Disclaimer: not mine, copyright Labyrinth Enterprises (at least, that's what it says on my copy of the movie). Thank you Mr. Jim Henson way up high for creating such loveliness.
I'm A Doctor, Not A Magician!
Psychiatric ward, restricted area.
Follow the red line.
Sarah's sensible dark blue pumps, almost black, click-clacked over the concrete floor. The bright cold TL-light from the caged lamps threw hardly any shadows under her feet and hid nothing from sight.
Not the dirt on the walls, lower half pale blue, upper half once white. Not the flaking of the paint.
Somebody was shouting, somebody was singing. Somebody was yelling to the others to shut the fuck up.
And Sarah followed the red line towards them.
Something crunched under foot. She stopped and stared at it, realised that the dark green grain she stepped on was rat poison. A man in a brown-red uniform with a bag of small lumps in his hand rounded a corner and came in view. He wore a cap with some firm's name spelled out on it and the word 'pest control' on his back.
"Pest control?" she asked rather incredulously. The small balding man with the horn rimmed glasses walking in front of her, shrugged his shoulders. He turned and shook his head wearily.
"Mrs. Culbreath- We have absolutely -no- idea where they came from. Last night they simply were there. One of my orderlies totally panicked at the site of them."
All Sarah did, was raise her brow. She and ward unit chief Dr. Simion R. Beetem had been discussing 'the patient' in the doctor's office. Walls cluttered with degrees and decorations, a dying pot plant in a corner and a wide desk strewn with documents. Within moments, he plucked the relevant ones out of a seemingly random pile, studied them a moment and impatiently threw them away.
"You want some coffee?" he asked the impeccably dressed young woman in front of him and Sarah nodded. Her dark blue suit all business, her skirt neither too long nor short, an elegant crème blouse and simple jewellery, but golden. A black leather brief case on the floor beside her chair.
Beetem went over to a dresser at the other side of his small office, poured two cups of old and bitter black coffee and sat down again. An undistinguishable small man dressed in a variety of browns, covered with a white lab coat. Undistinguishable, but for the eyes. They were a sparkling cornflower blue, intelligent and mild behind thick glasses.
Sarah and he knew each other well enough by now to know of their coffee habits. Beetem liked nor disliked the young professional woman, he simply admired her results.
"What they wanted me to do to this man, was totally unethical. The Federal Bureau of Investigations has been working on this case for almost fourteen years now. And now they finally had found a man they could hang for it, they would not let a small thing like his capacity to stand trial be an obstruction to their success."
"Judging from your report of his examination, the last thing he is capable of is to stand trial."
"Mrs. Cullbreath, the man has a good day when he is capable of taking a shower unaided."
Sarah tapped with a manicured nail on the papers.
"Passive, unresponsive."
"Catatonic, really. Usually he is extremely frightful of anyone who even tries to approach him. Yet there are episodes of extreme violence. I must warn you, the man -is- very dangerous. Last night, he attacked one of the orderlies. He is in hospital with a broken jaw, his ribcage kicked in and several vertebra severely damaged. It is still not quite sure weather or not he'll ever walk again."
Beetem sipped his coffee. Sarah stared at the table. When she looked up at her elderly colleague, something in her attitude had changed. Her chin had come up as if challenged and her eyes sparkled.
"Why am I here?"
"For the risk, you mean?"
"There is no risk, not as long as he is treated kindly."
Beetem protested. Again she tapped the report.
"Your own words, Sir."
He sat back and smiled at the stubborn young woman.
"I -can- approach him. As long as I keep my voice low and gentle and my movements slow. Something Dr. Frank Marshak failed to do. Besides he does not like the boy."
"Boy?"
"I know he is not. He's a man of thirty-five- forty perhaps." Beetem sighed again. Something he seemed to do a lot.
"But he has a desperation about him, an endearing vulnerability. Like a little bird fallen from the nest into a world he understands nothing about. He's a very slender man. Skinny almost. Not very tall, only a little taller than you and me. He has very fine features and no beard growth what so ever."
"Odd."
"For a Caucasian, yes, very."
"You seem to like him."
"As I said, he seems very vulnerable. And childlike. I guess I just feel a little protective-"
Getting a little angry he put down his empty cup.
"And I do not like to be pushed by uncaring agents, sniffing a career possibility, who simply wish to hang the nut and forget about him. They wanted a simple case with a straightforward conviction and the uproar among the parents of the missing children silenced. So everybody could forget about the poor fool.
Sarah shivered.
"It is not right to put a person away, simply to forget about them." While lifting her cup, her golden bracelet caught her eye. Inwardly she smiled- some old friend might have liked it.
The doctor stabbed with his finger at Sarah.
"Exactly! A person. He is a person. Whatever he has or has not done. Whatever punishment he deserves or would have deserved would he been sane, he still is a person. Something we forget all together too easily around here."
Sarah smiled at the volatile little man. He cared. After eight years at his post, he still cared. She envied the man his passion.
"If you put food in front of him, he eats. That's about the extend of his capability of independent action."
"And the normal questions, date, name of president..."
Beetem took off his glasses a moment and tiredly rubbed the reddened rim of his nose.
"He speaks not a word. Sometimes, he hisses."
"Hisses?"
"Yes. It usually means he's afraid."
"Like a cat?"
The doctor leant back in his seat and slowly, pensively, shook his head.
"Not like any cat I've ever heard. It's a rather eerie sound. Gives me the shivers. I never knew a human being could make such sounds."
Sarah fingered her almost empty cup.
"What is it with this 'ear- thing'?"
"Something the Federal Police is dying to learn more about. They are pointed."
"They are what?"
"Pointed. Like that Spock from Star Trek. Somewhat smaller, I think."
"I never knew you were a fan." said Sarah, smiling.
The man chuckled. "My children were. When they grew up, I would feel positively left out if I could not talk with them about their latest infatuation."
Beetem smiled. "And to think I'm going to be a grandfather before the year is out! How time flies."
Sarah smile turned somewhat cold. Beetem noticed and dragged himself from his family.
"The reason why the FBI is so interested in those silly ears is that someone must have practiced plastic surgery upon the poor man. They want to know whom. And why. And weather or not they are the sign of some cult."
"As in who are this man's accomplices and are there other child-molesters running around in those woods."
Beetem cocked his head. "You've got it. They are also extremely interested in finding the bodies."
"I see. So it will be my job to find some way to communicate with him and to get him to relate all this to me?"
"And right from the start I can tell you, that task is an impossible one. What -I- would like, is for this man to be a little bit less afraid of human contact. He shies away from anybody who comes near him. We have tried to place him with the other prisoners in day-care. He just sits in a corner making himself as small as possible, wraps his arms around his head in an 'if I can't see you- you can't see me' manner. It even seems to work, sometimes."
"I beg your pardon?"
"This man is a master in hiding in plain sight. A week ago he went missing for over an hour. Simply sitting in the same old corner, all the time. Incredible, isn't it?"
"Er- yes, it is." said an unbelieving Sarah.
"You don't believe me. Well, perhaps he will pull that little stunt again. I for one would sure like to know -how- he did it."
"But to kindness he responds."
"Somewhat. He seems very sensitive to the attitude with which he's approached." Beetem warded off Sarah's reaction with open upheld palms, shaking his head.
"Believe me, I -know- how that sounds."
"I would like to meet him now."
"We have him in an observation room. Unfortunately, after last nights episode, we judged it better to keep him restrained in a straight-jacket. Otherwise we would have had to drug him and in view of your visit we choose not to do that. Besides, drugs have an odd effect on him.
"How so."
"They hardly seem to work and there is a not imaginable chance of an overdoses if we really have to put him under. Besides, the mere sight of needles makes him go wild."
Sarah put down her cup.
"I think it's about time I met with our mysterious John Doe."
Beetem nodded. "We've experimented with some names. He responds, somewhat, to Jerry. So we now call him 'Jerry Doe'."
The room Sarah was led into was small, it's only feature of interest the large see-through mirror to the next room. Inhere, there was a desk to make notes at, some chairs, a sign not to smoke, commonly ignored for the stench in the room and the ashes on the floor.
Sarah walked up to the mirror and stared at the huddled figure in the next, padded room.
"You see, there he is. Totally lost into whatever cave his mind has found to hide within."
Beetem put a cheap cigar between his lips and padded himself for his lighter.
In a corner, bare footed, dressed in his grey pyjama's and that awful straightjacket, a man sat, his face down and hidden by his wild blond hair.
She had seen hair like that before. Flowing in a dark breeze, full and shiny. Not matted and dull, sleek against the mans face. Damnit! Was everything going to remind her of -him- today?
Sarah put one hand to the glass. Behind her, Beetem droned on about 'the patient'. Sarah so wished he would look up and see someone totally different.
The shining wall- there were other kinds of minds behind. Compassionate ones. One he knew- the other not. And yet, there was something familiar. He looked up.
He looked up. Sarah's heart turned to stone.
I'm A Doctor, Not A Magician!
Psychiatric ward, restricted area.
Follow the red line.
Sarah's sensible dark blue pumps, almost black, click-clacked over the concrete floor. The bright cold TL-light from the caged lamps threw hardly any shadows under her feet and hid nothing from sight.
Not the dirt on the walls, lower half pale blue, upper half once white. Not the flaking of the paint.
Somebody was shouting, somebody was singing. Somebody was yelling to the others to shut the fuck up.
And Sarah followed the red line towards them.
Something crunched under foot. She stopped and stared at it, realised that the dark green grain she stepped on was rat poison. A man in a brown-red uniform with a bag of small lumps in his hand rounded a corner and came in view. He wore a cap with some firm's name spelled out on it and the word 'pest control' on his back.
"Pest control?" she asked rather incredulously. The small balding man with the horn rimmed glasses walking in front of her, shrugged his shoulders. He turned and shook his head wearily.
"Mrs. Culbreath- We have absolutely -no- idea where they came from. Last night they simply were there. One of my orderlies totally panicked at the site of them."
All Sarah did, was raise her brow. She and ward unit chief Dr. Simion R. Beetem had been discussing 'the patient' in the doctor's office. Walls cluttered with degrees and decorations, a dying pot plant in a corner and a wide desk strewn with documents. Within moments, he plucked the relevant ones out of a seemingly random pile, studied them a moment and impatiently threw them away.
"You want some coffee?" he asked the impeccably dressed young woman in front of him and Sarah nodded. Her dark blue suit all business, her skirt neither too long nor short, an elegant crème blouse and simple jewellery, but golden. A black leather brief case on the floor beside her chair.
Beetem went over to a dresser at the other side of his small office, poured two cups of old and bitter black coffee and sat down again. An undistinguishable small man dressed in a variety of browns, covered with a white lab coat. Undistinguishable, but for the eyes. They were a sparkling cornflower blue, intelligent and mild behind thick glasses.
Sarah and he knew each other well enough by now to know of their coffee habits. Beetem liked nor disliked the young professional woman, he simply admired her results.
"What they wanted me to do to this man, was totally unethical. The Federal Bureau of Investigations has been working on this case for almost fourteen years now. And now they finally had found a man they could hang for it, they would not let a small thing like his capacity to stand trial be an obstruction to their success."
"Judging from your report of his examination, the last thing he is capable of is to stand trial."
"Mrs. Cullbreath, the man has a good day when he is capable of taking a shower unaided."
Sarah tapped with a manicured nail on the papers.
"Passive, unresponsive."
"Catatonic, really. Usually he is extremely frightful of anyone who even tries to approach him. Yet there are episodes of extreme violence. I must warn you, the man -is- very dangerous. Last night, he attacked one of the orderlies. He is in hospital with a broken jaw, his ribcage kicked in and several vertebra severely damaged. It is still not quite sure weather or not he'll ever walk again."
Beetem sipped his coffee. Sarah stared at the table. When she looked up at her elderly colleague, something in her attitude had changed. Her chin had come up as if challenged and her eyes sparkled.
"Why am I here?"
"For the risk, you mean?"
"There is no risk, not as long as he is treated kindly."
Beetem protested. Again she tapped the report.
"Your own words, Sir."
He sat back and smiled at the stubborn young woman.
"I -can- approach him. As long as I keep my voice low and gentle and my movements slow. Something Dr. Frank Marshak failed to do. Besides he does not like the boy."
"Boy?"
"I know he is not. He's a man of thirty-five- forty perhaps." Beetem sighed again. Something he seemed to do a lot.
"But he has a desperation about him, an endearing vulnerability. Like a little bird fallen from the nest into a world he understands nothing about. He's a very slender man. Skinny almost. Not very tall, only a little taller than you and me. He has very fine features and no beard growth what so ever."
"Odd."
"For a Caucasian, yes, very."
"You seem to like him."
"As I said, he seems very vulnerable. And childlike. I guess I just feel a little protective-"
Getting a little angry he put down his empty cup.
"And I do not like to be pushed by uncaring agents, sniffing a career possibility, who simply wish to hang the nut and forget about him. They wanted a simple case with a straightforward conviction and the uproar among the parents of the missing children silenced. So everybody could forget about the poor fool.
Sarah shivered.
"It is not right to put a person away, simply to forget about them." While lifting her cup, her golden bracelet caught her eye. Inwardly she smiled- some old friend might have liked it.
The doctor stabbed with his finger at Sarah.
"Exactly! A person. He is a person. Whatever he has or has not done. Whatever punishment he deserves or would have deserved would he been sane, he still is a person. Something we forget all together too easily around here."
Sarah smiled at the volatile little man. He cared. After eight years at his post, he still cared. She envied the man his passion.
"If you put food in front of him, he eats. That's about the extend of his capability of independent action."
"And the normal questions, date, name of president..."
Beetem took off his glasses a moment and tiredly rubbed the reddened rim of his nose.
"He speaks not a word. Sometimes, he hisses."
"Hisses?"
"Yes. It usually means he's afraid."
"Like a cat?"
The doctor leant back in his seat and slowly, pensively, shook his head.
"Not like any cat I've ever heard. It's a rather eerie sound. Gives me the shivers. I never knew a human being could make such sounds."
Sarah fingered her almost empty cup.
"What is it with this 'ear- thing'?"
"Something the Federal Police is dying to learn more about. They are pointed."
"They are what?"
"Pointed. Like that Spock from Star Trek. Somewhat smaller, I think."
"I never knew you were a fan." said Sarah, smiling.
The man chuckled. "My children were. When they grew up, I would feel positively left out if I could not talk with them about their latest infatuation."
Beetem smiled. "And to think I'm going to be a grandfather before the year is out! How time flies."
Sarah smile turned somewhat cold. Beetem noticed and dragged himself from his family.
"The reason why the FBI is so interested in those silly ears is that someone must have practiced plastic surgery upon the poor man. They want to know whom. And why. And weather or not they are the sign of some cult."
"As in who are this man's accomplices and are there other child-molesters running around in those woods."
Beetem cocked his head. "You've got it. They are also extremely interested in finding the bodies."
"I see. So it will be my job to find some way to communicate with him and to get him to relate all this to me?"
"And right from the start I can tell you, that task is an impossible one. What -I- would like, is for this man to be a little bit less afraid of human contact. He shies away from anybody who comes near him. We have tried to place him with the other prisoners in day-care. He just sits in a corner making himself as small as possible, wraps his arms around his head in an 'if I can't see you- you can't see me' manner. It even seems to work, sometimes."
"I beg your pardon?"
"This man is a master in hiding in plain sight. A week ago he went missing for over an hour. Simply sitting in the same old corner, all the time. Incredible, isn't it?"
"Er- yes, it is." said an unbelieving Sarah.
"You don't believe me. Well, perhaps he will pull that little stunt again. I for one would sure like to know -how- he did it."
"But to kindness he responds."
"Somewhat. He seems very sensitive to the attitude with which he's approached." Beetem warded off Sarah's reaction with open upheld palms, shaking his head.
"Believe me, I -know- how that sounds."
"I would like to meet him now."
"We have him in an observation room. Unfortunately, after last nights episode, we judged it better to keep him restrained in a straight-jacket. Otherwise we would have had to drug him and in view of your visit we choose not to do that. Besides, drugs have an odd effect on him.
"How so."
"They hardly seem to work and there is a not imaginable chance of an overdoses if we really have to put him under. Besides, the mere sight of needles makes him go wild."
Sarah put down her cup.
"I think it's about time I met with our mysterious John Doe."
Beetem nodded. "We've experimented with some names. He responds, somewhat, to Jerry. So we now call him 'Jerry Doe'."
The room Sarah was led into was small, it's only feature of interest the large see-through mirror to the next room. Inhere, there was a desk to make notes at, some chairs, a sign not to smoke, commonly ignored for the stench in the room and the ashes on the floor.
Sarah walked up to the mirror and stared at the huddled figure in the next, padded room.
"You see, there he is. Totally lost into whatever cave his mind has found to hide within."
Beetem put a cheap cigar between his lips and padded himself for his lighter.
In a corner, bare footed, dressed in his grey pyjama's and that awful straightjacket, a man sat, his face down and hidden by his wild blond hair.
She had seen hair like that before. Flowing in a dark breeze, full and shiny. Not matted and dull, sleek against the mans face. Damnit! Was everything going to remind her of -him- today?
Sarah put one hand to the glass. Behind her, Beetem droned on about 'the patient'. Sarah so wished he would look up and see someone totally different.
The shining wall- there were other kinds of minds behind. Compassionate ones. One he knew- the other not. And yet, there was something familiar. He looked up.
He looked up. Sarah's heart turned to stone.