Sirius Rising

Been very focused on recovery as of late. Finally ended the project that had been sucking my soul over the winter, and came back feeling like I had just returned from the war zone. Shell-shocked.

Stopped writing for a while, needing to get away from words and sharpen my skills elsewhere. Photography seems to have stepped up to the plate as the elsewhere (or perhaps elsewhat) for some solitary visual exploration.

Figured I’d share it here.

I don’t have voices in my head, I have imaginary friends.

“Too many bats in the belfry, eh?”

The question came from a small man in the scrubs-and-robe garb of an inmate. He looked a little like a garden gnome, or maybe one of the dwarfs from the Disney movies.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Rydell. Crazy fucker.” The gnome giggled a bit at that. “Too many walnuts in his fishbowl.” He tapped the side of his head.

Rydell. George Rydell, the man who had made headlines about a year ago, after a vicious killing spree where he tore apart a family of four, and ate parts of their brains. His story had been consistent from the beginning, that there was a creature that lived inside his head, and told him to kill this family, that they were evil, and their evil needed to be consumed. Crazy fucker seemed about as apt a description as any.

“Termites in the wheelhouse,” the gnome giggled again. “Too many badgers on his rooftop!”

“Come along, Joseph.” An orderly took the small man gently by the elbow. “Sorry about that, doctor…”

“Fitzgerald. Howard.”

“New here, I take it?”

“Visiting, actually. I’m here to give the court evaluation on George Rydell.”

The orderly shuddered. “Oh, man. I don’t envy you one bit. Creepy son of a bitch if you ask me.”

“Walrus in the cathouse!” The gnome was cackling merrily. The orderly rolled his eyes.

“Let me get Joseph here tucked away, and I’ll let Doctor Branson know you’re here.”

“Thanks.”

Out of sight, out of mind, I thought.

“Invisible!  Insane!” More merry cackling.

I looked around a bit. The Mayville State Mental Institution had something of a reputation, mostly from the last century. It had been a time when most of the patients were either destitute or forgotten by their families, put away where they would not have to deal with the strangeness and difficulty. One of the doctors had done experiments in treatment that today would be considered barbaric, possibly even torture. When he died from a massive brain hemorrhage, his work had been uncovered, and while he had maintained copious and detailed notes, the horrendous nature of his work had been seen as mad and evil, and much of what he had done was destroyed. His laboratory space was sealed off in a basement of one of the wings that was now unused due to budget cutbacks. These days it seemed quite normal, if a bit shabby. The place was clean, the patients that I could see in the waiting room looked physically healthy, and there was a mild tang of disinfectant in the air.

A large man in a business suit strode up to me, hand extended. Dark hair, slight gray at the temples, and a kind expression on his face.

“You must be Doctor Fitzgerald. I’m Carl Branson, the head of this facility.”

I took his hand and shook it. Firm grip, but not crushing. Confident, but not egotistical. It seemed like we might get along.

“Howard, please.”

“And call me Carl. Come back to my office and we’ll get you settled in.”

I had to stride a bit fast to keep up with his 6-foot four inch frame. Put him next to the garden gnome, and they’d make quite a picture. I grinned at the mental image.

Doctor Branson’s office was about what you’d expect: dark wood paneling everywhere, old books lining the wall behind his desk on both sides, framing the old mahogany desk in a nearly presidential manner. A few nondescript paintings hung on the walls, along with a few sets of pictures of the old buildings that made up the campus of the institution. A small, low table and chairs made up the other end of the room, a few magazines, mostly medical journals stacked as if they’d been read over time. The only thing that looked really out of place was the flat screen monitor and keyboard on his desk.

“If you will give me a minute to clear my schedule,” said Dr. Branson, and I nodded to him.

“Take your time.”

I pored over the pictures. They showed a series of events taking place at Mayville, some holiday photos, one of a huge Christmas tree in an ornate visitor’s lobby with curving staircases on either side, dated “Christmas 1926” in flowing ink on the border. A few photos of treatment facilities, taken when they were new, and probably at the finish of their construction.

“I’m afraid that as director, my duties are largely administrative anymore. A bit sad, really, but we do have a good staff here.”

“From what I’ve seen, everything seems well-run.”

“Thank you, Howard.” The big man smiled. “Please, let’s have a seat.”

He gestured toward the low table, and I sat in one of the plush leather chairs. The smell of aged leather and wood surrounded me as I sank into the chair.

“Oh, this is comfortable.’

“Yes indeed,” said Dr. Branson. “I managed to pull them out of Dr. West’s wing a few years ago. It would have been a shame to let all of these go to waste, when a little cleaning and touch-up was all they needed.”

“All of this came out of Dr. West’s laboratory?”

“His private offices, but yes. Would you like some coffee? Tea?”

I looked around with renewed interest. “No, thanks, I’m fine. I’m surprised that there was anything left, I thought the old guard purged everything to do with him and his research.”

He laughed. “Not really, they just took his files, and closed and locked the doors on everything else. Pity about the files, really.”

“I’d have thought the Board would have some issue with dragging out those memories.”

“They probably would, if they knew about it.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down in the chair facing me. “Silly sentimentality, really. Besides, this saved thousands of dollars on the budget that is better spent on caring for my patients.”

“Can’t argue with that.” I looked back on the bookshelf. “Did the books come from Dr. West’s office, too?”

Doctor Branson stiffened slightly. “Some of them. Some of the more interesting ones, anyway, maybe a third of what you see there. The rest are my own collection. “But,” he said, the warm smile returning to his face. “You’re not here to peruse my library, Howard.”

No, indeed.

“You are correct, Carl.” I took the court papers from the folder I had in my briefcase. “The court order for an evaluation of mental competence to stand trial for one George Rydell, late of the Mayville State Mental Institution.”

Doctor Branson took the papers, put on a pair of reading glasses, and looked them over. “Fairly standard in these circumstances I suppose, and not entirely unexpected.”

“Can you tell me about him?”

He signed the last sheet of the document, handed it back to me, and took off his glasses thoughtfully.

“Fairly quiet, most of the time. We did keep him sedated when he first got here as is standard procedure with violent patients, but he really did not seem to continue with any violent episodes after his initial capture.”

“So he’s not currently sedated?”

“A low dose of Diazepam. Five milligrams, twice a day.”

“And he’s asymptomatic?”

“Quiet as a dormouse, really. He primarily just sits on his bed, staring out the window.”

“Does he talk?

“Only when spoken to. Really, he seems quite rational, relatively intelligent. He knows where he is, what year it is, and why he’s here.”

“Have you asked him about his crime?”

“Only to the extent that he admits to it entirely,” the Doctor shrugged. “With the direction of his ‘inner demon’.”

“Inner Demon?”

“It’s really better if you get the details from him yourself,” said Dr. Branson, standing. “I’ll take you to him now.”

Quiet and lucid. Things did not bode well for Mister Rydell. I stood up to follow the doctor.

“Oh, one thing Howard. Are you a religious man?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Good, good.”

—-

Dr. Branson led the way down a corridor of rooms that reminded me of a dormitory wing. I supposed these were the low-risk patients, ones who had little required care and small incidence of trouble. The hallway ended in a set of double doors with an electronic card lock on the door, which the doctor opened with a small tag that was attached to a lanyard on his belt.

“This is the secure wing. I do have to ask that you leave your briefcase and any objects that may be used as weapons here at the guard desk.”

I pulled a small digital audio recorder out of my briefcase. “I would like to keep my recorder with me.”

He looked at it and said “That should be fine. Jacob, if you will?”

Jacob was evidently the guard behind the small window, a severe-looking black man who did not smile. And when I say black, I mean black, the darkest pigment I have ever seen on a human being in my life. His features were sharp looking, and he did not speak a word as he took my briefcase and handed me a clipboard to sign.

“Jacob will make sure that your items are well-cared for.”

The doctor strode off down the hallway. I turned to look at Jacob again, his face like a stone statue, staring at me.

We came to another set of double doors, these very obviously heavy steel with wire-laced glass embedded in them. A small video camera was hung on the wall above the doors, and Doctor Branson looked into it with expectation. A heavy buzzing noise and the doors opened with a creak, showing a set of wide stairs leading down. The dank, musty smell of basement wafted up the stairwell, along with something else that I couldn’t quite identify, something sharp. He stepped into the stairwell, leading the way down.

“Because of his notoriety, Mister Rydell is a special guest. This is the maximum-security facility. He’s the only one that has been here for quite some time. It took our maintenance crew a few days to get his cell ready.

The basement was much more reminiscent of a prison wing. Large, heavy steel doors lined both sides of the hallway, some exposed pipes running along the ceiling marking hot water, cold water, and steam, along with a few other pipes I couldn’t identify. All of the windows in the cells were dark, save one.

“Number thirteen. Seemed fitting.” The Doctor smiled and took out a massive key that looked a bit like a key from a wind-up toy. “Chubb,” he said when he caught me looking. “Virtually impossible to pick, and inaccessible from the inside. Quite advanced for the time.”

The door opened, and I saw a man sitting on the lone bed in the cell.

He wasn’t at all what I expected. The man I saw sitting on the bed was thin, almost frail, and looked like he would have been at home behind a library desk or antique book store. The cell itself was actually fairly clean; a new coat of paint on the walls covering what had obviously been bare areas where the paint had peeled away. A single light bulb glared overhead, a new fluorescent spiral type having replaced the old incandescent that my mind wanted to place there. A one-piece toilet-and-sink combination stood in the corner, obviously ancient, but with new plumbing attached. There was a small steel table with a single steel chair beside it, but other than that there was nothing. No books, no pictures. A small reinforced glass window hugged the ceiling, letting in a dim filtered light through a patina of dirt and aged plant material.

I cleared my throat. “Mister Rydell? My name is Howard Fitzgerald.”

“I know who you are,” came a clear, steady voice from the man. Again, not quite what I had expected.

“You know my name?”

“I said I know who you are,” Rydell said, eyes still closed. “You are the lawyer from the court. Your name is unimportant.”

Doctor Branson stepped back outside. “Is there anything further that you need from me, Howard? I really should get back to work.”

I shook my head. “No, I think that we are fine here.” I looked warily at the frail man. “We should be okay.”

“If you need anything, just wave to the camera,” he said, pointing up at the newly-installed camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling. “Jacob will be keeping an eye on you, though by law we are not allowed to record any audio without your permission. If you wave, he will turn it on and you can speak with him.”

“Thank you Doctor Branson.”

He closed the door with a massive thud. The air pressure in the room changed slightly, enough to be noticeable. I suspected that in the high of summer, this cell would become a sweltering mess, but in the mid-autumn, it was cool and comfortable enough.

“Mister Rydell, do you mind if I sit down?”

Rydell gestured to the chair, and I sat, pulling out my recorder and turning it on. “I am here at the order of the court to provide an evaluation of your mental state, and whether you are mentally competent to stand trial. Do you understand that?”

He nodded.

“Mister Rydell, I need to record our interaction for the record, and you have to answer yes or no.”

“Yes, then.” He sat, unmoving, eyes still closed.

“And you understand why you are on trial?”

“Because I slaughtered that family and ate their brains,” he said matter-of-factly.

“And you understand that it was wrong of you to do that?”

His eyes opened then, clear and watery-blue. He looked at me. “Wrong? Yes, of course I know it was wrong. I know it with every fiber of my being.” His hands started to shake. “If I could have stopped it, I would have.”

“What kept you from stopping it?”

His hands stopped shaking, and he closed his eyes again. “No. You won’t believe me. No one believes me. Leave me to die,” he said, “then maybe I can get some sleep.”

“Mister Rydell… can I call you George?”

He nodded.

“George, I’m not here to judge whether or not what I think you say is true. What I need to know is whether or not you believe what you are saying. If I think that you are lying to me or trying to deceive me, then I will report back to the court that you are competent to stand trial. Do you understand?

He nodded slowly. “They’ll kill me.”

“It’s very likely, George.”

“Doesn’t matter anyway. I’m already a dead man.”

“If you were dead, I wouldn’t be here asking you these questions.”

He opened his eyes again, looked at me, then looked down, and nodded.

“So what kept you from stopping?”

He paused for a moment, thinking, and then said one word: “Be’lial”.

“And who is Be’lial?”

He stopped to think again, sort of like he was having a silent conversation with himself. “Not as much who, as what. Sort of both, I think.”

“Ah, I see. And does Be’lial talk to you?”

Voices in the head are a classic Hollywood bit of misdirection for people claiming insanity pleas. The actual voice-in-the-head phenomenon— a monosymptomatic auditory hallucination— is extremely rare, and is almost always caused by physical damage to the brain.

That look of inner conversation again. “Yes, and no. He— it— doesn’t speak so much in words. It’s more images and feelings.” He stiffened then, as if he had been shocked. “And pain,” he finished weakly.

Selective delusion. Self-punishment. If it were schizophrenia, he would be much more unfocused. A true psychosis is possible.

“George, did Be’lial tell you to hurt those people?”

More of the internal conversation, a few more body spasms. Definitely signs of a severe disorder.

“Not them. What was inside them.”

“I don’t understand, what was inside them?”

“They had… riders.”

“Riders?”

“That’s the closest word that I have.”

Possession? Is that why Doctor Branson asked me about religion?

“George, are you by chance Catholic?”

“No,” he said, and closed his eyes, seeming to relax. “And no, I’m not possessed.”

“So is a rider like a passenger in a car?”

He thought again, head moving up and to the right. “More like… a horse.”

Locomotive hallucination? Reminder to look into Haitian Voudon rituals.

“Does Be’lial ride you then?”

“Not… the same. He… it… stays in back sometimes. Kinda likes to sleep when he’s full.”

“When he’s full?”

“Yes.”

“He eats?”

Head moving up and to the right.

“Not eats. More absorbs.”

“So Be’lial absorbed those people’s… souls? When you ate their brains?”

Jerk. Spasm.

“Not their souls. Their riders. He hunts them. Eats them.” Head thrown back, eyes wide. “He says you would consider them evil.”

I admit it took me a couple of seconds to compose myself; if this was an act, it was an extremely good one. Internally consistent, not working off of my leading. And a completely fascinating bit of mythology; if I worked this right, my publishing rights were in the bag.

“George, is Be’lial with us now?”

Spasm.  “Yes.”

“Can he hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Can I talk to him?”

Rydell started to tremble, his eyes wide open, fixed on mine. He started to whisper a hoarse “no”, but was cut off by a series of sharp spasms, interspersed with screams of agony. I looked at the camera, and was about to signal for help, when his body went limp on the bed, trembling. Then he spoke.

“He says that you can only talk with him if you invite him in.”

A breakthrough! I saw the dollar signs dancing before me.

“Very well then. Be’lial, I invite you in.”

Rydell sat up with a sigh, looked at me with a small smile on his face and said “Thank you”. A trickle of blood came from his nose, and right before his eyes rolled back into his head, I thought I heard a soft “pop”.

What happened next, I don’t really remember well. There was a flash of light that seemed to come toward my face, though that may just have been the power surge that took out both the overhead light and the camera mounted on the wall. It also seems to have completely destroyed my audio recorder, so I have no actual record of the conversation that took place.

When the camera went out, Jacob had immediately come down to take over and called Doctor Branson in. They found me unconscious on the floor, figuring that I had fallen and hit my head. Rydell was dead. He had an aneurism in his brain that burst. The pressure was causing him to have severe hallucinations, blinding pain, and delusions galore. At least that will be my finding, as corroborated with Doctor Branson. An autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow.

As I left, I once again ran into Joseph, pointing at me and spouting his nonsense. “Termites in the wheelhouse! Badger in the woodpile!”

The orderly rolled his eyes again, and led him away. I smiled. Joseph was harmless. Nobody would listen to him.

As for Be’lial, well, he likes to sleep after he’s fed. And he’s starting to get hungry again.

Anakin hated his name.

His parents had thought it was cool back in 1999 when Episode I had come out. His mom had gone to the premiere dressed as a pregnant Princess Leia, and had gone into labor during the closing credits. She had delivered him while still in the costume, and had the freakin’ thing mounted in a frame, blood and mucous stains out thewre for the entire world to see. She had even gotten some of the crew to sign a poster that she had hung in the hallway opposite the dress, but not anybody you’d know. Signatures like Andy Secombe and Ben Taylor, and Trisha Biggar. She hadn’t even gotten the cool signatures, like Ewen McGregor or Liam Neeson, Or even Jake Lloyd, the kid who had played his namesake.

He had to walk past those damn things every day. And one of the little tidbits he had learned was that some of the brownish staining on the Leia costume was shit, actual shit that his mother had thrust out during his birth. Framed shit, displayed in the entryway of their home.

He hated his life.

Dad had died two years ago, a heart attack while fucking his secretary. Mom sort of took it in stride, and threw herself into her animal rescue thing, becoming weirder and more distant. He did try to talk to her for a while, but she had come to a kind of tunnel vision working with the “animals that had no other voice but for us”.

He hated her.

No, he really didn’t. More than anything he pitied her, seeing her life kind of tunnel down into a small, restricted box where she didn’t have to really deal with anything that could actually talk to her.

He hated school.

The kid-fucks had called him “Annie”, and flushed his head more than a few times. He learned early on that his best camouflage was blending into the background, not raising any flags that would cause anyone to recognize him and single him out for some sort of delicious punishment.

His parents were freaks. He knew that, and was embarrassed by them at every opportunity. Yes, they loved Star Wars, but they kinda took the whole Jedi thing way too far. On his tenth birthday they got him a novelty “Home Mitichlorian Test Kit”, which they found kind of hilarious, but really kind of pissed him off.

And really, that was the breaking point.

The Home Mitichlorian Test Kit was always intended to be a novelty. It showed up as positive when you sprinkled water on it in the same way that the little patches in your phone show up red if you expose it to water. There was ooohing and aaahing and lauging, and the kind of secret looks that parents give each other when the wine has hit, and it was just too much.

“This isn’t fucking funny!”

Mom and Dad both stared at him, their eyes focusing on his, blue as a lake.

“You don’t understand!”

And they started laughing. Small giggles at first, then full-on laughter as they looked at each other.

It was the last time that they connected so deeply.

From that point on, he knew he had enemies.

Anakin hated his father. He knew his weakness, and over time, he *pushed*.

The look on his father’s face when he died was one of surprise. Apparently it’s not uncommon.

He has a harder time dealing with Mom. She has set up a whole lot of defensive walls, cordoned herself off from certain aspects of reality. It’s almost like she knows. Her defenses are really pretty strong.

Annakin is patient.

Doctor Deckard spoke into a small headset.

“Miss Paige. Miss Paige, can you hear me?”

The woman in the tank opened her eyes slowly and blinked, then her eyes went wide and she tried to scream, thrashing about.

“Miss Paige! Listen to me! There is no need to panic. There has been an accident, a terrible, terrible accident. You are submerged in a holding tank that is helping to keep your body processes slowed down, at least for now.”

She continued thrashing.

“You’re not actually drowning, your brain has simply convinced you to react as if you are. It is conditioned to believe certain rules of physics that your life experience has trained it to perceive as true.  Just try to relax and think of something else, and your panic will subside momentarily.”

Madelaine stopped thrashing for a second and looked out through the glass, then started pounding.

“I’m afraid that will do you no good miss Paige. That particular tank was designed to hold a gorilla that would go through much more of a panic than you are right now, and is made of two-inch thick polycarbonate. I really hadn’t planned on using it on a human, but there was really very little choice.”

Madelaine stopped and stared, realizing for the first time that she was naked. Instinctually she tried to cover herself.

“Oh my dear, we are far beyond that stage of our relationship. I’ve had a rather close study of every aspect of your anatomy for the last nineteen days, or at least as best I could while keeping you in that isolation tank. And I should mention that it is what is keeping you alive… well,” the doctor paused, “at least keeping you from decaying quite so quickly.

She looked at him, tried to form words, to speak.

“No my dear, you can’t really talk. I do so wish you could, because I would love to know what is going on in that lovely head of yours. How much do you remember? Ah, no, that won’t do at all. Let me think.”

He brought a lab chair over and sat down in front of the tank, bringing his face closer.

“Let’s try this: one blink for yes, two blinks for no. Do you understand?”

She stared at him, and blinked once, slowly.

“Good, good! Oh this is progressing so much better than I had hoped. Now, do you remember anything of the accident?”

Madelaine blinked once, then shook her head and blinked twice.

“Ah, difficulty. I suppose that is to be expected. Very well, do you remember your employment for Bridge?”

One blink. Then two.

The doctor sighed. “I had been working for Bridge Pharmaceuticals on a very intensive bioengineering project. I was trying to slow down the aging process, to reverse it if possible, through a few different stem-cell agents. About a year ago, I had made a distinct breakthrough and was making some good headway with the animal testing that we had been doing on rats and pigs— did you know that biologically, rats and pigs have a great deal in common with humans, my dear?

A pause, and a blank stare.

“I suppose should have expected that you would be confused, you poor thing. You would of course know this, but I will help you remembering until your mind can begin to find its bearings.

“We were in a position to try some more advanced testing on primates, when I was first diagnosed. Pancreatic cancer, a rare form, quite difficult to treat.

“Mister Bridge Senior was quite nice and assured me that they would do everything in their power to get me the best treatment possible, but as things progressed, it became quite obvious to me that none of the treatments were working. And they left me so ill that I couldn’t really keep on with my research. Much as I demanded, then finally begged and pleaded, they decided after several months to put me on an indefinite medical leave.”

Doctor Deckard motioned around him. “I knew this would happen, of course, it is a kind of inevitability. In foresight, I was able to alter the course of several pieces of research equipment here to my own laboratory.”

Madelaine stared around the room as best she could from the pinkish interior of the tank.

“The early 1950’s were a strange time indeed, and the owner of this particular house had built a rather sophisticated bomb shelter, at least for the time. Reinforced concrete walls, several feet thick. Built to withstand a nuclear bomb. Of course, at the time they didn’t know that the real problem with nuclear war had nothing to do with the bomb blasts, but that’s all that the world had any knowledge of at the time. They had no context for the future.”

The doctor was seized by a coughing fit. Madelaine just stared.

“The company had no idea, of course. The books were altered well enough by a young man in the procurement division with a particular taste for some of the more experimental pharmaceuticals. I suspect that one day he will be caught, but I believe that by that time, I will have as they say, shuffled off this mortal coil. Hopefully I can come up with a solution before then, but it is a kind of race.

“And you my dear, that is where you come in. You were elected to become my caregiver.”

She blinked once, slowly.

“Ah, you do remember! Wonderful! You higher brain functions seem to be progressing, I was hoping they would. It’s difficult to tell with animals how much they remember.

“I was rather annoyed with you at first. I did not need someone meddling in my affairs, taking me away from my research. My life, sinking away like sand in an hourglass, and you coming twice a day to fluff my pillows and make me swallow those god-awful pills. I really didn’t take them, you know. Spit them out when you weren’t looking.

“Not that I didn’t mind the company, of course. You are… were quite pleasant. Enjoyable, even. Not that you would see anything of substance in an old man such as myself dying of cancer, but I grew rather fond of you. I suppose it might have been a bit of vanity on my part to think that if I were able to cure my own illness that you would see something in me, see past the wrinkled facade, and into my heart.”

Two blinks.

“Now my dear, don’t be like that. Everything has changed now, and I’m afraid we don’t have much time.

“It was your fault, really. You came early and unexpectedly. I was undergoing one of my own treatments, and you did not handle well seeing the whole intravenous setup and syringe that I was about to inject. It was never in the plan for you to see any of this, and I wish to God that it had never happened, but it did. And you quite simply slipped and fell. I reached for you, I tried to grab you, but I am simply too old and too slow.

“You must have hit your head on the way down, because by the time I had reached you, you were completely gone.”

Madelaine stared, frozen, her eyes wide.

“You see my dear, you died. And that is the most unfortunate truth of the whole ordeal.”

She blinked, then blinked twice, then twice more, faster.

“You remember now, don’t you?”

Madelaine shut her eyes tight.

“I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances. I gave you the injection directly into your carotid artery. I massaged it into your neck as best I could and tried CPR for a while, then I brought you down here. I couldn’t lose you…”

The doctor broke into tears then, great, racking sobs of misery.

“It wasn’t ready yet. I could only cease the cellular destruction of some types of nervous tissue and maintain some level of regeneration of muscle tissue, but I couldn’t stop the degradation and necrosis that comes with death. It’s why I have you in the tank now, to keep the tissues from decaying while I find a cure for this last piece of the puzzle.”

Two blinks.

“Don’t you see? In this tank, I can keep you from decaying, from really, truly, irreversibly dying. As long as I can keep you here, there is a chance! I am so close, and when I am done, I will have conquered death itself!”

Two blinks.

“You don’t understand yet, but you will, ” he said, and turned away. Madelaine kept blinking twice, over and over.

She couldn’t tell if she was crying.

—-

The explosion took the doctor by surprise, and blew him against a rack of glassware and vials, shards of glass cutting into his flesh before he hit the floor. There was smoke and fire and lights flashing all around, and a sharp ringing in his ears. He saw shapes moving in the smoke, and tried to stand up to warn them off.

The last think he felt was a bursting white-hot pain in his chest before he died.

“MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!” came a voice from one of the shapes, muffled by the gasmask he was wearing. “Suspect down, I repeat suspect down!”

A jumble of voices, all taking over each other.

“Oh, my god.”

“What is it?”

“Sarge, get over here!”

“What the…”

“Get her out of there, NOW!”

Two of the uniformed men unlatched the tank and lifted the naked woman out of the freezing liquid. “Get an ambulance here now!”

—-

The two paramedics in back were having difficulty. They had put an oxygen mask on the woman’s face, but she didn’t seem to be breathing properly. She was still coughing up frothy pinkish fluid.

“Got no pulse!”

“Eyes are open, pupils reactive.”

“Step on it Murphy!”

“Going as fast as I can!”

—-

Jacobson kinda liked working the overnight shift at the city morgue. The whole “graveyard shift” joke was something that he kinda liked, and really, it was just a bunch of dead bodies hanging around in a big refrigerator. For the most part, everything was quiet, and he could lose himself in tunes and play Graveyard Defenders on his phone. Shit man, it was a sweet gig, even if it didn’t pay all that well. Once in a while things heated up, like tonight when they brought in that crazy doctor something-or-other, big-ass shotgun hole in his chest. Some weird shit gone down with the S.W.A.T team, crazy dude keeping some naked chick in a tank of water. That shit is decidedly fucked up, and as they say, fucked up shit, take another hit.

He took out his pipe, dropped in a small bud, and drew in a quick hit, heading into the main autopsy room and turning on the huge overhead fan. It was cold as shit in there, and the fan was designed to draw out the stink of dead bodies; it worked pretty well to pull out the smoke from his hitter as well. He exhaled directly up and into the vent, noticing how the swirl of smoke became a smooth, rapid pull as it got caught in the vortex of the industrial blower.

He didn’t notice the body bag behind him starting to move.

I should perhaps not post words when I am in a cranky mood, but those are the times that you savor, so I shall try to entertain you with my rantings.

Women.

Okay, be truthful, you read some sort of attitude into that single word written in my post, and it’s an entirely different attitude than you would have taken when seeing it on a plastic sign on a wall in a bar. Most likely it’s because when you’re in a bar and looking for that sign, it’s because you need to pee, and that is kind of the primary drive for you at the time. When you’re cruising the electrons online, it’s only natural that you see my comment as something deliberately sexually deterministic.

So if I say “Women: Bah”, it becomes a judgment call of all women being bad, and is sexist or misogynistic.

And if I say “Women: Yay!”, it becomes a judgment call that I am perusing pictures of scantily-clad spring-break girls and making frat-boy mooing noises over their breasts.

Sorry, “Tits”.

So back to the bar analogy: would you be offended if the bathroom signs were labeled “Tits” and “Dick” (or “tits” and “dick” so as not to offend our less-enhanced comrades)?  Or perhaps “Setters” and “Pointers” is acceptable?

Or even “|” and “_”?

Really, you know which is which in that last one. If you don’t there are lessons online.

Yes, there is a point here. We are more than the identity of which we pee, and that is wonderful. I very much wish to be known beyond my ability to pee. I have so much more to offer.

And hey, in realizing that I have far more to offer to the world than just my style of peeing, I may just accept that maybe you have something to offer as well, despite your peeing style.

Honestly, I feel a bit primitive that I have to throw this out there.

I don’t want to be labeled because of an artifact of how I pee. I don’t want to be labeled because of your perceptions of how I view your gender/desire/taste.

I am willing to be labeled for who I am, for my ideals, for my stances.

None of those things require a hole for anything to go into or out of, or a stubby frond to rub up against, or even a tentacle to suckle the life-juices from.

Not that I decry those things at all, for they can be great fun if handled well. And I am highly positive for great fun in handling well.

But none of those things drives who I *am*.

I love to play. It is play. I do not derive my existence from who I choose to lick, or fuck, or kiss, or hug, or laugh with, or touch.

Y’all have some bearing on my life. I thank you for that.