Preston Child - The Babylonian Mask

In no way did the place resemble a hospital, really. It looked more like a conglomerate of medical offices and practices in a large mall, but Sam had to admit that he found the lack of expected lunacy just a tad unsettling. Nowhere did he see people in white hospital gowns, or wheelchairs transporting the half-dead and dangerous. Even the medical staff, which he could only tell apart by the white coats, looked remarkably serene and casual.

They would nod and greet him cordially as he passed them, not making a single inquiry into the flowers he had in his hand. Such acceptance just took the fun out of Sam’s intended humor and he dumped the bouquet into a nearby trash bin just before he reached the allocated room. The door was closed, of course, being on the barred floor, yet Sam was dumbstruck when he found that it was unlocked. Even more astonishing was the interior of the room.

Apart from one well-draped window and two posh luxury seats, there was little else but a carpet. His dark eyes scrutinized the strange room. It was missing a bed and the privacy of an en suite bathroom. Staring out the window, Purdue sat with his back to Sam.

“So glad you came, old boy,” he said in the same cheerful, richer-than-God tone he usually used to address his guests at his mansion.

“Pleasure,” Sam replied, still trying to solve the conundrum of the furniture. Purdue turned to face him, looking healthy and relaxed.

“Sit down,” he invited the stumped journalist, who seemed to be investigating the room for bugs or hidden explosives, by the look on his face. Sam sat down. “So,” Purdue started, “where are my flowers?”

Sam gawked at Purdue. “I thought I was the one with the mind control thing?”

Purdue looked unperturbed by Sam’s declaration, something they both knew but neither supported. “No, I saw you saunter up the drive with it in your hand, no doubt bought just to embarrass me in some way or another.”

“God, you are getting to know me too well,” Sam sighed. “But how can you see anything past the maximum security bars here? I noticed that the inmates’ cells are left unlocked. What is the point of barring you in if they keep your doors open?”

Purdue, amused, smiled and shook his head. “Oh, it is not to keep us from escaping, Sam. It is to keep us from jumping.” It was the first time a bitter and snide tone had haunted Purdue’s voice. Sam picked up on his friend’s unease, coming to the fore in the ebb and flow of his self-control. It appeared that Purdue’s apparent tranquility was just a mask over this uncharacteristic discontent.

“Are you prone to such a thing?” asked Sam.

Purdue shrugged. “I don’t know, Master Cleave. One moment all is well and the next I am back in that bloody exaggerated fish tank, wishing I could drown faster than that ink fish swallowing my brain.”

At once Purdue’s expression had gone from a sunny silliness to an alarmingly pallid depression, brimming with guilt and worry. Sam dared to lay his hand on Purdue’s shoulder, having no idea how the billionaire was going to react. But Purdue did nothing as Sam’s hand comforted his turmoil.

“Is that what you are doing here? Trying to reverse the brainwashing that fuckwit Nazi subjected you to?” Sam asked him blatantly. “But that is good, Purdue. How are you progressing with the treatment? You seem your old self in most ways.”

“Do I?” Purdue sneered. “Sam, do you know what it is like to not know? It is worse than knowing, I can assure you. But I have found that knowing breeds a different demon than being oblivious to one’s actions.”

“How do you mean?” Sam frowned. “I take it some actual memories have returned; things you could not recall before?”

Purdue’s pale blue eyes stared through the clean lenses of his glasses, straight ahead into space as he considered Sam’s opinion before explaining. He looked almost maniacal in the darkening light of the cloudy weather that spilled through the window. His long, slender fingers fiddled with the carvings on the chair’s wooden armrest as he dazed away. Sam thought it well to change the subject for the moment.

“So what the hell is with there being no bed?” he exclaimed, looking back at the mostly empty room.

“I never sleep.”

That was all.

That was all Purdue had to say on the matter. His lack of elaboration unnerved Sam, because it was the antithesis of the man’s trademark behavior. Usually he would cast aside all propriety or inhibition and spew out a grand tale filled with what and why and who . Now he was content with just the fact, so Sam pried, not only to force Purdue to explain, but because he genuinely wanted to know. “You know that is biologically impossible, unless you want to die in a fit of psychosis.”

The look Purdue gave him made Sam’s skin crawl. It was halfway between insane and perfectly happy; the look on a feral animal being fed, if Sam had to guess. His gray-soiled blond hair was painfully neat as always, combed back in long strands away from his grey sideburns. Sam imagined Purdue with unkempt hair in the communal showers, those pale blues piercing the guards’ as they discovered him chewing at someone’s ear. What bothered him most was how unremarkable such a scenario suddenly seemed for the state his friend was in. Purdue’s words snapped Sam out of his hideous pondering.

“And what do you think is sitting right here in front of you, old cock?” Purdue sniggered, looking rather ashamed of his condition under the drooping grin he had tried to keep upbeat with. “This is what psychosis looks like, not that Hollywood overacting bollocks where people tear their hair out and write their names in shit on the walls. It is a silent thing, a silent creeping cancer that make you not care about the things you have to do to stay alive anymore. You are left alone with your thoughts and your deeds without a thought for eating…” He looked back at the bare patch of carpet where the bed was supposed to be, “…sleeping. At first my body caved under the robbery of rest. Sam, you should have seen me. Frantic and exhausted I would pass out on the floor.” He shifted closer to Sam. Alarmingly the journalist could smell medical spirits and old cigarettes on Purdue’s breath.

“Purdue…”

“No, no, you asked. Now you l-listen, al-alright?” Purdue insisted in a whisper. “I have not slept in over four days straight now and you know what? I feel great! I mean, look at me. Don’t I look the picture of health?”

“That is what concerns me, pal,” Sam winced, scratching his head. Purdue laughed. It was not a crazy cackle by any means, but a civilized, gentle chuckle. Purdue swallowed his amusement to whisper, “You know what I think?”

“That I’m not really here?” Sam guessed. “God knows this bland and boring place would make me question reality in a big way.”

“No. No. I think when I was brainwashed by the Black Sun they somehow removed my need for sleep. They must have reprogrammed my brain…un-unlocked…that primitive power they used on super soldiers back in World War II to make animals of men. They did not fall when shot, Sam. They kept walking, on and on and on…”

“Fuck this. I’m getting you out of here,” Sam decided.

“I have not reached my full term reversal, Sam. Let me stay and let them erase all the atrocious behaviorisms,” Purdue insisted, trying to sound reasonable and mentally sound, when all he wanted to do was to break out of the facility and run back to his home at Wrichtishousis.

“You say that,” Sam dismissed in a clever tone, “but you don’t mean it.”

He pulled Purdue out of his chair. The billionaire smiled at his rescuer, looking decidedly elated. “You definitely still have the mind control thing.”