WARNING CONTAINS ADULT MATERIAL
It was an unremarkable morning. The grey streets glistened with
the morning dew. I walked down the street the sound of my
footsteps echoing in my ears. I stopped to glare at the
lamplight. It was early morning. I had to get my breakfast. Lal's
was open the sandwich shop. I went inside and bought myself an
egg sandwich. When I came out dawn was breaking. The sky was
awash with colour. I looked down at my shoes. They were old and
tatty I wished my Dad could afford to buy me some new ones.
Suddenly I felt afraid. A mental patient had come out of a back
ally. I knew him as Jimmy. Everybody knew he had been sectioned
once by a psychiatrist. He came over to me and punched me in the
face. I fell backwards. I got up and he smiled. He said 'God told
me to do that.'
I punched him back and he started to cry. I carried on my way.
Fear had given way to hatred. I decided when I grew up I wanted
to be a psychiatrist.
Long days and long nights had passed when I started in medical
school. I had always been bright and I found the work easy to
learn. It was then I met a girl called Laura a fellow medical
student. We started to meet after school. I took her for a meal
in a downtown restaurant. It was then I told her I loved her. I
did love her with all my heart. Months passed and we decided to
get serious. I booked a room in a hotel. It was then I found out
I had a problem, a serious problem. It was easy at first I just
kissed her on the lips and it went from there. Then in the heat
of sweaty passion I became overwhelmed with rage and strangled
her. I don't know what made me feel that way, but I was later to
discover I would feel that way every time I made love to a women.
Then I started to cry. I had killed this beautiful thing that I
loved. I would never forgive myself. Then sorrow gave way to
panic. What when the police caught up with me? I would be
imprisoned or sentenced to the death penalty instead of becoming
a psychiatrist. I left the hotel room and ran and ran all the way
home. I stood in the front room wringing my hands, waiting for
the police to come. However they never turned up. I guess the
hotel fearful for publicity just got rid of the body.
Months passed. Then one night I was enjoying a glass of whisky
with my father. I suddenly became overcome with remorse and
confessed to him. My dad went white then with shaking hand he put
his whisky glass down on the table.
'Well my son, ' he said shaking his head ' I'm afraid you're
going to hell for eternity'
Of course I never believed in heaven and hell. After all I was
training to be a psychiatrist. I was a scientist. I was just
thankful that my dad never told anyone.
Five years later and I began my psychiatrist training at Lostock
Hall Psychiatric hospital. It was a funny old world inside the
asylum. Patients ambled up and down the corridors nodding and
shaking their heads. The sound of classical music played upon my
ears. The stench of stale urine and vomit filled my nostrils.
Here endeth the man. Here the nightmare begins. I learned some
girls had been admitted under the morale defectives law for
holding a man's hand in public. But now in the asylum they had
already been turned into virtual zombies. Shuffling up and down
the corridors, nodding their heads, mute. I wondered what my
colleagues would do to me if they ever found out what I'd
done.
Morning broke and I awoke in my bed in the hospital quarters. I
stared out at the blaze of colour shining in the dusky sky. What
was I doing here? What if I confessed to one of my colleagues in
a drunken stupor, as I had to my father? What then? What would
the other psychiatrists have done to me? I had no compassion for
the inmates. I was becoming heady with my own power over them.
The drugs I knew made them docile and unlikely to harm me. I
thought of the girl I had loved. I wondered if I would ever fall
in love again, and if so would I make the same mistakes. I
shuddered at the evil in my own soul. If I had a penny for
everyone I despised in this world I would be a millionaire.
I went out that morning and bought a bike with my first wage
packet. Not only was I powerful I was rich. Few people could
afford bicycles. I felt like a millionaire as I cycled around the
hospital. Life was good. I just hoped something didn't happen to
burst my bubble.
Something did. One night in the gentlemen's club in town, feeling
remorseful off whisky. I confessed to a colleague. He whispered
in my ear.
'Do you know Jean Slater a patient in the hospital?'
'Yes ' I replied
'Sleep with her. Get rid of her', he hissed
'Why?' I asked amazed at the way the conversation was going
'She accused me of sexuality assaulting her'
'And did you?' I asked bemused
'Yes' he said 'That's why I want rid of her'
I sneaked onto the ward at dead of dead of night. I found Jean
Slater's bed. I decided I didn't need to sleep with her just
strangle her. As I did all the memories of that fateful night
came flooding back. Tears welled in the back of my eyes. I had
brought with me some acid. I put drops in each of her eyes. Some
people say when a person is murdered the killers face is
imprinted on the retina. I left as quietly and unobtrusively as I
had come in.
Little fuss was made about her death. It was just assumed some
other patient in the hospital was to blame.
Time flew by and I qualified as a consultant. If I sectioned one
wayward teenager I sectioned a thousand. All of them I knew in a
very short time would resemble all the other mental health
patients in the hospital, walking with a shuffle, too frightened
to speak to anyone, hallucinating like crazy. Convincing anyone
who visited the place they were so ill they needed to be in here.
So what? Their parents didn't want them. Where else were they
supposed to live? We can't have them littering the streets can
we?
I had learned long ago the admittance procedure. First the nurses
shaved their heads (In case of head lice). Then they stripped
them naked and confiscated any possessions they had with them.
The newly admitted were then lined up in the shower room and
hosed down with cold water. The new clothes they were given to
wear where all hospital issue. Brown smocks for the girls and
pants and shirts for the men. Sometimes there were not enough
clothes and they were left naked. Then the drugs regime began,
Chlorpromazine. This was a powerful tranquilizer that was known
to have horrific potential side effects. So what? I was in
control. Once I diagnosed a patient with a mental health
condition they were totally in my power. I could do what I liked
to them and nobody could stop me. I enjoyed being a psychiatrist.
Not because I wanted to help people with mental problems, I just
was enjoying the power trip. I knew many of my colleagues felt
the same. Like the first time I gave somebody a frontal lobotomy.
Jenny claimed to be psychic. No matter how much chlorpromazine
you gave her she wouldn't shut up about it. She kept giving
predictions and frightening people, especially the staff. I tied
her down to the bed and injected her scalp with local aesthetic.
Then I started to saw her skull in half. The blood spurted across
the room and I felt happy. I was happy because I was in control.
I removed the frontal lobe of her brain with a scalpel then sewed
her back up again. When I finished she looked at me and said 'you
bastard'. I grinned I was in control. That would teach her to
frighten the staff. Of course, I wasn't scared of her. So what if
some of her worst predictions came true. She was just good at
guessing. There was no after life, I was sure of that. No such
thing as the spirit realm. Personally I felt like she was making
it up. Although some psychiatrists believed the frontal lobe was
responsible for making people hallucinate. I must admit as far as
I was concerned it was just a punishment. I was flexing my
muscles. Showing her just how much power I had over her to do
what I liked. I called a nurse to take her back to the ward in a
wheel chair. When she had left I looked at the blood on the
floor. It gave me a sick sense of satisfaction that I had the
power to attack people with a knife. I had the perfect right to
do so I was a psychiatrist. I was above the law.
The next procedure I enjoyed was electric shock treatment. A
woman came in after trying to take her own life by drinking
bleach. She was wheeled in naked after having her head shaved and
cold hose pipe treatment. She screamed
'What are you going to do to me?'
I didn't reply. Patients had no rights to ask questions of me.
The nurses strapped her to the bed. She struggled but the nurses
soon had the situation under control. I put a piece of leather
between her teeth then turned the machine on. She convulsed as
the electric current flowed through her body. I left it on for
five minutes, and then turned it off. The women started weeping.
Then she lifted her head and her eyes flashed at me with hatred.
I cared not that she hated me. I hated her. I hated everybody.
Even the nurses that sometimes did not do as they were told. I
was a psychiatrist. People should have respect for me. After all
I could easily get the nurses sectioned if I wanted too. I could
section anybody I God damned liked and there was nothing they or
anybody in the world could do about it.
I knew theoretically the procedure could at times wipe people's
memories completely. It mattered not. They needed no memories of
their past lives, family or friends in here. I knew soon, once
the medication kicked in, the women's eyes would no longer be
able to betray her feelings for me. They would become dull and
listless as she succumbed to zombiefication.
Chapter two
It was midnight at the hare and hounds. I had gone for an after
work drink and the landlord had treated us to a lock in. My
colleagues were with me, all drunk as skunks. One of them started
to scream. We all turned to look. He feel forward with a knife in
his back. Behind him was an escaped Mental patient I knew as
Jimmy Mac. I rushed to help him and as I did Jimmy Mac lunged at
me. I wrestled him to the ground. By now there was quite as a
commotion going on. Jimmy Mac shouted
'You bastards you all deserve to die'
My colleague gasped his last dying breath. For the first time for
ages I was frightened. Things were no longer under my control.
Jimmy Mac had been a vagrant picked up by the police. He had been
saved from the workhouse by us kind psychiatrists. Look how he
was repaying us. Jimmy Mac screeched at me
'You bastard psychiatrists belong in hell'
'Theirs no such thing as hell' I whispered
The landlord dare not alert the police. He would get arrested for
having a lock in.
Two of my colleagues dragged the dead psychiatrist back to the
hospital. I took a bar stool and hit Jimmy Mac over the head. He
fell unconscious. I took my knife out from under my pocket and
tried to cut open his skull and cut open his scalp and remove his
frontal lobe. However my knife would not saw through his skull. I
slit his throat instead. Jimmy Mac bleed to death their on the
bar room floor. Then I and a colleague dragged him back to the
hospital. We admitted him to the mortuary. No questions were
asked.
Back in my room I began to shake. It hadn't occurred to me that
patients could escape and get back at me. I thought of how many
people in the hospital I had dreadfully mistreated. To be honest
it was all of them. To kill or to be killed suddenly I began to
doubt myself. I began to question my career in psychiatry.
However there was no chance of me leaving. How else could I earn
so much money?
Second to none, that's what my Mum used to say about me. I
thought of My Mum and Dad back in the suburbs of London. They
were strong Catholics. They would have been horrified at what I
just did. However he did kill my colleague. An eye for an Eye
that's what they say. If the police had been called he would have
been sentenced to the death penalty. I could always justify my
own existence. Society needed me. What else would you do with the
waifs and strays that nobody wants?
I thought again about my father telling me I was going to hell.
Who believes in that rubbish? When you're dead you're dead. I
know I'm a scientist. Belief in the afterlife was just for weak
willed people who had no belief in themselves. I believed in
myself. I was all powerful. Just for one moment in time I was
frightened but not anymore. It was a one off it wouldn't happen
again. The wards were very secure. How Jimmy Mac got out I'll
never know. He was obviously some psychopath who had been
spitting out his medication. I wondered if chlorpromazine would
ever come out in injections. Time would tell what sort of stuff I
was made of. I had to put this behind me and just get on with it.
Chapter three
One can always tell the way one was feeling by the stuff inside
ones heart. Mine was made of mincemeat, jellied mincemeat. I had
no compassion for anyone. I didn't even see my patients as
people. They were experiments for me to play with. How hard I
tried to be jolly at the gentlemen's club but inside I was a
quiver. What I knew about psychiatry must never come out when I
was drinking. It would cast a slur on the whole profession.
Johnny my Mate, a joiner, was complaining about his Mrs. she
never washed up, she complained about him being out late after a
hard day at work. She accused him of having an affair which
wasn't true. She'd even told the lady next door she was having an
affair. I decided to help him. I sneaked out of the gentlemen's
club early and went to his house. His wife was bringing the
washing in. I accosted her.
'I hear your Johnny's having an affair' I said
'The bastard, I knew it' she said
'How would you like to get back at him with me?' I grinned 'I'm a
psychiatrist I earn good money. I can give you money for
makeup'
His wife smiled charmingly
'Come upstairs' she said 'Johnny won't be back for ages'
Once upstairs I set on giving her an orgasm. I didn't use my
penis I used my hand and fist. Then I tied her hands to the bed
with my tie. She grinned at me. I got some acid drops out of my
coat pocket and put them into her eyes. She screamed. I strangled
her quickly before she could make any more noise. Then I stood on
the bed astride her and released my manly fluid all over her
body. I had a mortuary toe tag in my pocket. I took it out and
wrote liar on it. Then I fixed it to her toe. I snuck out quietly
without been seen and went back to the gentlemen's club to have
another drink with Johnny.
Chapter four
Smoke gets in ones eyes in the early winter months when everybody
is burning leaves swept up from the fall. The smoke got on my
chest and made me cough. It was the next evening and I was
anxious to meet up with Johnny. I was dying to find out how
pleased he was. Johnny actually was silent. He was not at all his
usual chatty self.
'What's up?' I asked him
'The wife's left' he replied
'Well that's good news, isn't it?' I asked grinning from ear to
ear
'I suppose so it's just that..., Oh never mind'
'Just what?' I asked
'Well the kids. What am I going to do with the kids whilst I'm at
work?' He said downing his whisky
