Lullabies for Suffering

by Caroline Kepnes et al.

  "But I saw it. I really saw it this time."

  Dr. Atryx turned, and, surprisingly, smiled at her.

  #

  Pain addiction?

  Like what the fuck, right?

  You can’t be addicted to pain. Addiction is for things like meth or coke or oxycodone. Booze or pills or pot. But not pain.

  How the fuck can you be addicted to pain?

  Something my mother used to say to me, after I was stupid enough to tell her.

  You don’t see addicts crouching in dark alleys bashing their heads against the bricks, do you?

  You don’t see someone willing to trade a blow job for just one hit.

  You don’t see junkies lounging on filthy mattresses in derelict buildings breaking each other’s fingers.

  But come on, if Robert Palmer was right, and you might as well face it you’re addicted to love, then why would pain be so far off the mark?

  I’ve never stolen money or cruised dangerous streets in bad parts of town to get a fix of what I need, but I have traded sex for it plenty of times, so what? I’ve wheedled and begged for it, foregone relationships because of, forgotten to eat or drink or go out of the house for long periods. Felt the deep ache of withdrawals, the cravings, the thrill of the fix, and the desperation to do more.

  Point is, I’ve done everything a good addict would do to score a hit of what I need. What I’m addicted to.

  Besides, pay attention.

  I’ve already told you.

  I’m addicted to two things.

  And I already knew at this point that one of them was gaining the upper hand on the other.

  #

  One of the drab, generic lab techs (not Daphne) led Livy to a drab, generic room, where her clothing hung limply on wire hangers inside a flimsy Ikea pressboard wardrobe. She dressed quickly, sitting on the lone plastic chair scooted across the room, up against the featureless beige wall.

  When she was dressed, she opened the door to find the same lab tech still standing outside, waiting.

  "Come with me," she said, turning down the long beige hallway, walls unadorned, floors of the kind of hard speckled linoleum favored by institutions. "Dr. Atryx wants to speak with you."

  Livy followed, wondering if this woman was the one who administered the syringes to her. Who had stood by watching while she writhed in pain on the cold medical table.

  My kind of girl, Livy thought to herself. Maybe I’ll see her sometime out at the club. Or under my sheets.

  She walked behind her through a bewildering series of turns and cross backs, to a nondescript set of elevators. The tech pushed the button, smiled thinly at Livy.

  Livy considered saying something to her, but what crossed her mind were only stupid things like Come here often? or So, when do you get off? She decided instead to remain as quiet as the tech.

  The elevator doors finally opened. Inside, the car looked as if it had arrived straight from the 1950’s. It was painted a scuffed light green. The buttons were simple black ones, unlit. The entire car was draped in heavy, quilted fabric, the kind movers use in freight elevators to prevent furniture from banging around.

  Once inside, the tech inserted a key card into an unidentified slot under the numbered buttons, and the car lurched into motion. Livy had no idea what floor they were on. The buttons went from 4 to B, and they were clearly going down. But either the car moved in almost ancient slowness or they descended well past B.

  Just when Livy began to feel that there was something truly amiss, the car heaved to a stop, and the doors banged open. She followed the tech down another series of hallways, these dotted along their length with windowless metal doors, most bearing placards with a series of numbers that seemed not part of any pattern nor meaning Livy could discern.

  At one of these doors, just like any of the others, the tech stopped, waited for Livy to stand beside her. Then, she opened the door onto a simple office. A potted, obviously plastic fern stood in the corner. Two chairs faced a plain wooden desk. Nothing was on the desk, not a pen, not a photo, not a piece of paper.

  And behind it sat Dr. Alan Atryx, looking as if he had been sitting there waiting quietly this entire time.

  "Thank you, Marcie," he said, and she backed from the room, closed the door. "Please have a seat. Livy, is it? Splendid."

  Livy turned, saw what looked like relief wash over the tech's face as she closed the door behind her.

  "So, you performed adequately on the first set of tests. But what you said there at the end, well, I’m not going to lie to you. That stopped me cold."

  Livy turned back from the closed door to face Dr. Atryx. His demeanor was now wholly different than it had been in the exam room. There he seemed brusque and annoyed. Now, he came across more like a game show host, casual, almost jovial.

  "Well, I’m still not quite sure what this is all about," Livy said, looking around the small office to find something, anything that signified that the man actually worked here, that this wasn’t just some room he happened to wander into and sit behind an empty desk. But there was nothing. Cubicles at the DMV had more flair than this space.

  "Let me just stop you right there," he said, raising a small, manicured hand. "You’re here for what you think is a pain study, am I right?"

  Livy blinked. "Well, yeah, I thought so."

  "It’s not really a pain study. At least not precisely."

  Livy waited because it sounded to her as if he was now going to launch into an explanation of exactly what it was. But he didn’t. He simply stopped talking, staring at her across the desk.

  "Then…what is…it?” she stammered.

  "Well, that’s it, isn’t it? If it’s not a pain study, what was all that up there?" he asked, circling a single finger up toward the plain acoustic tiles of the ceiling. "I mean, why would we just put you through all that? Yowtch!"

  With that, he practically leapt from his chair, pushed it back behind him and jumped to his feet. Had Livy been a more excitable person, she might have yelped in fear. As it was, she did flinch.

  "So I suppose we owe you some kind of explanation, don’t we?"

  He came around to her side of the desk, stood fairly close to her in this small room. She could smell him now, a combination of seemingly disparate odors—chalk dust, breath mints, some kind of cheap aftershave and something else. Something that underlay them all, just a hint of it, a whiff with every breath Livy drew in. Something that, weirdly enough, made Livy think of that unknown thing she saw through the door pain opened inside her. Something slick and sinuous and almost greasy.

  That foundational smell was sort of musky, sort of sweet, sort of spoiled, and she closed her mouth against it, held her breath.

  "Well, I guess so…"

  "Not that you didn’t get anything from it, though, right?"

  At this, he winked lasciviously at her, and she might not have been more surprised if he’d have licked his lips.

  "Let’s go. I have something to explain to you, but I think we need a little cheerier setting."

  Livy hesitated. She was becoming surer and surer that whatever this strange little man wanted to show her might involve her eventual appearance before a Title IX Board of Inquiry.

  "It’s certainly nothing like that," Atryx said, holding the door open for her.

  Confused, Livy stood and followed him back into the hallway.

  #

  "Are you familiar with any studies of consciousness? Of, say, sleep and its whys and wherefores?" He looked across the table at Livy, who stared at him blankly.

  After following the strange little scientist through the rabbit’s warren of blank hallways somewhere underneath the building, he’d led her to the foyer at its first-floor entrance. Afternoon sunlight beamed through its airy atrium and played off the abstract aluminum sculpture that sat in the pool of a fountain gurgling away at the center of the space.

  They were seated in two cushiony lounge chairs nestled behind the fountain from the main entrance. A few peopl
e milled about here and there. A coffee kiosk near the main bank of elevators bustled with what Livy assumed were researchers getting their afternoon fixes.

  These were not the elevators she and Dr. Atryx had just ridden up on. That was farther back, behind an unmarked security door.

  Everything that had occurred so far today—from the actual medical tests to this on-the-go discussion with Atryx—was all so surreal that Livy had simply detached her questioning mind from what was going on. Not able to make much sense of it, she just took it all in.

  "Sleep?" she asked. "I’m not sure I understand."

  "No, of course you don’t," he said, managing to sound condescending and not condescending all at once. “Let me explain a few things that may sound digressive, but will ultimately tie back to where we are now. Will you indulge me?"

  Livy didn’t reply for a second, so thoroughly had she detached herself, but Atryx’s lingering look carried such a weight of expectation that it eventually hammered through her stupor.

  "Oh…I…sorry," she stammered. "Of course."

  Dr. Atryx uttered a little, fussy sigh, then proceeded.

  "Sleep offers somewhat of a mystery to researchers. Prior to going to bed, your brain is very active, very alert. Brain waves are cycling up and down at thirty or forty times per second. Like Buddy Rich on steroids."

  He paused a beat, waited for a reaction from Livy. But she had no idea who Buddy Rich was, and Atryx moved on.

  "So, frenetic, erratic brain waves prior to bed. Got it? Asynchronous, no predictable rhythm. How does all that result in sleep? Well…" he explained, then paused to consider his next words.

  "Picture a music concert, some sort of alternative rock from the looks of you. The audience is packed, restive. The stage is set with a single microphone. Everyone in the audience is talking about different things to different people, all at the same time. This represents your brain prior to sleep. Each audience member represents a different brain cell, each occupied with a different yet important activity. Everything is chaotic.

  "But then sleep comes. This chaos becomes synchronized. All that chatter in the audience calms down, and everyone seems to be suddenly singing the same quiet, slow song. It’s as if something or someone has taken the stage with a commanding presence, commanding enough to get every single member of the audience to sing along at its volume and cadence."

  He paused to see if Livy was still paying attention. Apparently satisfied that she was, he continued.

  "In the brain, the singer, if you will, is something in the middle of your frontal lobe that emits these slow waves of non-rapid eye movement sleep. That single organ or cluster of cells is what opens your brain to sleep. It organizes the millions, the billions of chaotic cells that compose your mind and focuses them on that one thing. Opening the doorway into sleep.

  "I’m after the same type of thing, but on a wholly different, cosmological level. I’m attempting to organize the chaos of humanity in much the same way, to bring a disparate group of consciousnesses together for a single purpose that we’d otherwise never have."

  Livy shook her head, trying to organize Dr. Atryx’s flood of words into something that made sense.

  "What does this all have to do with pain? With me?"

  Dr. Atryx smiled. "If we’re to keep with our charming analogy, pain is the song we need to get the audience to sing. And you, Livy, you, I think, are the singer. And I desperately need someone to lead my chorus. That is, if we’re going to open that door and see…really see…what’s behind it.

  "Think about your answer, my dear. Be certain. Do you want to fully see what you’ve only caught glimpses of your entire life? Are you ready?"

  "Yes," Livy answered without considering the implications of everything he’d said. "Absolutely fucking yes."

  #

  Livy went home propelled on a wave of perplexity and anticipation the likes she’d never experienced before. Perplexity because she still had no clear idea what Atryx had been trying to say. Anticipation because she still somehow felt that he held the key to the one thing she wanted above all else.

  That perfect hit, that ultimate high she'd been seeking, the orgasmic blast of hurt that had become her life’s one overriding need, that one sublime toke of pain that would push her right to the edge—of herself, of her consciousness, of death. She wasn’t sure which, not even sure she needed to be sure.

  That one hundred-percent, uncut, unadulterated line of pain so pure it would unlock that doorway inside herself, to finally, wholly see what was on the other side.

  She wondered, as she sat curled in her bathroom, smashing at the third toe on her left foot over and over with the hammer she kept under the bathroom vanity for just such occasions, she wondered if her doorway was the same Dr. Atryx was attempting to open.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  And if so, what would they find on the other side?

  #

  A few nights later, Livy lay in bed absently flipping through her dog-eared copy of Hidden Bodies, not really watching an episode of Dateline.

  "I want to possess all the dark yellow copies ever made and keep them in the basement so that only Amy and I can touch them." She loved that line, loved its inherent addiction.

  Something about Joe's obsessions—with books, with killing—stuck in Livy's head, like a plug of hair in the shower drain, refusing to be washed away. His addictions (and, frankly, those of most of the other characters) spoke to her so truthfully, she'd read the book at least a dozen times.

  Her cell rang. Not expecting anyone, she peered down on its illuminated screen to see a picture of Velma from Scooby-Doo. She’d humorously added this to her contact should Daphne prove to be a more-than-once hook-up.

  Smiling despite her best efforts, she answered the phone.

  "Well, hello there, kitty," she purred. "Long time no hear."

  There was an awkward pause.

  "Umm, yeah," Daphne said. "Look, if you really want to be a test subject in this study, meet us here at the lab building, out front, at 10 p.m. There’s a little field trip involved."

  "A field trip?" Livy asked, momentarily nonplussed. "OK, errr, do I have to bring anything. A permission slip from my mommy?"

  The attempt at humor was lost on Daphne as she had hung up.

  #

  When does it slip over, eh?

  When does an addiction cross into something that flirts with death?

  All addictions ultimately do. You understand that, right?

  I don’t care if you’re addicted to sour cream or crystal meth. Everything that becomes an addiction leads to death. Full stop. Literally.

  I'm well aware that every addict’s family—my family—has already rehearsed the late night phone call where some unknown voice tells them their loved one is dead. But I'm also well aware that addicts only fear death because it means we'll no longer be able to get our high again.

  What that death looks like takes its form from the particular addiction. Whether it’s slumped in the grungy bathroom of some doom metal club, a twist of hose tied around your arm, a needle stuck in a vein. Or on a gurney in an operating room, surgeons valiantly trying to bypass your fat-clogged heart. Its shape may be endless, but in the end it’s all death.

  Did I answer the question?

  When does an addiction become death?

  From the very first nip of a needle, the very first spoonful of sour cream.

  Death is there, waiting, tapping its fingers restlessly but confidently.

  From that moment on, you can’t do anything but ride the rails. Oh and by the way? Those fuckers are greased.

  Yeah, I know what you're saying. You're saying the obvious. The thing that everyone says, sitting on their La-Z-Boys, feet up in their living rooms, Fox News blaring on the television, staring at the wife’s Precious Moments figurine collection. You’re saying just get off. Stop feeding the beast.

  Just stop being addicted.

  I got news for you, Nancy Reagan, it’s not as easy
as all that.

  Imagine, then, how hard it would be to get out from under two addictions.

  #

  And that was how Livy wound up in a black Tahoe, the kind favored by modern-day television G-men, blindfolded and chatting with Dr. Atryx as they made their way to an undisclosed location.

  She sat between the good doctor and someone else, someone who seemed more solidly built than Daphne (whom she hadn’t seen at the meeting location anyway) and smelled decidedly male.

  Axe body spray, Livy sniffed. Ugh. Is there anyone on the planet other than a teenage virgin who think this shit smells good?

  She kept that to herself. She’d stayed mostly quiet since they slapped the blindfold on her, forcibly helped her into the car.

  “Am I finally going to see the Batcave?” she joked. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.” No one laughed or responded, so she retired the comedy act for the evening.

  Besides, Atryx did most of the talking. At some point during the 30-minute ride, she realized that he was one of those men who liked to hear himself talk. A lot.

  "So, after digressing last week with you in our little chat about sleep, we’re now going to explore Native American culture a bit. Again, though this will seem pointless, believe me, it’s pointed. And it tees up what I’ll be showing you tonight."

  She felt him fidget next to her, as if barely restraining his delight in what it was he was about to tell her.

  "But first, you stopped me by saying something last week while you were still strapped to the gurney. Do you remember what that was?"

  Liz turned to him. She was somewhat surprised that he was just bringing this up now.

  "Sure. I saw it, is what I said."

  Through the blindfold, Livy could swear that she felt him smile at that.

  "You did, indeed. In fact, you also said, 'I really saw it this time.’ Emphasis on the word really."

  "Yeah."

  "That’s important, because seeing is the whole thing here. The big enchilada. Pain is the key, you see. You just might be the singer to get the choir in tune, as it were, but we must never forget that pain is the key."