What a time to forget a tie, Gabriel thought to himself. He straightened his shirt and blazer as best he could in spite of the wrinkles formed by sitting in his car. He coughed into his hand and checked the smell of his breath. Using his car’s side rear-view mirror, he checked his face for any smudges or blemishes. The only things that bothered him were his own hazel-green eyes, both of which betrayed hints of his inner nervousness. He took a deep breath and closed those eyes, trying to compose himself instead of finding something else to worry about. Satisfied, he headed toward the monolithic psychiatric facility.
The thought occurred to be less politically correct about his destination – he was willfully entering an asylum. The very name, though describing sanctuary by its definition, did not bring the happiest connotations. Gabriel knew he was merely interviewing for a receptionist position, and a well-paid receptionist position at that, but the thought of being surrounded by lunatics, psychotics, and the tormented was very unnerving. During his stroll to the door, he considered turning around more than once, but economic needs kept pushing one foot in front of the other.
Half expecting something from a horror film, Gabriel opened the door and was greeted with pristine silence. Everything was in perfect order and immaculately clean, from the air conditioning vents on the ceiling to the grout lines of the tiled floor. Pale blues and faint greys amplified the bright indoor lighting and left Gabriel with a sensation that everything had been sterilized moments ago. It took him a moment to register the reception window to the right of the welcoming room, and still another moment to realize that there was a woman sitting inside, smiling right at him.
“How can I help you?” she asked practically the instant he saw her there. Her tone was very polite and warm. As Gabriel approached her, he noticed she looked a little older than she probably was, with age lines around her eyes and mouth.
“Uh, hi,” he stammered, still off-put by the surroundings. “I’m here about the receptionist position.” When the last word left his mouth he instantly regretted his answer. She was more than likely the person he was going to replace and he had no idea if her departure was going to be an amicable thing.
“I’ll let the doctor know you are here. What’s your name?” she asked, her tone consistent. It made him ease a little.
“Gabriel Verachec,” he answered.
The receptionist dialed an interior line, spoke to someone Gabriel presumed was an orderly, and hung up. She explained that the doctor was finishing up with a patient and would be along shortly, and that Gabriel should take a seat. The whole time she spoke, she carried the same unblinking, smiling facial expression. It wasn’t hostile, or even very upsetting, but it left Gabriel wondering if it was something he’d have after working here – assuming he got the job in the first place.
The next ten minutes passed very slowly. There were no magazines or television to distract Gabriel and the receptionist, as pleasant as she had been, provided no fuel for conversation. He watched the second-hand on the black and white wall clock twitch around and around, noting that every ten seconds that it made a little backwards motion before leaping to the next dash. He examined his clothes again, pulling off some minor pieces of lint, and popped in a breath mint when the receptionist turned to face away from him. Suddenly, the increasingly uncomfortable quiet was aggressively banished by the whoosh of double doors.
“Where’s my new receptionist?” a man asked in a jovial and boisterous tone as he passed through the doors. Strikingly handsome and obviously confident, the newcomer’s unstained lab coat, pressed pants, and shining shoes made him look like he belonged on some ridiculous hospital TV drama. But what truly caught Gabriel’s attention were his hazel-green eyes. They were identical to the ones Gabriel saw in the mirror not twenty minutes earlier, save for the assuredness in the new version.
Interview etiquette took over, impelling Gabriel to stand, offer his hand, and introduce himself.
“Gabriel Verachec, sir,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Are you, now?” the doctor replied sarcastically. “Do you spend a lot of time getting to know psychiatrists?”
“Only the ones who can potentially hire me, sir,” Gabriel answered.
The doctor laughed and said “Good enough. I’m Alexander Kemp, purveyor of this fine establishment and, if you aren’t one to crack under pressure, your employer for at least the next year. Let’s get this little chit-chat started, shall we?”
+ + + + + +
Much to Gabriel’s surprise, the interview went very well and by its end, Dr. Kemp was giving him instructions on what paperwork to file with his predecessor to make things official. The doctor’s easy-going nature and smooth intellect had dispelled practically all of Gabriel’s jitters and hesitancy, and belatedly Gabriel wondered if such a thing was a well-practiced tactic. As he pondered this, Dr. Kemp surprised him again.
“You know, Gabriel, as much as I’d like to have you work with us, there is one critical thing that needs to be settled before we go forward from here,” Dr. Kemp said. “There are some truly disturbed people here and if we cannot acclimate ourselves to their conditions, our efforts to help them will be dangerously counterproductive.”
“I can handle it, Dr. Kemp,” Gabriel answered, trying to be as convincing as possible.
“I have to be the judge of that, Gabriel,” the doctor answered. “Please come with me.”
The doctor stood up and headed out of his office with Gabriel in tow. They passed the dark and empty offices of other physicians and psychiatrists and Gabriel wondered if their absences were permanent or temporary. He shivered a little when he realized how cold it was in the long hallway and though the doctor was facing away from him, he still used the pretense of straightening his blazer to pull it tighter around his shoulders.
At the far end of the hallway, two large, muscular and seemingly dim orderlies stood sentinel in front of heavy steel elevator doors. The men and the doors looked more like a scene from Fort Knox than anything Gabriel expected from a hospital in suburbia.
“Gentlemen,” Dr. Kemp said in a pleasant tone.
“Sir,” they answered and obediently stepped aside at the unspoken command.
The doctor and the new receptionist entered the elevator and as Gabriel turned and watched the ponderous doors come together, he felt a pang of claustrophobia set in. The entirely new experience was extremely disconcerting, but he smothered it before he ruined his chance at the job. The doctor pushed a button to head to a lower level and with a pinch of vertigo, they descended into the belly of the asylum.
+ + + + + +
When the doors opened again, Gabriel’s eyes spread wide. He had expected to see more pale blue and off gray with a whiff of cleaning solvent in the air, but what greeted him could only be described as dank. The facility’s plumbing ran visibly overhead, groaning and shaking with each rush of imported or exported water. Sloppy brick walls pushed back the encroaching earth on all sides. Hastily strung lighting zig-zagged down the corridor, doing a poor job of illuminating and an effective job of concealing what lay beyond.
“Down here is where we keep our most troubled patients,” Dr. Kemp said as they exited and walked forward, in a tone without the slightest gravitas. “Their conditions are so advanced that they remain a danger to themselves and those around them. We have removed most forms of stimuli and keep them heavily medicated, but I must warn you that what you are about to see is not pleasant.”
As the doctor neared the only two cells, deep at the end of the corridor, he called out into the gloom.
“Hello, boys.”
A thunderous crash boomed to Gabriel’s left, causing him to jump back several feet. The impact shook the nearest hanging lamp and as the light swayed, it revealed and concealed the person responsible repeatedly. The man inside the cell held the steel bars in a white-knuckle grip, the musculature on his arms thin but whipcord strong. He held himself several feet off the ground, his heels pressed into the bars. He was trembling with pent up energy and mewling in between long, messy, deliberate strokes of his tongue over his lips. His breaths came out as wet, ragged gasps and long, unkempt hair covered his face down to the nose. He wore only a pair of loose fitting regulation pants, pulled tight at that moment by a prominent erection. His latent stink caught Gabriel’s nostrils then, making the new receptionist silently gag.
“Gabriel, I’d like you to meet Jack,” Dr. Kemp said as if introducing a colleague. “Quite the excitable one, as you can see. Our mission here is to teach our friend Jack to refrain from giving in to his more base impulses.”
The floor of Jack’s cell was covered in small pieces of loose white debris. The smell of old food made Gabriel realize that they were the remains of shattered plastic eating trays. When he looked back at Jack, the patient had his head cocked inquisitively to the side. Jack looked at Gabriel, down at the debris, and back again, smiling the second time. With a grunt, Jack dropped like a stone to the floor, rolled over, grabbed one of the sharper pieces of plastic and hurled it at Gabriel. The shard came within inches of Gabriel’s eye and left a long scratch along the receptionist’s temple before clattering into the wall behind him.
In a flash of movement, Dr. Kemp threw open one side of his lab coat and produced a hefty black gun. Gabriel’s eyes flashed open in shock when Dr. Kemp depressed the trigger and pronged wires leapt at Jack before disgorging several thousand volts of electricity. The imprisoned man writhed and spat incoherent obscenities before the doctor was satisfied and released his electric grip. Jack pushed himself up and began muttering threateningly, all the while walking around his cell and punching the brick walls with considerable force. Several wet pops likely meant dislocated fingers and broken bones, but Jack only growled and retreated to the corner.
“Don’t…don’t be…mad, doctor. He…he…he…he…hasn’t…had any…visitors…for a long time,” said a rumbling voice from behind Gabriel.
Very alarmed, Gabriel slowly turned around to the cell opposite Jack’s. A huge shadow shifted in the depths of the chamber and lumbered its way to the front. It was a huge and deformed man, with impossibly broad shoulders and cartoonishly large arms. His legs were thick and stubby and the regulation clothes he wore were pulled taught around his bulky frame. He leaned forward, eyeing Gabriel underneath a Neanderthal brow.
“He knows the rules, Daniel,” the doctor said to the giant. “That kind of behavior will not be tolerated.” The brute’s gaze turned sheepishly to the floor and he nodded knowingly.
“Gabriel,” the doctor continued, “this gentle giant is Daniel. Despite his appearance, he’s actually quite intelligent and, when his stuttering is under control, he’s quite the conversationalist.” Gabriel looked at the doctor with a momentary disgust caused by the insensitivity of the remarks, but the doctor didn’t notice.
Daniel returned to the middle of his cell, pressed his back into the wall, and slid down to the floor. He looked like a man robbed of all spirit and vitality, and Gabriel could not help but feel crestfallen as well.
“Though we haven’t quite discovered what yet,” Dr. Kemp said, “something in poor Daniel’s past left him a broken and angry spirit. He vented his incredible rage on anyone he could find and the police were going to throw him in prison. Can you imagine it? Poor Daniel would kill and kill until he himself were murdered. The barbarity infuriates me. Anyway, I happened to learn of Daniel’s case and had him brought here for treatment.”
Gabriel saw huge scars forming random crossing patterns on Daniel’s hands and forearms and could only imagine what the rest of his skin looked like underneath the clothes. It was not hard to envision Daniel as some avatar of anger, but seeing him loaded with enough medication to kill a normal man was just as disconcerting and much more disheartening. Daniel began whispering to himself, with the occasional word being much louder than the others and changing the directions of the stream of consciousness that now flowed from his mouth. It made little sense.
“Ah, such a shame,” Dr. Kemp said. “When he goes off on a train of thought like this, he’s unreachable for hours. At times I think it’s a defense mechanism. He does it constantly.”
Gabriel clenched his fists in order to stop himself from shaking, and in all probability, turning and sprinting for the elevator.
“Doctor,” he said, “this is nothing like I expected.”
“Perfectly understandable, Gabriel,” Dr. Kemp replied. “If you have to go for the day, feel free. It’s a lot to take in.”
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “Thank you, sir.”
Gabriel turned and quickly walked to the elevator. He pressed the button several times, no longer concerned about concealing his discomfort and outright fear. After waiting for what felt to him like an eternity, Gabriel sighed in relief when the steel doors opened and revealed the empty elevator within. He entered and pressed the first floor button several times, but as the doors began to close, he looked up one more time.
In the dusk of the corridor, he saw something that didn’t make sense. He something that shouldn’t be. He saw something that had a depth of meaning that he was far too afraid to explore.
There, in the shifting shadows that enveloped what had been hidden from the world, he saw three pairs of hazel-green eyes.
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