Penicillin Blaze

 

            Rain pounded against the roof and grounds of the J.L.R. Asylum for the mentally unstable.  Peering out through a tiny barred window on the top floor from her stark padded room sat the asylum’s highest security patient.  Mari Blaise, jokingly called Mari Blaze by the various nurses of the asylum who did not tend to her, was the only patient confined to a solitary room, as well as the only patient on her floor.  She was kept company by only one round-the-clock nurse and the hourly chimes of a large grandfather clock in the hall, which allowed her a sole concept of the passage of time.  Alone in her room, sitting by the screened and barred window, she scanned through her uncle’s last letter.

 

Dearest Niece,

 

The hospital staff has informed me that I may pick you up in two weeks time, on your eighteenth birthday.  How wonderful it is to hear that you are well!  I can only hope that you do not grieve for your mistakes, and you realize that your parents and sisters live on in the forgiveness in our hearts, happy that you are well.

 

Congratulations, as well, on your latest achievement.  Nurse Kinsington informed me with your last letter that you’ve completed several more courses.  I can only imagine how lackluster your life at J.L.R. would be without your classes to keep you busy.  I was told you’ve now completed Advanced Japanese Language Part 2, World Mythology, Religious Studies Part 3, and Differential Equations.  I believe this qualifies you for a third degree, yes?

 

Returning again to our latest conversation…

 

America’s war continues.  Why we suffer losses for those who do not wish for our liberation, I do not know.  It seems this brutal battle drags on and on, with no real reason behind it.  The world is naught but violence anymore.  People are the knife on the skin of the world.  And through it all, only one truth has become evident to me:  Even freedom must be paid for in blood.

 

I will be at the hospital to receive you in two weeks, a birthday present in tow.  Please go ahead and send some of your things.  The staff will assist you in packing.  I have paid the postage.

 

An uncle’s love,

Jim Blaise

 

P.S.  I made you the laser appointment you requested.  Those dark scars you’ve suffered will be gone from your soul in no time.

 

            Smiling deceptively down at the letter in her lap, Mari let it fall to the ground.  An uncle indeed, she thought.  Her uncle had written her letters since the second week of her confinement, sending money for the college courses she had taken to pass the time and discussing with her the various goings on in the world that she was not privy to without his information.  The hospital staff, of course, read all of the letters, and the nurses took turns writing reports to be sent to him with Mari’s replies.  It was largely thanks to these letters that they were letting her go.

            Mari was convicted of murder in the third degree, or first-degree manslaughter, exactly one month after her sixteenth birthday and two weeks after the murders.  The trial had been quickly pushed through by substantial sums of the Blaise estate.  Her conviction was considerably light, but won with a plea of insanity on the part of the family attorney.  She was sentenced, not to a stint in prison, but to an extended time in the J.L.R. Asylum for the mentally unstable by the presiding judge and required to stay there until the head psychiatrist saw fit to release her.  While her uncle was her legal guardian by her parents’ will, he was not allowed the choice of the institution she was to be placed in, as he did not appear at the trial.

            When Mari was incarcerated, she had just completed her first year of college.  At sixteen years old, she was considered somewhat of a prodigy, a young girl of incredible intelligence.  Her first year had included not only her basic courses but also the beginnings of a mathematics major and linguistic minor.  Her family, undoubtedly affluent in the assets of their estate, had never seen any difficulties in giving her every opportunity she wanted.  Upon their deaths, the entire estate was left to her, and she signed its keeping over to her uncle for the period of her internment, requesting only the finances needed for her courses, which turned out to be many in number.  Now, at the end of her imprisonment, she had completed a bachelor’s degree in linguistics, and, with the conclusion of Differential Equations, achieved a master’s degree in mathematics.  Her latest venture was the beginning of an associate’s degree in liberal sciences, opening with a course in pyrotechnics.

            Due to her amazing intellect, the psychoanalysts employed by the asylum had found great difficulty in diagnosing her during her first week of stay, beginning a mere month after her completion of that first collegiate year.  When speaking without prior provocation, she seemed like any other intellectual: soft-spoken and well-versed.  During the first week of her confinement, when she had been restricted to wearing a straight jacket, she had carried on polite conversations with the nurses administering her daily exams as if they were sitting at an afternoon tea.  However, it became apparent after one of her first sittings without the restraints that she had acute obsessive compulsive disorder.  Everything to her must be presented in sixes, a number the psychiatrists connected to her affiliation with Satanic principles[a].  Mari also showed signs of severe nicotine addiction.  She was jittery, nervous, and always needed something in her mouth.  Very quickly Nurses Kinsington and Marcuccilli became accustomed to bringing the young girl suckers and chewing gum to calm her frayed senses.

            It was not until her third week of commitment that the psychiatrists discovered her malady.  An intern by the name of Matthew Ianson, a European boy in the United States to attend college to become a psychiatrist, made the drastic mistake of believing he could somehow talk the illnesses out of Mari.  He sat with her in her room, making polite conversation about her daily activities outside of the asylum, when he not so subtly brought up the instance for which she was there.

            “Mari, would you like to tell me why you killed your parents?”

            The girl’s demeanor switched so quickly that the room turned to ice.  Her voice became frigid, her face blank.

            “ ‘Killed’ is such a barbaric term,” she stated, icicles forming on the edges of her words.  “Most prefer to say ‘murdered’ or ‘exterminated.’  Honestly, though, is it murder when a prison inmate is executed for a terrible crime?  Is it murder when a fifteen-year-old rape victim aborts a fetus she cannot support?  I 'killed' no one."

            "Mari, murder is a sin," Matthew pleaded, placing his hand over hers.  She yanked her hand away and crossed her arms over her chest.

            " 'Sin' is a relative term centering around specific religious affiliations.  There is no sin for me, just as there will be no psychiatry degree for you if you do not learn to cease your preaching."  Her hard, unblinking stare made him uneasy as she continued with her calm deliberation.  "Religion has no place in impartial sciences, Mr. Ianson.  Religion has no place in a diagnostic office.  Your beliefs will not cure the ill of mind."

            Downcast, Ianson stood to leave.  However, Mari had been set into motion and would have none of it.

            "Oh, there's no need to be going yet," she cooed as she slid between the intern and the door.  Her eyes were cold, completely unemotional.  "You see, you came in here to speak with me.  You thought that perhaps your words could heal my mind.  There is a flaw in your plan, you see."  Catlike, she moved toward him and leaned to whisper in his ear.  "There's nothing wrong with my mind.  That's what troubles both you and your superiors.  There is not a single imperfection to be found within the mass of grey matter in my head.  I am well aware of my habits that you define as obsessive-compulsive disorder.  It's true, I've had the disease since childhood, but it has done nothing to bring me to this.  My actions are merely human nature without the restrictions of conscience.  Conscience to you is a blessing and necessity, but in reality it is a handicap.  I have no conscience.  I regret nothing, and I feel no discomfort in my actions."

            Emphasizing her statement Mari placed both of her hands on Matthew Ianson's shoulders and shoved him backwards.  Not expecting the blow, Ianson fell to the floor, surprised by Mari's strength and sudden actions.  Before he quite realized what was going on, three orderlies rushed through the door and pinned the girl down while a nurse outside called for the head doctor.  One hundred fifty milligrams of Valium[b] later and Mari Blaise was unconscious in her bed.

            “Severe psychosis in relation to warped beliefs,” the head psychiatrist, Doctor Madison Carson, diagnosed after reviewing the tape of Mari’s ‘interview’ with Ianson.  “While she is incredibly intelligent and very calculating, her beliefs allow her to act as though she is without a conscience.  Due to this, she is capable of practically anything.”

            “Psychosis?” Mari laughed after hearing her diagnosis.  “Do you honestly think that I am living in some perpetual dream world induced by hallucinations?”  Doctor Carson’s eyes widened.  “Don’t seem so surprised, doctor.  Psychology was a required course for my first year of college.  Do my thought patterns exhibit disorder in any manner?  Do you think I have a lack of insight into my behavior?  I am aware that you think me crazy.  I am aware that my actions are eccentric and that your blinding religious beliefs confine you to thinking my lack of conscience is a sin.  I will tell you as I told Mr. Ianson, sin is a relative term, and there is nothing wrong with my mind.”

            Blinking, Doctor Carson took a pen and a prescription pad from his shirt pocket.  Patiently, he scribbled out a remedy and handed the sheet to Nurse Kinsington, who stood beside Mari Blaise.

            “Mari, I am going to put you on some medications to make you feel better.”

            “I feel perfectly fine, doctor, aside from your abysmal cafeteria meals, that is,” Mari cooed, brushing one strand of her almost-black red hair from her face.  In the right light, Carson noticed, her hair shone like freshly spilled blood.  Deciding to play along, Dr. Carson nodded to her and opened his mouth to tell her he understood, but she interrupted.  “Is it to be chlorpromazine or haloperidol[c]?”  Carson raised an eyebrow, but told himself he shouldn’t be surprised.

            “Haloperidol, Ms. Blaise.  I want you to take it as I’ve directed.”

            Now, after two years of constant counseling and multiple administrations of various experimental medications in succession to the haloperidol, a high-dosage antipsychotic, they considered her well enough to let her go.  Oh, the miracles of modern medication!  Granted, her release was not without a few puppet strings attached.  She was not permitted to leave the immediate area of the surrounding county for a time period of at least one year and was to return to the asylum once a week to sit with a counselor.  Her daily dosage of haloperidol would continue as well, administered by her uncle.

So, sitting in her room on her eighteenth birthday, Mari watched for the arrival of her uncle.  Her trunks had been mailed out, packed full with belongings the hospital had confiscated and thick tomes from all of her time-consuming classes.  Left with her, stacked neatly on the floor beside her bed, were three books:  The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown, Pyrotechnic Sciences, and The Collective Works of Edgar Allen Poe, a college ruled notebook, and a black felt tip pen.

            As the hall clock chimed 10 a.m. a jet black BMW with tinted windows pulled up to the gate.  Mari smiled as she watched the driver lean out the window and talk to the security guard through the speaker.  Calmly she went to her bed, sat on its edge, and lifted her books into her lap.  She opened the pyrotechnics textbook to the middle and smiled at the secretly bound in pages of the Anarchist’s Cookbook[d] that had been hidden within typical textbook content.  She tucked the letter into the front of the textbook and waited.  He hasn’t changed.

            It was only five minutes before Nurse Kinsington came through the door, smiling broadly.

            “You uncle is here,” the nurse exclaimed cheerily.  Mari plastered on her sweet, serene smile.

            “I know,” the girl replied. “I watched him through the window.”  She pointed to the window for effect.

            “Your file said he was young, but I hardly suspected that he was this young,” the nurse exclaimed, trying to make conversation.  Mari merely nodded.  “Are you excited?” Kinsington asked, taking Mari’s elbow as they started out into the hall.  Mari, standing five feet seven inches in height, easily dwarfed the nurse by half of a foot.

            “Very,” Mari assured.  Out of the corner of her eye, Nurse Kinsington thought she saw the same smirk Mari held the day she attacked Matt Ianson.  Knowing her own paranoia, the nurse dismissed it as imagination.

            As they turned the corner toward the lobby at the bottom of the back stairs, a very tall young man, barely of age to legally purchase alcohol, came into view.  He was dressed in smooth black slacks, black dress shoes, and a long sleeved black button down shirt.  His mid-back length jet-black hair was pulled into a sleek ponytail at the nape of his neck.  Around his neck was a heavy silver chain that disappeared beneath his shirt.

            Damien, Mari thought, her eyes shining and her heart racing.  Her mind flashed to the day she had left him, involuntarily, at the door of his apartment.  He had worn his hair loose that day and his piercings had all been in place as she walked back to her flaming house, keeping him out of the picture to insure their future.

            “Hello, Mr. Blaise,” Nurse Kinsington chirped, pulling Mari to his side.  He smiled softly down on her, winking on the Nurse’s blind side.  “I think your niece is pretty happy to see you.” 

            “I should hope so,” Damien crooned, wrapping his arm around Mari’s shoulder.  The young woman turned into him, laying her head on his shoulder.

Kinsington felt tears brimming in her eyes as she watched the embrace of reunion.

“Shall we go, then?” Damien asked, looking down at Mari.  Mari nodded, feeling the surge of adrenaline as she prepared for the staff to resist.

“Mari?”  The girl turned to see Nurse Kinsington extending her hand.  Warily, Mari stepped up and took it, keeping her hold loose.  “You behave yourself, and be happy.  God bless you.”  Mari nodded, secretly gritting her teeth.

Without chance for further goodbyes, Mari and Damien made their way out of the building and down the stone steps to the BMW.  Once settled inside the car, they gave in to a passionate kiss.  Damien broke away first, fixing her with a Cheshire cat grin.

“Those are the fools that claim to have cured you?” he asked, his eyes and mouth twisting into a malicious smirk.  “Those imbeciles who can’t see through a glass window claim to have cured someone with no illnesses?”  He tugged at the buttons on his shirt, removing it to reveal a black muscle shirt and arms covered in tattoos of blood, death, and suffering.  The silver necklace fell free as he tossed the over shirt into the back seat, revealing the inverted goat head pentacle of Baphomet[e].

“Yes,” Mari crooned, freeing her blood raven hair from its bonds and shedding the white hospital shirt, “Those are the fools.  They read every letter, and never suspected a thing.”  She ran her hands over her arms, taking time to fondly trace the grim reaper and his scythe on her left bicep, the black hexagram[f] on her wrist, and the demon that curled around her right forearm.  Turning to Damien, she smiled her smile, the smile she had given Matthew Ianson while she was teaching him.  Damien handed her a black tank top and a cigarette and produced a silver butane lighter engraved with an inverted cross and the digits 666.  Mari slid into the shirt, lit up the cigarette, and inhaled deeply, reveling in the nicotine as it flooded her bloodstream.

“Idiots,” Damien snorted as he started the car and drove out the main gate.  Mari let out a surprised gasp as a baby python slithered up her leg and coiled around her left arm.  She looked at Damien who smiled at her.  “Ridiculous, faith-loving idiots.  Happy birthday, my little demon.”

For the first time in his career, Doctor Carson could feel something wrong.  As he watched Mr. Blaise escort his young niece to the car it quickly worsened.  He turned to his computer, and typed in the passwords that allowed him access to courthouse records.  Quickly, he searched back to Mari Blaise’s case files and then ran a background check, centering on genealogy.  He traced her mother’s family first before realizing that her uncle shared her last name.  After tracing her father’s side, he located the name he was looking for.

 

 

Doctor Carson’s eyes widened.  That made him exactly thirty years old.  Then he saw another date, one that made chills shatter his spine.

 

 

Down in the lobby Marietta Kinsington noticed a folded piece of paper on the floor. She picked it up and skimmed through the letter from Mari’s uncle.  Turning it over, her eyes flew back and forth as she read through a duplicate letter, written in Mari’s elegant hand.  Upon reading the first sentence, her eyes widened.

Their code had been perfect, a throwback to languages used in prison to disguise discussions from guards.  An accomplished linguist, Damien Kane had explained to Mari the way prison-speak[g] worked:  disguising words pertaining to murder and escape plots with more acceptable words pertaining to ordinary daily discussion.  Together they had developed a similar language that they termed ‘Demon-Speak.’  It was in Demon-Speak that they wrote, Damien brilliantly taking on the identity of Mari’s obscure deceased uncle.

 

My Wicked Fallen Angel,

 

The fools fell for our trap.  In two weeks, on your birthday, I shall arrive to remove you from your heretic imprisonment.  I maintain my opinion that you did nothing to deserve such confinements in the first place.  You chose a sufficient punishment for their mistakes.

 

Congratulations on your latest course completion.  I’m ecstatic that they still let you study while you’re locked inside their pillow prison.  Let’s see…Advanced Japanese Language Part 2, World Mythology, Religious Studies Part 3, and Differential Equations.  This makes your third degree, correct?

 

Back to our plans…

 

I’ve sent with this letter your new course books.  I believe you’ll find Pyrotechnic Sciences a most helpful manuscript.  All you need worry about is a combustion ratio.  If they refuse to let you leave with me, we will have to resort to our second plan, so a trigger would be the best idea.  Either way it goes, they will eventually realize their mistake, which leaves us with only one evident option.

 

I will see you in two weeks, mea parva daemon, and I will have a present for your birthday.  Pack everything up.  I’ll have proper clothes for you as well.

 

With all of my blackened heart,

 

Damien

 

P.S. The tattoo artist is expecting you.  I found someone who can do the black wings you wanted.

 

            Terrified, Nurse Kinsington took off at a run for Dr. Carsons’ office.  As she ran, a switch flipped in her mind.  Why would she write out such a dangerous translation?

            In a black BMW, a young woman pulled a television remote control from her pocket.  Several wires protruded from the back and continued into removed buttons.  Aiming the laser pointer of the remote over her shoulder, the woman pressed a button and dropped the remote into the back seat.

            High on the top floor, in a small, padded room, a green light blinked off on the inside of a shoebox under the bed.  Next to it, a red light blinked on.  Thirty seconds lit up on the display of a dismantled alarm clock.  A tiny, mechanized hammer drew back on its spring before the nail poised at the rubber stopper of a glass container.  The seconds counted down and the hammer drew back further and further.

            Two miles down the road, the driver and passenger of a black BMW smiled at one another as a pillar of flame erupted behind them.  The passenger, a baby python wrapped about her arm, turned up the radio, blasting distorted, screaming metal music across the countryside.  The back seat was stuffed full of boxes and the trunk of the car held one large black trunk with an asylum sticker and more boxes full of clothing.  Resting in the center console were two passports and two round-trip tickets to Tokyo, Japan.

           

            Even freedom must be paid for in blood.