Tales of a Madman 7
I am finding it very difficult to concentrate in what is happening around me now. I know that my white-coats are coming into my cell and filling me full of drugs every day but it is hard to care about it. I don't think that they are giving me the Rush that I once needed but it doesn't seem to matter to me any more. There was a time when I woke up craving the relief that came from the syringe full of pure violence but now it just isn't important any more.
Much of my time in the cell is a blank to me now. I know that I am here because where else could I possibly be? Night and day mean nothing to me because the lights in the cell never go out or even dim. Meals are brought into me at regular intervals but I have no way of knowing how far apart these meals are. Hunger is a long forgotten memory, I only eat because it is expected of me and I fear that if I didn't eat voluntarily I would be force fed. The plastic bucket I use as a toilet is taken away whenever it gets full and replaced by an identical one. Maybe the white-coats search through my refuse, hoping to find some clue to my mental state. That would be fitting, unlikely but fitting. I am washed when the jailers put the sprinkler system on but even that indignity doesn't affect me any more.
I wish I knew how long I have been here, locked away from the harsh realities of Mort. I could probably work it out by the length of my hair and beard but I can't remember how long it was when I was a free man and every time I try to concentrate on it my mind wanders. I spend so much time running through the maze of my memories that I sometime fear I will be stuck in there for ever. I think that my white-coats fear that as well because they are always reminding me to speak to the camera, to express my inner thoughts to the unseen observers. One of the things that really scares me is how easy it is getting to talk to the camera. My life is becoming nothing more than a story for the amusement of the hidden watchers, a tale for them to dissect and examine. Perhaps one day I will be famous, a case study for the psychiatrist who train and work in the universities and schools. My only lasting effect on the world - a puzzle for trainee mind shrinkers!
The present might be vague and shadowy to me but the past is clear and precise. I care little for myself but I find myself worrying more and more about people I used to know, people I haven't seen in months, or it might be years, who knows? One of my friends was a man called Tony Morrison, a strong, vibrant, alive person; or at least he was when I first knew him.
I first met Tony in Meny and we became good friends in those hectic months. My time in Meny had to be one of the high points of my life and I hope that I am never forced to forget it. Meny was clean and fresh, a city full of young, lively people, people who know that they are the best and that they are amongst peers. The competition and rivalry was intense but the social life was incredible. All of the operatives in training might be forced to work very hard but we played hard as well, boy, did we play!
For the first few weeks, while we were all finding our feet, the parties were incredible. Every night there were hundreds of things going on and the only problem was deciding which event you should go to. For about a month after that it quietened down when people realised the work load that they had to deal with. That was when the first drop-outs started but the operatives who managed to hack the pace didn't care about those who fell by the side. All that was important was making it ourselves, becoming one of the select few, the elite, operatives!
After the time of settling, everyone seemed to come to terms with the work and the parties started again. In those few months that I spent in Meny, I formed friendships that will last forever. At least, that was what I thought at the time, but insanity has a way of testing even the strongest of relationships.
Tony had a room in the same hall as I did and we soon got to know each other. I liked him, he was clever, witty and had a wicked, dry sense of humour that appealed to me. It took a long time to get to know him well, but I thought that it was time well spent.
As we went through training together the friendship became stronger and stronger. We both had our faults and there were times when I really hated Tony but they were few and far between. Both of us had problems with certain aspects of the training but it seemed that what one of us was weak in the other one was good at and we somehow managed to struggle through everything. We both expected to team up and work together when we completed out training but it didn't work out that way.
Out on the streets, I work best on my own and Tony always did function well as part of a team. So, when we graduated we went our separate ways but we kept in touch. Every time I met Tony his liveliness and zest struck me afresh. He loved life so much and was always ready to make new friends and think the best of people. His sense of humour had a wicked streak to it and no-one was safe from his sly comments but he insulted himself far more than anyone else and that seemed to take the bite away from his jokes and jibes.
I hadn't heard from him in a couple of months when I got a call out of the blue asking if I could meet him in one of our local bars. I was overjoyed to hear from him again and cancelled an appointment I had so that I could meet up with him. When I got to the bar, Tony was already there and he seemed to be on edge. He kept looking around the room and he had taken a seat where he could keep his back to the wall and keep an eye on the door at the same time.
When we started talking it was obvious that there was something on his mind but it took Tony a couple of hours and a lot of drink to actually mention it. The story came out that he had screwed up big style on a BPN and he had two choices, summary execution or serving a two months long tour on Dante. Some choice, both equalled certain death.
I couldn't believe it when he told me that, SLA Industries couldn't do things like that, could they? It was blackmail, pure and simple and SLA was far above that sort of thing. It just goes to show how naive I was back then, now I would believe anything of Slayer and his private universe. Tony was distraught, he just couldn't believe that he was going to be leaving the city that he loved and heading to a war-torn hell. He did his best to put a brave face on it but I knew that he saw this last drink together as a way of saying goodbye.
He was due to ship out the next day and we spent that night getting very drunk and talking about the old days. The bar was meant to close at 1 AM but with a little gentle persuasion and a lot of money we kept it open until about 8 o'clock. We drank lots and talked more and for a while, we almost managed to forget that Tony was leaving the next day.
Finally, the time came for him to go and there were tears in his eyes when he got into the taxi. It wasn't sorrow at leaving me or fear of dying on Dante but it was a deep regret that he had to leave Mort. Tony loved the city so much, the people, the buildings, the atmosphere, he even loved the constant rain. He had grown up in Suburbia and he truly believed that he had Slayer to thank for everything he ever had. At the time I argued with him about it but now I believe it to be true. I don't think that Tony meant it in the way that I do now though.
Over the next two months I never forgot about Tony and I watched as many of the news channels as I could in the vain hope that I would find out something about what was happening on the War World of Dante. I know now that the garbage that is beamed directly into the population's brains from the vid is far from the truth but I didn't know that then. I thought that we would be told the truth, we would actually be able to find out what was happening in the World of Progress. As usual, the news was good. Great progress was being made against Thresher. The vile invaders had suffered huge losses and would soon be in the position where they had to beg SLA Industries to accept their surrender. It is amazing how many times Thresher have suffered vast losses but they can still fight on and kill thousands of our people every day. Our soldiers fight them on the War Worlds and have done for hundreds of years without making any progress against them but still they are on the brink of defeat. I would like to think that the people of Mort are not stupid enough to swallow the garbage that we are told but it is just not so. I believed in it for years on end, never thinking to question the authenticity of it so why should anyone else doubt.
For two months I watched for news but was certain that Tony would have died long ago. I remember reading somewhere that the average life expectancy of a grunt soldier on his first tour of Dante was 28 hours. Not days, but hours. That is just incredible! With all the technology and equipment that the soldiers are given they can still last for just over a day before they are destroyed. There was no mention of what the expected life span of a Thresher soldier was but I didn't really expect to be told that.
Still, I watched for any sign of Tony, any hint that he might be alive. The two months passed and I hoped that he would get in touch but it didn't happen. After another week I was beginning to believe that he had died on Dante and by the time that the third month was over I was sure that the evil monster that is Thresher had claimed another victim. I was swept up in the anti-Thresher brainwashing and was almost ready to sign up for Dante myself, just to avenge Tony's death.
Then Tony rang! I couldn't believe it when I saw his face flickering on the screen of the vidphone. He wanted to meet me in the same bar where we had last spoken and it was then that I started to worry. His voice was different, harsher somehow and his attitude had changed. It was as though he expected me to automatically drop everything and come running for him, as though he deserved my obedience. I went to the bar, not sure of what I was thinking. I wanted to believe that I had been mistaken and that Tony was just the same as he had ever been but I couldn't.
I got to the bar and Tony was sitting in exactly the same seat that he had been in last time. He was leaning on the table, with a bottle of beer in his hand but his eyes were constantly scanning the room. He watched every move that anyone made and stared at me as I walked across the bar to meet him. Our greeting was forced, it was like I was meeting a stranger for the first time. We sat and we drank and slowly things relaxed between us. I talked about what I had been doing for the last three months and Tony pretended to be interested. No matter how much I questioned him Tony would say nothing about his time on Dante. In fact, the more I asked, the quieter he became so I quickly dropped the subject and we talked about Meny again.
The night wore on and Tony got drunker and drunker. He eventually got drunk enough to talk about Dante and it scared me. First he showed me the scars where he had had the Nuke implants put in. Normally, that sort of operation doesn't leave any scars but it was a rush job for the military and the surgeons cut a few corners. Tony's body was covered in a network of thin, white lines but it didn't seem to worry him. He was far too impressed with his new found strength and speed to worry about minor things like scars.
His stories about Dante shocked me and I had been an operative for close to a year by then, very few things shocked me. He told me of whole units of soldiers destroyed by flame-throwers, people screaming and running while the molten flames burned through their armour, their skin, their bones! He told me of the time that a unit of Thresher troops equipped with jump units on their armour dropped into the middle of his camp and started shooting anything that moved. That horror went on for almost 5 minutes and then they suddenly left. The survivors were amazed, they were certain that Thresher would have killed every last one of them but then they realised why the enemy had left. The sky above them was full of missiles that dropped onto the camp, onto the area that the Thresher troops had left only moments before. How did Thresher know that the air strike was on it's way? Nobody knew! A total of 18 soldiers out of 2,500 survived that attack and more than 400 of them had been killed by their own missiles.
Tony told me of the time he saw a Captain order his men to fire on a unit of our soldiers that had broken and were fleeing from the battle. The poor fools were caught in a crossfire between Thresher and their own companions and were cut down in seconds. They never stood a chance against the Thresher troops and their own side killed them for trying to save their skins. Tony told me of the time that he had been caught in the radius of a bomb blast and had been thrown through the air to land in the area of no-man's land between the two lines. He said that he lay there for almost 6 hours before he found the courage to start crawling back to his own lines. He struggled the 20 metres back through the blood soaked mud, across razor-wire and bloated, rotting corpses. He told me of how when he tried to crawl across what looked to be open mud, he fell through the surface and landed in a mass grave. Bones and broken armour grabbed at him and his eyes, ears and mouth were filled with the putrid mess of rotting flesh and diseased meat. Maggots crawled over him and gas escaped from one corpse with a high pitched whine that sounded like a young girl laughing. He said that it reminded him of the giggle of one of the girls he used to date in Meny and he actually laughed then. He sat at the table in the bar and laughed at that memory.
When he did finally get back to his own lines, he was given two minutes to get cleaned up, given a shot of Ultra Violence and then sent back to his unit to join in with an attack on the Thresher lines.
The entire time that Tony was telling me this catalogue of horrors, his hands were clenching and unclenching, the knuckles growing whiter and whiter but his face was still and calm. The emotions seemed to have been drained out of him and I didn't want to know what had been used to replace them.
In the early hours of the morning, the barman came over to tell us that he was going to have to close up soon. He leaned over the table to pick up some of the many empty bottles that lay scattered across it and Tony lashed out at him. The edge of his open hand struck the barman across the throat, breaking bones and crushing his wind pipe and before I had a chance to do anything Tony was on his feet and kicking at the unfortunate man. I threw myself at Tony, trying to pull him away but my friend casually brushed me off and threw me across the room.
As I picked myself up I saw that Tony had moved away from his victim and was walking towards the door. He turned to me and I will never forget his words.
"You will never understand what I've been through, no-one will. They taught me to be a wolf and now they put me back with the lambs."
As he walked out into the rain I staggered across the room to see if I could help the barman but it was too late. I called the Shivers, explained what had happened and went home. I never heard of Tony after that but I almost hope that he has died. I know how bad that sounds but you didn't see the pain in his face when he left the bar, you didn't hear how out of place he sounded when he tried to make normal conversation. Tony doesn't belong on Mort any more, he belongs on Dante with the other killing machines. Maybe he went back, I don't know!
With hindsight I can see that Tony was just an example of what Slayer does to every one of us. He twists us and changes us into creatures with no feelings, no souls. We are reared in an environment that has no regard for life and then we are punished if we take on the same attitude. One of the paradoxes of Mort is that we are taught to kill and then chastised if we do it without Slayers permission.
I am finding it hard to bring myself back to the present, away from Tony and his tales of Dante. I look around what I know to be my cell and all I can see are the bloody mud fields of Dante. I see kilcopters flying through a polluted sky, clouds of poisonous chemicals drifting in the breeze. I see tanks ploughing their way through the ranks of friend and foe alike and I can feel the dim light of the far away sun on my face. My mind knows that this is not happening, that I am locked in a cell in the depths of Central but my senses tell me that I am on the distant War World.
My vision finally clears and I can see the cell walls and ceiling again. There is still a faint scent of blood in my nostrils but it is my imagination. It is just so hard to concentrate on the present, I fear that one time I will never return from the trips inside my vivid imagination.
No, wait,...... The sprinkler system has just come on but it can't be time for my shower already, I am sure that I had one just a few hours ago. This is great, just to confuse me even more the white-coats are changing my routine. Do they want to break my already unstable mind or is all just part of some sadistic game to them.
Wait, there, being washed into the drain. I swear I saw a mix of blood and mud being washed out of my cell and into the drains but that just can't be. My mind is playing tricks on me, perhaps it collaborates with my jailers or perhaps it is just growing bored of this confinement.
Strange, my feet are hurting and there seems to be faint scars on them. Red lines that might be scratches cover the soles of my bare feet but I don't know where they came from. It must be my mind again, or maybe the drugs that the white-coats force into me. Whatever the reason I will ignore them and I will prey that the go away. The marks can't be any more real than the mud and my life is full of enough pain without me having to create more.
I will not let them take my sanity away from me, it's all that I have left.