THUGLIT Issue Two (5 page)

The senorita gazed up at him with wet eyes. Her body trembled and her skin turned pale gray. Yet even with her life fading away, she was beautiful. Just like Maria had been that night Roberto caught her with another man and shot her dead.

“Sí,” Roberto said. “You’re just like her.”

He raised the gun.

b
y Marc E. Fitch

A psychiatric ward is actually the sanest place on earth. It is the only place where a visible wall of glass separates the sane from the insane, the mentally competent from the mentally compromised. Here I am talking to a guy who is telling me in a slurred, rolling tongue that God talks to him in an audible voice and gives him visions of the future. In here, he’s insane.  On the outside, he could be president. Luckily, I work here, so I’m always on the sane side of the glass, regardless of what that may actually mean. I got the job because some sociopath pulled a nurse over the medication counter by her hair and pummeled her, and all that the other nurses could do was sit and watch until security came. That’s the problem with a profession like this dominated by women; when shit got real physical and real bad, they were left out in the cold, stark reality of a world that doesn’t give a shit about being politically correct.

This is also where I met Matthew—a fey, balding, quiet little man, chinless like a turtle and depressed because his best friend, some woman named Mindy, had died recently. It is also where I met his husband Gilbert. An elderly, disabled, tight-skinned pack of bones with a limp, sporting a gold-handled wood
cane and dressed in a buttoned-
up sport coat and jeans like he was ready for a day of yachting on the sound. He barked at me about his rights as a husband to know any and everything about Matthew that the doctor had written. I told him we couldn’t give him the file. He told me to go fuck myself and that he didn’t need to be lectured by a drop-out. He was a bully. He bullied Matthew and was trying to work it over on me as well. That pretty much sealed it for him. I hated bullies.

The husband had a young guy with him too. He looked like he had been landscaping all day and I could see the tan lines on his arms. He stood at Gilbert’s side and stared me down the whole time. Maybe he thought I would be scared of him, as if my job didn’t somehow entail being threatened almost every day.

I had talked my way into this job. I had no formal education in psychology other than listening to losers weep into the draught beers in a dark bar at two in the afternoon. No matter, they needed some excuse to get some balls on the floor. Truth is, it’s a great gig. It gives you access to all sorts of information—names, dates, birthdays, addresses, doctors names, prescription information—all of it at my fin
gertips. It was a beautiful set-
up. The patient would come in, crazy as fuck, get on a medication cocktail (which these day almost always included some kind of pain killer or Xanax) and he or she would be discharged with full prescription bottles. A couple days later, I visit their shitty little apartment or house, easily break in, snag the meds and sell them on the street for fifty bucks a tab. Maybe the patient realizes they’ve been robbed, or maybe they’re so far gone they don’t. Even if they call
the police, they get the brush-
off because the police know they’re unstable and they’re just sent right back to my hospital for more screening and more drugs. I wasn’t entirely heartless though; I wouldn’t hit the same people every time. There was no need to. There was plenty of crazy to go around and each med bottle was money in my pocket.

But what piqued my curiosity about Matthew—aside
from
his asshole husband—was that he was private pay. Private pay meant no Medicaid or Medicare or insurance. That meant money. Not like every other worthless schmuck who came through the hospital these days. This was the golden egg.

So, for once in my life, I took an interest in my patient. I talked to Matthew and pretended to be a caring and interested Psychiatric Technician. I actually kind of liked the guy. He’d been through a lot but didn’t have the strength or wherewithal to handle it. His dad molested him as a kid, so no wonder he was depressed. His friend Mindy had died—who was one of his sole refuges from Gilbert’s anger—and now he was left playing mother in this strange, piecemeal family. His husband played father and the young landscaper, Danny, played son. They all dallied and fucked about, but still tried to keep some semblance of family. Sad, but it happens everyday in all sorts of families. His husband was who I was after, or rather, whatever it was that he had in that house.

They actually lived in the far Northwestern part of the state, an area I had been to once and felt no desire to return to. It was nothing but dense forest and a long, long drive,but it might be worth it. According to Matthew, old Gilbert owned a substantial piece of land that was leased by both a water company and an electric company. There was a water tower on the property that supplied the local town with drinking water and they pretty much had the run of the local scene. A quick Google search told me that this was a small, rural town with only one State Trooper for law enforcement. Beautiful. The worst situation imaginable, the poor guy still has to wait on Troopers from other towns to show up. Might as well wait for the National Guard.

Anyway, I’m sure my studied counsel cured Matthew of his chronic depression, but just to make sure I doctored the notes on the guy to make it look like he was running smooth and perfectly sane and safe to be discharged. The doctor couldn't care less.

I shook Matthew’s hand and gave him the sincerest smile I cou
ld, lots of encouragement and “B
e sure to take your medication and pick up your other prescriptions as soon as you leave.”

“I will,” he said, almost giving me a loving look. “Danny said he would bring me straight to the pharmacy.”

“Good luck,” I told him. I meant it. I liked him. But it was Gilbert’s money and he was the one I was after, so I rationalized it in my head. I was like Robin Hood. Stealing painkillers from the rich to give to the poor…or anyone with fifty bucks cash.

It was an hour-and-a-
half drive out to this nowhere town at the edge of civilization—it had a main street with a church that loomed over the rest of the street, diner, feed store and small grocery mart attached to gas station that was obviously gouging prices. There was a single traffic light. I decided to stop in at the diner to get a drink and get a feel for the town. Small towns are a different challenge from big cities. People tend to care about their neighbors and notice when someone looks out of place or suspicious. It may be the middle of nowhere, but you have to be able to avoid the locals. In the city, no one cares or notices. It tends to be easier.

Just opening the door to the diner I could tell this wasn’t going to be Mayberry
,
where the locals all say ‘hello’ and smile. There were a couple men sitting on stools at the counter, sipping coffee and finishing up a lunch. Hard stares. Looked mean and big with that heavy, burly strength that comes from hard labor on farms and construction crews. That one look tells you that they don’t care about hair gel and going to the gym and literature—it was a look that ju
dged you wrong from the get-go.
I probably looked like some yuppie faggot to them. I had tried to dress to look as innocent and plain as possible, jeans and a button-down shirt with a light jacket. I worried I might have blown my cover already. But they took me in, sized me up, and then turned back to their coffee and lunch.

I ordered a coffee and looked at the menu for a minute before turning my attention to the local paper. Top half of the paper was nothing interesting, the usual zoning issues and town board meetings, but a small article at the bottom corner was about a sixteen-year-old runaway, with a picture of the boy—good looking
;
hair that covered his eyes
,
thin shoulders with lean gawky arms
—
so skinny he almost looked starving. It said that he had left a note saying that he was running away, that he had some connection that could get him into the city and he could start over where he would be “accepted.” Apparently the school bullies were just as bad today as they had been in the past. So the kid was gone, lost, forced out because he couldn’t hack it. Maybe that was what was boiling beneath the surface of this little town; someone was missing, one of their own, but it was still a dirty little secret that their own ugliness had caused it.  When shit like that happens, it’s usually just the tip of the iceberg, like a boil on the skin or a blemish that signals the whole body is diseased. It always shows in the kids. I know that from the hospital. You want to find out what is wrong with the kid, look at the family, look at the environment and then look at society. There’ll be ugly little cracks where evil sneaks through and corrupts the innocent.

I finished my coffee and left a small tip. I felt them watch me as I left. I heard a stool push bac
k from the counter and the boot-
heavy footsteps following me as I walked out into the bright day.

I drove through the town. It sat under high wooded hills like some little swath of humanity in the wilderness. But the place seemed dead. Maybe everyone was at work, maybe not. Maybe they were all just holed up in their homes waiting to fade away.  Either way, no population was good for me. GPS found the address. It was up in the hills overlooking the small town like some old haunted house. The road curved along the mountainside and I stopped my car at the driveway to give the place a look. It was up a steep driveway and had an entire wall of glass looking out over the town. There were no cars in the driveway but there was an extensive garage so it was very possible they were home. I drove on, circling around the mountain to the wooded backside. Far above me, rising over the trees was the water tower, painted white and gleaming in the sun, the source of Gilbert’s money.

I parked the car on the side of the road in a little dirt enclave, stepped out into the light and zipped up my jacket. My door slammed shut, and almost immediately after another door slammed shut. I turned and I saw one of the men from the diner, his truck parked across the street, staring me down. He was big and bearded, wearing overalls and a baseball cap. I tried to play it off like I wasn’t up to anything. I turned and began to walk into the woods.

“That there is private property,” I heard him call from across the street.

I stopped and turned back around. “You go up there, they’ll call the police on you.” He seemed angry.

“Just taking a walk,” I said. “I hear there are some hiking trails up here.”

“The only trails up there are for perverts sneaking into old Gilbert’s house to play with little boys,” he called back.

I turned to face him.

“That’s right,” he said. “I know what you are. You tell Gilbert we’ll be coming for him soon enough. We’ve had enough of his influence in this town. We’ve had enough of our young people disappearing up there. You tell him that, understand?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “But if you have some kind
of score to settle it sure as h
ell isn’t with me.”

“We’ll see,” he said. He opened the door to his truck, got in and revved the engine something fierce. He took off down the road, eyeing me the entire way.

I had once broken into a patient’s apartment as he began to light a bonfire in the middle of his living room. He was burning the place to the ground. This kind of had the same feel, but I was a moth to a flame. I didn’t get burned then, I wouldn’t get burned now. But now I had to know. It was risky and even more dangerous now, but now I had to know, I had to see into that house. I had to take something from Gilbert. I wanted to take a lot from him, now. I wanted to ratchet up the risk. I was spiraling toward something, maybe jail, maybe death, maybe something new; hurtling through space, you cannot stop, just wait for the inevitable.

I approached the house from the woods. It was a sprawling, gothic stone structure that seemed as old as the mountain itself. It screamed an “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter” feel.

I could smell smoke in the air. The leafless trees, the dull stone mansion, the smoky wet fall air made ever
y second feel like an eternity—
as if the whole world was captured in some autumnal slumber and I the sole watcher in the woods. I fooled myself. The quiet, the desolation of the scene made me feel invincible, made me feel like the invisible man who could walk into a house and never be seen, move throughout the rooms, halls and corridors never being noticed.

The back door was locked, but I elbowed a small pane of glass out from the door. The sound of breaking glass was lost in the air. Confidence is a killer and I was feeling way too good about this. The rush is a drug like any other drug, an addiction like any other addiction; you can’t bottle it, but the second you enter that house, apartment, room that isn’t your own, where you overstep that social boundary,
that
is when you feel it,
that
is when the drug hits and
that
is when the dull depression of life is lifted. They should teach this shit in psych wards everywhere.
             

I moved through the dark hallways, sensing that there were others in the house, hearing their echoes down the corridors, hearing Gilbert’s cane knock, knock, knock on the hardwood floors. Then it was quiet. I kept tight against the wall. The hallways were dark—perfect. The place was like a maze, so much bigger than any apartment or house that I had ever broke into before. The adrenaline was cranked up a thousand notches and behind it all a feeling of unease.