A cheesy tongue in cheek (I hope) look at punishment and insanity in the holier than thow society; I think I wrote this to shock the middle aged catholic spinster who used to piss me off in creative writing. Kind of shamefully immature, but I was only about fourteen at the time. Still no excuse for this degree of Edam.
The wall was like a subway map, a vast circuit board of exponential cracks. A tapestry of decay, a testimonial to deprivation. A flaking blue to its observers eye, it was a stark contrast to the clinical perfection of the rest of the room; a reminder of inevitable erosion, in the plastic white of an artificial world. A door opened and the footsteps of the intruder produced echoes in the silence. The man sat, impassive, as electrodes were strapped to his forehead, gazed
ahead uncaring as he was given first light then larger and larger jolts of electricity. Blank faced and empty eyed, he made no motion as the doctor giggling increased the current, jeering as he turned the dial still further. “Come on psycho, come on you twisted prick. Bit your tongue, make it bleed.” Until at last he left, leaving the room to silence, and the man to staring at the
wall.
Pan dropped an acidbomb. Letting it fizz away on his tongue, dissolving, an exploding whirl of expanding consciousness. “Boom”, he whispered, dropping his head on the battered yellow cover of the couch. A vivid collage of memory, short through with golden threads of sound, rose from the battered remnants of the room to meet him. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his mind exploded.
He awoke to the jerking, shaking motions his body was making as it recovered from the cocktail of chemicals he’d fed it. Shivering in the early morning air, he sat up gazing around the isolated park for some sign of life, some indication he was not alone. Far off to his right he noticed a group of children walking a dog. Standing he set out for them, strolling with a quick unhurried
pace through the cold misty air. As he approached he noticed one child in particular. A little girl. Even as he watched her face changed, became that of his abusive father, staring mockingly up at him. Laughing at his sons ragged appearance. A well of hatred boiled up in him, speeding his pace. Within seconds he was among the children. Kneeling, his hands around the girls neck. Still she wore the face of his tormentor and he knew hat if he could make his father go away everything would be alright. He squeezed, his hands crushing his fathers throat. Pressing the life from him. A choking noise erupted from the broken larynx and then, nothing. He was filled for a moment with exultant joy and then, even as he watched, the face changed , his father rough hewn features were replaced by those of a child. Horrified, he stared down at the limp body in his arms.
The cell was filled with the stench of sweat and piss. The legacy of human bodies kept for too long in close confinement. Pan’s eyes wandered round the room, inspecting walls stained with blood and shit. Exploring dark corners, where sick things squirmed. Pressing over the rooms two bunks indelibly marked with the legacy of years of puke and grit.
The other man, a rapist, lay sprawled on his bed, vulnerable, spread eagled in the all to human act of sleep. Peering at him Pan was reminded of a steak, a huge inviting hunk of raw, bleeding meat. Something pure amidst the scum. The desire for something clean, something not of this place, grew; a cancerous wanting. He needed, urgently, something to cling onto. The mass of helpless flesh looked so inviting. He reached forward and twisted the mans neck, first one way, then the other, breaking his spinal cord. Then he buried his head in the soft meat of the mans stomach and began to eat.
The doctor’s smile widened as he luxuriated in an orgy of sadistic pleasure. As he covered the mans body in razor sharp pins he experienced the thrill of not being responsible for his actions. The feeling of power. He could do anything, break any taboo, the patient was too far gone to react, no matter what the stimuli. As he got his depraved pleasure the doctor was growing acclimatised to the horror. Soon it wouldn’t matter whether his patients reacted at all. The seeds of insanity had been sown.