*
I calmed down when I turned onto the next street in my car; at least the cameras couldn’t follow me. Out here, I was safe from watching eyes. Then, in my rearview mirror, I saw the white surveillance van which had sat outside my house for the last eight days. The police were still watching me. Then I realized I didn’t even know for sure it was the police. It could be anyone. It could be GP&A. Maybe they had grown suspicious of my behavior for some reason and had placed a mobile unit outside my house so I truly couldn’t get away from their eyes.
Surely I knew the area better than they did, though; I had lived there for years. My lack of pants made my legs lighter and more responsive to my commands; I was ready. A familiar alley came up the street between houses, and I slowed down as I approached it. I turned in, and the white van followed closely behind me. I accelerated up the alley and the van accelerated to match. I slammed my foot fully down on the gas and turned the wheel at the same time. My car jumped into action, swerving to the left and crashing through a wooden fence onto someone’s lawn, knocking aside a child’s swing set behind it. The driver of the van didn’t have time to react to my unexpected turn and drove past the car-sized hole I had made in the fence. A woman stood inside the house, looking out the French doors at my car speeding past through her back yard as she drank her morning coffee.
I drove through the grass and out the other end of the fence, onto the next alley and now heading in the opposite direction. I made several more turns onto different alleys and side streets to be sure I had lost them, and when I looked in the rearview again the road behind me was clear.
I had lied to the camera when I said I was going for breakfast, but the chase had given me a large appetite, so I decided to stop to eat. I parked my car behind the dumpster at a restaurant. Inside, I sat at a booth by myself and ordered bacon, eggs, and toast. A man at a nearby table stared at my bare legs as he ate a sausage. I met his gaze and slowly pulled one of the legs of my boxers higher up, revealing the smooth, milky skin of my thigh, and raised my eyebrows at him. He moved to a different table and faced away from me, so I was able to eat my breakfast in peace and think about my situation.
I hadn’t been back out of the hospital for very long and I really knew very few people who I could trust. I can’t go to Winslow, I thought, if he finds out I didn’t take my medication he’ll probably call up the police right away. And I can’t bother my parents with this. There was Dr. Boggs, though, I knew he would help. I wouldn’t have to tell him that I hadn’t taken my Psylocybin, but I could ask him about Penelope, see if he had found anything out from the police.
The woman at the counter spent a long time looking me over when I asked if I could use their phone, but at last she said yes, probably only to get me behind the counter where my lack of pants wouldn’t bother the other customers. She went back to cooking, but kept an eye on me, ready to throw a pan full of hot grease onto me if I started any trouble. I would have to get some pants and shave my beard as soon as I could; it wouldn’t do to be under the threat of hot grease everywhere I went.
“Dr. Boggs, it’s about Penelope——” I started, when he answered the phone.
“Yes, it’s a terrible thing, what happened to her,” he said. “Would you like to talk about it?”
“It’s just that the police think I’m responsible. They’re not even looking for whoever actually took her. I was hoping you might know something about it.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help, Oscar. I spoke to her at work the day after we talked last, and she admitted to not using her medication properly. We were getting her started on a program to get her back onto it. That was the last time I saw her.”
“The day after…”
He couldn’t have seen her the day after. I had been in her house and seen the drinks we’d been having together had been spilled in the struggle. She must have been kidnapped that same night, after I spoke with Dr. Boggs over the phone. After I told him I suspected she wasn’t using her Psylocybin, and that she was home alone.
Right then, I wanted nothing more than to not be talking to him anymore.
“Anyway, Oscar, why don’t you come in and we can talk about it?” he was saying.
“I think I will, Doctor,” I said. “That sounds like a good idea.”
I placed the phone back on its cradle and leaned against the wall, my face pressing against an OSHA workplace hazards bulletin. I knew now that there was no help to be gotten from Dr. Boggs. He must have been the one behind her kidnapping. Really, I was the one behind it, though; what an idiot I had been.
Now who could I turn to? It had to be someone who understood me, someone who understood the mental condition me and Penelope shared. The only people I could think of were all either patients in Maple Ridge or staff there. I couldn’t get to any of the patients, and if I did it wouldn’t matter since they were nearly all genuinely crazy anyway. I couldn’t trust Dr. Boggs which meant I likely couldn’t trust any of the other staff. Penelope was gone. My normal friends on the outside would be no help, because they didn’t understand the situation and wouldn’t take me seriously. I could no longer stay in my own home because of the cameras there.
Then I thought of Jim the hedgehog guy, who would have been released from the hospital by that time, and I remembered that he had given me his address. I tried to recall it, but I couldn’t. I had written it down, but where had I put the paper? Then I remembered; I had put it in a kitchen drawer at home. My home which was being watched from the inside by the three cameras I had allowed to be installed. Now that I wasn’t putting Psylocybin into my body and the Psylocybin from the weeks before gradually worked its way out of my brain, I realized more and more what a terrible trap I had gotten myself into. Everything I could use to help myself was at home. Any kind of tools, electronics, or notes was there. Even my pants were there. If I went in then I’d have to willingly let myself be watched by the cameras, which I had done many times over the past weeks but now seemed like an unbearable torture, now that I knew who was watching and why they were watching.
A sudden sizzling reminded me that I wasn’t alone, and I looked over to see that the cook was watching me as she flipped sausage patties on a grill. Why was she watching me? I had to get home, I had to get there fast, and then I had to get to Jim even faster. My appearance in public with no pants and a week of beard, my leaving the house suddenly, my driving through someone’s yard in my car, all of those things were pieces of a puzzle, and if Dr. Boggs and whoever else put those pieces together they would have a very clear picture to show them that I was not taking my Psylocybin in the prescribed manner, and they would come after me just like they had with Penelope. They would do to me what they had done to her, but I could not bear to contemplate exactly what that might have been, both because I didn’t want to think of it being done to her and also because it didn’t seem like something I’d want done to me either.
I looked back through a window when I was out of the restaurant, and saw that the cook was on the phone now, still flipping sausage patties and rearranging bacon on the grill with her other hand. I went back to my car behind the dumpster, but as I put my hand on the door handle, I realized I couldn’t take the car. Whoever the cook had reported me to would be looking out for the car, and so would the police surveillance team, and probably any other police patrol cars which were in the area. Plus, there were the traffic surveillance cameras, which only a few days before I felt protected by, but now caused me the same fear as the cameras in my house. I would have to go on foot. At least I had remembered my shoes, even if I was pantsless.
A month of Psylocybin had left an effect on my mind and I could more easily sense the paranoid feelings coming over me, and in a feeble way I was able to separate them from reality. I found out I still couldn’t resist them though, as I scrambled into a metal trash can beside the road, hiding from an approaching ice cream van even while thinking how unlikely it was that an ice cream salesman would want to hurt me. Paranoia aside, I h
ad no reason to trust anyone at this point, even if they were selling delicious frozen treats and bringing happiness to all, so I stayed hidden while the van went past.
Being inside a trash can could be much safer than outside. There was an old rubber duck in the trash can with me. Briefly, I considered the possibility of making a new life for myself in the can. The duck could be my friend, and perhaps – in time – something more. The tubular metal shell around me would protect me from the elements and from hostile forces. People would deposit their trash and I would feast on it grandly, king of that cylindrical metal universe. It sounded like a glamorous, easy life, and its call tempted me, but only for a moment. I had to save Penelope, and I couldn’t do it sat on old newspapers cuddling a bath toy. Technically, I could do it sat on old newspapers cuddling a bath toy, but at the very least I would have to leave the trash can.
I extended my legs a bit and raised my eyes above the rim of the trash can, with the lid balanced on my head. I scanned the area. The ice cream van was out of sight on another street now, and the sound of The Entertainer playing over its loudspeaker had faded into the distance. I stepped out of the can, and after sharing one last meaningful look with the duck, I lowered the lid on my old life.
Providence had littered the way back home with bushes, trees, and large pieces of litter that I could hide behind. I leapt from one tree to the next, rolled around a bush, and then popped up behind a fence. I kept a constant watch around me as I slinked and snuck and skulked through all the streetside flora, but there were no threats apparent. I sidled along the side of a house at the end of my street and then peeked around the corner of it. The surveillance van was not there. The whole street was quiet. I might have said that it was almost too quiet, had anyone been there with me to hear my movie reference, but in fact it was not too quiet. It was very quiet, which is just the way I wanted it to be. Any suspicious noise would have made my leg muscles unwilling to carry me to my house, so the quieter the better.
I ran across the street and burst in through my unlocked door, shutting it behind me but still ready to burst back out if I met with resistance. I met the single eye of the camera in the living room as it stared directly at me. They could see me, but they couldn’t hurt me, so I strode confidently forward.
On the first stride, I heard the door saying “THUNK!” behind me, and I spun around with nervous speed to see a tiny metal dart had embedded itself in the wood. I looked back at the camera and saw that a small hole had opened up in the base of it. As I looked, the pointed tip of another dart emerged through the hole. I ducked and dived behind a chair as that next dart also went into the door instead of into me. I heard the small sound of a tiny hole being punched through fabric and particle board, and the tip of a third dart protruded from the back of the chair in front of my face.
Sitting with my back to the chair, I saw that the bathroom door was open, and several Psylocybin pills could plainly be seen lying on the floor. There was no way that the cameras could have missed them, which explained their sudden hostility. Whoever controlled the cameras now knew for sure that I was no longer under the influence of their drug, and they wanted me taken care of.
I had to get out of the living room and into the kitchen, but the gap from the armchair to the living room door was several feet long, certainly enough space for a dart to fit into and then into me as I tried to run past. The chair was the only cover I had access to. The chair had been in my family for years, and I remembered how when I was a small child my mother had tipped the chair forwards so I could sit under it like it was a fort with the sides closing me in and the top hanging over. Killer robotic cameras hadn’t been after me at the time, but I had probably pretended it anyway. I pulled the bottom of the chair towards me and pushed the top, sliding in under it as it tipped over. Then I walked, crouching, holding the chair on my back as a shield. It worked. Another dart shot into the chair as I crossed into the kitchen, but the darts weren’t strong enough to penetrate my protective seating.
I pulled the kitchen drawer open and an unruly pile of papers met me. Among other things, there were expired coupons, notes to myself that no longer made any sense and potato chip receipts in case I was unsatisfied with the product and wanted to return it. Organizing the drawer had been a top priority of mine since I had come back home from Maple Ridge, but I always got stuck on some important decision, like whether expired coupons should be filed under the ‘Financial’ or ‘Food’ category, and shut the drawer again. As I sorted through them then, I wished that I had just filed those things in the trash. As I pulled out the old and unnecessary bits of paper, I dropped them on the floor. I found Jim’s shoelaces which he had nearly killed himself with, and since I wasn’t wearing pants and couldn’t spare the time to go find some, I just put the shoelaces in my underwear. Jim would understand that it was an unusual situation I found myself in, and that was the best place for them. The cameras couldn’t get to me in the kitchen, so at least I had plenty of time for sorting through everything until I found his address.
Then I heard the sound of a machine drilling, and after a minute I heard the high-pitched ‘ting!’ of something small and metal hitting the top of the stove. Right after, there was the quieter sound of the same small and metal thing landing on the linoleum floor. I looked and saw that it was a small screw. I had no idea how it had got there, but I would deal with it later, after I had found Jim’s address. The same curious sounds repeated a few moments later; another screw rolled on the linoleum next to the first. I risked looking out from under my protective chair to see who was in my kitchen apparently disassembling machinery. The drilling sound started again, and came from high up on the wall. I was surprised to see that the teddy bear camera on the wall was waving two of its legs freely; it had detached them using a small tool and was now busy detaching one of its arms, the only thing still holding it to the wall. The bear stopped drilling for a moment, turned to look at me in as menacing a way as a tiny, expressionless machine inside a tiny, expressionless stuffed animal can, and fired a dart at me through its mouth just as I ducked back under my chair armor.
I had expected a lot of things. As a long-term paranoiac, I was skilled at expecting. I often expected the unexpected. One thing I had not expected, though, and therefore had not prepared myself against, was the cameras in my house being sentient killing machines and detaching themselves from the walls in order to pursue me to my death. I didn’t actually have any direct proof that they were killing machines, but I suspected the darts wouldn’t be healthy for me.
Even as the bear was busy freeing itself from the wall, a thumping sound came from the other side of my office door. Fortuitously, I always locked that door from the outside to protect the expensive equipment GP&A had given me. Still, the camera in there had been much larger than the ones from the kitchen and living room, and the door was shuddering dangerously with every impact against it.
Knowing now that I wasn’t free to investigate the drawer at my leisure while under the protection of the chair, I sorted even faster. Business cards went onto the floor. So did restaurant loyalty-punch cards. Catalog cutouts, onto the floor. Finally, nearly at the very back of the drawer, I found Jim’s address, scribbled on a tiny scrap of paper. I shoved it into my underpants along with the laces and hunkered down under the chair, waiting for my chance to escape.
The third screw tinged down to the stove. I launched my chair at the camera, and before that final screw had fallen to the kitchen floor the chair had smashed the camera against the wall. The teddy bear dropped to the stove among a shower of sparks, and feebly kicked its legs in the air while its broken arm flopped uselessly at the wrong angle. I didn’t have time to finish it off, because just then a loud chirping announced the camera from the living room as it skittered in, a metallic cross between a Chihuahua and a tarantula. I ran for the back door, punting the second camera as I went and enjoying the satisfying clang-crunch of metal against wood when it hit the wall.
I reached the ba
ck door and reached for my keys, but then remembered I usually kept them in my pants. It didn’t seem to matter, though, because the thumping at my office door had finally stopped. It seemed that the camera in there had broken itself. The teddy bear on the stove had stopped kicking its legs, and I had kicked the other camera into several pieces.
I only had a moment to relax, because then the high-pitched whine of a circular saw started, and a swiftly spinning blade sliced through my office door. I ran past it for the front of the house, and when I was past my office I heard resumed thumping, now accompanied by the sound of splintering wood as the door finally gave in.
Once I was out the front door, I turned around and saw the large office camera coming straight for me on a set of rubber wheels, led by the still-spinning saw blade. I shut the door before it could get out, but the blade instantly cut a slit through the door. I felt pretty sure that this one was definitely a killing machine.
I had nowhere left to go. I couldn’t outrun the camera in the streets, it moved with such incredible speed. I was trapped just outside my house, with freedom nearly in my hand, by a square surveillance machine that only reached to the height of my knees. I had to think fast, and my mind chanced upon one of the few advantages that humans still hold over machines. The camera smashed through the door and I immediately bashed it with a large rock, bending the saw blade into a useless piece of steel and knocking the camera onto its side. I realized then that I actually had many advantages over that particular machine, other than the ability to select unlikely weapons from ones immediate environment. One of those many advantages was that I didn’t need to be upright on my wheels to move. Also, nobody had bashed me with a rock. I could experience the wonderful emotion of love. The list was endless, and in a way, I pitied the machine.
The camera had landed with its lens pointed at me, and I smashed that out with the rock too. I was tired of being stared at. I brought the rock down hard onto the machine’s body several more times, just to be safe. I left the rock on top of the battered camera and walked away.