Carl Tait
Dr. Melgar was crying again.
Gilbert heard the quiet sobs as he entered the room. The doctor was bent forward in his angular desk chair; a cheap and uncomfortable piece of furniture that matched the low-rent ethos of the nursing home. Dr. Melgar’s elbow was perched precariously on the narrow arm of the chair, his hand covering his eyes. A few stray tears had leaked through his fingers and dripped onto the leg of his threadbare pyjamas.
Gilbert had been working at Slender Pines for several years and knew what to do. He placed a comforting hand on the doctor’s back.
“I’m here with you, Dr. Melgar. My name is Gilbert. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Dr. Melgar lifted his head. His crying abruptly ceased. “Is it time for lunch yet?” he asked.
Gilbert was taken aback by the mundane nature of the question, but he answered calmly.
“Almost, sir. It’s coming up on noon now.”
The doctor nodded. “I was famous once, you know.”
Gilbert knew. He also knew that Dr. Melgar suffered from early-onset dementia, so his random wanderings from one subject to another were to be expected.
“Yes, Dr. Melgar. You are a physicist, correct?” Gilbert was careful to use the present tense.
“A very great physicist, if I may be immodest. You have heard of the Melgar singularity, yes? That is mine. My discovery. My very great discovery. Like the space shuttle.”
“The space shuttle?”
Dr. Melgar made an irritated clicking sound with his tongue.
“The Discovery is a space shuttle. Didn’t they teach you that in school?”
“Yes, sir. So the Melgar singularity had to do with the Discovery space shuttle?”
“No, no. I was mentioning the shuttle because you young people find that sort of thing interesting. Where did you hear of the Melgar singularity? I discovered that, you know.”
“I believe you may have mentioned it, sir.”
Dr. Melgar nodded. “Perhaps. My mind is not what it was. The loss pains me greatly. Most of the time now, I just cry and wait for lunch.”
“Is lunch important to you?”
“I keep worrying they will serve the Forbidden Sandwich.”
“What is that?”
“It’s a tomato sandwich with…ah, you nearly caught me. You NSA types are all alike. Trying to get me to reveal the secret ingredient.”
Gilbert wasn’t sure whether to nudge the doctor away from this odd subject or to humour him. He chose an intermediate option.
“I love tomato sandwiches,” he replied.
“Aren’t they delicious?” said Dr. Melgar, with simple happiness. “Blood-red tomatoes. White bread. The best mayonnaise. Salt and pepper. But if you add…my God, young man, you’re good. You almost got me to tell you the secret part of the recipe.”
Dr. Melgar’s eyes were bulging. Gilbert tried to return the conversation to normalcy, or at least to its usual disjointed rambling.
“I’m not here to extract any secret recipe from you, doctor. Why don’t you tell me about the Melgar singularity instead?”
“You can read the journal papers yourself. I wrote three of them. Three complex, groundbreaking papers in three months. Unheard of, they said. Impossible, said the research team. Time to punt, said the football team. That last part might be wrong. I don’t understand football very well. When is lunch?”
“Soon, soon.” Gilbert was more uncomfortable than he wanted to admit.
“I hope they picked the logarithms right at daybreak,” the doctor said. “Otherwise, they’ll be too sour.”
He smacked his lips.
* * *
Gilbert glared at his painting and threw down his paintbrush in disgust.
Why couldn’t he get it right? The man in his picture was supposed to be screaming in unhinged horror. Instead, he looked like a drunk at a bar struggling to hit a high note while singing karaoke.
Gilbert was an artist. That was his real job. His work at Slender Pines was intermittently rewarding, but its main purpose was to pay the bills while he established himself as a painter.
He had a natural talent for art. His mother had always said so, from the time of his earliest vague smears of paint on paper in elementary school. Beautiful colour choices, she had told him. You’re going to be an artist.
Gilbert sighed. He had tried not to doubt himself, but years and years of polite, half-hearted compliments on his work had made this increasingly difficult. No one really liked his paintings. Sometimes he had trouble admiring them himself. The images in his mind proved to be disappointing when they materialised on his canvases.
He glanced at his watch. His girlfriend Kat would be arriving soon. She made an effort to say nice things about his paintings.
Gilbert went to his tiny kitchen and poured himself a glass of apple juice. He would have preferred bourbon but he didn’t want Kat to think he was an alcoholic. He drank the juice slowly while staring at his failed painting with anger and shame.
The doorbell emitted a tinny buzz. Even my doorbell stinks, thought Gilbert as he went to answer it.
Kat’s cheerful face refreshed him, as it always did. She gave him a quick peck on the cheek as she entered the cramped apartment. She caught sight of Gilbert’s painting and stopped.
“Oh. That’s nice,” Kat said. “Really nice. I think it’s one of your better pieces.” She smiled.
Gilbert was encouraged. Kat’s compliment was hardly a rave, but it sounded sincere. Maybe he had underestimated his work.
“Do you think Rand might be interested in taking a look?” he asked.
Kat’s smile faltered and Gilbert realised it had probably been artificial to begin with.
“Not yet,” she answered. “We’ve already talked about this. You’ll need to have several outstanding paintings before Rand would consider showing them in his gallery.”
Rand Putney ran an art gallery with a modest cachet. He and Kat had known each other since they were children. Gilbert reminded himself that this had nothing to do with his reasons for dating Kat.
“Well, do you think this might count as one of those outstanding paintings?”
Kat’s smile was in tatters. “I suppose it might, once it’s finished. But let’s not talk about that now. We’re going to be late for the movie.”
They were going to see one of those dreary British period pieces. Gilbert found them tedious, but he wanted to make Kat happy. Solicitude and kindness were all he had to offer. His questionable artistic talent was not a significant asset.
Gilbert smiled faintly. “Let’s go,” he said.
* * *
An unfamiliar woman sporting a severe bun of grey hair extended her hand.
“I’m told your name is Gilbert,” she said. “I’m Judith Melgar, Harold’s wife.”
“Pleased to meet you,” answered Gilbert. “Your husband and I have had some interesting conversations.”
Dr. Melgar was seated in his usual chair. He looked up and Gilbert was pleased to see a focused look in his eyes.
“I’m having one of my good days,” the doctor said. “Judith sometimes brings that out in me. I’m not going to make any spectacular discoveries, but I might be able to hold a normal conversation. Given the circumstances, I count that as a notable accomplishment.”
Judith’s eyes were less focused than her husband’s.
“Please forgive me for not visiting you more often. The last time I was here, you thought I was a Slender Pines nurse who was spying on you for the CIA. It was very troubling.”
There was an awkward silence.
“I do what I can,” said Dr. Melgar quietly. “I’m sorry I can’t always follow what’s going on, and I sometimes forget who people are. If you want me to apologise, I will. I’m sorry I ate the Forbidden Sandwich.”
Mrs. Melgar let out an exasperated sigh.
“Harry, we’ve been over this more times than you’ve mistaken your caregivers for spies. There is no Forbidden Sandwich. That was just a silly legend that caught the attention of your otherwise brilliant mind.”
“It sounded like a legend, but it turned out to be true.”
“No. You had your breakthrough and you shot off fireworks like a Roman candle for a few months. Then something went wrong and your brain burned out. I’m sorry for putting it so bluntly, but you’ve got to stop thinking the stupid sandwich had anything to do with it.”
“Excuse me,” interjected Gilbert. “I’ll give the two of you some privacy.”
“No, no,” said Dr. Melgar. “I want you to hear this, young man. I may never again be able to explain it this clearly.” He smacked his lips and looked up at his wife.
“Judith, I am an extraordinarily rational person. I found the sandwich story entertaining but entirely implausible when the tour guide told us about it.”
“I wish we’d never taken that trip.” She glanced at Gilbert. “He wanted to visit the land of his ancestors in Appalachia.”
“Beautiful country out there in western North Carolina,” said Dr. Melgar. “Very old. Lots of secrets.”
“Lots of superstitious drivel,” Judith answered. “You insisted we visit a place called Mystery Towne.”
“Towne with an E. I remember. Tourist-trap nonsense, but fun. Except for the sandwich.”
“Except for your fixation on the sandwich. The guide was a dolt who was trying to impress the out-of-towners.”
“I liked him, Judith. Poor fat kid without much of a future if he stayed in that little town, but he had theatrical flair.”
“That’s it exactly: hillbilly dinner theatre. Yet somehow you swallowed every morsel.”
“The story was simple but compelling. A tomato sandwich, when laced with a certain secret ingredient, stimulates the mind in an inexplicable way, leading to uncanny brilliance. But the brilliance fades into darkness after a short time. Thus the sandwich is forbidden and has a carefully guarded recipe. The guide said the secret ingredient was something very common.”
“Why did that fascinate you so much, Harry?”
“It was a good story. I love stories. And I’d sometimes wondered about the effect of certain foods on the brain.”
“You’re a physicist, not a biologist.”
“Well, I still wondered. Oh, there was that final touch: once you’ve eaten the sandwich, you can never get the taste and feel of it out of your mouth. You’ll certainly never want to eat another one.”
“I thought the guide made that up on the spot because people were getting bored.”
“Perhaps. Nonetheless, it was effective.” He smacked his lips.
Judith shifted uneasily. “Then you started eating tomato sandwiches constantly when we got home. I didn’t like that.”
“I love tomato sandwiches. And it seemed harmless to experiment with different ingredients as a lark. Most of them were terrible. I can assure you the secret ingredient was neither peanut butter nor marshmallow whip. It also wasn’t dirt, and it certainly wasn’t logarithms. They’re way too sour.”
Judith looked at Gilbert in alarm. He shook his head sadly.
Dr. Melgar’s eyes had lost their focus and were filling with tears.
“I finally found it,” he said quietly. “It should have been obvious to me, of all people.”
He rose from his chair.
“I found it!” he screamed. “And it was wonderful! And awful! Awful! AWFUL!”
He continued to scream the word until a pair of orderlies rushed in and poked a hypodermic needle into his arm.
* * *
Gilbert stared deep into his miserable painting, lost in the unfathomable problem of how to replicate Dr. Melgar’s scream on the canvas. The howl still echoed in his mind, but the artistic equivalent remained as elusive as ever.
Growling, he put down his paintbrush. Maybe it would help if he learned more about Dr. Melgar and his work. Do your own research, he thought. The unofficial motto of self-important dilettantes everywhere.
The information he needed was easy to find on the internet. Harold C. Melgar, PhD, had been a solid but unexceptional physicist for most of his career. His breakthrough on the Melgar singularity had been both breathtaking and unexpected. Colleagues agreed he had a nimble mind, but several anonymous sources commented that Melgar lacked imagination and vision.
Could the Forbidden Sandwich have been responsible for the discovery? The question, which had been simmering in the back of Gilbert’s mind all day, now came to a sudden boil. No, he thought; that’s ridiculous.
Could he discover the secret recipe for the Forbidden Sandwich? He reassured himself there was no such recipe. The whole idea had been fabricated by a bored guide at a tawdry North Carolina tourist attraction.
Could it hurt to try? Gilbert had no ready answer. He loved tomato sandwiches. Why couldn’t he try adding some odd ingredients, just for fun?
Dr. Melgar hadn’t found that fun at all. Dr. Melgar wound up with a ruined mind, crying and screaming and chattering about sour logarithms.
Gilbert knew there was no connection with the sandwich. The doctor had physical deterioration in his brain; Gilbert had seen his chart. That was tragic but not mysterious.
But the uncharacteristic brilliant insights that had made him famous? Was it possible that a bizarre combination of flavours in a sandwich had given his thinking a productive sideways jangle? Unlikely, of course.
Gilbert took another look at his amateurish painting and made his decision. Unlikely or not, he was going to try.
He went into his micro-kitchen. His conversations with Dr. Melgar had brought back fond memories of tomato sandwiches and he already had the requisite ingredients on hand. The guide had said the secret ingredient was something very common, so Gilbert hoped he had that as well.
The experiments began. Gilbert might have claimed he was treating the enterprise with the lightness it deserved, but his intense, methodical approach belied any claims of frivolity. Sandwiches were prepared and quartered to maximise the number of ingredients that could be tested. Oregano: no, though the sandwich was tasty. Garlic: no. Baking soda: absolutely not. Chocolate pudding: not even close.
As he prepared the next sandwich, Gilbert brushed his hair back from his face. A detached strand found its way into his mouth. Gilbert sawed his tongue against his upper teeth in desperation, smacking his lips as his tongue darted in and out. He couldn’t get rid of the hair.
It hit him all at once. A feel you can’t get out of your mouth. Dr. Melgar’s lip smacking. The doctor’s insistence that the secret ingredient should have been obvious to him, of all people.
Harold Melgar. Harry.
Hairy.
Could the secret ingredient be hair?
Gilbert had never before had an intellectual epiphany and he enjoyed the exhilarating sensation. He grabbed a pair of scissors from the counter and snipped off a generous chunk of hair from each side of his head. I needed a haircut anyway, he thought wildly. He took a full, unquartered sandwich and sprinkled his hair all over the tomatoes, slathering on some extra mayonnaise in an effort to lessen the revolting appearance. Gilbert put the top piece of bread in place and took an enormous bite of the sandwich before he could change his mind. He chewed vigorously.
The sensation was appalling. A mouthful of slimy hair mixed with partially masticated tomatoes. Gilbert thought he might vomit. The prickly hairs infuriated his tongue and poked angrily at the roof of his mouth.
Poke, poke. Tickle, tickle. Sour tomatoes. Creamy mayonnaise. Spongy bread as a substrate.
Something was happening. Something wonderful. Something wonderful and awful.
Gilbert saw it.
He saw his painting as it should be, still fuzzy through a shimmering haze.
He took another bite of the dreadful sandwich. And another. With each bite, the vision of his painting grew sharper.
Gilbert finished the sandwich, swallowing the last bite with a mixture of nausea and wonder.
He saw.
* * *
The bright shaft of light cutting across his sofa pulled Gilbert’s attention away from his painting. He turned with annoyance to inspect the distraction.
A sunbeam. Sunlight was leaking through his blinds. It was morning and he had been painting all night. He briefly worried about being late for work before remembering it was Saturday.
Gilbert turned back to his painting and shuddered anew at what he had created. A snarling, agonised mouth. Scorched flesh. Mutilated digits of some kind. A vast caliginous abyss he would have been utterly incapable of painting a day earlier.
Gilbert smacked his lips. The sandwich was still with him, as he suspected it always would be. The sensations were maddening, but Gilbert would willingly have suffered far more grievous discomfort to acquire the dark visions that now filled his mind.
The painting was complete. His pathetic earlier version had served as a useful first draft, letting him slash his finished masterwork onto the same canvas in a single frenzied overnight session.
Masterwork. He had used the word without thinking. In the past, he had applied the term to his own paintings only with rueful sarcasm. This time, he believed the expression might be accurate.
Gilbert needed a new canvas for his next painting, which was already clawing at his brain in its hunger to be realised. More mundane matters had to come first. He began by standing up, against the protest of muscles that had been tensely focused for too many hours. Then showering. Eating breakfast. He half-hoped that conventional food would cleanse the crawly feeling from his mouth, though he was not surprised when the sensation failed to dissipate.
Gilbert walked briskly to the small art supply store down the block. He had planned to purchase additional paint and one more canvas, but he now felt that a single canvas would be only one brick in the long road he envisioned.
“You want six of the twenty-by-twenty-four-inch canvases all at once?” the young clerk asked, raising his bushy eyebrows. “Man, you usually don’t go through that many in a year.”
“I need six,” Gilbert repeated.
The clerk shrugged and wandered into the back room. He returned balancing a stack of plastic-wrapped canvases and laid them gently on the counter next to Gilbert’s assortment of oil paints and brushes.
“You need a glass of water?” the clerk asked. “Sounds like your mouth is dry.”
“No, thanks,” said Gilbert, gathering his purchases. He tried to keep his mouth closed as he flicked his tongue across his teeth.
Back at home, Gilbert set his art supplies on the floor near his easel and was immediately overcome with fatigue. Sleep, he told himself. The sandwich says it’s okay to sleep for a while. He retreated to his bedroom and fell into the unmade bed.
The pattern continued all weekend. Long, manic sessions of painting. A bit of food and drink. A few hours of sleep, tortured by relentless nightmares. Repeat.
When his doorbell rang on Sunday evening, Gilbert cried out with surprise.
“Gilbert? Are you all right?” called a voice from the hall.
Kat. He had completely forgotten. They had planned to have Thai food before seeing a crushingly dull movie on animal migration.
He manoeuvred his way to the door, carefully skirting his first painting, which he had propped on a shelf to dry. He opened the door and tried to meet Kat’s smile with one of his own.
“Gilbert, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve hardly slept.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Come and see.”
He stepped aside and Kat saw.
She stood motionless, frozen. Gilbert wanted to paint her in exactly that attitude, perhaps with the ragged claws of an unnameable creature reaching out from the darkness towards her face.
“My God,” she said. “My God.”
“Do you like it?”
She was silent for a moment before answering. “‘Like’ isn’t the right word. I am overwhelmed by it. This is a brutal, eviscerating painting. And it is quite wonderful.”
Gilbert walked over to his easel and turned it around to face Kat.
“This is my second one. It’s not done yet, but the heart of it is here.”
Kat’s head swivelled. Her hand went to her mouth. Gilbert heard her shuddering gasp.
“That one is even worse. By which I mean better. I don’t know if I can look at it for very long, but I do know it is a stunning work. Let me call Rand.” She pulled out her phone.
“Wait, wait,” Gilbert said. “Didn’t you say I had to have several outstanding paintings before he would look at my art?”
“Yes, I did say that. I didn’t want you to embarrass yourself. But now…it’s different. Something has happened. Rand would very much want to see these.”
“Not yet.”
“Why? I thought you were desperate to have him look at your paintings.”
Gilbert took time to cringe at the word ‘desperate’ before he answered.
“There’s more,” he said simply. “I have a few more images in my mind, but I need time to paint them. I have a lot of unused vacation time at Slender Pines and I’m going to lock myself in here and do nothing but work on my art.”
“How long do you need?”
Gilbert considered. “Three weeks.”
“I guess we’re not going out tonight.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry, but that’s all right. You’re full of fire and you need to spew it out.”
Gilbert nodded gravely as he closed the door.
* * *
The ecstasy of the following three weeks restored the colour to Gilbert’s faded worldview. No more monotonous drudgery of working and sleeping, with an occasional lackadaisical session of painting thrown in. Instead, Gilbert was able to turn himself inward to meditate on his ideas and realise them in vivid and disturbing ways in his art.
His style was changing. He could sense the condensation, the distillation to essentials. He was restricting the number of elements in each painting, relying on his increasingly refined eye to build subtle distinctions within a narrower range. Every completed painting was better than the last, in his view.
As the end of his artistic marathon approached, Gilbert found himself slowing down. He had completed six paintings – his original one-night wonder and five more – and decided that was enough. Kat and Rand would be coming to see the collection the following afternoon and Gilbert gave himself an evening of rest.
He slept for sixteen hours, awakening only an hour before his guests’ arrival. He showered and dressed hurriedly, then worked on setting up his six paintings to present the strongest possible effect. He decided to arrange them in the order of their creation, ending with the nightmarish piece of minimalism he considered his finest work.
His doorbell buzzed its annoying buzz and he went to answer it. Kat’s smile glowed. By her side stood a man whom Gilbert had met only once, at a cocktail party.
“Gilbert, you remember Rand Putney, my old friend. Rand, I’ve told you about the paintings that…” She trailed off. Rand was staring fixedly over Gilbert’s shoulder and had stopped paying attention to everything else. Gilbert moved aside to give him a better view.
Rand’s focus shifted from one painting to the next, down the row and back again. Kat stepped inside and gently pulled Rand along with her. Gilbert closed the door behind them.
Rand finished his survey and spoke.
“You have some extraordinary pieces here. I rarely see work that is simultaneously so visceral and so beautifully executed. Congratulations.”
Gilbert grinned. “Thank you. I thought you would like to see the full progression of my work.”
“I understand,” Rand said. “But one needs to be selective.”
“In what way?”
“Assuming these end up in my gallery, I believe it is best to leave the three weaker pieces behind. They are much less successful.”
Gilbert felt that his moment of triumph had been tarnished. He spoke carefully.
“The first three paintings are my earlier works. I agree they are lesser accomplishments, but I still believe they are strong pieces. Kat was quite taken with the first two when she saw them a few weeks ago.”
He glanced at Kat for confirmation but she looked confused.
“Of course the first three paintings are strong,” said Rand. “I assumed that’s why you put them first. It’s the last three that are, frankly, rather poor. I thought you simply wanted to show me some of the work that led up to the brilliance of those first three.”
Gilbert felt defensive, as if a stranger had insulted his children. He tried to tamp down his anger, but it refused to be contained.
“‘Rather poor’?” said Gilbert in quiet fury. “I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. They are my most recent work and are easily the best of the set. Especially the last one, which is an immensely powerful minimalist statement. I don’t believe you have looked closely enough.”
Rand squinted his eyes. “I have seen a great deal of art and I can assure you that the last painting in particular is an inferior work. If that’s the way you’re painting now, I question my decision in coming to see your art.”
“You can leave any time you like.” Gilbert smacked his lips defiantly.
Rand’s mouth twisted.
“Gilbert, your first three paintings are enormously good. I do not say that lightly. If you can produce more work like that, I will be happy to talk about showing your paintings. For the moment, though, we’re done. Kat, we’ll talk soon.”
Rand turned and left.
Kat’s expression was full of pain.
“Gilbert, what happened? Is this a twisted joke? That last piece is dreadful. Even the paintings you used to do were better than that.”
Gilbert was more successful in controlling his anger with Kat than he had been with Rand.
“Kat, I need to think for a bit. Why don’t you go get us some Thai food? We were going to have that on our date.”
Kat tried to steady herself. “Okay. You like the massaman curry with chicken, right?”
“Yeah. Just come on in when you get back. I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
Kat left without saying another word.
* * *
The last painting. Gilbert stood in front of it, admiring its blackened twists and curves. He shook his head and turned to walk towards the kitchen. He glanced back for one more look.
No. Impossible.
For a moment, he saw the painting exactly as Rand and Kat had seen it. The shapeless black scribbles of an angry child. Haphazard writhing swirls. Terrible colour choices, his mother said in his mind.
He closed his eyes and looked again. His monochromatic masterpiece was back. Wasn’t it? He blinked slowly and the childish scrawl reappeared.
Gilbert experienced his second intellectual epiphany. This one was excruciating.
He finally understood the Forbidden Sandwich. It condensed and enhanced a person’s greatest strength. Melgar’s mind. His own artistic vision. But the turbocharged condensation was short-lived, and it permanently damaged the cherished ability. Melgar ended up with dementia; Gilbert had lost his artistic sense. What could he do?
Eat another Forbidden Sandwich.
Dr. Melgar was terrified he might accidentally eat another sandwich because it would destroy the remnants of his rational thought. In Gilbert’s case, there was no barrier. He had already lost his artistic vision except in brief flashes that were more painful than not seeing artistically at all. He didn’t care if he lost those flashes.
Gilbert went into his kitchen and prepared the sandwich. The bread had a few spots of mould and the tomatoes were getting mushy, but Gilbert didn’t care. He scissored off a tuft of hair from above each of his ears and pressed the hair into the tomatoes. He didn’t bother with extra mayonnaise.
Gilbert picked up the sandwich and devoured it.
After a moment, he began to scream.
* * *
Kat was coming down the hallway when she heard the screams. She rushed to Gilbert’s door and threw it open. She dropped the take-out bag on the floor and ran to the kitchen, where the screaming continued.
Gilbert was lying on the floor. His hands were over his face and one of his feet was bare. He had kicked off a shoe in his agony.
“Gilbert! What is it?”
He removed his hands from his face.
Clumps of coarse black hair were growing out of his eyes. Kat saw a flash of white at the base of each thicket and realised the hair must have grown through his eyeballs.
“Kat! Help me!”
Kat knelt beside him, struggling to control her nausea.
“I’m here with you, Gilbert.”
He screamed again. Kat leaned in more closely and saw why.
The hair was still growing. It swayed gently, as if blown by an impalpable breeze from an eldritch place.