We Are Monsters (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was hard to tell who looked more hungover, Alex or his dad. Both of their eyes were bloodshot and swollen, which was fitting for the occasion, although neither had been crying.

Don Drexler hesitated when he entered the viewing room and saw Alex standing in the corner. He scowled and shuffled in. Alex's mother followed meekly behind.

It had been nearly four years since Alex had been in the same room with his father. He looked shorter than he remembered. His hair had thinned and turned entirely grey. Still, the room took on a charge when he entered, like the formation of a storm cloud.

He walked up to Jerry's casket, took a brief look inside—Jerry's burial shirt concealed his sutured neck—then shook his head and turned his back. He walked to the sofa against the far wall and sat. His shoulders slouched and his heavy hands hung loose between his thighs.

Mrs. Drexler approached the casket and placed a kerchief against her nose and began making a series of hitching, high-pitched squeaks.

Alex felt unwanted in their presence. Like an intruder.

“Where's Rachel?” his father said.

“Home.”

His father smirked as though this were some expected insult. “She was there, wasn't she?”

“She was.”

He made a sound that resembled a laugh. “And where were you?”

“I got there as fast as I could.”

“But you were too late.”

Alex's mother continued to stare into her dead son's face and squeak.

“I don't get it,” his father said. He turned and looked Alex in the eyes.

Alex felt a stab of heat sear the center of his chest. It travelled up his neck and burned his face. “Isn't this what you do? Aren't you supposed to fix these people?”

“What people?”

“You know, crazy people.”

Alex didn't respond.

“And you couldn't even fix your own brother? I don't get it. I really don't.”

“Jerry was murdered, Dad. How was I supposed to fix that?”

Mr. Drexler dismissed the comment with a wave. He scratched his head, causing random strands of hair to stick up. He exhaled and frowned, and his face folded in on itself. “I don't know, Alex. You're the doctor, not me. But if I were a doctor, I would have worked harder to help my own family. I know that.” He looked over towards the casket. From his angle all he could have seen was Jerry's nose. “Jerry could have been anything he wanted. He was special, that kid. Just sick, is all. And with a doctor for a brother who never could get him well. I wonder about that. I really do.”

His father stood. He walked over to his wife and grabbed her by the arm.

She turned and buried her face against his neck.

He looked back at Alex. “You made all the arrangements?”

“I did.”

His father knocked on the casket door. “And this rickety piece of shit is the best you could do? I thought you could afford better. Guess your brother's only worth so much.”

Alex started forward and then stopped. He jammed his hands into his pockets and squeezed them shut with a force that threatened to crush his fingers. He
had
saved Jerry. He
had
made Jerry well. There was no way for him to explain this to his father, however. For his father, the successful son would always remain the failure. Only now, he had failed in the most unforgivable way. And there would never be another chance for redemption. Future successes would only accentuate the fact that he had failed where it mattered most. He had failed to heal the favorite son.

His father and mother left the room without looking back.

Alex waited a minute and then approached the casket. He peered down onto Jerry's face.

He looked like a mannequin. His face appeared plastic, his lips like pale wax. Only his neck showed any signs of imperfection. The skin was pulled unnaturally taut as it fed into Jerry's shirt collar. Beneath which, Alex knew, was a ragged line of sutured skin that would never mend.

The studies using Dimethyltryptamine had unexpectedly led to a series of questions regarding death. Regarding the possibility of an eternal soul. A significant percentage of the test patients were convinced that they had ventured beyond the veil of our material world while under the influence of the hallucinogen, to view what lies beyond. They spoke of a timeless place of ineffable wonder, filled with an overwhelming sense of unconditional love.

In all such cases, these experiences produced profound changes in the subject's outlook on the nature of reality. Atheists found God. People with depression found joy. The terminally ill found peace. Death, to these voyagers, lost its frightful allure.

Alex had always considered these experiences to be nothing more than hallucinations, mental phenomena dredged up from the pits of the subconscious. Now, for his brother's sake, he hoped that there was some glint of truth in these otherworldly reports.

But science told him otherwise. Death was darkness. Death was decomposition. If we live on, it's in the stomachs of earthworms or the weeds that arise from our rotten corpse.

For the first time since Jerry's murder, tears threatened to spring from Alex's eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he had cried, and was surprised by the searing pain that came with his attempt to quell the surge of emotion.

“I'm sorry,” Alex said. His words were thick and sodden. “I'm so, so sorry.” His vision blurred and he wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his silk suit. His brother's plastic face came back into focus. “I hope they were right.” The tears welled back up, blurring his brother's features, turning Jerry's face into a soft, crystalline ball of brightness. “I hope you're finally at peace.”

Alex leaned down and rested his hands on the edge of the casket, one stacked atop the other. His lips curled in, his chest grew tight. A piqueish squeal escaped him. His face contorted as he fought to hold it in, but the tidal surge of emotion overwhelmed the levee built to keep it at bay. He thrust his head against his hands and wept.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Psychic handcuffs. That's what they were. The drugs. The demon's elixir that had been shot into his veins, dulling his visions, turning him into the undead.

Crosby was staring into his lap. Had been for hours. His muddled thoughts sludged through tar pits, only to be sucked down into the goopy mess. His mouth felt mammoth, like a gaping cave.

Yet a spark of his true self still remained. He could sense it fluttering around in the dark hollows of his mind, evading talon-like shadow hands that tried to grab it and tear it to shreds.

“The bitch,” he slurred. Not even a slur, more like a moan. “Demon bitch.” His useless tongue clogged his throat. Thick drool drenched his toes.

Inside his mind, his fluttering essence spoke in snippets.

Get.

Message.

Pain rain.

Cold bitch.

Almost.

Shadow fuck knuckles.

Again.

He was in a small room. Alone. A guard was posted outside his door. A small window set high in the room cast a slanted crosshatched square of light that crawled slowly across the floor. The door was made of thick metal and had a thin waist-high rectangle to pass things through. The air was stale and made a soft hum. It stirred a few lank strands of hair against his bald head.

Crosby was slumped forward. He tried to sit up straight, but invisible hands were pushing against his head and neck. Hands. Everywhere, hands.

Murky voices now drifted from the hallway. Muted sounds that seemed to travel from beyond the horizon across the curvature of the world. A metallic clap came, like an anvil strike, and the heavy door swung open. Two men entered lacking shadows. Their shuffling feet sounded like the slither of snakes.

“This is the one all the fuss has been over?”

“That's right.”

“The what? Doomsday Slayer?”

“Apocalypse Killer.”

“Oh, that's right. Because he thought he was saving the world from annihilation.”

“His report just mentions demons.”

“Hmm. So what does that have to do with the end of the world?”

“I'm not sure. The Rapture maybe?”

“Ha! Got to give it to the media, they know how to sell a story.”

“Yep.”

“What's he on anyhow?”

“One thousand milligrams of Thorazine.”

“Jesus. I'm surprised the son of a bitch's still breathing.”

“Well, we're waiting on Dr. Alpert to return for instructions. It could be he's moved to the state pen.”

“Won't happen. He's already been found not guilty by way of insanity. All additional crimes would fall under the same plea. Besides, Eli would never release him. He'd try and mother him back to health. And just look where that got him.”

“How
is
Eli?”

“He's fine. Bumped his head, is all. He'll be released today. Anyway, it's no longer his problem. This is Dr. Drexler's hospital now.”

“Oh…”

“Aw hell. Look, that hasn't been officially announced yet. Keep it to yourself for a couple of days, why don't you.”

“Right. Sure.”

“And keep this one under wraps. We can't afford any more negative attention during the transition.”

“So, you want me to…?”

“Oh never mind. Alex will handle it. Let's keep going.”

“Right. Okay, this way.”

The door clanged shut, echoing for eons. The slanted square of light continued to slide across the floor. And the fluttering spark of Crosby's self spiraled in flight as it fought to evade the imposing grasp of shadow hands.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Eli unfolded the crumpled slip of paper once again. It had been handled so much by now it was as soft as cotton. He stared at the handwritten words that had begun to fade into the crinkled folds.

Xanax 1 mg

Take as needed

He'd had another panic attack at the hospital. He had thought for sure it was a heart attack. The pain had been unbearable. He had not been able to catch his breath. He had soiled his bed sheets in his manic state of disillusioned fear.

“This is to be expected.”
His doctor had comforted Eli after a nurse sponged away the streaks of shit that had smeared all the way down the back of his legs.
“It's common to experience acute anxiety after a traumatic event like you've been through. I'll give you something to help you through it.”

“No, I'm fine. Really,”
Eli had said, but it lacked conviction. Even still, the physician had been wrong. It wasn't the traumatic episode that worried Eli. He was afraid of the fear itself. The sheer potency of its destructive power. Its ability to instantly crumble the scaffolding that supported the principles and beliefs that he had spent a lifetime constructing.

He had always felt anchored to his core identity, had felt secure in the set of values that guided his life trajectory. Now he felt like a newborn calf walking across a frozen pond. And the potential relief that this prescription slip promised seemed more like stable ground than any of the mental constructs that were wilting, one by one, under the harsh scrutiny of true mental stress. Was this what it was like to go mad?

And, if so, if this was what madness felt like and he were to run to the comforting embrace of a pharmaceutical drug the first chance he got, then what did that say about his professional philosophy? It would be like an evangelical preacher taking a deal from the devil at the first taste of temptation.

Eli crumpled the paper in his dampened hand. His sharp knuckles pushed against his thin, wrinkled skin. He was so tired the act of squeezing his hand into a fist felt strenuous and made him lightheaded. His brain hurt.

Have I been right or wrong?
he thought, then shook his head. That was the wrong question.
Have I caused suffering, or have I relieved it?

He opened his fist and dropped the crumpled ball of paper into the wastebasket. A twinge of fear caused his heart to flutter. He inhaled deeply and held it. The sense of fear remained.

He exited his bathroom and walked down the dark, narrow hallway of his home, opened the door on the far right and entered. The musky scent of incense permeated the room. Eli placed a fresh stick in the bamboo holder and lit the tip with a match, extinguishing it with a shake. A thin ribbon of smoke slithered through the still air.

Eli placed his meditation cushion in the center of the room and sat. He folded his legs into the lotus position and closed his eyes.

Miranda was waiting in the darkness. Her eyes were wide; a stream of tiny bubbles percolated from her nose. Eli breathed and breathed and breathed, and watched as Miranda's frightened eyes became oblong and slanted. Her pale skin turned tan. The incense took on the harsh smell of burnt cordite. A frightened face now peered back at him through the frantic eyes from which a boy once watched his impending death.

Eli breathed.

He breathed.

He breathed.

And the vision began to fade.

Only to be replaced by another.

The pungent fragrance of incense intensified. Thick ribbons of smoke. Choking smoke. The smell…the smell of roasted flesh. The pyre beside the holy river. A tangle of corpses feeding the flames rising high into the sky turned crimson from the setting sun. Black, roiling smoke from her smoldering remains.

The cancer had spread like wildfire. By the time she received the diagnosis, it was already far too late. The weight loss, the stomach pains, the nausea—these were all symptoms that she had attributed to anxiety over wedding planning. But, no, it had been pancreatic cancer, eating away at her insides while she suffered in silence. Not wanting to complain or cast a negative light on something so wonderful.

Sweet Lacy. His wife who never was.

They canceled the wedding when they received the prognosis. There was simply no point. They took a honeymoon instead. To Varanasi, India, near the banks of the Ganges River. That is where Lacy went to die.

Eli was already Chief Medical Director of Sugar Hill when they met. He had given a speech about the history of humanistic psychiatry to a group of psychiatric grads. Lacy approached him after the presentation. She was nearly half his age, but seemed far older. She lacked the wide-eyed exuberance of a recent college grad. And she had an uncanny ability to see straight to the heart of any given thing and understand it completely.

“I respect what you're doing and appreciate you taking the time to talk about it,” she said. And she had said it with true sincerity, wanting nothing in return. Only to express her honest admiration. “It's shameful that your psychiatric philosophy is not more widely practiced simply because there's not as much money to be made in it.”

Eli had not addressed the financial discrepancy between humanistic psychiatry and other forms of medical intervention. It was an astute insight.

He paused and looked more closely at the tall young lady in front of him. Staring at him through dark, earnest eyes that were at his same level. She was thin, almost too thin—a voracious metabolism that would further disguise her cancer symptoms in the years to come—with long, straight brown hair parted in the middle. She wore a plain khaki blouse with flowing cotton pants and a pair of Birkenstock sandals. A throwback to the sixties. A contemporary flower child.

Eli normally looked to avoid postpresentation banter, but he felt drawn to the young lady before him. She reminded him of someone from a long time ago. “Yes, well, while that may be true, the outcomes from humanistic treatment are reliably superior to other forms of psychiatry. If that's what the patients demand, the industry will have to respond.”

She nodded and offered a sheepish smile. “I like your optimism. It's idealistic, but…that's what the world needs. I'd like to see it spread.”

“I'd hate to think there's something idealistic about using humane methods to help people with mental disorders.” He said it, but he knew exactly what she meant. While it seemed perfectly obvious to him, the industry continued to push antipsychotics as the primary form of treatment, even when the evidence clearly showed superior success rates with more natural forms of therapy.

“Did you know that in Ancient China doctors were paid for preventing illness, and were not compensated when patients became sick?”

“What happened when their patients died?”

Lacy scrunched her nose and peered towards the ceiling in mock concentration. “I think they became obstetricians.”

Eli laughed. “Ah, that would be wise. The most certain way to ensure a constant flow of customers.”

Eli felt as though the conversation had run its course, but the girl remained in place, gazing at him with frank admiration, delighted eyes expressing genuine interest. A few seconds went by as they simply stared at each other.
Where have I seen this woman before?

He reached out his hand. “Eli Alpert,” he said.

Her handshake felt like a hug. “Lacy Lovechild.”

Eli's smile faltered. He felt like she was putting him on.

Lacy blushed under his sudden scrutiny. “Hippie parents,” she said and shrugged her shoulders. “Changed it from Palakowski.” She smiled in spite of the heat rushing to her face and held his gaze.

“Oh wow. Can't say that I blame them,” Eli said. Her perfect white teeth were framed by rose blossoms blooming on her cheeks. He realized he was still holding her hand, and he released it. Reluctantly. He immediately wanted to grab hold of it again. The urge was out of character and he now became aware of the swarm of people vying for his attention.

“Well, it was nice meeting you. I'm glad you enjoyed the discussion,” he said.

She remained rooted in place, as though she hadn't heard him, still assessing him with that frank stare. She took a step towards him, leaned forward and spoke into his ear, “It was nice meeting you as well. I hope to see you again.”

He felt pressure against his side coat pocket.

It wasn't until three days later, when he took his coat in to be laundered, that he found the slip of paper with her name and number on it. After dealing with so many doctors, her handwriting, with large, looping letters written in purple ink, felt whimsical and free.

You're projecting,
he told himself.

Still, he kept the paper with her number on it. Like a talisman, it began to acquire a sort of potency, a palpable charge. In it, his trained skepticism saw fate. Through it, his pragmatism fell victim to visions of fantasy, of grandiose scenarios plucked straight out of a child's fairy tale.

A rush of emotion soon overwhelmed him, growing stronger every day. The fantasy became an obsession, distracting him from his job. He would replay their meeting over and again in his mind, reassessing every minute gesture, replaying every word, even laughing again at their simple exchange and strained bits of witticism. He would close his eyes and hold his hands together, trying to replicate the way her handshake had felt like a hug.

He had spent so much of his life alone, married to his work, he was surprised to realize how much he was missing female companionship. He was shocked by how good it felt to be desired.

But weeks went by and he began to realize how elaborate and frivolous his fantasy had become. He came to believe that he had interpreted the gesture incorrectly. It wasn't intended as flirtation; it was merely a professional gesture, a recent graduate looking for a job. His fantasy came crashing down in a cascade of cold sweats, leaving an empty hollow in his insides. His ballooning heart began to deflate and shrivel.

He threw her number away while leaving work. When he got home, he cursed himself and went back to get it. By the time he returned to Sugar Hill the cleaning service had emptied his trash can and left. He felt a curious combination of relief and remorse. He was finally, irrevocably free of the fantasy that he hated to see die.

When she called two weeks later, Eli was comically speechless. She wasn't. She was disappointed that he hadn't called. She even had the gall to tell him off, albeit in a teasing way. Lacy was undeterred by the difference in age, unimpressed by his prestigious position. She had felt an immediate attraction to the man and his principles and was not ashamed to pursue him. She made this clear by asking him out for their first date.

“Are you going to make me do all the work?” she said.

Eli hadn't said more than seven words since she called, and three of those had been “sorry”. He said it again, “Sorry?” His face was on fire, his body felt freezing cold.

Lacy exhaled in mock exasperation. “I would have expected the leader of such a large and respected institution to be a bit more assertive. But that's okay. I'd like to meet you for dinner. How does this Friday sound? I'll even pick up the tab if that's what it'll take.”

“No, that's not necessary. I mean, yes, that sounds good. I mean about the dinner, not the check.” He stopped and took a deep breath before his runaway words made him sound any worse. “Look, I'm sorry…” he cringed, having said it once again, “…but you've caught me a bit by surprise. I'd be delighted to take you to dinner. How does DaVinci's at 7:00 p.m. sound?”

“Sounds wonderful. I'll see you there.”

“Oh sorry, but—”

She hung up just as he was about to offer her a ride.

He looked down and saw that during the two-minute call he had sweated through his shirt.

Despite his initial awkwardness, the date went well. They both grabbed for the check at the same time and ended up holding hands. His was cold and slightly damp, but Lacy didn't seem to mind. He felt a charge just from touching her. Felt authenticated by her blatant look of adoration. She initiated the good-night kiss and it made him feel like a little boy.

Their relationship progressed faster than he would have ever expected. Faster than he'd even pictured in his fantasies.

Lacy was like a form of therapy. For so long Eli had felt conflicted by his innate instincts to treat people with compassion, even those considered to be his enemies, and the resistance he'd met from the masses who shared a different view on how to interact with others. He'd felt outnumbered and wondered why he was the minority. Without realizing it, he had started to become emotionally distant from his patients, denying them the personal bond, the sharing of souls that led to true healing. He had slowly started to conform.

Lacy reawakened his spirit of humane therapy. She gave him validation. She inspired him creatively, driving him to pursue new forms of therapy that delivered outstanding results. She also made him silly. She swept away his stress.

Her pet name for Eli was Alpert-fish. Whenever he was upset, she would suck in her cheeks, pucker her lips, place her hands beside her head like gills and kiss him. “Oh, come here, my sweet little Alpert-fish. Kiss, kiss. Tell me all your troubles.”

It was Lacy who first introduced Eli to meditation to help quiet his mind and manage his stress. Later, introducing him to even more enjoyable tantric techniques that they'd employ in the bedroom.

Eli had never identified with any traditional religion, but began reading the books on Buddhism that Lacy brought home and found a connection with its spiritual teachings. He became engrossed in the material and found that it began to positively influence his work. He saw his life pursuit as one to alleviate suffering among the mentally ill. And the four noble truths espoused by Buddhism had applications in treating mental suffering. With Lacy's support, he overcame serious resistance from the board and was able to introduce mindfulness exercises as a form of psychiatric therapy.