Psychic City: I really love that there are some of you that are really into reading this story. And, for that, I will update much faster. You cannot fathom the appreciation I feel with every review, good or bad, because I just love to write. It definitely helps, too, when there are people there to encourage me and keep me interested in writing this. Thank you all so much and I read every one of the reviews I get for this. Despite there only being about two chapters so far (not counting this one), I am so far just completely flattered and admiring of all of you. Thank you again! I hope you enjoy the third chapter, too.
Chapter Three:
The Fundamentalist
They had given him a ride to the hospital, despite protest from Murdoc that he could very well drive himself there. He'd gotten the concept of driving now, he had exclaimed in court- avoid shop windows, and for God's sake 'blue' lights meant 'holy shit there's a person's face out in front of you!'. Though the court hadn't found his joke to be very funny, despite the occasional chuckle from Murdoc himself. Although he had been a bit fuzzy with liquor even in those shaky moments. Yet still nonetheless, they'd taken away his license. And the old hag of a judge hadn't fallen victim to any of the Murdoc Niccals tactics, either. He'd even managed to wink and wave his tongue at her several times before deciding that she had to be, without a doubt, a lesbian.
She'd leaned in and said, "Murdoc Faust Niccals, you are a disgusting and horrible little man." The shadows emphasized her face and Murdoc thought that she looked like Death. Behind his podium, Murdoc blinked away the haziness caused by the rum he'd earlier consumed and tried to rid himself of the horrible complexion of the white-haired skeleton. However, after several attempts to shake her ghastly face away, Murdoc decided that the judge, unfortunately, must just really look like that.
At his side, Murdoc's lawyer had broken out in a vibrantly massive sweat. Pools of salty water trickled down from the top of his crown and bleed pathetically into his shirt collar. He kept tugging on his tie and readjusting it. Earlier in the day, he'd advised that his client be on his best behavior but Murdoc had clearly taken his advise with a grain of salt. They'd reached a happy medium anyway, Murdoc and his lawyer. At least he'd shown up wearing a suit.
The Death-faced woman of a judge lurched her body across the table she'd been seated at. Her gloomy face met seriously into Murdoc's and she prepared to finally speak out his damnation. "The court sentences you, Mr. Niccals, to thirty-thousand hours of community service as well as care for the vegetablized Stuart Pot for 10 hours every week." Which, of course, was where he, Murdoc Niccals, was now. In the back seat of a cop car, though this time without handcuffs, he'd watched the scene of the London city roll out before him and he felt a tinge of pity for himself.
Then the car pulled up through the large car park of the hospital. The police driver glanced back over his shoulder and glared at Murdoc from underneath his cap. The passenger cop pulled out from his seat first and walked a fast-paced stride over to the door to let Murdoc out. They seized him bitterly by the shoulders and forced him forward, through the odd onset of rain that had begun to sprinkle on them as they flew forward. Billy-Boy and the lot of Murdoc's other friends came to his mind. He made a note to himself as he walked down the sterile halls of the hospital that they would bitterly regret running out of the music shop that night.
"Room 23," said the voice of someone new and the two cops even looked up from Murdoc for a moment. The man was gray-haired and ancient. He looked up from his dark wooden clipboard and eyed Murdoc Niccals with a slightly demeaning gaze. He leered his eyes over to the two police officers and dismissed them dutifully, thus leaving Murdoc alone with him in the overly clean hallway. Murdoc felt a slight annoyance with the doctor already and, to further emphasize this, he rolled his eyes wearily. The man peered over his spectacles and it was probably the pills Murdoc had taken the hours before, but the doctor was beginning to resemble something of an eight-armed octopus.
Murdoc took a slightly uneasy step backwards, his eyes following up the front of the hospital door where a tiny little plate read "Stuart Pot". He glanced back up at the doctor and ignored the visions caused by far, far too much unnecessary medication. "What," he asked, cocking out his thumb and jabbing it towards the closed door, "the little vegetable is er... right in there?"
"You know, Mr. Niccals," croaked the doctor with his eyes directly at him, "what you've done has been very serious. Stuart's family is really very distraught."
Murdoc gritted his teeth, but allowed the man to finish. He'd been chided for three straight days, yet he didn't see what all the scolding was doing to further help the situation, either. The kid was still in a coma, and most importantly he, Murdoc, still had to waste away thirty-thousand hours of his life taking care of him. He shifted his weight and fumbled with the pack of cigarettes he'd kept in his side pocket of his black rain jacket. As the stern doctor continued, Murdoc wondered if it would be far too out of line to light up right then and there in the corridor.
"Do you understand the severity of your actions, Mr. Niccals?" The man asked, still clutching the clipboard to his white coated chest. He closed the distance between himself and the door to Stuart Pot's hospital room and looked as if he were almost prepared to open the door once and for all.
Showing his jagged row of rotting teeth, Murdoc smiled sarcastically to the man, though his grin was mistaken for being sincere. "Yeah, yeah, of course, doc, of course." Then, when he was certain that the doctor was at least slightly convinced, he clapped his hands together and ran his long tongue over his teeth. Alright," he said greedily, "let's get this show on the road."
They pushed open the door and Murdoc stumbled inside the well-kept room. His fingers pulled down the zipper to his rain jacket and he shed it off revealing a shaggy black over sweater and an inverted cross that the doctor instantly frowned at. However, he took a stance at the back of the room and continued to cling onto the damn clipboard, occasionally taking notes. At first the room seemed heavily dark, but they blinds had been shut over the windows and Murdoc could only see a thin little lump atop the hospital mattress. Because the doctor's presence was still hovering closely around him, Murdoc stepped again forward and cleared his throat. He reached his hand out slightly from the pocket of his trousers and leaned over the metal railing of the hospital bed.
Murdoc saw the dopey looking Saturday boy once he'd managed to readjust his vision. There he was, swollen with raised and purple flesh. His mouth dangled open slightly to make way for the cord that plummeted into his lips and there was a stretch of white gauze underneath his hairline so that several strands of blue hair flopped over it lifelessly. Both of his eyes were black and blue and Murdoc couldn't help but think, "well, at least it matches his hair-do."
The hospital gown practically floated on him. His thin arms were wound outside of the sheets and hand been placed gently around a furry stuffed bear. Murdoc's face crunched conclusively and, staring down at the kid curiously, he asked flatly, "how old did they say this kid was again?"
"Nineteen," replied the old man and Murdoc snorted. His amusement was further ignored, however, by the instant passing of paper. The old man handed him something laminated and made certain that he'd had it firmly in his grip. Murdoc gaped at the thing, and the doctor announced, "here's your list."
"A list for what?" Murdoc retaliated.
"A list for Stuart. And for yourself. You're going to need that list for quite a long time, Mr. Niccals." The copy was filled down to the very bottom, front and back, of a sort of hourly schedule. It told him where to be at what times, and what to tend to the kid with. He was only in the hospital for two days a week, five hours during each, but the hospital had done quite the job at scheduling his entire time while he was there. With a surge of bitterness Murdoc considered the fact that the group must have purposely created a list of mundane, hard-to-do, and horrible tasks, just to get back at him. His grip intensified on the laminated sheet and he peered down at it furiously. At noon he needed to be back in the hospital room to insert a feeding tube. At twelve-thirty, he was scheduled to 'talk' to the kid for hours. "You'd better get used to it to."
"Used to it!" Murdoc yelped at the unsightly vision of the word 'sponge bath', "you better damn well-"
"Mr. Niccals?" A soft voice in the hallway cut through the stale air and Murdoc, despite his anger, spun around. He reeled back at a new figure, a scrawny outline of a man in a hardware uniform. His hair was a mess on top of his head, quite like Stuart's, and he peered over his own set of specs. He looked a bit old for his age, whatever his age really was, and he glanced down at Murdoc with a gaze that was both pitiful and angered.
The dingy little stick-on name tag on his chest read "David Pot" and Murdoc's feelings towards him suddenly spiraled even further downward. Still, he didn't answer the back back. Only instead, he cocked up his brow and swiveled away from his son on the bed.
However, David Pot's gentle approach came slightly less grand compared to the new sound that came out from around the hallway. From behind him, the doctor's clipboard raised and he looked as if he were prepared to shield himself from hurling objects. "YOU!" roared the voice and then the visual of a plump woman came into sight. She was deranged looking even from far away and the manic shine behind her narrowed eyes looked sinister even in the pure little hospital. She reached out her thick arms and pushed past her husband in the doorframe. And, as if David was prepared for her, he scooted to his right and allowed her to wriggle through the door freely.
Still at Stuart's dingy little bedside, Murdoc considered the appearance of Rachael Pot. She looked almost nothing like her son, expect that she had his eyes. Well, one eye at least now, Murdoc remembered sorely. Her hair was brown and light, stuffed into a messy bun. He'd known her to be a nurse since he'd heard mention of it in court, but this time she as dressed in a frumpy overcoat. Her hair was plastered to her face from the rain and, even with the distance between them, she smelled like an overwhelming sense of hand sanitizer.
She hurdled herself towards Murdoc, eyes blazing an intense shade of red and, before he could fully realize the situation, she'd stood within inches of his face. "I will ring your bloody neck, you degenerate little swine!" Up close, Mrs. Pot was far more menacing than she looked. Her messy hair looked snake-like around her bright red face. She spat at Murdoc harshly without her words and, despite himself, Murdoc found that he was shrinking in his spot minutely. When she grabbed for his neck, he stumbled backwards, slipped sloppily on the tile floor, and missed her prying fingers by just inches.
"Murdoc Niccals, you get over here!" Murdoc had slipped defensively at the other side of Stu's hospital bed and, with wild eyes, glanced around for a shield of his own. Instead, however, at the sight of an advancing Rachel, he lifted Stu's pathetic toy teddy bear and chucked it as hard as he could in her oncoming direction. The soft plush toy hit Rachel in the corner of her head and she stepped back, blinking curiously at the discarded toy she'd brought for her son. Her expression churned and, upon rising up her face, she resembled much of a very pissed off bull. "I will murder you!" she shouted, springing back into action and making off towards the squirming man behind her son's bed. "I will make you regret the day you ever crashed your car into my son's- hey!"
Two pairs of hands clung onto her stomach within the instant- and just in time too. She'd only been several centimeters from successfully seizing Murdoc and wringing him dry. Instead she was held backwards, permitting Murdoc to press his back heavily up against the hospital wall and grab fiercely for his inverted cross necklace. He held it out in front of him towards her as if warding off a demon.
The dual police officers had reemerged from out of nowhere to hold back Stu's furious mother and they dragged her even further from Murdoc's figure. "Ouff!"she squealed, slapping the arms of the men. "Get off of me, you wankers! Let me go!"
But she was pulled even further back, back beyond the doctor and even her husband. The three remaining men heard her sob fittingly before they yanked her away completely, and then she was gone from sight. Murdoc's stiff posture slumped forward and, exasperated, he dropped his necklace and glanced up just in time to see the fleeting figure of David Pot, who'd followed suit of his wife obediently before also vanishing from visible sight completely.
"Distressed, huh, doc?" Murdoc breathed once the two had gone. He'd remembered the way the man had described the boy's family earlier in their conversation. "That, mate, is a right understatement!" He'd slipped away from the wall once he was certain he could regain himself, pulled away from the window, and flopped down greedily on the hospital furniture that squeaked slightly even underneath his light weight. He watched the open door and glared down the corridor achingly. "I've created a fucking monster."
The man inched towards the door himself. He didn't respond back to Murdoc directly, however the expression on his face signified that he'd experienced years of the same hostility from the woman. Though really, despite her foolishness, the old man couldn't blame her. He gave one last sad glance towards the kid vegetable before him and shook his head. Nineteen years old and the boy was spending his youth in a hospital bed. "Well," sighed the doctor after a while, eyeing Murdoc with a much more accusatory gaze, "you've got your list." And then, hastily, he made his way out of the hospital room, forcing the door shut behind him.
"Well," Murdoc Niccals started, musing slightly. He'd reached down into his duffle bag and protruded a bottle of liquor that he'd actually been surprised to find had been packed there. "Well, Stuart, er... I guess this just leaves you and me, doesn't it?" He picked his heavy hand up and plucked away the stupid teddy bear that he'd left on the floor. Then, cleverly, he stuffed it into his duffle bag and therefore promised to shove it in the paper shredder later. "It would have been just me if you hadn't felt it necessary to stick your head underneath my car, you bloody bastard," replied Murdoc Niccals, taking another swig of his vodka handle.
His resentment for Stuart Pot grew perhaps even stronger as he sipped at the glass thing, eyeing him with suspicious contempt, as if this 'coma' ordeal were, in fact, all part of the boy's plan in the first place. However, Murdoc darted forward and glanced back up at the cameras that he knew were present in the corner. They blinked 'hello' with a bright red flash and Murdoc flipped it off back, though offered them a rather unfriendly smile.
He slipped his hand under the tubes of Stuart's hand and glanced minutely at the hospital bracelet looped around his wrist. "Stuart Pot. Pot, is it?" he read a loud, raising his voice so that the cameras could perhaps pick up that he was doing so. Hey, if prison inmates could get months kicked off their sentence for good behavior then, by all means, why couldn't he? However, despite this thought, Murdoc lowered his voice and looked Stuart Pot in his shut eyelids. "Well, Stu Pot," he emphasized his name as if saying it out loud were a bad thing, "you are going to regret the day you made me hit you with my car."
"I could have had a band," he continued flatly, and then washed down the bitter taste in his mouth with more vodka. "I could have hand a collection full of Uncle Norm's instruments, but you, you had to be at work after hours." Murdoc scoffed harshly and then threw his head back and shut his eyes closed. Maybe vodka was not the best cocktail to blend with whatever medication Murdoc had found in the depths of his closet. He overlooked the feeling of floating that overtook his body ruthlessly. It was a strange feeling and yet, an all too familiar one.
With his head pitched backwards, he remembered reading over Stuart Pot's file in the back seat of the cop car. They'd given him the thing as a reference and, even to Murdoc's surprise, he'd actually flipped through it. Stuart Pot had been, quite frankly, a rather pure kid. He hadn't gotten in much trouble, aside for his habit of spray painting in the downtown alleyways. But, despite the graffiti work, he hadn't managed to get in any more trouble at all. They'd then handed him a file full of nothing interesting in particular. It was a doctor's list of allergies and previous medical recordings. Murdoc elongated his neck and breathed out. He remembered that the specific file had said that Stuart suffered from severe migraines and that he'd been authorized the use of heavy pain medications to help combat the pain of it all. Eyes snapping open, Murdoc wondered where he could start looking for such medications.
Still, the Satanist found it in him to lean forward and rest his heavy head on his palms, reanalyzing the kid for the third or second time- he couldn't quite remember. In his deep sleep, the kid didn't look at all cheerful. In fact, he resembled something of quite the opposite. He'd already seen his slightly opened mouth, but the expression on his face was loose and confused. Stuart looked as if he were both in the middle of being somewhere between ill and relaxed, as if every feature in his pale face had given up.
And yet he still looked slightly pretty, like a woman and yet too scraggly to be such. His eyebrows were bent down in a slightly pitiful expression, as if he'd really truly understood his condition. And Murdoc was lightly relieved to find that Stu looked pitiful for himself because he, Murdoc, was far too high and intoxicated to be. Besides, Murdoc had never truly felt the surge of puty, other than for himself. What he did feel, however, was an overwhelming need for Stuart's special migraine pills. Just watching the lifeless kid was giving Murdoc at least something of a migraine. Like, some sort of headache, at least. "Alright, Stu," he said leaning forward and trying to speak clearly into the kid's ear, "stop being greedy. I know you've got those babies someplace around here."
But he did not go looking for the pills. Instead he only rested himself back. Someplace on the schedule, he knew he should be checking Stu's blood pressure. He knew that he should be writing it down somewhere in the notebook that the hospital had given him to record the boy's progress. He wasn't going to do any of that- not right now- because right now he needed his sleep. In fact, his sleep was knocking pretty vibrantly on the door of his eyelids and yanking them down like curtains. The room of the hospital swung around him violently and he clutched on to the chair's arms with great enthusiasm. Then, sloppily, he strode upwards and, for the cameras especially, swung aside Stu's sloppy head of blue hair and freed it from the depths of his shut eyelids as if he were, in fact, doing the boy a favor.
To the cameras, he shrugged, as if doing such a thing were his faithful and God-given duty. "No need to thank me," he mouthed graciously, in a mock-appreciative voice, "if you want to let me off the hook early, though... I mean, it's totally and completely your call, ladies and gentlemen." And, for good measure, he bowed before turning back to Stuart and running a hand over his forearm.
He dug his fingernails furiously into the kid's pale flesh, but to the camera faked a gentle expression and, with his freehand, moved away even more of the boy's unruly messy head of hair. Then he scuffed it up, ruffling it like a father. "Come on, Stu," he said for the sake of those watching behind the cameras. In reality, he just bloody well wanted to go home. His feet swayed out from underneath him and his fingernails unclenched around Stuart's thin little wrist. He flopped back into the hospital couch and slumped backwards with his neck outstretched like a bird. He smiled to himself, allowing the world of the hospital room to swirl out from all around him. He sat at the edge of the chair and permitted his legs to bound up and down around him like an anxious little kid. With a fumbling hand, he fiddled with his zipper on his rain jacket and let the thunder sound out around him.
The boy didn't fumble, didn't look up, and didn't give Murdoc any sign of awareness. In fact, Murdoc was certain he had ever seen a person resemble much more of a vegetable than Stuart "The Vegetable" Pot himself. He chuckled, feeling once again that strange surge of having drank a bit too, too much. He was never going to like this kid, he could tell. He was never going to get out of this place, either. No matter how false he acted towards the cameras. Still, despite the blinking red light of the video cameras in the corner, he breathed his cigarette and liquor rancid breath back on to Stuart Pot and winked vibrantly. It wasn't as if the kid could hear him anyways. Even if he leaned in and yelled, so loudly, in Stuart's ear, he was almost one hundred percent certain that his comments would go unheard. And yet still, despite that certain fact he'd had, he made certain to threaten the kid, just in case he was wrong. He said, "wake up and give Mudsy-Wudsy a smile."
