Twelve Mad Men

by Ryan Bracha et al.

  “Get out of my fucking garden before I stove your fucking head in, mutt.”

  The dog took one look at me and snarled. I walked forward, brandishing the shovel. It detected my lack of fear and eyeballed me. It skirted around me and ran down the drive, straight into its owner.

  “Oi, Bruiser! Get here…”

  The neighbour’s voice tapered off as he saw me holding the shovel. YOU COULD DO HIM NOW. NO ONE WOULD SEE.

  He pointed at me. “Touch that dog and I’ll put you in the fucking ground, pal.”

  “Get it and yourself off my fucking drive.”

  I dropped the shovel with a load clang that made my neighbour flinch and walked back into my house; my heart was pounding in my chest. Ten minutes later the cat slunk back into the house and came to sit on my lap, where she dozed as I twitched and shook in fear and anxiety. What was happening to me?

  That night as I lay in bed mulling over the day and trying to sleep I wondered if I should see the doctor about the voices. I guess that I must have drifted off; when I awoke it was to banging on the wall. A constant rhythmic thump, and this time it was not music. When I heard the first of the moans I knew what it was; the headboard, and her screaming for more under the sweating brute. She yelled loudly, begging to be fucked hard, and I sighed unhappily and stroked the cat, which lay asleep and twitching on the bed beside me.

  It seemed to go on all night. I heard laughter, and music. My misery couldn’t have been more palpable than if it sat in a chair staring morosely at me from the corner.

  June 5th

  I awoke once again feeling tired. My ever-present headache was starting to feel like an old friend now, I’d wonder what was wrong if I didn’t have a headache. The cat slipped off the bed and slunk down the stairs to await her food. I blinked the sleep out of my eyes as I entered the bathroom.

  Blood covered the room in small puddles. Thick congealing clumps slid down the tiles. Red viscous liquid ran overflowing from the toilet bowl and chunks of grey and pink matter floated in the sink. On the mirror above the sink, two words written in blood: KILL THEM.

  I gasped in horror and covered my face, my heart pounding in my chest with fear and nausea. I looked again; nothing, the bathroom was clean.

  I staggered down the stairs, gripping the banister with every step, my hands white-knuckled. I made it to the kitchen before I vomited into a sink full of dirty dishes.

  At eight I called into work and pleaded a migraine so I could have the day off. I left the curtains drawn and switched on the TV. I immediately muted the sound and watched grey images wash over me without effort. I curled up into a foetal ball. I pressed "play" on the stereo remote and found a classical station. As soothing strains of harp and flute washed over me, I lay curled up. The cat tried to get my attention but gave up after a couple of impatient meows and slipped out of her cat flap to find her own breakfast.

  I must have lain there for hours in the darkened room. The only noise I made was to laugh at the silent pantomime that was the Jeremy Kyle show on mute. As I watched some of the dregs of society, a beautiful orchestra played from the radio and I laughed and laughed until I was hoarse and coughing.

  Loud music from outside in the street had my eyes on stalks, flicking back and forth nervously. I crept to the curtains and looked through a small slit. A Citroen Saxo was blocking my drive. A guy wearing a Burberry cap stood beside it talking to my new neighbour. All the time the car’s stereo pounded out a beat. Money exchanged hands and my neighbour handed over a small polythene bag containing god knows what. They didn’t even have the good grace to look around furtively. DO IT. THEY DESERVE IT.

  The Saxo driver climbed into his car and drove off with tyres squealing. My neighbour strutted back to his house. I looked to my fireplace, at the ceremonial sword that hung there. A gift from an old friend. The scabbard was finely crafted wood with elegant carving curving up the length of it. The blade was still razor sharp. I walked slowly over to it and with trembling hands lifted the sword from its stand. I withdrew the blade and flinched at the harsh rasp as it caught the brass trim on the edge of the scabbard. I let the scabbard fall to the floor with a loud thud and lay back down, quietly stroking the blade's flat side. As Mozart played, Loose Women came on the TV. I was oblivious to all.

  June 6th

  I awoke in the early hours, uncomfortable from sleeping on the sofa. The sword was on the floor; no doubt it had woken me up when it fell from my grasp. I blinked and the room was in darkness except for the glow of the TV, which displayed one word in blood red letters: MURDERER. I got up quickly, nearly tripping over the sword, and switched the TV off at the wall. The word glared back at me defiantly for half a minute before slowly fading away.

  June 7th

  I skipped work again; my head was throbbing. I’d taken to having a morning cocktail of paracetamol and Ibuprofen, but nothing shifted the headache completely. Nothing dulled the voices or my obsession with my neighbours. I’d often hold a glass up against the wall to hear them talking. I’d stand there for long minutes trying to catch a word or phrase. I lurked in the back bedroom with the sword in my hand, looking out over their garden, which was already overgrown and messy. Large dollops of dog shit sat like land mines waiting to be trodden on. The beast himself trotted up and down the garden, barking at anything that moved. I stared down at it with bloodshot eyes, caressing the hilt of the sword. All the time voices whispered DO IT. DO IT.

  I was desperate to leave the house, but every time I walked down the drive my stomach knotted in fear and my headache worsened by degrees with every step.

  The third time I tried, the young Goth lad from next door was sitting on the wall by my driveway with his mate, laughing and smoking joints; they threw the tab ends into my garden. They watched my faltering, hesitant steps and laughed as I headed shakily back to the house. I heard calls of "weirdo" and more laughter. GET THE SWORD. I shut the front door behind me and stood there gasping for breath with sweat rolling down my forehead.

  June 10th – Judgement Day

  I awoke from a fitful, nightmarish sleep to a god-awful row. I looked out of the window. A street lamp cast an insipid glow over a terrible event. Next door's dog had something in its mouth and was shaking it vigorously on my front lawn. I ran down the stairs and out of the house. The dog looked at me defiantly and dropped its prize before running back next door and around the side of the house.

  I sank to my knees and held the near lifeless grey thing in my arms. The cat looked up at me and meowed weakly before her eyes closed for good. I looked up with tears streaming down my face and saw that bastard from next door smirking down at me before he closed his curtains. I carried the cat gently – as if I could hurt her now – and laid her down on the back lawn. I went to my garage and returned with a shovel. I dug a shallow hole and buried her. I worked like an automaton, no feelings, just numb and never stopping for a breather. The voices in my head were working overtime. NO GOING BACK. NOW IS THE TIME. With the job finished, I returned to the house and grabbed something I’d need, then walked calmly around to next door and knocked on the door. I continued knocking without stopping until someone answered.

  The bully yanked the door open and eye balled me. “What do you want, you fat fuck? Do you know what time it is?”

  I brought the sword from behind my back and rammed it through his chest. Blood bubbled from his mouth and his eyes widened in surprise and shock. I twisted the sword through three hundred and sixty degrees to cause maximum pain as I slowly withdrew it. Blood spattered everywhere as the sword slid from his body with a fleshy pop. He slid to the floor and I stabbed down too many times to count. I sliced and I poked and I prodded until what had once been a man was a load of bloody, hacked meat on the floor before me. A blood-curdling scream made me look up; his wife was on the stairs. When she saw me look at her she ran back up the stairs and I heard a door slam. I barely registered her existence.

  I stepped out through the door and walked around the side of the
house to the back garden. There I saw my goal: the kennel of the beast that had slipped its chain and left the garden after a careless scumbag had left the garden gate open. I advanced upon the kennel. A pair of yellow eyes regarded me with interest and not a little malice. I strode forward purposefully, leaving a bloody trail behind me. The beast must have known my intention, as it flew from the kennel and leapt at me. We went down together. The dog was going for my throat, but I batted it off with the sword; it yelled as I sliced its side. Still it fought with power and I let the sword drop and grabbed it bodily, and with all my might forced it off me. It came at me again immediately, but I’d grabbed the sword again by then and I held it out. The attacking dog impaled itself on the razor sharp blade. I push it further in and stood my ground, albeit a little shakily. I withdrew the sword and the dog yelped in pain. It was over; I slashed and hacked.

  When the armed response unit turned up I was oblivious to them. I was busy decorating the bushes with the dog's intestines. I marvelled at the patterns the reds and pinks made draped over the bushes. I’d used most of the dog's organs and some limbs to spell out REVENGE on the patio.

  I never heard the first warning or the second. I just felt white hot agony as a Taser blasted thousands of volts into me. I reckon if I’d still been holding the sword, they’d have shot me. When I passed out it was a blessed relief to be free of that single voice in my head that said KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL.

  ***

  So you see, I was driven to it. It wasn’t my fault. You’d have done the same thing, right? You want to know the real killer, the punchline? I have a fucking brain tumour. The part of the brain it’s in means that it is inoperable. It caused the voices and the headaches and the doctor tells me I might have months and yes, it was no doubt a contributory factor in my behaviour, but society can’t forgive what I did. I cast a glance at the empty, padded room that surrounds me. Small mercy, but I suppose I'd rather die in here than in prison. At least it's quiet. A whisper ricochets around inside my skull: KILL.

  Mostly quiet, anyway.

  Thirteen

  “What the fuck has that got to do with anything?” I cry out from my curled up position on the tiled floor. The blood that pours down from my forehead stings my eyes and the world hides behind a rose tint. Not that kind of rose tint.

  “Everybody’s here for a reason, Ryan,” says Darren from the toilet, “that much is for sure,” he says, “we all have our stories. Our tales to tell.”

  “So? What’s that got to do with me? I’m just a night guard.”

  Hysterical laughter resonates around the bathroom.

  “Oh aye, pal, you keep telling yourself that, then you’ll never meet Dr Bracha. We’ll all be stuck in here forever.”

  I frown, and pull myself upright, staggering toward the toilet stall. I make a solid point of avoiding the mirror.

  “What do you mean?” I ask of the door.

  “I can’t tell you, Ryan. You need to figure it out for yourself.”

  “Who’s Ryan?”

  The man in the toilet stall sighs impatiently. Says nothing. Pulls a couple of revolutions’ worth of bog roll from the dispenser, scrunches it up and wipes his arse.

  “Who the fuck is Ryan?” I ask, a little more urgently. Still he says nothing and takes another go at wiping his behind. I slam my hand against the toilet door.

  “Answer me, for fuck’s sake!”

  The toilet flushes. The door opens to reveal a well-built bloke, a sneering grin behind his glasses. The harsh light of the bathroom shimmers in a sweating reflection from his bald head. He looks pointedly at me, expecting me to get out of his way, but I don’t. We awkwardly stare at one another for a few seconds, and eventually he sniffs, pushing his glasses further back along his nose.

  “You are,” he says, “you’re Ryan Bracha. Today. Tomorrow you might be somebody else.”

  He shoulders past me into the less confined space of the rest of the bathroom. I stare into the cubicle that he’s just come from, a musky turd aroma weaves its stinking way up into my nostrils, and a thought about what the hell the bloke’s diet is like threatens to disturb my blank mind. The man, Darren, pushes twice against the liquid soap dispenser. I’m not Ryan Bracha.

  “Last week, you punched Richard Godwin in the face,” he says, “because he told you about the porcupines.”

  “I didn’t. I’ve never met Richard Godwin,” I say. And I haven’t. He wouldn’t let me in.

  Darren pushes down onto the tap to release the hot water.

  “You have. Many times,” he says, “I shouldn’t be telling you this. You’re supposed to figure it out yourself,” he says, “or else you’ll never get fixed.”

  “What do you mean? Fixed of what?”

  He brings a dripping hand up from beneath the water and prods it against his temple.

  “Fixed in the head,” he says, looking at me through the mirror. Still Benny stands in my place behind his reflection.

  But I’m just the guard,” I say, my tone hints less at anger and more at confusion.

  “Oh aye, the guard routine. We’ve all had it. It doesn’t work but they insist on keeping it up. Okay, tell me this. How did you get here today?”

  I can’t answer his question. I don’t remember. My eyes search the back of my mind for some distant memory of how I came to be at St David’s but it eludes me. Darren smiles a smug grin, and continues to run the hot water over his hands.

  “You were always here,” he sneers, “I love it when he puts the new ones under like this. It keeps them from knocking the shit out of us all. Or worse.”

  “Under like what?”

  “Confusion therapy,” he says, “like Gary told you. It’s what he does to the new ones. He tried to tell you anyway, but you were having none of it.”

  “How do you know about-”

  “We all know, except you. We’ve all been through the same thing. We all got to the end intact, but still fucked in the head. You insist on fighting it. Keeping up the pretence that you’re a normal bloke with a normal job to do. I’ll tell you now, you aren’t normal. Far from it, pal. You’re a fuckin’ psycho. He wouldn’t have brought you here if you weren’t. It’s all he knows.”

  “I’m not. I’m-”

  “A guard, I know, you said.”

  He pulls some towels from the wall and buries his hands into them. Drying off. Darren turns to me from the sink, dropping the towels to the floor.

  “Look, you’re boring me now, I need to go back to my room, and it’s almost time.”

  “Time for what?” I cry out, this whole charade is fucking with my melon. Why does no cunt give a straight answer? I already know the reason, it’s because they’re all fucking lunatics. Darren sighs loudly.

  “You’ll never get it on your own will you?” he says, “Dr Bracha, upstairs. Figure it out.”

  “I can’t, I don’t-”

  He prods a finger against his temple once.

  “Up,” he says, prodding again, “fucking,” and again, “stairs.”

  He means in my head. He can go fuck himself. He’s talking shit. Trying to mess with me. I launch myself at him, my fist connects really well with his nose. The man crumples to the floor, both hands up to his face. He starts to ask me what I’m doing but I’m on top of him, my knees pinning his shoulders to the ground, and I lay fist after fist into his mind-fucking face. He’s crying, begging for me to stop but I can’t. A particularly hard punch embeds the lens of one of his glasses into his eye, cutting the skin around it. Another punch bursts the eyeball behind the glass, and a disgusting jelly squelches out from beneath it, and over his cheek. Still the punches rain down, until he stops crying. Stops breathing. Stops living. I gaze down at the broken mess between my knees. The only sounds in this bathroom now are my heavy panting gasps, and the sticky drips of the blood pouring from his face. I drag myself upright using the sink, and I stare deep into the eyes on the man in the mirror. Something stirs inside me. A memory. The violence I�
�ve just inflicted upon Darren Sant triggered it. Fighting. The rush of adrenalin. I don’t feel remorse. I feel alive. I feel excited. I want more.

  The bathroom door is almost ripped from its hinges as I stride through it. My fingers already searching for the key. If what he said is true. If this is confusion therapy then there are no consequences to my actions. None of this is real. If that is true. Fuck it. If it’s not, then I’ll have some fun getting revenge on this fucking building.

  The door swings open to reveal him.

  “What are you doing? Why did you kill Darren? He won’t be happy with you. He’ll lock you away, like he did me,” says Martin Stanley, the alien. The murderer. It’s pretty much all he gets to say as I beat his last breath from his body. In what I’d take to be some sort of ironic punishment I place my feet on the shoulders of his corpse as I place my arse on the floor, and I pull hard, and harder still against his head, until I rip it from his shoulders. Surprisingly it comes away with ease, and as I carry it by the hair I leave his room, leaving the body to pump blood all over the bed.

  Still holding Martin Stanley’s head by the hair I stalk along the corridor, stepping over the bodies of the women he killed, until I reach Gareth Spark’s room. At the sound of the key in the lock I can hear him against the door. Tapping and asking to be released. Oh, you’ll get your release Gareth. The door swings open and he attempts to leave the room, much like a cat trying to slink through the tiny gap, but I halt him by swinging the skull of Martin Stanley straight into his. The dull heavy thud of bone on bone sounds nice. Gareth Spark falls to the floor and I rain down blow after blow with the skull of my victim. The thuds turn to splats, and neither the skull in my hand, or the one attached to Gareth Spark’s neck hold much by the way of solidity by the time I’m through.