Sanitarium

Oscar Varona

It’s strange, even disturbing, but from here I can see the bar where I met you, and I’ve been trapped in this sanitarium for months, maybe years, don’t know why or by whose orders, but it’s the first time that I’ve taken notice of that hole-n-the-wall in which I fell in love with you, with my own eyes, from here, from the barred window of my bedroom, and I can say that my heart skipped a beat and I almost had one of my crisis’s, that’s the way you marked my life, that’s the way I loved you, and now that guy who believes he’s Judas Iscariot comes into my bedroom and looks at me with his empty eyes and his mouth open, urine running down his legs and spreading a stench worse than cats when they’re in heat, I know he’s insane, like me, I guess, but this does not prevent me jumping him and beating on his jaw with all the force I have, like I used to do in the old days when somebody fucked around with me after a lot of beer and a lot of cigarettes, and my body is trembling, turning into a kind of dead jelly, although my fists are harder than steel hammers, and the red blood, as red as those summer skies that make it seem like the atmosphere is burning just before the night falls, flows from the injuries I’m inflicting, my face gets stained with blood that feeds the violence your memory brings back to me, ‘cause I don’t want to stay here anymore, and I couldn’t forget you in spite of the big quantity of pills that weaken me and dull my mind into a catatonic state, then the other eleven apostles and the one who thinks he’s Jesus Christ appear in my bedroom and try to separate me from Judas, not without effort, while I smack them to the left and to the right, leaving some of the Christians laying on the floor, their hands on their faces, moaning, while Judas keeps bleeding like a pig, laying in his own urine and not moving any of his muscles, and Jesus looks at me angrily, although I know his religion prevents him from fighting with me or with anyone else, maybe he could only argue, but his words wouldn’t mean shit to me, so he has nothing to do, and the injured apostles, beaten by my devil fists, get up as slowly as they can while I decide to run away before it’s too late and all of Christendom falls over me with the full weight of the Bible, an eye for an eye, I shove Jesus away and he stumbles over Judas, falling down over the apostle’s body, could I have kill him? I don’t know, I hope I didn’t but I don’t care anymore, so I run through the long aisle before the frightened eyes of Moses, David and Salomon and some other angry people that I don’t recognize and I wouldn’t stop to get to know them either, but the presence of a bunch of orderlies, with nightsticks in their hands, closing the end of the aisle, makes the fear in my body feel like an electrified centipede locked in my spine, they’re covering my possible exits and suddenly I see myself surrounded in the front and back and I know they’re not the apostles and their strength is not the same, so, although I resist at the beginning and get some of them in the nose, subdue me quiet easily because there are five or six of them with their arms thicker than my whole body, and I’m afraid that, even after I quit resisting or paralyze my body, I will end up in the shock treatment room, I had it happen a couple of times before and always for the same reasons, my character and my mental state, and while they drag me to the room, I can’t stop thinking of you, it’s strange, I know, but that’s the way it is, and I draw your face in my memory with total clearly, your eyes, your lips, your kisses, your soft voice telling me any wonderful silly thing, your body, your sweet and perfect body, and the orderlies place a rubber ball in my mouth, whose taste makes me retch, and a couple of wet sponges on my temples while they tie my body to the stretcher the tightest they can, and I smile ‘cause I see you saying hello to me from the window of your bedroom while your mom’s cooking Christmas pies, and right before the discharge, before my body starts to thrust and throw in violent way and my mind becomes pain and blue electricity destroying my nervous system and chattering my teeth, I remember how you ran to get the bus that carried you far away from here, from me, forever.

 

 

Oscar Varona is a writer but nobody thinks he is; a librarian who doesn’t feel like he’s one; a loser… of time who has published a book of short stories Tremolo; a weirdo who has published short stories in e-zines in Argentina and Spain. Oscar Varona is an unhealthy smoker born in Madrid (Spain) 36 years ago, who had not seen too much of the World and still fights against dumb publishers and best-seller readers.