Fiction: Stir Crazy

By Paul Smith

 

It was dark. Sometimes that’s all you know. Just your surroundings. Not all the other things you brought along with you – what your plans were for today, where you came from. I hadn’t brought anything here to this beige room – a bed, a dresser, walls with no pictures, a desk. A desk was for writing. I had nothing to write about, nothing to say. Just one question – where was I?

The room had a door. I imagined outside of it there was a corridor. Good! I was starting to think. There was a corridor or hallway that led somewhere, somewhere out of here. Did I want to get out of here? I don’t know. There were footsteps.

Then there were voices. There was a voice – a woman’s voice. She was talking about someone – someone they were going to release. ‘Back to the wild,’ the woman’s voice said. Then there was girlish laughter. It was funny. It reminded me of television. Television! Now things were starting to come back. There used to be television shows, Nature Specials from Africa and all over, how they captured wild animals and rehabbed them-pangolins, wombats, baboons. Someone was going back to the wild. Lucky him!

I sat up in bed and my head swam. There was something inside me, a medication that made me dizzy. I laid back down, thinking again. There was a ceiling fan, a table with a lamp beside the bed, and a desk where I had nothing to write about, and a ceiling that spun. I went back to sleep. Where was I?

I woke up the next day. There were two of them in my room now, two gals.

“How are you feeling today, Mr. Mallory?”

“I feel groggy.”

“Xylazine,” said the second gal. My mind played with the word that sounded like xylophone. It was funny so I started laughing.

The first woman started laughing too. “You’re not groggy. You’re feeling fine. I think he’s ready.”

“I think he is too.”

“Should we?”

“I think we should,” the first gal said. “Let’s check.” She sort of smiled and reached down to my crotch area and reached inside my pajamas. It was like nothing I had ever felt.

“Seems to be working fine,” she smiled. She smiled a lot.

“Alright, then,” the second young woman said. “He’s ready.”

“So far, so good. You?”

“Not me!”

“Me neither. That candy-striper needs her first real assignment. She gets here at nine.”

“Mr. Mallory, we have a very pleasant surprise for you. I know you’ve been very patient with us all this time, and all your patience is going to pay off. Just stay put. Do you remember anything?”

I remembered last night with the overhead ceiling fan and the corridor that led nowhere and the desk with the pen and paper. I remembered I was supposed to remember something. Outside of that – nothing.

“I remember everything you said, Constance.”

The two of them, Constance and Virginia, took a step back, smiles fleeing their mouths in what I took for disbelief.

“Take it easy, Mr. Mallory.”

I waited a long time, and I didn’t’ even know what I was waiting for. It was probably the bureaucracy of this damned place, like the bureaucracy of every other damned place I’d been in my whole life. There was this candy-striper, see? And she was supposed to report here for something, but some paper-pusher had her transfer order on his desk, her desk, and refused to push it to the out basket. They did the same thing in the Army after the accident or outbreak or epidemic, kept pushing papers around as I went from hospital to hospital, without anything ever getting done except telling me ‘everything is fine. You’re going to be alright.’ Is anything worse than the Army?

Finally, as the sun went down, the candy-striper arrived. She was younger than Constance and Virginia. She had a shy smile. She took off her clothes. She was cute as a turnip. I’m not going to get all hyperbolic about this, but we did the boy-girl thing for hours. I may have done this before but couldn’t remember. It was like a blank spot in my memory. After about the sixth time with her I finally passed out. The ceiling fan gave me this smug look like I had just barely passed some kind of test. I wondered did I pass with flying colors, but the desk and the walls and the pen and the paper all said I passed because I got graded on the curve, so just shut up and wipe that smile off your face.

The next day Constance and Virginia were back. They didn’t ask how I was feeling. They knew. “Sit up,” they said. “Look at what we have here.” It was a newspaper. “Read this,” Constance said.

I got up and went to the desk. “He got up and went to the desk,” Virginia told Constance. “Make a note of that. They do that at some point. At least, that’s what we’ve heard.”

“Where’s my coffee?” I asked. It wasn’t exactly a demand, but for crying out loud, a man should have a cup of coffee with his newspaper in the morning, shouldn’t he?

“I’ll get some coffee,” said Virginia, all giddy. She left the room.

“What do you see in the newspaper, Mr. Mallory?” Constance asked.

I looked it over. Was it really morning? I guess so. I just got laid and there was a newspaper in my hands, so it must be morning. “Let’s see – war in the Mideast, taxes are going up, a woman was sent into space with a chimpanzee, the president was some broad from Nebraska complaining about the ‘national shortage’, whatever that meant, maybe the corn again. And of course, the pandemic – the lopsided, assymetrical pandemic. It was all coming back – all of the rot I guess I had lived through up to now. Was there anything worse than the monotony and tedium of daily living on this godforsaken planet?

I thought not.

Virginia brought me coffee and informed me that I had done enough for the day and to just relax. I nearly exploded. Relax? I was a man. I had to do something. This place was driving me stir crazy. They went back to their nodding and smiling routine. They left me alone. On their way out, I could hear a key turning in the lock. I hadn’t tried the door until now. It was locked. I had all day with nothing to do.

There was the desk, of course, the desk with a pen and paper. I had to do something, so I decided to start writing.

I have no idea who I am. It is important that I know, but there is something more important than that. I must be in motion. I must have a sense of purpose. I must find some goal I can attain so I have some sense of worth. That way I can fulfill my biological destiny and be a companion to someone like Constance or Viriginia or their candy striper, all nice individuals, but they are only broads, with no other purpose in life but to bring me coffee and lay down with me.

That was all I had to say. I looked up at the ceiling fan, and today he or she looked less smug than yesterday and even seemed to nod a bit like Constance. There was something else on my mind, but I was so tired, I must have forgotten it because soon I went to sleep.

The next day arrived with a cup of coffee but no newspaper. Virginia brought it in. She also had a hanger with a suit and tie and dress shirt. The pen and the paper were gone.

“Where’s Constance?” I asked.

Virginia cleared her throat. “We drew straws.”

“You won?”

She made a face. “I lost. Look, I don’t want to do this. I mean, you’re all we’ve got. But this has to be done.” She threw open the door. I got up.

“Put this on,” she said, handing me the hanger. It was gray flannel. The suit, not the hanger.

“Am I going somewhere?”

“That depends.”

I put on the suit. It fit perfectly. Whoever was running this place really knew me. Virginia smiled wanly and motioned me to the door. The door did indeed lead to a corridor, a corridor the color of breakfast cereal. This was an institution run by people good at keeping tabs on you. The long corridor led to another door, a double door with one of those things you push to make it open. That bar was on the other side, not mine. Virginia had a badge that made it open. That is when I saw them.

There was a gaggle, a flock, a bevy of women waiting in what looked to be a reception area. Some wore business suits, some wore white smocks. It was like walking into a medical convention. Some of them looked serious, some hopeful. Their eyes were on me. One of the more senior women walked up to me and, without introducing herself, started feeling me up – my shoulders, arms, cranium. Then she stood back, unconvinced.

“One more detail,” she pronounced. She held up a large piece of white cardboard with a black splotch on it that looked like a wombat. “This is a Rorschach test, Mr. Mallory. What do you see?”

I squinted. “A Rorschach.”

“He’s good to go. You’ve been through a great ordeal, Mr. Mallory.”

And then, without any fanfare, she led me to another door on the other side of this lobby. It was big and dark. This time the push bar was on our side of it. She turned to face me one last time.

“You are our last hope. Out there is survival or death. We’re counting on you. There aren’t any more of you left. You have a meeting in one hour at Ohio Street. You remember Ohio Street, don’t you? Go north on State by taking the Number 29 bus, go to the fifth floor on the Northeast corner. You are running the meeting. You must convince the panel there is enough corn in the silos to get us through the pandemic.”

“The silos are empty!”

“Doesn’t matter. You are a man, a persuasive man. You must convince them. When you have done that, you must fire your administrative assistant Bridgett, who has a crush on you.”

“She does? Frigid Bridgett?” The room was suddenly filled with feminine tittering. “What did she do – start the story how the silos were filled with cinders again?”

“You knew. Let’s not kid ourselves. You were leading her on the whole time. Then you will go home to your wife and your four daughters. All of them are late this month.” She shook her head. “You must find out why and cook up a story. Ready?”

Is a man ever ready?

Matilda, or whatever her name was, opened the door. Sunlight flooded in even though the door led to an alley that looked like it was between Madison Street and Washington. 

The wild. This was it.

I felt a nudge on my shoulder and heard the door slam behind me. I was aware of a great ruckus as the alley led onto State Street. Throngs of people crowded the sidewalks. The pandemic had not affected them. Streetcars clanged, buses coughed exhaust, brakes squealed, traffic started and stopped. A CTA train rumbled a block away, clattering like an old maid’s empty stomach. Everyone was in a hurry, and they were all – women. They glanced at me, some of them shooing me away while others urged me to scoot along by waving their hands butt level. I had to catch that bus. I had to lie to the panel. I had to convince my family that everything was going to be alright even though one of them apparently had been unfaithful, which seemed to be an impossibility. The voices here in the wild became more strident. A bus was pulling away from the corner where two skyscrapers gave me this haughty gaze like a pair of stepsisters. The bus headed north. In the back of it was a face that looked like Constance’s. Her look went from encouragement to disdain to outright scorn as I started running to catch up. The bus was faster than I was, and I was swallowing its bus exhaust like it was an elixir. I was born for this. 

Chase the bus. Catch the girl. Lie to the committee. Explain miracles to the non-virgins. There was enough purpose here to keep me going forever. Is there anything worse in this world than being the only man alive among millions of women who are counting on you, lying to you, cheating on you, leading you on? The face in the bus back window got cheerful and sunny. Whoever it was, Constance or someone else, she truly loved me. Nothing was worse than this.

And nothing was any better.

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Smith is a civil engineer who has worked in the construction racket for many years. He has travelled all over the place and met lots of people from all walks of life. Some have enriched his life. Others made him wish he or they were all dead. He likes writing poetry and fiction. He also likes Newcastle Brown Ale. If you see him, buy him one. He is a featured poet at Mad Swirl.