Edward Lee: Succubi

Last week Erik had passed his board review for Class II status. And Duke had been Class III for almost a year.

The two of them made a deal.

Another luxury of the higher class status was that you got to use the pay phone in the rec unit anytime between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. Duke’s deal was this: he’d use his Class III escort privilege to take Erik to the pay phone, and he’d also give him change to make calls. Duke had an uncle who sent him money and cigarettes every month. In the automat II’s and III’s could buy anything they wanted from the machines: microwave sandwiches, candy bars, Cokes. The Diebold magnetometer at the entrance would prevent any sharp metal objects like bottle caps and pop tops from being brought back into the dorm. “So here’s the deal,” Duke had proposed. “One trip to the phone and thirty-five cents per nut.”

The first few times had been awful, but Erik forced himself to get used to it. He had money on the outside, but there was no one to bring it to him. How else could he earn money here? Several times Duke refused to pay. “Not till you get it right, fairy. Keep your lips over the teeth.” Eventually, Erik learned to “get it right.”

“Just ’cause I let you do it,” Duke had once verified, “I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of faggot. I think about all the chicks I reamed while you’re gettin’ down on it.”

Duke was what the doctors called a “stage sociopath with unipolar hypererotic tendencies.” He bragged about the sex crimes of his past. He’d raped dozens of girls, mostly “bar rednecks and druggers,” he called them.

“Killed a lot of them too.”

“Why?” Erik had queried with his shredded voice.

“Aw, shit, fairy. Killing them’s the best part. Ain’t no kick if ya don’t kill ’em.” He’d cackled laughter. “One time I picked up this skinny blond bitch. I got her in the back of my van, see, and I’m cornholing the shit out of her. Man, she was so fucked up on drugs she didn’t know which way was up; I coulda stuck a leg of lamb up her ass. Anyway, just as I’m gettin’ ready to come, I blow the back of her head off with my Ruger Redhawk.”

“That’s disgusting, man,” Erik replied. “You’re a fuckin’ monster.”

“Look who’s talking,” Duke came back. “You snuff a bunch of babies and you call me a monster. The fact is, bitch, we’re all monsters on the inside.”

It was almost funny the way he’d said that. Erik knew some people who were monsters on the outside as well.

Please be home, he prayed. The change fell into the slot. He held his breath as he dialed.

“Got a big nut for my bitch tonight,” Duke said, and laughed.

The phone was ringing.

Please be home.

—and ringing—

Jesus, please.

Twenty rings later, he hung up. He retrieved the quarter and dime.

“Who you callin’ anyway?”

Destiny, he thought. “Just someone.”

Duke chuckled. “Don’t matter none to me.”

“Listen, Duke, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Fuck talking, fairy. You’re out of time. Ping Pong’s startin’ and you got something to take care of first.”

“It’s important, man. It’s about the lawn contractors.”

“The fuckin’ what?”

“The people who cut the grass. They come out every day with their mowers and do the hospital grounds. They park right out—”

“Quit stallin’, faggot.” Duke shoved him toward the hall. “You’re just tryin’ to get out of the suck.”

They left the rec unit and crossed to B Building via the promenade. It was dark now. Above the trees, Erik could see the moon.

Almost spring, he realized.

The moon was pink.

They signed back in on the ward after walking through the metal detector and passing their change through in a plastic bucket. “No Ping Pong tonight, Duke?” one of the techs asked. Duke was the champ. “I’ll be in. Gotta hang a piss first.” But Erik was already walking down the hall.

“How’s your eye?” Jeff asked. Jeff was a delusional narcomaniac.

“My eye?” Erik grated back.

“Yeah, I saw it hanging out of its socket yesterday. I was concerned that your brain might get infected.”

You had to go along with these people. “Oh, right. It’s fine now. I just popped it right back in.”

“Good, good,” Jeff said, and shuffled away.

Nurse Walsh was tapping up a needle full of chlorpromazine in the med station while a bunch of burly techs four pointed Christofer the hydrophobe. “Four pointing” was just more psych ward rhetoric. “We’ll four point you if you don’t cooperate” was a polite way of saying, “These goons will pin you to the fucking floor if you don’t stop acting like an asshole.” “Tech assisted med administration” was executed when a patient “physically resisted chemical therapy.”

In the dayroom several pats were vegged out on the couch. Ten years of antipsychotics will take the zing out of anyone. All they made Erik take were mild tricyclics, none of the heavy stuff like Stelazine or Prolixin. “Zombie pills,” the pats called them. Many of the heavily drugged patients had to take large doses of Cogentin in conjunction with their psych meds, to offset the accompanying dyskinesia.

He went into the john, into the stall. You could always tell a psych ward bathroom from a normal one: there were never any locks on the stall doors, and the graffiti took diverse turns. “Do the Thorazine shuffle,” someone had written. “God stole my brain but He can have it,” and, “ECT, what a rush!”

Erik sat down and waited. He tried to concentrate on his plan, the lawn contractors, the supervisor, but the ideas kept slipping away. Sometimes he couldn’t think right.

But he could always remember.

Them.

Their sleek bodies, their breasts and legs—all flawless. The things they did to him, and the things they made him do. Blud. Mete. You are the meat of our spirit, Erik. Feed us. They’d consumed him, hadn’t they? With their kisses and their sex?

“Them,” he whispered.

He could still see them clearly as if they were standing before him.

But it was none of them that stood before him now. This was no midnight grove on the holy solstice—this was a psych ward toilet stall. There was none of that; the heralds were gone.

It was Duke who stood before him now. Grinning. Fat. The rasp of the zipper, however familiar, made Erik wince.

“Do it good, fairy, or else it’s no more phone calls…”

«« — »»

Later, Erik sat in his dorm. They were really cells, but they called them dorms. They called the ward a “unit,” and they called drugs “meds.” They called escape “elopement.” They had names for everything. Manacles were “restraints.” Jerking off was “autoerotic manipulation,” and shooting the bull was “vocalization.”

The steel mesh over his window was a “safety barrier.” In the window he could see the moon, and the moon was pink.

The ruckus of Ping Pong could be heard from the dayroom. Someone was playing piano. The television blared inanities.

Erik doodled in his pad. They didn’t call it doodling, of course. They called it “occupational therapy.” He drew fairly well, he was left handed. He’d read that left handed people were three times more likely to be creative. They were also three times more likely to be mentally ill. Something about inverted brain hemispheres, and a bigger corpus callosum, whatever that was. He drew the moon, and figures looking up to it. He drew their bodies to scrupulous detail. What he could never bring himself to sketch, though, were their faces.

It wasn’t that he didn’t remember their faces, it was that he did.