by Chad Norton
E knew he was the only sane person left and it was driving him mad.
He sat cross-legged in dirty jeans on the garage floor and worked the knot in a clump of old wire. A silver nipple ring with a dangling happy face jumped in the center of the black star tattoo on his chest as he muscled the thick wire into something more manageable. He tried to concentrate, focus on the matter at hand, but his thoughts wouldn’t let him. They reminded him that nobody saw what was going on – not his family, not the kids he used to know back in high school, not even the girls that wanted him. They were all too fucking gone.
E knew other people only saw what they thought they wanted to see. They chose the easiest route, the one without potholes, twists or excessive road kill, to end up with non-threatening, pre-fab conclusions about his reality and theirs.
He knew most people didn’t ask questions about him.
They didn’t pry. They whispered, they gossiped, they watched him from a distance and looked away when eyeballed. Their curiosity gave way to their goal of a life less affected, of tract homes and condos in cloned communities where German imports, SUVs and vehicles with soccer-mom-space battled for prize spots in warehouse-chain-store lots every weekend, all year long. Up and down every familiar street, he watched as identical Latino gardeners mowed lawns once a week and shimmering backyard pools reflected the sun with chlorine crystals also found in toxic spills.
E knew San Juan County was a warped, bland balance between ignorance and acceptance.
E was twenty-two and that was old enough to know that people wanted no unsettling surprises from “troublemakers” like him, no deviation from their stock-won status quo. They wanted to smile with capped-teeth and pre-cancerous tans, posing behind their perfect 2-point-5 kids and golden retriever puppies and invite neighbors they couldn’t really stand over for bar-be-ques to compare insurance policies and golf scores. They did it in an attempt to find some minor but damaging insight that suggested their lives were more Leave-It-To-Beaver-wonderful than the mirror-like family next door. They wanted the beige safety of uniform masses even though basic human nature demanded that they quietly pound their chests in fey dominance.
It gave E headaches when he thought about it.
He knew people in Rancho Del Rey and places like it weren’t normal. They were brainwashed by the government and trained by Big Brother corporations and a culture of omnipresent marketing, maybe even by aliens. The entity at the controls was vague, but the result clear: a lifestyle of complacency beyond individual reason or sanity. E saw people as lemmings convinced they all wanted the same painfully generic, robotically functional life featured in commercials, sitcoms and big screen romantic comedies. And with millions of sound bytes, press releases, national trends and perfectly edited relationships reinforcing these beliefs on a daily basis, there was little room or tolerance left for people like E. As an alleged psychopath/pyromaniac/rapist, he fit into this synthetically idyllic world like a leaky barrel of biohazard in Eden.
E knew people didn’t want to know him.
Only the medical community welcomed E with open, albeit greedy, arms. He knew he represented holidays in Hawaii, cocaine binges and turbo Porsches. He paid for hundreds of square footage their homes didn’t need, slips for sailboats they couldn’t navigate and jewelry for affairs their marriage contracts stated they shouldn’t have. Every appointment scheduled for E was another nugget in some doctor’s goldmine, every counseling session a mini-mental lottery and every hospital stay, well, that was the stuff medical conglomerate dreams were made of. E’s problems, and all of the bills that they generated, had been helping to provide a Rich and Famous lifestyle to more than a handful of MDs, shrinks and specialists his entire life.
E knew he was only the one who didn’t benefit from their care.
He realized it years ago, when the chaos between the medical world and its theories and treatments came to a head with the battles of his day-to-day existence. The drugs they prescribed made him depressed or nervous. The shock treatments left him numb. And at home, the voices wouldn’t let him sleep. They filled his head with whispered questions and demands that led to his first spree of tortured pets. School became a personal hell of name-calling, sucker punches and lunchtime beatings until he broke big Ricky Schultz’ arm in two places and the abuse shifted to absolute neglect as his classmates refused to acknowledge him at all.
E’s mind was caught in the middle.
He wasn’t up to the job of processing and making sense of the nightmare swirling around him. He couldn’t reason. He couldn’t think. Sometimes he could barely speak. So E decided to simplify things and came up with the idea of reducing names and labels to single letters to make more room in his head, hoping to clear things up and calm things down. He told people his name was E. His sister Christina became C. And the family’s dog, whose name E never liked, was re-christened D. Other abbreviations followed and communication became especially challenging for those around him. Messages would be revealed letter by letter as if in a game show and he found some peace of mind just watching his various contestants squirm for the big prize – they were finally as confused as he was.
But sometimes even his custom language wasn’t enough. More and more, it was pain that brought order to things. Pain helped E remember what he wanted to remember, to focus his thoughts. Pain could paint vivid scenes even in a medicated fog. And when his skin gave way under the rust-crusted wire he dragged across his stomach, he saw a doctor’s office he visited when he was six years old.
E’s first thought was that it seemed like a movie.
“You think too much,” Dr. Manning said.
The big, bald man handed E a grape lollipop which he magically produced from inside a closed hand that only a moment earlier had been held up to display an empty palm. E put the whole thing in his mouth, wrapper and all, and jumped behind the doctor’s desk to spin in the high-backed leather chair.
Dr. Manning spoke to E’s parents. “It’s hyperactivity or ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder.”
The couple stared at their son from across the room where they stood near a dark, wooden bookcase stocked with medical journals, a child-size plastic brain with removable parts and a collection of ceramic Disney characters. E’s mom wore her yellow blazer and nametag from the realty office. She was misty-eyed. E’s dad had come from the golf course, a white belt held up his plaid pants. He looked at his gold wristwatch.
“What does that mean? What can we do?” E’s mom asked.
“It means Eric has trouble concentrating,” Dr. Manning said. “He’s got so much going on in his thoughts, it makes it hard for him to concentrate on the task at hand.”
The doctor gestured to a black leather couch near a shade-drawn window.
“Please,” he said.
E’s parents took seats a cushion-width apart while the boy knocked over a container of pencils and pens and began beating the desk blotter with the spilled contents. The doctor continued to stand.
“The kicking, the biting and hitting are just his way of acting out his frustration. He doesn’t understand why he can’t stay still or finish what he’s started and that can come out as anger at himself and others...”
Dr. Manning glanced over at E’s mounting activity. The child had discovered that the desk’s lamp worked nicely as a high-hat and was eyeing a snow globe paperweight.
“Unfortunately, his sister and his friends get caught in the middle,” he continued.
“So what happens next?” E’s dad returned the doctor’s attention to the couch. “How do we make him normal? Can’t we give him a pill or something?”
“Well, yes,” the doctor answered. “Yes we can.”
Dr. Manning bent down to retrieve a brochure from a cupboard below the bookshelf and handed it in the direction of E’s dad. But E’s mom reached out and took it from his hand.
“We can try this, Ritaloff,” the doctor said. “It’s proven to be very effective for children and adults with ADD.”
Back at the desk, the high-hat had ceased. E was shaking the snow globe and watching the Lilliputian fly fisherman inside work a tiny mountain stream in a blizzard of swirling, white plastic flakes.
“It’s a stimulant.” The doctor pulled a prescription pad from a pocket of his lab coat and began scribbling onto one of the small forms.
“Stimulant?” E’s dad scoffed. “Look at him. Does it look like he needs a stimulant?” The adults watched as E stopped shaking the snow globe just long enough to spin twice more in the chair and launch lollipop wrapper spit wads in an arching trajectory around the room. When he stopped abruptly and resumed the snow globe assault with both hands, his dad added, “He already looks coked to high hell.”
“Honey, be careful with the doctor’s things.” E’s mom spoke to her son from where she sat. Her face wore a tired smile and she tapped Dr. Manning’s forearm with her jittery hand. “I have to say, I can’t see how any kind of upper is what he needs.”
“You’d be surprised.” The doctor turned and set the prescription pad on the bookshelf and picked up the model brain. “What it does is stimulate the brain to help it focus. We’re not sure exactly how it works, but the running theory goes something like this.”
He indicated a point on the plastic frontal lobe with an index finger and then showed the side of the brain and poked at a spot near where an imaginary ear might exist.
“By concentrating more stimulation to certain areas of the brain, it overpowers interfering messages that are coming in. And that helps give people with ADD longer attention spans, so they can think more clearly.” He tossed the little brain to his other hand. “I’ve seen it do wonders.”
As if mimicking the doctor, E began to juggle the snow globe between his hands.
“What about side effects?” E’s mom listened to the doctor but her moist eyes watched the snow globe gain altitude catch after catch.
“Nah.” Dr. Manning dismissed her question as he faced the bookcase and set the brain back in place next to the prescription pad on the shelf. He bent slightly and scribbled more of the order onto the form. “Nothing to speak of. If he has a bad reaction, we’ll adjust the dose or prescribe something along with it to make him feel better.”
“So it’s not dangerous?” She shifted her gaze from E and stared at Dr. Manning’s broad, white back while E’s dad checked his watch again.
When he looked up from the dial, E’s father saw his son release the snow globe in a fastball pitch so graceful and devastating that, given different circumstances, it would have made him as proud as any father has a right to be. Instead, he mumbled, “Shit.”
Dr. Manning righted himself enough to pivot and half face E’s mom. He was mid-way around when he saw the tiny, idyllic mountain scene careening toward him like a kitschy kamikaze.
The doctor’s neck gave an audible crack as he jerked his head out of the way, but that sound was nothing compared to the explosion that followed. The snow globe hit the plastic brain at full speed and, together, they rocketed further into the bookshelf and shattered Disney characters one after another. The ceramic shrapnel bounced off the wall and came back at E’s parents and the doctor in a cascade of needle-sharp shapes while the snow globe forced itself half an inch into the wall and blew apart in a gun blast of wet, glistening fragments. The brain fared better. It ricocheted its way out of the bookshelf and came to a wobbly rest near E’s mom’s black pumps. It was generally intact except for its medulla oblongata, which landed in her lap.
Speechless, she clutched her blouse and slowly lifted the top portion of the plastic brain’s stem and offered it to Dr. Manning. The doctor accepted the gray-blue piece with his free hand and raised a handkerchief to dab at a curvy slice above his nonexistent hairline with his other. Red droplets had fallen from the cut and splattered and spread in the absorbent white fabric of his coat. One of Goofy’s sharply severed ears sat on the doctor’s shoulder, shiny with blood.
“Dangerous?” Dr. Manning turned his head toward the boy playing behind the abused desk. “Not as dangerous as he is.”
Young E spun in the chair and slashed his purple lollipop against the wall with every passing rotation. The hard, sweet candy left marks like a wild cat that appeared to have no hope of being tamed.
But that was a long time ago. He didn't go to Dr. Manning anymore, or any other doctors for that matter. The medical profession had written Eric off, that's what his father had said. And that was alright with E. He didn't need doctors or friends or anyone. He had better things to do with his time, endeavors that they couldn't understand. They didn't dare. If they thought too much about what he was capable of, if they worried too much about what they might have done, a medicine or treatment they should have tried, it would have given life to the nightmare they wanted so desperately not to see.
"Fuck 'em," he thought. E always hated their poking and prodding and endless misdiagnoses. He never liked their drugs dulling his mind or his imagination. He preferred to be clearheaded–like today. And as he sat there in the cluttered garage surrounded by boxes of Christmas lights and inflatable lawn characters, his father's golf clubs, tools and a grand selection of childhood toys that sat silent and dusty from years of little use, he realized he was happy. Yes, actually happy.
He was happy as he tightened the last wire onto the detonator. So happy, he smiled.