Joined: 08 Aug 2007
Posts: 217
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Analysis
“Good Afternoon, my name is Doctor Goodwill” The voice is rasping and echoes around the bare brick basement, sending a shiver up the spine of Ivory, Lord Preston’s Master of the Boarders.
His eyes struggle to adjust to the strangely familiar constant white of an electrical lighting bulb that illuminated his captors. The foremost with oily black hair and a gaunt expression, dressed in a crude white coat covered in flaked brown blood and indistinct yellowish stains much worn and patched, his beady black eyes staring down into Ivory’s own. The second figure, a woman stood further back in the shadows nothing more than a silhouette in the darkness taking notes on a small white pad of paper.
“Do you know where you are Mr Smith?” His tone was pervasive, rattling inside the ears for a few seconds after he stoped speaking. Ivory glanced around the room forced his dry tongue to respond.
“Smith? Smith.” He rolled the name over his tongue a few times, feeling the familiar taste of that name mingled with a slight tang on blood from a broken lip. “Am I still in the domain of my Lord Preston?”
The figure looked down pitifully at the man bound hand and foot to the old splintered chair. “No Mr Smith, I’m afraid this is the Mental health ward of Mill View Hospital. You have been bought here under the mental health act two thousand and seven. We found you wandering the streets in a daze” The crisp syllables pronounced the year with elegant precision.
Ivory shook his head vigorously and immediately regretting it, as pain reared its ugly head. “No! Not wandering, patrolling. It’s my job! Lord Alexander Preston, he told me he did, patrol against the Fishers and the others that might come through, he trained me, got me clean, gave me a weapon from his own workshops! I owe him!” He heard his own voce echoing, recognising how insane it sounded.
The doctor just sighed, realising what a difficult task this would be, brushing a drop of Mr Smith’s spittle from his clean white coat. “Tell me about this Lord Preston.”
Ivory grunted, seeing the whitewashed walls of the room for the first time “You’re the Analysts aren’t you? We were warned! You kidnap!” He struggled to make his sentences coherent under the pain.
“I’m afraid my title is nothing so melodramatic Mr Smith, I am a psychotherapist with the NHS and we have detained you only for your own safety.” The voice seemed almost painfully sympathetic, his brown eyes and ruddy cheeks becoming more clear as he steps around to cast his face in a more pleasant light. “What can you tell me about this Mister Preston please?”
Ivory considered holding back, but what harm could it do? “He’s a good man, swore me in with his mystic ‘bout 10 years ago now.”
“A Mystic? You’re talking about magic now?”
Ivory just nodded, a few second ago he sounded so certain, but doubts were beginning to creep in alongside the carpeted floor that he could feel below his feet.
“This is the twenty first century Mr Smith, nobody believes in magic and mysticism any more.” The doctor simply gestured for his companion to join him and the woman dressed in a conservative, sensible black dress pulled up a second clean plastic chair like the one Ivory sat upon. “And this is my colleague Dr Wise she will be your case officer whilst you are with us.” The strange woman had deep angular features and oddly pronounced teeth as she smiled silently.
Ivory could feel the temptation, but clung onto what he knew with the desperation of a drowning man and demanded “Want my weapons! Show ‘em to me Now!”
Goodwill simply frowned and ducked out behind the neat plastic restraints that kept Ivory confined leaving him alone with the woman who kept her eyes locked on his, still writing. A clatter of a tray announced Goodwill’s return as he emerged into view with a tray of items, first and foremost the elegant duelling pistol given to him as plunder from the battle of Red Hill nearly 400 years ago, along with his knives, worn but sharpened. “Here you go Mr Smith, These were all the articles we found when we bought you in.”
Ivory simply eyed them with suspicion. It had to be a trap, nobody would give their prisoner their weapons back so suspicion drove him to press the matter. “Let my hands go!” He paused a moment, there was something wrong here and he felt he owed them something even if it wasn’t a heartfelt one. “Please?”
The woman simply came over unbuckling and relaxing the velcro straps on his arms. But she never spoke, only Goodwill “There you go Mr Smith.”
He reached down cradling the secure feeling of the iron barrel and thick oaken stock decorated with ivory from which he got his name, checked the pan for powder and pulled back the flint. Everything was loaded and a touch of the iron made him feel safe against the treacheries of faerie. “Why would you give me back my weapons?”
Goodwill meanwhile just leant closer, his mouth smelling of mint toothpaste and thick cologne. “You have to break away from this reality accept that it’s all in your head. There is no Lord Preston, just other homeless people, there are no courts, no witches or wizards, just sick people. These things in front of you are just toys, I wanted you to understand that.” Goodwill’s face was a beacon of genuine compassion and no small amount of pity.
Ivory pulled the heavy loaded pistol up to head height, reaching for a knife as he pulled the trigger, surging with adrenaline. However no explosion came, the flint never even struck, the pistols soft plastic felt feeble, pathetic, the knives no more than cheap cutlery. Ivory was gone, the Giant of Brighton Below shattered, his world broken apart. Now only Mr Smith sat there, shook softly and broke into tears.
Dr Goodwill pushed the water-pistol down onto the table. He stood delighted by his shining example of modern medicine. “Very good Mr Smith, you’ve taken the first steps, you’re doing very well.” The doctor offered a warm smile. “You can see that it’s nothing but a harmless squirt-gun can’t you?”
Jason Smith just nodded, feeling cold and numb, filthy beneath the blue hospital gown he understood it all, he fell on hard times, took to drinking, wandering the streets, the hallucinations, everything.
“Show me you understand” He smiled delighted in the progress.
The Doctor could help him, get him back into the real world, help him clean up, relief flooded through his body and he laughed slightly, pulling the water pistol up to his temple and pulling the trigger, willing to show them that he could break out of the dream world.
***
A thunderous sound and thick smoke from the flintlock filled the grubby basement. Ivory, the mighty border guardian slumped over dead, his blood spreading a gory red and white Rorschach test image on the far wall. The body collapsed to the side it its seat.
Doctor Goodwill gathered up some of the blood and soot that had splashed wide onto his face and licked the finger curiously.
“Another patient successfully treated well done. We’re really cracking through the problems!” He clapped his hands together, not bothering to remove the excess gore that now dried onto his already filthy old lab coat. “Please complete the outpatient reports Dr Wise and then we can have some tea, soon Brighton will be healthy again!” His voice cracked with the laughter of a manic who knew what was best for everybody and left.
Dr Wise opened her delicate mouth, discarding the notebook of pointless scribbles, the foetid stench of blood on her lips as she bent down to take her meal from the former patient’s neck, tearing off wet chunks and murmuring to its self “Preston!” between gulps.
The dingy basement light flicked and faded behind them leaving nothing but darkness. A darkness that would spread. The Analysts came.
The End |
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