Greg Sanders
Mr. Hallucinosis
Jack X. stands on an aluminum ladder trying to find a joist in his
ceiling so that he can install a thick steel hook and to that attach a
looped cable into which he plans to slip his neck and hang himself. He’s
drilled several holes with a 1/4" diameter bit but has hit nothing but air
on the other side of the plaster. You’re beginning to get frustrated
watching him.
For weeks you have been slinking around his apartment and your work is
at last paying off. As he continues his drilling, fine white powder slowly
drifts down and dusts the floor around you. You are hidden in the shadow
of Jack X.’s chaise. It’s ridiculous, you think, that a man who has set
out to perform this simple task of carpentry at such an important time of
his life seems so inept, so nervous. He drills more holes, quietly cursing
his inability every time the cordless drill punches through the ceiling
into nothingness. After more tries he finally hits a joist beneath the
plaster, takes the threaded steel hook from a breast pocket, and screws it
into the pilot hole. Wood shavings drift down slowly spiraling to the
floor. It must be hot up there at the top of the high-ceilinged room in
which Jack X. lives alone, and he wipes his sweaty forehead with his
sleeve, pushes back his moistened bangs. When he descends the ladder you
take shelter properly beneath the chaise, not wanting to be seen before
you are ready. You hear him gathering up the steel cable and threading it
through the metal collar.
Then he begins to undress—this desire to recreate one’s state of
arrival in this world when exiting it is standard—and you see that Mr. X
was once probably a good specimen, with a thick chest and muscled arms
that have since gone flabby from all the drinking. He’s wearing that mask
that’s part of the business, the expressionless joy of being in the last
stretch, not at all a glorious joy, but then again not what his relatives
will undoubtedly imagine—that he is weeping and fighting himself, under
the influence of booze. No, he’s miraculously sober and focused, a real
go-getter. They’re always so determined and at peace at this point in the
process that it’s as if they’re running on some strange instinct, some
primordial engine that once started cannot be turned off. He decides, last
minute, to leave his briefs on, and for this you are grateful.
He ascends the ladder, slips the cable around his neck, and tightens it
with a brief tug. You run out onto the floor, shouting his name and waving
your hands, somersaulting, touching yourself lewdly, laughing. At three
inches tall there’s no guarantee you’ll be noticed at a time like this,
but you think he sees. Surprisingly, he kicks the ladder out of the way on
his first pendulous swing back. This kind of coordination in the throws of
the act itself astounds you and you get on your knees and bow to him and
his composure as he swings above you, soon dead.
There was a time, and it really wasn’t that long ago, when your wife
would accompany you on these gigs that you do, but she’s recently taken
ill, or so she says. You suspect she’s having a bit of her own psychic
break, what with all the misery you two catalysts of hysteria have caused
over the decades. Her problem is that she has lately become sympathetic
towards your victims. You don’t understand it. It’s not why you were put
on this earth, to sympathize with those whom you’ve come to push off the
edge of sanity. This fellow, Jack X., your most recent, took weeks of work
before he broke down, and you did it all on your own. What, then, are you
supposed to do to get your partner, the love of your life, back onto the
team? It’s both a personal and professional dilemma.
* * *
A few months pass and you’re in a log cabin surrounded by towering firs
in the Maine woods. In the hearth a fire is roaring, spitting out popping,
red-hot sparks. You are hiding in a pile of kindling in a wicker basket
nearby. You have come in through the bottom of the basket where a small
hole provides a convenient means of egress. Again, you are alone, having
left your significant other to her solipsistic moping, her creepy
solitude. Next to you a beetle nibbles serenely at a bit of wood rot,
unaware of its own pending incineration. It amuses you, the insect’s
banality, the lethargic, mechanical movement of its jaws.
Through the weaves of wicker you watch Suzanne, the pretty
twenty-something you’ve been working on in this bucolic setting. She is
tied to a wooden chair. Her wrists are abraded from struggling against the
ropes, but she’s calmed down now, exhausted, and possibly heading towards
unconsciousness, maybe even shock. Milling about nervously is her lover,
Janice, who seems to believe she is helping her sweetheart. The staple of
your livelihood depends on situations like this in which individuals
disregard medical advice and go cold turkey without professional
supervision. For days now Suzanne, who’s come here at the behest of her
lover, has wanted a drink like somebody tossed from an airplane wants a
parachute. Janice whispers to her, caressing her face. You can clearly
hear, "Be strong, my beauty." She moistens Suzanne’s lips and forehead
with some cool water and applies anti-bacterial ointment to the abrasions.
Damn it, how you wish your wife were here. The theatrics you used to
perform for your victims—screwing each other in plain sight, playing catch
with a victim’s possession, shouting into both ears as your client is on
the cusp of sleep. But now it’s just you in this little cabin with these
two not unattractive and frankly admirable women. Truth is, you’re envious
of their devotion to each other.
It’s not easy when there’s a bystander involved. If she catches a
glimpse, your career is over. Nobody’s ever come back from that kind of
exposure. It’s not like you have special transformative powers and you’re
sure as hell not some giddy leprechaun, some amateur, feckless twit. You
work hard, have a high success rate, and hope that when your career winds
down you can spend your final years in Florida working on Alzheimer’s
victims at a leisurely pace.
When Janice goes outside to use the outhouse, you’re on. You walk
slowly into the middle of the room and look up at Suzanne who, seeing you
(a familiar sight by now), curses, then struggles with the ropes but can’t
break free. Her pupils are dilated and she’s white with fear but at the
same time hot and sweaty and struggling like a real warrior to get free.
She shouts for Janice, first softly, then hysterically. You moon her,
wiggling your tiny thumb-nail-sized ass at her for a few seconds. It’s
boring without your loved one here. You’re bored out of your mind, but
manage to run to and fro, whip around in circles, do cartwheels, flash
her, et cetera. When you hear the door open, you sprint back to the
basket, crawl in through the hole at the bottom, and take cover in the
mess of kindling. You note that the beetle seems not to notice a thing. It
is processing the wood like a machine. Janice is back, her belt still
undone, and she holds her sweet girl, rocking her back and forth.
"In there. In there," Suzanne whimpers, pointing as best she can
to the basket in which you are now suddenly alarmed.
Janice opens the basket top and starts pulling wood out.
"There’s nothing in here, baby," she says, continuing to dig down to
prove her assertion. "Just some bugs."
The beetle flashes by you as it is lifted out, clinging to its shard
blindly. Things are happening so quickly that you have no time to
formulate a plan. You are suddenly exposed and you catch the shocked look
on Janice's face. You escape through the hole, barely avoiding being
snatched up. The only place you can run is under Suzanne's chair and out
the cabin door, which has been left open a crack. Then you are outside.
You move rapidly through the underbrush and hear Janice thundering behind
you. You wonder what it would be like to be caressed by such a woman, to
be held close to her breast. None of your kin has ever come back from
being discovered. The woods stretch out infinitely around you. If only
your wife, your beloved, had been with you she might have advised you to
be more cautious, to pick a better place to hide. Why has she been so
distant, so unable to accept her role? The sun is low and warm light
dapples the forest floor in elongated bands. In the middle of one of
these you suddenly stop and look up. Janice's hand-soft, pink, trembling
with anticipation-gently surrounds you, enveloping you in warm darkness.
Greg Sanders lives in New York City, where he
earns his living as a technical writer and is an MFA
candidate at the New School University. His
fiction has appeared in previous issues of Blip Magazine Archive, in
Red Hen Press's Blue Cathedral, and in a variety of other print and
e-venues. |