Gary Braunbeck - Keepers

The orderly shrugged. “Getting you back wasn’t part of the deal. You put out, I bring you and the squirt over here. You want me to take you back the same way? You know what it costs.”

“You are such a fuck-stick,” said Beth.

“Yeah, well… you didn’t seem to mind it the other day in the linen room.”

Beth shook her head, her eyes suddenly so bright. She looked angry, and sad, and… something else that I couldn’t pin down. Ashamed?

“Come on, Gil, we’ll find our own way back.”

So we left the orderly to his monkeys and whatever else was back there.

She did not hold my hand this time.

At the breathtaking windows, neither of us spoke.

The same in the elevator.

In the tunnels, not even the ghosts said a word.

Once or twice I sneaked a look at Beth, who seemed to be trying not to cry in front of me. I wished she would so I could hold her hand again. It would make me feel better and maybe her, too.

I looked at the tube from my IV.

I thought of the girl I’d seen and the way she’d screamed as she knelt by the body.

I thought of the cats and how they wanted to talk to us but couldn’t.

The wires.

The charts.

The dog shaking its head No.

Back on the ward, the lunch trays were just arriving and the aroma of sloppy joes, my favorite bestest yummiest lunchtime food ever, filled the halls. I had no appetite. When a nurse asked where we’d been, Beth replied that we’d gone outside for some fresh air because this place smelled like a hospital, and did the nurse have a problem with that because if she did Beth would be more than happy to step outside with her.

I just stood there, staring down at the floor, feeling sick and thinking about the way that dog had shaken its head at me.

Now, as I pulled onto the side road that led to Audubon’s Graveyard, I tried to remember whether or not that dog’s eyes had been red.

I parked the car, popped the trunk, and killed the engine and headlights.

Everything was swallowed in darkness. Even the lights and sounds from the road a quarter-mile behind me couldn’t reach in and break the night.

I gripped the steering wheel and lay my forehead against my hands, still trying to steady my breathing.

(I’m telling you, pal, if you’d just stop fighting it and let yourself remember, this would all go a lot easier…)

I didn’t feel like arguing.

It’s not that I “hear voices” or anything dramatic like that; no formless demon from New Jersey tells me that God wishes I’d grind up my neighbors into dog food because they haven’t accepted Abe Vigoda as their Lord and Savior or anything like that. I live with-or try to live with, anyway-a condition that some doctors and psychologists call “minimization,” a fancy term that means (as far as I understand it) you’re constantly talking yourself out of something you remember. Think of it as denial’s more vicious and immovable first cousin.

In my own case-if the doctors are to be believed-I have spent decades convincing myself that this one particular memory is of something that never happened, and in the process have forced myself to forget it.

Even now, I’m damned if I can tell you what it is.

The only problem with minimization is, if you’re successful at it for long enough, you unconsciously begin questioning the validity and even the reality of other memories.

I thought it was all so much bullshit until about five years ago, when I began getting these physical jolts for no reason. I’d be sitting in a chair reading a book, and the next thing I know my whole body has just sort of snapped forward like a rubber band and the book’s on the floor and I’ve knocked over the glass on the side table and I’m shaking like I’ve got the DTs.

Nerves, I told myself. Just nerves.

Then I started talking to myself internally, in two different voices; one of them my own (or what I imagine it sounds like to other people’s ears), the other belonging to the smartass me of age eighteen.

And I began having these monstrous dreams, filled with violence and death.

Each of them separately was worrisome enough, but then they began clustering on me; the jolts, the voices, the dreams.

I honestly thought I had a brain tumor for a while, but a series of tests quickly ruled out anything physiological.

So I began seeing doctors, most of whom went right for the SSRIs-selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors-like Lexapro, Paxil, even good old Prozac. Each of them helped for a while, but the jolts and dreams always came back. My current doctor, whose offices are in Columbus, is the leading psychopharmacologist in the state. She determined that the reason none of the SSRIs were having their desired effect was because they needed to be “accentuated” (the word she used, hand to God) with a mood stabilizer such as Lemictol. It took us about six months but we finally hit on the right combination: Seroquil at night, Lemictol and Lexapro in the morning. For the past three years that combo had been doing the trick.

Until the last couple of weeks, when she started talking about trying anti-psychotics.

Christ.

I gripped the steering wheel tighter and rolled my forehead back and forth across my knuckles; the poor man’s face massage.

Just a few moments to rally my sorry ass, that’s all.

I’d get Carson, take him home, and we’d get through this.

We’d get through this because everything was going to be fine.

I was fine. I was fine. I was fine.

Just a few moments to rally and catch my breath, here in the safety of my car, my forehead against my hands, my breathing getting slower, steadier, steady… steady… there you go…

… I wake to the sounds of moaning and bleating. I blink my eyes and stretch my arms, pulling in the first breath of the day. I nearly choke from the fetid stench of wet straw and urine-soaked dirt. I press my hands into the floor to raise myself. I feel something warm and deep. I look down and see the trail of liquid filth that has squittered from the bowels of one of the sick animals chained in this place. Rising, I find a cloth hanging from one of the stable doors and drape it over my shoulder.

Walking outside, I climb the small rise to the side of the building and stop when I reach the well. I work the water pump beside it and soon the spigot spits out a heavy stream of something lukewarm but wet. I lean down my head-careful not to catch either of my horns on the iron-and drench my face and chest. I rub until I feel the filth of the night wash away, then use the cloth to dry myself.

In the distance, from a place just over the rise, I can already hear the groaning of the machinery, smell the metallic smoke rising into the air from the chimneys.

Overhead I hear a crow calling and there is the faint odor of rotting flesh in the air.

Suddenly one of the men is behind me, prodding me into movement with a long device that cracks and sizzles when it touches my flesh. The electricity jolts through my tail, my legs, and up into my chest.

“Get your ass moving, pal!” he shouts, then holds the device above his head, smiling, filled with glory; Jason showing his Golden Fleece to the masses.

It is the orderly from so many years ago, the one who guided Beth and me through the tunnels and to the animals. He looks even meaner than I remember as he snarls, “I got plans to meet some buddies for drinks and I’m not gonna be late on accounta you!”

He makes the device hiss and crackle once again. I twirl the cloth like a rope and snap it forward, knocking the device from his grip. It flies out of his hand and lands in a puddle of liquid excrement. Before he can pull his other weapon from its holster I grab him by the throat and lift him off the ground. I am very strong. He kicks and chokes. It amuses me, the way his dangling feet twist and move in the air. Is he trying to dance on air?