The Psyching: A Short Thriller (3 page)

Danni frowns. “Did you tell him how bad it
was?”

“
Of course not,” I say, shaking my
head. “Do you think I want to fail this rotation? I ran out before
I had to tell him. Anyway, I’m sure he could self-publish it or
something.”

“
Yeah,
probably,” Danni says. She gives me that disturbing, doe-eyed
stare. “By the way, there’s something
really
important I have to tell
you.”

I raise my eyebrows. “What?”

“
I don’t want to freak you
out…”

God, Danni is so
melodramatic. “Just
tell
me.”

“
So…” Danni takes a breath. “You
know that patient who keeps saying ‘lick’?”

Is she
kidding
me? Does she
think it’s possible that I could’ve been on this unit all night and
not know who that patient is? “No, I’m both blind and
deaf.”

Danni frowns. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t
understand the concept of sarcasm.

I sigh. “Yes, I know who you mean.”

“
I just realized something scary,”
she says. Her eyes widen into nearly perfect circles. “What is
‘lick’ spelled backwards?”

“
What
?”

“
What is lick spelled backwards?”
she repeats.

I roll my eyes, and think for a
second. “‘Lick’ spelled backwards is… ‘Kill,’ I guess…”

“
Exactly!” Danni says. “What if
that patient is psychic and he’s trying to give us a
message?”

“
Um, then why wouldn’t he just
give us the message ‘kill’? Why would he spell it
backwards?”

“
The mind is very mysterious,”
Danni says sagely.

“
It seems just like a really dumb
way to convey a message,” I comment. “How did you even notice that
‘lick’ spelled backwards is ‘kill’ anyway?”

“
I always
reverse words in my mind,” Danni says. “Ever since I read
The Shining
.”

“
Great.”

Even though I think what Danni
said was beyond ridiculous, I’m embarrassed to admit that I get a
little bit creeped out by it. It does seem like Johnny might be
trying to give us some sort of message. I mean, what sort of person
walks around saying “lick”? (Well, other than a psychiatric
patient.)

What if Danni is right? What if
“lick” really means “kill”?

1:45 a.m.:

And now, Danni has suddenly
disappeared.

I can’t find her anywhere. This is a locked
unit, so I know she must be somewhere. But I feel like I have
checked every crevice of every hallway, and she is nowhere to be
found. She just suddenly vanished into thin air.

What if she’s lying dead in Room
237?

Yes, that seems
unlikely. But not
impossible
.

I finally worked up the nerve to ask Sally
about it and she laughed and said, “I’m sure she’ll turn
up.”

I want to talk to her more about the whole
lick/kill thing. I feel like if I talk to her about it, she’ll say
something so stupid that I’ll realize that I’m being ridiculous to
believe her. Plus I want to verify that she’s alive and not hacked
to bits.

Where
are
you,
Danni?

2:35 a.m.:

As I walk by Room 237, I see Johnny standing
in front of the room. He gives me a meaningful look, then says,
“Lick.”

I had gotten used to Johnny saying “lick” over
and over. But now that stupid Danni said that to me, all I can
think is that it’s a warning.

What if “lick” means
“kill”??

Johnny steps away from the door, and I am
face-to-face with Room 237. I hear that soft music coming from
inside again. I know Jack told me not to enter this room, but I’m
not sure if I can help myself. I need to know what’s inside. My
self-restraint disappeared around one in the morning.

I put my hand on the handle to the door and
push it open.

Oh my God, there
is
blood
all over
the floor.

No wait, there’s ketchup all over the floor.
And mustard. And mayonnaise. And pudding.

I lift my eyes and see a morbidly obese naked
man in the middle of the room, covered in ketchup, mustard, and
mayonnaise. And what appears to be chocolate pudding, oozing out of
the fat folds on his abdomen. He’s dancing around to that bizarre
music. When he sees me, he smiles really wide. I see that he has
cream cheese all over his face like war paint.

He holds out his hand to me. “Come join me,
young girl!”

I know the wise thing to do right now would be
to run. But somehow I’m paralyzed by the weirdness of it all. I
can’t make my feet move from that spot. (But at least I don’t join
him.)

Then I feel a hand pulling me out of the room,
saving me. The door slams in my face, blocking out the horrible
sight of that naked man covered in condiments. I look up and
realize that the hand belongs to Sally.

“
What the hell
is
wrong
with
you?” she snaps at me. “Didn’t Jack tell you not to go into that
room?”

“
What
was
that?” I ask
shakily.

Sally shrugs. “That’s Mr. Torrence. He does
that every night. We just stay out of his way.”

She gives me one last look, then shakes her
head at me and walks away. I guess that solves the mystery of Room
237.

3:05 a.m.:

Where the hell is Danni? Seriously.

4:15 a.m.:

I tried to grab a few hours of sleep in the
resident room, but the couch in there was really uncomfortable and
smelled like moldy cheese. Sally offered to let me sleep in a
patient room, but that frightened me far too much. I mean, what if
somebody mistook me for a patient and I ended up locked in here
forever? At the time, it seemed like a really real
possibility.

So that’s why instead of sleeping, I’m
wandering around the locked psych unit in circles like a zombie.
(Or a schizophrenic.)

But I’m not the only one.

As I walk down the hallway, I see Johnny
stumbling towards me. “Lick!” he says, more forcefully than I
would’ve expected. His eyes are wide, almost frightened. I look
behind me, at where his gaze is directed, but there’s nobody there.
Nobody I can see, anyway.

“
Lick!” he hisses at me. The
urgency is clear in his voice.

I feel goosebumps travel up my
arms. Is Danni right? Does “lick” really mean “kill”? What is
Johnny trying to tell me?

He stops about a
foot away from me. I can smell his sweat, dripping down his
temples, rolling down his cheeks. “
Lick
,” he says, in a crackling voice
that comes from deep in the back of his throat.

He leans forward.
Before I can think to leap away, his broad hands grasp my shoulders
so I can’t escape. His moist tongue shoots out of his mouth, and
faster than a bullet, that tongue is on my face. It’s everywhere—on
my cheeks, my forehead, my chin. He’s
licking
me! Lick doesn’t mean kill!
Lick means lick!

Oh
God
, lick means
lick!
Lick means lick
! Somebody help me!

4:30 p.m.:

“
It’s not like you’re the first
person to be licked by Johnny,” Jack tells me, as I scrub furiously
at my face with antibacterial soap. After pulling Johnny off me,
Jack was kind enough to escort me to the staff bathroom. “He’s a
serial licker.”

“
Why didn’t you warn me?” I groan.
I wonder if there’s a way to take a shower without having to go
into a patient’s room.

Jack shrugs. “Well, the guy has been going
around saying ‘lick’ all night. Wasn’t that warning
enough?”

I decide not to tell him how I had believed
Danni’s stupid theory. It’s just too embarrassing. I think I’ve
already experienced enough humiliation for one night. I may have
broken some sort of record.

“
Anyway, you’re lucky I got there
when I did,” Jack says. “You only ended up with a first-degree
lick. It was just a superficial licking.”

“
What would count as a
non-superficial licking?”

Jack just gives me a look. Ugh.

I turn the water off, then dry my face with a
paper towel. I just want to go home at this point. But I guess I’ll
stick it out for the next few hours.

God, I’m tired.

I turn to leave the bathroom, but then I
discover Jack is standing in front of the door, blocking it. That’s
when I notice that he has turned the lock on the bathroom door. It
seems like sort of an odd thing to do. Why would he lock the door
to the bathroom? It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Then I see the crooked grin on his face and
the glint of a knife in his hand…

THE END

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In the meantime, please
enjoy an excerpt of my complete novel Suicide Med…

“
I wish I had become a
ballet dancer instead.”

I use the back of my forearm to swipe at
strands of dark hair that have come loose from the tight bun at the
back of my head. The attempt fails and the escaped locks fall back
into my field of vision just as my glasses slide down the bridge of
my nose. This is getting annoying—I wish I could use my hands to
clear my vision. Unfortunately, my hands are clad in two pairs of
latex gloves that are covered in preserved bits of Agatha’s
insides. Agatha is dead.

“
Or maybe a figure
skater…”

I try to tune out the ramblings of my lab
partner, Wendy Adams. It seems like Wendy’s irritatingly bubbly
voice has been a soundtrack to every dissection I have ever done.
It might have been more tolerable if Wendy offered to help.
Instead, she sits perched on a stool, intently watching my
handiwork. I’m tempted to rub my dirty gloves in Wendy’s face.

“
Anything but a doctor,”
Wendy concludes.

You’re not a doctor
yet,
I nearly point out, but I hold my
tongue. I need to focus right now and the last thing I want to do
is to get drawn into an argument.

It’s close to midnight on a Saturday night,
and Wendy and I are the only two medical students in the first-year
cadaver lab. I specifically chose this time, because I knew the lab
would be quiet and free from any distractions. I was right—all I
can see are rows and rows of dead bodies covered in a layer of
clear, thick plastic to prevent desiccation; all I can hear is the
whir of the fans working above my head. It would have been the
perfect studying atmosphere if Wendy hadn’t insisted on coming
along.

“
I had a dream about
Agatha last night,” Wendy says in a hushed voice, even though we’re
the only two people in the room.

During the first week of anatomy class, we
named our cadaver Agatha. I hadn’t wanted to name her—after all,
this had once been a real person who had a real name of her own.
But I felt silly voicing my objections, so I stayed quiet as the
other members of my lab group tossed around name suggestions. It
had eventually come down to Agatha or Medusa. I was relieved when
the group settled on Agatha.

Agatha does seem like an appropriate name,
somehow. “Agatha” is a frail old woman who has metal rings around
her sternum and blood vessels grafted onto her heart. Of course,
it’s impossible to know for sure, but I can make an educated guess
that Agatha died of heart problems.

I try to imagine what sort
of woman would make the decision to dedicate her body to a medical
school. After everything I’ve seen this year, I know that’s one
thing I myself would
never
do. The last thing I want is a bunch of snotty
twenty-two-year-olds making fun of all my subcutaneous
fat.

“
Do you want to hear my
dream, Lauren?” Wendy asks.

Do I have a choice?
“I’m trying to learn the brachial plexus,” I
mumble.

“
It was so freaky,” Wendy
says, shivering under her green scrubs. “I was lying in bed and I
saw Agatha walk into my room. Alive. She was wearing this long,
fancy dress, but the weird thing was that she had gloves on her
hands. Then she told me…” Wendy leans forward, her blue eyes wide,
“that she was going to dissect
me
. That’s when I realized that I
was actually on a lab table and I was naked. And my abdomen
was—”