Authors: Lee Pletzers
Marilyn reached over the arm of the sofa again and this time pulled out a small jar of pills. She struggled to open the lid with her slim, elegant fingers and manicured but unpolished nails until finally it clicked open and she emptied two pills into her left hand, knocked them back and washed them down with another sip of champagne.
He knew she was right but he wondered if he had what it took—he wondered if
anybody
really had what it took—or if they just stepped over the edge in a blur of emotions and hoped to come out on the other side.
“
What are those?” He enquired.
“
Barbituates.”
“
You’re right, Marilyn...,” he continued, “about me not having a choice left, but it’s so damn hard,” and at this, Martin found he had a lump in his throat. “I don’t want to give them the satisfaction. How should I do it? How should I end it? With those pills? An overdose, just like you?” Martin pleaded.
“
I suppose you could and that way you would just slip away without really even knowing it.”
“
Marilyn, why didn’t you leave a note?”
She hesitated and then she ran one of those elegant hands through her thick blonde hair before answering. “I don’t know. I mean people are all messed up when they do that sort of thing and I guess I was the same. Part of me still wonders if all I meant to do was to knock myself out for the night but I don’t know, I can’t remember. People do strange things when their lives are about to end. I mean, do you know how many people actually take their glasses off before they kill themselves?”
“
You still haven’t really told me why you did it.”
“
Yes. Yes I have. I told you I don’t know why. Think of it like this; maybe it’s because people always put me down. For example if I play a stupid girl and ask a stupid question I’ve got to follow it through. What am I supposed to do, look intelligent? People always thought that was me up there. Maybe I was tired of being known as the girl with the shape.”
Martin was struck again with a powerful sense of deja-vu and it was then he realized where he had seen her dress before. It had been the one she had worn in ‘The Seven Year Itch’.
As he reached over to the coffee table for the bottle he wondered if ghosts simply appeared the way they were most remembered. That would explain why Marilyn wore that white dress and perhaps even some of the things she said. Yet again Martin found himself agreeing with her when he considered that people did do strange things before they die. What he was doing now was strange; he was talking to a ghost and he supposed that anyone else who came into the room would not be able to see her but that wouldn’t matter because he would be dead before that happened.
“
At least if I drown myself then I could see my life flash before me,” he replied as Marilyn fidgeted uncomfortably at the thought of a closing windpipe.
“
Is it worth repeating?”
“
I could see where I made my mistakes, but then I don’t think it would last long enough for me to pick out them all...”
“
I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to find the courage. I did.”
Martin sobbed as tears began to trickle down his cheeks; “No! No! No! I can’t do this. God help me. I don’t know if I can do it.”
Outside, the last remnants of the purple glow from the setting sun had turned to the deep black of the night sky and the only light came from the lamp by the side of the sofa.
“
If you commit suicide, don’t you go to hell? There must be another way.” Martin suggested as the first seed of doubt was planted.
“
No! You don’t go to hell. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s your only chance, Martin. Do it before they get you. Do it before they win,” Marilyn pleaded.
“
I can’t, Marilyn. I just can’t risk going to hell. How do I know I won’t? I can’t face this. Suicide is a mortal sin.”
“
I know a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I do know of another way. Yes, there is another way, Martin, but you’ll have to trust me, trust me with your soul. All I need is a kiss.”
Martin gazed into her eyes and, outside, he heard a car pull up. When he looked out of the window he saw it was a black Toyota corolla and as two men dressed in summer casuals stepped out and made their way to his block, fear replaced his dread.
“
Oh my God they’ve found me! They’ve found me! I’m not ready to die. I can’t do it.”
“
You must.”
“
A kiss?”
“
Just a kiss.”
As he moved towards her he realized that, perhaps, he had wanted this all along.
“
Just touch my lips with yours and you soul will be saved,” Marilyn promised. Outside he heard approaching footsteps but his concentration was fixed as he moved his gaze from her lips to her beauty spot and into her hypnotic bright eyes. Then, just before their lips touched, he paused.
“
Norma Jean?” he questioned.
“
Please; call me Marilyn,” she replied and then he stopped.
Martin backed up swiftly, turned and walked towards the door.
“
Next time,” came a voice from behind him as he neared the door and it wasn’t Marilyn’s airy tone but more of a hiss. When Martin glanced back over his shoulder Marilyn was no longer there but instead something squatted in her place.
Its small scaly legs were bent at the knees while its talon feet dug into the sofa as did the claws on its reptilian arms. It had massive wings, the sharp points at the base of which dug into the carpet beneath where its feet rested. Beside each of its twitching, pointed ears was a horn exactly like the one on its snout-like nose. Its razor sharp teeth protruded in perfect symmetry from its grinning mouth and its green eyes with slit pupils gave Martin another knowing glance.
“
I don’t think so.” Martin replied and walked out of the doorway into the hall contemplating how well the hideous had imitated the beautiful, only to be let down by something as simple as the eyes.
Moments later two gunshots rang out in the night sky and Martin had finally been dealt a winning hand.
Normally, Halfway Houses and Rehabilitation Centers start out rough—’kicking cold’, scrubbing toilets, re-learning ‘people skills’, baring your soul to addicts even scarier than yourself—and then get better.
Not in Carole Gill’s world, though.
Big House
By Carole Gill
Addicts ‘r us
, messed up losers—you know the kind: cokeheads, overeaters, serious self harmers, suicide groupies, sex addicts—each of them so completely fucked up they finally end up in a kind of terminal rehab center—which is what this place was.
Yes, the Big House gave such places free reign to run them as they saw fit. They were, after all, evaluation centers to review the clients’ varying addictions and to best access what the next step was. That was what Executive Management
said;
what they
did,
however, was another matter.
Joe knew. He had taken the job happily, ages ago…but now he found his second thoughts had third, fourth and fifth thoughts.
But there was worse, there always is.
Joe sighed. He was Director, Houseman, whatever anyone wanted to call it—that was okay with him. In truth, he ran the place—this waystation, recovery home, haven, care facility.
Actually, he thought of it as ‘
losers ‘r us.
’ The place where the lost, the hopeless, the monumentally fucked up finally end up—in short it was the repository for addicts. He ran the men’s section.
He saw the new batch arrive in the van nicknamed
Pegasus
. Someone with a misplaced sense of humor named it that because if that horse flew, these poor bastards were now to be grounded for an indeterminate time (to say the least).
As always, Joe welcomed them: “We are going to sort you out—to evaluate you and send you on your way. It’s not so bad…you’ll see.”
“
What do you mean, ‘we’? I just see
you
, man.”
Ah, trouble right away…and in the shape of a skinny little kid with attitude.
Scott, recent jailbird and dull-eyed wonder at 19, was not impressed. “This place sucks!”
“
But you just got here! Give us time!”
Scott let loose a stream of abuse but Joe wasn’t bothered. “Your nose is bleeding, Scott.”
“
How do you know my name?”
“
We get briefed.”
“
Yeah, so what does that make me?”
It was always the same. “It makes you putty in the system’s hands, kid, better get used to it.”
“
Look, the judge told me he was sending me here, and that was it.”
“
Which judge was that, Scott?”
“
I don’t know—Judge Minos or something…the one I just saw. What’s it to you anyway?”
A murmur of laughter from the other losers and Scott looks proud of himself.
No one says anything. The only reaction is from Albert who deliberately lets one monumental fart rip as a kind of comment.
“
That’s disgusting!”
This
they nearly all respond to—waving their hands in front of their faces. “Christ almighty!”
Albert didn’t laugh—he was the most seriously disturbed. He wore bracelets on both his wrists these were the white dressings that covered his most recent suicide attempt: even his
scars
had scars. Poor Al.
Joe knew. He had the notes. Predestination came into it. In Al’s case he had a crazy mother who tried to drown him when he was ten.
“
Why did you do that, Mrs. Fugle?”
“
The voices told me, your honor. Blame them!”
Mom went to the state hospital, and little Al got shuffled around in a succession of foster homes—where he was beaten or abused in some way.
By the time he went to high school he was fitted out with a nice green and white Viking football helmet because he liked to run down the halls crashing head first into the walls.
The other kids (those deemed normal) laughed—because they weren’t crazy, not like Al anyway.
Al used to laugh, too, not understanding the joke was on him.
Eventually he left school and found himself working with some charitable concern that had him making ashtrays, but their supplier died and his son didn’t want to bother with that charity ‘crap’ as he called it, so the charitable concern looked elsewhere but their days were numbered anyway because their funds were cut off when the new governor was elected.
Go fight City Hall, yeah…and if you think that’s bad, try the State Capitol sometime.
So what was Scott’s story? Ah, Scott. Both parents were addicts, Mom sold herself for nickel bags on the street until she OD’d in an alley with a furious pimp pissed off because she hadn’t turned any tricks that night. Meanwhile Scott’s dad was run over on the way to the VA hospital where he was being treated for various medical conditions he had sustained as a result of exposure to Agent Orange. He also had an addiction to morphine—all this from having served in a war he no longer recalled having been in.
With both parents gone, Scott found himself in and out of teen homes and what they call social care centers. Not the kind of places a kid should be in…because some of the staff liked to molest young boys.
Ever resourceful, Scott learned to use a switchblade. “I’m going to cut it off, Mack, so you ain’t never going to be able to use it again.”
Slice, slice…
only he missed and the perv tried to kill him by pushing him out of a 3 story window but Scott didn’t die. His legs got mangled, but they fixed him up real good in St. Clare’s Hospital where an old lady felt so sorry for him she gave him 10 dollars to buy a robe, but he bought crack with it instead.