UNDER GREEN BRAIN
by William Pauley III
Crater sat on the steps leading down into the basement, staring blankly into the darkness before him. He’d been waiting there patiently for the better part of the morning, on a delivery of fresh meat so he and the rest of the kitchen staff could finally get to work preparing the day’s meal. There were dozens of hungry mouths to be fed, and within the next hour they’d be lining up to grab a plate just as they had every morning before.
Crater drummed his fingers against his knee, a nervous tick caused by the steadily increasing levels of anxiety he was currently experiencing. There was a slight ache inside his ears due to falling asleep with his earbuds in, something he’d noticed had been happening more often than usual in the last few weeks. He knew this too was something attributed to his creeping anxiety. With most people, anxiety and depression had no clear solution, in his case however, he knew exactly how to get rid of it: the building would have to be destroyed. The Eighth Block Tower was the source of every problem he’d ever had, and to eliminate the building would be to eliminate even his most extreme fears and paranoia. Destroying the building was no easy feat, however. Not only had it contained the kitchen he worked in, his only source of income, but also his home. Eighth Block was the only home he ever knew, and the people there, though he couldn’t stand the majority of them, were more like family than neighbors. The fact that the building was still standing was a testament to his self-control. He was clear-minded, for the most part, and able to analyze an idea thoroughly before making a conscious decision to stick the oars in the water and follow through. This was one of his best qualities, he thought. However, in the last few weeks he’d noticed a definite slip in this ability. The pressures of living within the tower felt inexplicitly higher now than ever before, and the effect it had on his mind was undeniably negative in a variety of ways. This is why he had been falling asleep with his earbuds in night after night, listening to self-help tapes on an old Walkman he’d found in one of the storage closets. The tapes seemed to help slightly, but not as much as…
He flipped the light switch on without bothering to stand from his position on the stairs. The unfinished concrete basement lit up and for a second burned out his eyes. Once he could see clearly, he examined the cardboard box resting in the middle of the floor, saw that it was still empty, and flipped off the switch again. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he fought the urge to calm his nerves the best way he knew how: the hum. He felt it necessary to try and deal with his anxiety through any other means because he knew the other residents of the building found the same solace in the hum, and he was not like them. He refused to believe the madness that infected the others infected him as well. To give in to the hum was to give up hope, he thought, after all, once he allowed himself to become a hum junkie, his dreams of one day destroying the building and being rid of his problems would be just that, a dream, something that would never become tangible, an unfulfilled wish, a lone stationary coin in a long forgotten well. Once he allowed the building inside his mind, destroying it would mean destroying himself, and he would never allow that. He had to walk away unscathed, and also reborn. He could not complete his metamorphosis while hanging on an addiction for the very thing he wished to destroy: the radiation, this building. It wouldn’t happen. If it were easy to overcome, then the other residents would have done it years ago. However, even knowing the consequences, it still seemed like a small sacrifice during moments when his anxiety levels were extremely high. During those moments, his brain sought immediate relief, and in the last few weeks he was embarrassed to admit, but he had given in to temptation quite a few times. Even now, as he sat on the basement steps, bathed in darkness, he thought about how easy it would be to lean over and push his ear to the wall, just for a few seconds of that sweet hum caused by the radiation of toxic chemicals flowing on the inside. He took several deep breaths, regained composure, and proudly managed to resist. He slid his hand up the wall and flipped the switch. Again the concrete room lit up and burned out his eyes, but this time the cardboard box was no longer empty. Great hunks of red raw meat glistened now inside the box and a small pool of blood was forming underneath. Crater stood, relieved to be getting on with his day, which he hoped would be filled with enough distractions to keep him from thinking too much about anything. The further he was from his thoughts, the better. He grabbed the box from the bottom, his fingers pressing deep into the squishy blood-soaked cardboard, nearly piercing completely through, and carried it up the dark stairway.
“It’s about fucking time, Crate,” a voice said as Crater walked into the kitchen. “It’s almost ten. You get lost down there, boy?”
He dropped the soggy box onto the countertop and wiped his hands clean across the front of his white apron.
“Chuck, it’s hardly my fault,” he said. “You know delivery has nothing to do with me. If anything, maybe you should put the box down there a little earlier.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted it. There was nothing left to do but take the storm head on, and to say as little as possible in the meantime.
“So what are you saying, Crate? You saying this is my fault then? You wanna be the guy that comes down here at six every morning to get the kitchen ready?”
“No.”
“Sounds like that’s what you’re saying.”
“No, not at all.”
Chuck took a moment to respond, instead he stared at Crater, sizing him up, long enough to create tension and for a little adrenaline to flow through their veins.
“You know, you wouldn’t do it even if I assigned the job to you. Hell, I can barely get any work out of you assholes now. You’re down doing god-knows-what in the basement and Sansa comes in later and later every day. She was supposed to be here an hour ago.”
“Have you heard from her?”
Chuck laughed.
“Do I ever? She’ll walk right through those doors, pull on an apron, and not say a single thing to me. Won’t even look at me. You watch and see if I ain’t right.”
Crater began cutting away at the hunks of meat, tossing slivers of fat into the wastebin.
“Have you ever considered that you may come off as a little intimidating?” Crater asked.
“Ah, Crate, come on now. You and I both know what’s going on with that girl. Her fella has got her on quite a short leash—”
Crater interrupted. “Stop.”
A surprised look came over Chuck’s face.
“Am I wrong?”
“It’s not fair to talk about that. It’s her business.”
“Shit, Crate, it’s just us here. What’s the big deal? You sweet on that girl or something?”
Crater silently chopped away.
“Oh, I see,” the two of them were silent for a few moments, Crater focusing on the task at hand and Chuck reflecting on the information he just uncovered. “You know, what you do outside the job is y’all’s own fucking business, but if you two bring any of that bullshit love drama here into work, I won’t hesitate to get rid of the both of you. Can’t have that. We clear?”
“It’s not like that. We’re only friends, Chuck.”
“Yeah, well, just keep that in mind for future reference.”
Crater couldn’t help but to crack a smile.
“You think she likes me?”
“Boy, you better hope not. No offense, I know you like the girl and all, but she’s a mess. It doesn’t take a whole lotta digging to see her life ain’t all shooting stars and rainbows.”
“Yeah, but who’s is?”
“Well, no one’s, I guess, but Crate…”
He paused.
“Just be careful,” he continued. “You’re a good kid. I know I bust your chops now and then, hey, that’s the job, but I’d hate for you to get mixed up in her mess of a life. You know how she is…walks around here, barely saying a word, but humming like a hive of honeybees. She’s a hum junkie, man. Bet her brain is so full of radiation it glows bright green. You can probably see it through her skull at night.”
“Chuck! Fucking stop already!”
Crater slung another hunk of fat into the wastebin.
“None of us are perfect,” Crater continued. “We’re all slaves to the radiation. Don’t pretend it’s not affecting you too. We’ve all walked in on you licking rat bellies at one time or another.”
“I wasn’t licking their bellies.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. We’ve all seen you do it. Just about everyone in the entire building knows. We all do weird shit like this. It’s all the goddamn radiation in the walls.”
“I chew on their feet.”
“What?”
“I chew on their tiny rat feet. I don’t lick them.”
“That’s still not normal.”
“Didn’t say it was.”
“Right, well, my point is that we are all fighting a battle here. It’s true that most of us here in the tower will be nothing more than a slave to the radiation, but not me. I refuse. I’m going to beat this.”
“Not with that girl, you’re not. And that was my point,” Chuck said.
“What girl?” Sansa said, as she walked in through the kitchen door.
“Speak of the devil,” Chuck said.
“Chuck!” Crater yelled, completely embarrassed and shocked that Chuck managed to keep his secret for only a minute or two.
“Me?” Sansa’s face became flushed. “What about me?”
“Ah, it’s nothin’,” Chuck said. “You’re late again, I see. This is becoming quite a habit. What’s the story here?”
Sansa pulled her long blonde hair over her face, hiding, just as a child would while being scolded.
Chuck spat a fake laugh.
“Told you, Crate,” he said. “Not a word.”
Sansa pulled on an apron and quickly went to work, stirring the beans, doing anything to avoid being caught in Chuck’s crosshairs.
“What’s that you got there?” Chuck asked.
Sansa turned away.
“I’m here, okay? Can I just work now?” she asked.
“Let me see your face,” Chuck said. “Look at me.”
Sansa continued to look in the opposite direction. From this angle, Crater could see what Chuck was going on about. The left side of her face had a crescent-shaped bruise that was a darker shade of pink than the rest of her skin. This wasn’t the first time she’d walked into the kitchen with visible injuries. Her last had healed only days before.
“That man of yours still giving you trouble, honey?” Chuck said.
“Jesus, shut up already!” Crater yelled.
Sansa briefly looked up at Crater, her eyes like big blue jewels, then quickly returned her gaze at the floor.
“What? I’m just asking her a simple question.”
“You’re being an asshole,” Crater said.
Chuck laughed.
“If you love this girl so much, why don’t you save her?”
Sansa looked up at Crater again just in time to see his face flare in anger. He pulled the bloody apron off his body, balled it up, and threw it at Chuck’s face. Chuck let it hit him and fall to the ground.
“You’re a lonely old bastard who criticizes others because you’re too goddamned scared to analyze your own shitty, pathetic life,” Crater said. “I’m outta here.”
He grabbed his Walkman from the countertop and stormed out the kitchen door.
“He’ll be back,” Chuck said, then walked over to the counter to finish chopping the meat.
Sansa remained hidden behind her hair, stirring the vat of beans. She couldn’t help but to smile.
Crater sat on the ledge of the roof, looking out at the dirty Chicago streets, the crumbling buildings that surrounded Eighth Block, and lit a pale cigarette. He inhaled. The smoke couldn’t have been any worse than the pollution he was taking in, he surmised, then took another hit. He dug his hand into his pocket and removed a spaghetti mess of tangled wires, his earbuds. After fidgeting with them for a moment, he managed to straighten out the mess and plug them into his Walkman. He took a long draw from his cigarette, laid his body out flat on the concrete ledge of the building, and pushed play.
“Your mind is consciousness, it is you, and it is in control of your own reality, the way you perceive the world. You are the mind and you are in control. You make everything happen,” said a tinny, somewhat distant voice on the cassette tape. “When feelings of anxiety penetrate your mind, it is only because you are allowing it. Do not accept this as part of your reality. Anxiety is not natural. There is a parasite living inside you. Take a moment to breathe. Close your eyes and concentrate on a way to expel this parasite from your body.”
A few minutes later, the steel door leading to the roof opened and two figures stepped out, dragging behind them a black shop vac on wheels and several feet of bright orange extension cord. Crater remained in position and took another pull from his cigarette. He recognized the two men immediately and wasn’t surprised in the slightest to see them, or their shop vac. Their names were Buzz and Magus. They came up to the roof several times throughout the day, vacuuming the sky, for god knows what reason. Crater was one of the only people in the entire building who actually recognized their vacuuming as a deeply odd ritual, however, he’d grown accustom to seeing such bizarreness over the years that he really didn’t think too much about it anymore. It was a mental illness, something they shared with all the other residents in the tower. He was thankful the illness hadn’t spread to him. He wouldn’t allow himself to become so sick. His mind was consciousness, it was he, and he was in control of his own reality, the way he perceives the world. He was the mind and he was in control.
They dragged the vac out to the center of the roof and Buzz leaned down and flipped on the switch. The hum of the vac immediately sent a chill shuddering down Crater’s spine. He tried turning the volume up on his Walkman, in hopes of obscuring the constant drone, but it was already on its highest setting. He would not allow this parasite into his mind, no matter how lulling… or relaxing… he found it… to be. However, he did not move or try to block it out in any way. In fact, he found himself doing the exact opposite. He stopped the tape, sat up on the ledge, and pulled the buds from his ears. His breathing slowed as his body synched with the buzzing. He was at peace.
This was quickly interrupted by the sound of gunshots.
Buzz held a stiff straight arm up in the air and fired a pistol into the clouds at random. Startled pigeons took to the sky, twenty or thirty of them in total. Crater’s heart jumped with every pull of the trigger, causing his anxiety to come rushing back all in an instant. The parasites are here, and they are swarming now. Expel! Rid them from your body! This is not natural. What you are feeling is not a natural human experience. You are plagued! The call of radiation was singing sweetly to him now from within the building, urging him to come back inside, promising to take care of him and calm his precious heart.
He stood and cupped his hands over his mouth.
“Hey, assholes!” he shouted at Buzz and Magus. “What’s with the gun? What the fuck are you even shooting at anyway?”
They looked up at the sky with a confused look on their faces.
“God?” Buzz asked. “Z’at you?”
“God?” Crater repeated. “No. Hey, over here, fellas! It’s me, Crat—”
He was interrupted by the sound of the gun going off again, but this time a bullet whizzed straight past him. It missed by several feet, but it was close enough for him to realize that he was now the target. He dropped flat against the roof and rolled his body to the nearest cover, a rusty old air-conditioning unit. The gun continued to fire in his direction for a few seconds more, stopping the moment a bloody pigeon fell into his lap. The bird had been shot straight through the neck, its head no longer attached, likely blown into a million little pieces and carried off with the breeze. This, of course, startled him and caused him to leap to his feet, awkwardly juggling the dead bird in his arms.
Crater let out a horrified scream.
“Dear Jesus, what have you done?” Magus yelled at Buzz. Buzz shrugged his shoulders and looked into the sky. “You killed God, man. Buzz… holy shit, Buzz, you killed God!”
Buzz didn’t seem too affected by the thought. As Magus stood there, hands cupped over his mouth and staring at nothing with the greatest intensity, Buzz calmly leaned over and turned off the vac. Crater watched as they seemingly struggled to make sense of what had just happened, trying to find the common thread that linked all these peculiarities together, something that told a story, even if it was the wrong story, something that made sense…to them. He also acknowledged that neither one seemed to realize that he was out on the roof with them too, despite the fact that he had actually spoken to them.
He grew annoyed watching them and threw the blood-soaked pigeon carcass at Buzz. Though the bird did not drop down on him from above, when it struck him, Buzz looked again to the sky.
“Birds! They rain from above!” Magus shouted. “God’s final plague! This is some Old Testament shit! Take cover!”
They huddled together, crouched on the rooftop, hiding from a rain of birds that simply just wasn’t there. Crater looked down at his hands and traced his fingers along the trails of dried blood caked in the creases in his palms.
“Christ,” he muttered. “I… I can’t… I can’t do this anymore.”
He ran to the steel door and pushed it open with such force that he put a hole in the sheetrock wall that lined the inside of the stairwell. He pushed the door shut and sat on the stairs, burying his face into his hands. Tears started to form in the corners of his eyes.
“I am not in control. I am not in control. I am not in control,” he repeated to himself.
He wrapped his fingers in his hair and pulled taut, away from his scalp. It was a way of distracting himself, or perhaps it was punishment for allowing himself to become so weak, and all within an instant too. He was shocked to see how quickly he had fallen, how weeks of listening to his tapes and remaining almost completely abstinent of the hum had built nothing sturdier than a house of straw. He was weaker than he thought, and tired, so very tired of fighting…
Never hesitating to reach out and grab him at his lowest, weakest points, the hum from within the walls sounded out clear and true, as if calling out to him, urging him in that moment to put his head upon its breast so it could sing his restless, worrying mind to sleep. Crater looked up at the hole in the wall and for the first time he could actually see the flowing river of chemicals that lay beyond the sheetrock. It was a liquid substance that had the color and consistency like that of antifreeze, just a little thicker than water. Crater pressed his face against the hole and took a deep whiff, expecting to get some sort of contact high off the fumes of whatever type of chemical this was, but instead he smelled nothing but dirt and caught a lungful of black mold. He started to reach up to touch the strange flowing substance, but was distracted by a body scurrying up the stairwell.
It was Sansa.
In addition to her bruised face, she now had a bloody lip and her neck and arms were red with hand-shaped splotches. She was sobbing hysterically.
“Sansa? What happened to you?”
She did not respond. Instead, she collapsed into his lap and continued to cry out uncontrollably, her face buried in the lower half of his torso. Hesitantly, he wrapped his arms around her. It was the first time he had ever actually touched her. Though he had often fantasized about it many times before, he never once thought it would happen under these particular circumstances.
She lifted her head and looked at him with big, wet eyes, saying nothing at first. Pain radiated from her gaze, her nearly soulless face, as she carried the look of someone severing nerves and ties to an unhealthy, abusive past. Crater found that in an odd way her lack of explanation spoke more about what she was feeling now than words ever could.
Finally, her swollen, bloody lips parted and she said softly, “I need a place to stay tonight.”
