The Grinders, Part IV

"The Grinders, Part III" 

"Your dad is dead and your mom does nothing but stare at the ceiling all day. Hope you’re liking that big hotel. Love, Your Aunt

“P.S. Your dad shot himself at work and the bullet also killed his bosses four year old daughter.”

This was the content of a letter a nurse handed to me.

After I saw the news about my parents, I would spend hours sitting in a corner and staring at the television. Sometimes I would glance at the channel-changing woman and quickly turn away. Fantasies would enter my head, with her coming to me at night and pulling down my pants. They seemed inappropriate, especially during a time of grief. I would try to rationalize these thoughts, by reminding myself that I had once saved my father when he was toying with his gun, and that neither he nor my mother --- nor anyone else --- ever came to the hospital to visit me.

Once, as I stared at the television, I heard a "psst" sound. I turned my head, and saw a short, emaciated bald man.

"What is it," I asked him, annoyed.

"It is imperative that you rise from the floor expeditiously. You must not delay. No, you must not waylay. You hear me. Get up right away."

"I'm busy."

"Fine. Sit in front of the cathode ray tube all your life for all I care. Don't worry about the important stuff. Don't worry about the quasi-impossible possibility of possibly getting out of this psycho zoo."

I got up.

"Ewwwww. Yee-hoo-hoo," the bald man cackled as his shoulders convulsed, "That's more like it! Come, follow me!"

I followed him to an end of the room.

"Now," said the bald man, "I must warn you of something."

"What?"

"Well, actually, before I warn you, I want to hear why you're in here."

"Hell, I don't know. Maybe it has to do with me threatening a dentist with a scalpel. Or was it scissors? Some damn surgical instrument. I guess people think I'm nuts 'cuz I broke my bloody teeth. Doctors say my parents turned me in, because I tried to kill them. But it’s a lie, just like I didn’t kill that old man. Actually, my dad is dead. But it was his own doing.

"How about you?"

"Uh-uh-uh," said the bald man, "You're not here to know why I'm here. You're standing here to heed my warning."

He paused.

"I must warn you," he continued, "that I am totally crazy."

"You don't say."

"That's right. I hold the firm belief that we are simultaneously on Earth and in a world having an atmosphere that glows like neon, but glows purple. I am convinced that lightning strikes everywhere and leaves streaks that seem to tangle like spaghetti in the purple sky. Everything in this world is transparent to light and overlaps the earth. I have no doubt that what I see is real. I laugh at any suggestion of hallucinations. Only a delusional maniac could have such confidence in such absurdities. I am insane."

Then the bald man ripped off his shirt, dug his fingernails into his chest and shouted, "I am mad! Quite mad! I declare it! You hear? I am a mad man! Taste the reality! Feel it! Feel it! Feel it!"

"Oh, shut the fuck up," growled the burly patient who had earlier dismissed the warning about the earth getting recycled, "I know your type. Always going on about having an oatmeal brain. Well guess what. I met a guy like you on the street. Kept going on day in and day out 'bout how he thought his boss was putting hallucinogenic gas in the office air and making him go crazy. Thought it wasn't no conspiracy though. Thought the gas was to make other office workers sane so they could be fired. 'Cordin' to him, that boss only hired screwballs 'cuz ya practic'ly had to be one to work there. He'd send people on vacations so they'd be away from the gas for a while, go nuts, and do good work when they came back and not quit. Old Oatmeal Brain thought there was good nuts and bad nuts and he was on his way to bad-nutdom, and the other workers all had the same variety of good nuttiness.

"Well here's what I say," said the burly man as he grabbed the bald man by the shoulders and shook him, "Who the hell cares? Think you're real special, don't you? Well you're not. You're just one of those pieces of science fiction dung. I bet you think you're one of those guys who can solve the world's problems or one of those wackos who thinks he knows everything, don't you?"

At this point, the burly man was holding the bald man in a headlock.

The burly man continued, "I bet you think people from the future are communicating to you. That's it. You think these far-out visions of yours are actually you seeing something like a type of matter that only you can see or feel 'cuz of your friends from the future. Vast stocks of matter that don't interact with the matter we can feel or be smashed by! Vast stocks of matter! Invisible stuff making invisible planets, invisible stars, invisible ladies crawling into invisible driers and invisible washing machines! That's it! I have you down!"

"Want to know why you're wrong," shouted the burly man as he kneed the bald man in the gut, "'Cuz there's no future people to make you see that crap. That's why! Listen to me! All of you! You too! Here's why hominids from 3016 or whatever ludicrous year ain't fuckin' with this man's head. Man's future's in a sarcophagus of mundanity. You hear me? A sarcophagus of mundanity! Oh sure, it's inevitable, inevitable, I say, that some stupid jerk will someday figure out how to make a time machine. So, you say, that means they can squirm all around time and play with the brains of people living today. Well you're wrong. Totally wrong."

He continued as he kicked the bald man, who was curled in a fetal position.

"Here's why you're wrong. Somebody, with his fancy dancy time machine will try to go into his future and steal an invention from that time. So he brings the crazy gizmo back to his own time and patents it. But, the true inventor from the time traveler's future would know about the invention. So there would be no point for him to create it."

The burly man paused, sat on the floor, and spoke slowly, "The invention wouldn't exist. The principle should apply to all technologies and progress would stagnate completely. The same principle holds for learning of ideas one will have later in life. Nobody with a time machine will be able to come up with an idea he can express. Time travelers are all stupid. They can’t think, and they can’t fuck with your grapefruit head, or anyone else’s.”

"This is why that joke of a man," said the burly patient as he waved his toe at the bald one, "has no idea what he's talking about. He's insane. Quit mad. Ha, ha, ha. Or so stupid he can't figure out that people from the future aren't communicating to him, since everyone with a time machine will be a vegetable."

"God damn it! I never could stand you," uttered the burly man as he wrapped his hands around my neck, "You act so goddamn superior. Always silently observing. Observing like a, like a--Well nobody cares what you observe like. You, you, you malaisonaut! Take this!"

His knee smashed into my groin and I collapsed in agony. He continued yelling, but I could not tell what he said. Several minutes later, when I recovered from the assault, I noticed him pointing to a group of doctors surrounding him. He was silent, and he trembled.

A doctor grabbed the burly man by the shoulder, who then exclaimed, "Help! Help! Help! Somebody, please!" A second doctor opened the steel door which had claimed Plastic Man and the patient who had collected the tacks. The burly man’s eyes popped wide open, and he let out a high pitched, primal shriek so loud that I could feel my ears pounding for minutes afterward.

The doctor who was holding the burly man’s shoulder gave him a nudge in the direction of the gaping door. The burly man’s face lost all pigment, and became wet with sweat. The doctor nudged the burly man again, and he fell, face first, to the floor. I looked at the door, and saw that it was exceptionally thick, like the portal to a vault. I peered through it, and saw only blackness. The doctors dragged the burly man along the floor, and through the door. The steel door slammed behind them, and reverberated. Then I heard it seal.

The asylum was quiet. There were no sounds of raving, screaming or howling patients. Everyone stared at the steel door, even the channel-changing woman. The patients' eyes were bulging, and their lips were turned downward and curled inward. This was the same expression they bore when Plastic Man had been led through the door. That time, I thought it was an expression of bewilderment. I now saw that it was instead a look of dread. The bald man was as frightened as everyone else, and showed no sign of relief that his assailer was gone. As the patients' eyes carefully scanned across the door, I realized that the look on their faces was not of childish fear, but of comprehension.

Each day after the incident with the burly man, I became more frightened. I began to wake up at night, screaming. Sometimes, I would think my brain was being controlled by people from the future. I was not like this before, and I knew it was because of this place.

One day, I found a scrapbook on the dining table. I discovered that it was filled with photographs of a young woman with a violin. She had green eyes and a narrow, elegant face. Her chestnut hair was neatly tied into a braid. She wore formal dresses, and was shown performing solo and in groups on stages. She appeared to be a symphony musician. It dawned on me that this was the channel-changing woman. She was much thinner in these pictures, but I could tell it was the same person. I wondered what she was like when she was first taken here, and I wondered how the other patients had been. I began to weep.

"The Grinders, Part V"