Friday, May 10, 2013

Bathroom Monologue: Suspect


The story makes no sense if you look at the whole picture – the land lady's perfect bill of health, the suspect holding the knife, the ex-husband everyone thought would come after her. That stuff is distraction. If you had been in the car with me on the ride to the station, you'd know. Our suspect is something unreal.

Our suspect suffers from something weakly diagnosed as high-functioning autism. That he lived alone with such an acute condition was unfortunate, a failure of the system. His father should have been there, but he died in Iraq. His mother should have been there, but two years after her husband died, she had a catastrophic psychotic meltdown, seemingly out of nowhere. The suspect's sister took care of him for a year before she had a catastrophic psychotic meltdown, also seemingly out of nowhere. This family had no history of mental illness before the last decade. He got extremely close with these two people before they lost their minds.

It was the sister's apartment where the suspect was living, occasionally looked in on by the land lady. According to another tenant, she didn't want him to go homeless.

You need to take the week of March 3rd as Week One. That's probably when the land lady leaves a book in his apartment, or somehow he walks off with it. That is The Portable Jung. I've fingerprinted it, and he read this thing. He even tore some pages.

Week Two, he purchases four books on psychology. He can't talk or write, but apparently can read and browse for books. Tell me how that works. I'm going interview the bookseller tonight. Of these books he bought, it appears only three were ever opened. Passages were torn from their bindings, mostly relating to one subject that makes sense in Week Three.

Week Three: he purchases six books on neuroscience. He reads the first half of two of these, again tearing out sections, making the collage that covered up his bathroom mirror. It's all about brain chemistry.

Week Four: he buys eleven books on chemistry. He tears passages relating to cell structure from all of them and collages his shower walls.

Week Five: nine books on molecular physics. It's as though he read a couple of chapters out of four of them, but removes nothing. This is the same week his land lady has a psychotic episode, out of the blue, and kills herself. And he's in her apartment when she does it.

I'm not saying he stabbed her. That theory was always bunk, and the two tenants who discovered him say the knife he picked up, he was trying to turn on himself. That's what he says, too.

Driving him to the station, I heard him. I turned around at a stop light, and his lips weren't moving. The guy can't talk with his mouth, but he was crying inside my head, so loud that tears were spilling down my cheeks. He kept apologizing and begging me in this garbled nonsense, and I actually ditched the car for a few minutes just to get my bearings. I thought my head was going to burst. I had to radio another officer to take him the rest of the way, and when I call her, she hasn't answered any of my messages. I bet she had a wild ride.

Look. He started with Jung, then he went from psychology to what made up our brains and how, skimming the whole thing because none of it was new to him. He only needed missing bits/ He didn't have to read that much because he'd always intuited it. He cracked our code because he's desperate to talk to someone, but his voice is dangerous. I'm pretty sure what he kept asking was for help.

So either this is some kind of horrible telepathy case, or I've gone crazy. And given the history, if I've gone crazy being around him, that's just more evidence that he's the real deal, and he definitely needs someone's help.

25 comments:

  1. Lots of people in this poor guy's life having psychotic breakdowns

    ReplyDelete
  2. A dark, dangerous and very skilful piece. Thanks John. And reading it has left me close to a meltdown.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dark story John. The workings of the mind something to be feared in the wrong head ^_^

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hmmmm. The scientific and medical fraternity believe that only 5% to 10% of the human brain is used during a lifetime. The question must then be, is this the mind of a genius; a madman; a combination of both; or something else entirely?

    Such an incredibly interesting article/story. Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  5. fascinating concept Jon, mind you if I internalised Jung it would make me psychotic.

    marc nash

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'd love to get the inside scoop from someone who could truly bridge the gap between psychology and brain chemistry and neuroanatomy.

    You built the suspense masterfully.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Intense! I'm surprised that the narrator seemed to be the first person to notice how many people around this character had random psychotic break-downs... but maybe the gossip of neighbors is another unimportant from this person's perspective?

    Quite the intriguing story.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I like that fact it's all suspicion. I could imagine the narrator taking some sort of action but never really knowing if he/she was right to do so. Maybe they're the one that's really breaking.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Poor guy. What is it that he wants? If he's truly cracked the code, can he fix himself with a little help?

    Wonderfully intense one here!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Oh, I'm glad it wasn't sinister intentions on his part. At first I thought he was researching how to kill, but I like your take much better. What he needs is a telepathic Miracle Worker, poor guy!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Having a son with High Functioning Autism made this very difficult for me to read, but it was intriguing enough that I couldn't stop. I wonder - did he lose his ability to speak after the tragedies of his family? For people with HFA do talk, (which is one thing that puts them in that category of "low level autism"). I appreciate how you relayed that people with HFA use parts of their brain that most of us don't even realize are there, much less what to do with them, (it's incredible how my son solves very involved math problems in his head), yet he can't tell you the alphabet.
    Aside from the personal aspect (for me) this is an incredibly creepy and well-told story John.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Good story! Even though there is so much tragedy around him, it's nice that he seems to just want to be liked, and wants to understand. Because he could go supervillain quite easily.

    ReplyDelete
  13. This felt X-men-y from the get go for me, was glad to see it end up there.
    And your narrators always have such a clear voice- I know that's nothing new, but I had to say it again.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I'd say he needs a mother's love, but it's too late for that. Maybe Bev is right and he needs Dr. Xavier. Either way, I really liked this one, John.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Wow - manages to be both a dark tale of horror & says something to me about the lack of support for people wiht mental health conditions and autism in society. Brilliant

    ReplyDelete
  16. unsettling, disorientating,perplexing and utterly brilliant..

    ReplyDelete
  17. Freaky, compelling story. Great writing.

    ReplyDelete
  18. The part when the land lady kills herself with him in the room really creeped me out. I'm fascinated by some of the characters you create, John, this guy included.

    ReplyDelete
  19. As Richard said, some of the characters you create fascinate. I'm curious about what motivated this.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Very 1980s horror film -- rather Cronenberg in particular. I wonder if someone manages to resist the psychotic breakdown but stays in range -- will their head explode?

    ReplyDelete
  21. Classical thriller stuff with a briliant twist! Kinda gets me wondering too, what he really wanted to say, how he came to (possibly) be the cause of this weird phenomenon. Neat story John.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I'm always fascinated by what happens inside the mind, since it's still so massively understood, but I actually felt sorry for the suspect, as he genuinely seemed to just want to understand himself.

    ReplyDelete
  23. A very intriguing character, John. Is this the start to a super villain?

    ReplyDelete
  24. Nicely done. I wondered too if this was another of your origins stories.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Poor suspect - sounds as though he cannot help transmitting all these bizarre thoughts and driving others crazy! Glad I dont know him.

    ReplyDelete

Counter est. March 2, 2008