(A hardcopy of this can be found in ER's "Small Voices, Big Confessions" Anthology)


Eerie,
sickening,
carousel music
attaches bell-hooks to the eyelashes
and helps my muscles lift the eyelids'�

This is the way I find myself. I open my eyes and this is how I find myself. Disorganized, lost, smelling of burnt hair. Taken back. To that Christmas when I singed the front of my hair off because I so enjoyed the wild thrilling smell of my own burnt hair. Then, yeah, then it all went too far and it became a family joke.

What is this hard table I'm laying on? In a room I've never known before, making me think of somewhere, tucked way back in the hospitals, that only certain secret doctors know about- yeah, sure- and their ill-fated patients. In a room where I can hear the repetitive reverberations of passing busses, teasing me, telling me I am a prisoner. Are they free? Pigeons on the wire'�

Am I a prisoner? Am I victim? Am I a subject to be inspected by so much laboratory equipment in an effort to resolve the freewill in an individual and therefore in an entire society? Or am I deluded? Too much froth in my café au lait'�

I open my eyes to the spooky carousel music. Synthetic. A sheet strung across me. Up to my chest, past my nipples. Am I suspected of being dead? Nah, that's too easy. This is more criminal'� on their part.

A candle is acting as the only light source. I'm afraid to even move. Why? I'm afraid to check under the Columbian blue sheet. I'm terrified to go past the hardening table. This isn't fair. When I opened my eyes, I knew I was trapped. Not trapped like an easily suspected ploy, more diabolical, but I can't remember the reason. What motivation has ensnared me? There are voices'� Mumblings'�

Who can comprehend such voices? I suspect there are other ones like me, others caught, others laying on similar tables, others afraid to move, waiting to find out what will happen to them. What will happen to me? Who are you? Such an easy concern, such a simple distrust. I think of phantoms. I leap to determinations of sounds heard through walls, hoping they aren't torturing such poor saps like me.

There must be iron bars beyond those Venetian blinds. Oh, yes, one could claim this area is a crime-ridden zone. Sure, we can trust in their arguments, then we can also be hit in the back and hooked into some kind of machine, which takes over our thoughts until all our independent thinking is simplified into liquid. When did I close my eyes?

I smell my hair. It is burning. Then there is the perfume of gardenia, the gentle flower scent that covers over my childhood and attempts to sedate those memories enabling me to forget them, to misplace everything, except the liquefaction of what could be considered to be my rational brain. Brain? Sure, it is turned left, moved due northeast, facing Thoth, smirking whenever some idiot attempts to argue about the free nature of the human mentality. We have nothing besides predetermination by God. Nothing except due northeast, turn left, face Thoth, and salute. This is where those who don't sleep at night are brought so they again sleep. With sleep, one can work most effectively five or six days a week. Pay taxes on time. Pay their bills without frustration. This is where the mice come to have their litters, to build their nests, to leave their messes flushed to the sewers that drain into the splendid Mississippi, swimming out into the Gulf. This is where we drink our City water because it comes from the splendid river, comes from us, making us good agents of recycling'�

There isn't anything under my sheet.

Naked. I sit up and think of pigs rutting in the mud. Not pink swine, better, more brilliant, colors that represent the aspects of our delirious city. Of course, I know where I am. Sure, I'm not crazy. This is the clarity of a rational man. One sabotaged into believing he'� Okay, this is all right. This is.

Naked. Why am I naked? What does that solve? Does it'� does it limit me in some way in their diabolical minds? Yes, I say mind again. And why not? You think me uneducated just because of my colorings? You fool. You are the idiots.

Quiet'� I hear them. The tunk-tunk-tunk sound'� Mechanical. Like machines hurting people that don't know they are being hurt. And that is supposed to comfort me? Or is this idiotic carousel music supposed to resolve my mood? No, I will get up. See, I can sit up. See, I am naked. See, I can wrap the stupid sheet around my waist and tie it there. Those clothes'� on that chair'� What a fool'� Those are so old fashioned in style. They remind me of television shows when I was young. Before I used to burn my hair. When we had just black and white'� Sure it makes me laugh'� Black and white. Get it? Shut up. You get nothing. You get the barred windows. You get locking the doors in your cars when I approach while all I need is directions. You get nothing. You don't see human'� But these clothes? Jesus'� I wouldn't wear this stuff. It's old'� Colored, yeah. Not like the old TV, but I'm not into yellow shirts, not into beige slacks. I don't like penny loafers. Check out this silly black belt. This isn't mine. But it fits. I need clothes.

They fit. The dimness can make this easier. The carousel is like a Halloween dream. A slow dance with Miracle when I was ten at church on Saturday chaperoned by parents. Miracle stepped on your feet. She had big feet. You got over it. Her big lips made up for the big feet. And here I'm thinking of Miracle's big lips and big feet as I feel the wall against my back. I say it calms me. I say it is relaxing. Like listening to the messages those city buses are hissing as they pass on by. Whatever happened to Miracle? Why isn't my hair on fire? Why do these clothes fit?

There he is. The white guy walks in. I have to escape. This isn't about his job, his diabolical occupation; this is about me getting free. Before he can see me I get his clipboard and hit him in the back of the head with it.

Sure it can be done. I just did it. Out of the clear blue sky. You don't react like you think you would. He froze. He became a possum and stood there. Before he even turned to see me, I had his clipboard and whapped him twice in the back of the head. He goes down. I move fast.

Check the door. No one sees us. Put him in my bed: bed of steel, bed of horrors. Before he closed his eyes he was in line for a promotion, now he will be waking up, wondering who he is, what day it is, why he's laying in such a bed of stone, and what the hell that carousel music is doing sitting on his head, making his head split.

It's easy slipping into the hall. Nobody. I really like nobody. Would like to take nobody out on a date sometime'� And there, like I said, is someone else on a table. She's light brown, like sandpaper, and wrapped in a sheet. Naked, probably, all confused. Her bed of steel is turning to stone. Another white man is about to hurt her. What else can I do? Tell me. I use the clipboard. I do justice. I do what is necessary. This is right, they are wrong. The man falls down. The sandpaper woman gets weird eyes. I bend down to her face and tell her to go. Tell her I'll protect her. I'm here to save everyone. I go on, telling her that this is a bad place, that they're reconditioning us, making our freewill into liquid, forcing us to be blind to our own independence. But she's too far-gone. They have her. She screams.

A woman dressed in calming yellows comes in. This shocks me. She even has her dreads still'� Maybe she's Miracle. Maybe this is what became of Miracle. They're about the same age. Same height, same lips'� I realize I have to save only myself, while she's hollering for backup and also trying to relax me, noticing the white guy on the floor, who's not moving. I grab her around the throat. Not too tight, just enough for a firm grip so she can't get away. She doesn't try. I demand she show me the door and she's all for it, especially when no one comes to save her. Nobody's going to help anyone here. It's all for one, none for all. Watch your own behind, unless some superior calls you on it.

She's a liar. She tries to calm me, calls me by fake names like 'Saturn,'� claims this place is 'a garden'� as I choke her, dragging her out into the lobby, past all the people sitting- just sitting, waiting their turn to be indoctrinated. No one moves. They keep their seats, all afraid to do anything, to get involved. Even the receptionist keeps her seat'� just picks up her silly phone and dials the hotline to hell.

I put my hand on the doorknob, pushing Miracle's incarnation away from me, letting her lose.

This eerie carousel music, this sickening carousel music
dulls, is made empty with rushing buses
as I blink with sweat rolling
in my eyes.

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