Of Matters Gray

They don’t like it when I write. Those blasted men in white keep taking my pens. I used to write about my scary dreams. Too scary for them, I guess. I can’t remember. My old writings are only a hazy jumble now. It’s of no matter, I won’t be stopped. The steel springs of my mattress can be broken into new pens. Oh, but they are sharp. The bending and breaking always wears at my hands. But, I am plussed as my many cuts allow more ink for writing. The red fades to a funny color within just a few days. Funny, funny, funny.

My memory fades too. The newspaper I read a week ago said that the Yankees hoped to win the pennant this year; their slugger, a rube named Lou Gehrig, was going to hit another forty-nine homers, like he did last year. Nonsense. Then I read (was it yesterday?) that the Yankees had already won the pennant, and another Series. I hate the Yankees, but how did I forget that? A whole year… gone. I know it’s the food they give me… ruins my mind. But starving is too difficult. Perhaps my cross-the-hall neighbor will give me some of her special food? Alice’s victuals are crunchy and filling, but they taste like the dry pills they give me at mealtime. Yuk!

Maybe it’s better that I don’t remember everything. I had such terrible dreams when I was a boy. Violence. Squamous abomination. Unwholesome adoration of some impossible god-like creature. I can’t recall any concrete details of what my dreams were about, but I know they were horrid. I was always in trouble in the dreams, always running from the creature, or trapped by it. Nevertheless, the whitecoats tell me I’m getting better now. Indeed, I am above the dreaming, stronger, more betterer now. May my secret dreams remain secret.

When did I move here anyways? The morbid halls of Arkham Sanitarium haven’t always been my home. I had a flat once… overlooked Harvard Yard. I watched the pigeons. Yes, I remember that! It’s hilarious that I remember that of all things.

They took my mattress this morning, but also took my room. I live in a concrete box now, nothing else but brown-painted hardness. They left me with a torn sack of pigeon feathers for a bed. Feathers too small for quills. No more sharp pens. I write now with a wooden toothpick I stole from my lunch tray. Couldn’t keep it under my tongue. I almost swallowed it on my way back here from the cafeteria.

Alice came with me and gave me a lot of her special food. I ate them all. This new room has its own special food too, comes in through the cracks in the concrete, and out from under the barred window. Mine tastes the same as what Alice brought but I’ve grown used to it. I don’t have to eat the poisoned food off the steel trays anymore, so long as these keep coming in. I go out only for my pills, skipping the meal times altogether. The pills come with a mint drink, helps my lumpy juices stay down. My gut feels stronger as well as my mind. Stronger and stronger I am.

I asked Alice to help clean the stony floor, but she just sits there smiling in the corner of my room. Her brown curls hide most of her plump face. The whitecoats will come for Alice soon, I suspect. She won’t leave on her own, no matter how much I warn her. I was only playing. Our fingers danced and danced. She and I played together good. She wasn’t as strong as me though, and she ate too much of my special, crawling food. The purple finger marks on her neck look like funny, giant maggots. Funny, funny, funny.

Oh, but it hurts. Hellish new treatment today. Angry whitecoats everywhere. Today they locked me in a cage no wider than my body. I could barely move. The cage was inside a steel tub, and they started filling it with hot water. Supposed to relax me they said, to keep me from “acting out” whatever that means. The water kept climbing, its unceasing torrent scalded my skin, especially my poor feet. The attendant left me there, alone in the burning water. I screamed through the cage, tried to tear it open with my sore hands. I pressed my face against the thick mesh of steel as the water covered my body. It splashed into my nose and eyes. I panicked.

I nearly drowned. Only my screams saved me.

The doctor returned just in time to turn the water off. His face was evil, all blurry and misshaped. His rock-solid chin had turned into unformed, tanned paste. He came close to me, starring at me with bubbling eyes. I knew he wanted to get me, to touch me with his squalid, lecherous touch. The writhing finger he pointed at me made me want to drown, to escape the hell of his embrace. I held my breath for as long as I could. He babbled things at me in some bizarre, eldritch tongue, but I wouldn’t let him touch me. I strained to avoid his disgusting hands.

After an eternity in the churning, boiling water, he drained the tub and let me out. He knew I would not be defeated, had to free me to do me further harm. I fought him, hit him in his squishy, soft parts, the same weak parts they took from me long ago. I am stronger now. He fell to the floor and I ran. The bright hallway beyond was filled with blurry faced people in grey smocks. Two whitecoats appeared out of nowhere and knocked me to the rough floor. My knees hurt, dribbled with red ink. They held me down and stabbed me. I can’t remember anymore. Maybe I died. Maybe I have been born again? That’s what the priest-guy always talked about. I have defeated them this time. Funny. How can they kill someone who comes back from the dead?

They’re always watching me. The slit in my door opens at the top of every hour. That dinging clock in the next-door office always tells me when they are coming. I pretend to be well behaved, to be a good boy, but I am not. Once that slit closes, I am back at my writing, dancing on my funny mattress, or catching my sole, good food.

I also pretend to eat off my tray when they let me out for meal time. They watch me but I am smarter than them. Only the carrots are not poisoned. The tablets and the mint drink are also pure. The fools only strengthen me when they actually want me dead–as if I could die. Still, I don’t want to be forever sick.

Those who sit around me come and go. I never see the same people twice. They all eat the food. They kill themselves. Suicides are never born again, not like me. I do not eat their poison.

The rock-solid chin was back. His angry eyes burned into my chest. He wants to ekrocute me, he said, wants to put some ekrocute in my head. I know he only wants to kill me, his goal in life, to lodge his ekrocutes inside my brain. So he lied to me, promised to help me think. I wouldn’t talk to him.

I even let him touch me, pretended it was just the wind. He showed me a clipboard containing a written page. It had only strange, arcane words on it, stamped in blood. He waved it in my face, like it was a blade. Still, I would not acknowledge him in the slightest. I am stronger than him.

I fell out of the chair with sudden pain shooting from my mouth. I don’t know what happened. It felt like something had fallen on my face, but from the side. Two whitecoats dragged me away. I felt weak. I must find a way to avoid The GreatChin. Makes me laugh to write that. So funny. I must eat more to make myself stronger but my special food doesn’t come like before. I still have my writing and my trusty toothpick.

They added blue pills today, funny and big. Didn’t make the mint taste any different. That was my real fear. The only thing I look forward to is that refreshing, syrupy drink. If The GreatChin ever knew I liked it he would take it away, so I pretend it tastes bad. If it looks like I am choking then they will surely let me keep drinking it. I will fake my death if it comes to it. Then I’ll wake up back here again, safe in my concrete box. Give me your giant blue pills if it makes you feel better.

Terrors. My dreams are back, I don’t know why. I don’t even know if they actually end. Am I awake now, as I write this? My room is not safe anymore. The thing came up behind me as I crouched on the floor last night. I was searching for some fat grubs when I saw its shadow. Did an ugly whitecoat sneak into here, I thought? The image of those burly men touching me filled me with dread… but no.

I saw darkness first, the light at its back. I looked up to where his eyes should have been but the bulbous, olive form had no head. Two plump pseudopods wiggled, emerging from the top to the liquid sound of pressed fruit. They slithered and shook, several feet in length, reaching for my face. Their fat, gooey tips slipped across my cheeks before I could move. I screamed and collapsed, I remember that. Its three stump-like legs slouched forward unsteady like unformed bags of mud.

I squeezed myself into the corner and scuttled away from this towering, blasphemous god, and found the narrow between my pillow and the wall. The thick mass lurched toward me and the pseudopods thrashed wildly, without reason, first toward me then at the ceiling, then falling only to curl up toward me again. Its broken, porous skin undulated and folded in on itself, before expanding like a balloon.

Then pouring forth, the fleshy monstrosity held my feet fast and climbed its corpulent mass up my legs. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. Dark sliminess covered my dead-cold face and all went black.

I woke sometime later, at least I think I woke, wrapped in my twisted blanket. Throughout the day I kept seeing amorphous forms at the edge of my vision. I would turn toward a shambling, flailing body only to see a white-suited nurse looking at me with baleful eyes. I stared at my uneaten sandwich during lunch, tried to block out the shimmering, demonic forms lying just out of my sight, left and right. When my resistance failed, I would raise, only to see normalcy. The bustling cafeteria would be regular for a few moments, except in that I was the center of everyone’s attention, all eyes watching me. Frightening shapes continued to appear throughout the day. I must still be asleep, still dreaming. I can’t shake the feeling that I have dreamed about the superhuman creature before. Maybe it wants something from me, but what? I need more medicine. Help me wake.

~~~~~~~~~~

Such fools. They haven’t the slightest notion what they have done. I came here with a blockage on my mind, an obstruction that had prevented me from seeing my true and most holy purpose. My understanding wasn’t there before, only confusion and, frankly, idiocy. Today’s procedure has put all of that right.

The orderlies came this morning, accosted me, and dragged me from my room. I understand that I had put up quite a fight. They forced me into a throne that had a fearsome appearance, heavy steel with multiple straps. Held fast, they connected wires to a skull-cap fitted around my head. I am not certain what occurred next. The last thing I remember was the smug grin on Dr. Nocks’ face, the man with the chin.

I woke up here in my room. Truly woke up. The electrical charge they had passed between my ears worked. I am free. Now let the real work begin.

All who have harmed the Most Holy One’s Anointed, will die. First, Dr. Nocks. He may have unwittingly helped me in clearing my mind, but prior to that leveled no small affront upon my person. A few of the miserable orderlies are also on my list. Others too, although I don’t know why, right here in Arkham, Massachusetts. These criminals have done great offense, as only my Beloved God knows–alas my brain has been through too much to remember their crimes. Their names came to me directly from the God. HE speaks to me in my dreams, and now I can recognize the fact. The path HE has shown me is clear. The fear is gone. The insanity is gone. I still committed to memory my first, the one named Alice, and the retribution I had applied to her. One name off my growing list.

Finding these wretched souls shouldn’t prove too difficult for me, once I am freed from this establishment. The perfect behavior I will perform will earn trust from my overseers, and eventually my release. Even Dr. Nocks will appreciate my progress. The will of the Mo​st Benign God, indeed my own will, shall come to pass.

This only leaves you, the reader of this my most personal journal. I didn’t give you permission to gaze upon this admittedly confused text. What right have you to pry into my blessed life? I know not how or why you received this document, but you have read this far, and of your own accord. You have thus earned my vengeance. In time, the God will grant me your loathsome details, and I will find you.

But why would you believe me? I’m just a bit of madness, safely locked away, forever behind the high walls of this accursed place. Know this, I am coming. As my final words here, know that you will believe, YOU WILL BELIEVE, when I cut you open. I won’t kill you quickly, no, not until after I’ve fed you your own dripping intestines.