PsyCop 5: Camp Hell (6 page)

How nice of him to give me no choice at all, and then act like it was all up to me. I wondered how many people in my life had done that over the years. And then I realized for all his reputation for being ruthless in getting what he wanted, Jacob never did that. “What do you mean by a trigger?”

“Camp Hell, obviously, since you’re repressing memories and self-medicating.”

I opened up the wet paper towel, sat back on the couch, pressed the back of my skull into the cushion, and draped the damp paper over my face. “I know you’re a professional and all, but I think there are some things that never go away.”

“You won’t know that until you try.”

“I hate trying.”

He laughed, a tiny sniff. He’s a tough audience. I remembered when I did really get him going, he’d do these big, deep belly laughs—contagious, to the point where it hurt, and we still couldn’t stop. It might have been the whipped cream propellant. But I like to think it was at least partially me.

“What?” he said.

“I remember…something. The whipped cream. When we huffed it.”

“We did that dozens of times. Until they made the kitchen off-limits to us, anyway.”

I searched for more detail, and then, miraculously, I remembered. “The time I was sucking the gas out, and you bent the nozzle and whipped cream came out my nose.”

That got a little chuckle out of him. “You tasted it for days.”

I breathed in the wood pulp smell of the paper towel. My heart rate slowed, until it almost felt normal.

-SIX-

“You are in a safe place. What happened in the past is only a memory now, and a memory can’t hurt you. You’re going to count back, from ten to one, and focus only on the sound of my voice….”

Stefan had a great voice for hypnosis. He should’ve been on those relaxation CDs they make. Seriously. He was that good. I missed him suddenly—which was lame, considering that we were in the same room together—but it sucked to think about all the years I’d lost where I could have known him again.

“Seven. Your eyelids are heavy. Your body is relaxed. Your arms are relaxed. Your legs are relaxed. Your fingers and toes are relaxed. Your tongue is relaxed….”

I’d left him. Funny, I’d never seen it that way. We’d go without seeing each other in Camp Hell for days on end sometimes, depending on who was in a focus group, or who was getting a…procedure.

“The past is only a memory. Memories have no power to hurt you. You are calm, and relaxed.” Stefan’s voice was louder, firmer, for a moment. I dropped my line of thinking and focused on him. “Four. Your arms feel very light, weightless. Your right arm is so light, so free, that it feels as if it could float right up out of your lap….”

They had set me up in the Police Academy right away, and no, I didn’t try to contact Stefan. I didn’t try to contact anybody. I was just barely treading water, and I was positive that one of the other cadets would figure out I liked dick, beat the crap out of me, and get me kicked off the force and back into the loving arms of Heliotrope Station.

“The past is only a memory. Memories have no power to hurt you.”

“What?”

I blinked. Stefan raised a black, pointed eyebrow and gave me his most lofty eyeliner-focused look.

Eyeliner?

We stood in a hallway that was painted two shades of blue, navy on the bottom and robin’s-egg blue on top. The horizontal line where the two paint colors met went all the way down the hall, which made it stretch and warp in forced perspective if I looked at it too hard.

“I think the hall’s breathing,” I said.

“What’d they give you?”

“I dunno.”

He looped his arm through mine and I flinched, because my arm was sprained. Wait a minute, no it wasn’t. Why did I think it was?

“Kitchen’s this way,” he said. “Don’t dawdle in the hall. After that ridiculous ‘no fraternization’ line they fed us yesterday, I’m paranoid about getting caught.”

We rounded a corner and collided with another resident—Movie Mike, Heliotrope Station’s token telekinetic. “Gimme a cigarette,” he told Stefan, “and I won’t tell anyone I saw you two homos getting it on.”

I might have been into other guys, but he was the one wearing a bright blue blazer with pushed up sleeves and a skinny tie with piano keys printed on it. Unfortunately, I was too high to argue about the various shades of meaning that could be attributed to the word
homo
. And I had no doubt that Stefan would be happy to wipe the floor with Movie Mike with no help at all from me.

Stefan countered with, “We’re doing nothing more risqué than walking down the hall.” So far, anyway. “You think anyone would even care?” Obviously, he was taunting Mike. And maybe tinkering around in his head, too—ferreting out his insecurity and self-doubt, and turning it a few notches higher. “Know what I found out after Show and Tell? I’m the best empath here. Level five. So what’re you going to do to get admin’s attention? Slide a penny across the table? I’m sure everyone will be so impressed.”

Mike’s cheeks colored. “No fraternization. They told me that when I went in for my talk.”

“No smoking, either.” Stefan gave him a glare that could wither a silk plant.

Movie Mike did his best to glare back. Stefan might wear more makeup than half the chicks in the program, but he was still the last guy anyone would want to hold a staring contest with. Mike caved first. He looked away, slouched beneath his shoulderpads and dodged around us. “Fucking fags.”

“Asswipe.” Stefan marched in the opposite direction, taking long steps now. I stumbled along beside him. “I wouldn’t have given him a cigarette even if I had any left.”

Probably not, but Mike’s threat to go tattle on us was nothing more than a bunch of hot air. Psychs were like nutjobs. They watched each others’ backs. Mike was just trying to rattle Stefan’s cage for form’s sake. I don’t know why he even bothered. Hopefully he wasn’t angling for a three-way or anything. I didn’t think so—Stefan probably would have called him on it if he had been, even subconsciously.

Stefan paused, and tugged my arm to stop me from meandering into the range of a rotating video camera. It swept the hall, red light blinking. When it focused on the courtyard door, he made for the kitchen, and towed me right along with him. He could move fast, for a big guy—especially when unlimited desserts and various institutional culinary propellants were there for the picking.

Stefan pulled a comb from his pocket, wedged the pointed end of the handle between the doors, gave it a twist, and clicked the door open. I slipped in, he followed, and he shut the door behind us. It was a crappy lock, obviously. It only locked from the outside. And you could pick it with a sharp comb if you knew where to press the bolt.

We snuck past a dozen tables with upside-down chairs on top. The industrial clock on the wall, lurking behind a steel cage as if one of us would go berserk and destroy it for no good reason, clunked as the second hand swept by the twelve. We had a good twenty minutes before the orderlies would herd us into the showers. Maybe more, but we always made it a point to be ten minutes early, at least. Especially now, with the creepy new orderlies on the payroll, I wasn’t going to take any chances.

“Oh my God,” Stefan cried from the kitchen. He sounded like he might be having an orgasm. “Brownies.”

I tore open a cabinet and looked for something to sniff. Aerosol cooking spray. Yes.

“Do you think they’ll notice if I eat one?” he asked.

“How likely is it you’ll stop at one?”

“Good point. I’ll need to be subtle. Help me.” The brownies were pre-cut, so he’d need to shave a sliver off each one so that no one noticed a portion was missing.

“Just cut the biggest ones in half.” I held the cooking spray upside down and sprayed until the oil cleared the tube, and I had access to the good stuff. I sprayed nitrous into a plastic food service glove and took a hit.

“So good.” Stefan’s voice was thick with chocolate. The walls inhaled.

I lowered the glove and the room dipped and swayed. “C’mon, do a whippit with me.”

He stuffed a handful of brownie slivers into his mouth, then came over and pressed me into the stainless steel sink. I filled the glove with nitrous and he huffed it. Then he rested his forehead against my shoulder while he enjoyed the spinning.

“They put a dead body in there,” I said.

Stefan tensed up, and spoke into my T-shirt. “What?”

“In the room with me.”

He groaned, and pushed back. I stared at him in the greenish glow of the kitchen’s after-hours lighting. He didn’t need to see my eyes to feel what I was feeling, but I think it helped. “People should think twice before donating their bodies to science. You’re strangely unperturbed. They must have given you some really tasty pills.”

“I couldn’t see the body itself…. The corpse. It was in a body bag.”

Stefan shuddered.

“They gave me these pills and just left me there. Me and the body bag. It stunk. But I didn’t notice right away. Once I did, the thought of how much of it I’d already inhaled made me sick.”

“Have another hit,” he said gently. “Want me to blow you while you’re high?”

I sucked in a lungful of nitrous straight from the can and shook my head. It didn’t feel safe; we were too exposed. I spoke as I let the nitrous out of my lungs. “Later on.”

“What were they trying to do?” he asked.

“All I can figure was they were waiting for me to get a read on him. When he showed up, I described him, and they took my vitals and parked me in my room. Where d’you suppose the spirit was hiding for all those hours?”

Stefan ran his fingers over the stubbly sides of my head, then tweaked my Mohawk up in the middle. “Maybe it wasn’t there. Maybe they gave you an enhancement, and then they got you to make a spirit show itself to you after it was already departed—call it back to the body or something.”

I shook my head and the walls rippled. “No. They only give me enhancements in the green room. The one with lead walls, or Kryptonite or…whatever.” I felt nauseated. I told myself it was a decent high. “I think it was something else. The opposite of an enhancement.”

“There is no such thing.” Stefan straightened my earrings. They were always getting tangled. I touched his black-dyed hair. It was crunchy with Aqua Net. He caught my hand, gave it a quick kiss, and then pulled away. If I wasn’t going to drop trou, then stolen dessert trumped me. “Well, at least they only kept you in there for a few hours. Could’ve been worse.”

I nodded, which was probably not the best idea, and then I upchucked into the sink. Nitrous must not mix well with whatever it was they’d had me swallow. Stefan tactfully ignored me and continued shaving pieces off the brownies.

I swished out my mouth and rinsed the puke down the drain. “I’ll come visit you tonight,” I said. I might not be fit for a blow job at that very moment, but at two a.m., when the overnight orderlies jockeyed for their lunch breaks? Oh, yeah.

“Be careful. I don’t like the looks of the new orderlies.”

“I’m always careful.”

Stefan glanced at the clock. “Come back now.”

“What?” Was someone looking for us already? We’d only been gone a few minutes. “Do you feel someone coming? We gotta hide—or they’ll catch us
fraternizing
.”

“Ten. You’re focusing on the sound of my voice.”

“Ten people? Fuck, they found out.” If I rolled myself up into a ball, I could fit under the sink. But Stefan? No chance.

“Nine. You’re breathing. You’re relaxed.”

I listened hard. I didn’t hear a group of people.

“Eight. And the present begins to filter in. Focus on your right hand. And remember where it is, on the arm of the couch.”

“I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Seven. I see you haven’t lost your edge, after all. You’re not in Camp Hell, Victor. You’re in my office. Sitting. On the couch.”

I was sitting? No I wasn’t. I glanced back at the sink, and a wave of disorientation hit me. I was sitting. At least, that’s what it felt like.

“…Three. Focus on the palm of your hand, make a fist, and open it again. That’s right. You’re very calm, and very relaxed.”

“Stefan?”

The room spun, and I realized the dimly-lit kitchen was actually a dimly-lit office—Stefan’s office. His face filled my field of vision, and my God, he was so old. I glanced down at my permanent press slacks, my standard-issue plainclothes dress shoes. So was I.

“…you awaken totally refreshed, and you remember everything you’ve seen.” He watched me. I blinked. Was I really there with him? I could have sworn we were in the kitchen. I could have sworn I was twenty-three. It all seemed so real.

“You feel calm,” he said, in his regular voice. Not his hypnosis voice.

“Yeah. I do.”

“You went deep, fast. I was worried you might not be a good candidate for hypnosis. Good thing I didn’t mention that and bias you against it. So—want to talk about it?”

His eyes were the same. Hazel. Shrewd. He’d stopped plucking his eyebrows and penciling them into sharp peaks, but they still looked groomed. My guess was that he still combed them into shape. His nose was… oh, there was a tiny dot, the size of a pore, where he’d used to have a silver nose ring. His mouth was the same.

I’d loved him so much.

“Or maybe you need to process it.”

I nodded. I’d never told him. Not once. And then I just left him in that fucking…place.

“What’s wrong?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t up for waterworks.

He watched me for a moment, and then stood up. “Sit for a few minutes. Or lie down if you want. It’s a decent couch. I’ve got to make some notes.”

There was a clock within view of the couch. It was almost five. He’d knocked out his last two appointments for me. I hoped they weren’t suicidal or anything. I tried to ground myself in the present. Beige wall. Berber carpets. Textured ceiling. I let my breath out slowly.

Stefan had to have heard it, but he continued to write without looking up. Just like he’d heard me ralph in the sink, but had kept right on pilfering brownie crumbs. “I remembered one of the times we raided the kitchen,” I said.

“Thought so. You wanted me to huff your glove.”