Chapter 15

It had been ten days since he had no sleep. He couldn’t do it, was too scared. At first, in order not to fall asleep, John was drinking great amounts of coffee and energy drinks and tried to keep himself busy. When the apartment was so clean it resembled a museum rather than a place where people would live, he took up sports. With his very strained and limited budget, he figured the cheapest thing to do was jogging, so he started running every evening.

He did have some moments of weakness after two days, so he called Paul to help him organize some help to stay focused. John told Paul he got a job as a bouncer in a club and it was difficult for him to get used to the new work schedule, so he needed a bit of pharmacological help. Paul, who had contacts among doctors and pharmacists, was able to get him some modafinil and adrafinil.

The most difficult thing was to keep oneself busy in order not to fall asleep. Watching TV or reading books was practically out of question; those things were able to make him sleepy on a normal day. After days of not sleeping, John was afraid it wouldn’t take him more than ten minutes to close his eyes if he turned the TV on or looked through a newspaper. During the days, John would go jogging, or swimming, at some point he started doing some small repairs at Molly’s place, and at nights it was his second portion of running. When he felt the fatigue getting him, he saved himself with cold showers and another dose of pills.

He felt horribly tired, but knew more than anything that going to sleep wasn’t an option. He kept on finding the belt in different parts of the house, but decided to ignore it. In a way he got used to this, by all means completely weird, and otherwise freaky, situation, but since he had already tried slicing the damn thing into pieces and it was still around, then what else could he do? One day, John threw the belt into the dumpster, on exactly the same day when the trash was taken. In the evening the belt was on the armchair, lying there, with its buckle as shiny as always. At one point, John started thinking that perhaps the belt was a hallucination, that maybe he was the only person seeing it, maybe he was simply losing his mind and that was one of the symptoms.

John had a plan, or rather a necessity, to stay at Molly’s place. He wanted to tell her everything that was going on and was hoping she would help him and would let him stay a bit longer with her. After all, it wasn’t like he was living with her because he had such a whim, he simply had no choice. She would have to be a truly cruel person to kick him out under those circumstances.

The sleep deprivation, the constant coffee drinking and pill taking caused him a few slight attacks of arrhythmia. He found out that oranges could help reduce the unpleasant feeling, due to the potassium, so he started eating oranges and drinking orange juice in such amounts, that, at one point, he hardly drank or ate anything else. His skin was pale, his face seemed gray the dark bags under his eyes were getting worse, darker and more visible with each day. Deep down he was perfectly aware that this couldn’t last forever, that the tiredness was eating him alive, but he couldn’t force himself to go to sleep, to allow himself to face the nightmare once again. It was too scary.

On the sixth day of not sleeping, John almost caused a car accident. He was driving back home from the gas station, when he paid for the fuel using the limit on his debit card for the first time in his life. As he was on his way back to Molly’s apartment, he started wondering how he was going to pay the debt off, and a brilliant plan appeared in his head to get a new debit card in a different bank once his limit there was reached and he had no money to pay back. The new card would have settled his problem with this bank, and start a different one in another bank, but he could just do the trick again, and again, and, -

“Oh dear God!” John shouted and stepped on the breaks with all his might. He must have fallen asleep with his eyes open, because he hadn’t noticed when his car drifted into the opposite lane and if it wasn’t for the deafening honking of the truck that was going straight at him, he would have ended up crashed by it. John skidded slightly as his wheels blocked; the Anti-Lock Brakes System worked perfectly, otherwise he would have surely lost control over the vehicle, and jumped back on his lane inches before hitting the truck. The Land Cruiser skidded again and stopped across the street. John’s heart was beating so fast at that point, that for a split second he thought he would have to drink gallons of orange juice to make it normal again, a thought that made him burst out laughing. It was a nervous, unsettling laugh, reminding him more of a madman’s laughter rather than someone who just told a good joke. Three cars passed him, all of them honking at him, with drivers looking at him and tapping their index fingers against their foreheads, but he didn’t care, he was now only focused on keeping the car under control.

On the tenth day, John started hearing voices. The first time it happened he was jogging along the boulevard with headphones on his head. He no longer ran, he barely jogged as his body was too tired and had too little energy to make his workout dynamic. The first time he heard the voices, he thought the headphones were dying. The voices were, at that point, only some blurry, indistinguishable sound, an incomprehensible noise heard under the music, something which wasn’t loud nor clear, but was annoying when heard for a longer time. Breathing heavily, he stopped, took the headphones off his head and focused. The sound was gone. He looked at the headphones and shook his head. Piece of crap. He bought them only about a week ago, and they were already malfunctioning, producing interference.

John resumed jogging, and after a couple hundreds of yards, he heard the sound again. As previously it was an indistinguishable swoosh that appeared in his head, this time, however, it was becoming louder with every step. He stopped, shook his head, and looked around. People were passing him by, some of them on bicycles, some of them, like him, jogging, nobody seemed distracted by anything. Apparently he was the only person hearing it all. John covered his ears with his hands and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on turning the voices down, but nothing was helping. He looked around once again, and decided to go back to his car and drive to a drugstore thinking that perhaps he was suffering some kind of tinnitus.

All the way to the store he kept on hearing the swoosh, it was driving him insane. As he got into the facility, he walked towards the counter and tried to explain to the pharmacist what his symptoms were. He decided not to tell the woman he was hearing voices, rather some kind of unpleasant distraction, a sound that wouldn’t allow him to concentrate and work. The pharmacist asked him if he was taking any drugs on regular basis, John lied and said he wasn’t and the woman gave him oral antibiotics, and explained to him that any drops were out of question unless a doctor said otherwise, because his membrane might have been perforated. The voices were still inside his head, louder with every minute, so as soon as John came back home, he took two pills, drank a whole glass of water and sat on the sofa. He was trying to calm down and wait until the antibiotics would start working.

Nothing was helping. After four hours, John took another two pills, and was walking nervously around the condo, trying to focus on something else. He turned the radio on, tried to concentrate on the music, but it wasn’t helping. He sat in front of the TV and started watching some news, but the voices were making it more and more difficult to hear anything. Finally, he took the rest of the pills, making it eight in total, and drank a double whiskey to make sure the drugs finally start working. The swoosh, however, wasn’t letting him go.

John started walking around the place, nervous, anxious, shaking, feeling dizzy and nauseous from the pills, from hunger, from fatigue. His forehead was sweaty, his irises were dilated, and he turned the light off as it was too bright in the room for him to stand. After a few circles around the room and kitchen area, he turned around and realized the living room looked exactly like the wooden construction in the middle of the round, narrow coliseum. He took a deep breath and felt tears pooling in his eyes. John turned around, wanted to sit on the sofa, but it was already gone, instead there was the small wooden stool and the area where the kitchen used to be, was now behind the bars, and the whole placed changed into the platform’s surroundings.

John was suspecting that perhaps the otitis drugs, alcohol and adrafinil mixed in some terrible, unfortunate reaction and he was now not only hearing, but also seeing things, but the truth was he subconsciously knew what was going on. He was dreaming with his eyes open. He looked down at his body and saw himself dressed up in the pajamas he was wearing in the nightmare. The pajamas and the slippers. What a ridiculous outfit for standing in front of the court. He had never thought of that before.

“Do we finally have the defendant’s attention?” the prosecutor asked.

“I believe we do. Mr. Prosecutor, let’s proceed. We believe the whole process is taking too much time, it’s all pretty clear what is going on here, let’s not prolong this,” the woman judge said.

“All right. I have one last witness, it’s Mr. Jack Cooper, John Smith’s boss.”

John turned left and saw Jack walking up the stairs and soon standing on the platform. He was wearing a black, hand-tailored, designer suit and an elegant white shirt with pearl buttons. His shoes were polished and there was an expensive watch shining on his wrist.

John was looking back at the black fridge standing behind him in the corner of the kitchen area, and was blinking fast.

“Jack, I’ve been calling you, I wanted to meet you, I couldn’t find you, and you were standing here all along? In my fucking kitchen?” He laughed and a small stream of saliva fell from his mouth, covering his chin. John’s eyes were tearful and glassy, his hair was sweat-soaked and was now sticking to his neck and forehead.

To John’s surprise, Jack walked in with his hands cuffed. He walked closer to the bars to see everything well.

John clumsily walked towards the fridge and stopped in the area where he thought he saw the bars.

“Jack, what the hell was going on there in the office? Why didn’t you tell me you had some plans to suspend the company for the time of the redecoration? I was so worried I had lost my job,” he said.

“Can you tell us how many years John Smith worked for your company?” the prosecutor asked.

“Over ten years.”

“Was he a good employee? Were you happy having him on your team?”

“Yes and no.”

“The fuck you mean “no?”!” John asked angrily and shook the bars of his cage.

John took another step closer to the fridge and said angrily, “Why aren’t you answering? What, I am unworthy of your goddamn attention? ANSWER ME!” he shouted, took a glass from the coffee table, threw it and smashed it on the fridge’s doors.

“I was happy because he was doing what he was told to, and the clients liked him, but I wasn’t happy about him stealing from me, about him defrauding my money.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” John shouted, and the creature standing next to the cage hit him with the wooden stick.

“Stop doing that! If you want to shut me up, just fucking kill me, but either you allow me to say something during this whole farce, or I will get you the moment I fucking walk out of here!” John was deranged. He was tired, he felt sick, and who the hell were all those people in the room, judging him, threatening him, beating him. He spat in anger. The crowd was going crazy, whistling, screaming, throwing rotten tomatoes, eggs, and apples on the platform, waving their hands.

“Get them out of here, at once!” the woman judge ordered. “There will be a short break, Mr. Prosecutor, I advise you to regain control over your defendant.”

At this time, a huge piece of black, thick material covered the cage, and suddenly, around John, there was complete silence and total darkness.

“What’s happening? What’s going on? I demand to know!” he said, but his voice sounded hollow; it bounced from the material and never got out of the cage. It was as if there was no open space behind it, as if it wasn’t material, but some concrete wall that covered it. “Let me out, please, God, let me out!” He started crying, coughing, begging for help, pulling the bars. He had a feeling as if he was trapped in some kind of sarcophagus, as if he was buried alive.

John opened his eyes, took a deep breath and saw the fridge door lying on the floor. He tore it from its frame so rapidly that one hinge was still in the body of the fridge, the other one was on the floor about two yards away from the door. The freezer door had dents on them.

“What happened? What did I do?” John asked quietly, looked around and saw the sofa was lying on its back, the coffee table had its glass top broken, and the TV remote control was in pieces with batteries and plastic elements scattered on the floor. A tall lamp standing in the corner was on the floor, too. Its shade was torn apart into small pieces.

“Shit-did I do all this?” he asked calmly and started walking around the place, looking for other signs of anger.

“Who else do you think did this?” John heard a deep, male voice in the room. It was right behind him, right next to his ear. He instinctively jumped and looked around.

“What?” he asked. “Who’s there?”

“Who do you think I am?”

John looked around once again and spotted the belt lying there on the armchair, about five yards away from him.

“Wha-?” he asked again, his voice was breaking, disappearing. Hot tears were running down his cheeks, but he wasn’t crying anymore. Come to think of it, it was all pretty funny in a way, wasn’t it? He laughed quietly as his voice broke again, and walked towards the belt.

“It’s been tough lately, hasn’t it?” the voice asked. It sounded worried.

“Y-yeah, it has,” John replied, nodded his head and cleared his throat. He kneeled next to the armchair, his sight was empty.

“Margaret and Mickey are doing great without you; they wouldn’t want you back even if you begged them. Paul didn’t help you, Jack disappeared, Cindy doesn’t want to know you, Molly doesn’t care. It’s been really, really tough, the past few months.”

John closed his eyes and a few warm tears fell down from them. They were dropping on his t-shirt, one of them touched his lips; he instinctively licked it off and felt its salty taste.

“As if it that wasn’t enough, Mickey doesn’t respect you, stopped calling you dad, thinks you have never been there for him, when the truth is, you actually married his mother, because you liked the boy so much, you thought you’d try to create a family if for no other reason than maybe just for him. Because you saw how lonely, how sad the three-year old was.”

John hid his face between his forearms and started weeping loudly. His fear, the feelings of loss, of regret, of being misunderstood, of making the mistakes that couldn’t ever be washed away, all those things were coming out of him in his tears, in his pain, in his rapid spasms.

“I-I’m scared,” he whispered and sniffed.

“I know you are. Nothing looks the way you wanted it to look.”

“Nothing,” John agreed quietly.

The material was lifted, and the light suddenly filling up the cage blinded him for a moment. Jack Cooper was still at his place, so were the judges and the Prosecutor. John looked up and saw there were no more spectators, nobody was watching the trial anymore. He sighed. In a way, it relieved him, made him feel a bit calmer.

“So, how exactly was the defendant stealing your money?” the prosecutor asked.

“He would, for example, buy more expensive plane tickets while preparing a trip for the clients, then he would bring me the invoice, I would cover it, and then he would give the tickets back, cancel the booking, using the time window allowing him to do it for free, and he would buy new ones, much cheaper obviously, and keep the company money in his pocket.”

“How did you find out?”

“Some clients complained about the slight changes of the departure and arrival dates, that they were made on the 11^th hour before the trip. I understand it might happen once, twice, sure, but practically a dozen times? I finally checked it, called the airlines, all of them confirmed the tickets were returned, and the bookings were canceled.”

“Is that the only thing you didn’t appreciate about Mr. Smith?”

“No, he was doing the same thing with hotels. Exactly the same. Through his actions my company lost at least between fifteen to twenty thousand dollars.”

“Why haven’t you ever reported it?” the judge on the right side of the table asked.

“As you can see,” Jack raised his hands showing the cuffs, “I’m no saint either. I didn’t want any police or other law enforcement on my back. We were going to deal with Mr. Smith in a different way, the plan was to cut him off the orders. But then, well, something else happened,” he showed the cuffs again.

John was sitting on the floor next to the armchair, crying quietly, and rocking gently back and forth.

“It’s miserable, John, I’ve gotta to be honest with ya,” the voice said again.

“I know. I do,” John whispered.

“Yes, Your Honor, we were kindly given the permission to question the witness, but he needs to go back now, he is having his own trial happening as we speak.”

“What? I thought you’d let me go once I testify against Smith!” Cooper exclaimed.

“I don’t recall any of such agreement,” the prosecutor said and two black creatures came to take Cooper away.

John smiled; it felt good knowing he wasn’t the only person in trouble.

“Let him stay for the verdict,” the woman judge said. “It’s ready, he can listen, it’s in a way his business, too.”

The guards stopped, Jack turned around, faced the judges.

“Does the prosecutor have any other witnesses to question?”

“No, not anymore.”

“Fine. Will all the witnesses come here, please?” she said and got up. Two other judges got up, too.

There were now many steps heard on the floors. Some of them were coming closer faster, some slower, but they were all becoming more and more distinct.

“Oh God, what’s happening?” John asked and felt fear irritating his nostrils, appearing inside of him and penetrating his body in a similar way an unpleasant strike of cold would do during the wintertime.

“Take it easy, it won’t be long now,” the voice replied.

“What do you mean?” John exclaimed, “What won’t be long?”

On the top of the construction there were now Margaret, Mickey, Rhonda, Cindy, Molly, and Jack. They were standing in line, looking at the judges.

“Will the defendant please stand up?” the woman judge said and John felt a poke in the arm. He looked right at his guard, and slowly got up. He felt his knees shaking and was wondering if he was going to be able to stand even for a while.

John blinked a few times, took two deep breaths and promised himself to get a grip and not to lose any more dignity than he was already. He was standing in the middle of the living room, among the furniture he tossed. The only light in the room was the open fridge, which was casting its dead-pale light across the place, but it was still pretty dark.

“For the past days I have been hearing horrible, appalling testimonies given here by the people you were obliged to love and protect, your wife and son, and by the people who perhaps shouldn’t have ever entered your life, but once they had, deserved respect. You have failed everyone, Mr. Smith. Your family, your lovers, your boss. You have constantly been choosing the easy ways out, you’ve constantly been either too scared, or too insolent, or too cocky to act like an adult …”

“I’ve been doing my best to stay true to myself, to live according to my needs and my desires, because I have only one life, and I believe I need to live it the way it’s fine for me,” John replied, his voice was trembling, but he was able to say it quite loudly and steadily.

“If that’s your philosophy, Mr. Smith, then, by all means, you should have chosen a different life, and became a hermit, or at least never engaged in any relationships with people. What you have done along the way was hurting everyone, left and right, people who trusted you, who were counting on you, who got attached to you, who you wooed, who you promised a different life than you ever wanted to give them. That’s not a life philosophy, that’s simply being cruel.”

There was such silence, John actually thought he heard his own heart-beat, that it was beating so loud it was about to jump out of his chest. He had a feeling everyone heard it, too.

“I therefore, sentence you, Mr. John Smith, to death by hanging. The society doesn’t need such parasites as you,” she said and hit the gavel on the wooden tray. “The trial is closed.”

“What? WHAT?” John screamed, petrified. “Oh God, oh no!” he cried. “What now, good Lord, what now?! It’s a dream, it’s only a dream!” he kept on repeating while holding his head in his hands. His breath was hectic, irregular.

The cage was opened loudly and the creaking sound gave him goosebumps all over his body.

John looked at his forearms, they were covered with goosebumps.

“Get out!” the guide said and reached out to grab him. John instinctively took a step back, inside the cage.

John took a step back, almost falling down as he hit the armchair with his calf.

-but the guide walked after him, and took him out by his shoulder. His grip was very strong, and quite hurtful.

“Where are you taking me?! Stop! I never had a lawyer, I was unable to defend myself! It’s not justice, it’s a joke!” He was screaming, trying his best to loosen himself off the grips of the guide, but soon another one appeared and now there were two of them taking him, leading him to the edge of the platform. He finally understood why he was up, kept so high, why there were stairs leading to the courtroom. At the end of the platform there was a wooden arm stretched about five yards away from its edge. There was a long rope attached to the arm’s end, long enough for it to lie on the floor of the platform and wait for the time it was needed. At the end of the rope there was a loop.

John was crying, feeling his arms being squeezed and his shirt being pulled. He was waving his arms, trying to set himself free, but he couldn’t. In the frenzy that was burning inside his head, he threw down a TV set and a TV cupboard it was standing on. The TV’s screen smashed into pieces and the cupboard broke in half.

“Oh God, no, NO!” John exclaimed and tried to brace his feet against the floor, but they were slipping. He felt a warm, delicate trickle of urine dripping down his thighs. An ultimate humiliation, he thought.

“Don’t let them win, John!” the voice said.

“How can I stop this?! What can I do?” he replied, weeping.

“Well, there is one thing you can do.”

“What, what is it?”

“You can be faster.”

John turned around, became immediately silent and dried his eyes. His sight was now focused. He saw the belt lying on the armchair. So this was it, this is why it kept on appearing everywhere. It wasn’t a punishment, it wasn’t anything to be afraid of; it was his only chance to make a choice, to choose how and when he wanted to end things, and not allow the farce trial and the farce judges to do it for him. He started trembling as if he had a flu. A very strong stomach contraction went through his body and he vomited so rapidly, he almost fell on the floor. Since he hadn’t eaten anything in practically two days, the only things coming out of him apart from bile were three small, half-digested pills. John dried his mouth with a sleeve, reached out for the belt, feeling the invisible arms squeezing his arms even harder, and felt some kind of a knot around his ankles.

As they were tightening the rope above his feet, he looked at the witnesses silently observing the situation. Cindy was silently crying, otherwise nobody had shown any traces of empathy or sorrow. They were just standing there, emotionless looking at his soon-to-be execution.

“You know what? I don’t regret anything! You hear me? Anything! I spent years of my life as a husband to a woman who was clearly out of her mind, whom I never loved, but I loved her son, and decided to be with her so the three-year-old boy could maybe smile a bit from time to time. I did it for you, Mick, you hear me? And you don’t even have decency to call me dad anymore? I’m fucking John to you, huh? I wasn’t a perfect husband, sure, I wasn’t also the worst one, and maybe if we both tried, things might have been different! Rhonda? You’re as dumb as fuck, you hear me? There’s just no hope for you, that’s the truth.”

“Wrap it tighter, will ya, I still feel some blood in my veins in my feet,” he said to one of the guides bending to tighten him and spat on his neck.

“This is it, John, you have to work fast, because they’re doing it! They’re about to execute you!” the voice said in an urgent manner. John snapped out of a lost-on-one’s-thoughts state and took the belt in his hand. He walked towards the kitchen area and took a wooden bar stool standing in the corner, then walked to the hallway. There was a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, its chain wasn’t very long.

“Molly, you’re as spiteful as I am, you just like to think you’re not. You pretended to like me, to fall in love with me, but you were too shallow to change your life for me, and allowed me to twist my life upside-down for you, but gave me nothing back. Cindy, you are the only person I loved. I really did. And I’m sorry I was such a shit of a boyfriend. I didn’t appreciate you, I took you for granted. God, it’s such a cliché…” he said. He was no longer angry, he felt resigned, he was crying. “I’m sorry, Jack. I was greedy, it’s as simple as that. And by the way, I hope they get you for all the money fraud,” he said and showed his ex-boss a middle finger.

John, shaking, trying to calm down, tightened the belt to make sure it was strong enough not to pull the chandelier down as he was about to dangle from it. He dried his face and eyes with a sleeve, checked it again and decided it was fine. He took a deep breath and looked around the apartment. Molly was going to have such a surprise, it was going to blow her mind, he thought and burst out laughing.

The rope was tightly wrapped around his neck. He was standing at the edge of the platform and the only thing that was separating him from death was one step. One step. One step, and everything would end, the fear, the anxiety, the shame, the remorse, the humiliation. Tempting, it really was.

John was standing on the stool with the brown leather belt wrapped tight around his neck, thinking it was just a matter of kicking the stool from under him to silence the voices, to finally rest, to finally get some sleep. One step. He took a deep breath.

John took a deep breath. He was about to make the step, when he felt the wooden stick poking him. As he was losing his balance, the very last thing he thought to himself was that no, he wasn’t ready.

A thought shot through his mind which was now sinking entirely in despair. A chilling thought.

He wasn’t ready.

Not yet.