At the Stroke of Madness (42 page)

J
oan couldn’t look at the tray of food he left on the bedside stand. She couldn’t eat it. She wouldn’t eat it. Whatever he was putting in her food made her insides feel as if they were being slit open. He didn’t even need to use the leather restraints anymore. She couldn’t leave the bed if she wanted to. Instead she spent what felt like hour after hour curled up in a fetal position trying to ward off the pain.

She no longer thought about talking him into releasing her. She no longer dreamed about escaping the cabin. She only wanted to escape the pain. Maybe he would finally kill her. Yes, why didn’t he just kill her and get it over with? Instead, he kept bringing her food. The smell of the soup alone reminded her of her body’s reaction to it. And already her insides burned. The nausea had never left. For hours it continued, like being seasick on a cruise and not being anywhere near land. She couldn’t think about it, nor could she feel anything else. So when he sat down next to her and started showing her his collection, she could only stare right through him and pretend to be interested.

He was the little boy again, excited and anxious, as if bringing his show-and-tell projects to share with her. Each one more hideous than the next and threatening to make her vomit, though there couldn’t possibly be anything left inside her stomach. She tried not to think about the blobs as pieces of human beings. She tried not to think about the fact that he had taken them from their owners.

He was showing her something in a large jar with a white lid. She refused to look closely, not allowing her eyes to focus on what appeared to be a dirty yellow glob of fatty tissue.

“This one was a surprise,” he told her, holding it up at her eye level. “I knew an alcoholic’s liver would look abnormal but this…” He was smiling and explaining it as if it were a prize he had won in some competition. “They say a normal liver has the same texture and color as calf’s liver. You know, like you can buy at the supermarket. Actually, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to eat calf’s liver. That’s just gross.” He turned the jar slowly around as if giving her a full view. “See, the alcohol causes that discoloration.”

He got up to put the jar on one of the top shelves, and Joan hoped the presentation was over. He came back, stopping at the food tray. Oh, dear God, she couldn’t handle him force-feeding her again. She simply couldn’t survive another spoonful. But he left the bowl and picked up the brown paper bag that he had brought in with him on the tray. He sat down beside her and took another jar out of the bag. It looked like an ordinary twelve-ounce jelly jar. But it didn’t look like jelly. The liquid was clear, like in the other jars. And like the other jars, something was floating inside.

“This is my newest acquisition,” he told her, twirling it in front of her. Then he finally held it still and so close to her face that she couldn’t avoid recognizing the two floating, bright blue eyeballs. “Amazing, isn’t it, that these couldn’t see except with really thick glasses.”

J
oan couldn’t look at the tray of food he left on the bedside stand. She couldn’t eat it. She wouldn’t eat it. Whatever he was putting in her food made her insides feel as if they were being slit open. He didn’t even need to use the leather restraints anymore. She couldn’t leave the bed if she wanted to. Instead she spent what felt like hour after hour curled up in a fetal position trying to ward off the pain.

She no longer thought about talking him into releasing her. She no longer dreamed about escaping the cabin. She only wanted to escape the pain. Maybe he would finally kill her. Yes, why didn’t he just kill her and get it over with? Instead, he kept bringing her food. The smell of the soup alone reminded her of her body’s reaction to it. And already her insides burned. The nausea had never left. For hours it continued, like being seasick on a cruise and not being anywhere near land. She couldn’t think about it, nor could she feel anything else. So when he sat down next to her and started showing her his collection, she could only stare right through him and pretend to be interested.

He was the little boy again, excited and anxious, as if bringing his show-and-tell projects to share with her. Each one more hideous than the next and threatening to make her vomit, though there couldn’t possibly be anything left inside her stomach. She tried not to think about the blobs as pieces of human beings. She tried not to think about the fact that he had taken them from their owners.

He was showing her something in a large jar with a white lid. She refused to look closely, not allowing her eyes to focus on what appeared to be a dirty yellow glob of fatty tissue.

“This one was a surprise,” he told her, holding it up at her eye level. “I knew an alcoholic’s liver would look abnormal but this…” He was smiling and explaining it as if it were a prize he had won in some competition. “They say a normal liver has the same texture and color as calf’s liver. You know, like you can buy at the supermarket. Actually, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to eat calf’s liver. That’s just gross.” He turned the jar slowly around as if giving her a full view. “See, the alcohol causes that discoloration.”

He got up to put the jar on one of the top shelves, and Joan hoped the presentation was over. He came back, stopping at the food tray. Oh, dear God, she couldn’t handle him force-feeding her again. She simply couldn’t survive another spoonful. But he left the bowl and picked up the brown paper bag that he had brought in with him on the tray. He sat down beside her and took another jar out of the bag. It looked like an ordinary twelve-ounce jelly jar. But it didn’t look like jelly. The liquid was clear, like in the other jars. And like the other jars, something was floating inside.

“This is my newest acquisition,” he told her, twirling it in front of her. Then he finally held it still and so close to her face that she couldn’t avoid recognizing the two floating, bright blue eyeballs. “Amazing, isn’t it, that these couldn’t see except with really thick glasses.”

I
t was after midnight.

He threw the mop in the corner, only getting angrier when it started an avalanche of gardening tools. He emptied the bucket down the floor drain, holding his breath while he sprayed at the vomit, yellow mucuslike chunks that looked all too familiar from a childhood of buckets kept by his bedside. He was tired of her being sick all the time.

Yes, he had planned it. Yes, he had wanted her to be sick. He wanted her to see how much control he had over her. He wanted it and yet it still repulsed him. He should have made her clean up her own mess. Clean it up like his mother had made him clean up his messes.

He should have been feeling strong and in control, especially with his newest acquisition. Instead, his own stomach ached despite gagging down half a bottle of the chalky crap. That stupid so-called medicine promised to prevent his nausea. He could no longer count on it. Why didn’t it work? Why was everything and everyone working against him?

He wanted Joan Begley to see, to understand what control he had. He wanted her weak and helpless. It had worked all those years for his mother. She had maintained control, first over his father and then over him. Why couldn’t it work for him? But he hated the mess.
Hated, hated, hated it!

He grabbed a meat cleaver from the workbench and slammed it into the wooden surface. Raised it and sent it into the wood again. Another chop. Another and another.

He shoved the meat cleaver aside. The wooden bench had plenty of cuts and slits, splinters and raw wounds from other angry bouts. It had been his father’s workbench and had been pristine until the day he died. Yet he had taken his father’s precious workbench, his workshop, his escape, and turned it into his own escape. And it had been an excellent escape. The only place he allowed his true emotions to come out. It had become his secret vault, protecting and absorbing and withstanding all the hurt, the pain, the anger, as well as the feeling of victory and sometimes even providing him with a sense of control.

He turned and leaned his back against the bench, allowing himself to take in the sights and smells of the magic workshop. The smells he loved: fresh sawdust, gasoline and WD-40—remnants of his father’s hideaway and smells that reminded him of his father—were, unfortunately, long ago replaced by the smells of his own escape: caked blood, rotting bits of flesh, formaldehyde, ammonia and now vomit. The only one of that list that bothered him, that repulsed him, was the smell of vomit.

He admired his father’s collection of tools, a strange and dazzling assortment hanging on the wall by pegs and hooks in organized rows. He had added the old meat hooks, boning knives and meat cleavers that now hung next to crescent wrenches, pry bars and hacksaws. Otherwise, he kept the wall of tools exactly the way his father had left it, paying tribute to the painstaking organization by cleaning and replacing the items after each use. So, too, had he kept the handy vises attached to the workbench in the same spots, along with the bone saw and the huge roll of white butcher-block paper resting in its own contraption with a sleek metal blade, sharp enough to slide through the paper with only the slightest touch of the fingertips.

In the corner was an old, battered chest-size freezer, gray scratches in the enamel like wounds and a low, constant hum that sounded like a cat purring. It had also been his father’s, used back then for premium cuts of meat and trout or bass from infrequent fishing trips. After his father’s death, he began using it as his first container, before he knew how to preserve his treasures. Quickly it filled up. Now it was one of several, with one next door and another at the house.

The shelves on the back wall were his addition, too, as were the vials, mason and jelly jars, crocks, glass tubes, plastic containers, fish tanks and wide-mouth bottles. All were immaculately clean, waiting to store his prizes. Even the cheap, store-bought pickle jars sparkled, not a trace of their brand labels left to block the view.

The top shelf held his own proud assortment of tools, shiny scalpels, X-Acto knives and blades, forceps, stainless steel probes and basins in different sizes and shapes. Most he had stolen one by one from work so that they wouldn’t be missed.

Yes, he was proud of his workshop. Here, he felt in control. Despite the smell of her vomit turning his stomach, here, he never got sick. This was where he cut out other people’s pain, their abnormalities, their deformities, their bragging rights, and kept them for himself.

All through his childhood his sickness had been so obscure. He could never point to a bum leg or heart defect or a precious tumor and say, “See, this is what makes me sick to my stomach.” Had he been able to do so, they wouldn’t have dared to doubt him, to whisper about him in hospital corners, to suggest he “get counseling.”

They wouldn’t have dared to laugh at him and point and snicker when he asked to be dismissed from class. They wouldn’t have dared to call him weak and silly. If only he had had one cancerous tumor, one deformed limb to point to, they wouldn’t have dared call him anything but brave and strong, a little soldier instead of a whiny brat.

These people with their claims to pain made him angry, made him jealous, made him crazy with envy. They could complain all they wanted and no one told them to buck up and shut up. And they didn’t even realize the priceless treasures they possessed. Fools. All of them fools.

And so he cut them, slicing out that which made them different, made them special, that which gave them the right to complain and brag. He cut out their prizes and made them his own. It gave him power. It gave him control.

That’s what he needed to do with Joan Begley. He needed to do exactly as he set out to do in the beginning. That was the only way he could gain control over her. But what would he use?

He examined the tools and scratched at his jaw. He wasn’t even sure what it was that Joan possessed. Where would a hormone deficiency be located? Was it in the pituitary gland? That would be on the underside of the brain. He might need a drill and the bone saw. Or perhaps it was the thyroid gland, which would be a simple slit of the throat. Although, it could be one of the adrenal glands. Where the hell were they located? Somewhere over the kidneys, perhaps? He grabbed the illustrated medical dictionary off the top shelf and began flipping pages.

As he browsed the index, his fidgeting fingers found a boning knife, the curved blade razor sharp. And suddenly, he found himself hoping it was the thyroid. In fact, he thought he remembered her mentioning the thyroid. Yes, that would be good. After cleaning up her vomit over and over again, he wouldn’t mind slitting Joan Begley’s throat.

I
t was after midnight.

He threw the mop in the corner, only getting angrier when it started an avalanche of gardening tools. He emptied the bucket down the floor drain, holding his breath while he sprayed at the vomit, yellow mucuslike chunks that looked all too familiar from a childhood of buckets kept by his bedside. He was tired of her being sick all the time.

Yes, he had planned it. Yes, he had wanted her to be sick. He wanted her to see how much control he had over her. He wanted it and yet it still repulsed him. He should have made her clean up her own mess. Clean it up like his mother had made him clean up his messes.

He should have been feeling strong and in control, especially with his newest acquisition. Instead, his own stomach ached despite gagging down half a bottle of the chalky crap. That stupid so-called medicine promised to prevent his nausea. He could no longer count on it. Why didn’t it work? Why was everything and everyone working against him?

He wanted Joan Begley to see, to understand what control he had. He wanted her weak and helpless. It had worked all those years for his mother. She had maintained control, first over his father and then over him. Why couldn’t it work for him? But he hated the mess.
Hated, hated, hated it!

He grabbed a meat cleaver from the workbench and slammed it into the wooden surface. Raised it and sent it into the wood again. Another chop. Another and another.

He shoved the meat cleaver aside. The wooden bench had plenty of cuts and slits, splinters and raw wounds from other angry bouts. It had been his father’s workbench and had been pristine until the day he died. Yet he had taken his father’s precious workbench, his workshop, his escape, and turned it into his own escape. And it had been an excellent escape. The only place he allowed his true emotions to come out. It had become his secret vault, protecting and absorbing and withstanding all the hurt, the pain, the anger, as well as the feeling of victory and sometimes even providing him with a sense of control.

He turned and leaned his back against the bench, allowing himself to take in the sights and smells of the magic workshop. The smells he loved: fresh sawdust, gasoline and WD-40—remnants of his father’s hideaway and smells that reminded him of his father—were, unfortunately, long ago replaced by the smells of his own escape: caked blood, rotting bits of flesh, formaldehyde, ammonia and now vomit. The only one of that list that bothered him, that repulsed him, was the smell of vomit.

He admired his father’s collection of tools, a strange and dazzling assortment hanging on the wall by pegs and hooks in organized rows. He had added the old meat hooks, boning knives and meat cleavers that now hung next to crescent wrenches, pry bars and hacksaws. Otherwise, he kept the wall of tools exactly the way his father had left it, paying tribute to the painstaking organization by cleaning and replacing the items after each use. So, too, had he kept the handy vises attached to the workbench in the same spots, along with the bone saw and the huge roll of white butcher-block paper resting in its own contraption with a sleek metal blade, sharp enough to slide through the paper with only the slightest touch of the fingertips.

In the corner was an old, battered chest-size freezer, gray scratches in the enamel like wounds and a low, constant hum that sounded like a cat purring. It had also been his father’s, used back then for premium cuts of meat and trout or bass from infrequent fishing trips. After his father’s death, he began using it as his first container, before he knew how to preserve his treasures. Quickly it filled up. Now it was one of several, with one next door and another at the house.

The shelves on the back wall were his addition, too, as were the vials, mason and jelly jars, crocks, glass tubes, plastic containers, fish tanks and wide-mouth bottles. All were immaculately clean, waiting to store his prizes. Even the cheap, store-bought pickle jars sparkled, not a trace of their brand labels left to block the view.

The top shelf held his own proud assortment of tools, shiny scalpels, X-Acto knives and blades, forceps, stainless steel probes and basins in different sizes and shapes. Most he had stolen one by one from work so that they wouldn’t be missed.

Yes, he was proud of his workshop. Here, he felt in control. Despite the smell of her vomit turning his stomach, here, he never got sick. This was where he cut out other people’s pain, their abnormalities, their deformities, their bragging rights, and kept them for himself.

All through his childhood his sickness had been so obscure. He could never point to a bum leg or heart defect or a precious tumor and say, “See, this is what makes me sick to my stomach.” Had he been able to do so, they wouldn’t have dared to doubt him, to whisper about him in hospital corners, to suggest he “get counseling.”

They wouldn’t have dared to laugh at him and point and snicker when he asked to be dismissed from class. They wouldn’t have dared to call him weak and silly. If only he had had one cancerous tumor, one deformed limb to point to, they wouldn’t have dared call him anything but brave and strong, a little soldier instead of a whiny brat.

These people with their claims to pain made him angry, made him jealous, made him crazy with envy. They could complain all they wanted and no one told them to buck up and shut up. And they didn’t even realize the priceless treasures they possessed. Fools. All of them fools.

And so he cut them, slicing out that which made them different, made them special, that which gave them the right to complain and brag. He cut out their prizes and made them his own. It gave him power. It gave him control.

That’s what he needed to do with Joan Begley. He needed to do exactly as he set out to do in the beginning. That was the only way he could gain control over her. But what would he use?

He examined the tools and scratched at his jaw. He wasn’t even sure what it was that Joan possessed. Where would a hormone deficiency be located? Was it in the pituitary gland? That would be on the underside of the brain. He might need a drill and the bone saw. Or perhaps it was the thyroid gland, which would be a simple slit of the throat. Although, it could be one of the adrenal glands. Where the hell were they located? Somewhere over the kidneys, perhaps? He grabbed the illustrated medical dictionary off the top shelf and began flipping pages.

As he browsed the index, his fidgeting fingers found a boning knife, the curved blade razor sharp. And suddenly, he found himself hoping it was the thyroid. In fact, he thought he remembered her mentioning the thyroid. Yes, that would be good. After cleaning up her vomit over and over again, he wouldn’t mind slitting Joan Begley’s throat.