SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #12

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #12

BATFISH

ST.PETER SECURITY HOSPITAL

That never did happen there, getting cornholed that is, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t worry about it. There seemed to be a lot of the guys doing each other, and Earl, the gang enforcer, was forcing himself on a few of the weaker ones on the unit. But I was pretty much left alone.

I guess it hadn’t taken long for news of my sucker punch to the back of Ray’s head to travel through the hospital grapevine and that I wouldn’t be a real easy one to take.

When I first walked through the door of that unit I knew right away that this was going to be a world that I had never known in my wildest dreams existed.

I figured that out after this client walked up to me and said “I knew you were coming.”

I was surprised. “How’s that?”

“How do you think? I could smell your asshole.”

Jumping Jesus!!

I had been on the unit for about a week when lo and behold who walks through the door but old Dan, my one eyed buddy from the county jail in Duluth. He acted like he didn’t even remember me, which I don’t think he did at first. Took him about two days to do it. I think he was still trying to get over the initial shock of his life time commitment to the place.

Dan had a companion along with him who was absolutely guaranteed that he would be serving a life sentence. His name was Cedar and although I didn’t know him personally, I had read about him.

One of the staff had left an alternative newspaper called the City Pages, out on the unit, which I had snatched up. In it was an article about this body that was found in the Mississippi River that had been missing its head, feet, and hands. The really strange part about it was that the body had already been embalmed. Turns out that these two idiots had broken in to the crypt of a young boy and had removed the parts and thrown the torso in the river.

They had a hell of a time at parties throwing the head on people’s laps and scaring the shit out of them. Cedar had been mentioned in the article, but only that he was an old former buddy of the two morons.

No, Cedar’s reputation more than preceded him. Cedar had been born to a hippie couple who had some problems with parenting skills. He was a tad too boisterous for them so they decided to medicate him with LSD, even though he was only three at the time.

It would affect him in his adult life since he started to believe that his grandmother was a witch and needed to be killed. So one night after an evening of partying, he beat the old gal half to death, tore out her eyes, and in the final insult, gave her a swirly in her toilet. For the uninformed, a swirly is when you stick someone’s head in the bowl and flush. She died several days later.

Cedar had been on the classification unit for a month prior to coming to Unit 800 and the medications he was on seemed to work wonderfully. He could carry on amusing conversations, knew rock and roll like it was nobodies business, and was obviously pleased when I mentioned to him that I had read his name in the City Pages.

He had smiled and said, “Shit, those clowns are just riding on my coat tails.”

The staff had found a joint on him, hence his trip to Unit 800. Medication wasn’t the only that was keeping him under control.

He had been given a series of ECT treatments, electro convulsive therapy shock treatment, before being brought to our unit. Every week he still made the trip for his dose of the electric juice. Thinking about that worried me.

I don’t know how it happened, but he would become the only person in the whole fucking joint that I would ever be able to trust.

We became chums and began to spend the days together discussing The Allman Brothers Band-both the new and old version, good pot, and most importantly, how to break out of the St. Peter Security Hospital.

But after three weeks on the unit it was becoming painfully obvious that jig was about up. Let me tell you, it’s goddamn hard to play crazy and I just wasn’t up to the task. From the little things like the staff noticing that I’d always ask for the television channel to be changed from cartoons, which the other clients watched like it was the word of God, to football, hockey, or boxing. Or when we went out to the yard how I’d run the inner perimeter doing my road work. The average nut just doesn’t do that. I just wasn’t fitting in.

The other nuts noticed it too. They gave me a lot of space. Everybody but Cedar, and for some unknown reason, Bob. And although Bob himself always had a load of shit in his pants and an odor of urine about him, he smelled a rat was on the unit.

I had been on the unit a month to the day when the unit shrink sat me down on his rounds and told me that he felt “I was full of crap and that it was time to face my responsibilities.” His recommendation to the court was going to be that I was fit to stand trial.

Jesus Christ, the prick only talked to me once a week. And then for only ten minutes. How in the hell could a guy fake he was ready for a permanent straightjacket in that amount of time?

I didn’t have the strength to argue with or try to bullshit him. He was just a typical government employee looking for an easy pension. The thought of pulling him over the desk and whipping the shit out of him passed through my mind. That would let the bastards know I was crazy.

But I couldn’t do it. I knew that he had a wife and kids at home.I had needed more time. Sitting in the jail in Duluth it had sounded so easy. It was a hospital, a fucking hospital! How hard could it be to escape from a hospital? I had underestimated everything. Security was much tighter than I thought it would be. And it wasn’t just a hospital. It was a prison with thick glass instead of bars. To top it off, the place was full of goddamn lunatics. How could you possibly form any sort of escape plan while living in that sort of environment?

I had looked and looked and still could not find a detect a chink in the hospital armor. A way where I could get the fuck out of here.

The past eight years hit me hard and I walked out of his office without a word. I went and sat down in the day room with the rest of lunatics. It was all rushing back in a steady stream through my head, like a bad acid trip. Albert Lea, my drunk parents, my dead brother, all the drugs, all the booze, Rose dead, the drunk admiral sitting there in his Fruit of the Looms, AWOL, Zak hanging in his locker, L.A., the dead bodies on Wonderland Avenue, half dicked blacks and one eyed Indians, it all ran together.

Shit, maybe I am nuts.

Norm and his diminutive biker lackey stood up and walked off like I smelled like Bob. Muttering some shit under their breath.

Fuck ‘em, at least I’d be out of here. Prison would probably be better anyway. Get this

shit all over with. They call Stillwater a gladiator school. Well it’ll be better to get carried out of there than rot in here. They were going to catch up to me sooner or later anyhow. How much longer could this nightmare go on?

Cedar came over to join me. “You know I've been pondering this escape shit all this time and all of a sudden, right out of nowhere, it hits me right between the motherfucking eyes, dude. All you need to break out of here man is a crack torch. It’s as simple as that.”

Sweet Jesus! Without a word I stood up and walked to my cell.

I was snorkeling on Oahu’s north shore. Warm, crystal blue water,me and a good Navy buddy named Tom. We had smoked a big fat number of a weed called Mango and were just floating on the surface like a couple of jelly fish. I had a spear with like a rubber band on the end that you stretched out to propel the spear forward, but hadn’t found anything to take yet. Then I saw this fish, this strange fish, swimming along the bottom. It

was almost translucent and it looked like a bat. A clear underwater bat swimming along like it was looking for its cave or attic to go hang upside down in. I dove down so I was over it as I pulled the band on the spear back. It was a perfect shot, right through its back. But I could hear this weird sound in the distance and I looked around but there was nothing there. It had a weird high pitch, kind of like it sounds when you’re inside a house and an outside water faucet is on. And then I saw what it was. The batfish had his mouth open and he was the one that was making the noise.

His little mouth was open and he was screaming. Screaming because I had shot him in the back and now he was dying a horrible death.

I awoke with a start. It had gotten dark outside. Someone was standing in my cell, in the dark. Cells aren’t locked in the hospital at night. Only on the sex offender’s unit or if the doctor writes up an order in your chart, something to do about patient rights.

It was Cedar standing there, quietly, just watching me. I was hoping he didn’t think that I was a witch and try to kill me. Or worse, give me a swirly.

“A torch is what I really thought we would need. That glass will fucking melt, man. But we don’t need my crack torch. The sons of bitches have the torches on the units, man. Just waiting for us. Those fucking cans of Right Guard!”

Cedar turned to walk out of my cell. “By the way you missed supper. Chicken Kiev. Tasted like shit.”