The Ghosts Inside
One hand folded on top of the other, resting on her lap, she stares into the distance, though there's nothing to see. Just white. White, white, and more white. White walls, white bedsheets, white curtains. White light streaming through the window that doesn't open, antiseptic and at the same time blinding in its intensity. There's an outside world out there, she recalls in her better moments, but the light, oh it hurts her eyes. Better just to lose focus, to step back from the world and let time pass. A sterile environment is by necessity a harsh one. A disinfectant is just another name for a poison, after all. Impurities are to be removed whatever the cost, the chemotherapy eating away at the body as well as the cancer, the gangrenous limb hacked off to prevent the spread of infection. Purity always comes at a price. The walls are thick and it's quiet, an empty sort of quiet that denies the experience of the modern world and sends new residents into a panic. Their eyes open wide, like those emerging from the wreckage of a bombed-out cafe, newly deaf, alone with a faint ringing in their ears emanating from no outside source, faces twisted in despair, reconciling themselves to the knowledge that all conversation will henceforth take the form of a monologue, unfolding inside of their own heads, cut off from the world, alone with their thoughts, or else some one-sided conversation with God, which amounts to the same thing. At this point, just when the resident is usually beginning to hyperventilate, the sound of muffled footsteps outside the door brings them back to reality and, laughing nervously, they wipe the sweat from their foreheads. The quiet, though, it doesn't bother her at all. She chooses not to listen. She slowly lifts her hand to her face, holding her palm flat against her mouth and nose, breathing in the scent of her own flesh, a sick-sweet smell. Running her fingers down along her cheek, she traces the lines etched in the skin. She had been beautiful once, you can see it in the symmetry of her features, but the hands of time are rarely gentle, and she had been handled more roughly than most. Her hand trembles as she looks down at it, shriveled and fragile-looking, but she doesn't cry or even make a sound. She's beyond that now. A knocking at the door, three quick raps, and then a long pause before the sound of a turning key. Her wheelchair is facing the wall, and she makes no effort to turn. Whatever this latest disturbance may entail, it could hold no possible interest for her. People in her life, they come and go, come and go, fleeting shadows on the wall. The light flickers for an instant, and then they're gone. And this too shall pass. The door swings open with the slightest squeak of its hinges, and the sound of footsteps enters the room. A male voice calls out in a monotone bass. “Ms. Foster, you have a visitor.”
There is a ghost beneath my skin, I can feel it. It waits there in silence, biding its time, staring out from behind my eyes, believing it's hidden, but I know it's there. I can feel its itch, itch, itch in the black of the night. It drives me to dark thoughts.
How much of ourselves can we really lay claim to? Which parts are ours and which are written into us, beyond our control? At times I despair that we are bound, Promethean, to the edifice of history, our chains our heritage, our legacy. Race. Class. Genetics. We struggle valiantly against them, while the buzzards peck at our liver, our future. All we own is that inch of slack between the chains and the rock, just enough room to allow us our jerks and spasms. Meaningless paroxysms.
I tell myself that things could never be so hopeless. Rarely are matters so black and white, and I've let myself get carried away again. But then, there's that itch.
We are haunted, all of us. By ghosts of the past. Ghosts of the future.
“I don't know,” Diego says, looking concerned as he walks back to Nami. “I looked all over the concourse and I can't find him anywhere.”
She's sitting on her luggage, her face in her hands. Hearing Diego's voice, she looks up. The sweat glistens on her face, causing her foundation to clump, her eyeliner to droop. It's hot and she's tired, and whatever pep she may have had at the beginning of the ten hour flight from Osaka to Santa Fe has long since disappeared, having diffused out of the pressurized cabin somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
“Mouuuuuu....” she moans, slipping back into Japanese. Diego bites his lip, not needing a translation.
“I told him our flight was coming in at 10:30. Where the hell is he?”
“This friend of yours....” she asks, flipping her damp hair back from out of her face. “He's usually reliable?”
“Reliable...” He screws his mouth up, before letting out a nervous laugh. “Well, that's not the first word that comes to mind when I think of Wally.”
“Then why did you ask him to pick us up?”
“He's the only person I know with a car.”
Wally jerks his head up from his desk, eyes agog, running the back of his hand against his nose as he inhales audibly. He drops the rolled-up twenty dollar bill next to the scattered grains of cocaine. He would have liked to use a hundred, but fuck it, no one was watching.
His dealer had come by early, knowing where to find him. Wally liked to spend his days strutting around his office, behind closed blinds. He had nothing really to do there, his building manager took care of all his properties for a pittance, but he liked to put on a tie and come in anyway. It made him feel important.
Used to popping off at the mouth at whoever was around, Wally had to hold his tongue around his dealer. A big, mean chulo with tats and a shaved head, he intimated Wally without even trying...though he tried a little anyway. He would saunter over to drop in Wally's big chair and kick his boots up on the desk while they talked business, flakes of barrio grime dropping off onto the fine mahogany finish. After forcing Wally to stammer awkwardly through five minutes of pleasantries, he usually sold him some product at three times the street price and left with a smile on his face.
That fucking piece of shit, Wally muttered to himself as he cut out another line with a series of angry swipes of a razor blade. He had been thinking about getting a new dealer for a while now. He would have dropped this one in a minute if he wasn't worried about the consequences. Who knew what a man like that was capable of? These Mexicans, they were too proud for their own good.
Not that he had anything against Mexicans. He just expected them to be a bit more deferential, was all, to know their place. Take his employees, for example. Almost all illegals, he liked to hire them short, under 5'6 if possible, easy to intimidate. He liked to feel confident he could slap them around a little if they got out of line. Or if he wanted to show off to his friends. But that was only natural.
The whole situation put him in such a bad mood that he couldn't imagine himself leaving his office until he had worked his way through the entire mound in front of him. Sad to say, but picking Diego up from the airport was the furthest thing from his mind.
Nami is sleeping on Diego's shoulder when he nudges her awake. The taxi is stopped in front of his apartment building, and she smiles briefly until Diego explains he doesn't have enough money to the pay the fare and can he borrow her credit card.
A minute later, they're dragging their bags over the shoddy lawn up to his front door. Diego fishes his key out of his pocket, dangling lonely on the key ring all by itself, and jams it into the lock. He pauses, turning to smile sheepishly at Nami.
'I told you before we left Japan that my place really isn't that great.'
'I really don't care, Diego, as long as I can get some sleep.'
' Well, ok. But don't say I didn't warn you.'
Turning the key in the lock, Diego pushes the door forward a few inches before it suddenly jams. He pushes into it with his shoulder, forcing it back only another inch or so. Another nervous smile.
'It used to open just fine before I left,' he says, now putting the brunt of his weight into the door, grunting as he pushes it forward, inch by inch. A few letters tumble out near his feet, sliding down from the heights of the mountain of envelopes which is blocking the door's progress.
'How long were you gone?' she asks, eyes widening.
'Amount six months,' he replies, sliding through the crack in the door and going to work, sweeping the pile of mail back further into the room.
He begins to cough audibly, and as Nami swings the door all the way open, she can see why. The shaft of sunlight piercing the room from the doorway reveals a hundred thousand particles of dust kicked up in the shuffle, held suspending in mid-air by invisible currents. She erupts in a sneeze, her hand flying to cover her mouth and nose, and then she sneezes again, culminating in a series of three.
'Can you get the light? It's by the door.'
Still covering her nose, she tiptoes over a few stray pieces of mail to flick the light switch. Nothing happens. She jiggles the switch back and forth, but still nothing.
'Diego!' she cries, in frustration more than anything. He jumps up from the stack of mail and tries the switch himself, as if perhaps, for whatever reason, it was programmed to respond to his touch alone. Clearly this is not the case either, as the room remains shrouded in darkness.
'Son of a bitch,' he murmurs, glaring first at the switch, then at the overhead light. 'I paid my rent in advance before I left for Japan. Though now that I think about it, maybe the utilities weren't included.'
'Mouuuu.....'
Brushing past Diego, Nami opens up the window above the kitchen sink, trying to let some fresh air into the apartment. She crosses the threshold into the living room and opens another window over the sofa before dropping down onto it with a sigh. She coughs loudly, having inadvertently kicked up another large dust cloud.
A box of cereal sits open on the coffee table. She leans forward to examine it, but when she picks it up, a half dozen fruit flies flutter out into her face.
'Eeeyah!' she screams, dropping the box and jumping back, waving a frantic hand in front of her face to chase them away. It the process, she kicks over a bong at her feet, knocking the cashed bowl flying and spilling six month old bong water across the apartment floor. She looks as if she's about to cry.
'Mouuuu....'
'Don't worry about it. The place is a shithole anyway,' Diego says, carrying a big armful of mail. He drops it on the coffee table in front of her, before taking a seat in the chair to her side. 'Can you help me look for the electric bill? It should say ComEd or something on it.'
Nami looks as if she wants to say something, but decides against it, sullenly assisting Diego in his search. Making use of the sunlight from the window above the couch, they begin to work their way through the pile of mail, one by one.
'What's this one supposed to be?' she asks him, holding an envelope up for his perusal.
'AWC? I don't know, probably some wrestling company. Must have heard I got cut by PRIME. Those guys don't waste any time at all.'
'You want to open it?'
'Nah, fuck it. I'll look at it later. First things first, we need to get some power up in here.'
There is a lot of garbage in the pile. Sweepstakes, credit card applications, fliers from the local pizza delivery store. Most gets tossed on the floor, where it gets put to good use soaking up the spilled bong water.
'Ah! I think I found it!' Nami says, smiling for the first time since she entered the apartment. She holds out the bill to show Diego, but he's not paying any attention. His eyes are locked on the letter he's holding in his hands, and she can see even in the dim light that tears are welling up in them.
The envelope the letter came in is laying torn on the table, but when she glances down at it she can't make any sense of it. It's from some sort of institute, she can see. So what, then, a college? What could it mean? What could it possibly mean?
My mother never complained after my father left us. Not in my hearing, at least. I know, I know, it’s a story you hear all the time. The single mother, back bent Atlas-like under the weight of the world. The shared heritage of the poor, the downtrodden. The rest of the story writes itself.
Only it doesn’t. Not all of the time. Not in this case.
There was alcohol, of course, there always is. She was no angel. But it never became a problem. She was able to keep it under control, work two jobs, save money, bring me up. In retrospect, she did a hell of a job. I was luckier than most.
As the years went by, though, she underwent a change. It was as if the very life-force was being drained out of her. I remember her slumped over the table after work, pale-faced and enervated. I was in high school at the time and nobody’s fool. I checked her arms for track marks, but she was clean.
What caused it, I couldn’t tell you, and neither could any of the doctors. She lost her job, she stopped bathing, her hair grew mangy and unkempt. The worst of it, though, was that she refused to talk to anybody about what was bothering her. It was as if going on with this life had become too much of a chore for her, she couldn’t be bothered going through the motions anymore. She drew into herself and the world grew dim.
I didn’t know what to do. I was just a kid. I couldn’t take care of her, even if I had the means. I put her in the state hospital, hoping they could do something to stabilize her condition. Which they did, more or less. Heavily medicated, but at least she was watched after, cared for.
I didn’t think things would get any worse. Shows what the fuck I know.
This world will make a fool out of you, again and again.
“Why won’t you let me see her?”
“Mr. Foster, you need to calm down, or I’ll be forced to call security.”
“I am calm, I just want you to answer my question.”
“You can’t see her without making an appointment. S-class residents have special visiting regulations.”
“S-class? What are you talking about? I have no idea what that means!”
“S-class designation is reserved for our most dangerous residents, the ones with a proven criminal history of violence. All of the details were in the report we sent to you.”
“So she got into a fight with some nurses. That’s hardly cause to bring her here….”
“A fight? Please don’t trivialize the matter, Mr. Foster. Two of the individuals she assaulted are still in critical condition, and a third is currently in a persistent vegetative state.”
“But....but....”
“There were three counts of attempted murder at her previous facility, not even taking into account the further two which occurred here. When taking into consideration your gross absenteeism, the only option available to the state was her transfer to the Institute.”
“But I need to see her.”
“If you needed to see her so badly, maybe you should have thought about that before you left the country for six months.”
“Is there a problem here?”
“Yes, I believe Mr. Foster is in need of an escort outside the building.”
“Mike? Mike! You have to help me! My mom!”
“Mr. Valentine, don't tell me you're acquainted with Mr. Foster.”
“Well, we used to work together....”
“Come on, Mike, you've got to be able to do something.”
“Diego is an old friend of mine. I'll take responsibility for the visit.”
“Wow, thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Hmph. Very well, I'll allow it, but only because of your stellar record. I just hope you don't make a habit of flaunting regulations. I'm sure I don't need to warn you, but keep in mind that this resident is extremely dangerous. Please take the usual precautions.”
Mike stood back, watching Diego tentatively enter the room, approaching his mother from behind. Though on the long walk down he had gone through the usual litany of warnings, he had a feeling that Diego hadn't been listening to him at all, his mind somewhere else, looking ahead. Mike had a rotten feeling in his gut as he rested his hand on the butt of his revolver, ready to draw at the slightest sign.
Looking at the woman, so slight, almost ethereal in her wheelchair, it was hard to believe she was capable of the heinous crimes attached to her name. But surely that was what had lured her attendants into a false sense of security the week before.
He had been there for that one, responding to the alarm. He had arrived to see her holding the shattered blade of glass to the throat of Perez, the trickle of blood already flowing down to stain his shirt. Her unblinking eyes had been full of malice, her voice, her hiss, that of a feral beast, ready to strike.
Too lax. That kind of behavior could get you killed in the Institute.
But she surely wouldn't attack her own son, he told himself. His grip tightened on the pistol. It couldn't hurt to be too careful.
Diego had walked around to stand in front of her. He called her name softly. Her eyes were half closed, fluttering slightly, but she showed no outward signs of recognition. She stared past him, through him, as he knelt down to place a hand on her leg, tears in his eyes.
“I'll do whatever it takes to get you out of here, Mom,” he said through his tears. “I promise.”
Mike watched this all with a stone face. He let Diego have his moment, but he knew better.
People that go into the Institute, they don't come out.
A lone figure, squatting on his haunches, surveys the city of Santa Fe below. His age is impossible to guess, his face weathered and cracked, yet betraying none of the lost vitality common to the faces of the middle-aged. He waits a long time, silent, motionless, before finally lifting a hand up to stroke his long mustache. Spitting, he stands up and walks back toward his campsite, on the way readjusting the shotgun slung across his back.
The stars shine overhead, but the lights of the city below make them seem paltry and insignificant. They`re too far away, too dim to inspire anymore. For millennia, it was easy for people to imagine that we were held in thrall to the motions of the heavens. But that was before the Copernican Revolution of the soul. Nobody pays attention to the stars anymore. It's the forces within that pull us along, like puppets on strings.
His campsite is spartan, a small fire all he needs. The summer night offers all the warmth he requires, and even if it didn't, his body has over decades become hardened to the elements. He has no bedroll, used to sleeping on run, his arm his only pillow.
The mesa is deserted in all directions. There are no signs of the usual summer campfires of college students, looking to escape the watchful eye of the city to engage in their perennial experiments with drugs, alcohol, eroticism. He has the serial killings of the autumn before to thank for his privacy.
The fear still lives in their hearts, he knows, mocking their youthful arrogance. There are things in this world yet beyond their understanding. They are right to be afraid.
He can feel it in the air, heavy and palpable, feel it in his heart, black and malevolent.
Dark days lie ahead.