns just to burn up the zaps of energy tickling the dendrites of her under-stimulated nerves. The mattress crinkled beneath her. It was covered in plastic. She wanted to ride her bike. She wanted to fuck. She wanted to yell. She wanted to do something.
On the bed next to Hela's, Carol's butt trumpeted once again and before the smell could scare all the oxygen from the bedroom, Hela got up, pulled on her socks and stepped directly outside the door to the nurse's counter.
"Can I have a pen?" she asked the nurse, a black man she hadn't seen before.
"Patients are not allowed to have pens." the nurse barked in a crusted, Jamaican accent. Hela had never heard a Jamaican accent carry such malevolence. Then again, she had only before heard them on travel commercials and Bob Marley songs.
"But I need to write. I'm a writer. That is what I do." Hela stood on her tiptoes to raise her eyes to the nurse's level. Defiantly. Challenging.
"Patients are not allowed to have pens. We've had incidents…"
"I'll sit right here." Hela waved her palm to a chair and table right next to the nurse's station, which was used for the blood pressure readings each morning. "You can watch me. I promise. I won't hurt myself with the pen. I just need to write."
"You can't have a pen. That's the rules." the nurse looked above Hela's head when he said this, as if he were bored with this argument already.
"I need a fucking pen! Give me a fucking pen!" Hela screamed, then. The dazed heads of all the patients, who were plopped like park pigeons on bolted down blue vinyl chairs in front of a fuzzing TV, twisted mechanically, slow like periscopes to watch the new girl take on Mean James, the day nurse.
"Jean?" James called. A sneering slug creature stomped out of the medicine room behind the counter.
Hela took a breath for composure. She knew better than to act up in the psych hospital. It would only prolong her stay. "I want a pen." she said to Jean.
The slug creature, no, more like a turtle creature, round and immense with a shell of short, sprayed down orange hair capping her hard head. A beaked nose and baggy eyes that looked as if they'd been punched and punched and punched…
"Patients can't have pens!" the Turtle croaked. "So Siddown!" She thrust her finger at an empty day room chair among the other patients, the higher functioning ones of which were giggling at the erupting confrontation.
"I need to write!" the electric zaps of fury stirred and grew sharp beneath Hela's skin, fried the sensible thoughts from her brain. There was no reminder of consequence, of punishment, of anything but this pen, this pen was the striving of all her existence.
"Give me a fucking pen!" Hela roared and reached for the chair at the blood pressure table, which was perhaps the only piece of furniture not affixed to the cold, tile floor of the dayroom.
"Siddown!" The Turtle glared, her green corneas bright and sharp like radioactive limes.
With a howl that rung and then hung from the yellowish walls, Hela heaved the chair in her arms and above her head, it dwarfing her body while also bestowing on her the illusion of strength. Hela is Atlas. This chair is her world.
She howled again and with a slingshot motion released her hand's grip, launching the chair to soar horizontally, skimming the curly, black head of Elena, who ducked and laughed and then crashing in front of the TV, causing the Cubs game reception to skip and Mona to yell, "I was watching that!"
The Turtle reached into the medication room and dragged out a mesh duffel bag stuffed with leather straps. Mean James picked up the office phone and chanted "Code Green, Code Green" on overhead loudspeakers.
Soon, five brown-suited security guards. Large, scowling. Waddled nonchalant in their largeness across the dayroom. From where? Were they kept in a closet with the spare gowns, or something? They clustered in circumference around Hela.
The Turtle held up the restraint bag. "Are you gonna siddown, or do I havta make ya?"
"I'll scoop your fucking eyeballs out and eat them!" Hela yelled. A guard grabbed her arm. A few patients laughed.
"What's going on?" a calm voice said behind the barricade of security guards. A young man with a wide and doughy child's face and seafoam eyes. He set down his backpack beside him.
"Dr. Littleboy!" Elena cheered.
"They won't give me a pen." Hela said to the doctor. Breathing heavy to steady her wavering words. "I'm a writer. I need to write."
"Then give her a felt-tip marker." Dr. Littleboy said to the Turtle and Mean James, with a spice of contempt in his tone and a sneer in his lip.
"And a shot." the doctor added. He smiled at Hela.

Blue Moon

2004-11-01T01:25:00.000-08:00

7/31

Solarium 9pm

The Solarium is the temple, here at the state hospital. Tonight is a blue moon, the second full moon this month. I can’t see it from inside my fishbowl. This square room at the back of the unit with windows on three sides. Shatterproof windows, smeared with prints of the fingers and faces that have pressed to them, as hard as they can, to lean as closely to freedom as possible.
Inches, only inches.

Standing in here I see a tree with berries, an outside sky with a plane and a street. With nice houses. Old renovated brownstones with summer flowers bloomed in the front. Montrose, I think, is the street. I can watch the cars. I can watch the planes, all the planes! The evidence of transit, movement.

“S’good to stand. We been sittin’ around so much my butt hurts.” Rosa just said to Markus behind me.

O’Hare…Midway maybe. Rising and dipping like condors from one of these points. Those hallow metal sausages with wings, the passengers cutting so quickly through the air. But stuck still. Muscles crusting over with the crab-shell of inertia, bound to such limited indoor boundaries of motion, like I am. Eating from stale lunch trays, too.

This place is like an airplane. More like a ship. I can feel it wave, sometimes. The illusion of going somewhere. The creak of the poop deck boards protesting the heft of human weight.

“Do you like the food here?” Mona just asked Rosa behind me. I didn’t hear her response.

Fuck, I’m starving! Only 11 more hours until breakfast…

* * *

The Solarium door swings open. Elena swoops in with a classic movie star entrance, tossing her black silk hair over one shoulder, bathrobe becoming a mink.

“It’s happy hour!” she proclaims and tosses her hands like “tada”!
Elena is entirely too amused by this mental patient thing. She loves her pills and the “zonkty” (as she puts it) way they make her feel. She gets a kick out of going to psychotherapy group and flitting about in a hospital gown like some kind of trapped and medicated butterfly.

The Solarium door swings shut and Elena zips on her tiptoes down the hall, to the nurses’ station at the front of the dayroom for her Celexa, Zyprexa and Ativan. I hear Rosa and Markus and Mona’s hospital slippered feet pad across the chilly tile floor and I don’t want to follow.

I can tell it’s a blue moon. All I can do is stare, stare at the milky lunar glow and how it illuminates everything, the tree with the berries, the faraway airplanes in soothing tones of silver. I should be out there. I should be at the lake, on the beach with the breeze and the rocks and the water, slick feet kneading the seaweed, hands wet, singing.

Singing. I can do that here. Rosa and Markus and Mona are gone. The staff checks on me, though, every 15 minutes, to make sure I’m not trying to cut myself with something or have sex with someone.

Bedtime 10:15pm

What to do when I’m out of here:
-Apply for student loans
-Dye hair (Cherry red?)
-Wax eyebrows
-Clean up bedroom
***-Find job
-Finish River Story
-Pay phone bill
*-Find rent $
-Tell people where I’ve been
-Go swimming!

I am sharing a room with Nancy and Carol. Carol is in the bathroom. She farts and it echoes. Nancy is sitting calm on her bed and flipping through a magazine with that dazed-cow look in her eyes. Body still. Wax museum still. Except for the tick-tock motion of her wrist as it turns the glossy pages.

I am with them in the first room, right next to the nurses’ station, because I am monitored so frequently. Which is my fault. For being honest. I wanted help. My perceptions had lost all grounding. I was believing every single story my galloping brain came up with. Listening to that voice that sounds like me, just like me but isn’t me. It is deeper and much crasser than my usual internal narrator. It talks seductively about train car headlights and deep waves. Handfulls of pills washed down with whisky and strange men beaconing “baby, com’ere” from cars in the alley behind my building at night.

Sometimes it is happy. Chittering. Falling in love. With everything. And then I’m in love with everything. Sunset glittering through tree leaves, the white tall buildings of Edgewater, where I live glowing orange in it. Everyone that I see, I swear I know and I love. From some other lifetime, I bet. That old man with the gentle brown eyes was my mother. The really tall guy that lives down the hall was my best friend. The baby that rests in the lap of a tired woman in a McDonald’s uniform on the train was my wife. But mostly it’s sexual.

This particular facet of my psychosis tossed me out horny on hot streets at night and then landed me here. I can fall in love with just about anyone for a few hours. Spill my affections for their every nuance, love them for their accent, their blinking, their shoes, whatever it is. The way they remind me of someone I fucked in the past. The way they remind me of me. Or at least I’m convinced that they do.

I must have them inside me. Make them me, once again. Perhaps the people I meet are simply projections of my imagination. I want to reclaim them as mine.

* * *

“Turn them lights off! You, white girl.” Carol just hobbled out from the bathroom. A trail of spicy stink has clung to her gown. A med fart. I know that smell. Like rotting hummus. The smell of a psych ward bathroom. The pills fuck with your stomach. I have been to 5 of these places.

“Hey, whitey-white. You wit yo blondie, blonde hair and yo light blue eyes. I know you. You so cute, but yo evil!” Carol’s gravely voice squeaks high on that last word. Is she talking to me? I’m not blonde. But I’m the only white girl here. My hair is a dingy gray-brown, “mousy” they call it, my eyes are deep green. A murky, Chicago River green. Polluted. They were blue when I was a kid.

“Shut off that light.” Carol stops in front of my bed and continues. On second thought, I don’t think that everyone I meet could be merely a hologram of my mind. Most people are so predictable. They remind you of at least 5 other people you know. A few set human molds, a blend of a few lifestyle and mannerism options. But others, like Carol, are otherworldly. Or maybe hyper-worldly. Wild, primal, undomesticated.

Just look at her. Hunchbacked but strong boned. Wrinkled raisin skin, tight fuzz of nappy, yellow-white hair in clumps on her head. Her lips pump, sucking her toothless mouth, like an angry bulldog puppy. Those eyes that swirl deep as if under 2 inches of water.

I couldn’t have made her up. Not Carol. Those things she says. What the fuck?! She’s absolutely unpredictable. A creature not to be taunted. Which is why I am putting my journal down and getting up now to shut off the light, as she’s asked me to.

2004-10-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the great American modern psycho novel.