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“Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn’t often, on their own, the hard way.” – Robert A. Heinlein
Date: 03.26.2098
Earth – New York City, New York
Nathan Zradce had slipped away with the excuse of dropping off the bags of belongings to a local charity. That was true, at least mostly. Just one-half block down from the charity was Peak View Behavioral Health, a facility he had sworn he would never visit again.
The last time he had been here she had spit on him and then tried to claw his eyes out. She had managed to scratch him deeply on one cheek, tearing flesh with her ragged, half-chewed fingernails. The staff had been very apologetic, surprised at the level of vitriol the old woman had manifested.
“Normally she just sits here in the day room.” The orderly had said.
“I’ve never seen her do that. She just stares out of the window and asks if anyone has seen Immanuel. Who did you say you were again?”
Nathan didn’t answer. He had cleaned up his bloodied cheek with a paper towel from the bathroom and strode out. He hadn’t bothered telling them that he hadn’t really expected much.
That had been nearly five years ago. And here he was, walking through the front doors, his nose tingling with the smell of antiseptic and bleach. That institutional smell that reminded you forcibly, as if you were not already aware, that you were not in a welcoming place.
Nathan had struggled with the decision to come here. And he had struggled with it silently. His wife Jennifer knew that he was adopted and that his birth father had never been in the picture. The rest had been a fiction of sorts. He never told her about Immanuel. And as for his mother? When Jennifer had asked, he had told her she died.
When pressed for details, he simply said, “An accident. I don’t remember much.”
He wished that he could forget. The Selection Committee had known more of course. You don’t send someone twenty-one light years away into space without knowing that a man’s birth mother had lost her mind and was now locked up in an institution for the rest of her life, drooling from the anti-psychotics and staring mindlessly out of a window. He had said nothing about the attack and the physical exam had simply noted his abdominal scar as an appendectomy. He hadn’t corrected them on that assumption. He had been accepted, so apparently they had been satisfied with his answers.
Not much had changed in the building. Maybe some new paint. Nathan approached the intake desk, his steps slowing. What am I doing here anyway? If she recognizes me, she might attack me again. If she doesn’t, she will think I am Immanuel. Either way, it wasn’t going to be exactly therapeutic for either of them. But all Nathan could think of in answer was that he had to say goodbye one last time. He owed her that much. No, I don’t owe her anything. I owe it to myself.
The woman at the intake desk was older and looked vaguely familiar. He gave his name, and her name and the woman eyed him for a moment. “I remember you. You came in years ago.”
Nathan nodded but said nothing.
“You were her one and only visitor,” the woman gave him a speculative look, “and I’ve seen you somewhere else too...recently.”
When the mission finalists had been announced, their photos, along with their full names, had been shown on every newsvid world-wide. It was a big deal, just 250 of them, out of several hundred thousand applicants.
Nathan shrugged, “I guess I’ve just got that face.”
Her lips pursed, “Perhaps so, but I am just sure I’ve seen you around somewhere, recently.”
She waved one hand in dismissal at the thought, pushed over a clipboard, “Sign in here.”
Nathan filled out the form and provided his ID card.
“It’s policy, we need to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s,” she said, winking, as she handed him a visitor’s badge.
He walked down a long hallway, two sets of locked doors with intercoms and buzzers, and then an elevator to take him to the third floor. Another intake desk. This one didn’t have any forms to fill out, and certainly no pens to write with. They weren’t stupid, the patients on this floor had been known to make anything into a weapon. They counted every spoon and refused to issue anything resembling a weapon – patients learned to eat their Salisbury steak with spoons or their hands, their choice.
An orderly ushered him into a brightly lit room. The chairs were anchored in place and overhead the speakers played quiet, soothing music. At one corner an inane newsvid played cartoons, far out of reach of any prying hands, or spitting mouths, and several patients were staring slack-jawed at it, unmoving, one sagging slowly to one side. In all, there were about ten patients in the room, most of them in drugged, drooling stupors.
Natalia Zradce sat alone near a window, looking out with a wistful, somewhat lost expression. Nathan approached her slowly, shocked at how young she looked. He knew from the tiny box of documents he had received years ago that his mother was born October 30th, 2013. Which meant that he and his brother Immanuel were born on her 45th birthday – a fact he hadn’t been aware of growing up. The picture of her holding two tiny babies in her hospital bed had been striking. In it, she hadn’t looked a day over twenty.
There had even been a small sliver of a smile on her face. Nathan had always wondered who had taken the picture. Had it been a nurse? His father?
The birth certificate had not listed any father, and she had never told him who it was. Yet another mystery, he supposed.
The biggest mystery of all was sitting in front of him, swiftly approaching her 85th birthday although she didn’t look a day over forty years old. Her hair didn’t have a single gray streak in it. Her back was ramrod straight, and her eyes were clear. That was surprising when he considered her surroundings.
Perhaps she was doing better, perhaps they had a new wonder drug that took away the crazy and replaced it with sanity and kindness. A lovely fantasy, but highly unlikely.
She stared at him and he stared back.
“Natalia,” bubbled the orderly, “look who has come to visit you! Your son Nathan.”
The woman turned to Nathan smiling, “Natalia is one of my favorites, and she doesn’t give us a lick of trouble, except a spate of nightmares in the early spring. Other than that she is peaceful and quiet, just a joy to take care of!”
Early spring had been when Immanuel had died, his tiny body lifeless after a massive seizure. Natalia had prayed over his body for days, ceasing only when her son’s corpse began to stink and draw flies. Nathan remembered it with such clarity. She hadn’t taken his death well. Each night she had visited the tiny grave she had dug under the willow tree in the back yard. Nathan could remember peering out the window, desperate for her to return before the wolf from the lullaby came and got her. Then he would have been all alone.
Nathan didn’t say anything in return, didn’t even acknowledge the other woman’s presence, and the orderly’s smile slipped down at the edges.
“I’ll just be right over there, Mr. Zradce, so you and your mother can have some privacy.”
He managed a curt nod in her direction, his eyes never leaving his mother.
“Good afternoon, Mother,” Nathan stumbled over the word.
Natalia Zradce’s eyes flickered over him, “Nathaniel.”
She said it so quietly, and her lips barely moved. He wondered for a moment if he had imagined it.
“I wanted to come to see you and tell you that I am leaving and going on a trip very far away,” he said, the ground unsteady under his feet, almost as if he was floating.
His mother did not react. A fly landed on her hand and she didn’t even blink, or move her hand to flick it off. It rubbed its front legs together, grooming itself or tasting the skin, he wasn’t sure what, and she ignored it completely.
“Perhaps you have seen it on the news. The mission to Gliese 581, Zarmina’s World?”
Silence.
“It is very far away. It will take years to get there.”
His throat was dry, standing there, trying to speak to this woman, this creature that haunted his dreams.
“I’ve decided that I won’t be returning. I’ll stay there on the planet and make a go of it. Start a family with my wife, Jennifer.”
Silence.
She was staring right at him and not a single muscle moved, her eyes didn’t even appear to blink. The seconds stretched, elongated, and were filled with silence. She seemed so perfect, so at peace, that what happened next terrified him.
She smiled.
It wasn’t the kind of smile you ever want to see. Her teeth were gray, rotting from the cocktail of antipsychotics, sedatives, and poor oral hygiene after years of languishing within the walls of the psychiatric hospital.
Nathan felt his stomach flop in fear, watching as that crazy light he remembered so well gleamed in his mother’s eyes.
“We are all going to die, Nathaniel. All of us.”
He pulled away slowly, “Anyway, Mother, I wanted to come and say goodbye and to tell you...”
“The world doesn’t know it yet, but it is all in motion, I’ve seen it, Nathaniel. Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins.”
“T-t-tell you that...”
After all of these years, the terror he felt in the face of her madness shook him to the core. He couldn’t even manage to form his words right
She raised a bony finger and the fly, startled, flew away in a lazy arc. She pointed it at him.
“You won’t die that way. You will live. But you will wish you hadn’t. Oh yes.”
He tried again, “T-t-tell you that...”
“Can you hear the screams of the dying, Nathaniel? Because I can. I can hear them screaming in agony and eating and eating and eating.”
She had risen from her seat now, a shambling horror of gray teeth and shiny mad eyes. Nathan took a step back. Behind him, he could hear the orderly rise up from the table she had been sitting at.
He couldn’t manage to just say it, “I just wanted to tell you that I...”
She advanced as he backed up faster. She was a tiny woman, no more than five foot tall and he towered over her. This didn’t make her any less terrifying.
The orderly had made her way to his side and was now advancing towards Natalia.
“Oh dear, well I think it is time for this visit to be up,” she said, reaching for Natalia’s arm, “Natalia my dear, why don’t you...”
Natalia Zradce’s hand flashed out, a blur, and the orderly let out a pained scream, a rivulet of blood dripping from the slash that appeared on her cheek.
And in that instant there was chaos. The other patients, all of whom had been peaceful and zoned out moments before when he had entered the room, instantly moved into a state of high agitation.
He could not help but wonder if she had done it somehow.
Not just with her words or by bloodying the orderly, but with the madness that resided inside her. The energy of it was palpable, a taste of copper in your mouth and a feeling of twisting snakes in your stomach. He was sure she had done it, although he didn’t know how. Nathan turned on his heel and ran for the door. He could hear the screams of the orderly and the patients behind him, but he didn’t stop running until he heard the door to the room lock behind him. The intake desk personnel were already in motion, running towards the unit to shut it down and regain control of the patients.
Heart pounding, sick to his stomach and a headache beginning to form, Nathan made his way through the checkpoints until he reached the main intake desk.
The same woman was manning it and she chirped as he passed the visitor’s badge toward her.
“I remember where I saw you! You are one of the colonists going on the Calypso, aren’t you? My cousin’s brother-in-law applied, but he was turned down. There was a lot of competition –– there had to be because he was a Rhoades scholar!”
Nathan muttered something, not even really knowing what. Then he bolted for the door. What had possessed him to ever come here?
