literature

The Writer

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Ward E has become my favorite part of the institution. It’s the only area where guards carry lethal weapons, and entering it at any hour instantly surrounds you with a salvo of implacable clamor mixed with the faint, acrid smell of sanitation equipment that never completely erases some of the stains its residents leave in fancy or fury. The place rattled the hell out of my nerves when I began my residency here, but that was quite some time ago. Now I always find myself called to Ward E with a minute welling of rational excitement, like an archaeologist beginning a dig. The chaos that meets me at its door each day has become nothing more than an old acquaintance.  

The particular case for which you are here proved to be unique as soon as I entered the ward that afternoon. Allen, the guard stationed at the security checkpoint, usually waves me on with whatever product of the daily take-out run he happens to be holding. I was surprised to find him standing, waiting for me with the inmate file normally placed on the table in the interrogation room.

“Hey, doc,” he said, the customary greeting. “I’ve got your file for you here.”

I set down my briefcase and took the manila folder from his hand. “What’s this?” I asked. “Do they finally have you running bellhop around here?”

He grabbed his belt and gave a small chuckle. “Nah,” he said. “Me and the boys just think it would be better if you didn’t take any paper in with this guy. He’s not too hard to handle, but he goes completely mental at the sight of the stuff. Or pencils, pens—the guy even tried to make a pen of himself all over the wall once! Never seen anything like it.”

“And I’ve never heard anything like it,” I replied. I thumbed through the file and handed it back. “There isn’t a great deal in there.”

“There’s not a whole lot to the guy,” Allen replied, turning and tossing the file on his desk. “Norman Potter, 34. Lived with his mom ‘till he offed her, then turned himself in. A real winner.”

“At least it’s easy to memorize,” I said. I thanked Allen and began to walk past him, but he stopped me with a hand to my shoulder.

“You might want to leave those here, too,” he said, pointing to the pens poking out of my shirt pocket. “And your notebook.”

“Right.”

My notebook and pens had become such parts of my daily routine that they had failed to even register during Allen’s warning. I handed the pens to the guard, then removed the slightly worn and crinkled pad from my case and surrendered it as well.

“Hope this doesn’t inconvenience you too much,” Allen said, “but you’ll get a lot more out of him without ‘em, believe me.”

“Nothing to worry about,” I said. “I still have my tape recorder. I do ask you not to go peeking inside my notebook, though.”

Allen arched an eyebrow with a grin. “Why not? You been taking down head notes on me, doc?”

“Maybe, but I mostly don’t want any of that appearing on my pages,” I replied, gesturing to the wilted remains of a half-eaten Whopper.

Allen laughed and gave a mock salute. “Gotcha, doc. I’ll keep it to the utmost of immaculation.”

I entered the interrogation room, lovingly known as the “board room” to other staff in the ward. It’s simple, white-walled, and nearly taken up by a long, executive-style table. It adds a small sense of grace to an otherwise sterile, fluorescent-lit box but its real purpose is separation. The length limits my exposure to whatever ill wind might be blowing across at me from the other end.

Mr. Potter was already seated at the opposite end of the table, two guards standing vigil behind him as protocol demands. He was slouched a little, pitched to the right, staring at some unknown interest on the wall. As I took my seat and set my suitcase on the table, his flat, straw-like hair gave a sudden shift and I found his gray eyes staring intently at me from beneath puffy lids. His entire face, in fact, had a slightly swollen, leathered look that conveyed an age older than his own. There was a certain energy beneath it, however, that seemed to build as my rummaging in the case continued. He leaned forward, bringing his hands out from under the table, and I finally understood what Allen had meant when he said Potter had tried to make a pen of himself. Both of his hands were wrapped in gauze, his fingers bound tightly together, and a hint of red had seeped its way through the white pores that covered the fingertips of his right hand. I found and prepared my tape recorder, which I set out a few feet in front of me, and set my case on the floor out of his view. He stared back and forth from the recorder to me until I clasped my hands on the table. He seemed to get the signal, as his anticipation drained and he resumed his observation of the wall.

“Mr. Norman Potter,” I said, “I am Dr. Leonard Pratt, chief psychological analyst here at Belleview. We’ll be seeing each other relatively often, so I hope we can get acquainted quickly. Would you mind if I called you Norm?”

His eyes shifted towards mine, then back up at the wall. Finally, he gave a sluggish, bobbing nod that seemed more to aid his own contemplation than to be any response.

“‘Norm’ is a title for someone oafish and foolhardy,” he said, “but I give you the liberty if you choose.”

“Thank you,” I replied, deciding to stick with ‘Norman’ in the future. “Do you know why you are here?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“Because I’m a writer.” He said it simply, matter-of-factly.

“Really?” I asked, feigning ignorance that he might have any interest in the subject. “The records I’ve seen say that you delivered sandwiches.”

“That was my job. To support my writing.”

“And your mother?”

I had finally mentioned something more interesting to him than the wall. He turned fully towards me.

“Most of it went to her, yes. After my father left for good 12 years ago, she proclaimed it my duty as ‘the only man remaining in the house’ to be its provider. I never found anything that paid much, but I never wanted to. Anything just to keep her off my back until I was able to sell a manuscript.”

“Were you ever published?”

He swabbed a hand back and forth across the table. “I had a couple short stories published in B-class journals. I only received free issues as payment, but I knew I could go further. Every night when I came home from work I went to the office I had made in the cellar to employ my craft. When I wasn’t trying to place some half-vision or revelation I had during the day I studied the guides on how to hone my skills; a diet… or regiment… a regiment of Strunk and White, Zinnser, even Stephen King. I had many things I was meant to write,”
His hand stopped.
“but she always managed to kill them.”

“Your mother?”

“Yes.” His eyes flashed. “She never took my writing seriously; always complaining that I never spent time with her. Every time I sat down with an idea I could hear her above me. Watching Wheel of Fortune with the volume up, chopping something in the kitchen. And talking to her worthless home-squatting friends! The way she paced through the house while on the phone! God, it was like a giant rat scurrying under the floorboards! And if it wasn’t that ruckus—din—above me, she was constantly summoning me upstairs to run some meaningless little errand or answer some idiotic question about the remote control.” He shook a mittened hand towards me. “It whittled away—decayed!--my writing. I forgot perfect lines, skipped areas in my proofreading. I had asked her to be more quiet—more understanding—but she balked at me! Said it was still her name under the deed, and she could run the damn house however she wanted. She knew what she was doing to me!”

The guards looked at each other, but I gave them a quick, reassuring glance. Potter must have seen it, because he looked over his shoulder. He turned back and exhaled deeply.

“I’m sure you are aware that I killed her,” he said.

I nodded. “Yes, I am.”

“I tried not to, at first,” he said, staring down at the table. “I thought that, if I could get rid of every other distraction under my control that I would be better able to bear the weight of those I could not; that I could still fit her in my life. I began small; removing the radio, deleting games on my computer. When that didn’t work, I uprooted my garden behind the house and removed all the art from my walls. It still wasn’t enough. I deleted everything but the word processor on the computer; I threw out the clock; I even dumped...” He rubbed his arm insecurely. “I discarded my books. To believe now that I had been deceived into thinking they were an enemy….”

“And none of it helped?”

“No. If anything, that woman yanked taut every bit of slack I made, and then some! She cornered me with endless questions of my actions, chiding…ridic—mocking me relentlessly for locking myself in what she called my ‘shell’! I could hear her talk about me in disgust over the phone! The TV became louder every day! I would curl up in silence downstairs, thinking desperately to remember my ideas, afraid that they would shatter as soon as I touched the keyboard or paper.”
He paused, raising his face, the corners of his mouth slightly turned up.
“And then came the day I quit the job.”

He was well past the point of warming up. “Go on,” I said.

“You could call it my last stand. I didn’t tell her, of course. I just went to the cellar and locked the door behind me without a word; for once, she didn’t say a word. I listened closely, waiting for any of her needless racket to begin, but all I heard was perfection. It was silent as a tomb. …No, that’s cliché.

“And poor foreshadowing?” I took a risk in saying. Thankfully, he did not take the remark poorly, flashing a brief smirk.

“True,” he said. “I took the silence as a sign that I had finally defeated her; that I could finally begin my own life.”

He gritted his teeth.

“Then the phone rang. I heard her pick it up from the coffee table. I heard her unnecessarily high, nasal greeting. I heard her tone drop. I heard her making angered, staccato laps around the dining room. I heard her terse goodbye. Then I heard her at the stairs. She started banging on the cellar door, yelling—screeching—for me to open it.

He grimaced, rubbing one hand over the other as if he wanted to wring them.

“Do you know how a sound, when it reaches a certain frequency, is capable of destroying crystal? She finally hit just that tone on my patience with her damned banshee shrieking! Before I was even aware of myself I had bounded to the top of the stairs and thrown open the door. She was there in full form, her graying, thinning hair up in her filthy, crude bun, crooked teeth sneering at me, and that phone—that goddamned phone!—pointed at me like she wanted to run me through!”

“What did she want?”

He emitted a puff of exasperation. “I don’t know. I never heard anything she said; my mind—my intent—was centered on that phone. I shot out and grabbed her wrist and gave it a wrenching twist. I heard a loud snap, and the phone dropped and exploded into parts on the floor.”

His fingers struggled to flex on some impulse beneath his bandages.

“That one simple move… it was euphoric. I could only stand for a second and marvel at what I had done. Her banshee shrieking brought me back to the moment, but even that horrible sound was tinged with liberation. My hand still clenching her wrist, I gave one firm jerk and threw her past me down the cellar steps.”

“Is that what killed--”

“It ended the shrieking.”

It is at such a crucial point with a patient that I have found it most informative to study their eyes. All I found in his as I looked into them at that moment was deep, unsettling complacency.

“So you chose writing over your own blood?”

His eyes narrowed as he cocked his head to the side. “And why not?” he said. “Did I owe this woman anything? She owed me! Owed me pages upon pages of worlds that I sacrificed like some fearful savage to keep the myth of her god-world intact!” He leaned back in the chair. “The floor of that cellar was littered with the aborted fetuses of her handiwork. She was just another body on the pile.”

I blinked. “If you won your peace, then why did you turn yourself in?”

He stared through me, wide-eyed, as if beholding some terror behind me.

“Because,” he said softly, “Silencing that woman did not bring me peace. It brought me vigor—an energy. My spirit was at its apex; my senses primed. I ran down the steps and over her rag body, not wanting to waste a precious drop of that primal core of all coursing its way through my veins!”

A laugh sputtered out of him, growing in intensity until it became a wheezing, grinding mix of grief and hilarity, as though his soul were being squeezed through an accordion. Even the stern visages of the guards were unsettled at its sound.

“But there was nothing!” he gasped. “I had nothing! Not a single letter was born onto the screen at my finest hour! That woman… the biggest bane to my worth was not her annoyance, but her holding the hidden key to all my inspiration, whether I knew it or not! I failed to defeat her, even in death! That’s why I turned myself in, doctor. I was broken!”

He turned back to the wall, eyes closed, and gave a small cackle.

“But now that I have had time to analyze my… my consequences, let us say, I now realize that it is the ultimate workable irony. A gift disguised as a curse, laid out perfectly in front of me, that I feared sampling until now.”

He turned to me, and I could see the same fire in his eyes that had been present before we began.

“Why am I still here, doctor? I can write again; I’m cured! The story is within me; a part of me. I no longer fear its fraility. All I need are the tools to make us work again. Is it not your duty as a healer to give them to me?!”

At this he leapt out of his chair and made a break for, I’m assuming, the briefcase he knew lay under my chair. The guards were faster, gratefully, and began to drag him away even before my nerves could function well enough to remove me from my seat.

“Our time is up for today,” I said to Potter. “We will meet again soon.”

“Damn you!” he cried, his face red and blazing, sweat dripping from his hair as he struggled. “She’s telling you to do this, isn’t she?! Can’t you see it?! I’m cured!” He weakened, letting the guards guide him. “I’m cured…” he repeated until he was out of earshot.

Subsequent visits with Mr. Potter affirmed to me that his craft was firmly attached to his soul. After a couple weeks of long thought on the matter, I finally agreed to have him dictate his story to an intern outside his cell. I thought it would be private and therapeutic, but if it had been you wouldn’t be here now. The manuscript your were sent to retrieve is lying on my desk, complete and unedited. You are free to take it, but please remind your editor that I still do not condone this action and therefore also turn down his offer of writing the foreword. If it weren’t for the board of directors’ approval—only due to the promise your house made of royalties to the institution—I would’ve locked away the spillage of Potter’s mind indefinitely.

I am confident I can treat Potter’s disorders; his paranoia, psychosis, and delusions. But that “craft” of his has served to be an impenetrable barrier surrounding them. I’m almost ready to declare it a disorder in itself! And now your publishing house has come in to sensationalize it and spread it to the world. I fear its consequences, to be honest. Will this truly help to cure him, or will it merely be a catalyst for those with the same sickly mix of humors as he has? Please do me a favor once you return. Study the clients of your house and report to me what you see inside them after you read that manuscript. Perhaps your world is as much an institution as mine is.
The "project." A firm step away from the usual writing I try to inject humor into, and one of my longest writings ever. It's not quite Horror, not quite Perspective. Just a sort of psychological... thing.

All comments and advice appreciated, because you can't convince me that I know what I'm doing.
© 2004 - 2024 triptychr
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Yoggington's avatar
I think the best thing about this is the way you have built Norman's (bloody psychos, its always a Norman, isn't it?) character as a writer, the way he keeps rephrasing, as if he's proofreading his conversation. That sudden "…No, that’s cliché." being the most obvious.
You've given him touches of humanity, the games, his books, the annoyance at the remote, and we all have annoying mothers, don't we? I suppose being a writer yourself helps give it this realism though I hope there's nothing Freudian going on here... . His slow slide into murder and madness seemed all the more believable because of this realism.
The Doctor, too, is well built. From his thoughts of the job and his friendliness with the gaurd to his interviewing techniques.

Despite this, I must agree with ~penultimatedishonest, it does drift off toward the end. The vague shift from the Doctor's internal monologue to the letter to the publishing house threw me a bit. It's a good idea, but just where does the letter start and the monologue end? How exactly you can address this I don't know. You're the writer, after all.

A thoroughly gripping read, and nice to see your wider range of skills on show.:clap: