Through The Eyes Of A Madman
Prologue
He could feel the heat dripping out of him as if he were a sponge in a cleaner's strong grip. Beads of sweat trickled from his curly hair down the length of his face tickling his nose and burning his eyes. Looking around the unfamiliar room, passing the stained furniture with a quick glimpse, he spotted the mirror. His feet ached from the hard run he had been forced to take in order to find this, his only escape. One wrong step after another left a trail of creaking floor boards to give him away. He struggled to remember why his heart was pounding, barely remembering the on foot chase only moments before. He reached into his plaid shirt's chest pocket. Pulled out a cigarette and held it between his lips. Fumbling for his lighter he lost the cigarette on the floor. Finally finding the cigarette, he held his lighter in his right hand. Flipped open the aluminum top. Cranked the igniter on the flint. Again. And again. The sparks finally caught the remains of lighter fluid on the wick in a magical display of modern technology and was caught up in ethereal flame. Until then, he had not noticed how dark the room really was.
The amber flame enveloped him in an eerie dim light. His eyes looked sunken in, and his nose longer than he remembered. Gazing into the mirror intently trying to see the face he remembered being his he began to realize something on his cheeks. Blackened spatters of blood. He held the lighter up to his left hand, more blood. The stress was more than he could handle. Questions rattled his mind. He held the now golden flame up to his paper-wrapped tobacco and sucked in along with the hiss and crackle of flame meeting the cancer-laden leaf. Leaving the mirror, he searched the walls of the room for a light switch; his hands felt gummy against the painted plaster. More blood he thought.
"Oh my GOD!" He heard the woman screaming as if she had snuck up to him within inches of his ears. "Stop! No! Please, oh God, no!"
He turned quickly, rattling his brain against the walls of his skull and extinguishing his aluminum torch. Swallowed by darkness, chest aching with the four-ton weight of his pounding heart, flicking the lighter again and again and again, finally it lit. He jumped back. The face was nearly touching his nose. A twisted and distorted version of his own, glowing red eyes, sinister grin, grimacing eyebrows. As quickly as it had appeared it was gone. His heart pounded harder. And then harder. He couldn't breath. "Who's there?" he whispered, surprised by the terror in his voice even in these bizarre circumstances.
James had always known himself to be a reserved and emotionally untouchable person. His words were trembling, and heavy with the burden of the entire world on his chest. He felt like he would have a heart attack. His vision began to blur until he saw two hands holding two lighters. The blood which was once caked on, was now dripping freely from his fingertips. His heart pounded even harder. Finally finding the strength to stand back up he nervously paced the room, careful to keep the flame of his lighter lit. It was then that he noticed the movement to the walls. His eyes were finally adjusting to the dim light his lighter provided.
One torn up sofa, covered in a mess of vomit and entrails; a wooden chair, the back was broken off of it and lay next to it covered in dripping blood. The carpet had been shredded by what looked like the claws of a black bear. The ceiling hung low, barely over his head. But it was the walls which entranced him. First throbbing, in and out as if they were only rubber and giant hands were pushing on them. Then glowing, red and blue. The light was faint but within the walls, not shining on them. Slowly the room was getting smaller. James leapt for the door. The knob would not turn. He pushed and pulled and threw himself into it, kicked it, punched it and slammed his open hands into it but the door would not even creak. He checked the door frame for a crack to pry on, but it was a very solid and flush frame.
The room continued to get smaller. He felt as if he were being swallowed whole in the mouth of a great whale. His heart raced, faster and faster. The room squeezed into itself, smaller and smaller. The furniture began to rattle. A voice came to him as if not only from a distance of space, but also from a great distance of time, faint at first. The room kept shrinking. His heart kept racing. The voice began to speak more clearly, though barely audible. "--uhm ... --ot .... -p," The furniture began to dissolve as the walls shrank into them. His face was now drenched with bullets of sweat pouring out of his panicked body knowing he too would be dissolved into those walls if he couldn't find a way out. "-ome ..... out ... -ith ........ --or ...... ---ds ... -p," The distant voice was drawing closer. James strained to listen as if understanding these words would bring him salvation Then he realized what the voice was saying.
"Come out with your hands up!" still distant but getting closer the voice sounded ominous and crackly, dreadful and forceful. A window he thought, I haven’t looked for a window. Making his way through the tortured room, trying desperately to navigate his feet away from the pools of blood and things his mind refused to define. Lighter still in hand, avoiding the swelling walls, he looked for a window. Along the swelling, bloody, light drenched wall opposite the door frame he found one. He raced back to the chair to pick up the broken back. Again and again he smashed the dripping pieces into the crystallized glass of the window, but he could not even force a crack out of it. His heart pounded harder yet. It felt as though his eyes were bulging out of place. “Come out with your hands up!” The voice still commanded him to do the one thing he never thought he would want to do, run to the police. The walls closed in tighter. The couch, window, chair, and door had now disappeared. All that was left in that alive room was him. Alone. Abandoned. Dead again, and dead already. He screamed, and then without warning … his eyes forced themselves open.
The pillow was soaked with sweat. He was knotted up in his sheets, clawing at his face. The koala-bear statue lamp remained lit on his desk in the corner of his small bedroom. Soiled shirts, pants, and socks covered the floor as a second carpet. But the closet door was closed, thank God the closet door is still closed. James Jones had always been reserved and emotionally untouchable, having moved from town to town throughout his life he found it to be his only method for mental survival. There were only two things which frightened him the most in this world: mirrors, and open closets.
“Just a dream,” he said out loud, stretching his arms, legs, and back still laying in bed. “Just a dream,” he removed the blanket binding which nearly fastened him to his bed and stood up in a dripping coat of sweat. His heart was still pounding, but was steadily calming down. He still had trouble breathing, but was regaining control of himself. His vision had been blurry from the dry air in his apartment, but his bedroom was slowly coming into focus. Looking down at his left hand his heart stopped calming down, and the control of his breath left him. Blackening, caked, blood. He looked up at the walls at once noticing the red and blue lights flashing against the white painted cement walls of his small two-bedroom apartment.
“Come out now with your hands up! Or we’re coming up there!” The voice echoed through his ears, loud enough to be coming from a megaphone. Then quieter voices.
“Riley? Shoot on sight?” then a deadly silence.
“If that freak doesn’t cooperate, you’ll lose your badge if you don’t shoot him the first chance you get. And that goes for all of you!” The officer’s voice was rough but in any other circumstance possibly kind. The others seemed younger, and eager. Slowly, James made his way through the short hallway barely noticing the finger length blood stains lining his walls. The lights were brighter in the living room. Steady rain droplets pelted the roof of the building. The sound of tree limbs swaying in the breeze sounded like an ocean’s song. The commotion of scrambling patrolmen and the cocking of 9mm handguns made the storm seem darker and heavier than it was, like a bad omen. James reached for the round knob handle of the front door. He shouted, “I’m coming out.” and all the noise beyond his fortress was hushed. As he pulled the door open the number of patrol cars at first shocked him, and then everything came back to him like the flooding memory of a bad dream.
Part One
Day 1
“That’s what brought me here, but it’s not what kept me here,” Detective Everit Riley said with a calm smile as he gently placed the guitar back in its case and then leaned it up against the bookcase. The gray sky told tales of coming rain. Down the street dogs were barking at unseen threats, trees were brushing against each other with the wind, and the first drizzles of the night’s steady rain began to fall against the windows. The soft light of Detective Riley’s small, but comfortable house made every room comforting and relaxing as if you could spend a hundred years there and not realize the time had passed. “I would’ve made it too, everyone knew that.” He went back to the kitchen table and sat down on the painted white oak chair. They weren’t the most comfortable chairs for sitting down to a big meal, but they got the job done. The glass of sweet-tea on his side of the table was full and beading with sweat. This was Luke’s first time in Everit’s house, the first time he had ever been asked if he wanted to hear one of his country songs.
“Why didn’t you stick with it when you’d gone so far? Why did you give up on it like that?” Luke Lloyd had been on the job for three years now, Everit’s partner for two and confident in his training since the day he was born. He had always been the rush-into-action type, as if the only answer to any question was a bullet or a swift kick to the groin.
“Music brought me to Nashville, like everybody else. I guess singing just wasn’t my only calling in life. Besides, you don’t have to be big and rich to sing good country. Actually, to sing good country … the last thing you want to be is big and rich.” he cut his laugh short to see if his partner understood him. Luke laughed with him, so his brain must have worked more than everyone at the precinct said. “I didn’t give up, I moved on. I’ve always been moving on.” Ten years ago Everit Riley packed up his car-load of belongings and left Rosedale, Minnesota in search of fame and fortune. Nashville wasn’t everything the brochure’s promised, crime and poverty left the city streets cold and dreary even in the summer heat. When producers finally caught onto him singing for a group of friends at Espresso Joe’s coffee shop twenty minutes south of the city, he saw a side to music he had always known existed but had likewise hoped to avoid. Even the country crowd was crawling with hired-on drug dealers and anything the immoral heart could ever desire. Everit was raised clean-cut and intended to keep it that way. His father Ray was a hardworking man, slaving away on construction sites day-after-day and instilling in his only son the importance of hard work.
“Why the force, though?” Luke asked with a grunt.
“When I got into music, I wanted to make a difference,” he answered, “I just didn’t understand how much of a difference I would need to make before I’d ever let myself think of retirement.” He laughed again only this time he didn’t restrain himself. Finally sipping on the sweet-tea, and then chugging it, Everit Riley knew that everything was finally working out. Ten years was long enough to be unsure, it was time to finally settle in.
"James," he said, "my name is James." The woman stared at him long and hard, her eyes reaching deep into his soul. Her eyes were an ocean blue, perfect and clean. She had long, dark hair. She looked as though she had come from some fairytale. But James never believed in fairytales. They're beautiful, he thought to himself, I could look into these eyes until I went blind.
Ryan was a gambler, in every sense of the word. He threw away his money on slot machines, and threw away his pride with loose women. All things considered, he really wasn't a good friend for James, but there were never many to go around. It was late when he called Ryan, very late. Now Ryan sat across the room from him on a stuffed up old sofa holding Kat in his arms, naked, and beautiful. It didn't matter to him and he didn't even notice, not with those eyes pouring into him every bit of wisdom he had ever missed.
"You have an old soul," she told him solemnly, "Very old, as if you've lived a thousand lifetimes. You're beautiful, James. I'm Jezzi." Jezzi drew in close to James, rubbing her legs against his and putting one arm around his waist as they sat together across the room from Ryan and the naked Kat. James placed his right hand on the back of her neck and kissed her. Jezzi took his hand and led him to the porch outside the house. It was cold, and she was only wearing a short dress and black stockings. They held eachother close for an eternity, and kissed again. "But you're so young," she said, "Too young for me, I've experienced so much in my life that you'll never understand. You need to go, James the old soul. You need to go, before I regret sleeping with you." James walked to his pickup quietly, and slowly, as if she would change her mind and run to him madly.
Day 2
It was morning, and it was bright out. The grass swayed in the breeze, and the dirt ... the ... dirt was cool on his back. James opened his eyes only to find himself in the middle of a field. I don't think I've been here before. He rolled over onto the warm grass, stood up, and brushed the dirt from his back and legs. Shaking the sleep from his body he found his bed, a single solitary pile of loosened earth. James walked home.
The complex was quiet, it must have been Saturday. He walked up the cold steps and found his apartment door. The cool of the air conditionor made sure he felt at home. The carpet was crimson, the walls white-painted concrete. It was a small apartment, more like the cell of a bee-hive. The kitchen was no more than two feet in width and approximately five feet in length. There was a built in refridgerator, microwave, oven, and cabinitrey to make the room more usable. James walked into the kitchen, opening the top left cabinet door he found a loaf of bread. Opening the fridge he found some sliced beef wrapped in butcher paper. He made a sandwich, walked the four steps to the couch, sat down, turned the television to channel one to watch snow, and ate his sandwich. Then he slept.
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