Twelve Mad Men

by Ryan Bracha et al.

  Every night, Benny and Gary will sit together in the security office of St. David’s Asylum for the Criminally Insane, eating pizza, and drinking beer. They will take their turns to patrol the halls, calming down the inmates, and will in no way abuse their power. That’s not what they do. They definitely do not abuse their power. No matter what anybody in here tells you, they are professionals.

  Sometimes, though. Sometimes the agency sends somebody new. Then, and only then, do they let the mask slip just slightly. Then, and only then, do they get just a little territorial. Then, and only then, do start to act just a little out of character.

  Eight

  “Twins?” I ask. Gary nods.

  “Mmhmm,” he says, “Benny’s older by fifteen minutes,” he says, “and forty eight seconds.”

  After the night I’ve had, I’m close to admitting that I’m relieved that these two fuckwits have been messing with my head. I knew something wasn’t right.

  “I could get him sacked, you know that?” I say, my threat as empty as Gary’s bearded head. Which is now shaking.

  “Yeah, but you won’t,” he says.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Well, for one, there’s two of us, and we’ll just make sure you keep quiet.”

  “Okay?”

  “And for two, we don’t even exist.”

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re undergoing confusion therapy right now, you aren’t here. We aren’t here. You’re a resident. You’ll wake up before long and they’ll drag you kicking and screaming back to your room.”

  Now I’m shaking my head, and laughing derisively. I’m a resident? I’ve never heard so much bullshit in all my life.

  “You’re fucking tapped mate,” I say, jabbing a finger into the side of my skull, “are you sure you’re not the resident?”

  “Go and ask Benny if you don’t believe me, he’s upstairs sorting your mess out.”

  I’m out of the door and flying up the stinking sweaty corridor as fast as my legs will take me. From behind me I hear Gary’s booming laughter. From above me I hear screaming. Fucking Keith. My steps feel heavy. I sluggishly drag myself up the stairs. At first it’s two at a time and then it’s one. The door to the first floor swings open before me and it’s then that I see it. Allen Miles’ door wide open. I didn’t lock it. Fuck’s sake. There’s that scream again but it’s not Keith. It’s coming from Miles’ room. I approach the open door. Inside it Miles, or Vincent Melluish, has a hold of Benny. His arm is gripped python like around his neck. Benny’s chubby purple face shivers as he clings for his life, but it’s looking like a losing battle.

  “Thanks for this,” says Miles calmly, “you shouldn’t have, though. Really.”

  “Let him go Vincent,” I say.

  “Mr Melluish!” he roars over the sound of Benny slipping into unconsciousness.

  “Mr fucking Melluish! Let him go, please.”

  “I’d rather not,” he says, and I step into the room, “take another step, I dare you,” he smiles.

  Still he hasn’t taken his eyes off of mine, his free arm doing everything it needs to around Benny’s neck. I hold my hands up and retreat back across the threshold.

  “Good lad,” he says, and Benny slips away. Dead.

  I turn to make some kind of plea to the CCTV, anything that will bring the dopier of the twins upstairs.

  “Now, be a dear and unlock my cuff,” says the resident, nodding toward the keys that dangle from Benny’s belt, just out of his immediate reach. I nod, and slowly step into the room.

  “Get back,” I say, “I mean it.”

  “Told you before, if I could, then I would, but I’m really going nowhere.”

  I take him on his word and lower myself to the ground, my fingers picking at the key ring, doing their best to unclip them without taking my eye from the chained up resident. Once I have them in my grip he smiles.

  “Would you?” he says with a smile which I return, before throwing two fingers up at him and leaving the cell, which this time I really do make sure I lock behind me, and check twice.

  “Sorry Benny,” I say above the bellowing from his murderer.

  Gary bolts through the door to my right and into the hallway. He looks worried.

  “You’re lucky none of us are real,” I say to him, “because Vincent just killed your pretend brother.”

  Gary howls in anguish, his hands to his face. Through the tears his pain turns to anger, and he pushes me hard. For the third time tonight I’m sent flying along the floor, but I suppose I deserved that, and I pick myself up without further discord.

  “Gimme them fucking keys, I’m gonna tear his fucking head off!” Gary snarls, and I have no choice but to comply. He snatches them from me and slams the key into the lock hard, before almost pulling the door from the hinges.

  “Ah, Gary, good to see you,” says the man in the cell, “you don’t look well old chap.”

  Gary rushes at Vincent Melluish-slash-Allen Miles, and that’s all I see, because once again I slam the door closed, twisting the key in the lock, and leaving the pair of them to do what they please. I came here to do a job, and I’m fucked if I’m going to do it badly. I can explain the fucked up twins to the powers that be in the morning. Right now I’ve got people to see and things to do. If I’m the only one left in this building with both my sanity and the ability to breath it’s my job to ensure the safety of the residents. I have a duty of care.

  The clattering and yelling continues from the room, but it disappears beneath the conversation behind door seven. An American voice. Then an English one. Then Scottish. For that breath shortening, heart stopping moment I’m convinced that Wilson and Furchtenicht and fuck knows who else have broken out of their rooms and are awaiting me behind the door. Then an Irish, no, Northern Irish accent too. What the fuck? My hand knocks on the door before I ask it to, and the voices go quiet. Not silent. There’s a whispering.

  “Hello?” I call out tentatively. No answer.

  “Who’s in there?” My eyes flicker to the name plate. It reads Edgerton, Les, “Les?”

  The voices mutter to one another again.

  “Are you okay? Who’s in there with you?” I ask as my fingers fumble around the keys.

  “You aren’t supposed to have anybody in your room, you know?” I say as my fingers fumble for the handle.

  “Get in the corner,” I instruct. I brace myself for an onrush of lunatics, my forearm held up horizontally across the front of my face. Ready to slam into the nose of the first person that attacks me. Focus. It’s your job. The door swings open and there aren’t a bunch of would be attackers.

  “Les?” I ask of the lone man sitting, back straight, in a chair. His fingers tap out a steady rhythm on his knees. The man in the chair is well built, bald, and with a biker-style white moustache, which curls up as he smiles. His eyes hidden behind small circular sunglasses.

  “Ain’t nobody calls me Les,” he says, “Jake’s my name.”

  Fuck’s sake, I don’t say. Does any cunt in this building go by their own name?

  “Okay? Jake, I heard voices in here with you,” I say, “are you alright?”

  That grin beams out again before he suddenly stops to lean forward, pulling the sunglasses down along his nose to get a better look at me.

  “Shit! Foster? Who the hell let you loose? Strangers are just friends you ain’t killed yet, huh?”

  Life Imitates Art

  By Les Edgerton

  Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

  Miles Davis

  The host tells me they currently have twelve guests here, including me. I’m not sure if that’s a baker’s dozen, which means there are really thirteen of us or if there’s just a straight twelve.

  Either way, the fucker can’t count for shit. There are twelve of us in my own suite alone. That isn’t counting all the other guys I see walking around during
“free” time.

  And I sure don’t feel like a “guest.” I feel exactly as I did when I was a “guest” in Pendleton… Only difference here is that I don’t have a number stitched on my shirt.

  My host asked me if I’d made any friends.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Lots. Some really cool guys in here, actually. Like Luke Case. Now that’s a pretty sharp guy.”

  “Luke Case? There’s no one by that name here,” he said.

  “There sure as shit is,” I said. Some “host.” Doesn’t even know who the other guests are. “The Limey dude. Well,” I said, considering, “One of the Limey dudes. I guess that wasn’t really a good description, was it? The guy who looks like Humphrey Bogart, if Bogart was still alive.”

  He got a puzzled look at that.

  “Another dude I really get along with is Tubal Cain. Now, that dude has some really scary stories. My kind of guy. I could listen to him all night long. In fact, I do. He kept me up until four ayem last night, telling war stories.”

  It looked like the little light in the refrigerator of his mind started to go on.

  “In your room? How could he be in your room? The doors are secured at night.”

  “Yeah, well you got part that right,” I said. “The locked-up part. I’m just talking about the dozen of us you’ve got in my suite. I don’t know who those other fuckers in those other rooms are, except maybe a couple I’ve seen in the chow hall or out in the exercise yard.”

  “Uh, do you know any of the others’ names?”

  I wasn’t crazy about the way he was looking at me. Like I had a unicorn sticking out of my forehead or something. I decided to play his stupid little game, at least for awhile. The longer I could stay here, yakking, the longer before I’d have to go back to the suite. Most of the guys there I got along with and liked, except that one fucker, Alan Foster. That guy was just plain scary. The first thing he’d said to me when we met was, “Strangers are just friends you haven’t killed yet.” What the fuck did that mean? Whatever it meant, it didn’t mean we were going to get matching tattoos, most likely. Something else struck me just then. Foster looked a lot like the guy sitting across from me. Enough to be related, brothers maybe or something. No wonder I didn’t trust the fucker.

  I couldn’t figure him out, either. Was he in charge or what? I wasn’t even clear on what I was doing here in the first place. What any of us were doing here. What kind of place was it anyway? In some ways, it felt like a hospital and in other ways it felt like a drug rehab place and in yet other ways it could have been a prison. Except, unless it was some kind of federal joint, it wasn’t a prison. Too nice for that! Individual rooms—hell, individual suites. Maybe I’d lucked into one of those place where they send the Wall Street crooks? It sure wasn’t a state joint. I mean, we had televisions in our rooms, a tennis court, a gym with all the crap you’d see in a high school gym, and, the biggest clue of all that this wasn’t a prison—the food was outstanding. Waiters, even. Menus. Utensils, not a soup spoon you had to eat everything with. No trays, no chow line. There weren’t any hacks at all. Guys in good suits all over the place, asking if you needed anything.

  It was a puzzle. I didn’t remember going to court for anything, having any black robe leaning over and telling me he was sending me away. It wasn’t a rehab place either, I don’t think. I don’t remember crashing on anything—hell, all I ever did was a little recreational coke. Hadn’t done anything heavy-duty in years.

  No, just one morning I wake up and here I am. A mental institution, that’s what it must be. The only thing that made sense. Probably had some kind of breakdown and that’s why I didn’t remember anything.

  I decided not to sweat it. Whatever this place was and however I’d gotten here didn’t much matter. The food was great, booze was everywhere, and it was like a four-star hotel. If this was the Cracker Factory, I could get used to it.

  But, this guy in front of me! I couldn’t figure him out at all.

  He asked again, “What are the other’s names? The guys you say visit you in your suite.”

  I ticked them off. using my fingers. “Tubal Cain, Luke Case, Alan Foster…” That name got a weird look from him. I went on. “Kori Woodson, Dave… er, Davie Diller. Davy Sheridan, Brian Morgan.” How many was that? Seven. “Brian Morgan, Reg Evans…” I thought. “Oh, yeah, this guy named Tommo. I don’t know his last name. Saul Stone. Two brothers—Jimmy and Sean Bennet.” How many was that? A baker’s dozen. There were more but I couldn’t remember their names, just then.

  “Those are the people you’ve met here?” he said. “In your room?”

  ‘Yeah. Well, some of them. There are others.” I remembered another guy who didn’t talk much, just kind of sat in a corner and observed people mostly. Truman Pinter. Kind of a weird fuck. Well, not “kind of.” Really fucked up. Which was saying something with that crew. I laughed out loud.

  “What’s funny?” my host said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “It’s just…:

  “Just what?”

  “Nothing. Can I ask you a question?”

  He nodded.

  “What kind of place is this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what kind of place is this? Is it a prison? Drug rehab? Some kind of mental hospital? What?”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “I asked you, man. If I had any idea of what it was, I wouldn’t ask, would I?”

  He just kind of shook his head at that, like I was too dumb to live. Fuck ‘im.

  He pushed some kind of button on the side of his desk and one of the suits showed up.

  “George here will escort you back to your room, Les,” he said. “We’ll talk again.”

  “Les? Who the fuck is ‘Les’? My name is Jake, you moron. Jake Bishop. Did you grab the wrong guy?” That would explain a lot. But, it would leave far more questions than it answered. What the fuck was going on? Which was precisely what I was about to ask him when he held up his hand like a traffic cop and said,” All in good time, Les. Or Jake. Whichever you prefer.” He nodded his head to the suit and before I knew what had happened we were out in the hallway, moving toward my suite, his fingers gripping my elbow like steel tongs and propelling me along.

  Don’t fight it, I thought. Go along to get along. I’ll figure this shit out.

  Back in my suite, there were half a dozen of my new friends lounging about, drinking beer and in some cases, bottles of whiskey.

  “We need to talk, guys,” I said. I sat down on the sectional and they gathered around, some pulling up easy chairs and a couple sitting with me. The door opened and another guy walked in. Luke Case. He walked over and sat down beside me. “What’s up, mate?” he said.

  I looked at him and then the others. “Do any of you know why we’re here?

  Nobody spoke.

  “That’s what I thought. None of us have a clue, do we?”

  Again, nobody said a word for a moment, and then a guy who’d just come in, Karl Black, said, “They made a mistake.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “I don’t know about you guys, but the guy in charge, kept calling me Richard. Richard Godwin. I asked him who the fuck was that and all he did was smile at me. That’s not my name.”

  Like a hive of bees, a buzz rose, everyone talking at once.

  “Yeah, they did… me, too… called me Ken Bruen… who the fuck is Matt Hilton?... my name’s not…”

  “Okay!” I shouted. The nose subsided and they all looked at me.

  “It looks like this is some kind of major fuck-up. Did anyone get called by their right name by the guy in charge?”

  A unified chorus of noes was my answer.

  “Me, either. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on and the best I can do is that this is some kind of secret government project. Do any of you know how you got here?”

  Again, a general hubbub began and the gist of it was none of knew the answer to that, either.

  L
ittle by little, we began to piece together the chain of events that had brought us all to this place. Other guys kept coming in and getting caught up. The suite soon filled up and the noise level kept rising. Finally, I shouted, “Listen up, guys!” The room quieted. It looked like I was the ipso facto leader. I took a sheet of paper from the supply furnished on the desk and wrote:

  “First, let’s keep it down. If this is some kind of government conspiracy, I imagine our rooms are bugged.”

  Everyone nodded. I passed out sheets of paper to everyone who needed it, but there were a surprising number of those gathered in the room who took out notebooks from their own pockets as well as pens. Amazing! I wondered what the odds were of a random assemblage who would have paper and pen on them.

  Back and forth we went, me posing questions and getting answers.

  Anyone been outside?

  Two guys. Both said the same thing. It appeared we were on some kind of small island. Heavily wooded and a city could be seen across the water. Neither would venture a guess as to what city it was. The outside of the building we were in was nothing like the inside. On the outside, both men said it looked like some kind of abandoned warehouse or institutional building. Nothing like the relative opulence we were ensconced in.

  Neither had spotted any boats, but we all agreed there had to be one someplace. Else how had not only we but our “hosts” gotten there.