Do You Like the Way

S.K. Millz


This room is padded. Padded for my protection. That's what the nice man in the clean white coat told me. Family tells me different, but I don't want to believe them. I want to believe the nice man in the clean white coat.

He said from time to time he likes to jot his thoughts down on paper so that he can read them later or lend them to someone else to read or have them sent off to be mulled over by professionals, people who read minds for a living. Thought I'd give it a shot. He really wants to help me. I can sense it in his voice. I can hear it in his soft saccharine tone.

Saccharine, that's the word he taught me. Means sweet, or something like that. Of or pertaining to sweetness. I saw it in the dictionary.

He leaves me alone in this dark padded room to scribble shorthand on a yellow notebook for half an hour, then he takes it from me and forwards it downstairs to have it analyzed. It works but it isn't perfect. They always need more bloodwork, and I really hate bloodwork, the way they prick your finger and draw blood through that long sharp needle. Something must be seriously wrong with me.

You've got a sweet tooth Sonny, he says. You've got to get it under control. You've got to shake your addiction.

I know it. I know it's wrong. I know I've made a mistake. That's what I'm here for. I've been a bad boy and now I need some help. I need your help.

We're going to be running some tests Sonny. Some of them might not feel so good, but as long as you sit still and look directly into my eyes and put your faith in me, you should be fine.

Orange feathers flitter through the air as nurses slacken up my straitjacket. One of them wears an eyepatch.

Hands, doc says, laying his palms flat on the cold metal table, openfaced. I offer up my fingertips. Good.

The wounded nurse tramps over with a pair of hedgetrimmers held aloft. I try to pull my hands away but doc's already clamped them to the table. She wedges my trembling pinky finger between the shimmering steel blades and leans gingerly on the handle. Just so. Enough that I can feel that sharp foreign pinch. Meanwhile the other nurse fastens a tourniquet to my forearm, tightens it, mops the dewy sweat from my brow, kisses my neck real long and smooth and slow.

What are you doing to me doc?

Don't ask questions Sonny. You ask too many questions. Just look at me and listen. Or look at the girls if you like.

Let us do the thinking for you, smiles hedgetrimmers, gradually increasing pressure.

Skin breaking.

There is no pain, doc says. Pain does not exist. It's all in your mind. Anyone who tells you different is out of theirs.

A stifled creak, like wood bending over a fork. Blood spatters against the blade, pooling silently about my outstretched hands. Tendons snap like brittle wires and hedgetrimmers just keeps on smiling and winking at me with her one ugly eye all big and brown and glassy.

Blood squirts and I can hear it pounding in my temples and it feels like I'm screaming but doc's words just boom louder and clearer than ever over that searing pain, like the voice of God rattling down through tragedy and dissent.

It doesn't hurt. There is no hurt. No such thing. We're helping you, remember. That's our job. We're here to help you get better. We would never dream of hurting you Sonny. You're our very favorite. We love you.

There's a terrible snap and in the blink of an eye I know it's over.

Gazing down at the bloody stump, How'd I do doc?

He just sits there smiling, studying me while the nurses clean and bandage the wound. You excelled Sonny, he says.

Then he stands and they all stand and together they all go out leaving me there alone to suck my bill in silence and in darkness.