REST OF CHAPTER 1

Last week, I posted the first half of the first chapter of one of the books I'm currently working on.  If you didn't read it and would like to do so, then just check out my Facebook or Twitter. The link is there on one of my recent posts. But if you're too lazy, then I'll provide you with a quick recap. The main character has just inherited his father's mansion. He left home at 17 and swore that he would never go back for reasons that are still unknown. At this point in the story, he is in a cab, in front of the mansion's gate.

Lots of people have given me feedback so I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to read and give me their opinion. I don't know if people realize it, but I put a lot of thought, work, and effort into every single word I write. There are times where I drive myself insane and spend an entire hour on a five sentence paragraph. So again, thank you all for reading. For those of you who take my writing seriously, I really appreciate it. Without further ado, here's the second part of the first chapter. Enjoy!

I rummaged through my pocket a bit more until I felt the icy touch of some forgotten loose change. I withdrew my hand. “Forty five years? What brought you here?”

“Curiosity, I suppose. Me and a few of my buddies would sneak over here. Just to get a look at the place. We were only dumb kids back then, ya know. But still…” Again, his voice trailed off as he absorbed the sight in front of him. “…it would amaze us every time.”

I stuck a hand into my other pocket. The first thing I felt was another set of keys. I smiled. This pocket held the keys to my Queens apartment, a small, one bedroom space that cost a mere $1000 a month. The other pocket contained the keys to my multi-million dollar mansion. It was as though each pocket represented a different world, a different life. Most people would probably toss away the former keys for the latter. I, however, didn’t plan on staying at McCormick Manor for very long.

At last, I found what I was looking for, buried beneath my leather wallet. My fingers closed on the slip of paper.  “I don’t suppose you ever got past this gate?” I asked.

“No, no. We didn’t dare climb the walls. Too high.” And after a brief hesitation, the cabby added, “And illegal too, of course. Besides, if we ever got caught, old man McCormick—I guess that was your grandfather—would’ve hung us by our feet from the highest window in the house!” His grin was reflected in the rear view mirror. “There were always the craziest stories about old man McCormick.”

“He was a tough man from what I’ve heard.” Though he couldn’t have been as tough as my father. I retrieved a clenched fist from the depths of my pocket and climbed out of the cab. The cold bit into my flesh and made me shiver. I sprinted to the main entrance. Just to appease my curiosity, I grasped the iron bars and pushed. The doors moved an inch before clanking to a stop. The gate’s lock was as secure as ever. My neck craned back so that I could glimpse the top of the gate. It towered a good ten feet above me. Well, nine feet and three inches to be exact. Even if the gate was unlocked, I doubt that I had the strength to push it open.

I hurried to the left column, where the intercom and key pad awaited. I could sense the security camera watching me overhead. It was like the eye of my father, glowering down at me with typical disapproval. I glanced at the piece of paper clenched in my fingers. 0523, it read. With shivering fingers, I punched the digits into the keypad. It felt…odd to hit those numbers. The code had always been 0124, my mother’s birthday. But that was eight years ago, before I decided to vacate the premises and never return. Never truly isn’t long enough…

The sound of slow, steady creaking drifted into my ears as the gate doors pushed open. It was then that I came to a sudden realization. I gaped at the paper, no longer aware of the cold, no longer aware of my emotions.

From behind me came a loud honk. Startled, I spun around to find the cabby waving me impatiently into the car. I followed his gesture and climbed back into my seat.

“Are you alright, kid?” He hit the gas, propelling us through the gate. Behind the right wall sat the vacant gatehouse, a shack that was probably nicer than most people’s homes. “What were you doing, just standing there?”

 I could hear the gate creaking shut behind us. Once the code was punched in, the visitor had about fifteen seconds to pass through the gate before the doors began to close. “Yes. I’m fine.” But that was a lie. Truthfully, I felt befuddled, lost. My father had never shown any indication that he loved me, not even a shred of concern for my existence. When his lawyer told me the numbers, it didn’t even occur to me that they coincided with my birthday. Does that imply that my father did in fact care for me? I stared at the slip in my hand, as if I were expecting to find the answer scribbled somewhere. Frustrated, I shoved the paper into my pea coat pocket, along with all of my thoughts and confusion.

“Holy shit. This place is huge!”                     

Huge was an understatement. I lifted my eyes to observe the land that I had never expected to see again. The driveway was long and wide, wide enough for two cars to drive abreast, and was comprised of red and grey pavers. But there was one thing that was sorely missing: the cherry blossom. It had been my mother’s favorite tree. In any other season, the cherry blossoms would stand on either side of the driveway, from the front gate all the way to the house. Their boughs, normally covered with gorgeous pink flowers, would converge overhead to create a sort of canopy. The cherry blossoms were almost like a welcoming party, ushering you into McCormick Manor. Their beauty seemed to promise the visitor happiness and good tidings. Unfortunately, the house had never given me much of either. But during winter, the trees were skeletons, bare and dead. There was a foreboding eeriness about them that made me feel like a trespasser, even though the house was now rightfully mine. And beyond these trees was nothing but acres among acres of brown grass, long and unkempt.

Finally, my eyes settled onto the main attraction. I didn’t want to see it, but we were now so close, or maybe the house was just so big, that it could no longer be ignored. The mansion had been in my view since the bottom of Pleasant Valley Road, like a permanent fixture in the horizon. Why anyone would want a house so large was beyond me, though I did know the who, how, and when of the story. Built in 1907, the mansion was the birth child of a lucrative oil business, a monument that was resurrected by Charles McCormick for Charles McCormick. The establishment stood daunting and humongous on approximately 3,000 acres of wasted land. The amount of trees that had to be chopped down in order for this monstrosity to exist is both astronomical and obscene. The house was constructed in a chateauesque style. Its steeply-pitched roofs and towers were grey, its walls a stucco beige. Some of these walls had a cylinder appearance, others rectangular. Its plethora of windows was dark as pitch, making the house seem gloomier than usual. But its most enormous attribute was its absurdity. Beautiful though it was, the house was a colossal joke. It was too huge for any normal mind to fathom, which would adequately explain my cab driver’s amazement.

“This is...I mean …excuse me, but holy shit…wow…” He shook his head and chortled, at a loss for words.

The dead cherry blossoms dwindled away as we reached the end of the driveway. It was a giant cul-de-sac with a fountain right in its center. I always thought of the fountain as creepy, especially now, without any water streaming down it. At the very top sat a little cherub figure who was anything but adoring. He had a mischievous grin and eyebrows that were as steeply-arched as the roofs of McCormick Manor.

The cab swung around the fountain and came to a stop at the front doors. I stared at them reluctantly. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew that the driver had joined me in my gaze. “This is really some place you got here. I can’t even imagine having something like this. You’re a lucky man. Hell, you must be one of the wealthiest people in the country!”

“I suppose I am.”

I suddenly felt the cabby’s eyes on my face. The faint stench of rum wafted into my nostrils. “Well, that’ll be $44.75. I bet that’s nothing more than a penny for you, huh?”

I retrieved the wallet from my jeans. I pulled out $100 before slipping the leather item back into my pocket. “Don’t tell anybody that you took me here today.”

The driver shot a greedy look at the money before focusing back onto me. “Kid, I don’t even know your first name. What is your name anyway? You another Charles?”

His assumption caused me to say, “No. I’m Andrew.” The greatest gift my father ever gave me, one far better than this oversized mansion, was not making me Charles McCormick IV. Although, I suppose I should really be thanking my mother for that. She despised the name Charles.

The driver took the money. “Well Andrew McCormick, you have nothing to worry about. I won’t tell no one that I brought you here, not a soul. You have my word on that.”

I thanked him, even though I knew he was lying. I was just about to exit the vehicle when the driver cried, “Hey, wait! How am I supposed to get out of here? I don’t have a code or anything.”

“The gates open automatically when someone approaches it from the inside.”

The cabby seemed both impressed and enlightened. “Ohhhhh. Got ya.” After wishing me good luck and mentioning “If you ever need someone to housesit, or if you ever just want to give away a million dollars, call me!” and handing me his phone number, I climbed out of the taxi and closed the door. I walked to the rear of the car to find the trunk already popped. I pulled out the navy blue suitcase, set it onto the red and grey pavers, and shut the trunk. Almost immediately, the taxi took off. It went around the fountain, around the cul-de-sac, back up the driveway, through the dead cherry blossoms.

I was now alone. Alone with the house and all of the memories we shared together.

I grasped the handle of my luggage and turned to face my old nemesis. The weather was cold, but I was in no rush to enter the house. Instead, I just gaped at those immense oak doors. They were like the jaws of a predator waiting to swallow me, its prey, whole. With a deep breath, I took my first step forward, and then another, and then another. Before I knew it, I was walking, walking toward the entrance. For reasons I couldn’t understand, my heart was hammering in my chest. I stormed out of those doors eight years ago, absolutely certain that I would never return. And now here I was, about to walk through them again, as if I had never left.

STORY TIME

OK so it's been decades (and by decades I mean 7 months) since I've blogged, so I figured I'd give it another shot. Here is the first 5 pages to one of the new books I'm working on. It has no title yet. And I'm not going to tell you what it's about because where's the fun in that? Enjoy!

Chapter 1

            It was never my intention to return to my father’s house. The old mansion was filled with bad memories and shattered promises. I lost so many things in there, so many precious belongings. It was there that I had lost a piece of my heart.

When I left for the last time, or what I thought would be the last time, I stormed out those humongous oak doors without ever glancing back, not even for a second. I was seventeen back then, a mere child, alone and frightened. Now I’m twenty-five, a man, and I’m still alone, still very frightened, though I knew there was no reason to be. There was no longer anyone in that house to hurt me, no one left to fear. My father was dead, and his old house belonged to me.

            The cab driver at the train station didn’t believe it when I first told him. “108 Pleasant Valley Road, please,” I said, slamming the door shut behind me. The interior of the car was warm but not warm enough. I rubbed my palms together, trying to ebb the winter cold from my hands. When I left my Queens apartment, I got that dreadful, suspecting hunch that I had forgotten something. It’s a normal fear, one that I believe everyone experiences before departing on a long trip. However this time, my emotions were speaking the truth. I had forgotten my black leather gloves, a horrible thing to forget in the middle of January. Luckily, I had a black pea coat and a gray beanie, both of them woolen, to shield the rest of me.

            “108 Pleasant Valley Road?” The driver turned to look at me, one hand glued to the wheel, the other around his passenger seat. He was an older man, probably in his late 60s, with coarse stubble that ran along his jaw, cheeks, and upper lip. There was long, gray hair protruding from underneath his red beanie, which was pulled down to his bushy eyebrows. Dark bags sagged below his eyes, and in his breath were faint traces of rum. The stench should’ve sent me running, but I remained in my seat. “Is this some sort of joke?” he asked, scowling. There was something in that deep, gruff voice of his, some unidentifiable factor, that told me he was uneducated.

            “What’s so funny about it?”

            “Well…nothing. But you said 108 Pleasant Valley Road.”

            “Yes. That’s where I need to go.” ‘Yes,’ my father would always say. Never ‘Yeah.’

            The man gave a brief pause. “Why?”

            Again, I should’ve exited the cab. The man was being boorish and intrusive, but instead, I chose to counteract his rudeness with my patience. “I live there.”

            The driver wrinkled his red, vein-broken nose with confusion. “You live there? You actually bought that place? Didn’t you hear what happened there?”

            His questions were leading me to a conversation that I didn’t want to have. My identity was something that I had always sought to stray from. It was an overpowering shadow. It was one of the reasons I left home. However, in this case, I decided to make an exception. I needed someone to bring me to my destination, and this was the only taxi at the train station. “I didn’t buy it,” I explained. “I inherited it. Can we please just get going?”

            “Inherited it?” Suddenly, a mixture of understanding and intrigue illuminated the driver’s face. “You’re related to Charles McCormick? Who are you, his son?”

            I sighed and reached numb fingers for the door handle.

            The driver lifted his hands into the air, as if conceding.  “OK, OK, I get it. No more questions. No need to get feisty. I’m just curious, is all. Just sit back and relax. I’ll bring you to the house.” And so I withdrew my hand and away we went.

We traveled in silence, though it was never truly quiet. My head was buzzing with troubled thoughts and painful memories. From the darkest corners of my mind, I could hear my father’s voice bellowing at me. I spent the entirety of the trip staring out my window, but every now and then, my peripherals would catch the driver glancing at me from his rear view mirror. I’m sure his head was buzzing noisily as well; buzzing with questions and curiosity. Thankfully, he never spoke. The next time he did was to tell me that we had arrived. But I had already known that several minutes prior, after we made the right onto Reid’s Hill. Whenever I glimpsed that street sign, I always knew…I was on my way home.

After making that right turn, my stomach contorted until it felt exactly how Reid’s Hill looked. The cabby followed the street’s twists and curves, winding this way and that. There were times where I was certain that the rum would cause him to veer off the path, into the trunk of a tree. Luckily, he managed to keep us on the street.

The road, which was as narrow as a road could possibly be, was in the boondocks, in a desolate, wooded area that sat on the outskirts of town. It was, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere. The nearest store was a thirty minute drive, though cars were seldom seen here. The road spanned approximately twenty miles and held only five houses, all of them humongous. And one of them now belonged to me. Besides that, there was very little life on Reid’s Hill, save for the abundance of trees that ran along either side of the street. Back here, there were no neighborhoods, no street lights or traffic lights, not even a stop sign. The only other road in the area was the one I was now heading to. There were no cyclists or joggers, no neighbors on an afternoon stroll, no children playing in the street. Every now and then, we would pass the opening of a driveway, which eventually led to one of the five mansions. Other than that, it was a dead, vacant place, especially during winter. Without the greens of a summer forest, the area appeared dreary and foreboding. The trees reminded me of black skeletons, their empty boughs reaching out like gnarled, groping fingers. Living in this area, I always felt as if I had been shunned from society, like my family and I had been exiled into the forest for some horrific crime.

Up ahead, on the side of the road, I spotted the decaying carcass of a male deer. Presumably, most people would turn away from the sight, too disgusted to look on, but I was infatuated by it. One of the animal’s legs had snapped clean off, as if it was more no more than a brittle twig. Its mouth was gaping but not as much as the enormous hole in the deer’s torso, where it was rotting from the inside out. I absorbed it, engraved the image into my memory for the entire ten seconds that it took us to reach the carcass and drive past it. Perhaps I would use the visual for one of my stories. The next sight to meet my eyes, however, was one much more unsettling. It was the end of Reid’s Hill. Straight ahead was only a blockade of woods. There was only one way to go now. Left would lead me to my destination. It was the road back to the hell that I had escaped several years prior. Pleasant Valley Road. Home sweet home.

The driver made the left onto the street, though truthfully, I had never really thought of it as a “street.” This path took you directly to the front gate, to the only house on the paved trail. Because of this, I had always perceived Pleasant Valley Road to be a continuation of my driveway. “Well, we’re here,” the cabby informed me.

And so we were. It was another narrow path, straight but precipitous. The taxi climbed up the steep hill, up to where the only thing that awaited me was a dead end. The mansion lingered ominously in the distance while at the same time looming closer and closer with every second. Even from the bottom of Pleasant Valley Road, the house was still in scope, its many towers and spires reaching for the darkening sky above. My body shuddered, though not from the cold.

The cab slowed to a stop before the main entrance. For most people, this was the barrier, the spot where Pleasant Valley Road ended and the driveway to McCormick Manor began. It was a fifteen foot tall, wrought iron gate, as black as the approaching night. The doors were held firmly together by a horizontal post. The gate’s bars were twisted extravagantly into a black sea of iron swirls. On the left door was a large, golden “C” imbedded into the iron, on the right a golden “M.” It was the original gate of Charles McCormick I, my great, great grandfather, with a few technological features that had been added by Charles McCormick III, my late father. The gate was stuck in between two stone columns, each of which was topped with a black lamppost and a security camera. The lights wouldn’t flicker on until 7 PM—that was how my father had set it—but the surveillance cameras were always on, always watching.

The columns on either side of the gate stretched out into walls, stretched and stretched until they enclosed the entire estate, as if being in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a gigantic forest, wasn’t reclusive enough. In the right wall was a second wrought iron gate, a smaller one with a keyhole. It was the entrance to the gatehouse. There, the guards would sit and wait and watch for any approaching visitors. But that was long before my time here, before the guards’ jobs were made obsolete by the features on the left column: a key pad and an intercom. Now these were from my time.

When I glanced into the rear view mirror, I could see the astonishment in the driver’s eyes. “So what now? You got to enter a code or something?”

“I do. Hold on.” I reached a hand into my left jeans pocket. My fingers groped a set of approximately three dozen keys, one for each car in the house. But the most significant one of them all was the master key.

“I haven’t been this close to this place in about…” The cabby took a second to reflect on his last visit to McCormick Manor. “…forty-five years.”

Edited first chapter of TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY

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.”