Dusk. The lights from the carnival reflect off the windows of Wilshire Tower. It stands, glowing with the delighted fire of those lights, monumental and lonely against the fading sun. I see something small and metal on the sidewalk outside of the apartment building. A key. I pocket it.
A memory:
I was wandering the halls of the new institution they had me in. This was after the hospital, of course. They had me at this new place. It wasn't quite a mental house but it wasn't the most comfortable place either. I wasn't told where I was or how long I would be there or why they had me locked up. They never told me what all the experiments and tests were for either. Anyway, I was wandering the halls, and turned a corner and there was this red door. I figured it had to be important, so I went in. The door led to a hallway that receded into darkness. There were no overhead lights. I walked forward, groping the walls. I guess I got scared or something, so I ran back toward the door before I went too far. There was something ominous about that darkness.
The door was, of course, locked. I banged on it for what felt like hours, screaming until my voice went hoarse. Eventually I felt that familiar pain in my head and then a pop. I passed out in exhaustion.
I remember waking up hot and sweaty, unable to breathe. Something was pressing down on my chest. Forcing myself up, I heard the pile of keys that had been covering me fall to the ground, clinking. The light from under the door made them glint in the darkness. I was surrounded by them. Keys of every make and color. I immediately knew that none of them would fit into the lock on the red door. That just wasn't how these things worked. I sighed, and leaned back on the pile of keys, resigned to my fate. Thousands of keys and one lock. You'd think the odds were in my favor. But at this point I knew better.
The noise of the carnival brought me back to reality.
I was getting close. There were people in the streets. We walked as one, past the closed storefronts and the run-down alleyways toward that promising glow. I passed on front of one alleyway and stopped. I could see, barely, down the alley, a man holding a baseball bat, silently pursuing an oblivious young girl. What struck me was his head. It wasn't human. He had an animal head, just like in my dream. I've never been one to follow 'signs' or 'omens' but I'm not exactly in the best position to disregard events such as these either. Animal-headed men didn't strike me as odd, but this felt significant. I yelled something at him. I didn't know what else to do. He disappeared. I blinked, and stood in silence. Looking back at the carnival, I turned around and made my way home, lost in thought.
I think eventually I heard someone walk by on the other side of the red door. I don't know how else I would've escaped. I probably banged on the door as they walked by and they had a key and let me out. Then again, I'm not really sure. Was that animal-headed man real? Did he have something to do with my dream? Did I ever actually escape that hallway behind the red door?
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Apparition, or Dr. Bob
I'm out of meat, now. I went to the butcher's only yesterday but I've already eaten all the meat. The meat's gone, and the page in front of me is still blank. I'm suspended in memory. My life now feels like nothing more than a product of my past. Everything that happened then was so important, so monumental. Everything that happens now is just an invariable result of what happened then. I'm simply playing out an unavoidable role.
I need to get out.
I walk to the carnival. As I'm walking, memories flash through my head. Random freeze-frames of my past life appear and are gone. My synapses fire. I remember a specific night spent in that hospital.
I dreamed that night. I hadn't dreamed in years but I dreamed that night. I remember the dream, because every once and a while I'll have it again. In my dream, everybody has these animal heads. The rest of their bodies are normal but my parents both have pig heads. My friends are foxes and hyenas and monkeys, playful things. My grandfather is a lion and my grandmother an owl. Anyway, I remember always feeling pretty guilty in the dream. I feel like it's my fault they're this way. Like I caused them to lose their heads, to turn into animals.
I remember something really bad happened in the dream and I woke up with a start in the hospital bed, sweating. It was midday. A doctor was sitting next to my bed. He was young and sad. His face was graven as he tried to explain my "condition." He said that most people require outlets when they get agitated. Whenever someone becomes afraid, or anxious, or angry they need a way to express that or to let it out. He said this was natural and healthy. Most people scream or yell or punch a pillow. Their physical action is dictated by their emotions, and from that physicality the emotion is relieved. I couldn't really understand most of this at the time. Years later I would find my medical report and, after reading it once, throw it into the ocean.
I'm different. Instead of relieving my emotion I simply bottle it up, stuff it back inside. From an outsider's perspective I would seem emotionless and stoic, but I'm not. Inside I'm a whirlpool of anger, fear, nausea, angst, sadness, anxiety, etc. Eventually, like a balloon filling with helium, I pop. My psyche can't handle the emotional overload and it needs a release.
When this happens, my brain activity shoots up. My emotion materializes in front of me in a physical form. This would explain the mythical creatures, archetypal characters and inanimate objects that would randomly appear throughout my life and eventually cause me to leave my home and everyone I knew and move here.
Everything about me - my loneliness, my lack of hygiene, my apartment, my inability to write, all stems from this "condition." It consumes me.
I remember that, after the doctor had finished explaining this to me, a nurse approached the bed to my left. Albert was only sixteen, but he had lung cancer. On bad nights I could hear him through the curtain coughing and crying to himself. The nurse was holding his medicine - they were trying an experimental treatment that involved sticking Albert with a two inch needle every morning.
The doctor's face turned as white as his smock when he saw that needle. He quickly stood up and tried to leave, but as he turned around he saw the man in the bed to my right. He was in some kind of accident and he had to get some stitches on his head. The doctor puked. He was getting hysterical. Everything about the hospital seemed to scare him to death. He ran screaming out of the ward. Minutes later I could see him outside my window on the front lawn of the hospital, still screaming and running.
Looking back on it, I think he was another one of my "apparitions." He probably grew from some underlying anxiety I had about needles and hospitals at the time. Anyway, after that encounter I wouldn't see him again for a few years, and when I tried to inquire about him to the hospital, I realized he never gave me his name. I decided that if I had conjured him out of my own repressed emotion, I was allowed to name him. I named him Dr. Bob.
I need to get out.
I walk to the carnival. As I'm walking, memories flash through my head. Random freeze-frames of my past life appear and are gone. My synapses fire. I remember a specific night spent in that hospital.
I dreamed that night. I hadn't dreamed in years but I dreamed that night. I remember the dream, because every once and a while I'll have it again. In my dream, everybody has these animal heads. The rest of their bodies are normal but my parents both have pig heads. My friends are foxes and hyenas and monkeys, playful things. My grandfather is a lion and my grandmother an owl. Anyway, I remember always feeling pretty guilty in the dream. I feel like it's my fault they're this way. Like I caused them to lose their heads, to turn into animals.
I remember something really bad happened in the dream and I woke up with a start in the hospital bed, sweating. It was midday. A doctor was sitting next to my bed. He was young and sad. His face was graven as he tried to explain my "condition." He said that most people require outlets when they get agitated. Whenever someone becomes afraid, or anxious, or angry they need a way to express that or to let it out. He said this was natural and healthy. Most people scream or yell or punch a pillow. Their physical action is dictated by their emotions, and from that physicality the emotion is relieved. I couldn't really understand most of this at the time. Years later I would find my medical report and, after reading it once, throw it into the ocean.
I'm different. Instead of relieving my emotion I simply bottle it up, stuff it back inside. From an outsider's perspective I would seem emotionless and stoic, but I'm not. Inside I'm a whirlpool of anger, fear, nausea, angst, sadness, anxiety, etc. Eventually, like a balloon filling with helium, I pop. My psyche can't handle the emotional overload and it needs a release.
When this happens, my brain activity shoots up. My emotion materializes in front of me in a physical form. This would explain the mythical creatures, archetypal characters and inanimate objects that would randomly appear throughout my life and eventually cause me to leave my home and everyone I knew and move here.
Everything about me - my loneliness, my lack of hygiene, my apartment, my inability to write, all stems from this "condition." It consumes me.
I remember that, after the doctor had finished explaining this to me, a nurse approached the bed to my left. Albert was only sixteen, but he had lung cancer. On bad nights I could hear him through the curtain coughing and crying to himself. The nurse was holding his medicine - they were trying an experimental treatment that involved sticking Albert with a two inch needle every morning.
The doctor's face turned as white as his smock when he saw that needle. He quickly stood up and tried to leave, but as he turned around he saw the man in the bed to my right. He was in some kind of accident and he had to get some stitches on his head. The doctor puked. He was getting hysterical. Everything about the hospital seemed to scare him to death. He ran screaming out of the ward. Minutes later I could see him outside my window on the front lawn of the hospital, still screaming and running.
Looking back on it, I think he was another one of my "apparitions." He probably grew from some underlying anxiety I had about needles and hospitals at the time. Anyway, after that encounter I wouldn't see him again for a few years, and when I tried to inquire about him to the hospital, I realized he never gave me his name. I decided that if I had conjured him out of my own repressed emotion, I was allowed to name him. I named him Dr. Bob.
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