God Among Mortals
Chapter 1: Disturbed Mind
"Let's go over the cards again shall we? I'll hold up the ink blot and you tell me what you see." Said the blond bimbo in the dorky glasses and white coat. She held up a card in her manicured hand. It was the same random splash of ink she'd been flashing over and over at me for the last hour.
"A fucking butterfly." I grumbled, exhaustedly. We'd been at this for so long. I was tired. I hadn't slept for three days straight.
"How about this one?" She sighed, taking another ink blot card from her file.
"Your sweet ass." I snickered with a cackle.
"Fine!" She hissed, throwing the file onto the table between us. "Then please, explain to me one more time why you tried to stab that lady the other day, Nikolas, and please give me a halfway reasonable explanation."
"For the last damn time." I huffed in irritation. I leaned forward as far as my restraints would allow. My arms were hand cuffed behind the chair I sat in. I had tried to punch the cop who was interrogating me before the psychologist chick arrived. "I see things, people who have been dead for a long time. Ghosts, I guess you'd call them. They talk to me too. They beg me to help them, tell me to do stuff for 'em. The other night this kid came to me, said that his step mom poisoned him. He wanted her to pay. He wouldn't leave me alone! So I got a knife and went to kill the broad, to get him to shut up. He wouldn't stop screaming and crying at me. What was I supposed to do? Besides, she was a murderer, no one anyone should miss, right?" The doctor looked taken aback by the coldness in my voice, and perhaps the shier madness that was spewing from my lips. She didn't get it. No one did. For as long as I can remember, I've been able to see and hear the spirits of the restless dead. They follow me and beg for help, help I rarely can give them, no matter how much I want to. The other day, I'd finally come to my breaking point. "Fuck it!" I'd said and rushed out the door with my switchblade in the hand pocket of my hoodie, off to kill the witch. I just couldn't take anymore of the begging and desperate wailing of that poor kid.
The psychologist sighed and jotted down something in her notebook. "You don't believe me. Do you?" I smirked, out of bitterness, not amusement. She didn't say anything. I looked up into the black eye sockets of the spirit that hovered over her. Blood stained the front of his shirt and He leered down at her, staring with a crazed hatred, mixed with some kind of demented fascination.
"Tell her, I still love her." The spirit moaned.
"There's a spirit attached to you." I said matter-of-factly. The doctor visibly jumped in her seat and stared blankly at me. I took this as a sign of interest and continued on. "He's a middle aged guy, looks like, stocky with short brown hair. There's blood on his shirt, looks like he was shot." At this her eyes grew bigger and she turned as white as the paper she was scribbling on. "He says he still loves you."
"That's not funny, Nikolas. Not funny at all." She snapped, jumping up from her seat so fast that the chair she'd been sitting in fell backwards with a loud crash.
"You know who he is, don't you?" I smiled darkly, eyeing her knowingly.
"Good day, Mr. Zorbas. I'll be giving my report to the authorities." She said, quickly striding across the room to the door.
"Oh, Miss Doctor, by the way." I began, turning my head to continue looking at her. "He says he still watches you….all the time."
Her blue eyes turned to steel as she glared furiously at me. "Once the police read my report, you will never see the light of day again." She snapped and slammed the door behind her.
Like some kind of oracle or creepy old lady with a crystal ball, her premonition came true. After several more appointments with several more shrinks, I was diagnosed as a delusional schizophrenic and thrown into an asylum for the criminally insane. And there I'd stay until I either snapped out of my psychosis or they carried me out in one of those nifty glorified trash bags.
I laid on my piss stained mattress, staring up at the equally stained ceiling. I wasn't sure if the puddle I was looking at was from water damage or blood. The stain seeped across the ceiling like a cancer, effecting everything with a rotten scent. My tiny cell was filthy and frigid. It always smelled of piss and moldy bread. If I listened hard enough I could just hear the squeaks of the rats in the wall beside my head through the screaming and wailing of my neighbors and the spirits that surrounded me. "Please" they begged. "Take us to the misty land. Lead us there so that we may rest." They screamed.
I folded the sides of my pillow over my ears. "Shut up! What the hell do you want me to do? I'm stuck in here! I can't take you anywhere!" I yelled. Still they persisted. I turned my back to them and curled into a fetal position on the mattress. "They're just in my head. Just in my head. They're not real." I chanted over and over again, trying to persuade my brain out of the craziness it had fallen into, but it did absolutely nothing.
There was a knock at the heavy led door and I jolted upright at the sound. The spirits scattered and dissipated, giving me a moment of peace. "It's visiting hours, Zarbos. Your mother's here to see you." Said the guard. He opened up the door and escorted me out into the visitor's area. I'd sit in one chair, my mother would sit in another across from me. There'd be a plate of Plexiglas between us and we'd get to talk through a phone. I wouldn't get to touch her, wouldn't get to feel her warmth as she embraced me. I was a full grown man, but hell…I wanted my mommy.
I took my usual seat across from her and picked up the phone. "Hi, Mom." I greeted with a small smile, after I stared at her for a moment. She seemed to look a little older, a little more haggard with each visit, as if my being here was zapping her of her youth. Joan Zarbos was once a very beautiful woman, she could have had any man she wanted, but she chose to marry an abusive drunkard who beat her for a few years then ran off with some hussy, leaving her childless and alone. After a couple of years of solitary living, a kind of miracle happened. A baby boy appeared one day, in her bed, sleeping by her side. That baby was me. Little did she know that that icy eyed child would become the demented soul that now sat across from her and stared at her through a film of shatter proof glass.
"You look so thin. Are they not feeding you enough?" She asked in her motherly way.
"They feed me just as much as everyone else here." I said, which was true, but that wasn't very much.
"Sweetheart, don't you worry. I'm sure you'll get out of here soon. You just need to take your medicine and go to your therapy treatments. The doctors I'm sure can fix you. I'm certain of it." She said, reassuringly, but with blind trust.
I sighed and held my head in my hand. My head was throbbing. I had a suicide victim screaming in my left ear. "I don't think they can help me, mom. I don't believe I'm crazy. These things that I see. They're just too real. I've been taking medicine my whole life to make the visions stop and to quiet the voices but I only see more of them and the voices have just gotten louder. I don't think all the medicine and therapy in the world can help me."
"Don't talk like that. You will get better and you will be free." She said, her olive green eyes bright with confidence. She smiled warmly at me and I smiled back.
"Why do you sound so sure?" I asked, quirking a dark eyebrow.
"I've been praying to the old gods." She smirked. "Every day. Athena, in particular." Joan was an odd one. She was a true Greek, still believing in all the old traditions and religion. She had a small shrine to Athena in her house. She prayed regularly, sometimes obsessively. "My prayers have worked miracles before. The gods gave you to me. I know that they can help you now as well."
"Whatever you say, mom, but I won't be holding my breath."
After visiting hours were up, I had to go to a therapy session. I was led into the shrink's office and was surprised to see the lady doctor from before there, sitting cross legged in a leather chair. She glared at me over the bridge of her glasses. "Please sit down, Mr. Zarbos." She said, motioning towards the couch. I sat down and she sent away my guard.
"Never thought I'd see you again, doc. You weren't too happy with me, last time I saw you." I said.
"Let's get right to the point." She said. "Who told you about Walter?" She asked, eying me carefully.
"Who's Walter? You talking about that spirit that's clinging to you?" I asked, meeting the spirit's dead eyes. He was practically draping himself over her, wrapping his arms around her neck.
"Yes." She confirmed with a nod.
"I don't know a lot about him, only what I can see and hear. Who is he?"
She fidgeted in her chair uncomfortably. "When I first started my practice, this patient of mine formed a…inappropriate attachment to me. He stalked me for a time and one day he attacked me in my house. My neighbors called the cops and they were forced to take him down to save my life."
"Tough break." I said. "Even though he's dead he hasn't let go of you yet. He still wants you, apparently."
"You are still convinced that you have some sort of supernatural ability?" She inquired, cocking her blond head to the side.
"I don't know what it is. I've just always had it. I deal with it. I live with it. I get by. Maybe I'm crazy, but then if it's all in my head, how can I describe your ghost so well that you get that look of fear and dread in your eyes?"
"Could be just a clever guess. You do seem more intelligent than most patients I've met." Said the doctor with a melancholy tone.
"If I were guessing, don't you think I would have dropped the act by now? Don't you think I want to leave here and go home? I wouldn't be putting my mother through all of this if I could help it." I grumbled. I sat up and ran my hand over the bristles of my very short black hair. It used to be much longer. The bangs used to hang in my eyes in an annoying way. Now, however, I sported the traditional psych patient's buzz cut.
"Disturbed minds are rarely rational, Mr. Zarbos." She said, snottily. I'd never lay a hand on a woman, but I admit I was tempted at that moment.
I got up from the couch, glaring angrily at her. "If that's all the pointless questions you have for me today, then I'd like to go back to my cell now. I have walls to stare at."
"Very well. Thank you, Mr. Zarbos. I'm sure I'll be seeing more of you in the future. There's a lot of work to be done with you." She looked up at me with pity in her eyes. "You're a very sick young man."
My lips twitched in irritation and before I could stop them, the flames spilled out. "Whatever. You keep telling yourself that I'm fucked up if that's what's gonna help you sleep better at night, but the fact still remains. Walter hasn't left you and one day you are gonna join him in the sweet embrace of death. You'll be together forever in hell." I smiled mockingly. "Won't that be lovely." I laughed at her gawking expression and stormed out of the room.
The guard led me back to my cell and I privately laughed at the lady doctor as I stared back up at the yellow-orange stain on the ceiling above my mattress and listened to the rats scurry along the dusty floor.
