Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End (2 page)

I imagine their thin
hospital robes transformed into vestments. They become agitated
when staff acts to redirect them, protect them. Shared Psychotic
Disorder is interesting. It is unstable, contagious, like a virus.
The carrier, the new patient, is calm. I believe he
plots.

I open my desk, pop out a
sample of Wellbutrin, and drink it down. Wellbutrin is indicated.
Clearly.

Dionysus slouched in the
door-frame. He was flanked by orderlies, but despite their hulking
menace he seemed to somehow strike a casual pose somewhere mid-way
between Shaolin monk and Hunter S. Thompson in his prime. The
orderlies glanced at Doctor Fein in concern, but he waved them
off.

“
Won’t you come in?” Doctor Fein asked. Dionysus nodded and
sat. “What is your name?”

“
Same as yesterday. Dionysus. Well, Dionysus Chthonios, but we
don’t need to be so formal.”

“
What day is today?”

“
E Tu
, Brute?”

“
Excuse me?”

“
It’s the Ides of March. That line is apocryphal, anyway. Can
I ask you a question?”

“
I don’t see why not.”

“
What experience gives you the right to be my
shaman?”

Doctor Fein blinked for
several moments before replying. “I’m sorry? I’m a psychiatrist.
And I’m here to help you, but only if you want it.”

“
Alright. Try to follow along with me here. I’ve been driving
myself nuts trying to figure out why my stomach was in knots last
night. Could be repressed childhood trauma, right? Could be the
awful ‘food.’ The meds. It could be the displaced, angry spirit of
an Ibo tribesman who, for reasons passing understanding, feels the
need to take out his vengeance on my bowels.” Dionysus was
gesturing rapidly with his hands as he spoke, his enthusiasm
building. Plunk, plunk. Doctor Fein, in his distraction, didn’t
notice pills popping in his coffee.

“
This is the problem with diagnosis. Any excuse we use to
explain the sensation begins as an excuse. And then it is a guess.
Have you heard of Chaos math?” Dionysus asked suddenly.

Doctor Fein stared off into
space.

“
Figured not. Linear cause and effect is the result of
short-sighted presuppositions. Our bias determines our attribution
of cause. Now,” Dionysus leaned forward suddenly.

Doctor Fein
jumped.

“
You seem tense today, Doctor. Now... if you don’t
know
what is giving me
heartburn, then how the fuck are you supposed to treat
me
?”

Doctor Fein shook his head
and made some quick notes in his file.
His
delusions are getting worse. The patient-doctor relationship is
clearly breaking down in a fundamental way.

“
Scale. See? Scale is the key. Nothing in the limited span of
a human life amounts to anything...if it wasn’t for the secret that
eternity hides in the smallest spaces between each
moment.”

A fly buzzed on the wall.
Filth, Doctor Fein thought, swatting at it. Chaos and filth. He
took another slurp of cold coffee.

“
Think of rain drops falling from the sky. Splash! They hit a
windshield, grip on, slide down slowly, mingling with dirt and
grit. Things behave differently at different scales. Sub-atomic,
atomic, molecular...this room here. The fluid and sedimentary
dynamics of a riverbed. An ecosystem. A fucking solar system.
Galaxies! Scale is a frame of reference, an idea, much like
molecules themselves. Some things recapitulate on any scale, and
some things change. The matter that composes this desk is mostly
empty space. This is just basic physics. They didn’t teach this to
you in school?”

The fly was rubbing its
legs together, and it was cacophonous. Like steel wool on a rusted
pan played through the speakers at an AC/DC concert. Its eyes were
huge, a fractal rainbow of fruit flavors. Synesthesia, a new
symptom. Time is passing, but how much?

“
Find it, Doctor Fein. Find eternity,” Dionysus said, tapping
on the desk.

The tapping snapped Doctor
Fein back into time and Euclidean space. His hands bit down on
themselves, curling into tight balls, as if his fingers desired
escape from servitude to the almighty Hand. Fingernails parted
flesh.

“
NOW!” Dionysus screamed, slamming his fist on the table.
Files flew into the air, containers full of pens and the Doctor’s
remaining coffee toppled end-over-end, crashing to the
floor.

Dionysus paused, his arms
in the air, waiting for the great reveal. There was none. The
Doctor stared dully at the droplets of coffee on the
ground.

“
I’m sorry, Doc. You missed it. Maybe next time around. Just
pray the Buddhists are right about that. Sorry about the coffee, by
the way. Oh, have you heard of the Zen stick of
encouragement?”

“
No.”

“
See the way you attain Satori, that’s what they call
enlightenment, is by sitting. Just fucking sitting. But you need to
be constantly jolted into the present, so that you can grasp it.
Grasp eternity
now
. It is here, or it is nowhere. So the Roshi, the teacher,
walks around and whacks students with a stick. The stick of
encouragement.”

They locked gazes. A
rivulet of sweat dripped down Doctor Fein’s nose.

“
I can talk at you all day. There is only one way to really
show you.”

Dionysus grabbed a pen and
drove it into Doctor Fein’s chest. It stuck out like a
mini-erection, a BicⒸ Priapus, spurting blood instead of semen. The
Doctor screamed and flailed, ripping it free.

“
Breathe, Doctor Fein. You are alive!”

“
HELP! GET IN HERE!”

“
Oh, calm down. I didn’t stab you that deeply. You’ll be fine.
Now take this opportunity–”

Two orderlies burst into
the room and grabbed Dionysus so forcefully that the chair beneath
him spun and crashed to the floor.

He offered no resistance,
but looked at Doctor Fein with concern. “You tell me I’m sick and
need to be cured but you’ve got
issues
, my friend. I think you
should talk to somebody.”

The orderlies managed to
slam a syringe into Dionysus' neck. The world, an Aristotelian
universe of clockwork, slowed down and unspooled itself. Gears and
glass clattered and crashed around him. His eyes fluttered closed
as he was carried through the door.

A last thought stuck in his
mind, before darkness: Janus was the God of doorways. Janus,
two-faced, the ambivalent hermaphrodite. A passageway... to
dream.

He was carried
unceremoniously to his shared cell. His roommate Cody sat in his
own bunk, strumming on a guitar.

“
Trouble again?” Cody asked, not looking up.

The orderlies grunted as
they shackled Dionysus to the bed.

“
That’s not code, you know,” Cody said.

They glared at him, as if
to ask if he wanted to get tied down, too. Cody shrugged and went
back to transmuting the melody of Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose” through
the key changes in John Coltrane’s giant steps.

Doctor Fein was being
rushed through corridors, strapped to a gurney. Cables dangled and
flapped against him. They were filling him with their fluids!
Catatonia, one of the nurses said. Damn shame, said
another.

He knew he would be fine.
He was the one in control. Everything in his manner, voice, his
surface thoughts all screamed: “this man
knows
.” He was integrated, wise,
with a sturdy grasp on the here-and-now. He took care of his suits,
short of obsession. He was practical, short of boring. Low-carb
dinners, exercise on the weekends.

He understood everything,
standing on the shoulders of rational giants and the scientific
method born from the great Enlightenment. He knew. He knew who he
was, where he was, when he was, and why. He knew when yesterday
was, when tomorrow will be. Things fall down, but the center
holds.

The feeling lasted until he
opened his mouth to speak the truth, to let the nurses know that
everything was okay. Instead he gagged, jackknife vomiting in a
steep, sour arc.

He knew he’d been there
before. He’ll be there tomorrow.
Be here
be here
. Oh God. No escape from eternity.
No escape from uncertainty.
Anything,
anything, anything but this.

“
Wouldn’t you feel less incurably mad after a nice, long nap?”
he thought he heard a nurse say.

He tasted vomit and smiled
at her. Tried to make a joke and bear down on his gorge. But all
the words had turned to grease and coated his tongue
black.

“
Go to sleep, Doctor. Rock-a-bye, Fein, on the wave front…”
The nurse leaned in and opened her mouth. Wide. Stretch marks
formed at the hinges of her jaw before the skin tore with a
running, wet zzzzziiiipppp! And she was growing, looming over the
table, rows of sharp teeth sprouting with muted pops from a gummy
pink palate. She grabbed his bed like it was a dinner plate and
tilted it up, the hospital machinery sliding into her wet maw with
cracks and crashes.

“
You’re not real!” he shrieked. “None of this is
real!”

“
Then hop in.” She smiled.

Dionysus tossed in his
bunk, his hands latched in place.

Sharp, tawny blades of
wheat parted and gave way to a stone path that wound its way
through picturesque hills. The sound of creaking chains rolled
towards him with the fog. Atop the hills stood the outline of
dangling figures, swaying in the wind like marionettes. Beyond the
macabre forms laid a village.

Those that watched over the
village must have seen it fit to hang deviants from iron chains on
a stone gallows. Tongues cut out meant watch your own. Eyes gouged
out meant mind your business. Hands removed with a splitting maul
meant no begging, idling or street busking.

The village itself couldn’t
be placed in time, or by culture — each house varied too widely in
construction, placement and class, though overall it was a pastiche
of peasantry throughout time. As it receded into the distance
Dionysus saw a stone maze.

He stumbled through the
field, not yet aware of himself. The familiar sound of a girl’s
laughter danced on the wind. Then he saw her. Eyes sparkled and
shifted colors, as he gawked and fell in love. Each of her gestures
had the slow-motion, natural grace of a high quality shampoo
ad.

It was her eyes he kept
returning to — impossibly huge, self-contained worlds. Dream eyes.
Everything beautiful that he’d ever seen was distilled in the form
of her radiant face, framed by thick braids of crimson hair. He
wanted to clutch them with both hands as they made endless love in
the field, distracted by nothing, serenaded by the whispering of
wind through the wheat and the crickets.

She wore a summer dress of
red cotton that fit her like a nightgown, and as she laughed a
strap worked free from her shoulder, stopping his heart.

“
Do you think we can fly?” she asked.

He grinned and took a step.
“It seems reasonable. I’m dreaming, right? We’re
dreaming?”

“
Are we?”

“
Isn’t it obvious? Fields of wheat, a cobblestone maze, an
eternally receding village that exists outside of time. And
you.”

“
Me?” she asked, resetting the strap on her shoulder. “Where
do you think I fit in?”

He racked his brain for
poetry to steal, but found nothing. “You’re a dream.”

She swayed minutely towards
him and smiled. His heart came in his ribs.

“
You’re almost right.”

“
Almost?”

She glided up and around
him, breathing so close to his ear that he felt himself fainting.
“I’m bait,” she whispered, ducking his encircling arms. She
sprinted naked into the wheat.

He stood frozen, holding
her red dress in his hands.

Without so much as a
thought, Dionysus followed. The wheat blotted out the sky. Broad,
brittle leaves cut him as he dove through rows of it, chasing a
giggle, a flash of her taut calf, a breath of musk. He ran to the
drums of the blood behind his eyes, panting with a mixture of horny
abandon, supplication and elation that formed a nameless emotion
somewhere behind his navel. He tore his clothes as he thudded
through the stalks, toppling them. Their stems popped gunshots
under his feet.

He remembered her
question. “Do you think we can fly,” she had asked.
Can we?