Sweet Tooth: Lord of the Pies
By R. M. Huffman
Copyright 2013 R. M. Huffman
LORD OF THE PIES
It’s Thanksgiving night at the asylum where I work. Yes, it’s Thanksgiving night everywhere - at least in the United States - but I’m at the asylum, and you know that’s what I meant. We staff who work the dark hours have a traditional dinner to mirror the one served during the day shift. I’m a huge American history buff, and this holiday is one of my favorites. If I’m not obliged to be with a patient, I’m where the people are, and they’re usually where the food is.
“Did you know,” I tell a nurse carrying a good-sized casserole dish covered in foil, “that George Washington declared the first Thanksgiving celebration in 1789, only two years after the Constitution was ratified?”
“No, Dr. Pierce,” she says, putting her dish down beside a dozen others on the kitchen’s dark granite countertop. Yes, the asylum has a kitchen, and it’s rather ostentatious, since this place was once a mansion.
“I thought the Constitution was written in 1776,” says a musclebound orderly behind me. He’s laden with a pan in which sits an enormous browned turkey, wallowing in gravy and with stuffing falling out of its various orifices. He places it in the center of the antique table. This is Jorge Paniagua, a man who has worked for me for a decade at least - long enough that I’m beginning to worry about him noticing that I don’t show any signs of aging. Ah, well. When the time comes, I’ll find him a job that pays him twice as much, even if I have to supplement from my own deep pockets. I’ve considered enthralling him or turning him, but he has a wife, children, and a close extended family, and he doesn’t need the drama.
“That’s because you’re ignorant of this country’s history, not to mention probably here illegally.” The Paniaguas have actually been here for five generations. I tease Jorge about his occasional lapse in historical knowledge, and he makes fun of my skinny arms. “Really, that’s a common misconception. We declared our independence in 1776, but the United States as we know it didn’t come about until eleven years later.”
Jorge nods. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Very interesting, Dr. Pierce. You know, if you exercised your body half as much as you do your brain, your arms might not look like two toothpicks attached to a slightly bigger toothpick.”
I take a bite of pumpkin pie. “I’ll work on bulking up tonight, believe me.” Jorge grins and goes off to his duties.
“Wait a second, pal,” you’re saying. “If I remember right, you’re not the type to eat normal food. The type you are is, shall we say, ‘undead creature of the night,’ and you require human blood for sustenance.”
First: I didn’t spend four years in medical school and another four in residency to be called “pal.” It’s “Doctor Pierce,” until I’m obliged to restaff this place and come up with another assumed name. Second: while it’s true that normal human food won’t sustain me, I can still enjoy its consumption. Do you chew gum? Smoke a pipe? Drink diet soda? None of those contribute a single substantial thing to your body’s function, yet entire industries are built around them. I eat the rest of the pie.
I make my rounds quickly. The census is small, and the patients seem calm. Naturally, I head back to the kitchen. It’s empty - everyone is hurrying to finish their work behind me - but I await the flow of people and conversations at the table, in the same chair at which I used to sit as a boy. I survey tonight’s spread, inspecting the egregiously-large turkey last of all. I furrow my brow. How dare somebody...oh. Bollocks, and possibly merde as well.
Jorge comes in behind me and catches me staring.
“Nice, doc, but it’s not Halloween.” He sees what I see: what looks like two puncture marks in the turkey, near the right wing, with cranberry sauce dripping down and doing a fair impression of human blood. None of the other employees of the asylum know what I am; at least, I didn’t think so. Right now, I tell Jorge the truth.
“I didn’t do that.”
“No. I did, Dr. Franklin.” A long-haired man in inmate’s garb is sitting in the breakfast nook, and I wonder that I didn’t notice him, my senses being sharpened as they are. He clutches a two-tined fork in his hand. He licks the cranberry sauce off it, and his tongue is longer than it ought to be.
Jorge starts toward him. “His name is Dr. Pierce, friend. It’s time to get back to your room, ‘kay?” Jorge has a silver tongue and iron limbs, making him as perfect for his job as one can be.
“Pierce, hmm? Oh, is that his name? You’re sure?”
“He’s insane,” I tell Jorge, but I’m not at all convinced that’s the case.
“Get back in your room,” says Jorge, reaching a hand out. Like a striking cobra, the man grabs his arm and, still seated, tosses him like he weighs nothing. He hits his head hard on the corner of the counter.
“Jorge!” I check his pulse at his neck, then wrist. They’re both strong, but he’s unconscious.
Definitely merde.
“What do you want?” I hiss.
He smiles. “Best me in a feat of strength and I’ll tell you.” He props his elbow up on the nook’s small table and nods to the seat opposite. He isn’t kidding. Really?
I sigh.
I do have skinny arms, but I possess the physical strength of a dozen or so humans regardless. I have weaknesses enough to make up for my various enhancements, but they can be exploited only if one knows what they are; none involve any aspect of “arm-wrestling.”
I sit across from him, clasp his hand, and tighten my grip.
“On three.” He licks his lower lip and, disgustingly yet impressively, his chin. “One...”
He bears down on “two,” to no avail. I budge a fraction of a centimeter, then force his hand to the table, gently, so as not to damage the finish.
This man was admitted as an inpatient earlier today. He came with no identification, although he called himself “Beelzebub,” which was attributed to psychosis by my colleague. He chuckles. “As strong as advertised,” he says. “Next time I’ll bring a few of my friends along.”
“What,” I say, “do you want?”
He leans back, tilting the chair, with his hands behind his head. “Oh, just to chat with you, really. You’re not...how to say it?...playing very hard for our team, you know?”
“I’m certainly happy to ‘chat’ with you, but let’s do it in your quarters, shall we?” Nurses and attendants will arrive any second now, and I want this maniac isolated. I also need to be free to tend to Jorge. “If you’ll give me just two minutes, I’ll meet you there alone.”
He leans forward. “Do you swear?”
I nod in what I hope is trustworthy fashion. “Yes, I swear.”
“Excellent!” He pushes himself up from the table. “But if you break your oath, I’m going to start killing people. Ta!”
As soon as he’s gone, I run to the kitchen entrance. I meet a nurse, first to festivities, and bring her to Jorge. He’s awake, groaning.
“Call an ambulance,” I tell the nurse. “I think he’s only concussed, but I’m not going to be surprised by some intracerebral hemorrhage.” The nurse makes the call, and I’m where I promised to be with half-a-minute to spare.
Have I seen demon possession before? Maybe. Mental disease isn’t a quantifiable entity like a broken bone or hypertension. Possession has certainly never been in my differential diagnosis. With today’s modern antipsychotic medication, though, I suppose it’s like emptying the gas tank of your psychic automobile: whether someone stole it outright, or you just forgot how to drive, that mind-car isn’t going anywhere in a hurry.
This is different - malignant, maleficent. I hate to admit to myself that I
don’t have the tools to handle this, but I’m leaning that way. I need a back-up.
The man shuts the door behind me and locks it. “Here are the rules, Franklin.” He knows my real name. “No phones, no yelling for help.”
“Telephones aren’t allowed in rooms, and the walls are soundproofed,” I tell him, trying not to explicitly agree to his conditions, but I can tell he sees this.
“Swear to abide.”
“Fine, fine, I swear.”
There’s no escaping it: I need an exorcism. I’ve never seen one, certainly never done one, and have absolutely no idea how one might go about acquiring the means and personnel to perform one, so I start mentally organizing the little I know on the subject.
I can’t use Catholic priests. They’ll bring a dozen different crucifixes, and they always make everything so complicated, too. For the life (un-life, rather) of me, I never understood why Dracula - by far the most well-documented and notable member of my kind - wanted