Ward Off the Voices: A Short Story
Please, Dick. It’s gettin’ cold!” William H. Bonney screams to the nurse who’s serving him his state-regulated lunch and mid-day pills.
The nurse, Nurse Glinda, glares at Billy, “Now Mr. Bucannon, I need you to be patient and calm down, you’ll get your food in tern just like all the other patients.”
Billy the Kid (as he preferred to be called) whipped out both fists from his white linen uniform pockets in the shape of two finger guns. With a startling jolt into an upright sitting position from his former slouch, Kevin Bucannon, or Billy the Kid, startles Nurse Glinda and menacingly utters, “See? See there sweetheart? I coulda killed ya. I coulDAKILLEDYA! I coulda killed ya! Coulda killed ya! BUT. I don’t wanna kill ya, see? I want to eat! EAT!”
And with that he slumped back into his metal cafeteria chair anxious for his white bread bologna sandwich and mac-n-cheese.
“No food until you take these,” the nurse hands him two antipsychotic drugs and a benzodiazepine. Billy swallows them whole and stretches out his hands like a child, reaching for the paper tray of food.
“Alright then, here you are,” she mutters as she places the tray past his nagging hands onto the table before him.
Billy’s certainly not alone; not alone in the cafeteria and certainly not alone in the state-funded Texas Psychiatry Hospital and Mental Institution. He’s surrounded by more whackos. These other loons don’t necessarily share his specific affliction, though. You see, Billy, er-Kevin, that is, suffers from cognitive dissonance; he has made himself believe that he really is Billy the Kid, American outlaw and famed star of the Wild West. William H. Bonney, that is, the real William H. Bonney, died in 1881, long before Kevin was ever even born. Kevin is very confused about his identity, in fact, he isn’t even aware that William H. Bonney’s real name was actually Henry McCarty. The real outlaw began referring to himself as ‘William’ after fleeing from New Mexico into neighboring Arizona after becoming a federal fugitive and a wanted man sometime in 1877.
But Kevin doesn’t know that. Now, in the late 1990’s, Kevin Bucannon is only aware of the Billy the Kid that he’s seen in movies. Films he’s watched for days on end. Binging. His favorites are Young Guns (1998), Young Guns 2 (1990), and Tombstone (1993). He’s seen them all thousands of times. Enough times to quote every line of each movie. He’s seen them so many times because he used them to hide. He used them to hide from his own harsh reality. The reality of his malicious step-father, a horrifically evil man who beat him; who beat him and his mother and sister religiously; the man’s every word stung like wasps and whose every blow was like a crayon that colored his skin purple, and yellow and brown, and often red. The villain that Billy would eventually murder in cold blood.
“Stop hackin’ on ME!” Billy screams as the nurse walks to another table of patients; another table of cuckoos that are staring blankly into the distance or babbling to themselves; another table of people who are checked out; out of reality and certainly out of their minds.
“But there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip! Many a slip! Many a slip! Many a slip twixt the cup and the lip… the cup and the lip… cup and lip…” Billy’s mutterings begin to disappear into inaudible whispers as his focus turns to his hospital food. He picks up his plastic spork with a gripped fist like a child and begins to stab at his macaroni.
Meanwhile, Nurse Janet scans the room as the other two nurses continue to serve lunch. She scans the room for any oddities beyond the usual nut-sO behavior. She scans for signs of violence, for signs of patients losing control. She’s not worried though. This day is like most others: nurses and orderlies have the patients sedated and docile. After lunch, they’ll bustle the quackahoos to the recreation area, where most of them will continue to do exactly what they’re doing now (minus the food)… basically drool on themselves. What a wonderful life, eh?
“YAHOO! I’LL MAKE YA FAMOUS!”
“Mr. Bucannon! Please!” Nurse Glinda Pleads with Billy to calm down.
“Maybe we should up his dose, ya think?” Janet mentions from across the room.
“HEY TOMMY, LAST ONE UP THE HILL’S A THREE LEGGED DOG!”
“I agree, too much more of this and he’s going to get too wound up to be calmed down. Let’s go ahead and administer a shot. Ten milligrams, Lorazepam.”
“You’re a daisy if you do!” Billy quips with a wink and smirk towards the nurses, who have now joined each other and are approaching Billy with a syringe in hand.
“Okay, Billy, alright, now. Everything’s alllllright. Everything’s gonna be just fine. We’re just going to take a little nap now. Take a nice afternoon nap now that we’ve finished our big lunch, okay? Okay.” Nurse Janet administers the shot to Billy as he squirms slightly under Nurse Glinda’s grip.
“My SWEet soft, Hungarian devil…” Billy drifts off into a lull; a drool state.
“Clarence, can you and Ben help us here?”
Two of the orderlies come over with wheel chair in hand. They scoop up Kevin Bucannon from his metal chair and strap him in the state-issued wheel chair. Billy’s head is cocked to one side now, his eyelids half shut and closing fast.
“Go ahead and take him to his room, thanks guys. I’ll come check on him in a minute.”
The orderlies wheel Kevin down the hall and out of site.
“Alright folks, nothing to see here, let’s get back to our lunches, now,” Nurse Janet addresses several of the other patients who are onlookers now, staring with mouths open at the scene that just took place in front of them. Most of them don’t have their mouths gaping in surprise, though (except for the sane man, Shephard Way). Rather, they’re just enjoying the drool party.
Party time?! AmIright?!?!
Except for Allie Prae. Allie has turned to face Janet, a dramatic move for the nearly comatose patient who never speaks and hardly moves. The girl who has to be fed and bathed and clothed. But she’s turned now. Turned to face the nurse. A single petrified tear rolls down her cheek. Unnoticed. Unseen. No one cares.
“You’re going to burn in Hell for this, you know nurse? Hell! HELL, HELL, HELL!” Sybil Leeke snarls from her isolated table in the corner of the cafeteria.
“Hooookay, I think lunch is over now,” Janet gestures to the other two nurses and the orderlies to start cleaning up the patients’ plates. “I think it’s time we retired to the activity room for some afternoon naps and quiet time, alrighty? Alrighty then.” Nurse Janet says with the rhythm of a kindergarten teacher sing-songing her class into doing what she wants. “C’mon. C’mon now everyone.” Her intonation is calming. The staff guides the haphazard group to the lockable activity room while administering several benzo shots to a few patients, including the would-be witch, Sybill Leeke.
There’s no use in Sybil fighting back now, though. She bitterly accepts her dose as she unblinkingly stares at the eyes of Nurse Glinda, the good witch. She’s staring deep. She’s staring into the nurse’s soul. The good witch doesn’t know it. Sybill’s burning holes with her eyes. Burying her.
Sybill’s a dark character. After trial she came here because she was diagnosed as criminally insane after one of the most talked about trials of her small Texas town. Several vagrants had gone missing, one after the other. Eventually police were led to a wooded area that was unoccupied, well, by any normal people, that is. Sybill and a group of other so-called, self-proclaimed ‘witches,’ had drugged and kidnapped the missing homeless individuals and had sacrificed them. Bathed in their blood. Danced around the bonfire of their bones. Levitated into the forest night.
Follow me into the forest…
Sybill spoke of levitating; of dancing naked around giant bonfires; of talking Billy goats; dark-horned creatures that gnashed and flapped in the night’s shadows. She spoke of extended periods of black outs (this is what helped get her off in court); of screams and whispers in her head at night; of hallucinations in the day; of glowing eyes transfixed in the corners of her room; dark figures following her when she was alone. She spoke of possession.
Paranoid shadows out to get her.
Hail the way King. Though he’s old and grey.
In the ward, she was mostly ignored, though. She was just another patient, perhaps more gothic than most, resembling the manic-depressiveness of characters like Lisa Rowe in Girl Interrupted. She’s also manipulative. Evil. This was apparent to most of the small-town community at large (aside from the twelve jurors that heard her plead her case, of course). A lot of people speculated that had her victim’s not been on the fringes of society—had they had family members who cared about them—had they not been homeless vagrants, the truth about her character may have come to light. Sybill herself had never examined her behavior in these ways. She’s sociopathic. She says she’s a witch—no one can really be sure. But we can all be sure of one thing, she is a murderer.
For now though, she’s a docile cat. Lounging in one of the hospital couches in the activity area, blankly staring at Jeopardy re-runs on the old TV with a bent antenna.
A soft piano melody drifts from the back corner of the activity area now. Small notes that flutter like butterflies before landing on the lower, full chords of the octaves below them.
Allie Prae.
Her fingertips fall to the keys like drops of morning dew.
The rest of her body is still.
Her eyes don’t move.
No other part of her body moves, except from her elbows to her fingers.
She plays. She plays beautifully. But this is all she does now. Nothing else. She must be fed and clothed. She wears a diaper. She is catatonic. Once a devoted Southern Baptist choir singer and pianist, she grew up in a very traditional home. Her father, a preacher, was a strict man. Her mother was obedient to a fault. Still, Allie had a good life; a happy one. Perhaps too happy. She became too carefree, her father would say she lost the fear of God. She stopped praying.
The body moves, but the mind’s unchained.
Hail the way King, in a world of shame.
She lost the fear of God.
She became pregnant.
A teenage mother.
Carrying a young bastard…in the eyes of her father. In the eyes of The Father.
His punishment was swift and cruel. Though he never physically beat her, some would say his wrath was far worse. Allie was locked for days in the cellar of her traditional home. Starved—for days on end. Bathed like a prisoner. Hosed down to wash the sin off. The stains that will never leave. Haven’t left. Cursed. Verbally ridiculed. No one came to her rescue.
She lost the baby.
Maybe it was the extreme malnourishment. Maybe it was her own fading will to live. Maybe it was the unbearable loss of her father’s love. The guilt of a thousand lives not lived.
Maybe it was the crippling weight of sin.
Catatonic.
Mute.
She became unable to look after herself in any normal capacity, certainly providing enough evidence for her family to have her permanently committed by the state.
No escaping now.
No faith that she’ll ever come to. No faith that she’ll ever snap out of it.
She stopped praying.
But the music persists. As it always does. The only thing that she can still do.
Play.
The nurses enjoy it, too. They say it calms the other patients. Plus, Allie’s good. She’s wonderfully talented, actually.
But sad stories never end.
It’s dinner time just a few hours later. All the patients have been walked or wheeled back to the florescent cafeteria. White tiled with the metal chairs and paper trays and plastic sporks. White gowns match the white walls. The nausea of the extrapolation of white depth. Where the walls meet the ceiling and the ceiling meets the floor. Caged in a lucid dream. A sickly version of Oz.
We’re not in Kansas anymore.
The patients are mostly cheery, though. Nurse Glinda’s certainly in a better mood; her shift is almost over. Thomasin Mercy takes note—
“You look just ravishing, Glinda! And thank you for the slippers! I wasn’t sure I deserved such a gift.” Her smile twinkles like ruby reds.
Nurse Glinda plays along with Thomasin, for once.
“Well sweetie, just remember, never let those ruby slippers off your feet for a moment, or you will be at the mercy of the Wicked Witch of the West.” They grin at each other.
Sybill Leeke glares from under her brow across the white tiles.
Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?
Thomasin isn’t as deeply entrenched as Kevin—as Billy. She often uses Dorothy as a means to calm herself down and perhaps to express herself. Perhaps to cheer herself up.
We’re not in Kansas anymore.
To keep from cutting.
“Nurse Glinda?”
“Yes Ms. Mercy?”
“Do you know when I’ll be going home? Do you—do you know how much longer I have to stay?” she whimpers.
The voices are creeping in…
Oh! Will you help me? Can you help me?
You don’t need to be helped any longer. You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.
I have? Then why didn’t you tell me before?
You wouldn’t have believed me. You had to learn it for yourself. Have you learned, Dorothy?
Well, I—I think that it, that it wasn’t enough just to want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em—and it’s that—if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with. Is that right?
That’s all it is!
But that’s so easy! I should’ve thought of that! I should have felt it in my heart!
Well you had to find it out for yourself. Now those magic slippers will take you home in two seconds!
Oh, Toto too?
Toto too.
Now?
Whenever you wish. Now close your eyes and tap your heels together three times. And think to yourself, ‘There’s no place like home.’
…voices….
“Well sweetie, we want you to stay awhile. With us. We care for you! We don’t want you being unsafe out there in the scary world beyond the ward. We just want to make sure you’re safe and sound.”
Safe and sound…
“No way to ward off the voices now, Thomasin,” Sybill sneers.
“Now that’s enough, Sybill. Please just eat your dinner,” the nurse scolds.
“But I just want to be better. I just want to get out of here—to get well, to get getter better,” Dorothy whines.
“I know sweetie, and you will. You will in good time. Okay? Here now,” she sets the tray down in front of Dorothy “let’s have some delicious meat loaf, alrighty? Alrighty then.”
Wouldst thou like the taste of butter? A pretty dress? Wouldst thou like to live deliciously? Wouldst thou like to see the world?
The dangerous world?
The primal hunger that only sin can feed.
My sweet, soft Hungarian devil.
“BANG BANG! HAHAHAHAHA! I coulda killed ya! But I—“
“…Just wanna eat. Yeah, we know, Kevin,” Glinda sighs heavily. The sweet glisten of a good mood is disappearing fast now. “Only forty five minutes till freedom,” she says to herself under her own breath as she places the paper tray in front of the Western outlaw.
“BEST DOLLAR EIGHTY I EVER SPENT!”
“Shhh, Kevin, pleaaaaase. Just—just calm down and eat your supper. Good Lord.”
“But Bob! If we’re caught, we’re gonna hang!”
There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.
“Kevin!” Janet’s voice echoes across the stagnant white. Reverberating in the pale sickness. “That’s enough now, y’hear?”
“Dear Governor Axtell, I’ve heard that you will give two hundred dollars for my head. Perhaps we should meet and talk. I am at the Juarez village at the border. Send three men, and instruct them not to shoot, as I am unarmed. In short, Sir; I surrender. Your obedient servant, William H. Bonney. PS: I CHANGED MY MIND HAHAHAHAHA. KISS MY ASS! HAHAHAHA.”
“Jesus Christ. Alright that’s it.” Nurse Janet heads to the nurse’s station across the hall to retrieve the hypodermics and the (the good stuff) juice to fill ‘em up. Behind the counter, she takes a long pull from a flask hidden beneath the desk. It helps to get through the day. Necessary. She tells herself.
“Murphy, you son of a bitch…” Billy trails off again after the injection.
“Hook him up to his tube since he didn’t eat,” Janet tells the orderlies who are now wheeling Billy once again down the hall. He had a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy performed for incidences like this. And is unfortunately fed often this way.
What will you from me?
Dost thou see a book before thee?
Aye…
Remove thy shift and write thy name…
I cannot write my name…
Then I will guide thy hand. Follow me into the forest…
Voices.
Whispers.
Screams.
John and Shephard have been watching the dinner scene. Horrified. They’re truly trapped.
There’s no place like home.
An incredibly paranoid man, John Thomas hears voices, much like the rest here. He constantly thinks the people around him are plotting against him. Trying to bring about his demise. But their intentions here are not that. No one here is plotting against him. Not the nurses. Not the orderlies. Not the other patients. Not even the janitor crew that comes in at night.
Not unless he’s planning to leave.
There is no leaving.
You cannot ward off the voices.
There is no leaving the ward.
John’s sensitive ears are what got him in here. He couldn’t handle the stimulation of the outside world. He’s the only other musician in the building besides the Baptist choir singer. But there’s no music for him now.
Bye-bye Ms. American Pie.
He became homeless after his interactions with all the people around him, strangers, close friends and family, he couldn’t handle any relationships. He isolated himself and eventually became homeless. Picked up by police for harassing passers-by on the streets of Dallas. He’s been committed to the ward ever since.
“I’m tellin’ ya man, I’m tellin’ ya… Can’t you see it?! Can’t you hear it?! They’re coming man. They’re talking about us. Plotting. They’re fucking talking about us. OhmyGod ohmyGod ohmyGod,” he’s becoming frantic under his breath. He’s beginning to scare Shephard.
“It’s going to be alright, man,” Shephard coos, he doesn’t want the dude sitting at his table to freak out and have to be sedated like that quack Billy. He doesn’t want to draw any attention to himself. To draw any more attention to the fact that he’s sane.
Follow me into the forest…
The black Billy goat beckons you.
No, Shephard Way isn’t crazy. Hard to believe how he managed to get himself in this situation. In this cage full of loons. The only thing that Shephard is, is an addict. Worse than most have seen.
Because he’s an addict, he’s a thief.
Because he’s an addict, he’s a liar.
Because he’s an addict, he can’t be trusted.
Because he’s an addict, he’s desperate.
Because he’s an addict, he’s depraved.
Sick with a disease.
Being addicted to fucking heroine is not a disease, Shephard! You chose it! You can’t choose a fucking disease!
He’s robbed.
He’s lied.
He’s manipulated.
He’s begged.
He’s despicable.
But he’s not crazy.
Not crazy.
I’m not fucking crazy! I don’t want to fucking go there!
Well it’s either the institution or jail, BuckO, so taKE YOU’RE FUCKING PICK!
Voices.
Honey, it’s the only way. We’ve exhausted all options for rehab.
Yeah, not to mention you’ve only been twenty fucking times!
Harold!
You stole cars, you lied to everyone you know, you manipulated your loved ones, all of us, you’ve panhandled on the fucking street, you fucking stabbed someone! Thank Christ you didn’t murder him or there really WOULD be no other option than prison. Prison for the reST oF YoUR FuuucKING LIFE!
It’s the only way, Shephard.
Screams.
It’s the only way.
Whispers.
But he’s not crazy.
It’s the only way.
The courts agreed.
Hail the way King, in a world of shame.
He stares now at the bleak food set before him. Quietly chewing the meatloaf. Quietly thinking while his table neighbor rocks back and forth anxiously biting his nails. Stammering to himself. Whispers.
How can Shephard Way escape? How can he be free? The itch beckons him.
The black Billy goat.
An itch he can never really scratch.
The monkey on his back.
8:30 pm.
“Alrighty, let’s get everyone ready for bed now,” Nurse Janet says to the group before turning and taking another large swig from her flask as she makes her way down the psychiatric hall.
The witches come out at night.
As the patients are bedded down for the night, the lights begins to click off one-by-one in the hallway. An intimidating countdown to the black of night. Each morose light quivers before it shuts off. Each click of escaping power sounds like a bang, a bell toll, echoing through the sickly white halls.
What is this that stands before me?
Figure in black which points at me—
A playground for the whispers; the voices, the screams.
As Shephard lays in his cot, staring at the moonlight through the metal bars of his window, he cries without making a sound. How will he ever escape this lucid nightmare? How will he escape this waking dream? It’s been months. He’s losing track. He’s losing what sanity he had left.
The monkey on your back.
A creak in the hallway. A whisper. A beckoning.
Follow me into the forest…
Black Billy goat.
Reluctant, terrified, he rises from his cot to his cracked suite door. He peers around his corner and down the hall. He hears whispers…
“You killed the boys, Patsie.”
Billy the Kid.
“Lord, forgive us for our wrongdoings, for our misguidance by heathen religions. Thank you for keeping us alive. Lord, be with us in doing the right thing. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallow be thy name.”
Billy.
Shephard stands fully upright. Exists his room. Begins to creep down the hall. Towards the voices. Towards the light of another cracked door. Who knows what time it is? Deep in the night, is all he can guess. The quiet bustles of the janitorial team are gone. They’ve gone home for the night. Closer to the light. Further down the hall, he steps. The wet sounds of his bare feet on the cold, white tile. The sick tile. White with disease.
“Reap the whirlwind, Brady, reap it.”
Closer.
Ever closer.
Shephard’s at the cracked light of the door now. The whispers echo in his brain as he listens.
“What are we gonna do now?”
“We’re gonna show these guys that they’ve finally met their match.”
It’s Sybill and Billy the Kid. They’re plotting.
“You’ve killed before, Billy,” Sybill coaxes. “There’s only one orderly on duty now, in the nurse’s station. He’s got the only set of keys. We can escape, Billy. We can be free!”
There’s no place like home.
She was right of course. She knew his history; how he came to the ward. Billy had murdered his step-father. Shot him in the back of the head with his own Colt Anaconda, a large frame double-action revolver, featuring a full length under-barrel ejection-rod lug and a six round cylinder. He’d used a box of .44 Magnum ammunition cartridges. He’d used all of them. Six through the back of his step-father’s head, before re-loading and unloading another six on his mother. A second and third reload for the twelve shots that killed his siblings, his sister and brother. And the rest fired off ‘just for fun’ throughout his house and neighborhood. A Colt Anaconda. The gun Henry McCarty used. The gun the real Billy the Kid used.
When the murders happened Billy was sixteen. Now a grown man, the wicked witch beckons him to unleash the fury once again. Only this time, there is no weapon. There is no Colt Anaconda. There is no gun. There is no Billy the Kid. There is only Kevin Bucannon and Sybill Leeke.
I’ve got two guns, one for each of ya.
“Why? Is it because I’m your friend?” Billy sounds like a child again, asking himself for permission as he asks the witch.
“Friend? Hell, I gotta lotta friends, Billy. We dance and sing in the forest. Wouldn’t you like that? We can dance together around the fire with all our friends. I gotta lotta friends, Billy. A LOT”
“I don’t.” Billy mutters.
“We’re dying in here, Billy. Slowly. This place is making us. IT’S MAKING US SICK, BILLY.” Her voice grows bolder now. Edgier. Fueled by a growing black rage.
Black Billy goat.
“Billy we’re doing this or you’re not my friend.”
“Sybill, what an ugly thing to say. I abhor ugliness…does this mean we’re not friends anymore? Y’know, Sybill, if I thought you weren’t my friend, I just don’t think I could bear it.”
Billy sets a shank of the floor between them. It’s a metallic pen that he’s sharpened into a weapon. Gauze and toothpaste make the cement-hard handle that’s wrapped tight around the opposite end.
“There, now we can be friends again.”
Shephard bumps into the cracked door as he tries to lean closer in, listening.
“YOU!”
Sybill almost shouts it before recoiling back into her demonic whisper.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”
“You’re no daisy. You’re no daisy at ALL!” Billy recites in unison with the witch’s outburst.
“I—I—I—I’m sorry, I just…I just heard you whispering and I—“
“And you what? This is a private party pal.” Sybill says with unusual normalcy.
Soft piano notes drip from the ceiling down the hall.
Allie.
Lost fear of God.
The melody is different than before. Different than when she was playing that afternoon in the recreation room. It shuts the argument down. The melody is dark and brooding now. Haunting. The unmistakable sound of the triton. C to G#.
The diminished fifth.
The augmented fourth.
The devil’s melody.
Black Billy goat.
The sound beckons the three, who’ve now lost track of their astonishment with each other, with seeing Shephard. They’ve all stood up, beginning to peak out the door. Beginning their journey down the hall.
Follow the yellow brick road.
They slowly slither past the other patients blacked out in their rooms.
They pass the girl with the red slippers who twitches in her sleep and whimpers inaudibly, in her waking-life dream.
They pass the man who is trapped in his own paranoia. Kept prisoner by the thoughts and voices he thinks he hears. He hears them even now.
The devil’s melody. Behind the wall of sleep.
They reach the recreation room. Allie Prae, the girl that no longer prays, the girl who lost fear of God, the teenage bastard mother, sits in the corner, at the piano in the dark. She doesn’t move, except from her elbows to her finger tips as they hover over the ghostly notes.
What is this that stands before me?
Figure in black which points at me—
Across the hall they see the orderly in the nurse’s station. He’s dosed off, basking in the white static light of the small television in front of him. A newspaper resting on his fat chest. The key ring dangling from his belt.
“Billy.” The witch motions towards the keys.
“Billy, now is the time. Now, Billy.”
Billy looks at Shephard. Desperately seeking approval. Desperately seeking a friend.
Shephard stares. He knows what’s about to happen. He knows he can stop it. The violence. The blood. The unquenched sin.
He doesn’t stop it.
Billy stares at Shephard as the two of them quietly enter the nurse’s station through the unlocked door. They crouch around the desk, then slowly stand fully erect on either side of the sleeping orderly.
Billy eyes glaze over as he addresses his accomplice.
“You remember the stories John used to tell us about the three Chinamen playing FanTan? This guy runs up to them and says, ‘Hey, the world’s coming to an end!’ and the first one says, ‘Well, I best go to the mission and pray,’ and the second one says, ‘Well, hell, I’m gonna go and buy me a case of Mezcl and six whores,’ and the third one says, ‘Well, I’m gonna finish the game.’ Well, I’m gonna finish the game. I shall finish the game, Shephard.”
“Let’s finish the game, Billy.”
As if a lightning bolt struck the room, Billy stabs the orderly in and around his neck, his jugular, his jaw line, his face.
StabStabStabStabStabStabStabStabStabStab—
Rapid fire.
Too many to count.
Before the orderly can even open his eyes, his fate is sealed.
Blood spurts everywhere like a shaken champagne bottle that’s just been uncorked.
It hits the ceiling like sprinkler, painting the sick white walls and the caged windows of the nurse’s station.
It’s all over now, Baby Blue.
The witch runs into the nurse’s station laughing gleefully. She pulls the key ring from the belt of the
warm corpse.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!”
The three make for the front door down the long hall of double swing doors. Keys in hand, Sybill unlocks
door set as they come to them.
Visions cupped within a flower
Deadly petals with strange power
Faces shine a deadly smile
Look upon you at your trial
Freedom.
They tackle the front door with the shaking keys. Pushing and rubbing before they can even open it.
“HURRY UP, HURRY UP!” Shephard’s screaming now.
Hail the way King.
Follow him into the forest.
They burst out onto the concrete steps. The night air fills their lungs. The moonlight reflects off the blood dripping from their faces and hands.
Red sun rising in the sky
Sleeping village, cockerels cry
Soft breeze blowing in the trees
Peace of mind, feel at ease.
A dark figure stands at the foot of the state hospital’s steps. A goat.
It slowly rises to greet them, taking the form of man.
In a sharp, deep voice that rings through their ears, the horned goat-man speaks.
“Some people say my love cannot be true please believe me, my love, and I’ll show you.
I will give you those things you thought unreal the sun, the moon, the stars all bear my seal.
Follow me now and you will not regret leaving the life you led before we met.
You are the first to have this love of mine forever with me ‘till the end of time.
Your love for me has just got to be real before you know the way I’m going to feel.”
“What the FUCK?!?” Shephard shrieks, but he is drowned out by the spell being cast before him.
“Now I have you with me, under my power, our love grows stronger now with every hour
Look into my eyes, you’ll see who I am. My name is Lucifer, please take my hand.”
The Billy goat is gone now.
The three escapees are as well.
Only their white gowns are left, draped on the steps of the hospital where they once stood.