Bird Blood Snow, Page 7

  He is surprisingly articulate. (Of course, he could not have built such complex delusions were he not, so I don’t know why I say surprisingly.) He has acknowledged himself that his format has been to destroy any situation he begins to see the structure of. He accepts this is probably on account of being taken away at the wrong time from a place he felt connected to. He no doubt bundles this trauma with the loss of his father, (i.e. father figure, that vacuum replaced by his Arthur character.)

  We have talked about overcoming this fear of ‘place’. It causes some trouble with the other patients but he now has a favourite seat in the day room. This is a start. (He is actually claiming a ‘location’.) He has also taken to collecting cups, which he is very possessive of. (Again, this causes some trouble, but does indicate that he is beginning to develop a sense of the ownership of things, and therefore of permanence to an extent. There is also the more abstract relevance of the cups to consider: the receptacle, a thing expectant to be filled, a ‘female’ object; an incredibly personal device – some would say a surrogate breast – that can deliver nourishment, water – in that sense, a maternal replacement – etc, etc.)

  This improvement aside, I do not suggest we cease EST at this time. Intend to continue treatment as we have it.

  *

  ** My Note re. Peredur’s use of language / imagination etc. being repeatedly noted. It’s a shame I didn’t meet his mother. By all accounts a smart girl. Her father a teacher, but alcoholic. As rumour has it, Efrog also had the relative natural wit of a ‘good’ criminal. (It’s a mistake and arrogant to think these people are stupid.) Peredur had potential. He had the genes. Try to reflect this if writing in 1st person.

  The guy in the red pyjamas comes up to me. He has a sidling way to him. If nothing else, my instinct is intact, and I can tell when someone’s wheedling.

  ‘What do you want?’ I say.

  The conversation we have is interesting.

  Turns out one of the nurses will use her hand for twenty quid. ‘She’ll clean her hand with her mouth for another tenner,’ he says.

  One guy says for a hundred she did it with her mouth from the start then spat it back into one of those little paper pill cups. He’s kept it. There’s still a faint trace of her lipstick on it, mad fuck. His eyes are bright.

  He follows me through to the day room. We are to be ‘Sociable’ in here, it says. She’s in there, sitting with some of the placid ones.

  I have made myself dislikeable. The others visibly tense when I come amongst them now. I tell them to get away and sit down with the nurse when they leave. She asks me if there’s anything I want. She’s not stupid.

  The red pyjamas man is gleaming at me, shifting from one foot to the other like he needs to piss with the excitement.

  ‘Not me,’ I say. ‘Edlym.’

  He’s nearly as red as his pyjamas when she walks him off to his ward. Amazing what humiliations people will undergo for a little handout.

  He couldn’t do it for himself. He couldn’t quite have the faith in himself to get away with wearing those red pyjamas confidently. He needed me.

  I feel myself spinning. Thinking what she’s doing for him I start thinking about that harp music again, the acid mess drying on my skin. Feel the spin. Like a mivvering of the mind.

  You see, when I was a child I was hampered. I was taken away from things that I should have had the chance to work through. And thus, I guess, I built my own world of magic.

  I built my own world where I was king, where I ruled not only men and women and animals but clouds and stars and sky. I was invisible. I flew. I was a bird. No authority could keep me in or out. In my dream I built not only a world but remade myself as I would wish to be. I guess that’s all.

  Usually people make peace with the world and work out compromises so that the two will not hurt each other badly.

  Well, some few do not make peace. And some of these are locked away as hopelessly insane and full of fantasy.

  I know full well I choose now, one way or another, whether to climb aboard, let myself be spun up in my delusion; in the speed and whirl of it. Let the world off my merry-go-round turn into a blur. It’s all choice. That’s what the sane sometimes don’t recognise. Most people live in a half-dream all their lives and call it reality. Just take a step. It’s all just another tactic to get through. A tactic. A way of surviving. Kids know invisible friends aren’t there but they prefer them to be.

  The truth against the world? Huh! Get real.

  And I see, my spinning eyes, the vortex of my mind suck up everything around me into its centre; I see the vegetable idiots here crash against furniture as I hurl them in their chairs, bones break through flac­cid flesh as I break those down who are before me.

  I can look up gloriously at the sky spilling in through my world’s funnel, whatever light I want glimmering on the ripped bodies of the nurses here, their witches’ robes shred, their hair out in clumps. I see it all, the edge of my whirl, and Arthur watching. If I want to. But I know it isn’t real. Arthur. Arthur is a lucky coin in my pocket. A rabbit’s foot.

  That makes me insane. But change that name for God. For Jesus. They let people go to church here. They tell us faith will help us. But it’s just having some conviction*.

  [Note:] *Conviction, sometimes, an artificially emphasised belief in something that allows you to take part in it, e.g. the laws of football. [Explore idea of him using delusion like a faith.]

  I go through to the ward. It’s got late. I must have drifted off. I’ve been ESTd again. I can tell by the sticky that’s still on my head; a tightness on my skin, like that spunk drying. It steals time from you. I feel as dry as hay.

  It’s oppressively hot and standard fans line the aisle, plugged in by the beds. The beds line the ward, most with curtains drawn. Just that thin nylon of privacy. It’s the sounds that get you, though. The sounds are enough to drive you mad. It’s not what you see but what you hear.

  The plastic chairs have been arranged out in front of the ward television. A special treat. Like children, we are allowed up after a certain time, (they say it’s vital we have a Routine); but they’re letting us watch the concert tonight, in the ward. There was a vote. I’m sure there are those who don’t want to hear it, but the world doesn’t work that way. That’s the problem with sound, smell, smoke. It reaches other people.

  The large auburn-haired orderly is on the ward. Already the television is on and you can see the tents of the festival and the pavilions and marquees and the glorious stage in the centre of it. And the pavilions and food vans with their canopies and the tents seem somehow to continue out into the ward with all the curtained beds here, like I could keep walking all the way onto that stage. I scratch away some of the dried gel from my head and watch it fall, a tiny snow. Again, I sense a little vortex, a delicious little vertigo.

  I go to my bedside cabinet and collect my cups, my three precious cups – they help me feel Secure, Safe, I need them says the doctor, a reference point – and sit before the concert. It’s as if I could step in, out of these distant tents, into that place. I try to shut out the noises of the other ‘guests’.

  And then, there she is. The camera rushes to her as she appears – a steady beat begins – frames her face, like she looks out at me from a window. But she seems close enough to touch. Beat. Beat.

  Ah! That spin. Like a helicopter camera shot. And I let myself roll in. I have never seen a more beautiful maiden. Arthur sits there smiling. She is dressed in gold. And I gaze at her. And she starts to sing.

  I make my choice, choose to ignore the talking and muttering – why can’t people be quiet? – and until the interval stay here, in this world of my own.

  People are shifting about at the break in the concert. And some are staring at the half-time adverts and have finally shut up. I have a headache now, that post-shock headache.

  I ask the orderly for something. ‘Say,’ I say. ‘I’m feeling sort of edgy. Could you give me some
thing? I need a little something.’

  He’s standing there by the waist-high cabinet with the electric fan whirling on top and the face of it scanning left to right, humming and throwing about the air in that area of the room.

  He looks unconvinced. ‘Just a little something,’ I say, ‘a leveller.’

  I imagine being very small, riding into that windmill.

  ‘Nurse told me to ask,’ I say, and it’s all I can do not to say ‘the witch’.

  He looks me up and down and takes his keys and opens up the cabinet and fiddles through it. I see into the treasure chest, jewels of pink and blue and foil, white pearls of pills, tablets and capsules of untold wealth.

  He passes me two tiny pills and turns to get me water. I put them on my tongue.

  So much of life is timing.

  The nurse shouts and he hits me on the back, I cough the half-melted tablets out. He’s not amused.

  I watch the tablets slightly fizzing on the lino tiles, losing their shape at the edges, just a little like me.

  When I can drop into my special place, everything is fine. As I’ve said, the real things blur. Then the damages I want on them can happen in my mind.

  I think of the pills fizzing on the floor. My trouble comes with clarity. When I can’t apply the brakes and go rushing into the face of reality. I should have had those pills. I’m accelerating. Feels like I’m tapping my broken brakes but the pads are worn, my mind spinning, a hot wheel carrying me straight head on at the wall of the world. Not good. But it’s a choice as well. I’ve said that. Most of life is just steering into the skid. And they keep talking. They’re talking while she’s trying to sing.

  That’s what my mother did not understand: no matter how you build them, the world will come crashing against your fences.

  And that’s it.

  I dedicate this to her. They were talking through your music, maiden. And we cannot have that.

  The first thing to go is the cabinet beneath the tele­­­vision which I rip out and hurl at the row of seats. They scatter. The television hits the ground with a plastic crunch.

  I am instantly behind the cabinet, through the space it’s made in the air, driving my fist into a face, its structure breaking and folding under my repeated force. Everyone is screaming now.

  When he is so slick and bloody that my punches won’t land properly I put him down and go after another.

  It’s a beautiful chaos now. Men flee before me. The curtains tear and beds go over. They come down like collapsed pavilions, like a broken camp.

  I catch another by the foot and twist and twist until it hangs there like an apple in a bag. I don’t see who it is, just hear the scream.

  The ward throbs with the flashing orange light and is filled with the alarm, as if the room itself has reacted to the fear. I remember, years ago, the flock of geese passing over in their hundreds, hear the honk of the alarm.

  I tip things and I smash things. You should see how many wires and cords are broken and stands pulled over, and how many curtain poles lie fallen on the floor.

  I look up and Arthur is not smiling. ‘It’s a black day, a troubled day,’ he says. ‘It’s a day, simply a day,’ I say. ‘You have a black and troubled mind, my Lord.’

  I might have overdone it this time.

  *

  The Incident with the Cups ­­– from _______’s unfinished manu­script. [Some time after the incident above, after which medication and EST were stepped up. Perhaps the final ‘violent act’ before an even further increase in therapy, after which P. seems to have been fairly quiet for over a decade.]

  ‘Don’t touch my cups. Don’t touch my cups.’ But they are determined to upset him.

  They laugh manically, a high and insane un-right laugh, and the first parades with the yellow plastic cup, aping that he’s drinking from it.

  ‘My cup. My cup,’ shouts Peredur. [It is likely that our hero was heavily medicated at this time and physically slow with it, and we can imagine the other patients knew it.]

  ‘Fight me for it, fight me for it,’ mocks the black-haired man.

  Give the cup to me, the fair nurse says. And the black-haired man accedes. But then another. Mockery! This time with his china cup.

  ‘My cup,’ shouts Peredur. And again, this time, this other black-haired man hands the china to the nurse. And both times she lets Peredur have them, and he drank the blackcurrant squash, and passed his cup to a second nurse for safe keeping.

  And then the ginger-headed giant, the big curly-haired slob, appeared, and danced there before Peredur with his glass tumbler, its pretty lines clutched there in his filthy podgy hands.

  ‘My cups,’ said Peredur quietly.

  *

  From Coroner’s Report; Incident No. XXXXX

  From the reports of witnesses it is clear the patient waited until the morning following the incident. This suggests significant planning and forethought correlant to the scale and nature of the injuries. They are not indicative of a spontaneous and uncontrolled attack.

  First black-haired man: The neck is snapped. It is the clean break of a violent twist, rather than correlant with a fall or heavy blow. The fingers, numbering six, were probably broken after the act.

  Second black-haired man: We removed two shards of a china cup from the eye sockets. They would have instantly blinded the victim, but were not deep enough to hurt the brain. Again the fingers are broken with clear determination. We were not sure what killed the man until we found the rest of the cup fed to him. It was likely he was then punched, the internal shards of china thus puncturing his insides.

  Red-haired man: The hair is ripped out. Circular torsions on the face and skull correspond to the size of the base of a broken glass discovered near the scene. There are no fingers. It is likely he cut them off with the glass.

  *

  You see, there are lines. There are lines of humiliation you should not have to cross. I like my seat, and I like my cups. I told them not to touch my cups.

  – And that was fourteen years ago.

  The cups? Yes. That was fourteen years ago now.

  – But you feel the need to talk about it, these last few months.

  You asked.

  – But you have not said yes before. To anyone.

  *

  A note found left upon his bed. Handwritten.

  I dreamed last night. I walked along a mountain, and on the other side I could see this place, this ‘Fortress of Wonders’, ha! Nestled here beside the river as it is. The soft, slow river. How peaceful for us.

  And as I entered – the place, in the dream, was more of a hall inside – and the door opened, I saw the lame old guy who taught me to box. I saw Gwalchmai there beside him. Old friends. And I saw my little bike, all adorned. And Uncle patted that old bench and I saw the deer hunt embroidered, vivid there, not faded anymore, and I went to sit with them.

  I was extraordinary then. I could have been put to good.

  I used to be a rescuer of small things. My little goats.

  Beside the note were handfuls of pills. He had not taken his medication for weeks.

  And I saw then how it was. I will not be a deer in your wire. And I called for Arthur. And lo! He came.

  He had signed the note Ape Frog.

  *

  From The Celtic Echo

  Moment of Madness in Insane Asylum

  Long-term inmate Peredur Ap Efrog (34), son of the infamous Carl Efrog, known as ‘The Earl’ in criminal circles, now deceased, was found guilty yesterday of what police have called ‘a one man riot’.

  ‘The unit is a secure unit for criminal patients with psychiatric problems,’ said a spokesman, ‘and they are set up to deal with dangerous behaviour, but this was extreme and pre-motivated. It took them by surprise.’

  Ap Efrog had been an inmate of the facility for fourteen years and was undergoing therapy. ‘He was also on medication, but seemingly somehow he managed to fool the staff, and he was not taking his t
ablets,’ he said.

  In an horrific attack, Ap Efrog killed several nurses. Staff from the facility have been asked not to talk to us, but we do know he believed them to be witches at the time. Final details of the casualties have not yet been released.

  We can now reveal Ap Efrog to be the ‘Child Terror’ reported on many years ago by this very newspaper. Questions have to be asked why a child that dangerous – who terrorised local children for years – was allowed to grow up into such a dangerous adult.

  A psychiatric expert, contacted by the Echo, said: ‘He was not sane,’ refusing to comment any further.

  *

  She’s bleeding out now. They’re coming for me. She’s number three, but Arthur will go after the others.

  Strange to watch them, through that unbreakable glass, trying to get to me. To hear the dull thump of them charging the door.

  That filing cabinet won’t move. I imagine all our little minds in it, scribbled down to little notes. All encased and kept in there.

  She gurgles now. And as she does, her blood bubbles through the new mouth in her throat.

  You failed witch. They cannot have me now.

  They are trying now with chairs; it’s funny, the strange vibrating noise of them bouncing off. The blue lights and the noise

  Peredur