SHAKESPEARE, DICKENS AND THE BIBLE

SHAKESPEARE, DICKENS AND THE BIBLE

            I always knew I would do it.  I was destined to.  From the moment I laid down on her couch I knew what would happen.  It was inevitable.

            It started innocently enough.  They committed me because of my many problems.  I can't remember why they sent me up and it's not important.  The important thing is that I was sent for four long, excruciating months, to stay at The Animal Farm Psychiatric Treatment Center.  Maybe it was four years, I don't remember.

            I knew what would happen the moment I saw her.  The orderly lead me down a long gray hallway and told me about the woman shrink I was going to meet.  A woman I thought, she will be ugly as sin, as big as a house and meaner than all hell.  When that same orderly opened the door to her office I was in for a shock.  Or maybe the shocks came later.  I don't remember.

            I do remember her sitting beautiful behind her cheap wooden desk.  Her long black hair flowed over her shoulders, down onto the swell of her breasts.  Her dark brown eyes beamed, as did her face, all a glow in self-health.  She wore a plain green blouse, silk I think, opened slightly in the middle, revealing a black brassiere.  She looked up at me, our eyes meeting suddenly, and I fell in love before she even said a word.

            "Hello." she said briskly.

            I marveled at the way she spoke.  There was a kind of ethereal quality in it.  She spoke volumes with that single, simple word.  It was like a picture that she painted; only she spoke this painting or rather willed it into existence.

            "My name is Katherine.  You may call me Kate.  I know your name.  Robert isn't it?  But I want you to tell me what to call you?"

            "Anything."  I responded.  Her name was Katherine.  I was even permitted to call her Kate.  I wondered if that is what her lovers called her.  Somehow I figured it was Kitty.

            "Is Robert okay?" she asked.  I watched her mouth the words, wondering if she would let me kiss that mouth.  I doubted that.

            "Call me Burt." I blurted out.  I suddenly liked the name Burt, although nobody had ever called me it before that moment.

            "Burt?" she asked.

            "Sure."

            After we had our names straight she told me to lie on her couch, so I did.  It was a plain black couch, nothing special to look at.  The ceiling was far more interesting.  I traced over the cracks in my mind to make shapes that didn't mean anything.  Then she started asking me questions, private type questions that I didn't intend to answer. So I didn't.

            It took about six weeks for something to happen.  I would lie there on her black, plain couch watching her body, waiting for the session to be over.  I was eager to get back to my drugs.  They give you drugs constantly you know.  They are free too.  Sometimes she would caress my head and tell me to go without the drugs, but I didn't want to do that.  I wasn't ready to stop.

            Then during one session she told me that I was the most interesting patient she had ever counseled.  I wasn't sure how to take that.  I guess it could have been a compliment, but somehow I doubt it.  I took it as an insult.  I asked her what she meant, but she didn't answer, she just smiled.  Her smile drove me crazy and she knew it.  She was entirely and easily the most beautiful woman I had ever known.  I wasted away most of my sessions staring at her memorizing her face and its features.  When I wasn't doing that I was trying to convince her I was brilliant intellectual.  For some reason I don't think she believed me.  We had running jokes on how much I actually knew.  Well, they really weren't jokes; they were insults aimed at me.  I just never had the guts to tell her they hurt.  Or maybe I did and she just didn't care.  I don't remember.

            The very next session, it could have been two or three sessions later actually; she wore a tight mini-skirt with a matching tight black blouse.  She had black stockings on and high heeled shoes.  Her red lips glistened and she smelled of expensive perfume.  I was enamored.  She was the picture of my fantasy, the one I had described to her in many previous sessions, half-hoping she would fulfill it.

            She made a place for herself on her couch, next to me, but not touching me.  I felt a terrible tingling sensation in my groin that begged to be heard.  I tried to get up, but she held me down with her painted fingernails, gently digging them into my chest.  She rubbed, caressed my chest with her perfect hands, smooth and feminine.  I tried to take her hands in mine but she moved away, denying me blatantly.

            "Just stay still."  That was all she said.  Her voice seemed out of place, lost in space somehow.  I struggled with my sanity, but I lost.  Was my shrink caressing me?  Was I dreaming?  I remember when I was little my mother used to say that dreaming was evil.  So this was an evil experience and I just let it happen to me, like everything else in my life.  I had no control.  That's how I ended up in Animal Farm.  My biggest problem was passivity or maybe indecisiveness.  I can't decide which.  There are good arguments for both.  I think the latter won out in the end.

            Then I was released.  Four months had passed, maybe four years, and then I was out.  The real world flashed before me.  I would have to do something for myself for a change.  I was on my own.  As to the reason for my discharge all they told me was something about a budget cut.  I didn't understand.  I still don't understand.  How could they let someone like me out?  Were they allowed to do that?  Don't they remember the things I've done?  Sometimes I remember and I sure as shit wouldn't let me out.  Not that it matters.  I tried to see Kate, but they wouldn't let me in.  They shut the gray painted steel doors, slammed them in my face.  Those asshole attendants in their fucking white uniforms.  Who the fuck did they think they were?  They were keeping me from my drugs, my ping pong tables, and my therapy sessions with Katherine.  I felt like screaming.  So I did.  I screamed as loud as I could that everyone at Animal Farm was a fucking idiot.  Who were they to let me out?  I needed my therapy, the therapy that was costing somebody somewhere a lot of fucking money.

            "Fuck you all."  I yelled that to whoever had their face plastered in the barred window looking out from the main office.  With that I went, tripping over my feet as I left.

            Several weeks later, after I had stolen enough money to rent and furnish an apartment, I ran into Katherine at Waldenbooks.  I happened to be browsing over a rack of classics when I saw her.  I walked up to her, fearless, not bothering to look at what book I was clutching.

            She looked radiant.  She donned a simple sweater, with straight black slacks and plain flats.  She flashed a sinister grin when she saw me.  I loved the way her nose crinkled when she smiled like that.  It drove me crazy.  It was a good smile, no, a great one, a smile to capture on film.

            "Hello."  I said.

            No reply.

            "I'm glad to see you're so chipper."  I felt stupid as those words came from my mouth.

            "I didn't think Dickens was your style."  She said.  "I figured you more for a Dr. Seuss type of man."

            I felt my face go red.  I dropped my head to look at the book that I held, gripped.  It was Great Expectations.  I had read Dickens fictional account of young Pip's adventures many times, but I didn't tell her that just then.  What good would it have done?  She seemed to think that I read Dr. Seuss.  Ha!

            "Maybe I am trying to broaden my horizons.  What's it to you?"  I added a little snap, just for the hell of it.

            "Start with something more your level.  I suggest a Hardy Boys book.  I hear they are in depth reading."        I was insulted.

            "Which series?" I inquired.  I could play games too; I was famous or rather infamous for that.

            "Excuse me?"

            "There are several sets.  Which one do you recommend?"  I was happy, she looked flushed.

            "I'm sorry." she apologized.

            "Stuff it." I smiled upon my victory.  She squirmed, uncomfortable, shifting her feet in and out of her flats.

            "Would you like to have a drink?" she asked.

            "I..."

            "Come on.  We'll chat about old times.  What do you say?"

            "Just one drink." I answered.  I couldn't believe she was asking me.  "And it has to be at my place."

            "That's better," she said.  She laughed and gave me one of those smiles.  I was always a sucker to those smiles.  She knew that too.

            I bought the book.  The fact that I already owned more than one copy didn't deter me from spending money in an attempt to continue my little game with Kitty.  It was worth the Lincoln that I dropped.  After all, there is Shakespeare, Dickens and the Bible.  The rest is shit.

            I sucked down my third shot of Absolut while Kate nursed her scotch.  Not a womanly drink if you ask me.  I was quite surprised when she asked me for a scotch, straight not less.  I thumbed through my book while she took my place in.  Not a bad little rat hole.  There were only three rooms, but those rooms were large.  There was a kind of living room/ kitchen, the room that led from the front door.  I had located a couch at a garage/ yard sale, much the same as her couch.  I had a hell of a time getting it back to the apartment.  In front of the couch I had placed a kind of table, multi-purpose, which served as a coffee table and a footstool.  There was a bookcase, black of course, on the far wall.  I had filled it with books that I had read over the two months since being discharged from Animal Farm.  Most of the books weren't very good in my opinion, but I soon ran out of Shakespeare and Dickens.  He only wrote 37 plays, or something like that, you know and I had read them all by that time.  I had to settle on lesser material.  It was almost time for another bookcase.  I had been buying novels from the Waldenbooks monopoly at a rate of five or six a week.

            From the living room a person could see right into my bedroom.  I decided to rip the door off.  It was rotting away anyway.  I had purchased a cheap mattress and box spring from the owner of the apartment complex.  He also sold me a worn but sturdy bureau and desk set, complete with lamp and clock.  Not a bad lot of furniture for $75 dollars.  I only lacked a phone stand, which I would buy or steal once I acquired a phone.  Annexed to my bedroom was the bathroom.  It doesn't deserve description.

            I poured another shot glass full of Absolut, carefully.  The other three were starting to have an effect on me.  Kate was still sipping on her scotch.  I brought my glass with me and sat down on the couch with her.  She looked nervous, extremely uncomfortable sitting there, like she was waiting for something to happen.  I always have wondered what she thought was going to happen.  I guess I'll never know.  I gulped down my vodka, which brought tears to my eyes, and slammed the glass down on the coffee table.

            I was feeling a decent buzz when I moved myself right next to her.  I put my hand on her leg, figuring it would be turned away, but it wasn't.  She didn't even move.  In fact, I don't think she moved until I was done.  She might even have enjoyed it, but I doubt it.  She then politely asked if she could go to the bathroom.  I didn't know whether she would try to leave or not, but I figured I'd let her go.  I knew I didn't want to have a bladder full when I died.  They say you wet yourself when you die.  I always hated wetting myself.  I hated it most when it happened in public.  There you couldn't even change; you just had to sit in it like a baby while people laughed.

            Then she came back.  I don't know why she came back.  She knew my record better than anyone did.  She probably had my record memorized.  The faces, the names...it was probably all in her head.  I had killed so many people though, that I had given up remembering.  I just bought myself something special when I did a family or someone important.  You can't feel sorry for her.  She knew.  Maybe she wanted to die or maybe she was a brave little soldier with something to prove.  I'll never know.  After all, she was the shrink.

            After she sat down again I almost didn't do it.  I felt terrible, like it was too easy.  For a moment I almost told her to run, leave.  Maybe I should have.  I really liked her.  Not just in my own demented little way either.  I hated the thoughts that were running through my head, but I couldn't control myself.  My arms started to move, she started to scream and there was blood.  More blood than I had ever seen in a place at one time.  (From one person of course.)  I started tearing pages from my book and stuffed them into her mouth until no more would fit.  Then I knew she was dead.  I also knew that I would need another Great Expectations.