Philly''s P-Hine{t} /> Hardcore Phant-[o]m$ Part One Chapter VIII

VIII

April 24^th, 2015

3:17 p.m.

“They made me do it. It was bad… I was /> afraid. More so because I thought I’d f**k it up- which I did but… I dunno…. I really didn’t want to do it. They made me do it… They made me…”

Herb stared into space like a dying goose knowing all too well that only he herself was TO BLAME (!!!) for his own death, no matter how many other people or circumstances may have caused it on the outskirts. He was kinda being a b***h, but then again, in his defense, these were somewhat benign circumstances :(.

“What did you do?” Gestarrè asked.

They were sitting in one of the few meeting rooms in Herb’s room at the psychiatric ward at Jefferson Hospital in Center City Philadelphia. Palmer and Gestarrè came reluctantly, but without choice as according to their Sergeant who said that, even as a simple gang informant, Herb Pot’s take on the events would be of utmost help regardless. Perhaps Herb’s being there could point them in the direction of the gang members responsible for Randall’s murder and, undoubtedly, so many others in the city of Philadelphia and beyond, always such a simple result of douchebags being douchebags and nothing more.

“The thing slid. It-“ Herb stuttered. “It… wouldn’t stick to Randall’s skin…”

He turned his head to the side and downward and closed his eyes.

:’(

“Everyone laughed and thought it was funny at the time. Even I found it funny. I mean, it was genuinely hilarious, but the smell was terrible and it-” He took a deep breath. “It swelled up immediately once the metal touched the flesh and I almost accidentally sneezed because the odor was so potent /> It was…”

He opened his eyes back up and looked seriously at Palmer.

“…Really nasty.”

Palmer didn’t know what to say. Gestarrè didn’t have anything. Herb looked away again.

“I never understood those guys to be honest,” he began. “I mean we’re f****n’ bros of course, but something just always thru me off.”

Something always ‘just thru’ Herb off. Always…

“My dad used to tell me that I read too much. I used to go through like, three, maybe four books a week and almost always something classic. I read Brave New World and Island by Aldous Huxley both five times each within three months; Atlas Shrugged, 1984, and The Wisdom of Insecurity: same thing. Alan Watts, Kant, Nietzsche, Plato, Stephen Hawking, I f****n’ love those guys. I never really got why people never said anything about them. I mean people think they talk about ‘Plato’ and Stephen Hawking and Nietzsche but unless they’re scientists, they never really talk about any of them. Ayn Rand’s the only one people non-scientists talk about and that’s only because privileged people can use her philosophy as a scapegoat for their not caring about the rest of the world. Actually, maybe she did only care about herself…”

“She had good stories,” Palmer said after a pause and Herb nodded and said, after a ‘pause’, “yea, she did.”

 “Mr. Pot… The Branding™ story, please” Gestarrè said and there was another pause until Herb was able to gather his strength and continue.

 “They made me do the Branding™. And after that was when things started to go south. Like, really south. Actually, it wasn’t that bad, coulda been worse.”

Gestarrè asked, “then why are you here?”

“Heh,” Herb chuckled to the ceiling before his smile quickly dissipated into nothingness #Anxiety and he reached for his sunglasses on the table. He said a good nothing as he #Over-Dramatically put them on.

“The world,” he muttered and Gestarrè rolled his eyes and started, once again, to normally write in #TheBoardInHisLapWithThePaperAttatchedToTheFrontOfItSoThatHeCouldMoreEasilyWriteWhateverHeNeededWrittenInIt #LongWords (#LongerWords).

“I dunno,” Herb continued. He then lit up the cigarette from the pack Gestarrè had left on the table and sighed as he let out the fist hit.

“You know I owe over 80 grand for college?” Herb went on instead of continuing with his story. “I don’t have a job anymore because I’m not good at talking to people or sucking up to authority when they treat me like s**t and like I’m some kind of slave or dog or something. No one should have to live like a slave, let alone be treated like they should. They boss me around like I’m a f****n’ piece of meat, whose individual thoughts should be completely disregarded as any type of influence or inspiration to help the rest of society. That’s no life to live, it surely makes no world to live in and the a*****e at the top clearly isn’t getting anything from it except a wet dick and evidence to tell people why they should assume it’s so big. He’s not a real person. Real people feel, real people care and do work because it helps other people and makes them feel good at the moment of execution, not only so that they can buy houses and cars and Brandies™ and husbands and wives…

“I saw Barry’s eyes that night,” Herb eventually went on. “I never thought he was a bad guy but...”

“But what?” Palmer asked.

“He was… I dunno… Not himself that night. No one could be like that and be anything but not her or himself, that evil glare in his demeanor only possible to define in a moment. At least that’s how I see it. Er- Well, now that it’s been forced to be such a big deal, that is- That little f****r man-”

“You’re a very forgiving man, Mr. Pot.” -Gestarrè. Herb laughed again, but this time, the smile stayed on his face for a little longer. This was not very becoming. He didn’t know what the f**k he was doing ; (!!!)-

“You know I used to think that same thing,” Herb responded. “Back in high school, when people seemed to like me for no reason. First the words, and the compliments, and you think you understand the truth: the fact that people are generally helpful and loving of one another after the bullshit and the faces, the dirt. The thought that no matter how terrible something that someone may do is, that maybe that’s, underneath it all (#NoDoubt), just their own fucked up way of helping. That they really are just trying to help, they just aren’t equipped to really know how to do that, but then you realize. And you realize and you realize and you realize and you can’t tell if this realization is a result of your conditioning or some outside love, some otherworldly demon or serenating voice from above, like David Bowie’s, or if it’s something that comes from within and then the real realization comes (#RealRealRealization). The realization that after so many words and thoughts and plans for a world you’re clearly never going to be able to live in, you’ve already passed the brink and now there’s no going back anymore />And then that’s it! I mean f**k, if God resides inside and simultaneously without us all, then so does the devil, but there must be some way to tap into both regardless of who you are as a person. Some way to see it and to make objective decisions regarding those deepest parts of our inner selves???-“

Herb violently retracted his head to the side and there was a loud CRACK! in his neck. It looked like it hurt but Herb went unaffected and, as Palmer could only assume, remained with his eyes closed behind his sunglasses and within whatever this ‘trance’ as it seemed to him may be, for what felt like a time that could only end up as eternity.

“I’ve tried,” Herb pleaded. “I’ve tried so hard, but it only ever made things worse. I may have tried the wrong way or my attempts may have been in vain, but I’ve seen those people when they’re in love- when they feel love of and in the moment of absolute compassion, for whatever reason, my judgment of it being right or wrong… And then they name it! They call it and pray to it and act as though they can hold onto that single moment of feeling forever, that single rule, never to have to accept its evolution or its absolute and inevitable opposite, its necessarily needed opposite- and that after it’s happened, it’s just a memory anyway! As if it’s blasphemy and war against life to see and to accept this /> But what does it mean if you can’t come out of it? If you go on trying to relive the past, you never get new moments where, in the future, you’re going to want to relive them. If you get yourself stuck in that mindset of forward movement and worse, without even knowing er- maybe not caring about it if you ever did care… As if you’ve accepted it and have come to know everything in the universe yet can’t come out of that spin needed to get there until you’ve defined your ability to control it all, because without that control, you’re floating alone in space trying to imply you’re no longer alive nor that you want to be!?”

Herb was beginning to get pretty heated, he had a small tear stroking his cheek, even Gestarrè’s attention was grabbed :O.

“When you love so much and can feel the universe so potently, all its happiness and pain and suffering…”

Herb stared blank-eyed like a dead goose knowing everyone else as responsible for his own death.

…

-Herb was clam again.

“Nothing and no one can control anything anymore so f**k it. Time is perspective and that’s all it is.”

***

“He is very sick but we can’t particularly put our finger on how or what exactly it is.”

“Is he insane?”

“Oh yes, absolutely. I mean look at the guy.”

They stood looking through the one-way mirror into Herb’s padded cell: the two Special Agents along with Herb’s main nurse: Nurse Rebecca Pliny. Herb sat in the corner blanking-out in a straightjacket. He had no expression on his face and he didn’t move, not a fraction of a centimeter, except to push up the middle of his sunglasses to rest more peacefully on his nose, which he would do very slowly, sad and totally depressed-like (maybe because every time he’d go to try to do that, he’d realize it was impossible in a straightjacket =D).

“Why is he here?” Gestarrè asked. Nurse Pliny did nothing.

There was an awkward pause.

“Herb Pot’s had a tough life,” she finally responded.

“Something with his family?”

“No just…” and she looked down, dissipated. “I’ve had the opportunity to talk to him quite a bit. He has… something. Just something I think we all have, but he’s thought about it a lot.        

“He’s been seeing one of our therapists,” Pliny went on. “Dr. Wagner for quite some time. Dr. Wagner had said that he’s been getting worse as far as his depression goes, but he never thought he’d be any type of danger to anyone. Then he said he was getting better. Herb said he’s always been very up and down with that. He has no criminal record, no history of violence, nothing like that at all, not even close; just a lot of evidence against it, in fact; like an obsession with Radiohead and Star Wars and ‘How I Met Your Mother (sitcom 2005-2014)’. The worst thing he’s ever done was inch out a little too far so a coming car speeding to make a left turn could crash into him, almost killing him in the process and then claim suit and win over 300 grand thanks to a technicality in the process.”

“Failure to yield.” -Gestarrè, eyes on his ‘notepad’, I think it was, maybe?

“But then a few days ago, and this is Herb’s story here but…”

She paused…

And then continued (!!!):

“He said he started having hallucinations. He said he started to be visited by a group of very wise and knowing caterpillars, four or five of them, who would wake him up in the middle of the night and convince him to sit in on their conversations in the basement of his house er-well, I guess it was really his parent’s house-”

“Caterpillars?” Palmer asked.

“Yea, like eight feet tall, that’s what he said; they could barely fit in under the ceiling. All smoking cigars and they hated the Dallas Cowboys for some reason, with a passion-”

“From what I understand, herb is quite a lover of Herb, more so even than The Eagles. Could that have anything to do with it?” -Gestarrè.

“Marijuana could never cause that type of hallucination and we’ve checked his blood for any trace of anything else.”

“You found nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why the padded room?”

“Well, anyone who comes in saying that they’re having hallucinations of giant, all powerful caterpillars in Top Hats, drinking Brandies™ and discussing world politics is extremely prone to a mental breakdown of some sort, that’s standard protocol. That’s not the reason he’s in here though.”

“What is the reason he’s in here?”

The nurse, once again, paused only this time, she made no movement or even expected disheartening despair =(.

“Herb once told me that I was far too pretty for makeup.”

The Special Agents didn’t how this was related, but they let it go out of sympathy (Palmer’s). Nurse Pliny looked down with a heartfelt smile on her face.

“He said that no matter what the world and other people say, my real face is the one that matters. Beauty is just a perspective, an op-ed by some individual other person, one of billions, and it’s all relative. My ability to let others have opinions and still be able to let myself feel something about them when they come back negative, not to be overwhelmed by that feeling though, when I’m forming my own- that’s beauty. Or one perspective of it (#MyOP-ED, #TakingTheHashtagBack).”

She looked back up and into the glass window, at Herb, still smiling.

“He insists he’s dangerous. He refuses to leave mainly, he says, so that his insurance company can do its job for once but I know it to be much more than that.”

“So Herb Pot is here of his own accord?” Gestarrè, still completely, somehow, disinterested and writing on his- !!!!!!! �" plain wooden plank???-----!!!!!!!, asked Nurse Pliny.

“Yes,” she replied and her smile had now turned into a deep, almost black and ‘ever shadowing’, permanent frown :’(.

“At least as far as we know…”