by Mike Kilroy
“They are better left forgotten,” he added, pointing a thick and callused index finger at his temple.
“Maybe some of us want to know, want to remember.” Mar barked. She was not one to be trifled with and BRG was very trifling. “You seem to know more than the rest of us. Why don't you tell us what you know?”
BRG stood and walked toward the group. It was a looping walk, an unsteady one. That worried Solo. “The planet is ours, and all you can do is stand around and wonder why? What a waste.”
“And what have you been doing with your time?” Mar asked. She stood close to BRG, perhaps a bit too close. She waved her hand in front of her nose and grimaced at the stench of his breath.
BRG wobbled and caught his balance. He reached into his pocket and pulled from it a flask and took a swig. “Living. Exploring. I love to explore. I have it all figured out.” He tried to tap his index finger on his temple, but he missed—badly—poking at his ear and then his forehead and finally his eye.
“He has it all figured out, all right,” Tom chuckled. “I wonder where he keeps his stash?”
Solo looked at Tom, who put his thumb to his lips and tilted his head back, and then said, “I bet he has lots of things in his stash.”
Solo walked briskly toward Mar, grabbed her by the shoulder and smiled. “Follow me. I think I know where we can find some answers.”
***
Solo wound his flashlight and switched it on, shedding light on just how putrid this underbelly of the hospital was.
Not much had changed in the basement between the Before and After. It was still dank and still smelled foul.
“Why on Earth are you bringing me down here?" Mar asked, her nose turned up and her face creased with a scowl.
“BRG has a hiding place.”
Solo reached the door and turned the knob. It was locked.
Mar grabbed the knob, turned it and then yanked on it in frustration.
She turned to leave. “I'll beat the key out of him.”
Solo reached out and stopped her. “He won't have the key on him. He’s paranoid. He hid it.”
Solo reached up and slid his hand along the top of the frame. His fingers brushed something metal and he grasped it, shining the light on the key.
“Not a very good hiding place,” Mar said, laughing.
“He didn't want to lose it or have someone take it. He figured no one even knew about this place anyway.”
The door swung open with a creak and Solo shined the light into the small closet. The card structures were still there, dusty and faded, as well as crates of alcohol and files stacked neatly in the corner.
Solo slipped into the room, grabbed a file off the top and opened it. His eyes ran over the lines of the first page of a thick, manila folder dedicated to the mental instability of BRG—otherwise known as Paul Puckett.
Sentences that contained phrases like “perfect candidate for FTR 2.0” and “antisocial personality disorder” and “extremely dangerous” leapt off the pages at Solo as he read.
“What is it?” Mar asked, no doubt witnessing Solo's lips folding into a frown in the glow of the flashlight.
“I think we've found what we're looking for, but I'm not sure we should share these with the group,” Solo said as he flipped through the pages, finally coming to a police report.
“Why not?”
Solo didn't respond. He kept reading the ghoulish details of a triple homicide, of how BRG murdered his wife, his priest and the pizza delivery man with his bare hands, all while wearing his bath robe.
His brown bath robe that was caked with their blood.
Solo closed the file and took a deep breath. What he had just read was shocking and disturbing. But it was beginning to make sense.
God, it makes sense.
These were dangerous, mentally ill people—and I’m in here with them.
His memories, fragmented and disturbing, made sense to him now.
I’m a murderer. I was caught. I was sent here.
Perhaps BRG had remembered what he had done in the Before and was grateful for this new start in the After.
Mar squeezed Solo's shoulder tightly. “Solo, what’s in that file?”
“Details about why BRG was here. Everyone's file is probably in that stack.”
“You know you want to read them,” Tom’s voice came from the darkness outside the room and echoed hauntingly. “Go ahead. The truth is right there—if you’re man enough. Then again, maybe you don’t want to know what I did, what we did. Maybe it’s better that way.”
Solo began slapping at his head, squeezing his eyes shut so tightly they wept.
Mar began to reach for a file, but Solo reached out and grabbed her arm, squeezing it tightly enough to make her grimace. “Hey, let me go.”
“There are some things maybe we shouldn't know.” Solo put BRG's file back on the stack and pushed Mar out of the closet, closing the door behind him. He turned the knob to make sure it was locked and slipped the key into his pocket.
Solo stomped off, his heart pounding. He heard Mar’s steps behind him trying to keep pace and her yell, “Solo, what’s wrong? The truth is in there. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? The truth?”
Solo said nothing.
The truth? Why, when a lie would do so nicely? Or an omission—just as good.
Perhaps it was better to forget.
No regrets.
Some things never change.
***
“You had to have found something. You were gone for quite some time,” Normal Looking Guy asked. Mar shot Solo a look of concern as he simply stared out the window at the cold, the gray, the lifelessness.
Solo swallowed the large lump that had formed in his throat. “No. We didn't find anything.”
“They probably fucked,” Suicide Girl said. “Didn't you? God. She's always been a whore.”
Mar walked menacingly toward Suicide Girl. Solo snapped. “Fighting isn't going to get us anywhere!”
“I found something,” Gingivitis Guy said, drawing all the eyes in the room to him.
“Oh, yeah?” Suicide girl said, chidingly. “What did you find? Your teeth?”
“No. Look at this.” Gingivitis Guy held out a file, one Solo hadn't seen on the stack. He grabbed it out of GG's hand and flipped it open.
It wasn't earth shattering, just memos and emails between various department heads at the hospital. As he flipped, he was beginning to wonder what GG had seen to lead him to believe anything was pertinent.
Then, he reached the last page and a vague email signed by Dr. Kline:
We have found only about one percent of the patients meet the standard and prerequisite for FTR 2.0, making it challenging to find a suitable test group. But I believe we have enough to begin the experiment. One patient in particular is a perfect test subject. There’s something about him. His mind is beautifully complex. Special. It will be a joy to work with such a splendid specimen as he. Hopefully, I can help bring him and the others peace. Only time will tell.
Solo glanced up at GG, who smiled his toothless smile before saying, “One percent. That's us.”
“One percent of what?” Suicide Girl asked.
Mar knew the answer. So did Solo, but he had no desire or will to reveal it.
“Don’t tell them nothing,” Tom barked.
Solo swallowed another lump in his throat. “It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.”
Mar shook her head and stormed out of the room, brushing by Solo on the way out.
“One percent is us. It’s us,” BRG chimed in with an unsettling glee in his voice. “We are the chosen ones, the ones God left behind to repopulate His planet. To bring a rise to Babylon again.”
Everyone in the room looked at BRG as if he had thirteen heads.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Suicide Girl snarled and then turned her eyes to Solo. “What the fuck is he talking about?”
BRG snickered. “Tell them, Solo. They’re beginning to re
member. They’ll know soon enough anyway.”
Suicide Girl marched to Solo, stood on her toes and put her face inches from his. “If you know something, you better spill it.”
Solo backed away and looked at the all the eyes in the room, searching for answers, longing to understand. They looked meek and harmless, but Solo knew better. His heart began to thrum rapidly in his chest. He felt lightheaded and his face flush red.
The truth was the last thing they needed to hear right now.
“You all are special,” Solo said. “You have been chosen. Babylon is yours.”
Solo backed away and slumped down into one of those uncomfortable, molded plastic chairs. He buried his head into his hands and felt the room spin. He leaned back in the chair and pried his eyelids open to see everything twisting. He leaned back in his chair and it toppled over.
Tom’s face hung close to his. “It’ll be okay, brother.”
***
Solo pressed his elbows on the back of the pew and clasped his hands together in prayer.
His knees ached and his lower back complained of the kneel, but he thought if he was to call on God to help him, he needed to go all the way.
Tom sat in the pew behind him, leaning forward, his foul breath whistling through Solo’s ear as he exhaled.
“Why do you call me Solo?”
“Because you’re alone, stupid.”
“I’m not alone. I have Eye Lyds.”
“No. She has you.”
“She needs me.”
“You need her like a fucking hole in the head. All you need is me.”
“I don’t need you.”
“Yes, you do. And you know it. You just can’t admit the truth. You hide in your books, you imagine a life for yourself grander than it is. You dream of a better life, a happy life, a content life, but you’ll never have it. Never. You ain’t meant to. You are a freak. But you’re no monster.”
Solo closed his eyes and prayed.
Tom wouldn’t let him have even that. “You’ll become a monster if you keep her around.”
Solo pressed his clasped hands against his forehead and prayed even more intensely. He whispered, “Please, God, get her through this. Guide her through these troubled waters.”
“He ain’t listening. I am. And I’m answering your prayer.”
Solo opened his eyes. “What does that mean?” He turned to look at Tom.
He was gone.
***
“Is he dead?” Solo heard the distinct voice of BRG—and smelled the liquor on his breath—inches from his face.
“Nah,” Suicide Girl said, her face now inches from Solo’s. “He just passed out like a goddamned faggot.”
Solo sat up slowly. The room still spun ever-so-slightly, but he was getting his bearings again.
“What happened?” Solo asked.
“You took a dive,” Normal Looking Guy laughed. “Then your girlfriend came in and looked you over and left.”
“I thought she was going to kiss the rabbit between the ears,” Suicide Girl said with a giggle as she pointed.
Solo peered down at his pockets, which were turned inside out.
He stood quickly, bracing against a sudden swirl of the room. He couldn’t find his flashlight. “Matches! Anyone have matches!”
Suicide Girl reached into her pocket, pulled out a matchbook and held it out to Solo, who grabbed it and opened it to find one match inside.
The light from the match flickered in the hallway as Solo made his way carefully into the basement. The light of his flashlight glowed from BRG’s room.
As he approached, he heard sobbing.
Mar sat with her knees pressed against her chest and her head buried in her folded arms. She sobbed and jerked at the despair.
“Mar,” Solo said, shaking the match out. “What’s wrong?”
“You were right. I shouldn’t have read them.” Mar held out a file.
Solo hesitantly took it and then knelt to pick up the flashlight. He opened the file dedicated to Margaret Logue and leafed through the pages that detailed a very troubled girl.
And a murderer.
She ran a knife through the back of her father and watched him die with a proud smile as her mother witnessed him bleed to death.
Mar’s muffled voice rose to Solo’s ears. “We’re all murderers.”
Other files were open and spread across the floor. Solo shined the light on them, reading the names of Daniel Beam—aka Gingivitis Guy. Olivia Wilks—aka Suicide Girl. Duane Cookson—aka Normal Looking Guy. He grabbed each one and read about their lives spent in and out of facilities like this, about their inner torment and their demons run amok, and how they murdered people, some close to them, some not, in a variety of peculiar ways.
Solo grabbed Mar by the shoulder and shook her. He shook her again and she finally looked up with a wet and bloodshot brown eye and a wet and bloodshot blue eye.
“Where’s my file?” Solo asked.
Mar shrugged. “It’s not here.”
“What do you mean it’s not here?”
“I looked. It’s not here. There is no file on you.”
Solo searched frantically for his file, hoping she had just missed it. He tore through every last page of every last file.
Nothing.
“I killed my father,” Mar said, her lips quivering. “That’s why I am here. This is hell.”
Mar stood and grabbed Solo by the shoulders and squeezed tightly. Solo shined the light into her wan, wet face and was mesmerized by her eyes again, not because of their peculiar colors, but because of the amount of pain in them.
There was pain in her voice, too. “Solo,” she said, her lips quivering and eyes welling with tears. “We’re monsters.”
Chapter Ten
A Particular Kind of Monster
There is a darkness in all of us, a monster clawing to get out, to escape, to assert its will.
Some are better at controlling the monster than others. Some can hold it at bay through gritted teeth. Some can thwart it by taking a deep breath. Some can live with the monster, accept it and keep it chained.
Others cannot.
Most don’t have a face to put to the monster—it has no flesh, no bones, no searing eyes or bristling whiskers of a beard.
Solo wasn’t so lucky. Solo’s monster had a face and a name.
Tom.
And he looked at him, lips curled up into a smile, as he watched Solo try to consol Mar, who continued to sob.
“She’s right,” Tom said. “You’re all monsters.”
Solo slammed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw. He took a deep breath through his nose. He did all the things people do when trying to contain their monster.
It didn’t work.
Solo couldn’t control his monster. He was never able to control Tom. He was never able to hold him at bay, to keep him chained.
And Solo wondered if that meant he was a monster, too.
Mar pulled her head from her arms and wiped her eyes dry with the back of her hands. She was calm now.
She was all cried out, it seemed.
Instead, she peered at Solo with surrender, as if she had come to terms with her lot in this life and the other. Solo could also see curiosity in her eyes and that was confirmed by the words that spilled from her lips. “Where’s your file? You must have a file.”
Solo’s eyes searched the closet again, knowing full well he would not find his truth.
Perhaps BRG had it tucked away somewhere, perhaps it has been destroyed, or perhaps there was never one on him to begin with.
Mar expected an answer, but Solo had none. Instead, he shrugged, stood and held a hand out to her. “C’mon. Let’s get back to the others.”
Mar reached out her hand, but pulled it back. It was the first time Mar had looked at him with distrust in her eyes and it wounded Solo. He never expected that. Not from Mar.
It hurt Solo more than he expected.
“She don’t trust you no more,”
Tom said, laughing derisively. “How about that? After all she’s done, the devil bitch doesn’t trust you. I’d watch my back if I was you. She’s gonna stick a knife in it.” Tom chortled. “Maybe literally. That’s kind of her thing.”
Mar brushed past Solo as she headed upstairs. Solo followed her, injured like a dog that had been kicked.
Solo slinked into the common area behind Mar. The others, noticing their return, crowded around and began asking questions all at once, their voices blending into an incomprehensible swirl of sounds.
Mar silenced them all, “Do you know who you are?”
Solo grabbed Mar by the shoulder to spin her around, but she punched his hand away. “They need to know if they don’t already,” she said, not turning to look at Solo, instead staring straight ahead at her flock. “They need to know what they are. They need to know why they are here, why they were here.”
Solo knew deep down that he needed to stop her, that the next words that would fall from her lips would send a ripple through the group that would produce terrible repercussions. They were all fragile and lost. Such news would crumble their already shaky foundation.
Then Mar surprised him.
She always had the knack of surprising him.
“You’re all very special people. The one percent. A new start. You should be grateful. What happened before doesn’t matter. All that matters is what happens now. Forget the regret. We have a new world to conquer.”
Mar turned to look at Solo, her face taunt and her eyes narrow, and then looked back at the group. “There’s one problem.” She turned again, pointing a finger at Solo. “He doesn’t belong here. He’s not one of us.”
The eyes in the room fixed on Solo. The faces that belonged to those eyes creased into scowls.
“Told you she’d turn on you,” Tom said. He stood next to Solo, shoulder pressing into his. “Should have killed her. A false friend and a shadow stay only while the sun shines.”
***
The sun certainly wasn’t shining in here. Not in this place. It had been days since Solo had seen any discernible light. The only glow that had hit his eyes came from a flashlight as Mar pointed it at him while she slipped him food. Soon, she was gone and Solo was in the dark with playing cards he could not see and files he could not read.
