2 – White Room

The room reeks of sterile. Jack sits quietly on the small bed. A table, chair and space-saving corner toilet are the only other occupants aside from an intercom and ceiling vents. He sits on the edge, light-headed. This was hardly the accommodation he thought he’d get. He wonders why there are three vents in the ceiling for such a small space. They could do anything they wanted to him here. How much is this bogus treatment gonna cost me? He had to get out, somehow.

Deep in thought about the trance this charlatan put him under, Jack doesn’t notice the steel bar pressing hard into the back of his thighs until his legs go numb. He becomes restless and stands only to fall back on the bed writhing from the pins and needles that stab him. He rubs his calves to life. This was his third day of being admitted for evaluation, even though the doctor insisted it was his first. Nothing about his life makes any sense. Could it all be just an illusion? He came only because Mary had given him an ultimatum: Get help or get out! For the next few hours, Jack shuffles through muddled memories trying to make sense of all the craziness and the fateful night he fell off the wagon.

Fits of drunken tirades and delusions of grandeur were unbearable for Mary, an ambitious woman with standards from which Jack diverged. The lack of follow through drove her insane with frustration. Jack’s deflated, inadequate life had drowned into a spiral of booze and mental illness.

It was on one of his habitual walks down among the night crawlers of Seed City when he stumbled headfirst into his own self-loathing: a place festering from within, arguing with self-doubt and endless circles of indecision. Jack is spinning out of control, tied tight to a philosophical wheel of his own demise.

I’m better off alone.

She hates me.

I need to get home.

This is not my home.

He wonders what others must think as he fumbles with the need to feed his addiction.

Up ahead, just across Revolution Boulevard and neon signs, an old man lies on sheets of cardboard in a dark cutout of a boarded-up storefront. Across the way, a young couple trips on the edge of a circle of light cast down from an overhead streetlamp and disappear into the night giggling. Shadows climb the brick walls leading into the alley, avoiding the flickering streetlights, ascending into the heavens of corporate architecture. He imagines a lone tumbleweed rolling up a warm midnight walkway with wooden rails and dirt. A siren warbles far off, then cuts out. Seed City is a crossroad in time.

What is his purpose if not to please his wife? How can he possibly connect when all his efforts are met with scorn? Empty, carved out from his insides, he scrapes at the walls of his soul, hollowing himself out. He could easily leave her to drift off but then thinks he loves her. She just doesn’t see it or worse, doesn’t care. It eats at him constantly, and he struggles to reconcile her indifference. But then, could it actually be him who couldn’t see past his own needs?

He approaches a man on the corner, known as ‘Billy Baggs’, and passes through a seamless transaction and enters full stride into an underworld full of protesters, homeless drug addicts, and failed accountants. He studies the clear baggy that has just materialized into the palm of his hand, turning it over to measure its contents. A small blue sticker markets the word CLARITY.

He is the epitome of a failed human, born into a society cracking under the weight of its greed. Hmm… ironic. The needle still piercing where nerves no longer feel. Too many bruises have brought him to heel. The same questions cycle through his thoughts, over and over: how did he get here? Everywhere, shadows slink just out of sight, but he can hear the dark whispers hiss in his head, coaxing him to awaken. But to what? How can people not see the cracks opening beneath their feet? Not seeing conspiracies sowing chaos into public perception. Everyone is losing the nature of their true calling. Humans want more and more and more, snagged in a lust for power, they turn a blind eye to the chaos coming to upend everything. Jack just wants to get back to HIS normal and get high until he’s invisible again.

An abandoned side street leads away from the shuttered storefronts, and the few lingering street people waiting for last callto bum a smoke. CLARITY. His mind is trapped in a loop dragging him down this road yet again. Mary will be doing a crossword puzzle and watching her evening shows. A couple of drinks will serve as a periscope to a better life. Maybe they aren’t that different after all, yet Mary had him locked up behind this door.

 Wrestling with the iron grips of addiction, he somehow relishes in the uncertainty of his dysfunction like chance dice tumbling across the green. Slowly, chaos devours the human spirit, and he sees it for what it is, embraces it; people are losing their minds. Something stirs in the air that feels off. His mind teeters on the very edge, pushed and pulled between the light of his true being and the growing dark essence resounding off the walls locked up with him.

Footsteps pass outside the door and Jack freezes. After seconds…silence. He starts pacing, counting steps: 1, 2, 3, 4… The room is about 12 x 8. An icy chill runs up his spine; his heart starts pounding faster and faster as he sweats profusely. The shakes are not too far off now. He sits to reflect on the other day before CLARITY set in; tries to gather himself despite the bugs. Suddenly, Jack is standing in front of Saviors, a fancy high-tech store over on Powell, watching their mega-media screen.

[CITIZEN ALERT]

“The Northern Empire has declared martial law in seven sectors and all borders have been locked down. Heavy military units have seized cities and are rounding people up under a declaration of civil cleansing. Human rights activists demand international intervention. Meanwhile, religious leaders worldwide are calling the actions prophetic and claim it is only a matter of time. Fanatics have offered themselves for sacrifice from the pains of humanity.”

Jack sips from his day flask, mesmerized by the footage. Others gather like specters to witness the reality of what they had been warned about…

The image snaps. He’s back in the white room, dizzy, off-balance. He flops onto the stiff bed and carefully lays his head on the flat folded pillow. Recollections of similar events circle his mind as rumors or fake news.

Right there, THAT’S when it all started; THAT was the first drink that day. A few shots later he was shooting stick over at the Pelican, his usual haunt. Was that before or after CLARITY? He flashes back to the side street off Revolution Blvd. He isn’t sure how much he’d had to drink by then, but he fit right in like an anonymous bystander that somehow belonged; never suspected of being anything more than just a drunk. Jack prefers a soiled landscape with low standards. He is a man that walks without a name–a man forsaken.

A silent nebulous hand reaches for him from beyond a hidden door casting an outstretched shadow across the alley of broken glass and brick, latching onto his soul; burn barrels warm frozen souls and calloused minds born of shattered dreams. But chaos was already in his nature, born the moment he came into being, so entrenched, even his good side was amused by its equivocal judgment.

Still, that nervous twitch courses beneath his skin.

Ruby briskly enters, “Is everything ok, sir? Your neurological readings are quite irregular.” Jack is quiet, entwined betwixt the events that had led him here.

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