disciple (ch. 18)

by Tom Stuckey

18

To be fair to Billy, I could understand his desire to escape. If I were 20 again I would perhaps have had the same desire, but now in my 40’s it deemed to be unreasonable, if not undesirable. What is out there for Billy may not be very desirable, there is the cold and wet moors, possibly wolves, and even a high chance of hypothermia and starvation. If he did survive all this and found civilisation, what would he hope to find? There would undoubtably be more hurt, loneliness and madness, but he would do it all under his own volition. It was clear that what society feared most was Billy’s volition. Now that he was unconscious, it gave the rest of us a chance to finish our rice puddings in peace, a reward for being good citizens, and a kind of harmony amongst the docile resurfaced. The big flat screen TV had survived Billy, and a home restoration programme was playing, where a team goes into a home, in this case an elderly persons home, and guts it of all prior existence and fills it again with all the mod cons. A smiley tanned man was showing the elderly women around her new home, and it was clear that she was sad at the results, but she was too polite to say anything. The adverts rolled. I hoped to be a cantankerous old mule that kicked out at this sort of thing till the end. 

It was nearly time for my session with Victoria, and this made me smile. I had come to realise that there was no us and them, and that was maybe another reason I did not try to escape. The staff here did their best, it was true Dr Richards was maybe a sociopath, but the nurses generally held him in check, and he learnt to hide his sociopathy well. By all accounts he was a big fan of the arts.

Victoria was wearing a muted yellow suit today and it showed her figure well, she had runners legs and womanly hips. She stared at me intensely, and I already knew that this session would be something, it was a day when the electric of the sky was trying to break through the thick blanket of mist, there was always clear sky beyond.

“I like your suit.” I said.

“Thank you Thomas. How did you get on with the Autogenic training and storytelling?”

“Quite well on both accounts.”

“Oh good I’m glad, maybe you could share the stories with me?”

“Maybe.”

“Well today I’d like to start by checking in with you, see if you are alright after witnessing the incident with Billy. It can be traumatising for the other patients to witness this.”

“Yes, I think that his trying disturbed me a bit.”

“His trying to escape?” She was more still in her seat today.

“Yes as a patient and a human being I was rooting for him, but as a believer in basic physics I was disheartened to see him try.”

“You think it would be better for Billy to be out there alone?”

“Alone? You think he feels a part of something in here?” She shifted a little, maybe to the other bum cheek.

“I think that he may not realise it but that we are trying to help him, yes.”

“The problem is your methods, reasoning and perceptions are all out of date.”

“And you know of more up to date and effective methods?”

“LOOK! The problem is you want Billy to be like you and Dr Richards, or at least a watered-down version, but at some point, maybe not be today, you will realise that there are people like Billy in the world whether you like it or not and there is not a damn thing you are going to do about it. This is not to say I do know what Billy needs, no man knows what another man needs, we just think we do and try to impose it through fear. But maybe I have more in common with Billy than you do.”

“And you think this way for yourself also? That we cannot help you.”

“I have come to accept my role in society, it is just the society we have built based on an industrial level of capitalism instead of one say rooted in spiritualism or free thinking. You would not go to India and try to lock up all the mad and deranged. The rich and powerful have sucked out all the spirit of the Billy's for their own private gains and now you need Billy, but Billy doesn’t need you. That’s where the imbalance, the disharmony lives. But you don't like what Billy has become, Bad Billy, but there are millions of Billies now and who knows maybe they will burn it all to the ground. They seem to be getting better organised now with the internet.”

“I need Billy?” You could see that this had shifted something deep inside her that she tried desperately to conceal it, but the truth always comes out, unless you are a high class sociopath, like Dr Richards.

“So that means that I need you?” She immediately regrated saying this, but now it seemed free thinking was winning.

“Yes you do and I need you, but I’m not entirely sure that this is what you wanted to do, you are a beautiful soul.” She took off her jacket and unbuttoned the top button of her shirt.

“You might be right, how did you know though?”

“You look upset in the knowledge that you helped sedate and lock a young man in a cell. You live on the moors, run in their great expanse, I think you know what it is like to be locked away in a confined space.” She looked upset, and I felt bad.

“Yes.” She cried, and I got up to give her a tissue. She tried to regain her composure somewhat.

“So you think, then, in your case you should of been left to roam Rome and cause riots, all because you think you have met a saint?” She had lost all emotional denial.

“How do you know that I didn’t meet a saint?”

“Because they are not REAL!” She let out a wail of sound and tears.

“And this is the result of having to live by your perception.” I got out of my chair and took her hand, and she looked at me with her big moist eyes that begged to break free from their prisons, what had they seen that she had denied? We hugged, and I could feel her heart beating fast against the slow thud of my own. 

Photo of Tom Stuckey

BIO: Tom is a writer from Devon in England.  His work can be found at A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Bristol Noir, Nut House Press, and Pulp Magazine. He is the author of The Canary in the Dream is Dead and The Sun Marches upon Us All. Learn more about Tom Stuckey at www.tomstuckey.com.