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Jeff Parsons

The April Selected Writer is Jeff Parsons

Please feel free to email Jeff at: jeff_95630@yahoo.com

Jeff Parsons

THE EYE OF THE STORM
by Jeff Parsons

“Spare a smoke?” John Doe asked. John was a rugged, handsome man, dark skinned, straight black hair, grey eyes, dressed in stained blue sweats, sitting in a plastic chair before the impatient Doctor Schuster.

“Patients are not allowed to smoke,” the Doctor replied, taking a deep pull off his cigarette with one stained hand, and rifling through John’s case file with the other. Ashes rained like volcanic pumice onto the paperwork.

John’s file described his problem: he had no idea who he was.

But, he instinctively knew that he liked smoking and he knew that the Doctor was a self-absorbed, indifferent, arrogant loser stuck in a dead-end job.

With the curiosity of the passively observant, John looked around the Doctor’s cramped office. The wan light from the iron-barred cloudy window touched upon a faded diploma in a cracked frame, dusty medical reference books, stacks of patient files piled atop a scarred metal desk and most importantly, no sharp, breakable or throw-able items; overall, a safe room for mental patients to listen to the Doctor pontificate about their stay at the New York City Behavioral Assessment Center.

The Doctor inhaled wetly, much like an overweight toad would, and said, “Your record states that you fell off a building. A skyscraper no less.” He exhaled with disgust. “And your fall was broken by a tree. You survived with critical injuries and…this cannot be right. Your injuries were healed by the time you arrived at the hospital. Hmmm, more likely you just fell out of the tree and the EMTs completely misdiagnosed you. Incompetent fools. One thing they got right—you have amnesia. You can’t remember anything before the accident.”

The Doctor flipped through the hefty file again, blowing a jet-stream of smoke towards John.

“We do not know anything about you. You had no ID on you and no one has come forward to claim you. You have been here three weeks…much longer than our regulations typically allow for isolated observation, but due to the nature of your case and the mishap we had with your preliminary therapy, the administration extended your stay.” He scowled. “It was speculated that you were suicidal, hence the intensive sedation regimen, however, I needed to assess your base state of mind, so I took you off the meds two days ago when I took over the case. I have a week to make a decision about your future.”

No happy drugs? He thought. No wonder I’ve been edgy lately.

This mystery about his past was truly annoying. Doctor Neumann, his previous intake assessor, had told John exactly what the EMTs encountered on the night of his accident: a suicide with rag-doll twisted limbs, pulverized bones, blood everywhere, and miraculously, John was clinging tenaciously to life, just barely. But, by the time they pulled into the ER, he had fully recovered, except for his memory loss.

John hesitated, then asked, “What happened to Doctor Neumann?”

Doctor Schuster’s caustic expression made him look like an angry gorilla. “While you were hypnotized, he left the session, and…promptly quit this hospital. Any ideas on why that would happen?”

“No idea. I only remember him starting the session, and then, someone shaking me out of it. But, I’ve been having visions ever since.”

“These visions are known as impressions. Basically, they occur because your mind was tampered with, due to Doctor Neumann’s complete ineptitude, no doubt, and these impressions give you false memories and notions about reality.” He shook his head with sour exasperation. “Hypnosis therapy was a bad choice of treatment in My Professional Opinion. It has left you confused.”

“I’m not sure how I feel, confused or not, but I see things in my visions and I’d like to know why. I hope it’s not from my past…it’s all indescribably…horrific. Is it normal to see such dreadful things?”

“You have been experiencing episodic hallucinations related to your memory loss, but it is normal to feel anxious, and—”

John tuned out the Doctor’s rambling while he thought. Anxious? Yeah, I’m going crazy thinking about it… oh wait, I’m already crazy. Supposedly. He stifled a smirk while the Doctor kept droning on and on—something about all this, something unknown, gently tickled John’s mind with its curious distraction.

“—this immersion therapy, to face your fear, may help dispel the hallucinations. Your record states that you experience them when you are relaxed, typically before sleeping. I can simulate that state of mind in a series of tests. I will first observe your reactions, and from there, I can recommend a treatment program to help recover your memories. If you concur, we can start tomorrow morning.”

Sounds like pop psychology to me. Oh, what the hell can it hurt?

“Yes, please,” John replied.

“Good. I would rather not send you away without a proper diagnosis. It does not look good on the paperwork.”

John wondered how many people the Doctor had sent away to a drug-induced hell, condemned by a maliciously incompetent and indifferent diagnosis; innocent people trapped, crushed and forgotten within the system, doomed to die an early pointless death because it looked good on the paperwork.

“Of course, I understand,” John agreed, silently fuming. Paperwork? Is that all people are to you?  “But what if the therapy doesn’t succeed?”

The Doctor frowned, radiating a scathing message of contempt. “I am just a humble civil servant doing my job, Mr. Doe. The system will take care of you, one way or the other. Someone will come by with paperwork for you to sign within the hour. In the meantime, enjoy your lunch.”

The Doctor waved his hand imperiously at the door behind John.

Two burly orderlies came in, lifted him up from the chair and took him away. They frog-marched him down an ancient, antiseptic-doused hallway to the cafeteria entrance, where they shoved him forward into the crowded dining area. His innate sense of balance prevented him from stumbling, but many of the patients, all of them men in this ward, snickered at him anyway.

John entered the food service’s assembly line. He grabbed a molded tray, a glass of water and a spork, all crafted in faded once-cheerful plastic colors. Tonight’s dinner was slopped into the tray’s partitioned areas: an open-faced turkey-remnant sandwich, unnaturally spotty mashed potatoes, coagulated gravy and a dried cherry tart.

Still fuming at the Doctor’s behavior, he sat down at an empty table and stabbed hungrily into his meal. I guess I’m not fussy when it comes to food. Many times, he had overheard other patients gripe about the food. It seemed like that was all they ever talked about.

The tables around him had become quiet.

Suddenly, he was pelted by food from all sides. The deluge stopped after several volleys. Mocking laughter cackled around him.

He wiped away mashed potatoes that clung to his eyelids. He blinked several times to clear his vision.

Some of his attackers thought this harassment was hilarious. He listened to their cruel jibes as he continued to clean the food off himself. He was incensed; with the drugs having worn off, it was a new depth of feeling for him to experience. Still, despite the deep, dark mood of livid anger boiling within, he didn’t react with an outburst of retaliation. Strangely, his anger was distracted by a powerful curiosity, his mind observing the situation as if it was on the verge of remembering something incredible. In a way, it was like trying to define something elusive by the effect of its absence.

The scornful derogatories directed at him took on a sinister vulgar tone.

Then, chaos erupted—a full-scale food fight broke out. It was a bizarre attack targeted against a select few: those who were naturally docile and those who were drifting in and out of a fog of drugged lethargy. They were assaulted en masse by food, gooey handfuls grabbed and hurled forcefully from close range, followed by plates and utensils. The innocent patients covered their heads, cowering in a vain effort to protect themselves from the barrage. Their cries of fear and pain were soon drowned out by the feral howls of the attackers, who seemingly became frenzied into more hostile behavior by the innervating presence of weakness, like the smell of blood drawing a hungry predator.

John slid off his chair and hid underneath his table, astonished at how quickly the situation had become volatile.

Aggressive patients began beating their trays against the hapless victims. The trays cracked and split and fragmented; sharp edges drew rivers of blood that spilled and spattered, screams became shrieks of terror. Some of the innocents lay on the floor. No longer moving.

A large group of doctors, orderlies and support staff had assembled at the cafeteria’s open entrance doors. At the vanguard, a line of orderlies waited with riot batons ready, like pit bulls straining on their leashes.

Why aren’t they doing SOMETHING!

Suddenly, with an enraged roar, the orderlies swarmed into the cafeteria. They grabbed hold of patients and repeatedly beat them senseless. Even the previously afflicted innocents, lying unconscious or worse yet, were subjected to brutal attack, as if years of repressed rage demanded cathartic reparations. Likewise, the aggressive patients fought back, some picking up chairs and wielding them.

Time to go.  

John crawled under the table to the nearby wall. A patient moved to attack him, but was felled by a passing orderly. The crack of a baton upon the patient’s head resounded like a thick watermelon rind being snapped apart. The patient collapsed to the floor. The orderly charged towards the main battle developing in the center of the dining area.

Other support staff flooded into the cafeteria, but, overall, there were more patients than facility workers…the brawl was totally out of control.

The doctors had also entered the cafeteria behind the support staff, seemingly drawn by an impulsive momentum, but had stopped short just a few running steps inside the double doors. And by now, they were looking quite agitated, fingers flexing into knotty fists, bodies trembling anxiously, hungry eyes reveling in the carnage like a bloodthirsty audience at an ancient Roman coliseum game.

They were so fixated on watching the cafeteria’s manic spectacle that John snuck past them into the hallway.  He was actually crawling away when one of them, a particularly waspish woman psychologist, happened to glance backward. With a growl, she made a running leap and speared him in the lower back with a spiked heel.

He yelped from the piercing flare of pain. She kept on kicking him even as he tried to stand up. He stumbled and fell to the floor, and was attacked again and again by more forceful kicks, this time with another doctor joining in. John took a shoe tip to his left eye—his vision in that eye went dark. Something was torn loose. His eye hung limp in its shattered socket.

He felt betrayed. These people, these doctors, with their lofty impassive demeanor, were supposed to protect him! Anger exploded from within.

No!  

Sometime thereafter, as unknown seconds of insanity roiled around him, the assault against him stopped.

The sounds of raucous battle grew at the doorway: desperate scuffles, guttural grunts of crazed exertion, shrill screams of pain and fury, squeaks of shoes sliding and slipping, bodies landing on the wet floor.   

He attempted to stand and was surprised that he was able to do so, albeit with a lingering twinge of muscle stiffness.

Looking back, his troubled vision gave a disoriented view of a nightmarish scene. Several lifeless bodies lay sprawled on the blood-slick floor. The doctors fought each other, swinging clipboards and stabbing with pens. One doctor still raged on with a pen stuck in his eye—the pen moved whenever his eyes darted about. Other doctors resorted to tooth and nail attacks, animal-like in their screeching ferocity, all pretenses of personal integrity and self-defense ignored.  

In the long hallway ahead, it was no different. Patients and staff wrestled with each other.

It occurred to him that he could now clearly see this tragedy unfolding before him. His eyesight was restored.

Shocked as he was by this epiphany, he knew he needed to get away from the fighting. Immediately. 

Many doors lined the long hallway before him. Four additional corridors branched off the hallway and at the far end, there were security doors that eventually led towards the way outside. There was only a slight chance that the security doors would be open, but, perhaps he could hide in one of the rooms along the way.

He bolted down the hallway.

That was a mistake. His movement attracted attention. He almost made it to the security doors when a bloodied hand groped at his sweatshirt. He was confronted by an angry patient who held on with an unshakable grip.

John hands sprung up in a reflex reaction. “Wait!” he pleaded.

A wet fist smacked against his chin, sending him reeling backward. His back hit an office door—it popped open behind him as he fell to the floor. His head bounced against the cold tiles.

The patient landed hard on John’s chest, knocking the wind out of him. Stunned, he felt hands close around his throat, throttling his breath and lifting his head up and down, banging it with devastating effect against the floor.   

He couldn’t breathe.

He fought back, clawing weakly at the patient’s wiry arms.

Spinning red and black dots squeezed in from the edges of his vision. The patient straddling him was fading away.

No!

His survival instinct kicked in. Furious adrenaline fueled his muscles, but the energy wasn’t needed anymore.

The patient atop him squealed like a stuck pig, released the death grip on John’s throat and lurched upward, staggering out the door, tearing at his own face. John saw blood and viscous goo streaming down the patient’s face … he had gouged out his own eyes.

Lying on the floor, through a haze of blood pounding back into his head, he saw the people in the hallway attack each other with wild abandon, far worse than anything he’d seen earlier. 

What the hell’s going on?

More people had arrived in the hallway, pulled inexorably towards the epicenter of pandemonium—he now understood, it had to be him. Intentionally or not, his presence was a catalyst that seemed to summon forth the primal instincts lurking inside the raw subconscious, with anger and fear being easiest to access. He was something more than human, something far more powerful, as dangerous and unpredictable as a rabid timber wolf tearing through a herd of penned sheep.

Guilt overwhelmed him. Maybe this devastating pathos had always swirled unseen around him like a hurricane’s treacherous winds, taking lives whenever he got angry and leaving behind a twisted swath of utter grief and tragedy. It was almost too much to bear – perhaps that was why he had tried to kill himself before.

I can stop this.

Focusing on peaceful thoughts, he stood up and walked out into the hallway. 

The ongoing struggle bruised, bit, scraped and tore flesh around him, driven by an all-consuming fierce furor.

He watched helplessly as one of the patients, a gentle, mildly-retarded man, was pummeled by two patients and an orderly.

John bent his will towards the assailants. His body shook from the enormous amount of effort.

Stop it!

The attackers stopped and looked at each other with confused expressions.

Yes!

Feeling light-headed, he stepped forward to help the afflicted patient, but was suddenly pulled into a side office by strong calloused hands.

The door slammed closed and he was spun around. He was in an observation room that was brightly-lit, with lime-green paint peeling off the walls and stuffy uncirculated air that tasted of ammonia. Doctor Schuster stood before him. An orderly held John’s arms firmly from behind, fingers crushing into John’s triceps.

The Doctor beamed with an expression that was oddly euphoric, confident and conciliatory. He waved the orderly away. The grip released from John’s aching arms.

“I just realized what has been going on, John.” The Doctor’s tone was hushed like a preacher sharing a profound revelation with his congregation. “I had listened to Dr. Neumann’s recorded sessions with you and read his notes. I had refused to believe it. Up until now. Turns out the fool was afraid of you. He left because he knew what you are. John, you are the source of what is happening here. You are evil.”

The Doctor’s right hand moved in a deft streak, plunging a hidden scalpel deep into the side of John’s throat, leaving it to quiver there as John staggered backward. 

Thick arterial blood welled around the contours of the embedded scalpel blade.

NO! I don’t deserve this…

He yanked the scalpel out. His trembling fingers couldn’t plug up the thin deep gash; blood sprayed out quickly, pulsing with each heartbeat’s struggle. 

Breathing hitched, vision swam and dizziness spun; his overwhelmed body began to shut down from severe blood loss.

The doctor smiled with maniacal glee: eyebrows raised high above wild eyes and lips pulled thin over bared teeth that hissed out a low throaty chuckle.

John understood everything with perfect clarity in that instant.

With infinite sadness, he realized that there was nothing he could do to change the inherently cruel nature of mankind. This problem couldn’t be solved by persistent acts of kindness. The aggressive people of the world would always terrorize the meek. It was time to correct that, not by encouraging them to behave decently, like he had probably tried before, but by encouraging them to destroy themselves. The pure of heart would also suffer as a result, but some would survive, and in the end, true evil would be exterminated from the world. 

When he willed his body to heal, in a searing flash of white light, his senses fully returned to him and he knew what he had to do. He gave into his anger. Fully. Embracing it – that feels good.

The Doctor and orderly immediately attacked one another: struggling, grasping, clawing, biting, and falling to the bloodied floor. Other calamities erupted into savage violence throughout the hospital and spread outward into the world with a dark madness; the last days of evil mankind would be snuffed out by an unstoppable apocalypse.

I have become Death. Woe be it to the wicked.

Jeff Parsons is a professional engineer. He has a long history of technical writing, which oddly enough, often reads like fiction. He was inspired to write by two wonderful teachers: William Forstchen and Gary Braver.

Jeff got his first break with SNM Horror Magazine’s online stories. SNM published his debut book of short stories titled Algorithm of Nightmares and also featured his stories in the SNM Bonded by Blood IV and V anthologies.

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