19. In the Cell

The insanity behind the White gestalt explodes in the confines of a police cell..

Mr White, both Sebastian and Percival versions, looked around him. He was in a cell, yes, but why? Surely cells were for bad people, and neither he nor his brother had ever been remotely bad, had they?. Oh, yes, they had dealt out justice and why shouldn’t they? If other people did wrong things, things against the best interests of nice people like the two of them, they needed to be punished, didn’t they? There was a kind of justice in that, wasn’t there?

“Sebastian,” said Percival, “ that boy, the one you clouted?

The voice changed a fraction, barely enough for the officer outside the cell to notice,

“You clouted him, Percival,” it said, “but you had to, my dearest brother. He was making out he was that other boy, the one you fancied and made believe in your fantasies that he was me…”

“There was nothing wrong with that!” snapped Percival, “we, my dearest brother, have been twins down all the years and that little scratch of meat reckoned he was a twin too! I heard him thinking such thoughts in his repulsive little head…”

“I was there with you,” sighed Sebastian, “and I stopped you going further than just clouting the wretch! He could be left safely in the mud and the gloopy brigade would have found him, comforted him, checked his pulse, sent him on his way home.”

“I want a pipe of tobacco!” interrupted Percival, “to soothe my mind and take my thoughts away from twin boys in the woodland…”

“Will you stop talking to yourself!” barked the officer, who had been ordered to keep an eye on the prisoner and report back if he said anything. He couldn’t make any sense of two similar voices coming from the one mouth of the madman in the cell. Madman was his own personal interpretation of what was going on and quite understandable.

“Who are you talking to, moron in a uniform?” challenged Sebastian, “I say, brother, he can hear us! Yet creatures like him will never understand… how can they?”

“Yet, Percival, we need to communicate. We need to know each other’s thoughts, to see the deepest secrets in each others minds, to share our love…”

“I warned you!” barked the officer, and he scraped his truncheon across the bars of the cell. “This’ll go on to the back if your head if you don’t shurrup! If you need someone to talk to then what about me, eh? Tell me your secrets. Let me into the madness of your heart!”

“Do you hear that, Percival, my dearest brother?” shouted Sebastian, “he talked of madness! As if we were those lacking in sanity rather then he, who is blinded by a life all alone! If I could only understand the workings of a simple mind…”

“Or me,” agreed Percival, “I hear his every syllbale and it burns through something in my mind!”

“And mine! Look, I will tear up these bars with my bare hands and twist them into twisty liquorice sticks!” screamed Sebastian

“You and me alike!” shouted the other member of a ghastly gestalt in the dark isolation of a police station cell.

And then they seemed to rise like two together but in a single body, and set about attacking the bars of the cell with their bare hands, careless of what damage that struggle might do to their own flesh.

This was too much for the uniformed officer staring open-mouthed at what seemed to be an explosion of insanity, and he called for assistance at the top of his voice.

DI Winthorpe happened to be not far away, round a corner and not too far away, discussng the case with her Superintendent, when she heard what sounded like a desperate cry for help, and she hurried towards the cells quite sure that something unusual must be happening because there were strong bars and locks between the officer shouting for help and the prisoner he was watching.

“Officer Intake, what is it?” she demanded, though what had disturbed the officer was clearly visible. Already the prisoner’s hands and even his arms were smeared with his own blood and from the way it was hanging at least one of his fingers was broken.

“Do something!” barked Florence, and when it was plain that the uniformed officer hadn’t a clue what to do she snatched the keys from him and pushed the door of the cell open.

It was then that it seemed that magic happened.

“Sebastian,” she Sid in a quiet voice, but one with threatening tones hidden in it, “Sebastian, stop that at once…”

The prisoner paused and looked at her with eyes that held what looked like a thousand questions.

“Mummy?” he said querulously.

“No,” she told him, “I am not your mother because if I was I’d be quite a lot older. But you just listen to me as if I was your mother. You must take note of everything I say and do as I tell you. And o start with you will stop trying to break steel bars with lour bare hands because there is no way you could even scratch them by doing what you were doing, let alone break them.”

“But you’re not my mummy?” The prisoner's voice was suddenly plaintive as though something had just crossed his mind, something that he should have been aware of many years ago.

“You’re quite right there, Sebastian. Will you kindly tell Percival that I’m not the woman he so hated and to calm down in order for us to have a chance to have a quiet conversation.

“She killed him. In her womb because he was a naughty boy.”

“How could that be?” asked Florence, “I know a man who is the father of twins, and he has no idea what they did or thought before they were born, when they were in their mother’s womb.”

“Fathers, or men, don’t know, silly. It’s ladies who are in touch with what goes on inside them. I mean, how silly would it be if men knew the deepest truths and understood the wisest mysteries?”

“I rather suspect, Sebastian or Percival or whoever your think you are at the moment, that someone has filled your mind with nonsense, and that however hard you might try you won’t be able to see the truth about yourself or yourselves. But before we debate this any longer I want the doctor to look at those hands of yours because you’ve damaged them. I can see at least one broken finger, for goodness sake. It must have hurt you.”

And Percival or Sebastian, whichever one it was at that moment in control of the White body, looked at his damaged hand, saw what he’d done to it in his effort to dismantle the cell, and burst into tears.

“I hate…” he said, and fell to the cell floor.

“Oh dear,” sighed Florence.

© Peter Rogerson, 21.07.24