SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #16

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #16

BATFISH

ST. PETER SECURITY HOSPITAL

All that fucking paramilitary training and it took a committed lunatic to point out to me that a hot flame would melt the security glass that the hospital used instead of bars.

Have you ever lit the spray off a can of deodorant? Shit, the flame shoots out almost five feet!

The staff kept our personal hygiene items in their security bubble and we had to request them on shower days. They just handed you this plastic basket and when you were done with your shower you simply handed the basket back in. I was positive that we could keep out our deodorant and hide the cans somewhere on the unit. Wait for a day or two. Then tell the staff that we had run out and would need our caseworker to give us some cash to buy another can at the canteen.

I kept my can out first after I had found a place to stash it. I had been wearing an old pair of jump boots when I was brought to the hospital but I hadn’t been wearing them. I had been wearing my running shoes and the boots had been sitting in my cell. In the exact same spot since I had taken them off. I stuck Cedar’s can along with mine in the boots. One per boot and stuck a disgusting smelling sweat sock in each to hid the cans. Not one staff picked those boots up on their semi-daily cell checks.

Several days later I stole Bob’s nearly full can from his shaving kit as he was taking his yearly shower next to me. He never noticed it missing.

Probably still hasn’t. Cedar bought another can and we hid both those cans in his mattress. We had slit the ends of his mattress with a razor blade taken from a safety razor on the female unit, and then lightly ran a cigarette lighter over the seam. It looked good as new when it was done.

Both the razor and lighter had been smuggled to Cedar from a female client who had fallen hard for him after she read about his celebrity status in the City Pages. She left the items in the canteen taped under a table using the sticky ends of a Kotex.

We were ready to go. Cedar had called his graveyard robbing buddies from the newspaper article. They had only received probation for their stunt and they would meet us in St. Peter at the local Taco Johns as soon as they got the word.

I wasn’t real pleased have to rely on those two fucking gonads, but I was running out of choices. They were thrilled out of their jockstraps to be helping a celebrity during his prison break. Great thing to be able to tell the kids. If they even know where they come from.

I still find it hard to believe that we could use the telephone whenever we pleased. One of the differences between a mental hospital and prison I guess. You always had to call collect, but you could call direct if it was an 800 number call.

One nut on the unit called in a bomb threat to a pen factory in Pennsylvania on their toll free line. When the police traced the call they told the staff that the factory had to shut down for a half a day. Cost them

thousands. But the whole master plan almost was severely sidetracked two days later.

The unit had been taken up to the gym for our daily “workout”. Out of twenty clients maybe three or four did any physical exercise. The rest played cards or jacked off while watching soap operas on the gym television.

Walking out of the gym and heading towards our unit, we met Unit 900, the sex offender unit. I hadn’t seen Ray face to face since we had been brought to the hospital and as we passed I gave him a shit eating grin.

Well, that cock sucker had been palming an ink pen and he turned around and jammed it right into my shoulder. Fuck did that hurt!

But Ray was getting old and his reflexes weren’t quite up to snuff. I reached back with my left hand and caught his wrist before he had could pull the pen out of my shoulder to stab me again.

I snapped him towards me with my left hand and drove my right fist straight into his nose. It exploded like a rotten tomato and Ray went down like he had been hit with an ax, screaming at the top of his lungs. One of his baby raping buddies tried to jump in but I saw him out of the corner of my eye and drove my elbow right into his open mouth. I think he was shouting “motherfucker” when my elbow knocked out all of his front teeth.

I turned towards my next advancing opponent but when I realized that it was Scott, my unit’s lead security counselor, I was finished. I put my hands up in a sign of surrender, turned around, and assumed the cuffing position.

I was led back to the unit where I was placed in solitary confinement for the next three days. Cedar had taken the opportunity to jump the smallest deviant, a pedophile, who was just standing there minding his own business, and had landed several good shots before being pulled off. It was good strategy. We both had been worried that Cedar would be assigned to a different unit before we could attempt our break. After assaulting the sex fiend he’d remain on Unit 800 indefinitely.

The rest of the unit goofballs had sat down  at the canteen tables and had watched the

whole thing go down like it was just a continuation of their soap operas.

The next time I saw Ray he had the 8 ball hemorrhage look. Both eyes were solid black.

Upon my release from the hole, the first thing I did was go check my cell to see if the cans had been disturbed. Luckily, the staff had merely locked the cell door and hadn’t bothered to do a shakedown. Thank God for lazy state employees.

The staff was now even more wary of me now. They had never seen a mental patient dispatch two grown men that quickly or in that manner. Their observation of me became much more rigid as well as cautious.

Less than a week later I received notice from my caseworker that the court in Duluth was going to be dropping the charges. The black whose dick I had severed wasn’t much on showing up for court dates and the judge had finally said the hell with it. He had also received the hospital shrink’s report on me and was going to be recommending that I be released.

My heart began to race. Maybe I would be able to walk right out the fucking front door. This was going to work out after all!!

However, she continued, I could possibly be facing charges for my recent assault on the two fudge packers from Unit 900, so there was a very good chance that upon my release from the hospital, that I would be met by representatives of the local sheriff’s department, who could very well detain me. “But” she said “That’s probably going to be the least of your worries.”

Within seconds my hopes were being dashed. My guts were starting to churn like I had eaten a pack of Ex-Lax and washed it down with a six pack of bad beer. I didn’t think I was going to like what she had to say.

My caseworker was a nice lady named Darlene and she always seemed to know that when she was dealing with me that she was not dealing with your normal run of the mill mental case. She had always been very professional with me but I always had the feeling that she was pissed I was running a scam and was just wasting her time. So now she was sitting back in her chair with this tight little smile on her face and when she asked,

“Have you ever been involved with the government? Like the army or something like that?”

I about bolted up in my chair like someone had shoved a broom handle up my ass.

“Why would you ask that?” I stammered.

“Well,” she paused “It seems that a different name than yours has popped up on a governmental data base after the local authorities ran your prints through the National Crime Information Center and the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. It’s pretty standard stuff. It just takes a while for all that information to get routed through. But it sure looks like that the government is interested in you and they’re sending some people down for a little chit chat. They’re scheduled to be here in several days. Tell me something. Are you using a different name than your own? Some alias?”