Stephen King - End of Watch

‘One more step, Mr Hartsfield,’ Haber would exhort, and when he managed one more step the bitch would ask for one more and one more after that. When Brady was finally allowed to collapse into his wheelchair, trembling and soaked with sweat, he liked to imagine stuffing oil-soaked rags up Haber’s snatch and setting them on fire.

‘Good job!’ she’d cry. ‘ Good job, Mr Hartsfield!’

And if he managed to gargle something that bore a passing resemblance to thank you , she would look around at whoever happened to be near, smiling proudly. Look! My pet monkey can talk!

He could talk (more and better than they knew), and he could shamble ten yards up the Torture Highway. On his best days he could eat custard without spilling too much down his front. But he couldn’t dress himself, couldn’t tie his shoes, couldn’t wipe himself after taking a shit, couldn’t even use the remote control (so reminiscent of Thing One and Thing Two back in the good old days) to watch television. He could grasp it, but his motor control wasn’t even close to good enough for him to manipulate the small buttons. If he did manage to hit the power button, he usually ended up staring at nothing but a blank screen and the SEARCHING FOR SIGNAL message. This infuriated him – in the early days of 2012, everything infuriated him – but he was careful not to show it. Angry people were angry for a reason, and gorks weren’t supposed to have reasons for anything.

Sometimes lawyers from the District Attorney’s office dropped by. Babineau protested these visits, telling the lawyers they were setting him back and therefore working against their own long-term interests, but it did no good.

Sometimes cops came with the lawyers from the DA’s office, and once a cop came on his own. He was a fat cocksucker with a crewcut and a cheerful demeanor. Brady was in his chair, so the fat cocksucker sat on Brady’s bed. The fat cocksucker told Brady that his niece had been at the ’Round Here concert. ‘Just thirteen years old and crazy about that band,’ he said, chuckling. Still chuckling, he leaned forward over his big stomach and punched Brady in the balls.

‘A little something from my niece,’ the fat cocksucker said. ‘Did you feel it? Man, I hope so.’

Brady did feel it, but not as much as the fat cocksucker probably hoped, because everything had gone kind of vague between his waist and knees. Some circuit in his brain that was supposed to be controlling that area had burned out, he supposed. That would ordinarily be bad news, but it was good news when you had to cope with a right hook to the family jewels. He sat there, his face blank. A little drool on his chin. But he filed away the fat cocksucker’s name. Moretti. It went on his list.

Brady had a long list.

He retained a thin hold over Sadie MacDonald by virtue of that first, wholly accidental safari into her brain. (He retained an even greater hold over the idiot orderly’s brain, but visiting there was like taking a vacation in Lowtown.) On several occasions Brady was able to nudge her toward the window, the site of her first seizure. Usually she only glanced out and then went about her work, which was frustrating, but one day in June of 2012, she had another of those mini-seizures. Brady found himself looking out through her eyes once more, but this time he was not content to stay on the passenger side, just watching the scenery. This time he wanted to drive.

Sadie reached up and caressed her breasts. Squeezed them. Brady felt a low tingle begin between Sadie’s legs. He was getting her a little hot. Interesting, but hardly useful.

He thought of turning her around and walking her out of the room. Going down the corridor. Getting a drink of water from the fountain. His very own organic wheelchair. Only what if someone talked to him? What would he say? Or what if Sadie took over again once she was away from the sunflashes, and started screaming that Hartsfield was inside of her? They’d think she was crazy. They might put her on leave. If they did that, Brady would lose his access to her.

He burrowed deeper into her mind instead, watching the thoughtfish go flashing back and forth. They were clearer now, but mostly uninteresting.

One, though… the red one…

It came into view as soon as he thought about it, because he was making her think of it.

Big red fish.

A fatherfish.

Brady snatched at it and caught it. It was easy. His body was next to useless, but inside Sadie’s mind he was as agile as a ballet dancer. The fatherfish had molested her regularly between the ages of six and eleven. Finally he had gone all the way and fucked her. Sadie told a teacher at school, and her father was arrested. He had killed himself while out on bail.

Mostly to amuse himself, Brady began to release his own fish into the aquarium of Sadie MacDonald’s mind: tiny poisonous blowfish that were little more than exaggerations of thoughts she herself harbored in the twilight area that exists between the conscious mind and the subconscious.

That she had led him on.

That she had actually enjoyed his attentions.

That she was responsible for his death.

That when you looked at it that way, it hadn’t been suicide at all. When you looked at it that way, she had murdered him.

Sadie jerked violently, hands flying up to the sides of her head, and turned away from the window. Brady felt that moment of nauseating, tumbling vertigo as he was ejected from her mind. She looked at him, her face pale and dismayed.

‘I think I passed out for a second or two,’ she said, then laughed shakily. ‘But you won’t tell, will you, Brady?’

Of course not, and after that he found it easier and easier to get into her head. She no longer had to look at the sunlight on the windshields across the way; all she had to do was come into the room. She was losing weight. Her vague prettiness was disappearing. Sometimes her uniform was dirty and sometimes her stockings were torn. Brady continued to plant his depth charges: you led him on, you enjoyed it, you were responsible, you don’t deserve to live.

Hell, it was something to do.

Sometimes the hospital got freebies, and in September of 2012 it received a dozen Zappit game consoles, either from the company that made them or from some charity organization. Admin shipped them to the tiny library next to the hospital’s nondenominational chapel. There an orderly unpacked them, looked them over, decided they were stupid and outdated, and stuck them on a back shelf. It was there that Library Al Brooks found them in November, and took one for himself.

Al enjoyed a few of the games, like the one where you had to get Pitfall Harry safely past the crevasses and poisonous snakes, but what he enjoyed most was Fishin’ Hole. Not the game itself, which was stupid, but the demo screen. He supposed people would laugh, but it was no joke to Al. When he was upset about something (his brother yelling at him about not putting out the garbage for Thursday morning pickup, or a crabby call from his daughter in Oklahoma City), those slowly gliding fish and the little tune always mellowed him out. Sometimes he lost all track of time. It was amazing.

On an evening not long before 2012 became 2013, Al had an inspiration. Hartsfield in 217 was incapable of reading, and had shown no interest in books or music on CD. If someone put earphones on his head, he clawed at them until he got them off, as if he found them confining. He would also be incapable of manipulating the small buttons below the Zappit’s screen, but he could look at the Fishin’ Hole demo. Maybe he’d like it, or some of the other demo screens. If he did, maybe some of the other patients (to his credit, Al never thought of them as gorks) would, too, and that would be a good thing, because a few of the brain-damaged patients in the Bucket were occasionally violent. If the demo screens calmed them down, the docs, nurses, and orderlies – even the janitors – would have an easier time.