Judgement Day (12 page)

Just after
Easter II, I was sitting on the side of the road in Katoomba in the
early hours of the morning, not really knowing where to go, and
this group of people came past and handed me a few dollars in
change. I thanked them, and told them I would get a coffee. It was
just a really nice thing to do. I recounted the story to Silk’s
parents, I told them that having a limp makes begging easier, like
the beggar in ‘The Life of Brian.’ I was limping for months after
Easter II. When I went to Silk’s parents after Easter II, his
father gave me an old warm jumper. It was such a simple gesture,
but it meant so much to me, it was the nicest thing anyone had done
for me for a long time. Simple acts of kindness really mean a lot
when you’re down and out.

I ended up
turning up on this guy Pete’s doorstep in Katoomba. Silk used to
live with him once, nice guy, and he said I could stay. I was only
there a few nights then there was a knock at the door. It was mum
and Sally, I looked at mum with anger in my eyes, I tried to keep
my mouth shut, but I was so mad I couldn’t and
I blurted out
“I know about you.” I
proceeded to rattle off a list of problems she gave me, and I told
her I knew about the people she killed. She acted like she didn’t
know what I was talking about, but “I knew she knew.” Then she
left, and I started to panic.

“Sally knew
too much!” Panic set in, “mum would have to get rid of her, and
fast, before Sally starts telling people about what mum had done!”
I was racing around all over the place, I didn’t know what to do,
and I didn’t have much time to do it. Suddenly (I believed) I
worked out where mum kept the poison, in the hallway there was a
cupboard filled with old medicines no one has ever used, for
conditions no one has ever had, “they weren’t medicines, that was
the poison cupboard! Powders, potions, poisons, she really was a
witch!”

I went to
Silk’s place, to tell him and his parents about my great victory,
that I had discovered where she kept the poison! They didn’t
believe me, and I got angry and left. I ended up going to the
Police Station in Katoomba to tell them about my mum.
Without saying anything
they just
led me
out the back and
into a holding cell, they call it “the fishbowl.” I was in the
holding cell banging on the perspex and shouting “I hate
people
!
I just want to
go where there’s no people
!
L
et me
go where there’s no people
!
”
Then
t
hey put me in the back of a police car and drove me down to
Nepean Hospital. I started to relax, this is what I needed, a roof
over my head, a free feed, and some time to regroup and
reorganize.

This is what
it took and the sacrifices I made to discover The Stage. Many times
I thought about drowning myself, about filling my pockets with
rocks and jumping into Blue Pool, just like the swagman from
‘Waltzing Matilda.’
I
survived discovering The Stage, but only just. Had I not believed
my mother was poisoning people, I never would have gone to the
Police, and I probably would have died out there in the bush. I
wanted to die out there, I wanted to fall asleep and never wake
up
.
I
t was my spiritual home, but I had to keep
going for the sake of the human race, and to make sure that my
mother faced justice. Even though my God had abandoned me, even
though He left me to die out there, I could never truly give up. It
was not in my nature to give up.

And his ghost
may be heard as you pass by the billabong,

You’ll come a
waltzing matilda with me.

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Chapter 5

“
It’s no use to
reason with me now, I must die.

Since I have done
‘Eureka’ I can achieve nothing more.”

(Edgar Allan Poe)

All there was
to do in the psyche ward was smoke cigarettes, and because I didn’t
have to pay for food or accommodation, I was the cigarette man. I
had two kinds of rollies, packs of tailors, and small and large
cigars to choose from. I would sit in the courtyard and think,
“what do I feel like smoking next?”

The highlights
of my day each day were meal times, there was nothing else to do in
there, so I would stuff myself silly at meal times. I’d start the
day with two helpings of the hot breakfast, followed by four bowls
of cereal. At lunch and dinner times I would eat two servings of
the hot meals again, and about four sandwiches. I put on quite a
bit of weight in the hospital, but there was just nothing else that
brought any pleasure to me in there, apart from smoking of course,
and having ridiculously long showers several times a day knowing
that the hot water wouldn’t run out. The highlight of my week each
week were the music videos on the weekend mornings. Britney Spears
was in the charts for ‘My Prerogative’ at the time, and every week
when that video came on the TV my heart would flutter and I’d dream
of the time when I would be with her.

At my first
magistrate hearing, the doctor was telling the magistrate reasons
why he should keep me in there. I was laughing and saying “go
ahead, keep me as long as you want! I’ve got free food, free
accommodation, I don’t give a shit!” That feeling didn’t last.

They had me on
my old drug, Seroquel. Before being in the hospital I used to take
300mg at night, but between the time that I took it and the time
that I got to sleep I would get really paranoid and depressed. The
paranoia and depression could be pretty intense at times, but it
didn’t last because that stuff would knock me right out. Apparently
that drug is often used as a date rape drug, it’s pretty sedating
stuff, so I would tolerate it knowing that soon I would be
asleep.

In the
hospital they started me on a low dosage, but they just kept
increasing it every day. By the end they had me on the maximum
dosage, 1000mg at night and 500mg in the morning. It was horrible,
it was psychological torture. Not only was the dosage huge at
night, but in the morning, after I’d just woken up and can’t get
straight back to sleep, they were giving me 500mg of the shit and
forcing me to stay awake through the intense paranoia and
depression. Every day when I went to get my medication I would beg
them to stop it, I would plead with them about how it makes me
feel, but they completely ignored my pleas. They treat you like an
infant, like you don’t know anything. I’ve got a friend whose
brother died from being overmedicated in a psyche ward, he tried to
tell them too, but they didn’t listen to him either. These are the
standard abuses of human rights and human dignity that occur every
day in the hospital. I’ve always told myself that if I can ever
afford it I’m launching a class action against the government for
false imprisonment and psychological torture. Probably not really,
I don’t believe in litigation, but were they ever to take me to
court for something, I’d start the biggest fucking class action
against human rights abuses the government has ever seen. They
treat you as subhuman, and the psyche wards aren’t for getting you
well, they’re for sweeping you under the carpet so that you don’t
mix with the rest of society.

I remembered
what my old friend told me the first time I was in the hospital,
about knowing when to hold them and when to fold them, and I kept
quiet about The Stage, and I kept quiet about the no knowledge of
good & evil thing. I did tell them about my mother, at the time
I thought that5 this was a perfectly rational thought. There was a
whiteboard in the TV room, and I used to write about all the things
my mum did, about all the evidence pointing to her being a
murderer. When that didn’t work, I started writing about my
theories, I wrote all about time and gravity and the infinite
Universe. Each day I would write more and more stuff on that
whiteboard, and each day they would rub it off. This continued for
about a week or so, until one day they took away the markers.

One of the
hardest things about being back on drugs was that The Stage was
disappearing from my perception. When I arrived I could see the
world through the eyes of God, it was hilarious, everything was a
big joke, but soon my perception of The Stage began to fade. I
struggled to keep seeing The Stage. I still knew about The Stage, I
still knew it was there, but I was no longer feeling it
, I couldn't actually see it
anymore.
That was when things got tougher and I got
depressed, because life wasn’t such a joke anymore. I was beginning
to take life too seriously, like the rest of the human race, and I
wasn’t happy with my situation.

They kept me
in the hospital over Christmas that year, everyone else got to
leave except for me, and maybe one or two of the real freaks. I
hated them for that. Then when I saw the Boxing Day Tsunamis on TV,
I couldn’t believe it. I remembered a passage from the Bible “Just
as in the days of Noah… the people knew nothing until the floods
came and swept them all away, so it will be at the coming of the
son of man.” “This is it,” I thought, “Judgement Day!”

I was working
on bringing on Judgement Day, but the Boxing Day Tsunamis told me
that I had been thinking too small. I’d been talking about freak
accidents and a meteor shower and stuff, when really this isn’t
about a few accidents, this is about worldwide devastation. So I
lifted my game a little, and I started planning bigger disasters
for Judgement Day, as far as I was concerned Judgement Day had just
started. That’s what I thought the Boxing Day Tsunamis were, the
beginning of Judgement Day. Of course I was wrong.
I spent years afterwards working on
different Judgement Day Scripts, in the end I settled on a three
day event, Freak Accident Friday, Supernova Saturday and Floody
Sunday. The idea was that the world would surrender before the
final day, when an asteroid would smash into the ocean, and because
the world surrendered the asteroid would never come. Just as the
Boxing Day Tsunamis happened on the day after Christmas, and in
2011 the Japanese Tsunami happened on the day after my birthday, I
believed that both of these were precursors to my Judgement Day
Tsunami. My Judgement Day never eventuated, it was like I said, you
can't sit around waiting for a miracle to save you. I should have
taken my own advice, and as the years have passed by, I've learned
to let go.

Anyway, o
ne day this new girl came
into the psyche ward, her name was Kristy, and she was straight
onto me. It was great having the attention of a woman, even though
she was crazy. Kristy was only in the hospital for a week, maybe
two. Kristy knew when to hold them and when to fold them. I soon
found out she was crazier than me, but she never said a word to the
hospital staff.

My sister
Katie came over from
America while I was in the hospital to get married to this guy,
Tim. They had a ceremony in both countries, I couldn’t go because
of my mum of course. I would have made such a scene.

I had other
relatives visit me in the hospital. I had relatives come over from
Perth and visit me, I don’t know why they had to come and see me in
a place like that, but worse was that I had distant relatives come
all the way from England and visit me in the hospital. For fuck’s
sake, I’ve seen them twice in my life and once was in a psyche
ward, do you know what I mean?

At my last
magistrates hearing, I had been in the hospital for about two
months now, the magistrate told the psychiatrist that unless he
could think of a good reason why I needed to stay in the hospital
any longer he would extend my stay for two more weeks and that’s
it. Finally, I was getting out!

Kristy said I
could move in with her, although we’d had fights a few times
because she would go nuts over nothing and she would change her
mind, but at the time of me leaving the hospital, I was moving in
with her.

When I first
moved in with Kristy I didn’t understand her. One moment she would
be really nice and fun, and the next she would turn. Because I
didn’t understand her personality I thought she must be a spy,
working for some government that wants to keep an eye on me. I saw
her putting plastic screws into the walls, I thought they were
little spy cameras, when she wasn’t around I would look closely at
them trying to see the cameras.

Soon I began
to understand though, if I had no knowledge of good & evil,
Kristy was my opposite. Kristy was the most insanely jealous woman
you’ve ever met. I couldn’t talk to or even look in the direction
of another woman without Kristy calling her a prostitute and
getting angry with me. I would walk around town with my eyes
focused on the ground, bumping into things, trying desperately not
to look at anyone female.

In the
hospital, you are beaten into submission. We call it “the psyche
ward” because they try to psyche you out and make you think you’re
crazy. When I got there my spirits were high, nothing could bring
me down, but it didn’t last. They beat me down, they took away my
spirit. You do what you’re told to do in the psyche ward, and you
keep your mouth shut. If you open your mouth, or if you try to defy
them in any way, they give you more drugs, until you learn how to
keep your mouth shut and your eyes downcast. So when I left the
hospital and moved in with Kristy, I had already been beaten into
submission, Kristy just kept me in this state.

Our
relationship, it was horrible, I was completely submissive to her,
and every two weeks I would get kicked out after we ran out of
money and she got the shits. Except this wouldn’t even be her
excuse, she would accuse me of “spiritually cheating,” or
“spiritually having an affair with the neighbour.” I still don’t
even know what this means, except maybe that I was fantasising
about someone else, I didn’t even know who the neighbour was, I’d
never even seen this neighbour that I was supposed to be
“spiritually cheating” with. I always went to sleep after her, if I
went to sleep before her I would get a slap in the face, and her
telling me I was spiritually cheating.