OK faithful followers. It's been a slow, time consuming process, but I've been hammering out more pages to my next story. Here's the first chapter in its entirety. It's a continuation from my last post but some of it has been modified and improved, so I suggest reading from the beginning. When you're finished, let me know what you think! I really love it so far, not going to lie. If it turns out how I envision it, then it's going to be awesome. Enjoy!
Session One
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
The doctor’s voice speaks to me from somewhere far away. I veer off memory lane and crash back into my gruesome reality. I suddenly realize that my fingers have been gently caressing my neck for the past 30 seconds without my even knowing. It’s such a curious thing, the mind. “Excuse me?” I ask.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” repeats the doctor. He fidgets nervously with the photo ID dangling from a silver chain around his neck. He’s worried. But whether he’s concerned about my well-being or his own, I’m not sure. “You know he’s…not there, right?” he adds.
My grip tightens on the handles of my laptop bag. “Please open the door,” I reply curtly. I shouldn’t be rude. The doctor is, after all, providing me with an extremely generous favor. Only authorized personnel are granted access into the next room, and as of this moment, I am the first exception.
The doctor firmly nods his head, trying to mask his fear with a confident facade. “Very well,” he says. He attempts to remove his ID from the lamination, but it refuses to come out.
Watching a man with a MD struggle with a piece of plastic makes me uncomfortable, so I set my eyes on the metal door standing before me. Butterflies flutter nervously in the pit of my stomach. Behind this metal door lies an untold story; a mystery that’s been locked away for two decades; an enigmatic puzzle that I intend on piecing together. Beyond this metal door, the rules that govern our world of logic and reason will no longer apply. It would almost be appropriate to hang a sign on the wall beside it that reads: “Please leave your morals and sanity at the door, thank you.”
Finally, the doctor withdraws his ID from the lamination. He flashes me a weak smile, but his embarrassment refrains him from speaking. He swipes the card through a small machine attached to the wall. I hear a noise that reminds me of the buzzer in my apartment. The door has just been unlocked.
The doctor wraps his fingers around the helve and pulls. With surprising ease, the door swings open to reveal the next room. It’s a long, dimly lit corridor.
“After you, Mrs. Liddell,” he tells me. The doctor tries to appear courteous, but I can see his true motives. He’s trying to postpone what awaits him on the end of that corridor, even if it is for only a few seconds. I take a deep breath, as though doing so would somehow inflate my courage, and step through the doorway to meet St. Matthew’s most dangerous patient.
This establishment is California’s most renowned mental hospital. It was first built in the early 1900s as a facility for the criminally insane, but since that time, St. Matthew’s Psychiatric Hospital has opened its doors to embrace all kinds of mentally ill people. Interestingly enough, the majority of its patients are here by choice. Only a small percentage of the overall population has been admitted involuntarily. And only one is being held in a supermax—a super-maximum-security facility. And that is exactly who I’m on my way to see now.
When Jake Andrews first arrived to St. Mathew’s doorsteps, there was a lot of controversy and debate regarding his placement in the hospital. Some people wanted to lock him up in solitary confinement and throw away the key. Others demanded that he receive the death penalty, which was ludicrous given the extreme circumstances of the case. And beloved fans and sympathizers felt that, at the very least, he should remain with the other involuntary patients—the inmates. Their argument was that solitary confinement was a form of cruel and unusual punishment and wasn’t conducive for a person’s mental health, especially when that mental health was already damaged. Naturally, the story made national headlines when the chief of staff at St. Mathew’s released a statement saying that Jake would be placed in the same ward as the other inmates. According to this particular doctor, Mr. Andrews was deeply disturbed, was unable to comprehend the distinction between right and wrong, and should be treated no differently than any other involuntary patient in the hospital.
Five days after this announcement, Jake slit the chief of staff’s throat with a shard of glass, killing him within minutes. Security eventually restrained him, but only after he beat two of the guards over the head with a chair, fracturing their skulls and putting them in comas. One of them still hasn’t woken up. Suffice to say, following this incident, Jake was admitted to solitary confinement and has been here ever since; two decades of isolation, where he has only the voices inside his head for visitors.
The doctor follows me into the hallway and shuts the door behind him. I stare at the lonely metal door waiting for me on the other side. It calls to me, beckons me forward. It is the only doorway left for me to walk through. The doctor directs the door with his right hand, as though pointing through a thick, swirling mist, while the other continues to hold his photo ID. “After this,” he begins, “he’s all yours.” What a terrifying prospect.
He leads the way, and I trail after him like a child that is afraid to get lost. It feels as though I’ve trekked through a maze of obstacles to get here: security guards, elevators, metal detectors, locked doors. Now, I’m walking down a corridor that has only two rooms. One of them is my final destination. The other stands to my left behind a glass window that contains yet another group of security guards. They stand hunched over surveillance monitors. I give a quick, sweeping look of the hallway and spot a security camera lingering in each upper corner. The amount of security in this place astounds me. I understand that the patient is dangerous, but it all seems a bit excessive for just one man.
I smile at the security guards behind the window. Not one of them returns the gesture. I look at these men, and I see sleepless nights and haunted dreams, coupled with tired, gloomy faces and pale skin. They remind me of corpses, empty shells of the men they used to be, as though all of the life inside of them had been sucked out. Most men spend their nights with family or friends. But when the sun sets, these guys have only a homicidal maniac for company.
Our footsteps echo on the tile floor, yet somehow, the corridor is eerily silent. Just as I begin to wonder whether coming here was a smart idea, I find myself standing in front of the door at the end of the hall: the last barrier between Jake and myself.
The doctor extends his arm toward the handle. Right away, I notice the violent tremble in his hand. He gives a nervous gulp and grips his fingers around the helve. I can hardly believe what I’m seeing. A licensed doctor, a man who willingly pursued a medical degree that would allow him to work at a hospital such as this one, is afraid of his own patient. I look to the glass window behind me. I can no longer physically see the guards, but I can envision their worn-out, lifeless faces in my mind, staring at the monitors. The entire scenario disturbs me. I suddenly find myself haunted by a single question: what kind of man can have such a profound effect and instill such a heightened sense of fear in those around him? I can’t even begin to imagine the horrors these men have seen or the terrors that have filled their nights. It’s as if Jake’s insanity has somehow creeped through the door’s cracks and infected their minds. But perhaps the most disturbing thing of all is that the doctor isn’t even staying for the entire session. He’s merely providing the introductions and then shoving off on his merry way. And yet, those few minutes in Jake’s presence are still enough to terrify him. The doctor turns toward me, his face completely drained of its color. “Security will be monitoring you,” he informs me in a voice that quivers just as much as his hand.
Suddenly, I am struck by a question that I should’ve asked long before I stepped foot in the hospital. “He’s secured, right?”
“Of course,” replies the doctor. “And before we go inside, you have to remember one thing.”
My ears perk up.
“No matter what he says, he can’t hurt you. You have to remember that.” I observe his trembling hand and pale face and begin to wonder whether he lives by his own advice.
The doctor lifts another shaky hand, the one holding his photo ID, and swipes it through another machine. Once again, a loud buzz signals the door’s unlocking. And then, he begins to slowly lift the handle.
The butterflies zoom through my stomach relentlessly. I feel like I’m about to stumble through the rabbit hole and into Wonderland, as if this door represents the final border between normalcy and insanity. It feels like hours ago when the doctor asked whether I was certain about doing this. I was at the time, but now, I have the strong urge to get the hell out of this building. It was foolish of me to pursue these interviews, foolish to let my curiosity get the best of me. But at this point, there’s really nothing for me to do but go forward.
The door creaks open, and a ray of light squeezes through the crack.
My heart thunders against my chest. My laptop bag suddenly feels like an anvil in my hand. I try to prepare myself for what I’m about to experience, but I soon realize that there’s nothing in this world that can ready me for what lies behind this door.
Finally, the portal into insanity opens, and there, lying in a twin-sized bed in the center of the room, is the king of its realm: Jake Andrews himself. When he sees me, his dry lips curve into a malevolent smile. Right away, I can sense that there is something…off about this man, something that isn’t quite right. Danger seems to emit from his body like heat from the sun.
Jake’s living situation is appalling. The room is approximately 6 by 8 feet, and squatting in the upper left corner is a security camera that watches his every move. But as right now, Jake isn’t going anywhere. A white straight jacket, which matches the color of the padded walls, binds his arms to his torso. Leather straps keep his body fastened to the bed, half of which has been lifted to a 90-degree angle so that Jake is sitting straight up. And across from his bed is a wooden chair, which I assume is meant for me.
His face is unrecognizable to the handsome mug that graced the magazine covers of twenty years ago; not because of old age, but because of the long, matted hair growing from his scalp and face. He looks as though he hasn’t gotten a shave or haircut in years; probably because the nurses are too afraid to approach him with scissors or razors. But even with all of that hair dangling in his face, I can still feel those crazy eyes penetrating me with their ice-cold stare. My heart freezes up inside of me. Even the butterflies have suddenly stopped flapping their wings. My mind empties itself of its contents and spills them onto the floor. I don’t know what to think, how to feel.
At a loss of what to do, I turn toward the good doctor. The horror in his eyes matches what I feel inside. Yet even with his dread eating away at his intestines, the doctor enters the padded room. Somehow, I manage to get my feet moving and follow him inside. I stand to his right and gawk at the specimen of lunacy before me. The doctor raises a clenched fist to his mouth and clears the dryness from his throat. Once again, he tries to mask his fear with a confident façade, but Jake can see right through it.
“Good afternoon, Jake,” greets the doctor. “How are you feeling today?”
Jake just stares in response, that unpleasant smirk stuck onto his face. He doesn’t say a word, but there’s no need. His flagrant appearance does all the talking for him. “Look at me,” it says. “I’m wearing a straight jacket and locked away in a mental hospital. How does it look like I’m feeling?”
The doctor gives another nervous cough. “Your visitor is here. Remember when I told you that you would have a visitor today?”
Again, Jake remains silent. Tension begins to fill the room like a thick fog.
The doctor starts to introduce me to my captive audience. “This is—”
And then suddenly, Jake utters his first words. “I know who she is, dumbass. I may be psychotic and homicidal, but I’m not fucking stupid.” For a man in a straight jacket, he speaks with the utmost confidence. Twenty years in solitary confinement, and he still sounds exactly as he did in the movies.
The doctor turns to me and forces a smile. I know exactly what he’s thinking: My time here has expired.
“Security will be monitoring you,” he tells me for the second time. And then, without even so much as a goodbye, he steps out of the padded room and back into the world of sanity. But before the doctor can shut the door, Jake bids him a hasty farewell.
“Say hello to that 16 year old daughter of yours,” he says with a sickening wink of his eye.
The doctor looks absolutely appalled. He responds to Jake’s comment by slamming the door shut behind him.
I am now alienated from society, trapped in a world whose population is comprised of Jake, myself, and a security camera. I stare at the bare, padded walls of the room. I would never be able to cope with Jake’s fate. No normal person could, but of course, Jake doesn’t exactly fit in that category.
I shift my attention toward the subject. He observes me from head to toe, absorbing my appearance. There’s a wild eagerness in his eyes, a rabid hunger. I suddenly feel like a small animal that’s about to be pounced on by a lion. Thank God he’s restrained. “I guess it’s just you and me, babe,” he says in a voice underlying with sexuality.
I suddenly want to flee the room, to be as far away from this lunatic as possible, but that opportunity is no longer available. I muster up the small bit of courage in the corner of my heart and tell him, “If we’re going to do this, then I have one request.” I try to sound authoritative, dominant, but that’s hard to do with a man like Jake.
The subject tilts his head in a way that makes him look more disturbing than puzzled. “Are you referring to a request other than having me restrained in my own bedroom? That’s not very polite behavior, you know. Didn’t your parents ever teach you any manners?” He chuckles.
I try to ignore his snide remark and continue. “Please don’t call me ‘babe’,” I instruct him forcefully.
Jake just stares at me in response. I’m not sure how he’ll react, but he’ll definitely be defiant about it. But then, he surprises me. “Fine,” Jake says with a sneer. “But I’m only doing it because you said please.”
I thank him with a silent head nod. My eyes dart to the empty wooden chair across Jake.
“Please,” he says. “Make yourself at home.”
I force a smile and take my seat. I feel uncomfortably close to Jake, almost claustrophobic-like. I rest my laptop bag on the floor and pull on the zipper. I can feel Jake’s eyes watching me, waiting for my next move. I retrieve my laptop from the bag and rest it on my legs. Next, I take out a small tape recorder, set it on the tiled floor, and hit the ‘Play’ button. The session now officially begins.
“You’re married,” he says suddenly. “I didn’t get an invitation?”
His knowledge of my marriage startles me. “How did you know?” I ask.
“The wedding band around your ring finger told me.”
I suddenly feel incredibly stupid. I clasp my hands together and conceal my wedding ring beneath my fingers. I should’ve just left the damn thing at home. “Well, yes. I am.”
“How magnificently grotesque,” he remarks. “I’d congratulate you, but since I consider marriage to be a fucking joke, I’m afraid that I just can’t do it. Who’s the unfortunate soul that’s sharing your death sentence?”
I assume that, when translated in sane terms, his question reads more like, “Who’s your fiancée?” I’m just about to give my answer when I suddenly realize something: I’m the one conducting the interview, not him. “These sessions are about you,” I remind him with a polite smile. “Perhaps we should keep it that way.”
Jake grins at me mischievously. “So,” he says. “You’re one of those feminist bitches, aren’t you?”
This time, I don’t even bother acknowledging him. I open up my laptop and run my finger over the mouse. The monitor awakes from its slumber and reveals an empty page with a blinking cursor. I rest my hands on the keyboard, ready to type.
“Listen,” Jake whispers. “If my predicament weren’t so…inconvenient, I would toss you against these padded walls and fuck you until you came, regardless of whether you wanted me to or not.”
My stomach churns with disgust, and my hands begin to tremble uncontrollably. His words are vile, repugnant, so much so that I feel like I may vomit on my laptop. I close my eyes and try to contain the sick within my stomach by swallowing mouthfuls of saliva. The more spit I swallow, the better I feel. In the darkness, I can hear Jake’s laughter. I know what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to mentally dominate me, belittle me, degrade me until I’m nothing more than a sexual object, just like all of the countless women he’s used throughout his life. But I won’t allow it.
I wait for the sickness in me to subside. After another 20 seconds, I open my eyes. The blackness disappears, and I’m instantly greeted by a wide, maddening smile. It’s time to remind this psycho who’s really in control. “Have the doctors informed you of the reason behind my visit?”
Jake’s smile fades slightly from his face. My willpower has disappointed him. “Yeah, they told me,” he says. “You’re writing my biography. That’s a fucking national bestseller right there. Although, I’m sure you’re already aware of that. The drones are going to line up outside the goddamn bookstores just to obtain a copy. I’m sure they’re all extremely curious to know the truth.”
“Drones?” I ask. I stretch my fingers out on the keyboard.
“Yeah, drones,” repeats Jake with a sneer. “All of the ordinary people in society who don’t have the balls to pursue what they want, who choose to work monotonous jobs and live mundane fucking existences.”
I type what he speaks, every crazy, intriguing word of it. “You said that they’re curious to know the truth,” I say. I finish typing the last word and glance up from the computer screen, back at that evil face. “What truth exactly?”
Another sly smile finds its way onto Jake’s face. “The truth about everything,” he says. “Every single fucking thing. Isn’t that why you’re here? To learn the truth?”
At first, I respond with a brief hesitation. And then, “Partially,” becomes my ultimate answer.
Jake tilts his head with curiosity. “Partially?” he repeats. “What other reasoning do you have for coming here?”
I refuse to acknowledge anymore of his questions. “Let’s keep this about you,” I tell him. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
Jake contemplates my words, as though I just asked him to do something obscene. It takes a few seconds before he finally says, “ Fine. This little fucked up tale begins a very long time ago. But as you and I both know, it doesn’t start with me.” He gives me another mischievous smirk. I know exactly what words are about to leave those dried-up lips. And then, he says it, “ This whole fucked up story begins with Walter Vascko.”
