The Boys from Santa Cruz

Everything after that, except for a few wispy fragments of sense-memory, like walking through a field of pot plants seven feet high, lacy green light filtering through the leaves, was either blank, or so confused and conflated with my CR hallucinations and nightmares that I couldn’t separate the real from the fantastic.

Somehow, though, after a few nights of struggling, I managed to stumble upon a solution to my problem. Write it down, something told me, you have to write it down. Which led to the next problem: how to obtain writing implements without giving away my secret?

Pens were easy, there were plenty of them lying around the nursing station desks. All I could find to write in, though, was this 1995 Pocket Pal notebook-calendar. I found it in a drawer in the nurses’ station. It’s one of those pocket-sized drug company giveaways with the name and address of the local Pfizer sales rep printed in fake gold leaf on the fake leather cover. Not a lot of room for writing, obviously. But by printing in microscopically tiny letters, jamming the lines infinitesimally close together, and making use of every available inch of space including the margins around the “Useful Information” pages (first aid instructions, a metric conversion chart, zip and area code listings, etc.), I have managed to squeeze ten full years of my life into these cramped and no doubt barely legible pages.

It worked, too! My marbles and my memories, they are back. I know who I am, and I know what happened to me. And thanks to my psychiatrist, who left me alone in his office with my records and charts the other day while he went off to attend to some emergency, I even know how they got away with doing what they did.

It all started with a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. In other words, according to the shrinks I am a total psychopath. That’s why, they say, I helped Big Luke and Teddy rape and kill at least three women. No mention of the fact that Judge Higuera dismissed all the charges against me.

Then I strangled Dusty and threw her over the cliff, snuck up on Brent and attacked him from behind, and stabbed Rudy to death for good measure. Never mind that I was never convicted, or even brought to trial, for any of those terrible deeds. Apparently that bit in the Constitution about how you’re innocent until proven guilty doesn’t apply to psychos.

Next they brought me to Meadows Road, where I started attacking orderlies indiscriminately, willy-nilly, no mention of how it was the whitecoats who jumped me the second I arrived. And as for how that whitecoat used to take me into the bathroom and beat me up when I was drugged and helpless, somehow none of that ever made it into the records, even though one of the doctors caught him in the act.

I realize now that in a way, it would have been better if I had been convicted of something. At least then I’d have a lawyer and I could appeal. Instead, I’m serving life without parole and I can’t even argue my own case, because if they so much as suspect that I’ve got my marbles back, they’ll have me back under chemical restraint before you can say phenothiazine.

So come to think of it, yeah, maybe I am a little crazy by now. But can you blame me? I’m only twenty-five years old, but I’ve already been lied to and betrayed by everyone I’ve ever trusted, robbed of my freedom and robbed of my mind, then locked up for life in this shithole they call Meadows Road. And I don’t even know why.

My grandparents do, though. And thanks to some information one of the inmates gave me yesterday morning, I may get a chance to ask them about it any day now, face-to-face, live and in person.

And when I’ve finished discussing matters with Fred and Evelyn, there are a few other people I’d like to have a word or two with.

I know, I know, everybody says that living well is the best revenge. But for me, living well is probably an unrealistic goal, even if I do manage to make it out of here. So I guess I’m going to have to settle for second best: seeing every single one of the treacherous, backstabbing bastards on my list die slow and painful deaths, and maybe even sticking around long enough to watch the turkey vultures munch-munch-munching on their remains.

3

Thanks to a sudden April shower, there were only two patients in the little garden courtyard yesterday morning. There was me, wearing a raincoat over my pajamas and robe, carrying an umbrella, and shuffling along in the flat-footed walk I’d copied off the other chemically restrained droolers I saw every day. Then there was a tall, stooped old lunatic with luxurious sorcerer’s eyebrows, who was wearing a transparent poncho over a shapeless, egg-stained brown cardigan.

“Spitting out the old meds again, eh?” he said, when we were out of earshot of the whitecoat assigned to the garden, who had taken refuge on a bench under the eaves.

“Hibbing owza wha?” I replied in a drooler slur: the trick was to pretend your tongue was as thick as a sirloin steak.

“You can fool them,” he said, “but you can’t fool me. I’ve been here forever. I know where the bodies are buried.” He delivered the words in machine-gun bursts: ratta-ta- tat.

Oh great, busted by a full-blown loony. I decided my best bet was to play along with him. “How’d I give myself away?”

“Aura. Your sulfur black has turned to primrose pink.”

“You can see auras?”

“I see everything. That’s why I’m here. Too much input, not enough filter. I used to think it was the antennas.” Pointing toward his upper molars. “Delusional behavior: they don’t need no stinkin’ antennas.”

“I’m C.R. myself,” I told him.

He nodded knowingly. “If I was you, sonny, I’d get the hell out of here. Before your next blood workup. Which will tell them you’ve been spitting out your meds. Which they’ll then start injecting.”

“But…but they took blood from me just the other day.”

“Then my advice to you is make like a banana and split. Decamp, posthaste before the results come back.”

“I can’t: I’m not a voluntary commit.”

“But you are on the third floor, right?” he said with a wink. Or it might have been a tic.

I nodded.

“Spend much time in the lounge?” A huge, dark, high-ceilinged room, oppressively overfurnished with high- backed leather chairs, carved oaken side tables, tasseled lamps, and sofas with deedle-ball trim. Even the television set, encased in a heavy walnut credenza, looked kind of Victorian.

“Of course.” What else was there to do? A guy can only take so many naps and so many walks.

“Ever looked behind the curtains?”

Dusty drapes of eggplant-colored velvet were drawn across the back wall; I’d never seen them opened. “No, but I saw the windows from the outside when they first brought me here. They’re all bricked up.”

“Windows? What windows? Forget the windows. Who said anything about windows?”

“Sorry.” The rain worsened; I angled the umbrella to shield him as well. “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

“Here’s the tale, boy. Once upon a time, I was lounging in the dayroom when the fire alarm went off. The whitecoat opened the curtains. Voila, a fire door opened onto an enclosed stairwell. Shoo, shoo, down we went. One flight, two flights, three flights. Then the all clear. Shoo, shoo, back up we came. But there must have been an egress down there somewhere. Either that,” the old loon added confidentially, “or they were leading us to our deaths.”

After lunch, I made my way to the lounge. Dressed in drab pajamas, a shapeless robe, and paper slippers, I took a seat at the chess table, and while moving the pieces aimlessly around the inlaid squares of walnut and maple, I discreetly surveyed the room’s inhabitants.

Standing in one corner, staring intently at something no one else could see, was Chuckles, the inmate whose bearing and behavior I had studiously observed and copied in order to perfect my ongoing imitation of a drugged-out drooler.

A few feet away from Chuckles, the saddest-looking man I’d ever seen rocked back and forth in a squeaky red