by Nico Laeser
What I brought back from one of my summer vacations was something that would last much longer, and would affect me more profoundly, than any expensive surrogate for parental attention.
After a couple months stint helping to build a Christian school or install an irrigation system in one or another barren landscape, something came with us on the plane—a hijacker. The hijacker passed through airport security undetected and followed us back home, where it would take only one hostage, before beginning a series of attacks that would destroy my world forever. The hijacker was a tapeworm.
Tapeworm larvae somehow found its way to my brain and would stay there, housed in a cyst, and feed off my brain unnoticed for years, until one day, during track and in full sprint, I collapsed mid-run. I was fifteen years old.
It felt, for a second, like trying to run across a lake; the momentum carried me forward as I lost control of my legs, and gravity did the rest. My body went limp, and I slammed hard to the track.
I opened my eyes to a bright sun, fast moving silhouettes, and a high-pitched squeal inside my head. People moved around frantically, and my head felt like someone had smashed it open with a hammer. The sunlight and the blaring siren of the ambulance served to amplify the splitting pain in my head, which was so excruciating that I failed to realize that it was the only thing that I could still feel.
CHAPTER 4
I am the shorn lamb
It is the first of the month, or thereabouts. I know this because my chair is covered with a thin veil of plastic that makes a shushing, rustling sound when I’m lowered into it. I listen to the rustle of the plastic as the wheels rub against it on our way to the day room.
I open my eyes when we come to a stop, parked in front of the day room window. The windows are full height and stretch the full length of the day room, separated by floor-to-ceiling columns every twelve feet or so, and each section between is split by a large cross of ornate framework, housing the four individual panes of glass. There is warmth that I feel on my face, but I attribute this to nostalgia, rather than the actual warmth of the morning sun that pours through the glass.
Anna places the leather case on the table, unzips and opens it, revealing the electric hair shears and all of the accessories, of which, she will only use one—the quarter-inch guard. She attaches the guard and plugs the long cord into the wall socket on the face of the nearest column, before draping another light blue plastic veil over my body and disappearing behind me.
The growling buzz orbits my senses as the sun highlights a haze of half-inch lines that drift down slowly in front of me. I close my eyes and ignore the psychosomatic itch that begins to crawl and spread over my upper body.
I am unsure as to which is the greater lie: the image in the mirror that reflects a contorted immobile stranger, or the self-image I maintain in my mind of a clean-shaven, well-groomed man, closely resembling a younger version of my father. I know it is the latter, which plays the leading role in almost all of my thoughts and dreams.
I was never allowed the opportunity to cut my own facial hair. I remember, when I was a child, staring up at my father shaving carefully in front of the bathroom mirror. I would stand next to him, barely up to his elbow, idolizing him and emulating his movements with the back of my toothbrush.
The last time I watched my father shave, I was around nine years old. He sliced his cheek with the razor, deep enough to make him drop the razor into the sink and curse.
“You didn’t hear me say that.” My father had winked at me and pressed a wad of tissue that immediately blotted red against his cheek.
“No Dad,” I replied with a smirk, knowing that he was referring to the curse word.
“I nicked myself pretty good there,” he said, viewing his reflection out of the corner of his eye and dabbing at the cut with fresh tissue.
When he moved his hand away, I could see the red line splitting swollen pink skin. “You look like Aunt Anna,” I said.
My father shot a disapproving glance in my direction and shushed me. “Don’t you say that in front of Anna.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Some things are better left alone. Your Aunt Anna’s scars are one of those things,” he said in a hushed but firm tone.
I continued to stare at my father. “I don’t understand.”
My father took a seat on the edge of the bathtub and sighed through his nose. “You know that Grandma Jane used to visit poor countries to help people, just like your mother and I do now, right?”
I nodded in response.
“Well,” he stopped and let out the air from his lungs, but not the words.
I waited patiently for him to reassemble his thoughts and continue.
“You know that Grandma Jane rescued Anna from one of those places when Anna was just a little girl?” he asked rhetorically, to which I nodded.
“Well, there were people that lived in Anna’s village who wanted to hurt her,” my father said.
“Why?” I asked.
My father shuffled uncomfortably. “They thought that Anna and her sister were witches.”
“They thought Mom was a witch too?” I asked.
“Your mom? No. Anna had another sister, before your grandma took her in.” My father stared at the floor.
It was obvious to me from an early age that Anna was not a blood relative, but up until then, I was unaware that she had another sister. “What happened to her sister?”
“Your grandma wasn’t able to save her in time,” he replied through his hand as he rubbed at his freshly shaved jaw.
“Did they hurt her?” I asked.
My father seemed to wake from a daydream in apparent shock to my question and took a second to process it.
“Yes.” He nodded. “They did.”
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“She’s with Grandma Jane,” he replied.
“In heaven?”
My father nodded slowly with that same forced, straight-line smile that usually meant he was uncomfortable or unsure. He never talked to me again about Anna’s scars, and I would have to wait impatiently for just over three years to learn the rest of the horrific story from my mother.
***
I open my eyes to the silhouette of Anna brushing the hair from my face and neck. She turns my chair away from the window, and as my eyes adjust to the relatively dark day room, Anna’s smiling face appears.
“Well, don’t you look handsome, Danny,” she says.
CHAPTER 5
I am Medusa
The headaches come and go. Sometimes they are mild, and sometimes they are worse than anything I had ever felt before, when I could still feel anything at all. My senses that remain are sight, smell, and hearing, and other than smell, all of these senses are obscured or distorted by the pain that sears and burns through my brain during one of my headaches.
My sensitivity to light and noise become intolerable, and if I can, I close my eyes tight. This is not always possible, as even my eyes sometimes require immense persuasion before they will obey my request. The subtle sounds of the machines and apparatus that work around me, to keep me breathing, fed, and whatever else, become loud like pistons, pile drivers, and jackhammers. It feels like I am transported at once to the interior of a demolition site, with all the work lights flooding through the open windows, blinding me, as the building is smashed down around me with a thunderous cracking and rumbling.
About two years after I collapsed and was permanently paralyzed, I was sitting in my chair, and one of my headaches began like microphone feedback. The squealing evolved quickly into a localized pain and then immense pressure, like someone was pushing down on my head with great force, crushing and grinding my skull into the vertebrae of my neck. The pain was incredible, and I could not call out for help or beg for medication. It was unbearable torture. Like a trapped animal that chews through its own leg to escape a trap, I somehow chewed myself free.
I was standing, looking at a much darker version of the day
room. All of the furniture and objects in the room were represented in varying shades of blue. I turned and stared at the person-shaped mass in a seated position, glowing like the ghosted image that lingers in front of your eyes after staring at a bright light. It was my body, and I was no longer trapped inside it. I thought that I had died.
The closer I came to objects, the clearer and more defined they became. I moved to the wall of the day room and toward the grid pattern that I knew to be the bookshelf. I had to move in close to view the words embossed on the spines, but I could not read the text on any of those that were not in three-dimensional relief. I placed my fingers on top of one of the books and tried to pull it from the shelf, but it didn’t move. I tried to push and pull other objects—a vase containing fake flowers—but not even the flowers would budge, as if they, and everything else, had been turned to stone.
I made my way down the hall and out into the entranceway before continuing on into the kitchen. I saw another figure with the same primary color glow. I approached the figure that was stopped in mid-turn, holding a tray. I attempted to push the immovable objects on the tray and then leaned onto the tray itself, but nothing gave; everything was frozen solid.
I don’t know how long I wandered around the house or if time can be used to describe the duration of my exploration. I moved through every room of the house that was not sealed off by a closed and immovable door.
When I returned to the day room where I had started, I studied the glowing figure in the chair, with light emanating from its mouth and eyes like the melting photographic negative of a bowling ball. I was expecting to feel yet another solid, unyielding mass, but was surprised as my hand passed through the figure. There was a wall of sound, screaming and pounding. I was back in my body, and the pain in my head returned at once, as if it had been turned on with a switch.
The pain lasted out the sunlight and then gradually faded back to a dull throb. This was the first time that I escaped my cage, but it would not be the last.
CHAPTER 6
I am not in love with my captor
I first heard the term, “Stockholm Syndrome,” from Mr. Farley, an English professor at my high school. I had been sent to detention by the mathematics professor, Mr. Cornell, for almost three consecutive weeks following an incident in his class. He seemed to harbor a genuine loathing toward me, and this sentiment was more than reciprocated on my part.
The boy that sat next to me in Mr. Cornell’s class was named John. John had become a good friend. Spending my summers away and out of touch made it difficult to retain friends, and John’s parents had him signed up for a variety of classes during the summer to help him with his dyslexia, so we found ourselves in the same position when trying to maintain friendships and popularity.
John often had trouble reading the questions from the textbook, so I would read them to him aloud, so that he could get the words and numbers straight in his head. Mr. Cornell had accused John of cheating and said that I was giving him the answers.
“I’m trying to help him, he’s dyslexic. I’m just reading out the questions,” I had said in my defense.
“He’s not dyslexic, he’s an idiot, and you must think that I’m an idiot, if you expect me to believe such an asinine excuse, Mr. Stockholm,” Mr. Cornell said.
“I don’t expect you to believe anything, sir, and yes, I do think you’re an idiot,” I said without taking the time to adequately censor my thoughts.
Mr. Cornell’s cheeks lit up like the taillights on a car, and the glint in his eyes, like that of a freshly honed knife blade, made me shuffle around in my seat. He rushed toward me and snatched me up by my shirt collar. He readjusted his grip as I squirmed, trapping some of my skin within his grasp as he dragged me out into the hall.
He slammed me hard into the wall, and in a hushed but stern tone, he said, “You just earned yourself a week in detention, you impudent little shit.”
I was not a particularly gifted student, but up until this point, I was rarely referred to as disruptive, or singled out for punishment. I had flown under the radar, kept my mouth shut and head down, managing to remain undetected, surreptitiously cloaked by mediocrity.
Mr. Farley was an English professor who also ran a creative writing course held in the library after school. This was also where I was to spend my ongoing detention.
“You seem to be suffering from the syndrome of your namesake, Mr. Stockholm,” Mr. Farley had said upon my appearance in detention for the second consecutive week.
“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” I said.
“Stockholm Syndrome,” he said with raised intonation, posing it as a question.
My blank expression led to Mr. Farley elaborating on the subject.
“Stockholm Syndrome refers to people in captivity that begin to think positively of their captors,” he said.
“I’ve never heard of it, sir,” I replied.
“Maybe you should look into it, because if you are here in detention for a third week, then I will be expecting you to write an essay on it, and maybe you can include why it is that you keep finding yourself here, Mr. Stockholm,” he said.
In August 1973, a man took four hostages during the robbery of a bank in Stockholm, Sweden. The perpetrator of the robbery kept four employees of the bank, three women and one man, hostage in the vault for 131 hours. During this time, the hostages began to exhibit empathy for their captor, refused assistance from government officials and began to view the police as an enemy. A psychiatric consultant named Nils Bejerot attended the standoff and was the person responsible for the term Stockholm Syndrome.
I wrote a very detailed version of this in my essay that read like an excerpt from a poorly plagiarized Tom Clancy novel. As a footnote, I wrote that although I share my last name with a location in Sweden, I am not a sufferer of the aforementioned syndrome.
I went on to explain in writing why I had been sent to detention continuously since the initial incident, because I found it impossible to remain silent, while Mr. Cornell berated John and relegated him to the status of idiot, in what I viewed as an obvious attempt to instigate a rise out of me.
I wrote in my conclusion, “After calling my dyslexic friend an idiot, he raises an eyebrow and asks me if I have something to say, which I always do, the sentiment of which is the reason for my prolonged incarceration.”
After reading my essay, Mr. Farley had asked me about the incident, and I had explained it in greater detail. A couple weeks later, both John and I were moved into a new math class, and John would receive extra help from the new teacher.
Mr. Farley had asked me if I wanted to attend his classes in creative writing after school since I now had free time upon being released from my “prolonged incarceration,” and I did. He was a good teacher, and although I was not a particularly gifted writer, I developed a love for literature. What I had learned in his classes would be put to use on my family vacations to non-English speaking, poverty-stricken regions of the world, whether it was reading something that Mr. Farley had recommended, or writing about the trip and handing it in later as part of my, “What I did this summer” assignment, upon returning to school.
I found that over time, I did learn to think positively of Mr. Farley, but I didn’t think of him as my captor; he was quite the opposite. He had allowed me the tools to escape captivity.
Years later, I would be revealed as my own antagonist. My true captor, my own body, would become my cell, with only two small windows for me to view the outside world.
Whenever I see my gape-mouth reflection, I think of him as my captor, though it was not Danny’s fault or his intention to trap me inside; he is akin to the amber that seals a bug inside, preserving it for centuries.
I am the trapped bug, but unlike the bug, I was not fortunate enough to die.
CHAPTER 7
I am a good little bird
Cassie is not here today; I already know this as I lie in my bed staring at the chandelier sundial. I know this because I can
hear the loud revving engine of a 1972 Ford Mustang as it pulls into the driveway. This is Marcus Salt’s car; I know the sound of the engine, and I know that it is his because I listen to him brag about it on the phone, and for the last couple of years, whenever I hear that particular vehicle, he shows up instead of Cassie.
Anna says, “Good morning, Danny,” and rolls me onto my side, facing the window.
I can’t see what she is doing, but from the rustling sounds, followed by the sound of dripping water that I attribute to the ringing out of a sponge, I assume that she is changing and cleaning me. After about nine years of this, it has become only marginally less embarrassing. I prefer it when Cassie is not here for this part.
Anna finishes up and then lifts me into my chair, adjusting my position and placing my head gently against the headrest. My head rolls a little to one side, and she readjusts my headrest to face me forward. I am grateful for this and for the fact that she shares Cassie’s view, that I am still cognizant and still me, trapped inside an unresponsive body. This is not a view shared by all, or even most.
“There you go, Danny, let’s get you into the day room,” she says and wheels me out and into the hallway. I close my eyes until we come to a stop.
“Good morning, Marcus,” Anna says as the thin wiry guy strolls into the room wearing sunglasses that are too big for his angular face.
“Morning, can you get me a coffee, it was a late one last night,” Marcus says in a flat indifferent tone.
“Burning the candle at both ends?” she says rhetorically.
“Yeah, sure.” He walks past her without looking in her direction and slouches down in Cassie’s chair. “What’s up, Danny boy?”
Anna leaves the room.
Marcus takes off his sunglasses and rubs at his eyes. When he opens them again, they look like the scene of an ice-skating accident, cracked ice with blood frozen into every crack. The dark rings around his eyes make them seem an even brighter blue.
