And a View of the Helipad

Word count: Approx. 900
Notes/Warnings: TRIGGER: mention of mental illness, allusions to attempted suicide, and time spent in a psych ward.


The new patient in the psych ward looked like a pared-down, bearded Ryan Gosling.

Cute, Eric decided as he chewed his forkful of tepid eggs and dithered with his golf pencil over the lunch menu. He marked his selections almost at random: spaghetti and meatballs; buttered roll; fruit cup; and tapioca pudding. If one is into Ryan Gosling, that is.

Which I’m not, Eric assured himself as the Gosling look-alike shuffled across the room and sat at Eric’s table, which was also occupied by Krissy.

Krissy had a habit of randomly taking off her shirt and walking around the ward topless until the staff noticed. Eric not-so-secretly found her delightful, her conversations with imaginary people included. She was good enough company, even when fully-clothed.

Eric was the only one who’d bothered to sit with her. Until this day.

The three mental patients sat in heavy silence while the tables around them filled with other patients and chatter. Eric stared out of the room’s lone (barred) window in between stealing glances at the Gosling look-alike. The former offered nothing more exciting than a view of the hospital’s unoccupied helipad: a clear, clean bit of asphalt in a large lot of the same, bounded by a fence and CAUTION signs, and marked with a giant red X that could be seen even at night.

The latter offered a view of what Ryan Gosling might look like if he were playing a mental patient who was eating his breakfast.

The look-alike, like the rest of the new patients Eric had observed in his three weeks among them—as one of them—ate slowly, methodically, with great concentration. He nibbled on his French toast, staring at the plastic tray that contained his breakfast, blinking only rarely. He bore the druggy focus of the heavily medicated and his wrists were bandaged.

“I was here for four days before someone told me that was a helipad,” Eric said suddenly and to no one in particular, scratching absently at his own scarred and stitched wrists. The look-alike didn’t respond, merely continued to nibble at his French toast. But Krissy tugged on the hem of her shirt, stretching the garment out in front of her, and looked at Eric questioningly. Her pupils were approximately the size of fly-specks.

Pointing out the window, Eric went on. “The helipad, there. See that red X? That’s where the medical helicopters land. That’s why there’re all those CAUTION signs and it’s fenced off. But when I first came here, I imagined that that lot was like the lake in Creepshow 2, the story with the carnivorous oil-slick on that secluded lake.”

Krissy blinked blankly, tugged on her shirt again and said: “Whuh?”

And the look-alike’s brow furrowed. His last bite of French toast paused halfway to his mouth.

“Only this was carnivorous asphalt, and that’s the real reason why it’s cordoned off,” Eric said blithely, tepid eggs forgotten as he scratched at his scabby, tender wrists and dug into his story. “I imagined that one evening, some stupid kids would be playing nearby, and see the fence and wonder why there was a fence around an empty lot. And there’s always one kid that’s stupider and bolder than the rest—one who would ignore the CAUTION signs and the giant red X. I could practically see that lone idiot, little Jimmy or something, climbing that fence and laughing back at his friends, saying: “I ain’t afraid of no asphalt!

“Then he of course marches right up to the giant red X. Stands dead in the center of it, arms akimbo like he’s proven his point. Then the asphalt rumbles and cracks, and before he can run away, it quickly opens: a giant, child-gobbling maw . . . and swallows the little stupe whole, while his friends stare on in utter horror. Then the asphalt closes and seals without a trace of the kid, or of its true nature.

“And that, dear friends, would be the tale of little Jimmy,” Eric concluded gleefully, staring out the window at the red X as if waiting for the asphalt to rumble and crack open in a hideous approximation of a smile. . . .

Then Eric heard a snort.

When he reined his attention back into the breakfast room, Krissy was staring off into space, drooling just a little and mouthing something Eric couldn’t make out. But the look-alike was gazing at Eric with eyes that were almost all pupil, but for the thin rings of blue-grey iris. Somewhere from within his druggy haze, he seemed . . . amused. His lips even twitched a little in an almost-smile.

“I ain’t afraid of no asphalt,” he said in a perfect, snotty falsetto then snorted again. The last bit of French toast got put away slowly, and chewed the same way.

Eric grinned and scratched at the stitches in his left wrist.

Krissy nodded once, solemnly, muttering: “Okay, if you say so,” to someone Eric couldn’t see, but who was nonetheless standing right in the center of the table. Then off went Krissy’s shirt. It got dropped to the floor like garbage, and the woman herself went back to her eggs, nodding to herself in apparent satisfaction.

The rest of breakfast passed in companionable silence.

END