A Blink of the Heart
© Stephen Cain
3740 words
Some of the walls are covered with hexagonal tiles. It reminds me of a picture I once saw in a vampire comic. It can't be a coincidence. Destiny permeates everything like the lingering effects of a hallucinogen. Angels and saints are crowded together in this enormous building. I am with them. I know that this is the gateway to the upper world. On the other side will be pleasant homes and well-furnished apartments, jobs that not only provide an adequate income but even a little self-respect, and people will be nice, not strange and malevolent the way people always are. We have come from hell, but our having been there was an abomination so we were saved. The time has come for distributing the many-coloured drugs that burn away the contagion of the place we have come from and the dreadful things we learned there. When one enters the upper world one's mind must have been purified. We queue in silence every morning. We queue for purification. Everyone looks ill, with bad or even bluish skin. I can feel the burning, but I swallow my tablets in certain hope of the resurrection.
Certainty falters. Hope grows threadbare. I have seen that sainthood is a small thing really, a joke. I have left my saint's body behind in the place they gave me for sleeping. It has begun to decompose already. It will soon submerge beneath a sea of writhing larvae. The larvae will leave nothing but my shining bones and a faint scent of violets. I have not swallowed my tablets. I hid them in my mouth and spat them down the toilet later. The patient's lounge has begun to ripple and shimmer with the exquisitely patterned waves of the divine word and when I close my eyes I behold the glory that blazes at the heart of everything. As I drift through the mystically transformed interior I see and hear things that most people never see and hear. If the ones whose deepest secrets I apprehended are reading this — some of you may know who you are — then do not fear; I shall not breathe a word.
I start to swallow the tablets again because they will surely be able to tell if I don't. I have been told by a male nurse that I will "get it up the arse" if I do not take them. Besides I could not sleep, and anyway, weren't the tablets supposed to make me better? I want to get better.
I have met the vampires. They wore nurse's uniforms, but the pointed teeth and the blood-red lipstick of the senior vampire were clear signs for the awakened. While I waited she explained to her novice that you could make them enjoy it if you wanted. She did not seem to think that I was conscious at all. They did not want much though — only a needleful. Apprehension turned to sharp pleasure as the needle slid into my arm and I could not prevent myself from laughing out loud.
The doorknobs on the ward are of brass, old and etched by the moisture of countless palms to reveal their crystal structure. It is my job to polish them every morning. Earlier, while I was still a saint, there were games, art, folk dancing, and plays. I don't know why, but those things have stopped. There are just these menial jobs that everyone has to do in the morning before breakfast. Then we are left to our own devices except for exercise and meal times. I try to lose consciousness as much as possible because consciousness is mostly just of feeling horrible. I have only one wish remaining now: to get out of this place so that I will not have to take the tablets and will feel alright again.
When they finally let me out I stopped taking the tablets straight away; I did not feel much better though. I went to work in a place where memories are hardly formed at all. The memories I do have have much to do with missing life's joy, colour, and intensity. I even missed pain and tears. I remember that I sometimes needed to cry but couldn't. I needed to feel anything other than the desperate emptiness punctuated with bursts of dry, choking rage that was all that was left. I needed to find something — an answer, anything that would reinvest being alive with some trace of value.
I went home at night to a depressing basement flat. Apart from my work at the planning office I cooked and cleaned, searched the bible and other equally barren sources for my answer, and went to bed early. When I had saved enough money I bought a second-hand TV. It would sometimes provide much-needed distraction from the non-stop hallucinations, and went to bed less early. Awareness and feelings returned to some extent over a number of years, but the hallucinations worsened and everything felt wrong, unbearably so at times. I checked into hospital again, voluntarily this time. But it was the same old drugs, the same old crippling discomfort, so I checked out again. I had learned that there was no help to be had from ancient wisdom or modern science. I had learned that I was on my own with this thing, unless you count the infernal din of the voices that I sometimes knew were hallucinatory.
I had been seeing a surgeon about the removal of what had turned out to be a harmless lump on the back of my neck. Its removal had not been necessary so I was having it done privately. It seemed possible to me that the lump might have something to do with my condition. I did have the sense not to mention my hypothesis though; people who complain of problems with their slave-control implants are bound to be thought a bit, well, you know? So I said it was sometimes painful. I was early for my appointment, sitting in the waiting room wondering about the unusually urgent thought-voices emanating from the surgeon's office. Suddenly, the office door clicked open and a young man emerged. His clothes radiated an ordinariness so studied that I thought he must have been a drug dealer. He scanned the waiting room for a nanosecond, padded up to me, sat down and offered to sell me some grass.
"Thanks, but I don't smoke any more," I answered in the inaudible tone the wise adopt for business of this kind, reflecting that it would not be too cool to show any curiosity about what might have been going on a few moments earlier in the surgeon's office. "I have um... schizophrenia. It's like giving the flying monkeys alien technology, you know?"
"That's cool." He studied his trainers for a moment and said, "You know, I know a lot of very cool people, very cool people, you know? I know someone who might be able to help."
He took out a notebook, scribbled an address, and vanished leaving me clutching the note.
The address was in an unfamiliar part of town somewhere out on the far side of the entertainment district. I had had to ask several passers-by for directions and was despairing of ever finding my way back to the bus stop when I found it. It had a garden paved in hexagonal stones with old trees around the perimeter and a number of ornamentals in large terra cotta tubs closer to the building. It looked as though it had once been a luxurious private home. I was about to knock on the front door when it opened.
"I don't have an appointment..." I began.
"That's alright," said the dark-eyed nurse. "We can see you now, Mr...?"
"Caroll," I supplied.
"Of course, Mr Caroll. An appointment is made already." She sounded foreign, but I couldn't identify the accent.
"Are you sure — I didn't call."
"Yes," she smiled briskly. "This way please."
As she turned to lead me to the waiting room I noticed that she had a clubfoot, although her shoes were so well-made that you would hardly know. I was certain I had come to the right place — the nurse was a freak too. She would be on my side. I felt secure.
"Wait here." She disappeared behind a heavy door, returning a few moments later to take some details and again to announce that Dr Beckett was ready to see me.
Dr Beckett was a large, athletic-looking man with fair, thinning hair and a smile that made you feel you could — and should — trust him with your life; this was not always my experience with psychiatrists (which I assumed he was). After some pleasantries were concluded he asked how he could help.
"Well, I don't think I'm Jesus..." (I had had something along these lines worked out — a kind of joke because surely joking is a sign of sanity, a sign that a real human being is at home. The doctor was supposed to say "No?" and I would continue by saying that Jesus was dead and that I was the Holy One now. All laugh. Exeunt stage left.)
"No?" the doctor smiled.
"No. Jesus is dead. I am the holy one now."
"Aha!"
And out it all came in a rush, about how the voices constantly drive me out of my mind, about how they seem to have supernatural powers, about knowing that I have delusions and whether I can really be deluded if I know that, about the strange moods and feelings — good sometimes like being high, but mostly bad since being "treated", about how I find it so hard to deal with people, about how the voices torment me endlessly about the stupid, crazy things I have said so that I never want to talk to anyone again... "Sometimes I think I can only talk to doctors. They are the only people I can tell the uncensored truth, the only ones that can understand. It's such a relief to be able to tell the truth, doctor, a blessing."
"And you feel that treatment has not helped at all?"
"I have been given five different antipsychotics." (I sometimes recite their names to myself, my chemical rosary.) "I have a job. I couldn't do my work at all on Stelazine, but they're all the same really. They all make you feel so awful that life isn't worth living. And people wonder why schizophrenics are always offing themselves! Ha! I can't be forced to take the drugs can I?"
"You can be made to accept treatment under certain circumstances — if you were thought to represent a threat, for example. I don't think that would be called for in your case though."
"Thank you." Grateful tears threatened to overflow onto my cheeks. I looked away and tried to wipe my eyes without being seen.
"There is something new..."
"They always say that!" I instantly regretted interrupting, but the doctor appeared unfazed.
"This is very new, something quite different from the usual medications, not a dopamine antagonist at all. It's designed to improve your functioning, primarily targeting the cognitive and social deficits rather than the hallucinations and thought disorders. It has a considerably more favourable side-effect profile than anything else currently available. It is experimental, but I can get you into a study. I have looked over your notes..."
"How could you have done that? I haven't been here before."
"Er... it wasn't too difficult," he nodded towards a computer screen and continued. "You fall within the criteria for the program. You clearly suffer from schizophrenia, probably paranoid, but despite your persistent symptoms you retain a good level of functioning in some respects, and you have excellent insight..."
"I bet you say that to all the nutcases!" I regretted interrupting again. I had read that uncontrolled gabbling is sometimes a symptom. I expect the doctor knew that.
"I think that you are perfect for this drug. And, anyway, if you really don't like it you can stop taking it at any time."
"Uh-huh. What is it called?" I had almost made up my mind. This was hope of a far more substantial kind than the thin lies on which I usually subsisted, and what price a sixth bead for my rosary!
"They are calling it 'Hexxgon'."
"What colour is it?"
Dr Beckett looked at me without changing his expression. "Green," he said. "It's a pale green, six-sided tablet."
"Great," I said. "Ignoring the white ones which were only for side effects, I have had pale blue, yellow, orange, red, and blue tablets so far, but no green ones — I'll give it a try."
Hungry and too preoccupied to cook, I had picked up a stuffed rotisserie chicken on the way home. After gnawing every trace of flesh from the bones I put Brian Eno's Music for Films on the player. What is a hallucination? What is a vision? I used to believe I could distinguish between what is real and what isn't, but it would be truer to say that I had learned not to react overtly to anything that seemed unlike the things that had made up my world before the change. I had asked the nurse for a glass of water and swallowed one of the green tablets before leaving the doctor's rooms. I had felt queasy on the bus home, but I have always been prone to travel-sickness. The usual stuff made you feel okay at first, a pleasantly tranquil sensation, but just as you are starting to think this isn't too bad really the akathisia kicks in. By the time I got home the nausea had passed. I was far from tranquil though. There was an excitement that was subtly exhilarating. Nothing nasty had happened! I ate the chicken still expecting the worst. Nothing. I put a tape on. What happened next was not what I had expected at all. As the weirdly rhythmical strains of Eno's "M386" filtered into the room the pile of clean-picked chicken bones rearranged themselves into a long-necked dinosaur skeleton and began a slow dance to the music — a dance of eerie joy!
Okay, so I have had visual hallucinations before. It should be more obvious to people with schizophrenia than to others that life is a virtually inseparable mixture of internal and external events. I mean, if you are the sort of person that sees dancing skeletons or hears people that aren't there talking then you have some pretty good evidence that the external world is not quite as external as it may seem. Most people think that what they see and hear is God's holy truth and nothing but. Perhaps it isn't easy, but I feel that many problems would just disappear if people were able to distinguish more clearly between what is inside their mind and what isn't — schizophrenics included. Although my hallucinations and delusions seem a lot like reality to me I have rarely been able to believe in them to the extent that I would act on what seemed to be happening. Perhaps I am lucky — if you call having a reality you can't believe in being lucky that is. My problems were not so much with the uncanny things I was hearing and sometimes seeing as the brute fact that I was overwhelmed by them. They left little space in my mind for anything else. I was never not hallucinating, never not prevented from thinking by a barrage of Zen koans posed by an imperious sky, never permitted a moment's respite or a pause in which to think and dream about what to do next. You need space to think and dream. Thinking and dreaming are necessary.
So what was different about this particular hallucinatory experience? For one thing, it actually seemed to be an interior event, not a hallucination at all. A vision perhaps. Seen, certainly, but understood not as a collection of dancing bones, but as a metaphor. And I could understand it! The chicken pieces that I had eaten were my experiences. The bones were the memories that were left behind. Those memories were now connected up and functioning together smoothly, providing me with useful information, a guide to what to do next in my life. Something long-extinct was had returned. Something big. The graceful archosaurian vanished. I could see! The next thing I did was to check my auditory hallucinations. These were always the most debilitating of my symptoms. And they never stopped. Never. Would you rather be locked in a room with a dancing skeleton — even one you were not particularly fond of, or with a PA system that you could not switch off constantly blaring messages from semi-humans that could read your mind and hated you with a vehemence that is impossible to comprehend? Not a difficult choice for me. My auditory hallucinations had not vanished, but they had receded in significance to something more along the lines of a pot plant. Thoughts were occurring in my mind rapidly and in an orderly succession — rational thoughts, thoughts that I could access from the inside, quite unlike the infuriating babble with which I had been overwhelmed for so many years. The potted shrub inside my mind began to ripple flame-like as though it were trying to attract my attention. It produced a flower. I didn't have to, but I picked it anyway, just to see what it had said.
"You're okay," said the large, pink, fleshy flower.
I'm okay, I thought.
The other people at the planning office had largely ignored me for years and I treated them with the same courtesy. It may well be that I had been the ultimate source of this mutual disregard. Perhaps it was because of this that certain developments in my employment situation were not immediately obvious to me. One of my least pleasant duties (because it involved so much contact with others) had been to keep the sales office informed about work in progress so that they could answer customer enquiries. Sometimes, when she was very busy, Christine from the sales office would put customers straight through to me. Several weeks after I had begun my course of Hexxgon (and a short while after the removal of a harmless cyst from my neck) someone in management had noticed that customers had all but stopped calling the sales office with enquiries and problems regarding my department. They were calling me instead. When it was realised how effectively I had been dealing with these customers, including some of the company's most important clients, I was immediately offered a senior sales position. The departmental manager had asked me where I had been hiding my light; my accuracy with details had been noted before, but my people skills were a more valuable commodity. This conversation had taken place over a drink at his club on company time. I took the job.
I liked my new job. I liked getting dressed up for work in the morning, choosing just the right tie to go with my new suit, the new shoes that might be displayed on my desk from time to time. I liked my new apartment. More than anything else though, I liked my new facility with people — and to think that I had shunned all but the most unavoidable human contact for so many years! My daily routine was a game of tennis, a breezy, pleasant pastime that came as easily and naturally to me as breathing. And I owed it all to Hexxgon. My newfound normalcy may have been chemically-induced, but normalcy, as far as I could tell, was precisely what it was, and it was normalcy appreciated as only one who has lived long without it can. If the price of normalcy was popping little a green pill once a day then it was a price I would cheerfully pay. Hexxgon had no downside. Quite apart from everything else and unlike every other medication I had been given, it left me capable of sex — as my exhausting affair with Marzy, the highly-sexually-motivated divorcé with the business degree who had recently joined the company, will attest. I had even flushed my stash down the toilet (Had I given the impression that I didn't occasionally need to do something about the anger and pain?) — what need had I of other drugs now!
The bottle containing the Hexxgon was made of tough, opaque white plastic. It had a small label without colours. It was morning and I had just finished carefully knotting my newest tie in the bathroom mirror. I opened the bathroom cupboard door to which the mirror was attached and reached for the white plastic bottle with the small label. I push-twirled the childproof lid off as I had done every morning for months and tilted the bottle over my left hand. Nothing came out. I inverted the bottle completely. Nothing came out. I popped the inverted bottle sharply on my palm. A packet of silica gel and a lump of cotton wool fell into my cupped hand. I looked for Dr Beckett's number in the phone book. There were no Dr Becketts listed. I looked for a phone number or address on the plastic bottle. Nothing. I was on the point of ransacking my apartment for the note that the dealer in the surgeon's office had written me, but my new standard of personal tidiness meant that had it been in my apartment I would have known its location. I didn't. I searched the apartment anyway, and the pockets of all my clothes even though if not new they would have been washed or cleaned. It wasn't in my apartment, but there was no problem because it would be easy enough to find the doctor's rooms. I rang the office and asked Christine if she would mind telling Bob that I needed to see my doctor — nothing serious — and would be in as soon as I could. That will have been the last they heard from me. My hair and beard have grown long and my clothes ragged as I search and re-search every street and alley of this city and its inner suburbs for something I can't quite remember, a house, a garden filled with pot plants, and it was paved in with hexagonal flags, I think. If you see me searching and know where it is, please tell me because I really need to find it.