Behavior Report 32

Darkness.
Veiled shadows,
shift as I sleep.
Wakefulness fleets.
Hidden hands hold me
to a sweat ridden bed.

Sunlight crawls across the floor.

Lucid.
Stillness holds,
until footsteps appear.
Then a sting.
Poison slides through me
plummeting me to darkness.

I live a thousand lifetimes.

Repetition.
Daylight begins,
further away each day.
Unbelievable thirst.
Water on the table
is too far away.

Memories fade in and out.

Phantoms.
Revolving memories
remind me of failures.
Courage surrenders.
Fear fills the injection
that sedates my body.

The bleak numbness begins to subside.

Hope?
Footsteps appear
to inject me again.
Numbness wains.
Their power to sedate
fades day after day.

I awake.

… eyes open … lazily …

Am I building a tolerance?

Sunlight is … further away on the floor than expected.

How long have I been out? Weeks? Months?

I have no idea.

I think back to my experiences. Daylight, first light, then a sting. The Well-Fed Nurse must come in at dawn to inject me with whatever poison she has.

… padding footsteps …

The door clicks and opens immediately after I finish my thought. Did I will her to come? Do I show her that I’m awake?

No.

The last time I let her know I was awake, she practically jumped out of her skin and that didn’t stop her from injecting me. And showing her that I’m building up a tolerance would not be good. She’ll increase the dosage or change whatever poison she’s using.

What is the poison?

The Well-Fed Nurse walks in, humming. She’s happy? Content? I don’t recognize the song.

 She doesn’t bother to lift my shirt sleeve and presses the needle through and into my shoulder without any care. I hold myself as still as possible, which isn’t terribly hard to do. I’m aware, not awake. The Well-Fed Nurse plunges the medicine in harshly and I feel the liquid crawl through my muscle.

The growing crystalized cold returns. Numbness expands from my shoulder like ice forming over a still pond. I feel the darkness coming to overtake me, but something is different.

I can fight it.

Before, the darkness enveloped my consciousness, but now, only the edges see black. I feel as if I’m able to claw myself back out of the hole if I keep my focus. The fight is exhausting.

The poison makes my bed sheets itch like burlap. My skin crawls and feels like millions of worms or insects are burrowing beneath. I want to scream, to start scratching all over, but the Well-Fed Nurse refuses to leave my room. I’m afraid to open my eyes. ‘Keep fighting,’ I tell myself. ‘Keep your head on straight. Just a little longer.’

I train my hearing onto the Well-Fed Nurse’s breathing. Any bit of movement for her starts a subtle wheezing on the inhales and a guttural groan when she breathes out. I hear her set the syringe down onto my bedside table and then I feel her stomach rest on my arm. She puts two fingers on my neck and searches for my pulse.

The whole time I feel her musty breath exhaling. Once satisfied with my heartbeat, her clammy hands lean on my face to pull at my eyelids. I want to fight but I know I can’t. The poison does help reduce my response. It weighs heavily on my nerves and muscles. Then, the weight is gone. Her padded footsteps move to the door and leave with a click of the lock.

The unbearable weight of patience amidst a desire to scratch every part of my body is torture. But I know that I can’t move yet, not while The Well-Fed Nurse is just outside the door. I’m to be immobile. Terrible urges pulse from each nerve in my body. Waves of signals tickle my brain. Scratch here. Scratch there. Even my heels itch.

I wait until I hear her footsteps pad away. Then, glories of all glory, I begin to scratch. I cannot feel the tips of my fingers. Numbness has set in. But time has been helpful to my fingernails as they have grown long and sharp and are capable of practically ripping the itches from my skin. Relief comes only after many minutes of scratching in the same spot.

Slowly, the itchiness fades. My toes and heels lose sensation followed by my calves and thighs. Before long, everything is numb.

I cannot move. Maybe that’s not the right way to describe it. The process of moving seems impossible. My mind flourishes and attempts to send directions to the rest of my body, but it doesn’t respond.

Immobility and time alone leave me to wonder.

Are they doing the same thing to Earl, or did he escape? If he escaped, why didn’t he look for me? He wouldn’t leave me behind … we stick together … he must be locked up like me … keeping his head on straight.

But why … What medical reason …

The next thing I recall is jolting awake. Sunlight on the parquet floor marks time in the afternoon but I don’t know if it is the same day or weeks later. The itchiness is back. I try to move and can’t. Whatever signals my brain sends seem to stop along the way like a cut communication line severed between the command post and front lines.

Something worth recognizing is my clarity of mind. As my tolerance for the poison grows so does my ability to think clearly. I just hope that I have enough time to allow the rest of my body to fight back the effects, to be able to move.

I absorb every hint and clue that can lead to my escape. I make mental marks on the floor where the sunlight hits, like clicking a stopwatch, to track the amount of time that passes between visits from The Well-Fed Nurse. My attention then turns to the bedframe and, more importantly, the foot of the bed where the shackles are affixed. Their ends are hidden behind the mattress and sheets but the frame itself is wood and not particularly thick wood. Could a proper nudge break apart the frame?

As the itchiness grows, so too does my ability to move. It starts out by wiggling my toes and fingers and proceeds upward from there. Soon, my legs can move, but not without some strange pain that I find hard to describe. The closest idea I can come by is the sensation you feel when a limb falls asleep and reawakens to painful tingling.

After sunlight passes several parquet floor tiles, I can sit up. The first several attempts fail fantastically, instantly, as soon as the blood rushes from my head. But over the course of another parquet floor tile, I build up the strength to remain upright.

My Love, my whole perspective changes from a seated position. Leafy verdant treetops fill the view at the base of the window. The trees continue infinitely off into the distance. There’s no evidence that they are normal trees or the giants of the Cauchemar Forest. I don’t see any birds or other creatures that could help define my environment and even if there were any, I doubt that it would help as they all are in relation to the size of the trees. Regardless, my position above the trees can only mean one thing.

I am on a mountain.

Reason suggests that I am on the mountain in the center of the Cauchemar Forest.

All I know is that the Alter Man lives in the mountain and that the Krauts who took Earl were making their way to him.

By the time that night falls, I’ve built up enough strength to move to the foot of the bed to examine the shackles. In all the time leading up to this moment, in true Frank Kaplan fashion, my mind has examined every possible avenue as to why and where I am a prisoner. None of the answers provide any calm. My physical restraints show no seams or locks or anything to break apart. I don’t know how they were affixed to me or the bed frame but somehow the steel was molded to fit my ankles and the bed.

Soft footsteps appear from the hallway outside my door amidst the silence. I quickly and quietly lay down and pull the covers up. The door lock clicks and the hinges squeal. I hear the unmistakable guttural sounds of The Well-Fed Nurse breathing as she enters. I hold still. She walks over and checks my pulse on my neck. Her fat fingers press down with the weight of a tank tread. I lay as motionless as I possibly can while she practically chokes me. Her labored breathing helps me focus.

I consider turning and saying, “What do you plan to do to me?” but I don’t. That brief moment of satisfaction would be too small a victory that leads to even greater defeat. She would increase the dose of whatever she gives me and being shackled to the bed ensures that I will always lose the skirmish of being injected.

I need to think harder on how to break myself free. All my things rest almost within reach at the foot of my bed. If I can find some way to get them.

The Well-Fed Nurse takes her fingers off and pads over to the door but instead of the normal click signaling the door is shut and locked, nothing fills the air. I hear her pad away in the hallway. It’s as if someone has removed mufflers from my ears. Small sounds gather strength in the echo of the hallway. A creaking spot in the floor depressed by the Well-Fed Nurse screeches into my room. The normal pops and cracks one hears from a home settling feels like explosions to a mind that has been stuck in absolute silence.

I hear some voices. I can’t understand what they say, but I know they are Kraut voices from the hacking and throat clearing sounds of their words. They are overtaken by a scraping noise, like a chair dragged across the floor as someone sits down. Then, the strangest thing happens. Someone strikes a few notes on a piano, which are followed by another set of notes. They are gentle. Light. Airy. The sound carries through the halls like an angel floating delicately through heaven. Several additional notes collect, and a run of notes follows.

I recognize the angelic song as “Clair de Lune” by Debussy.

Each note finds my ear and sends me into a state of awe. My memories of blood and faces in pain melt away. My presence leaves the room through the window and over whatever lays outside below. Instead of night, the sun has returned. I float over the canopy of the Cauchemar Forest. My hands drag along the tips of the green leaves. I pass through the Stone Village and across the massive canyon that separates the awful forest from the rest of France. Le Perir appears and all the foxholes have been filled in. I get to the shoreline where the Krauts had so many trenches and I find that they too have all been filled in. The world has healed itself.

I pick up speed once I go over the water. My flight is such that I summon a wake from the sea. What took a week on a ship passes in seconds in my dream. On the horizon, I see New York’s manmade mountains appear, glinting in the sunlight like massive diamonds. Troop ships dock in the harbor. Ticker tape and confetti flutter about the air as soldiers walk off the ship to embrace their loved ones. I pass over countless boxes and squares and steeples of concrete and steel. Cars, taxis, trucks, and pedestrians mill about without any concern to the celebration on the shore.

I pass over several smaller cities where their town squares are ladened with red, white, and blue ribbons and flags affixed to every overhang. Shop owners greet patrons. Older couples walk about the square, smiling at mothers who push strollers with their little ones inside. Children ride their bikes and race the cars at the only stoplight in town. The first to reach the next block is the winner. Both the car and child take off as soon as the light turns green. The drivers feign car troubles to let the children win.

Families drive along country roads with suitcases packed in the trunk. Smiles adorn their faces. The children in the back keep a tally of the number of cows on their side of the road in a game to see who’s the bigger farmer. Husbands keep one hand on the steering wheel and the other interlaced into their wife’s hand. Each moment is fleeting, but I can see enough to understand that the scars from the war that the husband faced have been buried away because of the love of his family.

I fly over an endless sea of farms. Cornfields. Wheat fields. Acre upon acre. Farmers drag their implements across the ground, ripping open the soil, not to build protection against an invading force, but to plant seeds for a future harvest. Their wives sit on their porches, sipping tea on a rocking chair while knitting a new blanket for the next winter. Open barn doors reveal piles of straw ready to be served to the livestock that lazily graze in their pens.

I come upon Chicago where thousands of train cars wait to be emptied while sitting on hundreds of rail lines. Commerce continues, emboldened by victory. Gray exhaust lays heavily over the loading docks like a fog. Men move crates with hand trucks and forklifts. Someone painted over the spots on the boxes that once read “U.S. Army,” and now new paint reveals “Perishable” and “Sweaters” and “Soap.” The men move the products from train cars and stack them into truck trailers. Drivers pull away to deliver the goods.

I turn north for home. Lake Michigan sprawls out to my right like a sea full of boats and ships. Small cities and even smaller towns pass underneath, and I recognize some from the few times we’ve ridden the train from Kenosha to Chicago. Billboards recommend that I enjoy certain sodas or smoke refreshing cigarettes or purchase invigorating medicinal elixirs. In the distance, I see Racine, our city, our home. I recognize downtown and its shops and theaters.

Notes from the piano gather into a crescendo that remind me that the song is reaching its end. I gather speed to reach our street. I see our house in the distance, so close and yet far enough away that I fear the song won’t last long enough for my imagination to reach it. My body flies through the branches of the elm trees that line the street. Our neighbors stand in their backyards with smoking grills, sizzling burgers and hot dogs and steaks.

Near the end of the song, the notes that once gathered in a group of runs and chords, now take turns to play as a solo note garnering all the attention. I recognize the delicate tendrils and how they mark the last few beats. My feet obey the music and land softly onto our front walk for the first time in ages. My striped nightshirt is gone, replaced by comfortable slacks and that blue button-down shirt I always prefer to wear around the house. The sun hugs me with its warmth as if it were early June, my favorite time of the year, where one does not need a jacket and can just relax in the light.

The grass is mowed perfectly. The edges are cut sharply along the sidewalks. I know that you’ve taken your time with the outside chores to keep our house immaculate. How could I ever ask for anyone better? Our lilac bushes are rounded like bundles of cotton candy with sprigs of fragrant flowers. I remember past years when I opened all the windows in the house to let the lilac infuse our home. The sweet floral scent immediately reminds me of lazy Saturday mornings reading the paper and mid-afternoon naps.

I open our front door and step into our living room where a folded newspaper rests on my chair and an embroidery hoop with a half-finished image of a red cardinal sits on the coffee table in front of the couch. One of Junior’s steel trucks is parked underneath. Even a blanket is tossed on one side of the couch, something that would have annoyed me in the past feels wonderful to experience again. Knowing that the song is close to ending, I quickly look at our picture frames lined up along the oak mantel above our fireplace. All represent simpler times when we didn’t have anything but ourselves.

My heart starts racing because I know the song is just about to end. Whatever magic the notes hold is about to disappear. Only a few soft notes remain. I force myself to move faster and faster toward the kitchen where I can see a glow of sunlight and hear your voices. It’s only a few feet away, but the distance feels longer than crossing the Atlantic.

“When’s daddy getting home?” Junior says.

“Soon, honey,” you respond.

But I’m already there. I want to see you. I want to see Junior. I want both of your embraces to wash away all the hurt, the pain, the nightmares that fill my soul. I pass through our hallway, moving closer and closer to you, but the sunlight swells into a radiant, blinding, heavenly light. You both turn to face me—

And then the music ends.

The dream stops.

I am back in my room.

The scrape of the chair against the floor breaks the silence as the player leaves.

The Well-Fed Nurse pads down the hallway, closes and locks my door.

I was so close.