* * *
Imran heard them through the door. The low, silky voice was the mother’s—her esses took on the sibilant quality of a snake’s hiss when heard through two inches of oak, rendering her speech indecipherable. But the boy—his whiny tenor pierced through air, wood, and tympanic membrane, straight through to cerebellum and soul. He had such a country accent—a hick accent—that, while the doctor heard too clearly the boy’s words, he had no clue what he was saying.
Dr. Imran knocked, but didn’t know why. He never knocked. It was his clinic.
"Come in," the woman said, and the Good Doctor did.
Hector was shirtless, which Imran took as a good omen. Maybe he won’t cause a fuss after all, he thought. Maybe he finally realizes that the sooner he gets his shots, the sooner he’ll get to go home. Imran had had enough of the kid’s shit the first time around and didn’t want a repeat the second. He briefly considered going back to the lab and grabbing a vial of Thorazine—just in case the kid decided to throw a fit. But seeing him now, with his shirt already off and a little less fire in his eyes, he didn’t think it would be necessary. But still he prayed. Please don’t let him be a screamer. Please, Allah, please. He looks calm now, but he hasn’t seen the needle yet. People like him, they always lose it when they see the needle. Don’t let him scream, and don’t let him fight me. He’s way too big for me to handle on my own.
"Okay, Hector. This is going to be easy. If you’ll just keep still and allow me to do my job, I promise I’ll get you out of here as quickly as I can. Are you willing to do that for me?"
"Yeah," Hector said quietly, staring at the eye poster on the wall.
"He’ll be fine, Ms. Graham," Imran reassured. He shot her a warm smile through his wiry beard. Debbie, standing by the window with her hands clasped, a pained look on her face, nodded meekly.
Imran opened the medicine cabinet drawers and removed three disposable syringes, a brown bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and four cotton balls. He placed the items, along with the serum vials, in a contoured tan tray, which he balanced in the crook of his arm. Still smiling his let’s-all-get-along smile, he turned to Hector.
Hector looked up at the doctor, his murky brown eyes momentarily locking with Imran’s deep coffee-colored ones before darting away to the glossy eye poster on the opposite wall. His bottom lip quivered sinuously, like a fat, dying nightcrawler. His thick nostrils flared as a horse’s would if frightened (or infuriated) as he unsuccessfully attempted a furtive glance at the tan tray and its contents.
Hector didn’t want to be there. He wanted to go home. And he wanted water. And the voice that just had to be his but wasn’t began to crescendo from out of nowhere.
[CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES…]
Hector shut his eyes but still he heard. He heard Imran’s buttery voice say something placatory from a million (no, a billion) miles away, but the phrase was lost in a sea of murmurs and fricatives. The Good Doctor spoke from the vacuum of space, yet somehow the soft puffs of air from his bearded maw defied the laws of thermodynamics and lighted upon Hector’s peach-fuzzed cheeks. The screaming voice, however, wasn’t so docile. In fact, it was relentless. Is that really my voice?
[CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES…]
It taunted, it prodded, and it probed like the legs of a roach scurrying deep inside his ear canal in search of a warm, moist place to lay its eggs and die. It cleaved, it bored, it pierced (and dare he think it: Did it also feel good? Like the relief of having an itch scratched that he hadn’t been aware of having until now?) He wanted to scream out, "Help me, goddamnit!! There’s something in my ears!!!" But there wasn’t anything in his ears and he knew it. There was, however, something in his body that made him think there were things (voices) in his ears.
[RABIES]
[RABIES]
[RABIES]
But not only that. A kind of craziness existed inside him now, an inner knowing that things were spiraling way out of control, and that he couldn’t stop it, or right it, or even deny it. He felt it deep within the solar plexus—a place he believed to be a wellspring and a plumb line for decisions on how to act, think, and feel. The gnawing currently tearing up his insides—a weird resonant discord in his soul (if I even have one, ha!)—had really begun the second he punched Pete two days ago.
Why did I do it? I’m sorry, Pete. Really, I am.
And the feeling had stuck there like peanut butter on the roof of a dog’s mouth. Even while shitfaced and passed out in his Jeep, that weird, oh-so-weird emotion had rumbled through his guts, twisting his innards into one ever-growing bowline knot. (That’s why I threw up so much. And it was yellow, my puke was yellow—I remember that.) He knew he hadn’t shaken it off when he awoke in that overgrown, fallow field, because it was with him now. Only now, instead of residing in his intestines and stomach, the feeling (craziness? Am I really crazy?) had worked its way up to his brain, where it pounded like alternating kettle drum notes.
[CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES…]
Over and over again. Countless repetitions of the same two words. Screaming, pulsating, bleating.
Discord.
Discord, ad infinitum.
The sound reminded him of a trick he used to do with his mom’s piano (pie-ann-uh). After growing bored with practicing, he would depress the sustain pedal with his foot and crash his beefy forearm across two octaves’ worth of keys. Sharps, flats, and naturals would ring out in a clash of pure, grating noise. And how it would ring, too! The floor would vibrate and the picture frames buzz against the walls. It irked Debbie so much when he did that, that she’d come running into the room and point at the sheet music and tell him to play what was written on the page. He had been younger then, and those were also the days when he’d made half an effort at playing that noise box Debbie and Russell thought was so special.
It was that kind of discord that rang in his ears now. A million voices that sounded like his own but of slightly different pitches.
[CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES…]
[That’s your voice, bonehead.]
Pete, is that you? I’m so sorry I hit you.
[Shove your sorries up your ass, you lazy bastard. Yeah, you punched me. So what? You want to know the truth? I’m glad you hit me, because now I’ll never tutor you again. I bet you can’t guess what will happen to you academically without my help. I can. You’re going to flunk out of school and work at Dairy Queen for the rest of your sorry life—no, scratch that. You’re going to wind up in jail. Or dead. Yeah, I can see you dying a stupid, drunken death. Maybe you’ll pass out and choke on your vomit, or get shot over some disease-ridden whore after coming up short with the money. Believe me, Hec, your death will be ignoble and forgotten—just like your life. You serve no purpose; your existence betters society in no way. Your ex-girlfriend thinks you’re a psycho and a stalker, and your friends think you’re a bully and an asshole. Yeah, I’ll admit it, we had some good times together. You can barbeque like no one else, and you beat the hell out of Jamie Kirk that one time, saving me from a whole load of hassle. And I thank you for that. I sincerely do. But you know what? All of those things came with a price. Bareback Friday? What was that about? I’ll tell you: it was just another Hector Graham concoction aimed solely at embarrassing me. You beat the shit out of my first bully just so you could move in and take over his duties. You’re fucked, Hector. You’re reaping what you’ve sown. You have rabies and you’re going to die.]
As Hector listened to Pete rant in his left ear, the dissonant chorus continued unabated in his right. A trickle of sweat ran down his upper lip and into his mouth, kicking his salivary glands into overdrive.
Somewhere in the macrocosm beyond his closed eyelids, the doctor’s and his mother’s voices warbled and purred, mixing together to form bursts of lucid sound that he tried to hold on to but couldn’t. The Crazy Rabies guys ultimately drowned everything out. All except Pete’s voice. That he had heard word for w
ord.
Something prodded his back—a finger perhaps—then a deep pierce. For a brief moment, the voices stopped, and all he heard was the soft rustle of cotton against cotton—the doctor’s lab coat, he surmised—and the whirring of the AC fan overhead. Where the stars were. Where they moved for me.
Then, louder than ever:
[CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES…]
Please, God. Not again. Stop it. Kill me or stop it. I don’t care which. Just make it go away.
A familiar, self-assured voice began speaking in his right ear, while the crazy chorus transitioned smoothly to his left. The voice crackled and hissed, fading in like an old fashioned radio tuning in to a station. The voice was Russell’s.
[…it matters immensely. It never changes, only our perception of it does. Oh—hey, Hector. How’s it hangin’? This isn’t really Rusty. Or is it? You’re going to have to listen to your soul on that one. Do you even have a soul? Ha! I bet you’ve found out already, so I’m probably wasting my time telling you this. I’ll give it to you straight, though; I owe you that much. Pete hates you. He tolerated your bullshit before punching him, but now he genuinely hates you. I pretty much feel the same. I mean, how the hell do you punch Pete? What’s your fuckin’ deal, man? I know he tries to piss you off—hell, sometimes even I feel like giving him a quick one-two to the gut—but you’ve got to learn to walk away. You’ve got to learn how to pick your battles more wisely. And I’m not trying to pick on you. I give you more credit than Pete does. I think you do have a soul, but you just don’t know how to use it. You see, every nice thing you do has a string attached, and that’s just fucked up. Have you ever tried doing something nice just for the sake of doing something nice and nothing more? And I don’t want to hear any excuses about being poor, fatherless, and dumb, because I won’t listen to them. Your mom has been through way worse shit than you and she still knows beauty. She appreciates the subtle nuances in music and art. She has a soul. I think you do too, Hector. At least I hope you do. Because if you don’t, then you really are fucked. Not that you’re not fucked now. Because you are. You’ve got the rabies. It’s terminal, buddy. You got the disease from an animal, and you’re going to die like one. You’ll be so thirsty when it happens, you’ll cry out for water but no one will hear you, because by then you will have lost the ability to speak along with the ability to swallow. It’s really going to suck. A big bummer for you. You’re probably thirsty now, aren’t you? See? It’s happening already.]
Hector squirmed, and somewhere far away paper crinkled.
He tried to scream but couldn’t. He was a statue, as hard and resolute as marble, like a Greek bust, forever condemned to blindness by the hands of a Master who had chosen—as a means of punishment, for sure—to sculpt blank, unseeing orbs instead of concentric circles of iris and pupil. But Hector wasn’t blind out of spite. The Artist who had carved him as a creature of agony only did so because he had been inspired to carve him that way. Rarely will an Artist take into account his creation’s feelings. Unfortunately for Hector, he would never get to tell his Creator of all the misery he had endured, because the one immutable law of the universe is that the Creation never gets to see or speak to the Creator. To be mute, frozen in time—lost somewhere in time—and unable make sense of it all is the Creator’s gift to Creation: the gift of existence.
So all Hector could do was scream inwardly at a voice that sounded like Russell’s but wasn’t.
Fuck you, Rusty!
To which Russell replied:
[I knew you’d get that in. You’re so predictable and sad, Hector Graham. You always have to end up on top, don’t you? You’re so goddamn obsessed with your dick size and appearances and end results. All that matters to you is where you stand right now in relation to others. And if you can’t dominate through subjugation, or if someone stands up for himself, you immediately become scared and lash out, like you did with Pete. You smite; you will bite (although I haven’t seen you do that yet, I know you will). You’re the prototypical asshole. And you don’t realize that it all leads to nothing. All of your crass illusions of social order and hierarchy, of who is on top (you) and who is on bottom (everyone else), count for nil at the end of the day when you’re lying in bed all alone and real thoughts start lumbering through your restless mind. Thoughts like: Where is my mom tonight (on top)? And: Could she be with Sheriff Price (on bottom)? I used to feel sorry for you, but I don’t anymore. I think you’re scared of me. I see it in your eyes when you attempt to size me up, to see whether I’m a threat to your ego and position or if I’m just a lowly, faggy peon like you want me to be. I see how your brow furrows, and I look for that dent to appear between your eyes. Because it means something, that dent. My presence upsets you, but you don’t want to show it. You want to one-up me, but I don’t want to one-up you. You get so confused when I’m around. You’re like a dog and I’m the master and we’re playing fetch. Most of the time, I throw the ball and you chase it and bring it back. It’s fun for the both of us. Pleasant. You know where you stand when that exchange occurs. You always know when to run, where to run, what to find, what to put in your mouth, and who to bring it back to. Except every now and then, when the mood strikes, I only pretend to throw the ball. And when I do that—oh boy!—you should see the look on your face!! Your brow furrows and you get that dent right between your eyes… If there is a rank in our little quartet (and I don’t believe there is; not anymore), then I’m the one on top. I’m always the master, and you’re always the dog. I’m smarter and craftier than you’ll ever be. I win the game because I don’t play the game. You lose the game because the only one playing is you! And someone has to lose. Right? And you never catch on. You always fall for it when I mock-throw that tennis ball. I want to feel sorry for you, but I can’t. Not anymore.]
Hector bit down so hard he was afraid his teeth were going to crumble. Every muscle felt tensed, as if he were teetering toward a total body spasm. It could have been part of the paralytic freeze and not the anger he was directing toward Russell, but he wasn’t sure. And speaking of Russell: How dare he talk to me like that? After all I’ve done for that …hippy-wannabe.
Except, what had he ever done for Rusty? When it came down to the itty-bitty nitty-gritty, what had he, Hector Graham, ever done for Russell Whitford? There was the time…no…let’s see…I beat up…no, that was Pete. Hmmm, I know, I gave him food. Rusty, Pete, and O’Brien come over to the house once a week in the summer and we have a barbeque. Mom pays for it, but I cook it—well, the meat, anyway. That has to count for something. Rusty has to get some enjoyment out of it.
[CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES…]
Something flicked then, a toggle switch buried deep in a watery corner of Hector’s brain. Once on, it couldn’t be turned off. Once seen, it couldn’t be unseen. Such are the ways of revelation and discovery. So seldom had these switches been thrown in Hector’s head that he tied an exorbitant amount of importance to this one. As a result, the marble tunic he had acquired in his stupor began slowly eroding away. The dissonant choir of voices started to wane, too. By degrees, he grew cognizant of the other voices in the room—not Pete’s and Rusty’s, but the doctor’s and his mother’s.
"…wrong with him?"
"He’s nervous. It happens more often than you’d think. Believe it or not, I’ve seen bigger kids act more afraid around needles. In the medical community, we call those kids adults."
No laughter.
Hector unclenched his jaw, half-expecting to hear the hinge creak open like an old door. The muscles in his face relaxed, along with the other muscles in his body. Exhaling slowly, he slumped his large shoulders.
It was so silent in the room, Hector thought it was ringing.
But it wasn’t. Just the rustling of the doctor’s lab coat and the whirring of the air vent in the ceiling.
Can I open my eyes? Is it safe now?
No one answered, which was good, because he had asked the question
in his mind. Maybe all his marbles were in place. Maybe the fugue he had slipped into had been a one-time event brought on by stress. Maybe he wasn’t going crazy, as he had previously thought. The important thing was that he knew where he was, and the voices were gone. Everything else was insignificant.
I think I’ll have a little chat with Rusty when I get out of here—Pete, too. But first, I gotta open these peepers and see what’s what.
So he did.
Through the glare from the tinted window, he made out the anxious face of his mother. She stood in the middle of the room, her hands clasped neatly in front of her.
Debbie rushed to the table, where she grabbed her son’s sweaty head. Alternately kissing his crown and unknowingly mashing her bosom into his face, she whispered soothingly, "It’s okay, sweetie. It’s almost over now. Just a few more minutes and we can go home. We can pick up a pizza on the way if you want. How does that sound?"
Her wrists slid lovingly down his temples and around the edges of his jaw. She laced her fingers behind his neck and held his head firmly in place, watching him watching her watching him.
"Ma?" Hector croaked. "I figured it out."
"What’s that, dear?" Debbie beamed, leaning in close. "What did you figure out?"
Hector scooped both of her hands into one of his and tossed them away from his face. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to hurt her or break her spirits, but he did want her to listen. "They want our food, and that’s all they want."
"Honey, we’ve already been through this—"
"Rusty! Now he probably wants our pie-ann-uh and our food. He’s tricky. He only pretends to throw the ball. Don’tcha see? He doesn’t play fair. And you always said ‘play fair.’ I remember you saying that when I was little. ‘Play fair and follow the rules.’ Didn’t you used to say that?"
"Um…"
"Well, did you or didn’t you? Maybe you were too drunk to remember—it’s okay; I don’t care about that anymore." Hector made a sweeping gesture with his hand. Water under the bridge, it said. "But you did used to say that."
"Hector, stop shouting!"
"I’m not shouting!" Hector shouted. "I’m just trying to get you to admit what you said. Did you or didn’t you used to say ‘play fair’?"
When Debbie answered, her voice was close to inaudible, the tiny squeak of a mouse.
"Yes."
"See? It’s not my fault. It’s yours," Hector stated, triumphant.
"You need to calm down." She was able to transmit a smidgen of authority through her voice this time. Enough, she hoped, to convince the doctor she was still in control. “I know you’ve been through a lot these past couple of days, but you need to relax right now and let—"
"Relax," Hector countered. "Relax? I am relaxed! You wrecked my life, but hey, I’m relaxed…"
"Okay, try to calm down, honey." She looked over Hector’s shoulder to the doctor, but he offered her no solace, not even the courtesy of commiserative eye contact. He probably assumed this was normal behavior between redneck mothers and sons.
"Okay, I’m calmer now," Hector said, turning to face the window, where his mother had retreated. The butcher paper under him ripped. "See how calm I am? I just wanted to tell you that Rusty and Pete have been fucking us over, Ma. The only reason—"
Behind him, Dr. Imran stabbed the syringe into the flabby flesh above Hector’s waistline then depressed the plunger. It wasn’t by the books (he didn’t even sterilize the area), but it was close enough. It should have been a gluteal injection, but judging by the kid’s actions and physique, he appeared to be mostly ass anyway.
"You SON OF A BITCH!!" Hector shouted, swinging around. His face contorted into a feral mask of rage. "What the FUCK are you doing messing around with my butt?"
By the window, tunnel vision slowly squeezed out Debbie’s world. She staggered backwards and fell into the mini blinds.
Holding the syringe between his index and middle fingers, like a cigarette, Dr. Imran raised his hands in front of him, partly to defend himself from the monster, and partly because he didn’t know what else to do. He wished he had brought the tranqs.
"What are you, some sort of queer?" Hector asked, crawling across the table
"No—no, it’s not like that. I’m just giving you the shot." He tried to smile but couldn’t.
Hector stood on his knees, reared back, and let loose a swift haymaker. His fist struck Farouk Imran’s jaw with a hollow pop, sending the physician spinning on his shit-smeared Italian loafers. As the Good Doctor’s feet slipped out from under him, his back slammed against the door. He slid and landed on his butt a split second later. His last thoughts before darkness caressed him were of what an exciting day it had turned out to be. Not ordinary at all.
"Motherfucker!" Hector spat. "Teach you to touch my ass, you queer."
"Noooo…" came a mewling voice from across the room. "What did you do?" Debbie still leaned against the blinds, flattening them, throwing the room into shadow. Holding her arms to her belly, her face went ashen. She wanted to yell for help, but her vocal cords had seized, as did her body, in a paroxysm of fear.
He’s looking at me that way again. He’s going to charge. Move, you stupid bitch! Get out of here before he kills you.
As if hearing her thoughts, Hector lowered his head and fixed her in his gaze. He stepped down from the table. Changing from four legs to two, he began closing in on her, sniffing air as he went.
The tendons in Debbie’s neck quivered and flexed; the hollow of her throat sank in and then out. Like a plucked lyre string, her body trembled as her bowels loosened and warm, wet ooze filled her underwear. Seconds later the mess was dripping down her wobbling tan legs, collecting in the clefts between her ankles and tennis shoes, staining her white socks mottled brown.
Hector puckered his face and backed away from the stench. He tripped over Dr. Imran’s splayed legs but caught hold of the edge of the medicine cabinet before gravity could take him the rest of the way. He peered down at the doctor—past his closed, spectacled eyes, to the cherry-red trickle issuing from his mouth and down his wiry, gray beard.
"That’s what you get!" he yelled at the unconscious body.
Stepping over Imran’s slumped form, he threw open the medicine cabinet doors. They swung wide on their hinges, reached the end of their arcs, then rebounded back, slamming shut in Hector’s distorted face. He screamed so loudly it was primordial.
He reopened the doors, pulled out bottles of peroxide, alcohol, saline solution, and iodine, and hurled each one indiscriminately across the room. Since they were all made of plastic, they didn’t shatter. But they did bounce unpredictably off corners, medical equipment, chairs, and door handles. He removed the lid from a jar of cotton swabs and threw its contents at Debbie, who, seconds earlier, had collapsed in a puddle of her filth.
"Clean it up, BITCH!"
He kicked at the walls and pulled the paper off the exam table. He cranked the gear at the foot of the table, unrolling a long sheath of butcher paper, which he then gathered in his arms and tossed over the large lump on the floor that looked like his mother. He carried on in loud ululating shrieks as he ripped posters from the walls and attempted to tear magazines in half before giving up and throwing them against the window.
With his arms held wide, he ransacked the tiny room. Drool flowed freely from his gaping mouth, sliming his chest and dampening the front of his shorts.
"I’M THIRSTY!!"
Jumping over the paper-covered mass that had once been his mother, Hector skidded to the corner and twisted off the cap of a brown bottle. He leaned back and sucked at the liquid inside with loud, juicy, kissing sounds. No sooner was the fluid down than it was back up again in a jetting efflux of amber vomit.
"SHITFUCKDAMMIT!!!"
Hector staggered to the exam table and hopped up on it. So many smells permeated the room now, it was impossible to escape them. The mingling of all the awful aromas grew so overwhelming that he instantly became sc
ared and confused.
Where did everybody go?
"Ma? Where are you?"
He waited for a reply but it never came.
Then he noticed the one poster he hadn’t pulled from the wall. The eyes, diseased and faceless, stared back at him. He looked away.
"Ma? Where are you?"
Silence.
"I know you can hear me," Hector said to himself. "It’s all Pete and Rusty’s fault. They just want our food. Hey, why aren’t you talking back?"
Screaming and pounding on the other side of the door now: "Dr. Imran! Dr. Imran! What’s going on in there? Are you okay?"
The door opened and closed, an inch or two at a time. Imran’s torso jerked forward and backward with the movement, as if he were asleep on a rocking ship at sea instead of taking a penny tour of the great dark abyss that awaits us all.
Hector tuned out the people on the other side of the door and went back to the thought he had been trying to complete before they had so rudely interrupted him. Sitting cross-legged on the exam table with two fangs of drool streaming from the corners of his mouth, he spoke to the eye poster.
"What I was saying," he went on, "before I was interrupted, is that they’ve been using us. They never offer to pay for the food they eat. You’d think they’d at least chip in every once in a while? But noooo, they don’t even do that. They just come over, eat, then leave. And Pete’s the worst, Ma, ‘cause he takes leftovers. He takes more than his fair share. He doesn’t play by the rules—and neither does Rusty. Both a bunch of GODDAMN CHEATERS! I swear to God, I’m going to kill ‘em both. They deserve it after all I’ve done for them."
Hector’s head tilted forward, then he nodded, breaking the strands of drool. He slurped and wiped his chin
"You’re right. What about O’Brien?" Hector paused. "I say fuck him, too. Talk about worthless pieces of shit. I’d say he’s worse than Pete and Rusty, because he brings absolutely nothing to the table. At least Rusty plays guitar—whenever the son of a bitch remembers to bring it over—and piano. Pete helps—used to help, but he ain’t gonna anymore—me with my homework. But Mike? He’s useless. O’Brien’s a joke. I could swat him like a fly if I wanted to. He’s got no guts, and he really is a crazy motherfucker. Him and his goddamn dog. I tell ya, Ma, if you knew half the stuff that kid has pulled…"
The pounding on the door grew more fevered and desperate. At least a dozen people were knocking and screaming and pushing at that heavy slab now. Imran’s torso, at present, was undulating in a disturbing snake-like manner—like a psychotic butler bowing in exaggerated deference, or a sinner in rapturous convulsions upon finding JEEESUS under a canvas canopy.
The sick, cataract-ridden, rheumy eyes on the poster continued to stare at the sweaty fat boy sitting like a perfect gentleman on the padded table. Hector stared right back at them. Then, without warning or provocation, those eighty-five orbs slowly closed their blue membranous lids in a revolting, oatmealy squish.
Hector screamed.
He brought his knees up under him and backed away until the wall prevented any further retreat. Pointing at the smudged poster, he let out a garbled strain of gibberish. Slowly, the words gelled into coherence.
"Look at me when I’m talkin’ to you!"
The eyes remained closed. Defiant.
[You refuse to see.]
"No, not you. Shut up! DON’T TALK TO ME!!!!!!!!"
The discordant thunder rang out, and before he had time to wonder why nothing in the room buzzed or rattled, the chorus shouted:
[CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES, CRAZY RABIES…]
And Hector wanted to die. He wanted to find the bottle and drink its liquid again. This time he would fight to keep it down, to embrace its narcotic severance. He wanted to chase down the rabbit hole to the land of Morpheus (or Hades—he didn’t care which) and be free of the voices (so awful and grating) forever.
He swung his legs over the edge of the table and tried to stand. He collapsed instead. With an audible grunt, he landed face-first on the doctor’s knees, pinning them. The upper half of the doctor’s body carried on its sycophantic bowing.
Hector rolled over. When he saw the ceiling, he tried to scream but couldn’t.
But Hector saw. Oh, boy, did he ever see.
The dots on the acoustic tiles were swirling and eddying again, like grains of sand agitated by a wave or seeds tossed from a farmer’s hand. They swished to one side of the room, then to the other, as if the ceiling were a huge Etch-A-Sketch that somebody very, very big was shaking. Some of the black dots lit up before fading to black again. All danced and swarmed like gnats, each one knowing its place and never bumping into another. Beautifully, they curly-cued and zigzagged outward and inward. Influx and efflux. Some even fell from the ceiling, disintegrating like black snowflakes before touching the floor.
Hector turned away and cried. The voices scratched his ears; his stomach cramped. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He still lay on the doctor’s legs, near the foul-smelling shoes. There were just too many smells, too many acrid vapors boring holes into his brain.
"Dr. Imran! Dr. Imran!"
BAM! BAM! BAM!
"We called the police. Whoever’s in there better open up! Dr. Imran? Dr. Imran!"
Hector managed to climb to his feet, but as soon as he got there, the floor began to wobble. He tried shuffling over to the window, but getting there was like walking on a spinning merry-go-round. After a few steps, his knees buckled, and his hands shot out in a desperate bid to find something—anything—to grab hold of before his head cracked open on the tiles. Finding only air, Hector attempted to crouch, to lower his center of gravity, but in the execution of this movement, his foot slipped—thanks to the layer of butcher paper covering the floor—and he fell to his knees. The forward momentum carried him face-first to the tiles. Once there, he lay prone for several minutes, barely conscious, but still reeling from nausea and vertigo.
"Stop spinning!" he commanded the tiles, his words slurring, his bottom lip mashed against the floor.
Hector closed his eyes.
[TURN OVER!]
"I don’t wanna."
[TURN OVER!!!!]
"I said no. Leave me alone. Please."
[You still refuse to see…]
"I already saw."
Hector rolled to his side and retched. Nothing came up.
[Open your eyes.]
Hector opened them. The room was now cast in twilight—not quite night, but edging toward it. Outside, the sun still blazed, but inside, the ceiling had faded from cream to indigo. The dots on the acoustic tiles were not dots anymore; they were stars—summer stars, twinkling and flexing in their allocated homes in the heavens. Millions (no, billions) of them shone for Hector and Hector alone. And Hector looked, and Hector saw that it was good.
The voices had stopped, which was also good. The pounding and screaming continued from the hallway, though, but that was of no concern to him. He was here, and they were there. It was as simple as that. They couldn’t get to him. This was his, and he wasn’t about to share it with anybody else, let alone a bunch of screaming maniacs. He let their noise carry away on the wind, which was another thing he noticed. A light breeze lifted through the room, rustling the lump of crushed-up paper by the window, sounding like dead autumn leaves.
"That’s better," he sighed.
"Star light, star bright," Hector started, then stopped, feeling the precursor of a giggle climb his throat. "First star I see tonight—heh-heh."
"…I wish I may, I wish I might…have the wish—what the fuck?"
The stars were drifting to the center of the ceiling, gaining speed and momentum as they went. As they balled up and coalesced, they grew hotter and brighter. Twilight gave way to early morning, then to afternoon, then to supernova, fry-your-ass heat and brilliance.
Hector shut his eyes and tried to avoid looking at the red backdrop of capillaries while he shrieked and wailed. The Crazy Rabies
chorus sang out in unending mocking glory. And the heat—the searing heat was enough to char his soul.
Then the heat and the noise and the light were gone. Inexplicably swallowed up and shat out by something he didn’t want to begin to imagine.
When Hector opened his eyes, he was shaking uncontrollably. There were no burn marks on his body, and miraculously, his eardrums were still intact. Save the faint, faraway chirping of crickets, the room was silent. What he saw when he looked up now was a hurricane—a galaxy—whirling on the ceiling. In its core, a pollen-yellow globe pulsated with soft, iridescent light. The arms of the swollen storm rotated slowly, almost imperceptibly, with the pulsating fluidity of a jellyfish’s tentacles. For a moment, he expected the whole works to come crashing down on him and shatter into a trillion pieces. But the structure held, and once again he felt calm and well.
Then, realizing it was all too good to be true, the galaxy began to uncurl and fade. Hector cried out, "Come back!" but the galaxy either didn’t hear him or it refused to hear him, for it continued to lose its structure. The stars spread out, and the glowing orb waned and dimmed until it finally blinked out in a silent blip that Hector thought he heard but didn’t. He did hear something, though. Something beyond the scatter of stars made a sound. It came from above the ceiling, a metallic shudder (and was that a bark, too? The muted baritone yelp of a dog?).
Like dying fireflies, the stars fell from the ceiling. At first they sprinkled, then they poured over Hector’s sweat-slick face and body. The minuscule particles of light never quite touched him, though, and Hector wasn’t able to gather the strength needed to reach up and grab one before it faded away. So all he could do was watch in stunned awe as the universe erased itself above him.
Now all of the stars were gone save seventeen of the lucky few that had been too sticky—or too stubborn—to fall. As Hector stared, they grew brighter. His pupils contracted to take in the image. He knew that it was something he had to see, that somehow it was the most important thing he’d ever see in his life. But what was it? He might not have known its name, but he knew he had seen it somewhere before. (On TV, maybe?) He stared and pondered and squinted his eyes.
That metallic shudder again and a bark.
Yeah, that was definitely a bark.
Behind him, the pounding and screaming was now cacophonous. The door opened wider after each successive slam.
During the brief moments when the door was open and the light from the hall blighted out the picture on the ceiling, Hector would become anxious, like he was back at school and had only a few seconds to finish a test. He almost had the pattern pegged. What was it?
The next time the door opened, people poured into the room like ants.
"Oh my God!" a woman gasped, covering her mouth in unabashed revulsion.
"We need a medic. Quick!" said another.
Hector grew vaguely aware of two or three men yelling and grabbing him under the arms and propping him up. He never took his eyes away from the ceiling. Even when the men got in his face and screamed, he kept his eyes on the stars. When they blocked his view, he craned his neck around their shoulders. There was a lot of chaos and noise (not the crazy kind, thankfully) and a woman crying. Then someone was forcing his hands behind his back and clamping them there, while three other people dragged him toward the door. A brief commotion. Then an electrifying jolt coursed through his body, rendering him totally limp and leaving a coppery taste in his mouth.
As he was being hauled back-first through the doorway, Hector watched the air conditioning vent cover fall from the corner of the ceiling in the exam room. It bounced off the end table and chair, ringing like a muted cymbal, before hitting the floor and skidding to a stop next to the medicine cabinet.
From the vent, a mop of blond hair descended, followed by a face. Upside down, like a vampire, Mike O’Brien smiled at Hector—except, from Hector’s vantage point, the smile looked like a humongous disapproving frown.
Close your eyes, Hec, he’s not there.
"Hey Hector," O’Brien said, breaking into a chuckle. "Are you cooking again this week?"
Shit!! He’s up there! How can…Oh God no!! No! No! No! No! No! No!
Hector’s legs crossed the threshold. His considerable weight slowed his draggers enough to allow him to open his eyes and see O’Brien’s moronic, smiling face, now maroon from blood rushing to it. It wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t rabies. It wasn’t a dream. He was really up there. And no one sees him.
Except me.
The further Hector was pulled down the hall, the more his view of the room became occluded by the door jamb. Like a lunar eclipse, O’Brien’s head stayed eerily in view before disappearing in smooth, liquid phases
"What’dja wish for?" Mike asked, giggling, as unknown inches of plaster and wood cut off the last of his head.
Somewhere a dog barked and Hector screamed.
Part II
Bad Dog