by C. L. Bevill
Bubba suspected his head had been hit harder than he had previously thought. Sweat dripped into his eyes and burned like napalm on a distant jungle. The sock from the freed foot flew off and hit the wall with a low thump. He was able to use the shoulder of the straitjacket to wipe his eyes, but it didn’t absorb like Charmin TP.
Taking another break, Bubba looked around while he panted. The room was empty. There was some trash in a corner and what looked like mouse turds near his head, but there wasn’t anything he could use to help him get out. He decided to climb to his feet and see if that would help him attain a little slack in the jacket. If he could just get one of his arms over his head, then he might be able to unbuckle the top and work his way down. That was provided he could make his big sausage-sized fingers work the buckles.
Bubba flopped over onto his front and used his head (screaming internally with protest and with a request for a large ice bag while he was at it) and his knees to lever himself upward. With a great deal of awkwardness he was able to get onto his knees, and then with his freed leg, he climbed up. He first checked the single door. After all, if he could walk out, who cared if he was not freed from the straitjacket? He could simply walk back to the hospital and politely ask David to take the bleeping thing off.
While Bubba was on the subject of bleeping things, he added a few more swearwords just to make himself feel better. Then he did some combinations in order to create an air of bonhomie. It didn’t make his head throb less, but it helped his inner turmoil.
David needed him. So did Thelda and Jesus and a few of the others. Obviously, the unnamed murderer(s) did not need him, but that was neither here nor there. His mother needed him. Willodean and the baby needed him. He wouldn’t let the beauteous sheriff’s deputy marry any of the Kardashians, no matter how much money they made or didn’t make.
Bubba threw his shoulders upward. He threw one down. He jerked it to the side as hard as he could. He was rewarded with what he perceived as a touch of slack. He smiled grimly as he continued to lurch and judder. If someone had entered at that moment, it was highly debatable as to what they might think.
The thought made Bubba aware that just because he was still alive didn’t mean the murderer(s) wouldn’t come back to finish him off. He didn’t want to be here waiting on them just because he hadn’t tried hard enough. He took a deep breath and struggled harder. He forced his right arm up, and it stuck in place across his face. Momentarily smothered, he nearly panicked. Then he was able to move it just enough to allow himself to breathe. He decided that whoever had invented straitjackets had been a diabolical fiend worthy of existence in the seventh level of hell, reserved for people who left empty toilet paper rolls in the bathroom for the next unsuspecting soul to discover after it was too late to move to another stall.
Bubba jerked again. He heard something pop and realized his shoulder had done something weird. His shoulder said a few appropriate swear words. He clenched and flexed the muscles there. Then his arm was over his head. He pulled to one side, and fabric-covered fingers touched the top buckle. It took a little effort, but he popped the buckle open and smiled to himself with success. The second buckle was a little more difficult. He couldn’t reach the third buckle, so he brought his arm back down in front of him. There was a lot more slack now, and he was able to pull the cloth down his arms so that he could yank his left arm into the body of the straitjacket. With the arm free to roam, he unbuckled the strap between his legs.
Bubba resisted a triumphant yell. With a lot more judicious wiggling that would have made a go-go dancer popular with the customers, he writhed and twisted the straitjacket over his head and dropped it to the floor. He glared at it as if it was full of the power to restrain him anew. He was seriously thinking about dancing over it with size-12 feet. Instead, he kicked it away and went for the door.
It was still locked as he had expected. Bubba wasn’t about to be deterred. He thumped it once with his shoulder and then listened. He didn’t hear anything on the other side. He thumped it again and listened again. After ten more seconds, he simply plowed through it, tired of the whole thing.
The door cracked and fell to the floor, shattering some tiles along the way. The screws that attached to the wood had failed when he had put enough pressure on them. Bubba cautiously stepped through the broken tile and threaded his way down a blackened hallway. It looked like part of the hospital but a disused one. There was a path of footprints leading through thick dust that he followed before pausing.
Bubba sighed and went back for the sock he’d left behind. After all, he didn’t have a clue when he would get back to it, and his bare tootsies were getting cold. Of course, it didn’t really need to be said that it was a gift from Willodean.
* * *
Based on the view from the first window he encountered, it was still dark outside. So Bubba surmised that it was somewhere between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. There wasn’t even the hint of sunrise to come. He was going to guess that it was about 5 a.m. He would have looked at his watch, but it had vanished. He didn’t think someone would steal it because it was a cheap Timex, but he did think it might have come off when he was being dragged around, which was what had likely happened to his footwear. Plus, not only were there drag marks on his knees, but his wrists and forearms were somewhat scuffed. (Someone had gotten a work out this morning; he was a big corn-fed bubba, after all. Also gumbo, pot roast, and peach cobbler fed.)
Additionally, he judged that he was in another building altogether. Bubba hadn’t realized that the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being had more than the one building. He had only visited the one and only because he’d needed the help of the psychiatrist persona of David Beathard. In his place, he’d found The Purple Singapore Sling, who had been of more help than Bubba would have imagined. (The PSS’s ability to see inside people’s souls had made them nervous and chatty, which was a bona fide plus in Bubba’s book.) In any case, Bubba hadn’t been checking the layout and structure of the mental institute.
Solely based on the issue of transporting something his weight, Bubba also surmised that he couldn’t be far from the actual hospital, unless someone had used a convenient Radio Flyer wagon to transport his bulk over a longer distance. (In no scenario he could imagine were Radio Flyer wagons standard equipment in a mental institution.) The road was likely still closed off, so he had to be in the immediate vicinity. Also, he might be able to sneak around in the darkness and find out a few things before it was discovered that he had escaped from his straitjacket prison. He might as well take advantage.
He went out a door, slowly opening it so that it didn’t creak. Then he shut it carefully behind him, making certain that it remained open a crack just on the off chance that he might need a place to hide.
Bubba attempted to think back to his basic training days in the Army. There had been two night courses where sneaking had been instructed upon. Low crawling and high crawling had been fine arts to be perfected in the sand pits, over and over and over again. The state of Bubba’s knees did not preclude itself to relearning the low crawl, so he inched through the shadows all the while thinking of a drill sergeant who had once screamed at him for breaking a branch with his foot.
Bubba tilted his head and listened. The hospital property sat on a mesa of old growth forest. There should have been crickets and other night life making it difficult to hear one’s self think. The mournful hoot of an owl wouldn’t have been out of place. There were the distant strains of “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. Somebody was happy. It wasn’t Bubba.
Then someone yelled faintly, “Everyone drinks every time Pharrell sings ‘HAPPY’!” It didn’t seem like that someone was being threatened by a murderer, or that they had disappearing bodies or were even vaguely disturbed by being cut off from the civilized world.
Bubba shook his head and immediately regretted doing so because of the piercing headache that resulted. He made an estimation of where the hospital was located. The fog was beginning to dissipate, and
he could see through the trees to some murky yellow lights. He looked up and could see the North Star. He was on the east side of the hospital, the one farthest away from the entrance and the one least likely to be seen. The building was something like an office space or some kind of separate quarters for the staff.
The eloquent strains of “Happy” were coming from behind Bubba in a northerly direction where there might have been a few more buildings. He didn’t know, and he didn’t feel like stumbling around the darkness to see who was singing about their emotional state and drinking to the word denoting joyfulness. He didn’t want a drink; he wanted an aspirin, preferably two or three. Possibly an X-ray machine would be helpful. Willodean stroking the errant lock of hair out of his face would be beneficial and extremely appealing.
Bubba steeled his shoulders. David and the others needed him. They were being threatened. He inched through the darkness and stepped on a patch of goatheads. He bit his lip to keep from crying out while he did the sticky-thorns-in-my-foot dance. It didn’t matter a bit to the goatheads that he had replaced Willodean’s gift on his foot. Sitting on his butt well away from the patch of wayward thorny weeds, he plucked a half dozen out of his foot.
After he limped toward the yellow lights and made his way through a wretched patch of poison sumac, he came to the large yard where the patients had been playing with foam darts.
The doors to the hospital burst open and Nurse Ratchley, ran out shrieking, “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” Then she proceeded to run in a tight circle repeating the same until Tandy stepped up beside her and slapped her across the face. The movie actress seemed to take entirely too much enjoyment out of the act.
“Get a hold of yourself, woman!” Tandy yelled.
“But there’s only SEVEN cupcakes left!” Ratchley clutched her face and dragged in gasping breaths of air. “SEVEN! Bubba’s gone! Gone! GONE!”
Precious leapt out of the open door and was followed by Dr. Adair, Cybil, Peyton, and David. The dog’s prodigious nose immediately pointed in Bubba’s direction. She threw back her head and bayed in triumph, which was followed by a charge across the lawn. Bubba braced himself for impact as the canine threw herself at him. It didn’t help because she still knocked him into the ground.
Precious was still attempting to lick his face clean to the bone when the others circled around him. David said, “I say, Watson, whatever have you been doing? Bad form, old man.”
Bubba sighed and looked up at the people staring down at him. “Where’s Abel?” he asked.
Chapter 15
Bubba and Supplementary Shenanigans
Sunday, April 7th
Abel was missing. So were Bubba’s boots.
“What about Abel?” Bubba asked. The entire group had dragged him inside and sat him down at a cafeteria table. Unfortunately, he could see all too well how many cupcakes remained.
“I can’t talk about his diagnosis,” Dr. Adair said, looking at the bump on the back of Bubba’s head. “That’s privileged information. I am under a mandate not to discuss this with people like you.” He sighed. “Maybe a concussion. You’ll need an X-ray. Don’t go to sleep anytime soon.” He came around and looked into Bubba’s eyes. “Your pupils look all right. You lost consciousness?”
Bubba nodded.
“We’ll get you some over-the-counter painkillers and hope the police show up on our doorstep today,” the doctor said.
“I told you already,” Peyton said, “CEO of Vetcorp. They had a fabulous profit last year. He has two sons, both already married; I didn’t plan their weddings, which is their loss if you ask me. Of course it was years ago, before Pure Love Weddings, LLC was ever established. ” He made a noise not unlike a mini-raspberry full of contempt and added quietly, “They should have waited.”
“There was something about his brother,” Bubba said. If he hadn’t been looking in the doctor’s direction, Bubba wouldn’t have seen it. The doctor flinched slightly. He had a terrible poker face. Miz Demetrice would love having the psychiatrist at one of her Thursday evening games.
“Power struggle is what comes to mind,” Peyton said. “I wish my phone worked. I could just Google it. I think the brother wants to take over the company, but Abel holds the majority share at the moment. There was a hint that the brother could oust Abel based on the alcoholism, but seriously, who cares about that? It’s not like he drove drunk and hit a crowd of pre-schoolers. No, he peed on the ice sculpture at one of their fancy fundraisers while having a rabid discourse on the pros and cons of the Tea Party. Didn’t you see it? It was on YouTube, and every other channel, too.”
“What kind of ice sculpture?” Tandy asked.
“Swan maybe,” Peyton said. “It could have been a goose. It was some big water fowl type of bird. Ice sculptors never get it exactly right. Do you know how many people want ice sculptures at their weddings? I mean, there’s a significant wedding business in the summer, and ice melts in the heat. It melts quickly.” He fanned himself as if he was melting.
“Are we going to die?” Ratchley asked plaintively.
“You senseless Suzy,” Cybil said. “Not while we’re all together.”
“So the brother might want to do Abel in,” Bubba stated, half to himself.
“But what about all the other people who got murdered and went missing?” David asked. “Watson, you’re off your corker. You haven’t been using my seven percent solution have you? Have you been relying too much on the Baker Street Irregulars? Perhaps there’s a brain disease going on.”
Bubba knew he was grasping at straws.
“They all went off and committed suicide,” Dr. Adair suddenly proclaimed. “It’s a rare case of mass hysteria. I’ll write it up for The American Journal of Psychiatry and maybe The New England Journal of Medicine, too. I need another paper published.” He patted his rumpled jacket as if he was looking for something to write with.
Bubba shook his head. He stood up and went into the kitchen. David, Precious, and Peyton followed him. “Ya’ll seen an ice bag around? Mebe remnants of an ice sculpture?”
“There’s frozen corn in that freezer,” Peyton said, pointing. He shrugged at David’s look. “What? I was looking for something sweet to eat. They have to feed you people some kind of treat, right? Not a Popsicle in sight, for goodness sakes. You know that gives me an idea. We could freeze fake worms and plastic bait in Popsicles.” He clapped his hands together. “A redneck slash fishing themed wedding. We can put straw and fake cow patties on the floor. Buckets of peanuts on the tables. What fun!”
“That would prolly make Willodean spew,” Bubba said, opening the squat floor freezer, not adding, “and me, too,” although he wanted to say it. He located a two-pound bag of frozen corn and applied it to the back of his head. “Did I mention that someone knocked me out?”
“What? Again, Watson?” David said. “One day that’s not going to turn out for you so well.”
“That is a nasty lump on the back of your head,” Peyton said. “The wedding photographer can work around it. We should probably avoid profile shots.”
Bubba saw a clipboard with a menu on it. Taco night was supposed to be followed by Cold Cut Sunday and Order-a-Pizza Monday. (Clearly the kitchen staff wasn’t planning to come back for a few days.) A plain Bic pen was connected to the clipboard with a string and lots of scotch tape. He snagged the board with his free hand and put it where he could retrieve it in a few minutes.
Peyton sighed. “Fake cow patties is probably not the best idea. I need to store that away for future reference. Somewhere there is a groom who is wild about fishing and hunting and who will die for a themed wedding. No pun intended. I’ve got to stop saying that.”
“You could have a camouflage cake,” David suggested. “A little pair of boy and girl hunters on the top. Or two boy hunters for that matter. Or two girl hunters. I’m open-minded.”
“Oh, and when the bride and groom walk out of the venue, the groomsmen could have their fishing poles out and crossed for the c
ouple to walk underneath,” Peyton said excitedly. “The bridal gown can be decorated with iridescent fishing lures.”
“You do know we’re in trouble here,” Bubba said dryly. “Not wedding trouble, but are-we-going-to-live-through-the-night-trouble.”
Peyton rolled his eyes. “You deal with stress your way, and I’ll deal with it my way, which is by planning weddings I have yet to be contracted upon. Oooh, chocolate-covered grasshoppers. They’re delicious if they’re roasted before they’re covered with the chocolate. And it has to be a dark chocolate, not milk chocolate.”
“That sounds disgusting,” David said.
“What do you know?” Peyton asked dismissively. “Your imaginary character’s country eats kippers and Shepherd’s pie.”
“I’m partial to mincemeat pies,” David said loftily.
Even food that Bubba had never had before was beginning to sound good. He even thought about eating one of the cupcakes, but they didn’t seem like something that would be a good idea to touch. (Eat a cupcake; someone dies or vanishes. Lesson: Don’t eat a cupcake.)
Bubba found a loaf of bread and made himself a sandwich with bologna from one of the walk-in refrigerators. He slathered mayonnaise on it and even found a slice of American cheese. It wasn’t fried onions with blackberry jelly, but it would do. Wait, fried onions with blackberry jelly? Yuck. Well, mebe with rainbow sprinkles and a few red hots on top.
While cutting the sandwich in half with a chef’s knife, Bubba tried to convince Peyton and David to partake of the bologna goodness, but both men refused while they continued to argue the merits and deficiencies of British food. Precious, however, ate three slices of bologna without pausing to taste them. Then she licked her chops delicately.
