A patchy fog rises from the dissolving snow banks and hovers over the highway – the dying cold of winter in a joust with spring’s approaching warmth. A car aimlessly wanders down this road, cutting off other vehicles in its arbitrary path. Suddenly, a Rhode Island State police cruiser’s siren sounds commanding this car to stop; its blue lights blaze like beacons through the frayed fog. The auto snails to a stop in the break down lane.
Once stationary, this car’s driver’s side window is slowly rolled down. Sticking his head out the window, the motorist exhales a desperate sigh, which is consumed by the outside fog.
Seconds later, the police cruiser parks behind the car. Two foreboding state troopers advance with apprehension towards a tattered, tan Chevy Nova. Watching the driver’s window get rolled back up by a swaying body, the commanding officer says, “This person is really out of it. Quite the performance on the highway. I haven’t seen a person miss that many cars in a long time.”
“Whoever it is, they’re totally gone.”
“Looks like just a kid. Be alert though. You never know.”
Inside the Nova, a figure’s silhouette seems to be sucked down by a vacuum. Perhaps, a soul kneeling for confession.
Moving closer, the commanding officer examines the Nova, locating the driver. Both officers move into position: one in the back of the car and one at the driver’s door. Stationed by the driver’s door, the head officer observes the car is locked up. He taps on the window, “License and registration, please. License and registration. Sir, are you all right, sir, are you all right . . .”
No answer.
After scanning the front seat, the commanding officer says, “It’s safe. No apparent weapon. This guy is gone. No visible injuries. He is loaded. This could take some time to get him out of there.” "Damn. I don't feel like standing around in this weather." "Take a look at this . . .”
Huddling in a cocoon of dirty laundry and a crumpled road map, in the passenger's foot area, a balled up Michael Barnaby strains to be sheltered from demons within his mind. Too bad, the fetal position is safe only once in life, if at all.
Under siege in this footrest fortress, Michael's mind silently stirs, haphazardly rationalizing his situation. "No evidence; I did nothing; they'll never find out; I'm in control; I'll graduate U. Lowell in May; I need to stay cool; I'll win again . . . I'm sorry; she’ll be all right; things will be okay . . . It didn't happen . . . No! No please stop . . ."
Michael yearns to sleep but mentally resists, reality and imagination duel; his consciousness battles for a clear memory and a clear solution to his situation. He inevitably shivers into unconsciousness, a temporary suicide.
The police wait. The commanding officer looks inside the window. "Well, he's breathing. Passed out cold though."
"Do you want to pry the doors or use the shimmy or wait for an ambulance?"
“Let’s wait and call for an ambulance and wrecker."
“If this guy wakes up, we could end up looking like fools . . . calling in an army for this."
. . . Michael Barnaby had had everything going for him - a well off family, an upcoming electrical engineering degree, an almost guaranteed job, and a beautiful girlfriend. Yet, he continually craved something. He felt like his life was predetermined like a metal ball that rolls down a wooden track to its end, never altering its course from the course of the other balls released on the same track. Michael felt that he had to get a high paying job, had to get married, had to have children, and had to equal his parents or do better. He despised reality's and responsibility's repetition and routine. It didn't seem worth it.
Michael had always demanded passion and urgency from life. He couldn’t settle for normalcy and wasn’t interested attaining personal complacency. Nothing satisfied him; he had to roll the dice.
Few methods reside in truly avoiding oneself. Michael escaped the paralyzing confines of everydayness through booze, the sole hole of hope leading out of his self-imposed maze of dissatisfaction. Every corner lead to another predisposed pathway.
Booze may have been his escape but it transformed Michael Barnaby into a beast. When drinking, his slightly withdrawn personality exploded, he became “Rat” to his college buddies. They all had nicknames in an attempt to distance themselves from their drunken behavior. They behaved as if in a cartoon world where things done there didn’t count in real life. Physically, Rat was 5’4” with a scrawny build and tangled shoulder length black hair. He often sported an unshaven face. His eyes were consistently squinty and red.
Rat’s demeanor, with a good swag on, transformed from polite and shyly considerate to that of a rodent gnawing at humanity’s toes: obnoxious and irritating. However, he saw himself as a God; to his soaked mentality, his actions and thoughts became mythological; wasted, he could beat anything, knew everything, and wasn’t afraid to prove it to a point. “You don’t corner a Rat.” In his euphoric mind, Rat deductively argued with opponents, conquered foes, out guzzled Goliaths, charmed ladies, and furthered his insight and knowledge of the worlds. In reality, Michael became abominable. When sober, Michael was in complete quiet denial.
Deep down, sunken in his soul, Michael knew that he acted like an immature fool who couldn’t handle what he fought so hard to avoid. The lies that hurt him the most were to himself, but at least they allowed him to function.
Although Michael liked his life on the verge of personal Armageddon, overflowing with urgency, passion, and dilemma, he wanted a shut off switch in order to quickly return to a safe haven: his sober life. Alcohol provided the perfect escape, but like with all escapes, something is left behind and something follows. Michael could flee from boredom and guilt, but was haunted by ghosts and demons in quiet hours. He liked to think he could drive his life in any direction without paying tolls. He wanted control, but Mr. Hyde led him to court on more than one occasion and to places that he could not or would not recall.
He existed and drank, waiting, figuring his inner feelings of discontent had to someday subside. Although, one recent unexpected dilemma had forced him from his predetermined predictability; he dealt with it but his solution wasn’t settling well even after a fifth of vodka. His final rounds of adolescent angst with no reprisals had ended. Guilt awoke him each day, dripping down his brain to his stomach, boiling into acid as it passed his heart. . . .
In the Nova, as if pinned down by a human magnet, Michael remained semiconscious in the fetal position. The police waited. No one alive sleeps forever. Pain and anxiety eventually overflowed into Michael’s mental Novocain.
Coming to, first with a hand movement then with an eye blink, Michael saw a policeman’s badge and his mind raced again. “It’s done. It’s done. But, the Giant, Chaser, and Pockets will kill me. Squeal? Hadn’t we signed a pact?”
Overwhelmed, Michael cut his throat loose and screamed, “No more, no more! Me, Pockets, the Giant, and Chaser killed her. In Lowell, in Lowell!” Pop, the Jack in the Box sprang with Michael momentarily standing naked in reality, all defenses stripped.
“We killed her!” Michael tried to recall what happened. He had done stupid things before, but this . . . Storm clouds. Time and memory certainly seem priceless when the picture sputters in and out of your brain. What happened? Blackout. Just a glimpse, please to alleviate soul - shuddering doubt. No! Guilt. Black guilt. How much for five minutes? Mike.
In his drinking bouts, Michael religiously gave speeches declaring that violence remained the most thorough vehicle of change with an individual and with society. That was something that he would say to look tough at a bar, he would never really act on it, maybe a fistfight, no more. Yet, he knew that he had to have done it: killed her. The dry blood on his hands and the anxiety in his chest proved it.
After hearing Michael’s screams of repentance, the commanding officer stood stunned but quickly began to fully realize what this man had just confessed. The second officer reached for his gun.
Later that same morning, in Lowell, Massachusetts, near the college, in a trash barreled apartment, the alarm clock blared like an out of breath trumpet player startling the two passed out inhabitants. The pie-eyed piper had sounded his horn, demanding the damned to rise. “Shut that God damn thing off!” commanded Pockets. “You best be going to your nine o’clock class. You’ll pay if you woke me up for nothing.” Lying in bed with only the top of his head exposed form the covers, Pocket’s eyes looked around the bedroom. “Hey, Giant, where’s the Rat, that bag of booze.” “Off with the Chaser, probably cocked out of his mind. Mr. I am not here for a long time, I am here for a good time has been on a tear. Almost two weeks straight.”
“What the hell do you want his girlfriend dumped him. I don’t know why though? I assume he was an ass. She was a babe. What a body!” Pockets rose up slowly, a quick sweat hit him, and he dry heaved. He patted his head with the palm of his hand. “Rat must have pulled a show stopper.”
“Yeah, he must of done something pretty stupid. He had her wrapped.” Giant glanced at Pockets for the first time. “You look like hell.”
“Shut up. You should talk . . . Rat is a fool. He wasted two years with her.”
“Did you look at him the other night? He’s the only person I’ve ever seen who can shower and shave and then look worse.”
“Christ, Giant, this place is shit-housed from the drunkards. Man, there’s glass everywhere. All Rat and the Chaser do is drink and smash things. There was absolutely no need to wreck the couch. Look at the glass!” . . .
At the Rhode Island State Police barracks, several hours after his arrest, Michael sat, incoherently recalling the events of his girlfriend’s murder and the death of a child. Although garbled, some valid information appeared to be leaking out. Three detectives relentlessly probed Michael, watching his behavior alternate from poised to manic and back again. Unknown to Michael, his audience took notes intently. . . .
The next day, in Lowell, a fully dressed Chaser lay spread eagle on his barren dorm room floor. His tattered, slim green arm flack jacket cocooned around his body trunk. A hastened pecking on his door began to reviving him out of his inebriant coma. After five minutes of rapping, Chaser sat up silent and still. He glanced at the door, stood up, and teetered over to it, pulling the door open. “Shit! The cops.”
Chaser let the Rhode Island detectives and the Massachusetts’ State Trooper in; after a standard greeting, the inquires calmly began. Soon enough, Chaser’s fingers were going to be bent back. They wanted answers, not jive. He tried to play it cool, accusations, nevertheless, ignited the inside of his mind. “What the hell is going on. I love it when those jerks go do something and I get blamed.” He could barely talk. After the night before, he was lucky to remember his name.
A dry white film coated the Chaser’s mouth as his scarred system pleaded for a glass of water. His bar room tan fuzzed face, and squinting, blood dyed eyes drew little sympathy from his inquisitors. They would have been better off questioning a stone. One half hour of the detectives’ inquiry, in addition to his thundering hangover fueled Chaser into a ten year-old’s tantrum.
“I’m tell’n you, I don’t know what Mike is talking about. What the Hell, this is insane. I don’t know why he said that to you. Rat is . . .”
Sometimes, strangely, debasing another person elevates your own identity.
After the Chaser’s tirade, the detectives and the trooper concluded for now that he knew nothing and methodically moved down their shopping list of accomplices and headed towards Pocket’s and Giant’s abode. Throughout the cracked spider webbed window and its mangled blind, violence and apathy stared out at the authorities as they marched to supposed solutions. After one knock, the door was answered and left wide open. Chaser had called moments earlier. Standing at the open door, these social soldiers paused, watching the apartment’s two occupants head for the couch. Then, they entered, readying for the inevitable round of mind games. The interrogation seemed only a search for a sword to run through the Rat. Following procedure and after little initial feedback, the detectives separated the two suspects, sentencing the Giant to another room. Pockets was going to be the first on the chopping block.
“I don’t know, ask Chase, they were hanging out last. All I know is the guy got dumped by his girlfriend, and flipped out. I think she moved back to Rhode Island to get the hell away from him. Might even have quit school. She was pretty, what a loss. He loved her. Anyway, Rat was a fish, a smart dude but always trashed. Hell, he blacked out all the time. I don’t know what happened.” The detectives could not pick Pockets.
Fuming with irritation, Pocket’s glare x-rayed the officers. They didn’t seem to notice and he was led away. Predictably, the inquisition continued with questions now bombarding the humble Giant. He began to fell clammy sweat seep through his light gray T-shirt.
“I don’t know what to tell ya. Two nights in a row the kid horror showed. The first night at the bar he threw up on some girl’s red shoes, the next night on the way home from a party he was kicking the Goddamn window out of my car. Later, he was crying and went into convulsions, shaking like lime Jell-O on a rocking kitchen table. It didn’t stop him the next day with Chaser. They . . .”
Back in Rhode Island, the next day after the arrest, in his newly sanctioned hospital room, Michael lay in a physical lull of disinfectant and white. His tired head, his drained body, and his sunken soul rested, motherly snug in a fresh, clean bed. The intravenous attached to his arm countered the physical malnutrition. Was Michael really healing? He hadn’t spoken since his first night confessions to the police, however, when conscious, his mind endlessly attempted to rationalize his situation, revolving like a hamster on a running wheel, exhausting itself but getting no where. He did not know what had happened or why. The file cabinets which contained Michael’s and Rat’s memories and ideas had toppled over into chaos. He could not find sense:
“I couldn’t be wrong, could I . . . They say I didn’t do it . . . One of my next plans will work . . . Wishful thinking . . . I just won’t drink . . .I’ll get out . . . I can’t think . . . If the ocean were whiskey and I were a duck, I’d swim to the bottom and never come up . . . No time for nonsense . . Think . . . Not that, it will not stop . . Possibly, human existence can only be validated through he injury and agony of purposely rubbing your knuckles against pebbles of glass from a broken pane . . . It was a bad choice . . . I’m sorry . . . At least, visible suffering beats apathetic numbness and breaking glass draws attention. . . . I can’t show this to anyone . . . No pity . . . Whether with a bleach dry blade or a slimy saliva edge, upon request, the razor will tap into your existence and then you will push your being away, then your sole away . . . I have done it to someone else . . . Die Rat . . . Why don’t you stop it . . . I need to refocus . . . Too many tears . . Breath . . . Breath . . . Enough . . . She needed to be smarter . . . You ring your own bell, I had to say it to be noticed, I had to say it to be rid of it . . . I’m wrong . . . Enough . . . Enough . . . Shields up . . . I could say something funny, but who would laugh . . . Why bother . . . No . . . Right now, I need to end . . . Remember when you were a child, spinach, strong . . . I am not a child . . . Destroyer, destroyed . . . This set back is only an aw in the eye of the visionary . . . Watch excess . . . I’ll be all right . . . I’ll talk to her about it . . . A melting, blue ice icon of truth trickled its last drop into a green ocean of lies, I have no conscience . . . Enough . . . Be gone ghosts that haunt me!”
The booze was sweating out his pores. Michael’s stomach felt shredded. Shadows in his room took the shape of winged demons. His skin felt like it was being run over by snakes.
Routinely, the hospital staff attempted to enter Michael’s mental mayhem. His doctor questioned and searched, like an accountant investigating a bankrupt business, methodically sorting out a jumble pile of bills, trying to figure where and what went wrong. When his doctor initially made statements or asked questions, Michael contemptuously answered only to himself.
Here is your past history . . . he’s puzzled, he’ll see, my life’s a God damn mystery . . . Perhaps, some tests . . . you will get silence at the best . . . Describe the spot . . . why not . . . What do you see . . . my body hanging from a tree . . . How about this one . . . my deceitful girlfriend having fun . . . And this . . . my taking a hatchet to her wrist . . . Do you have your ups and downs . . . of course, I am a sad circus clown . . . Are you a Manic Depressive . . . to be that, don’t you have to be really impressive . . . Lithibid, Prozac . . . knick, knack, paddy whack . . .
Michael defended himself with ridicule and sarcasm. However, his mind began recalling what made him snap. . . .
Last August, life had firmly clasped Michael. His girlfriend Sarah became pregnant. After insisting five pregnancy tests to insure that the results were correct, Michael began to panic and became angry.
Sarah cried and cried, commenting, “Having a baby is supposed to be a happy thing.”
Michael thought having a child was a quagmire, sucking him in for good.
That day, Michael tore into a weeklong drinking binge. In that cloudy week, he made one clear decision to abort the baby. With strong conviction and unemotional logic, he convinced himself and her. She was younger than him, from a judgmental family, and she looked up to him. She hadn’t yet realized who he really was.
Michael called and set up an appointment. It seemed easy enough. They went to Boston on a boiling hot Saturday. The procedure would cost $ 342.83. He had had to get two money orders because each had a limit of $250.00 dollars. That Saturday, Michael, hung over like a dog met her in a parking lot before heading to Boston.
“Sarah, man, I need a drink, pull over at one of these convenience stores.”
“Oh no, you are not going to start pounding beers.”
“That is not what I meant. I want Gatorade.”
His forehead beat.
“What did you do last night, Michael?”
“I went out with Pockets and the Giant.”
“Don’t you see enough of them at school. You will be back with them in a couple weeks.”
“Give me a break, will you.”
“Do you know what I did last night. I cried all night long, holding on to the stuffed rabbit you gave me last Easter.”
All went quiet. They never stopped for a drink. The radio played indistinguishable tunes, more like drones and moans.
The closer that they got to the clinic, the higher the temperature seemed to rise. They found a parking place about a mile from the abortion clinic. They got out of the car and began the trek.
“Are you okay, Sarah.”
“No.”
For a moment, face turning red, Michael felt annoyed, questioning his decision. However, his hangover slammed him like a shock wave. He began browning out. Three quick breaths saved him from collapsing. Sarah didn’t notice.
After that, silence held them both until they got near the abortion center. Tides of people screamed at them outside the clinic’s door. Their consciences screamed louder. Michael made a threatening gesture at a woman protester jabbering at him as he opened the door. He put his arm around Sarah sheltering her for the last time, pushing her forward. “Hurry up, Sarah.”
They entered; everything blurred: the doors, the waiting room, the forms, the money orders, Sarah, himself, the tortured faces, the sedate professionals, the police, the procedure rooms. Utter angst. Michael signed forms, paid, and brought Sarah to the room. Then, he left. Michael remembered shivering outside in the summer sun. He was a coward, a murderer. Why couldn’t he rush in and stop it. He stood a coward, immobilized with the fear of responsibility.
It was not suppose to be like this. As the sun glared into his glazed eyes, he knew this would never stop gnawing at him. Quiet moments of his life would be guilt. A child’s laugh would be instant hell. Torture forever. An everlasting hangover. He would make her never tell anyone. They would go on somehow. He needed a chance to make it right, even though it was all dead.
The hospital hideout was growing old. Get out. Michael clenched his stomach. Pain’s acid burned his insides. No more contact with her. The guilt around her never ended. It all needed to be gone. This was causing his problems. Michael made the decision that he would do whatever he needed to do and be out.
By the end of the first week of therapy, a solitary tear began rusting away Michael’s iron mask of indifference. His distancing façade appeared to be fading. Alcohol abuse was what he was going with. He blamed all his extremes on the booze. He knew better. In-between charades, he convinced himself that he felt better. Michael never spoke of the abortion. He would bury the dead himself. . . . Michael remained in the hospital for a month of treatment and was released. No evidence supported Michael’s earlier confessions of murder. The police investigation had disintegrated after it’s first three days when Michael’s ex-girlfriend, Sarah, was contacted. Nothing that Michael confessed was substantiated, except that it was a bunch of drunken nonsense. His penalty was a D.W.I. conviction, lost license, and fine.
Michael knew things were lost, but what would follow. He was not sure. Sarah had stayed away. He felt drawn to talk to her but never did. For a while, he stayed sober, finished his degree and patched up some parts of his life.