Suddenly, I knew why I was here. I was sent to face the truth of seeing myself burned and on my deathbed.
“That has to be it,” I said aloud. “Why else would I be in a hospital?”
I couldn’t believe it and I didn’t want to go through with it. To be told what had happened to me and to imagine what I must look like was difficult enough to grasp. To face it head-on would probably kill me completely. I trembled. “I can do this,” I tried to believe.
“You ain’t dead,” said a voice with a deep southern drawl, “so how’d you get here, boy?”
I almost jumped out of my skin. A man sat on the end of the counter behind me with a guitar propped on his lap. Against the white backdrop of the ceiling and walls, he cut a stark figure with skin as deep as charcoal. He was a young man, wearing a white button-up shirt underneath a black pinstripe suit and striped tie. A pack of Pall Mall’s stuck out of the chest pocket of his jacket and he reeked of cheap whiskey.
“Second one I saw already,” the man added.
“You can see me?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, “and I ain’t no guide, so find yo’ own way ‘round.” He hopped off the counter and pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and stuck it between his lips. “But you oughta be careful, bein’ alive an’ all. Most o’tha original residents o’this place don’ like yo kind.”
He moved toward me, strumming a few chords on his guitar as he strolled into the center of the walkway where I stood. He hummed a blues-tinged tune in the back of his throat.
“Ought not stand right there, eitha,” he said, looking down at the floor. “You’s askin’ fo’ trouble.”
I looked down briefly and then back up at him. The walkway stretched out in four directions like a giant cross in the center of the building.
He began to finger the chords with more precision then and that hum came out as words every few seconds.
“Why shouldn’t I stand here?” I said.
“You may bury my body…Down by the highway side,” he sang, picking the guitar strings.
I noticed the nurses sitting behind the counter; eyes closed softly, their upper bodies moving subtly in time with the man’s music.
He continued to play and sing as he walked away.
“You may bury my body…wooo…Down by the highway side.”
“Wait!” I shouted, raising my hand to stop him. “You said you saw another like me?” But the man walked through a wall and disappeared.
Frustrated further, I pounded my fist on the counter where the man had been sitting. A plastic clipboard crashed onto the floor. The nurses stopped everything to see how it had happened. I only stayed long enough to watch them be baffled and then shrug it off. I left past the counter and turned down another hallway. More fluorescents flickered above, leaving the white more gray. I saw that the entire hallway was lined by identical doors on one side, each with a single square Plexiglas window near the top and all of them bolted shut with thick silver slide locks. I peered inside the first. It was a small room, bright and white like the rest of the place. There was a mattress on the floor with a single pillow. In the next room and the three after it, nothing changed. Everything was the same in all of them, but when I came upon the fifth one, I saw that someone was inside. I watched the man for a moment as he paced across the floor, barefoot and wearing a hospital gown, tied only at the neck. It left everything else to hang freely. The man appeared to be talking to himself, or maybe only contemplating intensely. He motioned his hands, stopped and looked up at the ceiling and then started pacing again.
I pressed my face to the Plexiglas window, trying to see the far left and right side of the room. The man noticed me and scurried to the door, pressing his face against the window in a frightening rage. I stumbled backward into the wall. The man spat on the Plexiglas and then smeared his face in it. His eyes were feral and huge, his teeth rigid and buck. Clearly, he was mentally ill. No, he was fucking psychotic. I began to realize that this was no ordinary hospital. In normal hospitals, the doors were not locked from the outside and men like this were transferred quickly.
“What did you bring me?” the man shouted, his voice muffled behind the window. He licked the spit off the Plexiglas and smiled hugely at me.
I hurried down the hallway and didn’t stop when I came to another door I was sure was locked. I went right through it and ran until I came upon a different sort of room, one lengthy and spacious with hospital beds lining the walls on either side. My pace slowed as I walked down the length of the floor, watching those few in the beds as I passed them, leery of what they might say or do, hoping they were not anything like the man back in the locked room. A girl sat up in the center of the first bed. Machines were hooked to her; an IV in her right hand, a little oxygen tube resting at the base of her nostrils. She stared at me as I walked by, but I wondered if she really saw me at all.
The next patient I know saw me as I approached. She was bone-skinny; her face shrunken, the skin around her eyes sunk into the sockets. She waved at me and squeamishly I waved back.
I walked quickly past her.
“Come to take me to Hell?” said a man with spiky black hair and a thick British accent. “I’m fucking ready! Come to take me to Hell?”
I tried to shuffle past him and to the exit that suddenly seemed miles away, but the three patients out ahead were roused by the British man’s interest. I slowed almost to a stop, feeling barricaded by them even though they were still in their beds.
“I’ve been waiting for the bastards, but they always leave me here!” the British man added. He pulled the IV out of the top of his hand. Blood oozed from the wound and soaked the bright white bedding and his hospital gown. He let his bony legs fall over the side of the bed and he sat there, looking at me with sharp black eyebrows drawn together harshly.
I stepped further away from him.
“Hey,” he said, “where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
I kept walking, trying to keep two eyes on four people.
“Ignore him,” said a blond man, “he’s half-cocked.”
Another man with black hair laughed. “He’s half-cocked?” he said. “You’re both crazy as shit—who the hell are you two talking to?” He shook his head.
“The demon,” the blond man said, pointing at me.
“He came to take me to Hell,” said the British man. He raised himself from the bed and stood hunchback. After wobbling for a moment, he started toward me. “You’re not leaving me this goddamned time.”
“I-I...no, I’m not here to take you anywhere. Sorry.”
Two nurses walked in through the double-doors I had been trying to get to. One carried a needle and the other, an extremely annoyed expression.
“Alright, back in bed,” said the one with the needle, “or you’ll end up back in the room.”
The way she said ‘the room’ made my skin prickle. It didn’t sound like any room I ever wanted to see.
The nurse with the annoyed expression snapped on a pair of blue rubber gloves and went toward the British man. He protested, pushing her away with curse-filled words, trying to tell her about the ‘demon’ standing there that came to take him to Hell. But the nurse was more persuasive, leading him back to his bloody bed, which would stay bloody by the looks of things.
An elderly patient with cottony hair and eyebrows never took his eyes off me. When I moved, his hard gaze followed methodically.
“Am I the only one around here that doesn’t see people and hear voices?” said the black-haired man from his bed. “I shouldn’t be in here. This place is full of crazies!”
The British man lay back against his pillow, holding out his arm willingly for the nurse. “I shouldn’t fucking be in here, either,” he said.
The annoyed nurse tended to the British man’s machines. “You’re in here because you believe you’re some dead punk rocker,” she said, pressing little buttons.
“I am not dead!” he retorted. “Why do I have to keep telling you p
eople that? Fucking Americans.”
They both ignored him, just like any well-trained caregiver in any psychiatric hospital who had to listen to lunatic ramblings day in and day out.
The annoyed nurse pulled out a little packet containing an alcohol pad and tore it open. After cleaning the bend of his left arm, she put the IV back in and let the other nurse come over with the needle to inject the medication into it.
One. Two. Thr—he was out.
I took this opportunity to try to ease my way past, but the old man with cottony hair stopped me just before I made it to the double-doors.
“Your little demon friend,” he began, “snot-nosed little fucker, was looking for you in here earlier.”
I cocked my head. “He was? Was his name Tsaeb?”
“Something like that,” the old man answered.
“See!” shouted the black-haired man, pointing, “He’s talking to the air! You don’t see me do that!”
The nurses didn’t even look at him and they left through the opposite exit where I had come from.
“Do you know where he went?”
“Nope.”
I waited, but the old man had nothing to add.
“Well, thanks...I think.”
“Sure.”
“Well then,” I added, “I’ll just be on my way then.”
I waited a few seconds more until finally I left through the double-doors without stirring them.
“It is fuel for the dying soul.”
--
I CAME TO AN enormous room on the other side of a tall glass wall, monitored by two male nurses. I had seen a room like this before, but only in the movies and in worse condition. There was a single TV mounted high on the wall near the ceiling. Animal Planet was on. Chairs were placed throughout the room, most of which were occupied by patients. A number of simple round plastic tables where patients skimmed magazines and drew pictures had been placed around the area. A girl wearing a ponytail low at the base of her neck sat stacking checkers in two piles. Black and then red, never red on red or black on black.
Four large windows sat beautifully in the wall out ahead, dressed by soft yellow painted crown molding. From each window, the sunlight spilled onto the shiny white tile floor in large pools. I went to a window and peered out, taking in the sight with a newfound respect. There was nothing special on the other side of that glass, but to me it was a dream. I could taste the fresh air, feel the warmth of the sun on my face and hear the birds chirping in the trees. I would do anything to go back, back home to my life. I would never take anything for granted again. Ever.
I didn’t care about why the picture framed by that window was no longer dead and gray. I didn’t care that it likely held great significance and that I should try to unravel its meaning. All I wanted to do was stand there and let the sun blind me as I stared into it.
“There you are!” said Tsaeb from the entrance.
I blinked back into reality and saw that the beauty of the sun had vanished and the only birds I could hear anymore were the damn crows.
“The people here are great!” said Tsaeb. “All that time I spent in the alley. I should’ve been spending it here!”
I acknowledged him, but was still grieving the loss of my hallucination and had no room for a response. I buried my hands deep into my pants pockets and my shoulders hunched over.
“What’s with you?”
“Nothing,” I said. I wouldn’t tell Tsaeb what I saw. He would ruin it for me further. “Where’s Sophia?”
“No idea. Haven’t seen her since I got here.”
“And how did you get here exactly?” This particular mystery, however, I needed to know.
Tsaeb pulled out an empty chair next to the girl with the ponytail stacking checkers and he sat down. He leaned back, propping his cloven hoofs upon the table, his fingers interlaced behind his head. “Well, while you were chit-chatting with Pretty Boy Samyaza, I was...well, I was gagging a lot, but that’s beside the point. Yeah, anyway I could tell right away that something just wasn’t right. I felt kinda high, y’know? And when I started looking at Sophia like a thirteen-year old boy might in the bathroom with a Cosmopolitan magazine, I knew there was definitely something wrong.”
He stopped to visibly shudder.
“Yeah, so I...well I guess you can say I came to my senses quick,” he went on, “and not a minute too soon. I would rather have the skin flayed off my....” he shuddered again, regretting the analogy. “So! What do you make of this? What’s our next move?”
“We have to find the Angel,” I replied listlessly, still thinking about the hallucination. “I know she’s here somewhere.”
The girl with the ponytail glanced at me then, but just for one slow second, enough to make it obvious she knew we were there, that she could see us.
I looked upon her carefully. Tsaeb waited for me to say something and when I didn’t, he obliged.
“Do you see me, too?” he said to the girl. “Or are you one of the oblivious naïf’s?”
I looked at him questionably.
“Oblivious? Naïf?” Tsaeb said, surprised I had trouble with such ‘self-explanatory’ words. He rolled his eyes. “Someone that can’t see what’s really there?” he added, gesturing his hands, palm-up.
“One whose mind isn’t opened to the truth,” said the girl, still looking at her perfect checkers. She added, “No, I’m not one of those, obviously.” Her voice just barely raised above her breath.
“I get it,” I said to Tsaeb and then I turned to the girl. “Do you know the Angel?”
“Sure I do,” she answered, never looking up.
“Do you know where she is?”
“I sure don’t.”
I pulled out the last empty chair and sat down, laying my arms across the checker-littered table.
“What do you know about her?”
“Any kind of help would be appreciated,” said Tsaeb. “Not that I’m in any hurry to leave, though. I like it here.” He smiled and it was genuine. In fact, it was kind and childlike even, complimenting his boyish façade for probably the very first time since I had met him.
The girl glanced up after placing another black checker on the left stack. I noticed that she must be young, not even twenty. Her skin was perfectly peach-colored and tight and her eyes were soft and innocent. “The Angel’s a prisoner,” she said, “and she’s as mentally impaired as anyone else here.”
Tsaeb and I glanced at one another briefly.
“Sometimes she knows who she is,” the girl went on as she continued stacking checkers, “but mostly she just sits there. Other times she might have a conversation, as random as it may be.”
She sighed and put a red checker on top. “The demon—,” she broke off and her soft face turned timid. I hated to see that, the beauty of her innocence so quickly consumed by fear. I thought it was such a tragedy.
“The demon took her mind,” she finally said. “That’s what she said one time when she knew who she was.”
Samyaza. I thought about him, knowing.
“Is the demon Samyaza?”
“I...I don’t know,” she sighed.
“Well, do you know what he looks like?” I urged. “Is he handsome with black hair?”
The girl’s eyes and mouth altered in a downturn, devastating her once innocent face even more. “No,” she shook her head, “he is terrible.” She visibly trembled.
I felt a twinge of panic race through my chest. Samyaza, with his not-so-intimidating personality, I thought I could handle. The demon described by this girl in only one word and a lot of body language wrecked the hope she had given me before.
A plump nurse entered the room pushing a patient in a wheelchair. Another figure entered behind them; a man with squared cheekbones and jet-black hair. A pair of dark shades were pressed over his eyes. He reached up and pulled the shades away as he leaned over the wheelchair near the patient’s ear. I glimpsed his eyes, which were were slit like a serpent.
I tensed i
n my chair.
“Leave me alone. I don’t need you,” said the patient in the wheelchair, “He will come for me soon, I tell you. God will come for me.”
“Uh-huh,” replied the plump nurse, thinking the patient was talking to her.
“Nobody’s gonna come out of the sky!” said the man with slit eyes. “Nobody.”
I noticed then something I was surprised not to have noticed sooner. Several people here were not patients or nurses. Like the tiny woman sitting in the lap of another patient in a wheelchair. She had awkwardly long fingernails. And the little girl who reminded me of Sophia, who kept skipping past the tall glass walls outside in the hall. And to our right was a red-haired woman wearing a hospital gown, but the long reptile-like tail that snaked along the floor behind her gave away her true identity. I nearly bit my tongue when I saw her. Terrifying memories of Charla the succubus haunted my thoughts for a moment.
Each of the ‘visitors’ seemed to be attached to certain patients. The woman with the tail kept whispering into a patient’s ear. He would reach over and slap the side of his face where her lips had lingered. Spit hung from the left corner of his sagging mouth.
“She also has no eyes,” said the girl next to me.
I looked back at her as she started taking down her two checker towers. Her movements were careful and precise; a hand on each stack that removed two pieces simultaneously and placed them flat upon the table.
“When did you see her last?” I said.
“Yesterday.”
I perked up a little.
“Where?” said Tsaeb, leaning up from the chair. “If you don’t mind us asking.”
Tsaeb was out of character. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he had a crush on the girl.
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