Here’s where it gets a little weird.
I was committed to the Kensey Psychiatric Center on Randall’s Island for ten years. I’ll repeat that because I’m not sure you understand the full weight of my sentence.
Ten.
Damn.
Years.
Early in my tenure as an adjunct whackadoodle, I became acutely aware that something sinister was afoot — that some nefarious force was messing with my head. Each morning I woke in the booby hatch, I felt like I was rebooting, like it was Day One every day. I was physically incapable of processing my disassociation with time, though I knew it was there.
“I am Margawks,” I said to the group assembled near me, on my last first day (which also turned out to be my first last day).
“I’m a mox.” My tired verbal declaration faded into a slurry bit of nonsense. “I … aieeeee.”
“Hey! The stiff is stroking!” A 412-pound diaper-wearing behemoth to my right leaned in and clapped his sweaty meathooks 36.24 millimeters from the tip of my nose. This empty, juvenile gesture had no effect. Well, no outward effect, anyway. Inside, I was affected by 0.0015 emotions.
“Hey buddy,” he pressed closer. “What’d you say your name was again? ‘Mucus’ something, right?”
He threw his head back and made a sound I can only assume was intended to be laughter but instead held a rarified similarity to a swirl of vampiric beefer bats, all fang-banging in a Zambian nether-cave. I rolled my eyes to the linoleum, where I spotted a middle-aged horsefly regurgitating a miniature, unappetizing meal on a wing. The fly slopped up its twice-baked brunch and then, content for the moment, flew up to repeat its disgusting, animalistic behavior on the dusty, barred window above the sturdy card table supporting dozens of scattered self-help pamphlets.
The rec room floor sparkled; a fresh coat of Mop and Glo adds a nice touch to otherwise dismal confinements. Did the custodians clean up every morning before dawn? Having just awoke in this place as if for the first time, I had no memory of yesterday to compare to today. But the polished shine sure smelled nice.
A dark and familiar body slid up like a shadow and sat in the chair left of me.
“Look man,” he said, and my untapped senses perked up. “I am not Kuwajii, OK? Know that above all else.”
I looked to the new figure sitting by my side; despite what he said, I was in the presence of the boy I’d loved and killed. I was instantly drenched by a heartfelt bliss cascade. I would have shrieked, cried, died, or fallen headfirst into his lap, except that he held me back with whispered words.
“They’re watching us,” he said. “Swallow your pain. Don’t give in. Shit’s about to get real. Trust me. Stick to your mantra. You’ll come out of this all right and I’ll see you on the other side.”
“Kuwajii?” I said.
“Hey. Just your mantra,” he said. And then two big guards were on him, lifting him by his armpits and forcing him away. The boy didn’t resist (exist?). He went willingly, leaving me alone with infinite questions. Before I could ask any, an inmate across the dazzling white tiles called out.
“Hey, ‘I am Marcus Fox’! Any relation to these two fools?”
He was pointing toward a boxy TV set high in the far corner of the room, above his head. The program being broadcast was one that was surely a construct of my own psychotic delusions, considering the show’s main characters were none other than my dear old ma and pa.
Swallow your pain. Don’t give in. Shit’s about to get real. Trust me. Stick to your mantra.
I somehow managed to keep my mouth shut to the new development, heeding the advice of Kuwajii/Not-Kuwajii.
The true crime show was nearing some conclusion as it zoomed in and froze on a picture of Billy and Calliope being arrested at an airport. The sound was low, but due to a persistent, tingling screech in my ears, I wouldn’t have been able to hear it even if the volume was at max. I didn’t know much, but I figured that incessant, droning ping between my ears was the squawk of shock. Prior to that moment, I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of my birth parents in maybe three decades. But up there, on the small screen, they looked exactly as they had when last we’d parted.
The camera panned to my mother’s face. Her mouth was upturned in a hideous howl as the arresting officers escorted her through a crowd of photographers toward their police car, idling on the tarmac.
“Billy was found guilty of all his crimes and was set to be executed in nine months. But the grim reaper just couldn’t wait. Sitting on death row, William Fox was killed by an unknown assailant just three months later. As for Calliope, she threw herself on the mercy of the court and turned state’s evidence against her husband. For that, she was granted a lenient sentence of twenty-eight years. She is set for release in March of 1995.”
Father, dead. Mother, free, I thought. Maybe that should be my mantra.
“You the son of the Texas Terrors, Mucus?” asked the belching baby bumpkin. A ripe foulness emitted from his oversized diaper, effectively ruining the clean floor’s pleasant scent.
“What?” The need to question my entire existence outshone Kuwajii/Not-Kuwajii’s warning to keep silent.
“You say somethin’?” the fat baby posed. “Hey! I think Mucus is saying somethin’ that ain’t his name!”
“What year is this?” I let loose. It felt like 1995 happened long ago, but of nothing was I sure.
A lanky, suave man in a smart brown suit sauntered over, leaned down, and studied me with a twitch of his mustache.
“It is 2000, Marcus. It is the year of our Lord,” the man said. “Welcome.”
The selfsame guards who dragged off Kuwajii/Not-Kuwajii returned and lifted me to my feet. They manhandled me out of the rec room and down the hall, then tossed me into a small room like a sack of stankfish. I scrambled to my feet just in time to have the door slammed in my face.
“Kuwajii!” I hollered, damning his warning entirely. On the other side of the door, the guard observed my delirium through the slotted window and gave me a fierce, red-eyed iris fucking before marching on. I don’t know how many times I shouted the boy’s name before a new, bearded face appeared in that tiny window. It was that of the man in the smart brown suit.
“Hello Marcus,” he said. “I see you are talking again.”
“Kuwajii. He’s here. Let me see him.”
“OK, Marcus, OK,” said Beard Face. “First, you need to settle down. Can you do that for me?”
I would not. I refused to allow calm to own me. Some part of me knew (perhaps a large part) that Kuwajii could not be alive and well in the sanatorium. But I suppose I also felt indebted to living the fantasy for as long as I possibly could. So, having no other logical recourse, I bashed my fists repeatedly against the door, howling Kuwajii’s transcendent name over and over until my voice went hoarse and flew the coop.
I know now (and probably did then, too) that I was focusing on the Kuwajii lookalike to an extreme extent because I refused to deal with the other revelation staring me in the face.
Father dead. Mother free.
To his credit, Beard Face waited out my misplaced temper tantrum. His countenance never faltered, even when my knuckles bled rivulets on the glass. I must have resembled a caged wildebeest slowly coming to terms with his fate. The stoic man on the other side knew full well I’d have to either relent or kill myself raging.
Spent, I suppose I sat down on the floor, because that is where I found myself when I came back to some semblance of me, breathing deep, meaningful breaths. They were the breaths of the living, and the air was mine to inhabit. Some sense of serenity did make its way through, and as it did so, my rational mind (whatever was left of it) returned: Of course the boy who claimed not to be Kuwajii could not have been Kuwajii. I’d held his failing body in my arms as he passed on. But then, how would he know Kuwajii’s name to be able to tell me he was not Kuwajii?
“I’m going to open this door now, Marcus.” Beard Face tried to reason with me. “If you attempt anything dangerous, there is a guard by my side who will subdue you. Do you understand?”
I understood nothing.
“I need you to acknowledge that you understand, Marcus.”
I imagine I nodded, because the knob turned and two men entered. One wore a beard on his face, the other a scowl. Neither was Kuwajii. That was good. If the dead boy started popping up everywhere, I don’t think I would have survived the mental onslaught.
“Now, let’s talk about what just transpired, shall we?”
I considered him. I considered freeing his head from the rest of his body. But that would have been counterproductive. So I made no move to destroy him. Though I could have done it easily by tapping into my boundless reserves of adrenaline and magnificent malice.
He had the gall to sit next to me, there on the floor. He had no notion as to the incredible danger he was in. I was on motherfucking tilt.
“Marcus, I am happy to inform you that you have experienced a breakthrough. True, it came with an unfortunate bit of violence, but I believe it was a breakthrough nonetheless. Can you please share with me your version of these recent events? If necessary, you may take your time. I have nowhere else to be today.”
I studied the face behind the beard and found no recollection of any man I’d ever known.
“I don’t know you,” I admitted.
“That pains me to hear. As of our meeting yesterday, we’ve had well over 500 sessions together.”
This news was distressing. It also put more of a time stamp on my stay here.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t remember.”
“Well, if that’s the case, then let me tell you, you haven’t missed much. Up until just recently, you’ve only ever spoken four words to me — to everyone in this facility, in fact.”
“I am Marcus Fox,” I said, knowingly (and yet unknowing).
“Indeed, you claim to be.”
“Why …” I began, but didn’t know how to finish.
“Is that all you have? Why? Mercy me, perhaps I should be the one asking why? More specifically: Why have I hitched my wagon to your horse? Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment. But I believe my interest in you goes much deeper than mere ego would suggest.”
“Who are you?” I asked, lost in the man’s incessant babble.
“You know my name, Marcus. You know me. Would you care to tell me my name?”
I looked to the guard for help, but there was nothing to read off that statue of a man.
“Don’t ask him. Look to me, Marcus. What is my name?”
Out of the quintessential blue, I ventured a guess.
“Dr. Sopras,” I said, immediately knowing a thing that wasn’t previously there.
“Yes. Yes, Marcus. I am very pleased to meet you … again.”
My paisley days locked up in that lunatic cage were quickly unraveling themselves in my rearview. My mind’s eye looked back, and I could see shades of nondescript memories revealed, on the edge of 535 sunsets.
“A year and a half,” I said, making myself known to time.
“Yes, that’s nearly right. Now how about you pluck yourself out of the mire and tell me more about what you’ve just experienced. What was it you were screaming to my doughy-eyed, new fellow?”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense, Marcus?”
“It’s Kuwajii.”
“What is Koo-wa-gee?”
“My boy.”
“You have children?”
“No. Not exactly. Not anymore.”
“That’s a very interesting name. Am I pronouncing it right?”
“Huh?”
“Koo-wa-gee? Is that right?”
“You know who he is.” I was growing all the more certain that this entire thing was a ruse — some kind of elaborate mind-fuck to tear me apart from the inside out. Sopras was mine enemy as much as the able-footed desert goat was the ever-elusive arch rival of the treacherous Yuchan toad.
“Where are you from, Marcus?”
The absurd question lingered in the air.
“From nowhere you would find appealing,” I answered.
“What woke you today? Why are you talking to me now? Was it something you experienced in the rec room? Something beyond whatever a Koo-wa-gee is?”
“Do not mock him. His name is more precious than your soup-stained tongue can dribble.”
“I’m afraid that I am now the one who is at a disadvantage. I misunderstand you. Marcus, you’re going to have to start speaking to me with sincerity if we intend to get anywhere with your progress and well-being.”
“You think I have any chance of being healthy? Any aspirations at all to be well? Clearly you have no idea who I am or what I’ve done. What I’m still capable of doing.”
“I do think you’re a person who is very confused and owning, perhaps, an overly damaged heart. I think you’ve been punishing yourself for far too long on account of events that were probably beyond your control. In fact, you may have been self-flagellating your entire life. You are like no other person I’ve ever met, Marcus. And yet, you are no stranger. Not to me. I am more familiar with your troubles than you may think. No, I may not know the specifics, but your entire story is written all over your weathered face. Mostly in your eyes.”
Sopras snapped his fingers, and the guard passed him a small, handheld mirror. The doctor held it up for me to see. What the reflection revealed was nothing short of horror.
“What do you see, Marcus?”
“Myself,” I said. “A monster.”
“You can’t be both,” Sopras said. “So which is it going to be?”
I stared deeper and attempted to wash the beast from my face. My shifty eyes narrowed and expanded, revealing nothing more than the man I already knew. What I also knew to be true was the glass held within that mirror could be used to slit, puncture, carve, and undo the two men before me. It would take very little effort for me to free that glass from its framework and use it to enable the first stage of my escape. What would two more deaths on my hands be? The beast in the mirror cringed and withdrew, unexpectedly. He fled, hiding behind my own eyes, which now appeared sad, lonesome, and brown.
“Pathetic,” I muttered.
“Well, at least now we’re getting somewhere,” Sopras said, returning the handheld mirror to the guard. Neither man had the slightest clue how close to being slop suet they’d been. I suppose I’m the only one who ever knows that base reality.
“At any rate,” Sopras continued. “Today’s carefully planned experiment has been tainted. We will have to reset for another day. But in all honesty, I don’t know how I can ever get a genuine reaction from you now. Half the ward was in there today. They all saw the tape, er, program. They saw you flip. They’ll be talking about it. The entire study is likely invalid now.”
He stopped himself. His fingers pushed through his curly, unfettered hair.
“For three years now, the woman you claim to be your birth mother has been living free as a bird, somewhere back in Texas, I presume. But then again, what do I know? She could have hung herself or died of natural causes or burned alive in a motel fire or … I’m off topic. It doesn’t matter. I’ll just have to find another way to get through to you. I’ll have to dig my way through some other wound. I know you’re in there, Marcus. Whoever you are. Truly.”
He then revealed, through a microtwitch of his lip, the kind of crazed sanity you never see in the real world.
“What is this place?” I asked, expecting and receiving no believable answer.
“All you need to know, Marcus, is that you are at a crossroads. You are at the intersection of truth and lies. And I am the God of your soul.”
“Oh give me a fucking —”
I never saw the cattle prod coming. But sure enough, I beheld the intense blue spark as it jigged and jived all over my chest. The full breadth of my body convulsed as a million separate but fractured elements. When it was finished, a cluster of small, gray smoke wisps piffed off me and became air.
“Marcus?” Sopras whispered. “I’m feeling generous. You may have the rest of the night off. Cherish your newfound memories (whatever they may be), while you still can. Tomorrow, we will go deeper than before. Tomorrow, we will discover your true frontier. Rest up!”
If I hadn’t been certain before, I knew now. This creature posing as a “Dr. Sopras” was nothing short of a fiend. They all were. Every last make-believe puppet in existence.
Back in my padded room, later that night, sleep would not come. There were no stars to gaze upon, only my crusty, crooked ceiling. The provided mattress was dressed in clean sheets, but I never could get used to a soft cushion. I lay on the floor and tried to work shit out.
He is not Kuwajii, I thought. He said so himself.
But how would a man who looks exactly like the boy know his name at all? I argued. You at least owe it to yourself to know for sure.
“Shut up,” I spoke to the voices in my head, both of which were 100 percent mine. “Kuwajii is dead and I am well. I just have to get out of here before Sopras decides to turn that shock juice up to eleven.”
“Bravo, buddy,” Charlie spoke to me from the opposite corner of the room. He was crouching, full of vigor and possibly vinegar, penetrating with liveliness.
“Charlie?” I asked. It was the dumbest question fathomable, but I posed it anyway.
“In the flesh,” he said. “I’m here to spring you out!”
“Spring is sprung?” It was the closest I think I’d ever been to feeling giddy.
“Jesus, you sound worse than when you were detoxing. What are they doing to you in here, brother?”
I shook my head in an effort to quell this new phantom. It didn’t work. On the tenth or eleventh shake, my vision happened upon the door, which was open wide.
“Sorry I couldn’t break you out sooner. These things take time, you know? But just wait till you see what I’ve got in store for us.”
“This is some trick,” I said. “Charlie is dead. They’re all dead. Everyone I’ve ever known, except …”
“Except that bitch who brought you into this world. Am I right? Well, all those other poor bastards may be worm food, but I’m here, chum. Do I look dead to you? Could a dead man do this?”
He didn’t do anything. He blinked.
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing, man, I told you. I came to get you out. You wanna be free or not? It’s your choice. But hey, I’ve probably overstayed my welcome already. The guard at the end of the hall could wake at any moment. So I gotta split, with or without you. I don’t have any notion to be your roomie here in the booby hatch.”
Charlie stood and crossed the short distance between us, his arm outstretched.
“Last chance,” he said, blinking again.
All manner of men and monsters blink, except for fish and snakes and probably some other long-extinct creatures I know not of.
If I thought it would do any good, I would have blinked too. But blinking would only cause me to miss it — everything that came next. The veritable, plaid madness of it all flashed by in the flicker-flurry of a bare-faced, grey loerie’s eye.