A Night at the Asylum

by Jade McCahon

  I’m not a coffee kind of girl; I naturally gravitate toward the soda fountain. Grabbing the biggest cup on display, I quietly filled it with carbonated poison and trudged up to the counter. Big Mike was working. He’s a former classmate of my brother. He nodded at me from under his long dark mane of hair. Big Mike is Indian, and by Indian, I mean Native American. There are a lot of us in town, though technically I’m only half. We’re a real melting pot here.

  “Heard you broke up with Raymond,” Big Mike grunted, and I immediately winced, but he didn’t apologize. Nobody ever does in a town this small. There’s no such thing as privacy or boundaries or tactfulness. “What’s up with that?”

  I stared at Big Mike for a moment, hoping to convey through the dead look in my eyes my complete and utter contempt. He didn’t seem to notice. “Shit happens,” I muttered.

  He was unfazed. “Bummer,” he said, ringing up the soda, passing me my change.

  I heard the sliding doors open behind me and half-turned, seeing out of the corner of my eye the vague shape of a guy in a hoodie stumbling in – most likely some drunk. “Yeah, it is,” I said, rolling my eyes in answer to Big Mike’s clever statement. My gaze automatically fell on the even more potent poison lining the shelves behind his head. “I…need a pack of those too.” I pointed lamely.

  He frowned, but rang the cigarettes up. “Since when do you smoke?” he murmured. I scowled at him and snatched them out of his hand, shoving them in my pocket. Behind me the drunk guy knocked something over loudly. “Dude, can you leave that stuff alone, please?” Big Mike called. I turned to leave.

  “Saw Bonita Taylor this morning,” Big Mike said to my back, and I froze.

  Now to be fair, Big Mike was just doing his job perpetuating gossip. He had no idea that as soon as he spoke, his words would turn my insides to ice, that I would have to swallow a scream like a jagged stalactite before being able to speak again.

  Oh, what those five words did to me.

  I should have left then, should have gone home and climbed into my bed, back to the restless dream that I dreaded. If I were anything other than a coward, I would have. How was I to know that the first in a twisting trail of dominoes had been toppled; that this night would be the one in a thousand of a now meaningless life that I’d never forget?

  I should have seen it coming.

  Instead, my attention was focused on how much I would chain smoke tonight, and how that would require a lighter. I turned back to Big Mike, hoping my face looked appropriately bored, but my mind was connecting dots. My heart was beginning to pick up its rhythm, but it wasn’t from the sugar or the caffeine.

  “Yeah…nobody’s seen her since…” he trailed off, but I knew what he was going to say. The bitch hadn’t even come to my brother’s funeral.

  “Yep.”

  “She wouldn’t tell me why she was in town, just said she was visiting someone. Wouldn’t say who.”

  “Imagine that.” I scowled at him. The gas station clerks here – particularly him – are like old busybodies staring out the window at the neighbors, only with shittier prescription drug coverage.

  “She’s better off, frankly. Got to get out of this town while you still have the chance.”

  The commotion in the aisle behind me continued. It was like the drunk back there couldn’t stay standing up, virtually the condition I feared I was about to be in. My legs trembled, my forehead broke a sweat. “Dude, buy something or get out,” Big Mike called. “We don’t sell beer after midnight, so don’t even try it.” He turned back to me. “I can’t believe you’re still in this town. You gonna work for your parents at that café forever?”

  I am a bit of a cynical person. Mostly I keep it to myself, but damn it, some people just push too far. My heart was already seizing, my fury beginning to boil, thanks to my rampant thoughts about Bonita. I tore open the pack of cigarettes, shoving one in my mouth with such force that it nearly broke in half. I stalked back up to the counter and slammed a lighter down, a death glare fixed on Mike. “Dude,” I spat. “You’ve worked here for eight years.”

  “I’m manager now,” he pointed out distractedly, trying to see around me.

  There was nothing else to say. I shot a parting scowl at Mike but his eyes were on the noisy patron who was now stumbling out from one of the aisles. I stifled a gasp as I recognized the drunk’s face. Big Mike recognized him at the same time and swore loudly. It was Emmett Sutter, son of the police commissioner. He was a year younger than me, which wasn’t old enough to drink, and by now he probably had half the cops on duty trailing after him. I laughed inside. Big Mike deserved any heat he was about to get from this. “Kid, get the hell out of here,” he growled threateningly, scurrying out from behind the counter to catch Emmett just before he impaled himself on a shelf stacked with fishing poles.

  Thank you. Come again. Screw you, Big Mike, I thought, snatching the lighter without paying for it in my defiant stride toward the door.

  The automatic slider opened, and as I went out, my eyes trailed to Emmett once more. His slouch cut him a couple of inches shorter than he actually was, unruly reddish hair swirling about his scruffy face. In that instant, our gaze locked. Even beneath the glaze of inebriation, his green-eyed stare was unsettlingly intense. There was something about him that always made me feel uncomfortably exposed. When Big Mike grabbed him roughly and he had to look away, I felt an almost physical sensation of being let go.

  The cold air hit me then, relief to be outside slicing sharply through me. I pushed Emmett out of my thoughts. Once again I avoided the poster immortalizing Jenny’s smiling face and half-jogged down the block, breathing heavily from the hate that pressed me on. Like precision research, my brain picked up where it left off, choosing one from a myriad of images: The strange black car occupying the driveway of Raymond’s house the night after he dumped me…the incriminatingly lightless windows. The girl who would walk out of the house in the morning was ingrained in my memory; I knew her face well. Long hair, surreptitious smile, black fingernails, dark riveting eyes…her name made my teeth clench and my fists contract. Bonita Taylor. Town tramp. Pierced princess. It seemed I could not get away from the very real ghost of this girl even Tommy had pined over, who had stolen so many boyfriends that her exit from our town was practically a local holiday. I hadn’t recognized her old black Mustang that night, walking much like I was now in the mud-slathered pre-winter slush. It had been so long since she’d been seen around this town. Now Big Mike confirmed she was here. Raymond shared the house only with his brother Jon, who had been Tommy’s best friend, but why would she be visiting him so late at night? No. There was only one reason for all of it, I could see that now.

  I didn’t know who I hated more, her or Raymond.

  Still clutching the giant soda in my hand, I plopped down on the concrete planter just outside the Catholic church a block from my house. Reaching for the lighter and a cigarette, I tried to fulfill my own destiny, but after seventeen failed attempts I shoved them back into my pocket and accepted the reality of things. My loser status was complete and undisputed, and I couldn’t even steal a lighter that worked.

  Fuck.

  I put my head in my hands, the cold clear night air moving in and out of my lungs noisily, until the faraway sound of a dog barking drowned out my labored breathing. I looked up, my eyes moving back and forth on the street. Be aware of your surroundings. Isn’t that what they teach girls who are dumb enough to go walking alone at night? Jenny’s face flashed before my eyes and I shook it off. What was I worried about? My porch light glowed a block away, and somewhere nearby a cop was just waiting for a malcontent to harass. The problem was, if I didn’t get home soon, that malcontent could be me.

  That’s when I heard the footsteps: scraping, trudging really, hesitant and inconsistent. That dog from down the street was going insane. I froze in a half-standing stance, every pore in my body listening. It wasn’t unusual that someone would be walking this way in the middle of the night. Th
e bar was open and it was only a few blocks south of the Gas N’ Go.

  Except…the dark figure wasn’t walking in the direction of the bar, but toward me. He was distinctly male, his rambling movements slow and ominous. His clothes blended into the black street behind him. I knew almost everyone in this town and certainly there was something familiar about his gait, but the streetlights were too dim and his outline too ambiguous to make a positive determination.

  Immediately on guard, I glanced again at the porch light of my house, shining like a beacon burning bright. The keys were in my pocket, ready to use as a weapon, but I couldn’t turn my back on this person coming toward me. I couldn’t find the courage to run. In fact, I was transfixed, caught in a nightmare decidedly less real than the one I’d just had about Tommy. Every nerve in my body told me to move, dammit, move, but my legs refused to oblige.

  Still, my fear was not quite realized until the thin strip of metal in his hands caught a glint off the streetlight overhead. My heart hammered in my chest and I managed to back away blindly, smacking into the planter behind me. There was a splat as the giant soda cup exploded on the sidewalk below.

  Just across the street from me now, he heard the noise and seemed to notice me for the first time. The metal object in his hand moved menacingly. I swore under my breath when I realized it was a long, slender kitchen knife.

  Time was moving at half pace. A million thoughts were coursing through my veins, but somehow the violence of those thoughts did not set my body in motion. Some robot part of my mind began to take inventory, filing facts that might serve me later. He was taller than me, but barely, with broad shoulders. He was wearing a hood that blotted out his face. He stumbled a bit; he was mumbling to himself. And I, perpetual idiot that I was, could only stand there as he approached to a point of a few feet in front of me. He was definitely leaving the sidewalk, definitely headed right for me. It was then that I recognized the peculiarity of his walk as being that of intoxication. I didn’t know whether to be more scared or relieved.

  This guy was drunk off his ass.

  Yes, I knew this person. The way he moved gave it away first, now that I could see him more clearly, now that he would soon be close enough to touch. He was guarded, his arms drawn close to his chest, almost as if he was holding the knife to fend me off rather than threaten me. Unkempt, rust-colored hair stuck out from beneath his dark hood. He reached for me. I called his name.

  Just as he was stepping onto the sidewalk, he stumbled over a pothole in the road and went down like a tugboat in an undertow. He didn’t even try to catch himself. His chin hit the pavement, splitting open like a second smile. The knife he was carrying skittered away from him and landed at my feet. Instinctively I picked it up. He made an odd gurgling sound and then he was quiet, apparently passed out.

  I stood in the middle of the sidewalk like a moron, waiting for my legs to work again, watching everything happen with astonishment and detachment. My sneakers crunched on loose gravel as I crept closer still. My breathing was shallow, heart galloping insanely. Where was the sense to run now that I could? I crouched down, my mind screaming at me incredulously. Ahead of all the other things I should have been thinking, I only wanted to see his face. I only wanted to be sure it was him. His chin was bleeding freely now, painting gory polka dots on the pavement. I pulled back his hood and he moved, groaning in pain. I recoiled automatically, sticking the knife out in front of me.

  Irony always has a way of making me its bitch. This night was not going to be an exception. Poised over a bleeding, unconscious man, holding a knife, was exactly how I was standing when the headlights of the police car washed over me.

  ****

  Two O’Clock

  The room where I was held was white, square, generic.

  I’d never seen this part of the police station before. Apparently this was where they brought all the hardened criminals that had earned the privilege of a shakedown, which explained why it looked mostly untouched. My eyes burned from the unsympathetic fluorescents overhead and I steadied my trembling hands around my complimentary can of soda. In spite of all the caffeine I’d consumed over the last two hours, my eyelids were fighting the good fight. Cold, stark fear was helping, but even it would run its course eventually.

  What a perfect microcosm of my stupid life this mess was turning out to be. I felt ill thinking about my parents. Were they really getting another call from the police in the middle of the night? That’s the thing about legal age: it’s but a useless technicality in a town where news spreads like wildfire and you have no one else to post bail.

  I didn’t know how much time had passed or how long I would be here, consigned to this chair. What I did know was that it had been Emmett Sutter, son of the police commissioner, who had gone from drunken Gas N’ Go terrorist to my own personal knife-wielding maniac. He might have slashed my throat, carved his initials into me, whatever – and here I was being treated like the criminal. It could only happen in this hole of a town.

  But had Emmett really just broke psychotic with me in his crazy crosshairs? The odds were considerable. There were three Sutter boys, and thanks to their father’s community status, the eldest two’s penchant for petty thievery and panty abduction was continually met with the mildest of consequences. Ead was the oldest, around my brother’s age. He was the poster boy for why girls pack pepper spray and, delightfully, in his fifth year on the police force himself. Eli, the middle child, had been shipped off to military school long ago for his infractions. Emmett was the youngest, known for keeping his head down and his mouth shut, until now. It was always the quiet ones, wasn’t it? At least that’s what they would have said if he had gutted me in the street.

  Emmett’s face now floated in my mind, causing that tight cinch of dread in my stomach. Maybe it was what happened after we were picked up that kept nudging at me. A lone policeman was the unfortunate soul that had rolled up on us, and he’d pulled his weapon. Being an almost-victim of random violence is shocking, but nothing like having a cop from a notoriously backward police force point a gun in your face. I explained myself. To my disbelief he put Emmett and I in the back of the cruiser together, unrestrained. The officer was young, a new guy who had just moved to town, and he didn’t know us. He didn’t radio for an ambulance and he kept asking a barely conscious Emmett what he was “on”. He called in to dispatch to let them know Emmett had been “found” and I knew my assumption at the Gas N’ Go about the trail of cops had been right. I was in the back of a squad car with my would-be murderer, but it was hard to be afraid when Emmett opened his eyes then and looked straight at me. Instead I felt a deep, misplaced concern for what would happen to him. He was trashed; I’d never seen him like this. “Insulin,” he whispered, shadows crossing his face as we headed into the middle of town and the safety of brighter streetlights. “He gave me…insulin.”

  I had no idea what he meant by that. Still, I tried helpfully to advise our new policeman friend to get Emmett to the hospital – just to be safe. The officer did not appreciate my suggestion; clearly, his orders came from higher up. When we got to the station he left us alone in the car. Emmett was motionless, and I seriously considered that he might be dead. Then slowly he moved his head in my direction and, his green eyes narrowed in confusion, looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. “Sara?” he rasped, and I felt a chill go through me. Emmett had probably never said two words to me before this, and yet he spoke my name so intimately and with such familiarity that I felt an uncomfortable tug in the middle of my chest. “Is that you?” he asked.

  “Yes?” I was so shaken, it became a question. “Are – are you…” It seemed ridiculous, but there was only one thing to ask. “Are you okay?”

  His head dropped against the back of the seat again, as if his neck wasn’t sturdy enough to hold it up. His eyes fluttered closed. Then he whispered, “I did it. I’m so sorry, Sara. It was me.”

  That awkward moment when a guy tries to kill you but apologizes…I ju
st stared at him. Any thoughts I might have had were cut off by the car door opening. Roy Conroy, a friend of my father, took me inside. The other cop – the new guy – hauled Emmett off to God-knows-where. I was led to this broom closet and told to stay put. And as the minutes passed and there was more time to mull over what had happened, the whole situation just seemed so very, very bizarre. I couldn’t sit still in my chair.

  Claustrophobia gripped me, inciting a need to rebel. The stuffiness of the tiny room was suffocating. I went to the door, opening it a few inches. To the right was the front desk, but it was dark. To the left were the jail cells, small and empty. Cool air circulated in the hallway and I leaned against the doorframe, inhaling.

  Low sounds of an argument filtered through a closed door down the hall. The words were muffled, but pressing my ear to the opening, I could just make them out. “Do you know how tired I get of having to rectify the stupid shit you do?” There was the sound of a strike, flesh upon flesh, and I gasped. “If you’re going to attempt something so moronic, at least be a man and finish the job.” There were heavy footsteps, and then the knob jiggled. I landed back in the chair just as a figure swished quickly past the doorway. What was all that about? I gripped the soda can in my hands again, trying to concentrate on the minutes creeping by.

  The wait wasn’t long. Roy, the officer who had escorted me here, soon bustled his large frame back into the room. He was sweating. The nervousness in his expression managed to kick my own panic into overdrive.

  “Sara, I didn’t call your parents yet,” he huffed, causing me to exhale in noisy relief.

  “Thank you, Roy,” I said earnestly. “Thank you.”

  “Sure.” He sat down, pulling out a pen and notepad. “How’s your dad doing? Last time I saw him was at the auction in St. Joe...” He kept looking from me to the door and back again, gasoline on the fire of my paranoia.