‘You are obviously not taking your medication, so there’s no alternative. We need to detain you under The Mental Health Act.’
‘ I snort. It feels like I’m making ape noises. My rib cage is contracting but no sound is escaping. Sally and Mel from the home treatment team are standing in my front room with their backs to the window. Their faces blend in with the grey sky visible through the gap in the curtains. More words float in my direction but they are muffled by the clouds.
There have been signs. Care staff making hints that I am talking at them, not with them. Over them, not to them. Professionals call it pressured speech, but only amongst themselves, as if it is some big fucking secret. My irritation has been increasing and lately there’s been explosions every five minutes. What they don’t get is that I’ve got one fuck of a lot to do. I’m learning every single jazz standard, alongside Beethoven’s fifth symphony in its entirety and every blues, rock and roll, ragtime, boogie woogie, samba, reggae, pop, indi, indefinable I had ever heard and liked. And get this. I’m doing it all on my wooden xylophone which I’ve hooked up to the radiator so it’s got this mind blowing resonance. Every now and then I throw in some irishy, folky, jiggy stuff on me bass and I’ve come up with this whole new genre. I’m writing tons of songs and getting ideas for lyrics from the piles of books and papers all over the floor. I have to spill them like a deck of cards to get from chair to desk to bed and a title always screams out at me. I can’t really get in bed because piles more books, magazines, an old dismantled telly and other boxes of crap are securing my duvet to the mattress. The plus side is I’m getting more and more well read. I’ve done the first lines of tons of mind blowing page turners and some classics, get on, and each one has this code which tells me which one I have to read next. I’ve nailed it down to the first two or three words now, no need to finish a sentence or nothing, I’m just straight on to the next title. When the idiots interrupted me I had picked up three books and was mid sentence of each of them.
‘Sit down Casey will you.’ I can’t because my legs have turned into pogo sticks and I’m springing from them upside down into a one pinky finger stand.
‘We need to talk to you because Dr. Turner wants to come over later. She wants to do a Mental Health Act Assessment’ Later. So I’ve got time to leg it before they turn up with the crew.
‘Mac here boy.’ I leap and bound towards the front door with Mackenzie at my heels and turn and do the magic salute with my knuckles to ward them off long enough to give us a chance to get away. When I open the front door Dr. Turner is facing me. There is middle aged male, no doubt shrink, behind her and what I guess is a female social worker. A couple of coppers are trying to look like accidental wallpaper.
‘Can we come in.’ What they really mean is ‘we can come in.’ I let them in. I can only use one magic signal an hour, so I need to play for time. They go into the front room and stand like lemons that need squeezing. Dr. Turner has her stupid case and file which she places on the floor.
‘We’re here because Derek’s been a bit worried about you.’ I’ve been worried about him lately too. He’s a useless dick for a CPN. One who does f all support you when he perceives you as well and then makes a song and dance about it when he perceives otherwise.
‘Do you feel you are well at the moment?’ Dr. Turner’s tone is one of exaggerated concern. The correct answer to this standard mental health question is no Sir, please Sir I am very very ill. That way they will think ‘you have insight. I miss the moment.
‘I’m working on some really important stuff so I need to kind of get on with it now ...’
‘Really what kind of stuff ?’ Without taking her eyes off me, she reaches down and retrieves a magnifying glass from her case.
‘Mental masturbation.’ Dr. Turner raises her eyebrows and holds the magnifying glass out in front of her. Her nose looks distorted through it. I am reminded of Pinnochio . I burst out laughing.The two doctors pass a confirmatory glance between them. My laughter is more confirmation that they can pat themselves on the back believing the are making the right decision.
What they don’t understand is that at the moment I am ahead of them timewise. Last week, as I got closer and closer to mental orgasm, I catapulted myself into the future and it was like the rush from a thousand hits. I met some white shimmering beings who had colonised the Earth. They gave me special powers to use when I returned to the 21st century. Since then I have been looping in and out of the future, so that the present keeps repeating itself like groundhog day.
‘I got some inspiration from the future so I’m adding some movements to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to give it more of a boogie woogie jazz punk reggae blue suede shoes rock and roll play it again sam feel it works like a shit hot samba I’ve got the timing aligned to rise with the moon and full on every other star over this side of the galaxy ..
‘Are you taking ….’
‘and even further like Andromeda casseopala reticula dog star you are fasterthanlightspeedlightspeedahundredaneightysixthouseightysixthousandmileoversixpointsevenrecurringwarpthinghowitsplitvectorapartyinfeasthouse
‘I’m afraid you’re not making much sense Casey. We had a call from a member of the public yesterday who was worried about his wife. Apparently she uses a wheelchair.’
I know who they’re on about. I was practising my powers in the street yesterday. The ones I got given in the future. To get people to do anything they want. I tried it on this old dear in a wheelchair. I just shouted HA SI HU and did a karate move. She looked at me funny though.
‘I don’t do karate sweetheart.’
‘It’s not karate. It’s magic. I can make you walk. I’m from the future.’ That was pushing it a bit coz I’ve only made a few visits there. Then all I done was walk towards her with the best of intentions so I could help her out of her wheelchair and I was gonna donate it to the nearest charity shop. On her behalf, that goes without saying. But this bloke jumps between us and pushes me back.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m helping her to walk.’
‘She’s a paraplegic you idiot.’ He goes and pushes the wheelchair out of my reach.
‘I know I ….’
‘Leave her alone or I’ll call the police.’
He must’ve done then.
‘Casey?’
‘Yeh?’
‘Why were you shouting at a woman in a wheelchair?’
‘I wasn’t. What do you mean? I was just using my powers to help her walk.’
‘What powers? Do you think you are God?’
‘No I’ve been to the future these amazing white shimmering beings showed me how to harness billions of yearinaninstant flower inyerhand inyerhand flowershower in the hot shave we’rethehavenots who’s got ravenen ravena ravenous insa ….
‘I am not sure that you are very well at the moment Casey, I’d like you to come onto the ward for a few days just to see if we can get you back on the right meds.’ They mean a few months/years.
I try giving the magic salute with my knuckle but it doesn’t work. The hour is not up yet.
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m not going into that dump.’
‘Well we’ve got no choice then.’ You do. You could leave me alone.
‘We’ll have to detain you.’
Before they turned up I was fine. On it. Playing my new repertoire brilliantly. Like a pro. Breaking fresh ground. Had some seriously unusual harmonies going. And mind bending dissonance. I’d brought the keyboard in. My fingers were set free, roaming all over the keys like naked explorers. I was killing it. Then the loud knocking at the door made me jump and fucked up the frequencies. Where there had been just that super cool bit of dissonance there was clashing. Wrong chords. My hands crashed down on the keys. More knocking.
‘AGHHHH!!’ I crashed down on the keys again and there was just this horrendous jarring noise.
I had gone to the window then and pulled the curtain back slightly. Sally and Mel from the home treatment team were stood at the main door downstairs. I debated whether to ignore them but their jaws were dropped open, wowed by my amazing sounds which must have drifted through the closed window and down to the ground floor. They’d heard me. Knew I was in. I pushed the buzzer to let them in . The clattering of footsteps, then, on the stairs, banged through my skull. They’d walked straight through to the front room.
‘You are obviously not taking your medication, so t here’s no alternative. We need to detain you under The Mental Health Act.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BEANY
As soon as I get to my room it clicks that something is missing. After a few seconds I know what it is. Beany. I don’t leave him behind, that’s not what I do. Where I go, he goes, if not, I don’t go. I can hear voices outside on the road. A car or two. I’ve got no poxy smart device on me and I’m relieved, because those bastards demand constant attention, stealing you away from wherever you are. I’ve got my pay as you go with me but it’s not like anyone’s gonna bother calling me. And I don’t do text any more, not after what happened.
There won’t be anyone when I get home either. To ask me how things turned out. How I coped. What the verdict was. There will just be wolf-like howls, saying ‘I’m here, she’s not’.
That’s me for the last thirty years. No one notices when I don’t turn up for my sick days. No one is waiting for me at home when I return after another day of being nowhere with nobody. The day to day reality for the excluded, the reclusive and all the lonely people out there is an invisible one. No one is bothered whether we wake up in the morning, or when we can’t sleep all night. No one stops or sticks around. It’s all fleeting. We don’t exist.
It’s not like I don’t reach out. Say good morning to people. But I get it wrong coz I’m always rooting on there being another loner wandering about somewhere. One of them rare bods who you can discuss deep shit with. Stuff outside of the weather or the breed and personality of Max, Monty, or Caesar. That’s why I have a ninety nine percent failure rate.
Last year, on my walks with Beany, I began to notice that on average only about fifty percent of people either replied or nodded when I greeted them with a ‘good morning’. I had to double check my watch more than once, just to make sure. It was morning. I worked out what the odds would be that everyone in the fifty percent who didn’t respond was deaf or hard of hearing. They were remote. Something like 9:1 chance they would all have heard me. I figured most people would have understood the words ‘good morning.’ But I threw out the odd Bonjour, Buenes Dias or Salaam Alakum or even Goedemorgen just in case. I tried cutting out some syllables to simplify things. Made it just ‘Hi.’ It wouldn’t have been fair to use ‘Do you think perpetual motion machines will be designed by an imaginary intelligence iborg in the post AI world?’
I looked at other possibilities then. Bods just don’t like the look of me. Not even peck worthy. Female body, but not proper woman. Tangled, messy, hair. Skinny and scruffy. Missing teeth. Trousers slipping down. Belt hanging off. Filthy trainers with laces undone. And then I got that lightbulb moment. I had forgotten the rules of contact sport. I’d been diving straight in with a roundhouse kick every time. That’s why I was being blanked. I’d forgotten to bow first.
One day I seriously used the words ‘good morning’ ten times in a row and not one person replied. One woman even reined her dog in urgently, protecting him from my verbal assault. A man looked me up and down as if he was a tailor estimating my inside leg. A couple speeded up. Super stuck together, fight or flight mode.
When I got home I broke down in tears. I don’t know if its true that in space no-one can hear you scream. But I do know only too well that on Earth, no one can hear you cry.
I search around the room for my bag but it’s not there.
Wanker, you left it there. I’m out the door and back down and have to get past some bodies before I clock it. Still by the chair. As I grab it there are looks again. From the latin and his date. Then there’s more daggers from another couple when I have to steer round them to get back to the stairs. I turn round to give them all the venom I can muster but it falls flat when I trip on the stairs and have to fumble around for my key.
I’ve got that urge to go now, but I’ve hit the floor before I can make it to the khazi. Tears are pumping out of me so I have to crawl on my hands and knees through the door to the bathroom. I reach for some tissue paper but miss and give up collapsing with my face on the vinyl floor tiling. It feels familiar. The same as every hard surface I’ve ever been acquainted with. Floors are pretty loyal friends. They don’t run away when you roll around on them despite the fact they’ve got a front row seat to see the raw you.
My limbs are stretching and twisting and clawing and digging.
“Jesus why the fuck … what the fuck, Jesus, fucking hell, why do I have to fucking do this? ….I don’t fucking know asshole. Jesus shit why the fuck does it always have to be like this? I don’t know do I you fucking moron. Shut it will you. For fuck’s sake, why am I such a total screw up? Coz you are, get used to it, dickhead, You useless prick. Shitface wanker. Fuck you!!”
I’m flat on my back now. I was supposed to have left this me behind. My muscles have turned into deserters, each one doing his own thing. I know by now that issuing orders won’t work. They’ll just go rigour mortis, form a picket line. No point in sending nerve signals out to my limbs any more.
I do have a solution to my catatonic states. I discovered it only after I gave up and finally decided to never bother moving gain. After a few minutes I felt one of my finger joints make a little twitch. That taught me probably the most valuable lesson I have ever learned. Lay off the steering. Take a back seat. Be like one of those helicopter seeds, hitching a lift on the air. It’s a shame it took me about forty years to register that.
Anyway, I’m on it nowadays. At least mostly. I don’t get stuck rigid for long any more.
It’s indecision. That’s what catatonia is. A shrink told me once that there’s third state between fight and flight. Freeeze. You’ve turned to stone because you can’t decide. And I’ve forgotten what the choice was.
Her solution was valium. She didn't have time for discussing helicopter seeds. She had a point though. Drugs are shit hot at making difficult decisions.
I let go, stretch out on the floor, and let myself be.
I don’t want to go back there. To those places.
I never want to go back there.
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