My days are over. Ida Mancini, my so called 'mother' was a lunatic, Paige was a lunatic, I am a lunatic. But it doesn't matter anymore, they're dead. I'm not. I'm stuck in a room with a schizophrenic buddhist priest. Only after disaster can we be resurrected well shut the fuck up, dude.
I press me against the wall, and cover my head with the cornflower blue sheets. This guy goes on forever about enlightenment, and truth. It's as if he forgot he was ever sane. He was sane when I came here about a week ago, then he started getting all these fucked up ideals.
"Dude," I say. "You're driving me crazy."
"You always were," he says again.
"You have a visitor" the nurse says, her pretty red hair bouncing around her shoulders in a most unsanitary way. I kind of wonder how she got there without either this moron or me noticing.
"For who?" the moron asks.
"Mancini," she says bluntly. I step out of bed, trying to cover my sunken rear-end, and failing completely. Hospital gowns never hide your ass. I waddle to the door and step into the carpeted hall tentatively. The hall is gray, the rooms are white, and I am yellow. I step into the visitor's 'room.' It's more like a cage to make sure nothing goes wrong. Denny sits at the desk, idly playing with his visitor's badge.
"It's finished," he says. He looks so helpless. "I ran out of rocks, and it's finished. Oh, and you're invited to Beth and my wedding."
"Marriage is for suckers," I say, ignoring his helplessness.
"Dude."
I nod.
"Got any pebbles on you?" I ask. "I need something to do with my time."
"You're not killing yourself again, dude, and I'm not saving you," Denny says. I scowl.
Then I realize what I was thinking, saying, planning. "I've lost it, dude." He nods.
"Why else would you be in the fucking loony bin?" he asks. I shrug. "I'm here to help you, man. You need out of this place, it's making you worse."
He gestures to my skin. It's true, I was getting worse. Much worse. Do I look like someone who wants to eat gruel every day? Who needs to eat crushed pill sandwhiches au jus once a day, monitored heavily for risk of my old 'self mutilating habbits' return. "How do you suppose we do that?"
"I don't know, but at least you don't have those rubber bracelets," he says.
"Blow it up."
"Denny, this is my roommate," I gesture to the ever-smiling lunatic just outside the cage-like... thing.
It shall be a beautiful friendship, I'm sure. Denny waves.
"Dude, your roommate is a legend," he says.
"What?"
"That's Tyler Durden," he says. I look over my shoulder and watch a doctor whisper something into his ear. "That's one of his space-monkeys. He's the one who blew up those credit card buildings."
"You've got to be kidding me," I say blandly. I wonder how Denny knows this.
"No, his girl told me. Beth and her are buddies," he says.
"Marla?" I ask. He nods.
"He talks about her?" he asks, obviously surprised.
"No, he pretends to talk about her. He kind of mumbles about her sometimes... Always asking where she is." I say. He'd said it once a day in the middle of our dysfunctional conversations since I arrived Tuesday, eight days ago.
"That's simple, dude. She's avoiding him," he says.