Johnny Gage: Just Lean Back

Johnny Gage went insane a long time ago. Everyone knew about it. They read the stories in the paper, or heard it at the funeral last year, or could tell what had happened by the sad, distant look in Roy's eyes, or the eyes of his children.

Everyone knew that it was a tragedy, one that could have and should have been avoided. Johnny was in the hospital for twenty weeks. He was crazy. "How sad," people thought, "He was sure one great paramedic." People know that it all started when station fifty-one was called to a water rescue. Apparently, Johnny was under too long. After a while you get brain damage, you know.

People know a lot about the incident. But what they don't know is what it was like for Johnny himself….

….

Johnny leaned back as far as he could in his strait jacket and wiped under his nose furiously to stop the tears from dripping down his face.

He was already soaked to the skin; what freaky idiot would add to that?

Johnny, apparently. Despite his excessive effort, the tears came crashing down fast enough to compete with a waterfall. Tears falling this hard were quite painful, and could result in face disfiguration, indigestion, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and even death. The poor man had no self-control. He let out a little cat mew, sounding pathetic, and then he snorted to discharge the snot from his hairy nostrils.

He had to think of a way to distract himself. So he picked up the largest rock he could find and began to write in the sand….

This Is What Happened:

As I strolled innocently down the street towards my tenth-floor apartment (though obviously I was quite distracted, having recently picked up a new wrench) a man of about six feet of tall and five feet of fat came up to me and asked, in an overly cheery voice, if he could borrow a ten-dollar bill. I said no. This made him angry, and this strangely wide man expressed this by falling to the ground and pounding the earth, screaming "Hallelujah!"

I attempted to defuse the situation. "Sir?" I inquired, gently prodding his damp, beefy shoulder with my big toe. "I am a certified paramedic. Can I help you?"

The "man" then pounded the ground thrice and stood up as quick as the wind, taking deep, filling breaths and cackling. "So you think I am a sir?!" He, or, rather, she, then ripped off her exquisitely crafted face mask and revealed all the feminine features and long hair typical of a female. She looked to be about twenty years old, which disturbed me, because the mask had made her look like a fifty-year-old man. She was still just as fat, though, which led me to think that possibly she was wearing a fat suit? She had a slim chin.

However, that is beside the point. The point is that I was scared out of my wits because this man was coming up to me and singing hallelujah, and then ripping some facial covering to reveal that she was a full-grown woman. This sort of thing doesn't happen everyday (I should hope). Shaking and shivering, I suddenly pieced it together—this was a setup. The mafia had sent an outsider to distract me while they robbed my apartment!

I was such an idiot.

Anyway, after I made my brilliant deduction, I got the brilliant idea to accuse this deranged woman of attempted deception and to start running to the nearest phone booth to call the police. And then, she grabbed me. And then she pulled out this bottle of water and an army knife and

Whoops, better wipe this all away. Here she come. With her mafiaesk friends.

I think I am in love with her.

Johnny endured being beat up by the mafia, then he wrote a poem in the sand. A poem inspired by that beautiful, obese woman.

Ice Skating

You make my head spin

My thoughts are like a spiral of smoke, gliding towards the stars

I must be living in a hallucination

But I don't think so

Because, Mary, you are so real to me

You are real

Mary, I am ice skating

On the edge of basic insanity

I am head over heels for you

I would do anything for you

Mary, please come ice skating with me

So we can jump into the ice together

And we can just lean back and relax.

TWENTY YEARS LATER

Johnny lay down on his blanket and knew he was not long for this world: he was starving to death.

Johnny did not want to die so slowly. Johnny didn't even want to die, really, but especially not slowly.

Johnny sat up and rubbed his arms. It was so cold. He looked at the poem he'd written in the sand.

Love Letters in the Sand

The sea tears at the beach, at the people, at the birds, at the sky

The sea tugged at your heart, Mary

And while I tugged at my shoelace, to pull it tight,

You were tugging at your purse's drawstring and packing up

And while I stared out to the horizon

You were walking to my car

You stole my car and drove away

You drove away, Mary

In MY car

You always were the brave one

And as I walked home that night, with my head in my hands

And my heart in your hands

You were sailing the sea

In my sailboat

And now you're dead, Mary

You are dead in my brain

Because you never existed, Mary

I have been in this strait jacket for twenty years

I am an old person

And now I am a widower, too

It was a good poem. It made him proud.

Johnny leaned back into the sand then, accidentally, and suffocated.

THE END