The first thing you need to know is that they’re not a who, they’re a what.
And they’re a what that steals.
A what that sucks.
That feeds.
I never noticed them, until it was too late.
I played my harmonicas, sang for the ladies. My bib-overalls flapping in the breeze and bare-feet kicking up a dust storm. My teenaged me, just howlin’ to the moon and to anyone who’d listen.
Oh, how I wailed.
Me and Woody, we knew something of the world.
And all the time, they were closin’ in.
I was blind.
Youth is always blind.
Until it’s too late.
Came my seventeenth birthday and I began to see things.
Odd things.
Seeing eyes that didn’t match, mouths that didn’t connect.
I saw faces like roofer’s putty.
Like ice cream melting in the noon sun, dripping down a cone, over fingers and thumbs, dropping to the ground in puddles to be fought over by the wasps and bees.
Faces that just weren’t right.
And I tried to warn them. I did.
I shouted, and sang, and talked, and ranted.
And they took me to the hospital; long, gray corridors that never seemed to end. They marched me down there, past all those closed doors, some with voices behind, some with screams. And some, the worst of all, with silence.
Deep, dark silence.
Like molasses.
And they shut me in a room.
Poked and prodded.
Asked me questions.
What did I know? What had I seen?
Who had I told?
And they forced my mouth open, and they gave me pills, they gave me syrup on a spoon, and I had no choice but to watch the syringe as it glimmered in the cold electric light.
That light; so dead, so cold.
The doctor in his mask.
And me, knowing that his face was melting behind the green fabric.
Melting.
The cold warmth of the syringe in my arm. I tried to shout, to scream but one of them was behind me, holding my chin up so my teeth bit into the gag, and I was trying, but the room was ripping apart behind the doctor, tearing a hole in the ceiling and walls, swelling behind him like a mushroom cloud.
And he was melting.
And the black was swallowing his melting head and the hands let go of my chin and the gag fell to my chest and my body…
I floated.
In the silent, dark, dead blackness.
Floated.
Floated.
* * *
Mac stopped talking, staring off towards the far fields.
Rufus stared at him, alarmed by the single tear tracing down the old man’s face.
“I never…” Mac began, but drifted off again.
Rufus didn’t know what to do, what to say.
What the hell was that? he thought.
After a long moment, Mac came back.
“Schizophrenia,” he said, “that’s what they said. Me and all these voices, locked up in my own head.”
“Really?”
Mac turned to look at Rufus.
“I’m not crazy,” he said, “well, no more’n anyone else.”
“But you were in hospital for it?”
“Sure,” Mac nodded, “though we called it the nuthouse more often than not. Spent my eighteenth birthday in there. Alone. My lost years.”
Rufus sat thinking for a moment. When he spoke, it was a thought he hadn’t even realized was brewing.
“What’s it like having multiple people up here?” Rufus tapped his forehead.
Mac burst out laughing.
“What?” Rufus smiled.
“There’s only one me, my young friend,” he said, “we’re not all Sybil!”
“Who’s Sybil?” Rufus asked.
“Never mind. Before your time, I guess. I wasn’t a case of multiple personalities, or whatever they call it. They just told me I had an over-active imagination. That I couldn’t control it, that…”
“So none of that stuff actually happened?”
Mac stared at Rufus for a long moment, then slowly shook his head.
“Didn’t say that, did I?”
“It did?”
“You know what they say, right? Just because you’re paranoid,” Mac began.
“Doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” Rufus finished.
“I’ll go to my grave and tell you that they’re real. They took me. And they drugged me. And they left me floating in the darkness for the longest time. Floating.”
Mac suddenly rocked forward and stood. Rufus could clearly see the goosebumps rippling across the old man’s arms.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Mac folded his arms tight around his chest as if fighting a chill; closed his eyes.
“It was dark,” he said.
And without another word, he turned to the office door, pulling it open to step inside.
“Wait!” Rufus called, “don’t go!”
Mac didn’t appear to hear him and the door began to swing shut behind him.
Rufus jumped up and grabbed the handle, stopping the door before it could close. He lent around it, watched Mac retreating into the interior.
“You never what?” Rufus called.
Mac stopped but didn’t turn.
“What?” he said over his shoulder.
“After you floated,” Rufus said, making his way carefully through the words, “you never did what after you floated?”
“I never… never…”
Mac stood stock still; a mannequin, a show-room dummy.
“I never played the harmonica again,” he said and resumed his shuffling walk through into the back room.
After a moment, Rufus realized he was standing there, holding the door open, staring at the empty office.
He let the door close, turned and headed for his camp-site.
RUFUS – A NOVEL is a novel-in-progress by Vincent Tuckwood, a Brit author living and working in Waterford, Connecticut, USA. Read more by Vincent Tuckwood.
