Brett McBean - Tales of Sin and Madness

“Might I remind you, Sir, that they are criminals.”

“Most of these patients are just crazy. Harmless, but crazy.” Stelig looked down at the stubby Doctor. “Might I remind you that this is the good ward, the quiet ward? The patients here haven’t displayed any signs of violent behavior since committing their crimes. Hell, they’re not the least bit violent. Not now.”

“How about Harris over there?” Adams pointed to the man sitting in the far corner of the room. “He butchered his entire family.”

Stelig huffed. “That was five years ago. He hasn’t displayed any signs of violent or aggressive behavior since. He went willingly with the cops, never even put up a fight. Hell, Harris is more harmless than anyone here. All he does is sit in that corner humming to himself.” Stelig stopped and looked over at Harris. Watched the man stare into space, grinning stupidly to himself. He listened to his humming.

“Christ, think I’d go crazy listening to that all day,” Adams said. “He sings the same three notes all day. Nothin’ else. Can you believe it?” Adams chuckled. “Enough to make anyone crazy. Don’t know how the doctors and nurses up here can stand it.”

Stelig sighed. He had always felt sorry for Harris. Wasn’t sure why, but there was something pathetic about him. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Still, it proves my point. They’re all harmless in here. Nuts, but harmless. We’re wasting our time. Warren did it, and he knows it. Doesn’t want to take the blame, that’s all.”

“I don’t know. I just don’t see why he’d lie, that’s all.”

Harris looked at Stelig then. Turned his head and gazed into the Doctor’s eyes. Unease shot through Stelig’s body. The man still hummed the same three notes, but now he was wearing a lopsided grin. It would’ve been almost comical were it not for the intelligence in his eyes.

It unnerved Stelig, although he would never admit it.

Stelig turned around and tried to shake his discomfort. “You’re too trusting, Adams. That’s your problem. Come on, let’s go. There’s nothing here.”

As the two men walked down the corridor, Stelig began humming.

“Catchy tune,” Adams said with a smile.

“Huh?”

“You were humming the same three notes as our resident singer.”

“Was I?”

Adams nodded.

Stelig’s unease grew. He smiled, but when he spoke his tone was serious. “Well I just hope I can get the damn tune out of my head.”

I wrote this story for the anthology Asylum Volume 3: The Quiet Ward . For those of you who don’t know, the Asylum anthologies were a wonderful group of books that dealt with, funnily enough, stories set in and about asylums. Each book was about a different ward, or a different type of mania — there was the violent ward, the psycho ward, and the third and last book, the one this story appeared in, was the quiet ward.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes, I did pinch the title from the song of the same name by Led Zeppelin.

Screaming. All around him people were screaming. Incomprehensible wails and darkness pressing down like a giant’s foot destroying everything that got in its way. It’s the end. Really and truly the end. But there was one last decision that had to be made, one last act of indulgence and then it would all be over…

He jerked awake as a hand grabbed him. “Huh? wha’?”

“You’ve been chosen. Come on, get up.”

Aleister P. Donaldson squinted up at the person whose arm was latched onto his Armani jacket and vomited.

“Whoa, hey there, now, fella. That’s no way to greet your saviour now, is it?”

Aleister hocked the last of the vomit to the alley floor and tried to get his head around what was going on. Did the old man just call himself my saviour?

Now the old guy was pulling Aleister up, and managed to do so with remarkable strength. “If I didn’t feel like shit right now, you’d be dead, old man,” Aleister garbled and then a headache exploded like a thousand nuclear warheads had just gone off in his head.

“Come on, hurry.”

“I ain’t going no…” Aleister was pulled across the alley into an open door and was inside a gloomy room before he could finish his feeble protest. He felt queasy and almost vomited again, but suppressed the urge and fixed his crooked tie instead. Once his mind had stopped spinning, he collected his groggy thoughts and said, “Okay, tell me just what the hell is going on here. Have I been kidnapped?”

“Peaches!”

Aleister jumped at the sudden cry.

“No peaches,” the old man who had dragged Aleister into this place said to some other old man sitting on a crate marked peaches . “We have to discuss our destiny.”

“Destiny?” croaked a female’s voice. “I can tell you about destiny. I was destined to become a star. Broadway Queen they called me. Had the looks, the voice, the talent, the…”

“Peaches!”

“No, I didn’t have any fucking peaches,” the woman barked. “But I did have a nice set of melons.” She laughed, loud and wet.

“Melons,” the peaches man said and giggled.

“Quiet please! The Saviour wishes to speak.”

Aleister felt dry, weak and horribly filthy. However, he was used to all that. Being woken from a dream and dragged into some dingy room was something new.

That’s right, I was dreaming, wasn’t I? People were screaming, and I had to do something before the giant’s foot squashed everyone. Christ, what did I have to drink last night?

Now the headache had settled in for the long haul and his mind was beginning to blow the drunken cobwebs away, he saw he was in a bar, a very old and very much disused bar, but a bar nonetheless. He didn’t recognise it — the place must have closed down before Shauna left him and he started on his long and bleak spiral to the bottom. Aside from the Saviour five people were sitting on either empty crates or discarded chairs. They all looked unwashed and wore layers of ratty clothes and aside from the two women, all had long gray beards.

I was kidnapped by a bunch of bums?

Aleister chuckled, but doing so hurt his head, so he stopped.

“Listen, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna leave and go home.”

“No, you can’t go,” the Saviour said. “No no no, not good at all. You have been chosen. As we have all been chosen. No, you can’t go. The world depends on you.”

Aleister gave a rummy grin. “The only thing that depends on me are the bars. I keep them in business you know.”

“I was in show business,” Broadway Queen said. “Yep, could’ve been a star.”

Aleister noticed the dreamy gaze in her eyes, then the mouse she was stroking. It didn’t look too active.

“Say, that’s a nice mouse you’ve got there,” Aleister said, tucking in his shirt and slowly backing towards the door. “What’s its name?”

“Rat,” Broadway Queen said.

“That’s a strange name for a…” His stomach squirmed. “Oh.”

“Where are you going?” the Saviour said. He rushed from his position near the long and dusty bar over to Aleister. “You can’t leave. The world needs you.”

The skeletal looking bum stepped up to Aleister. Aleister stopped. He didn’t want to piss this guy off — he looked old and frail, but there was no telling what kind of mental state he was in. “Look,” Aleister said. “You’ve made a mistake. I’m not one of you. My name’s Aleister P. Donaldson and I work on Wall Street. I had a, well, let’s say a rough night…”

Rough couple of months is more like it .

“…and I must’ve fallen asleep in the alley out there. Now, I don’t know what it is you people are doing in here, and I’m sure it’s great and really important, but I feel like crap and all I want to do is go home, puke my guts out and sleep. Okay?”