The Lunatic Messiah

by Simon Cutting

  Armaita rubs his eyes with his forefingers as he looks at me from across the table. I am not sitting in my usual chair, but rather in a wheelchair with restraints, as I am now considered one of the dangerous patients and "prone to bouts of violence". I feel no such thing as I stare at the psychiatrist, but it is a reasonable precaution from their point of view so I allow it. He sighs melodramatically, but it's part of his act. It is a gesture designed to make me feel that he truly cares about and is sad to see that things have come to this.

  'Joe, Joe, Joe. What am I going to do with you?' he says.

  'Thomas, Thomas, Thomas,' I reply. 'Your decisions are irrelevant now. You can do whatever you wish.'

  'You've hit rock bottom, Joe. The one benefit of that, I suppose, is that now we can start again with a fresh foundation. There's nowhere else to go but up. You are, of course, aware of what has happened?'

  'More than you could understand,' I reply.

  Armaita nods as if this makes sense to him, even though it doesn't.

  'In view of your recent behaviour, I had no choice but to give my recommendation that in my opinion you are not of sound mind. Your wife has had you committed, Joe.'

  I did not know that. I had thought I was being restrained because of the small matter that I knocked the Head Oncologist unconscious with a chair, but apparently my imprisonment was decided before I even woke up.

  'There may be a problem with that, Thomas. I'm afraid of commitment. Just ask my high school girlfriend.'

  'This is no joking matter. I didn't sign that paper lightly, and I can assure you that it hurt me to do it, but I really had no choice. You inflicted harm upon yourself with a kitchen knife, you were covered in numerous small cuts and bruises, and you attempted suicide with a homemade guillotine. You also appear to have been choked quite severely at some point. There's also the small matter of your kidney.'

  I laugh at the mention of it, just picturing their surprise when they saw the jagged scar down my back. If my kidney was anything other than metaphysical, I might lament its absence, but it's of no concern now.

  'What happened to you, Joe? Where did you go that night?'

  'I went for a walk. I'd just discovered Harry in bed with my wife and I wasn't feeling in the mood for their company.'

  'Do you remember where you went?' he asks me.

  'Of course. I went to King's Cross. It's a dangerous place at night. On the way, I was accosted by one of Grey's death squads. That's where I was choked. They were after Mohammed, but I got in the way.'

  Armaita scrawls a note in his pad, but for all I know he could be writing his shopping list. It takes him a little while and I wait patiently while he does it, running my eyes across the bookcase behind him and stretching my hands out and then back into fists to keep the blood flowing despite the tight restraints.

  'Mohammed?' he finally says.

  I nod.

  'Mohammed Ashhab. I should have realised that he was working both sides of the fence. He's meant to be working for me, but he was also trying to help Grey. Not his fault of course, just part of the corruption that Grey brought upon the world.'

  'This is Mr Grey, the man from your dreams who lives behind the glass,' Armaita says, looking down at his pad.

  'Very good. I guess there is some point to you taking those notes after all. Yes, Mohammed is supposed to arrive to help wake me up, being the only one who can speak directly to me. Everyone else could only speak to Joe Finch. But with Grey's influence, he was tainted. He helped and hindered me. I should have realised of course, as Ashhab means grey in Arabic. Unfortunately, Joe Finch didn't know Arabic.'

  'What do you mean, Joe Finch didn't know?'

  I've got his interest now, but it's still in the detached clinical sense. I haven't reached him on any kind of personal level yet. He waits for me continue without prompting and I oblige him. While I'm stuck here there's no harm in passing the time.

  'It's all coming to an end. It will take about two days. That's a rough estimate.'

  'What is?' he asks.

  'This world. This universe. All of it. There will be no survivors except for me. In fact, there never was anybody except for me. I created this world and I've created a new one underneath it.'

  'A new world?'

  'An Underworld. To replace this one.'

  Armaita nods knowingly when I say this, and I'm quite sure I know what his theory will be. He will say that after my "suicide attempt" I am having trouble dealing with the implications and have invented a fantasy world with which to justify it.

  'So this is about your condition. I can only begin to understand the thought processes that went on there, Joe, but you have to understand something. You tried to commit suicide. That is an incredibly rash act, and now that you've survived perhaps the impetus that drove you to it is not quite as strong any more. Your mind is trying to work out some way to integrate it into your sense of self. It's a natural reaction, but we need to face this thing, rather than give in to delusion.'

  More or less, his answer was as I predicted so I nod as if accepting his words, but then I pull out my ace, the question to which he will have no answer.

  'So where is the tumour?'

  He looks down at his notes, perhaps hoping that the answer is written there.

  'How am I able to walk when I'm supposed to be a paraplegic?' I add.

  There is a fairly long pause, longer than most, as Armaita considers this.

  'I don't know. I really don't know. There were obviously mistakes made, but there can still be no doubt that you have a brain injury. You've been experiencing seizures, and Dr Pontius informs me that it is his opinion that you have temporal lobe epilepsy.'

  'Yes I've heard. But frankly I think my explanation holds up better than his. None of this is real, except for me. Everything that exists is nothing more than a product of my own mind. When Joe Finch died, and he did die, I was returned to the forefront. I have lived thousands of lifetimes, Thomas. I can remember them all.'

  Not surprisingly, Armaita is sceptical. I don't blame him, but this is not the time for soft words. It's not every day that a man meets his maker.

  'What are you telling me, Joe?'

  'I’m telling you,' I say, as succinctly as possible 'that I am God.'

  Another long pause. Longer than the previous one. Finally he speaks again.

  'I see. I wonder if I need to point out to you how that sounds. For one thing, don’t you think it’s incredibly arrogant to assume that you are the centre of the universe?’

  'Only if you’re not.’

  'But what do you think is more likely? That you’re God and everything is just a figment of your imagination or that you’ve become mentally unstable as a result of a medical condition?’

  'Likely doesn't come into it. I am God.'

  Armaita writes something else down in his book, and unfortunately, strapped as I am to a wheelchair, I am unable to tear the book from his hands and see what it is as I did before. The restraints in fact, are starting to dig into my wrists and I consider asking him to loosen them, although I know exactly what he will say. He sighs as he looks back up at me.

  'None of this strikes you as just a little bit ridiculous?' he asks.

  'Of course it does. But the truth often is.'

  'No it isn't, Joe...' he begins, but I stop him.

  'Joe Finch is dead.'

  'Okay. So what should I call you?'

  'My name is Legion, for we are many. A tad melodramatic perhaps, but it is oddly appropriate. All these past lives dwell within me now, and will do so until I take a new vehicle.'

  Armaita stands up suddenly, and turns to the bookcase behind him. He starts to run his finger over the spines of leather-bound books that he has probably never read until he comes to a small one on the end. He places it on the desk and opens it up somewhere in the middle, licking his fingertip as he moves through the pages. Finally he finds what he is looking for, just as I am about to lose all interest in the proceedings.

&n
bsp; 'Here. The Gerasene Demons. My name is Legion for we are many, a passage from the Bible. Do you know what it's about?'

  I do, of course. I know what everything's about.

  'The Gerasene Demons are a multitude of demons that inhabited a single body and need to be cast out and thrown back into the pits of hell,' Armaita tells me unnecessarily.

  'So? What do you suggest? A better diet and regular exorcise?'

  Armaita closes the book with a thud and slides it to the side of the table.

  'I simply think that that is an odd analogy for a psychiatric patient to use, unless you subconsciously know that these demons are nothing more than a symptom of your illness and need to be cast out.'

  'It was just an expression,' I argue, for argument's sake.

  Armaita shakes his head and wags his finger at me, once again releasing a slight cluck of excitement. The bloodhound has found a trail.

  'No, I don't believe that it is. I've been speaking to Dr Pontius quite a bit about your condition. Now assuming you do have temporal lobe epilepsy, and it seems increasingly likely that you do, there's something you should know about it.'

  'Just a few days ago Dr Pontius was convinced I had a malignant brain tumour. Only yesterday he was convinced I would never walk again. His opinion is hardly gospel.'

  Armaita accepts this point, but still attempts to hammer his own home. Perhaps he believes it will make his book more exciting.

  'Temporal lobe epilepsy affects an area of the brain which has long been known to deal with religious experiences. There have been tests done on nuns and priests, compared with control samples of less religious people or atheists.'

  Armaita is the classic example of an atheist of the worst kind. A fundamentalist atheist, prepared to embark on an unholy war to wipe out the faith of others with his unfaltering logic. Even sitting opposite God and talking to him doesn't seem to convince him otherwise. He can't be saved.

  'Furthermore,' he continues, 'there have been many documented cases of people suffering from the same condition as you who have suddenly become intensely religious. Some even believed themselves to have had visitations from Angels and the like. These are clearly delusions, but their root source is in the right temporal lobe, just above the ear, where your tumour was thought to be. Now whatever the problem is, there is a definite convergence with those cases and your own.'

  'I don't follow.'

  'You've just claimed to be God! You were depressed, Joe... whatever you wish to be called, you were depressed to the point of suicide. You used to talk to me quite frequently about how your problems couldn't compare with the suffering of others in the world. You said that people were dying every day and nobody did anything to prevent it.'

  I try and raise my wrist, but the leather restraint stops me. It's beginning to become quite painful. I'm starting to cramp.

  'Is there any chance we could loosen these restraints?'

  Armaita ignores me and continues to preach his diagnosis, willing into existence the advance from a publisher that he seems sure this will bring.

  'You were concerned about the suffering in the world so you invented a way to solve it. You convinced yourself that those people didn't really exist. You were given a death sentence by Dr Pontius and you convinced yourself that you were God so that you wouldn't have to face it. Isn't that obvious to you? Can't you see the logic in what I'm saying?'

  Unfortunately, I do see the logic in what he's saying. In fact, as far as explanations go, I think it's quite a reasonable one. The only problem is that it's not the correct one. I don't really know any other way to explain it to him so I just nod as if to agree with him. He smiles.

  'Good. Now back to this kidney. What happened?'

  'Oh, you're still on about that? Well I went to a prostitute called Judith and she drugged me and stole my kidney. Presumably for sale on the black market. That's what the note said.'

  'The note?' asks Armaita.

  'They left me a note when I woke up in the bathtub filled with ice.'

  'That's not what really happened though, is it? That story is an urban legend, it's been around for a long time, but it's no more than that. What really happened?'

  'That's what happened. Do you doubt me, Thomas?'

  He looks me square in the eye, perhaps hoping to see a glimmer of sarcasm. In the month that Joe's been coming to see Thomas Armaita he has given him very little reason to trust him at his word. His contempt for psychiatry in general and Armaita in particular was never really hidden. I am not Joe any longer, but I still hold a similar view, and Joe is still a part of me. He seems to have a stronger hold over my personality than the thousands of others when I'm in the Overworld. Perhaps he has the home ground advantage. Finally, after a while, Armaita seems to accept that I'm telling the truth.

  'I believe that you believe it. That's enough, but I'm not certain we'll ever know what really happened that night.'

  'I know for a fact that you won't. I already do.'

  Armaita looks at me smugly.

  'So tell me, Joe. If you're all powerful, why is it that you let two wardsmen strap you to a wheelchair? If you truly are the creator of the universe, why is it that you're sitting in my office talking to me? Perhaps you should think about that.'

  I have thought about that, at length.

  'I have thought about that, and I don't know the answer. In the Underworld I can manipulate things as I see fit. But here, in Joe Finch's body, I seem to be powerless. It's never happened before. I'm meant to be dead and gone in this world and reborn in the next. Grey's appearance altered things.'

  'So in this Underworld of yours, which you can only access by sleeping, you are all powerful, but here you have no power, and therefore no proof of your claims? Doesn't that strike you as a little bit convenient?' he says, almost triumphantly.

  'No it doesn't. It strikes me as incredibly inconvenient,' I reply, struggling against my restraints to demonstrate what I mean.

  'What I mean is, you're fitting your story to the facts when the facts don't fit to your story. If we can find enough of these logic gaps then I believe that we may yet be able to save you.'

  'Save me. From being crazy, you mean?'

  Armaita shakes his head, chastising me.

  'No. You know I don't like the word crazy, Joe,' he says.

  'And I don't like the word prolapse,' I reply. 'But if somebody has six inches of intestines sticking out of their anus then there's no other word for it, right? You think I'm crazy.'

  'No I don't. The word crazy implies judgement of some kind and I don't believe that anyone has the right to judge somebody's way of looking at the world. What I am here to do is rectify thoughts that lead to harm, either to yourself or to others.'

  The word rectify leads me to the word prolapse again in an internal word association game that I can't help playing.

  'I am not in the business of altering the thoughts of an individual to some arbitrary norm. There is no such norm, but there is a basic congruence of ideas that allow somebody to live a productive life. That's what I'm aiming for,' continues Armaita soothingly.

  He sounds like he's just read me the brochure for a health spa. The kind that promotes vitality and general well being and is actually then filled with lobotomised imbeciles and electroshock therapy rooms. It's too polished to be true. Armaita is nothing but a creation of my mind in any case, and given my poor opinion of psychiatrists, he is bound to be a particularly poor example.

  'I also don't like the word synergy. As far as I can tell it doesn't actually mean anything,' I reply, and his eager expression evaporates.

  'I think we've had enough for today. You've certainly given me a lot to think about, Joe, and I hope I returned the favour. I want you to be well again, whether you believe that or not.'

  He presses a button on the intercom and calls for the two wardsmen in wolves clothing.

  'And I am your God, Thomas, whether you believe that or not. And as a test of your faith, I command you to take your only
daughter, Gabriel, and offer her as a sacrifice to me.'

  The door opens and the two wardsmen come in, looking angrier than cats in a sack. One of them takes the handles of my wheelchair roughly and spins me around to face the door.

  'Yes I've heard that story as well, Joe. And at the last minute God stops me, after I have proved the extent of my faith.'

  I turn my head back, frowning.

  'What? No. Why would I stop you? Stab the bitch.'

  Armaita does not smile as I am wheeled from his office and back to my room.

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