Fun fact: In South Africa, grey loerie birds are commonly referred to as “go-away-birds.” This is due to their nasal, drawling calls that sound as if they are forever declaring to those nearby to “Go away! Go away! Go away!” In the unlikelihood that they understand English, they are most likely telling it to nearby, unwelcome humans in their territory. And sometimes we do. Sometimes, we have no choice but to go the fuck away. Not me, though. Not anymore. I’m staying right here with you until the very end of my tale. And I thank you once again for remaining by my side. You are truly a bird of a different feather, so to speak.
Charlie, dead or alive, had fled the scene. Being the helpful soul he’s always proved to be, he left my cell door wide open for me. Without further ado, I followed him out.
When I’d last seen my friend, he was sprawled all over the street in a puddle of guts. He had a caved-in head and grotesquely bent leg, and his otherwise neatly combed hair was slightly tousled. Just imagine my surprise to find him returned, unharmed, and undead before my very eyes, a shining specter of perfect health.
“I know what you’re thinking,” my soon-to-be twice-savior said. “But fuck all that.” There was no sense in arguing with his logic, so I rose to follow Charlie’s convincing ghost toward uncertain freedom.
Outside the walls of Kensey Psychiatric Center, the sun crested the eastern horizon. There was no mortal reason I should know this. The section of the floor in which we were held had no windows. But with the excitement of a great escape pulsing in my veins, my internal clock and other long-resting faculties were kicking into gear.
Charlie walked at an irate inchworm’s pace, carefully creeping past the sleeping inmates. Obedience and trepidation were on his side; he moved as if a hive of mustachioed grass warblers were lying in wait within the few distinct cracks in the linoleum. Not that any warbler had the bone density (or brain power) to do such a thing.
At the end of our block, we headed up a set of stairs to a brighter, more friendly environment. Here, there were windows. Large ones that acted as fresh eyes to the outside world. The sun, by my deduction, was a fraction higher than it should have been in the sky, and it was rising much faster than it should. Or maybe we were just traveling in super slow motion? Whatever the answer, the day’s new light was slithering like quick dead moss off a snail’s back. Despite anyone’s best efforts, the light would not be ignored.
The door at the end was partially blocked by an unconscious guard. Charlie gave an innocent shrug and removed a set of stolen keys from his own pocket.
“Sleeping on the job, I see,” he said. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
As he unlocked and pushed the door open, the snoozing man on the ground reminded me not to be overly concerned about other guards that may be lying in wait on the other side. There weren’t many clocked in at this hour.
(A sidenote: If you’re wondering how I had access to certain memories of the guards’ comings and goings, your guess is as good as mine. Stumbling across those helpful memories was like unlocking a buried treasure chest full of golden information. I still could not recall any of my time spent in the psych ward prior to this day of all days, though I did have bits and pieces of knowledge that helped my current situation. Take this as you will. All I can do is relay the facts as I remember them.)
So, as I remember it, none of those soldiers of misfortune I was about to face would be carrying any weapons. Not officially, anyway. The state of New York disallowed it. It was because of this major safety malfunction that minor uprisings among the inmates occurred, often daily. The guards themselves were strong and a few had picked up minimal combat training or amateur martial arts know-how.
Unofficially, due to hair pulling, snide shin kicks, groin punches, etc., some (most) of the guards were known to bring in their own switchblades, pepper spray, or brass knuckles. These paltry defense mechanisms were no match for the great hunter now 85 percent awake in me. Even so, I’d rather face an unassailed stroll to the exit than an army of pissed off, overlooked, glorified security officers harboring concealed bike chains and personal vendettas.
Charlie stepped back, holding the door open for me.
“Crazies first,” he said.
I stepped past him, into the front foyer. There, as shit luck would have it, a host of half a dozen morning watchmen were entering the building. Every one of them was teeming with dejection and defeat, before their shift even began. One sported a Wallachuck beaver-sized, yellowing bruise on his right cheekbone. It couldn’t have been more than a few days old. This sorry sack of measly measles would be no match for —
“Hey! You can’t be out here!”
The pock-cheeked intake nurse revealed my uncloaked position from behind her shield of protective, tempered glass. She rapped a palm against that see-through wall, drawing the bleary-eyed attention of the guards. Their sunken faces unveiled that they were too groggy to process the danger that lay before them.
The nurse, momentarily abandoning her impersonation of a bonobo mime with a high-five complex, shifted her attention to the alarm on the underside of her counter. Upon pressing some hidden button, the world filled with ragged noise. It was an audio reckoning the likes of which Charlie’s various mobile help units would certainly bow down before. It was a goddamn resounding tsunami, and it shook those downtrodden guards to action more effectively than a cocaine cappuccino.
“Jesus Christ, already?” the bruised man complained beneath the blare. Regardless of his piss-poor attitude, he placed the duffel bag he was carrying on a nearby table and charged toward me. The others fanned out, forming an impressive semicircle impasse.
“Hold ’em for a minute, Marcus, I’ve got an idea.” Charlie let go of the door and hauled ass back into the asylum. Perhaps he was going to make himself at home, after all? Hell, he could have my room.
I planted my feet on nicer, softer, prettier linoleum. Its pattern — galaxy swirls within small, oblique boxes — was something to behold. The fucking floor was more sedating than the medication cocktail they’d been force-feeding me with every lunch.
Pick your head up and face forward, Marcus. I feigned a half-assed pep talk. At this rate, it was hard to pinpoint exactly why I even wanted to escape. Surely some fresh, scathing torment was waiting patiently for me out there, hungry for a wrangle.
Still stupidly stargazing at the design by my bare toes, I felt Alpha Guard’s hand on me before I saw it. He held my right arm with brute force and shove-swung it backward. Nuanced pain shot through my entire system. The old bullet wound flared and the memory of Kuwajii’s death, always present, burned brighter than ever. My face slammed. The ground swirled beneath my cheekbones. My only saving grace was the feather touch of the lazy linoleum. Like slick cork, it grated with care.
I was subdued.
Cheap, plastic cuffs were applied to my wrists as the alpha’s pack of subordinates waltzed closer. The weight of the guard on my back and the tightness of his restraints paled in comparison to my embarrassment over having been conquered without a lick of a fight.
“Shut off that cocksucking alarm, Beth!” Alpha screamed. Nurse Beth obeyed and suddenly, the hum of the world was back to its yawn-worthy, humdrum existence.
The beast who bettered your less-than-humble orator yanked me to my feet, causing yet another surge of fire to shoot through all points of my arm.
“I’m not even clocked in yet, asshole,” he said, now slipping his sweaty hand to my throat.
He didn’t squeeze. Not yet. For the moment, he just held me there, not twitching one digit, not cinching an inch. It was a power move I’d witnessed before, among the Serengeti nomads. When executed properly, it can reduce a foe to quivering smithereens. It’s less about the promise of a choking and more about activating the fear pulse in your fingertips. The goal is to deliver unwavering warning shots to the scarespots in an opponent’s carotid. When executed with elegance, the move can temporarily paralyze even the most fearless of warriors. However, this guard (who was no wandering Serengetian) demonstrated awful technique. That said, his jugular snatch, amateurish and unpolished, was not nearly as offensive as his breath. The six-foot-tall human stinkbug didn’t know his best resource was his own putrid air. His exhalations were filtered by cheap booze, cheaper mouthwash, half-cooked bacon, and subtle hints of an erstwhile orgy. I was over-fortunate the man did not harness his own smelly strength for war.
“Hey, let him go, Ralph,” one of Alpha’s lackeys spoke up. “You win, OK?”
“Win?” he said. “I ain’t even begun to play.”
That was when the squeeze came, and, frankly, I thought it never would. I was taking a blessed moment of thanks that he’d relieved me of his raging halitosis when Sopras came to the party, disrupting the whole scene.
“Stop!” he demanded, coming out from around the corner and passing through the string of guards. Alpha Ralph released me and, if he expected me to fall again, found himself dumbstruck.
“What is the meaning of this?” Sopras asked. Then he looked past me. I followed his gaze to see the slump of the guard I’d defeated (had I defeated him?) was now acting as a human doorstop, prying the entrance to Crazy Town open with his torso. I smiled, knowing Charlie must have positioned him there for easier access to the front upon his return. Now would be as good a time as any, Charlie, I thought.
“Tsk, tsk,” Sopras scolded. “Perhaps I was wrong about you, Marcus. I have to say, I am quite disappointed. You didn’t have a breakthrough after all. Sadly, it appears you’re just broken.”
“Would a broken man have been able to get this far?” I dared. Then the sleeping giant within me — the killer — awoke to mock Alpha Ralph through my gritted teeth. “I haven’t yet begun to play.”
Sopras shook his head, tsking for an eternity. “What are we to do with you, Marcus Fox?”
The question was rhetorical, so I stayed silent; I needed my mouth free from making words anyway. If I couldn’t employ the use of my tied hands to do the deed, I’d end him with my teeth. Yes, I felt that other me, the repressed slayer of men, peeking out from behind my own forbidden shadows.
That’s it, Sopras, the dichotomous hunter inside taunted. Come here and let Marcus give you a kiss.
“You must think I’m the stupidest person alive,” Sopras said. He read the face behind my face, yet still had the audacity to come within a yard and a half of mandibles’ reach. “You’ve lunged at me before. Would you like to know what sets you off? Would you care to feel it?”
Sopras was faster than he should have been for a man of his advanced age and shrinking stature. I can only surmise that he must have concealed the electric prod in a sheath by his side, beneath his pearly white jacket. I heard and smelled the sizzle an instant before I felt it. For four seconds, my veins existed solely to transport electricity throughout my body. It awoke pain receptors I didn’t even know I had and spoke to them in some ancient language I could only interpret as Ow.
Still, I stood.
“Maw. Grocks,” I think I said.
Ralph (no longer the alpha apparent) joined his companions. They now stood closer together, behind Sopras. Many cast their eyes downward or away, as if to disapprove of the shrink’s actions without having to vocalize their dissent. The nurse behind the glass vanished. Perhaps she was never even there at all.
“Hey!” Sopras leaned in — still a mere hare’s hair away from being undone. “I’ve been gentle with you, Marcus. I have been kind. Up until now, you’ve only known my prod’s sweetness. But did you know he can also be sour?”
Sopras adjusted a small knob, making his prod angry. It was chomping at the bit, at the air, at the promise of a full belly, and emitting a byzantine blue surge that meant business.
“You don’t remember, do you? That’s your story, anyway. Allow me to enlighten you.
“In group, day in and day out, you sit in a puddle of your own drool, occasionally ejaculating your four-word self-declaration. But then, in the afternoons, we meet, just you and me. And there, you talk. Oh yes, you better believe it. I make you talk.”
He brandished his prod back and forth in a dizzying manner. I refused to fall under its hypnotic spell.
“You have recounted many whoppers, Marcus. Each more preposterous than the last. Don’t get me wrong, I do find you immensely entertaining — the way you dramatically weave the versions of events in your life is a thing to be applauded.”
“You’re a sadist,” I said, only beginning to piece together this new horror-show puzzle.
“I suppose I am. So be it.”
“Um, should we still be here?” Ralph asked, revealing the true beta fish beneath his scaly alpha exterior.
“Get to work!” Sopras roared. Then, regarding the guard on the ground, “Get that man some medical attention. When he wakes, tell him to clean out his locker and never come back.”
They fell into line. Two men picked up the fallen guard and carried him out the front door. The rest, Ralph included, headed into the nuthouse to begin their day.
“Alone at last,” Sopras said.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t dare be alone with a monster like me. You’ve got a set of balls on you, Doc. I’ll give you that.”
“It’s not balls that make a man strong, Marcus. It’s power. And between you and me, I’ve got it all.” His electric prod backed Sopras’s absurd claim with as yet unchallenged authority.
“Every patient in this sick place has a story to tell,” he continued. “Each more mundane than the last. No one has much to offer in terms of originality. A third of your fellow psychopaths blame their shitty existence on drugs; another third claim their negligent parents, society, or circumstance for their pitiful station in life; the rest, well, let’s just say they hold varying degrees of chemical imbalance that renders them, for lack of a better term, predictably disposable.
“But you, Marcus. You are a unique species. For the longest time, I categorized you as belonging in the herd of the hopeless, brain-battered third group. And then, one day, you shocked me. Pardon my pun.” He twitched his hand slightly, making the electricity at the end of his prod shimmy. “I’d been experimenting with electricity for years, but no one ever came to life because of it, not like you. This knob here goes up to sixty. Right now I have it set at thirty-nine. This is the number that most agrees with you. This is the jolt that inspires you to talk — to fantasize, rather. So curious that everything below thirty-nine just pisses you off. That last bit you experienced was a mere fifteen.”
I opened my mouth wide and released my pent-up boredom. While he was distracted by my exuberant yawn, behind my back I was busying my dexterous hands with the shackles. My fingernails were worn down, and a few of my fingertips were on the verge of bleeding. But the progress was progressing.
“Yes.” Endlessly (yet to my advantage), he went on. “I suppose you bore me now too. I’ve heard your story more times than I’d care to recall. It never changes. Your outlaw parents, Shumbuto, Shandra-Namba, the disastrous end of the Shakasantie, your life on the hunt, and on and on and on. Even Kuwajii.”
On hearing his name, my concentration shifted.
“Oh yes, I know all about him too. Of all the tragic stories you’ve shared (thanks to trustworthy level thirty-nine), the Kuwajii tall tale strikes me as your deepest character build. You’ve always described him with such passion! I really felt like I could have picked the boy out of a lineup … or at least someone who looked exactly like him. Tell me, how did I do?”
How did he do what?
“Well, none of it matters anymore, does it? I’ve given away the game. I was hoping that, when confronted by your dead-as-disco Shakasantie brother, you might break down, break through, or break out with your honest-to-God true life story. I’ve wanted to know the real you so desperately that perhaps I went a little overboard in trying to find you out. That’s on me. Because even when presented with your imagined ghost brother in the flesh, your story remains unchanged. I will just have to write you off, sadly, as my greatest failed experiment to date. I’ll just have to chalk your entire life up to one sorry fact: You, Marcus Fox, are nothing but a liar.”
Sopras jabbed the business end of his prod into my chest. I darted backward, lost my balance, and toppled to the floor. There, the galaxies swirled quite conventionally.
“Some hunter you are,” Sopras said, massaging the prod’s knob to full blast. “Let’s see what truth we can zap out of you at maximum potency.”
He reached back his arm like a Shaksantie huntsman readying his spear for flight. I believe he would have loosed his prod, too — javelined the flaming spear directly into my heart — if it weren’t for the blather of revolting voices that came rumbling from behind the closed asylum door.
“What the devil is that?” Sopras lowered his electric manipulator, and I seized the opportune moment. Leaping up, in one swift motion, I freed my heels from the linoleum cosmos. In supreme, nimble fashion I vaulted over my restraints, bringing my hands back to the forefront of my body, where they belonged. In zerotime I was righted, allowing my muscles their God-given merit, once again. My mighty biceps bulged and my plastic captor held me no more. Those poor man’s handcuffs exploded outward, with one sharp end nailing Sopras in the eye, exactly as planned. He stumbled, tilting his prod upward. I snatched it from him, successfully turning the tables, and watched as he sputtered wildly, clutching his now bloody wound, trying desperately to hold his pupil in.
The obscene weapon, now in my command, cowed under my firm grip. Feeling its phony power only amplified the fact that it was a ridiculous invention, intended for ridiculous persons.
Speaking of ridiculous persons, just then, the wusspuss formerly known as Alpha Ralph came barreling back through the asylum door. With the din behind him growing ever more ominous, he didn’t stop to acknowledge the topsy-turvy scene. This was probably the bruised guard’s most impressive feat of the morning — turning a blind eye to me (the spitting image of Zeus, clasping a mighty thunderbolt) and Sopras (bleeding profusely through his finger webs).
“MAYHEM!” was all he shouted, breaking fast for the exit. “THEY’RE COMING!”
Charlie, of course, led the pack. Naked and hairless from the waist up, he burst into view wearing scraps of his tattered T-shirt around his forehead. The long-forgotten, unconscious guard’s keys still dangled from his belt. He held a bullhorn by the strap in one hand and clutched a fire extinguisher by the handle in the other. He halted when he saw me.
“What’d I miss?” he asked.
“What’d I?” I asked back.
Charlie’s face was lit with the unabashed joy that can only come from collective madness. “It’s a good day to be dead,” he declared.
A wave of inmates then plowed the asylum door clear off its hinges. Some of the mentally infected continued straight for the exit, following Ralph, out to seek whatever it was that freedom meant to them. Others lingered, momentarily assessing Sopras’s weakened condition before deciding on their mob mentality’s course of action.
The demented shrink never had a snowball’s chance in Zambia. The usually sedated human throwaways tore Sopras to shreds, leaving far less than a lion’s share of flesh and maw for some wet-behind-the-ears forensic examiner to jaw about for decades to come.
So long, Sopras. The devil inside me approved and withdrew. I’m certain he felt cheated of the kill and only retreated into hibernation due to lack of prey. He’d be back, I knew, if ever needed.
“Well that’s fucking disgusting,” Charlie said, dodging crudely strewn doctor bits. When it was over and the whole host of murdering inmates had fled the building, Charlie dropped the bullhorn and extinguisher with a thump and a clang. I wondered briefly how he’d made use of them, but didn’t linger on the thought; our escape, messy as it was shaking out to be, still required a few crucial yet delicate final touches.
“What now?” I asked.
“We make like naproxen and uhh-leave! Come on!” Charlie sprinted toward the hallway to the left. It was clearly marked “Employees Only” in obnoxious, block-font, red letters.
“Charlie! The exit’s right here!” I said, pointing to the obvious route.
“That’s what’s expected, man! You think I’d break you out without a plan? Now lose that lame electric boogaloo and let’s go! Try not to slip in the mess.”
The prod, still active in my hand, was losing all power, puttering out and shutting down. Perhaps, in its own way, it was dying of a broken heart, hoping for nothing more than to join its maker.
“Be with him, then,” I whispered at the dying thing’s faltering, jaundiced singe and then smashed it over my knee. Still not realizing the extent of my returned strength, I imagined it would snap into two equal pieces. Instead, what remained of the prod was but hundreds of quadrillions infinitesimal particles of particles. They settled lightly upon their patriarch.
Dust to dust.
Charlie led the way, out of oblivion and into something new. The alarm was called to arms once more by some unseen nurse or doc or guard. As he continued making haste through the long, narrowing corridor, my deceased companion minded the noise not.
The hall sloped downward, ever downward. Before reaching the end, we turned left into another endless expanse. My legs raced toward an unknown conclusion with reckless abandon (no part of me knew an understated way to be). The sheer length and empty depth of the building seemed wasteful and indulgent. We passed by a small sampling of open-door rooms on either side, none of which justified the architectural idiocy of it all.
They must have cleared the joint when that first alarm rose. We had the whole place to ourselves to run freely through. And then, just when I thought we’d be going forever, Charlie stopped.
“Down here,” he panted as he kneeled to lift a hidden hatch in the floor.
“Charlie,” I said. I was overcome by a gracious feeling.
“No thanks necessary, Marcus. Remember? I save people. It’s what I do.”
Fully relieved of the terrific, awkward emotion, I was now free to climb down the rusty ladder that, almost magically, appeared below. Four steps down, I plunged into darkness. The corroded metal rungs assaulted the already-raw parts of my palms. If the descent also wreaked havoc on the soles of my feet, I cared not. They were hardened by a lifetime of jungle grazing.
At the ladder’s bottom, I dropped a yard to splash in knee-deep water. Charlie touched down next to me and stretched his hand toward something hanging on the wall behind me, past my ear. Three seconds later, that moist darkness all around was lit on fire. My eyes adjusted with impressive speed (even for them) as they observed, guided by torch glow, Charlie pocketing a Zippo.
“Don’t get any ideas,” he said. “No spoons or crank today.”
Charlie held the torch aloft to reveal a long, underground channel. And just at the brink of perception, there floated a rowboat. And in that rowboat, there was a man, gagged, blindfolded, and bound by strong, unyielding chains.
“Insurance policy,” Charlie said. “Gotta have one.”
“Fucking fuck,” I iterated. Despite the shitty source of light, despite the distance, I recognized that beautiful black face for who he wasn’t.
“You know him?”
If I could have answered his question in a way that wouldn’t result in an imploding brain aneurysm, I would have.
“I caught him late last night,” Charlie explained. “Been down here ever since. Couldn’t help any of it, really. Come off it already. Don’t look at me like that, Marcus! I’ve been down here with him, feeding him and such, biding my time till escape o’clock. I only just left him to come and get you. Had to gag and blind the fucker, didn’t I? Now stop acting so innocent and let’s keep moving. No doubt the fuzz is all over the front, rounding up your ne’er-do-well cohort as we speak.”
As if to emphasize Charlie’s point, several shots, loud and muffled as an underwater potato cannon, echoed eastward, over our heads. Kuwajii … nay, Not-Kuwajii, shook with fear in the dumpy rowboat’s bow. As swift as could be fathomed in that slurry, I waded my way toward the boy.
“So what’s the plan, then? We going to row ourselves to freedom?”
“Oh, ye of little faith!” Charlie said. “Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Uncle Charlie’s thought of everything.”
Judging by the terrified angle of our captive’s brows, I highly doubted it.