The Tome

     The sun felt good on my face. I was unusually awake for an early school morning as I strolled across the metropolis like campus. Student bodies were bustling about the university full of their headlong beliefs. Some of the more interesting bodies were wearing miniskirts or tight jeans. Rick and I were halfway across the main courtyard on our way to the Social Sciences Building. I breathed deep of the late September air and became lost in my own dreamy thoughts…until Rick grabbed me by the shoulder and jolted me back to reality.
     "Hey, check out that guy over there." Rick pointed to our left.
     I looked over at a man who was headed in the same direction. It looked like he planned to head us off at the doors. We stopped walking, and the man stopped, too. After a few moments of hesitation he abruptly altered his course. I felt strangely dazed and confused and my heart skipped a beat.
     The man had thick, black sunglasses on so I couldn't tell if he was actually looking at us. He was overdressed. For one, he was wearing what appeared to be a tan, camel fur overcoat. I couldn't have known it was camel fur--it just looked like it. I thought it was a little too warm out to be wearing a fur overcoat, but whatever shakes your beans. He was definitely a slick looking individual. His polished leather shoes were twin mirrors that caught and reflected the sunlight. A dark green alligator skin briefcase that he carried in his right hand swung rhythmically with his timed walk. Crocodile rock came to my mind as I imagined he was thinking an outdated tune. The flaps of his overcoat floated behind him on the wind.
     For some reason I couldn't take my eyes off him. He looked so strange. A gray derby was tilted at a peculiar angle on his head. For the life of me I don't know why I decided the hat was made from mouse skin. Maybe it was the way the sun reflected off it with a dull, greasy shine. The smooth gleam made my skin crawl. In my mind I suddenly pictured rats with glassy red eyes scurrying about through dark, muck filled sewers. There was something slightly off-key about this man. His casual sleekness was out of sync with the present campus fashion for rich guys who wanted to show off their bucks. He was too weird or something. He reminded me of an artist--that guy who painted melting clocks with trains coming out of them. I remembered something like that from art history.
     I don't know why, but all I could do is stare at him. It looked like he had walked through a time warp from the dirty thirties into the present. Or maybe he looked more seventies. He had on a fat red tie and a shiny gold watch chain descended from his vest pocket down to his trousers. He also wore a black pinstripe suit. The suit did look classy. I could see the white pinstripes glowing brilliantly in the sunlight. The lines looked like dazzling inlays set into a freshly polished block of lustrous marble. They were sizzling. I could feel them burning into me.
     "What a weirdo," I commented to Rick. I grinned strangely--my smile felt too big and it made my lips hurt. "This guy looks like he's dressed for the Mafia. He looks like the Godfather's nephew." I glanced over at Rick. His eyeballs were engaged in a transfixed stare.
     "Jesus man," Rick said. "Do you think he goes to school here?" Rick looked nervous, but he was obviously trying to hide it. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. I was having trouble focusing on Rick's face. His lips hadn't moved right with the words. It seemed like he was making funny faces as he talked. "I just can't believe it!" Rick's expression changed to a look of savage hatred. "Why doesn't he go home?" Then he smiled and looked at me as if he hadn't spoken a word.
     "What?" I said in a weak voice. The sun was passing through me as if I was transparent. I could feel it. A perverse sense of déjà vu had crept into my conscious thinking. I felt sick to my stomach. Everything was much too bright. I knew it was the damn shoes reflecting those jagged rays that could cut through flesh and straight into bone. This had all happened before...The words echoed again and again inside my head as I shaded my eyes. I was caught in a bad dream that was trying to survive the morning glare. It was a wicked white light that blazed through the wide-open Venetian blinds of an unusually lucid window. But the light was above my head and beyond me, and I just couldn't reach high enough to pull the cord and shut it out.
     "He's probably a foreign exchange student from Iraq!" Rick made a mock machine gun gesture at the students around us. He laughed at his joke and slapped his knee. "Hey, come on, we gotta get to class, man."
     I gave a dry laugh, but a pasty film had coated my throat. It felt like the Sahara Desert. There wasn't an oasis in sight for a thousand miles in any direction. Standing on the highest mound I looked outward past the stark dunes of white sand and suddenly realized I was shut off from the rest of the world.
     Rick was still laughing as he started to move on, but when he noticed I wasn't coming he stopped and turned around. We looked into each other's eyes, and I realized I was gazing at a mirror reflection of myself.
     "Rick?" I said, and couldn't hear my own words, "I can't go to class." I looked again at the man who had almost reached us. He had jet black hair. The edges sticking out beneath his derby were pasted smooth against his head. Maybe he used motor oil instead of gel. When he reached us he came to a stop and removed his shades with a cool, quick flick of the wrist. His eyes were as black as coal. It was then that I decided he looked just like Rudolph Valentino. My God, it's the Dean! A voice shouted in my mind with abhorrence.
     The man with the briefcase stood still for a few seconds. His eyes were a vast, frozen depth--blank and expressionless--as he looked right through me. He turned to look at Rick, and I followed his glance. All of the blood had drained out of Rick's face and a greenish hue had formed on his lips. I was feeling really sick. I felt like I had become a video outline in one of Ted Turner's badly colorized movies.
     "What's up?" Rick asked in a garbled voice. The words came out in slow motion, which made them sound even more confused.
     The strange man flashed the most cynical smile I have ever seen--his large, white teeth gleamed in the sunlight--and said like he was the syndic of the universe, "Certainly not hell, that would never be up, would it?" His strange accent regurgitated the words into existence. My ears were sponges, and as the idiotic answer flowed out of his mouth it soaked into my brain filling my head with a numb, dumbfound emptiness.
     For some reason Rick thought it was funny. He lost it. He started emitting this deep, staccato laugh. I didn't think the situation was funny at all.
     The man set his briefcase down on the brick wall, did a quick combination and popped open the latches. I wasn't watching him. I was looking at Rick, but I knew he had opened the briefcase because I heard the clicking sound of the latches popping open. I wanted to look over--I wanted to see what he had in there--but I couldn't look away from Rick. Rick just kept laughing louder and faster. Students walking past were starting to stare at us, but they were on the outside and nothing they could have done or said would have mattered.
     Rick didn't stop laughing, but he did start gagging and coughing from the lack of oxygen. From inside my own little fishbowl area I could sense that a group of people had gathered around. I could detect a whisper of speculation, but it was just the hissing of desert snakes. What did they know? We had fucking Cheerios for breakfast! I wanted to yell at them, but the words wouldn't come out. It wasn't long before Rick's laughing fit turned into a loud and horrible cackling sound he was cracking up so hard. He had fallen on the ground and was holding his stomach in pain, squirming like a dog, drowning in laughter. He looked at me helplessly as his eyes rolled and bounced around like two ping-pong balls, but somehow he managed to keep laughing.
     My head was reeling. I was spinning like a top. I thought for sure I was going to dig a six-foot hole right through the concrete sidewalk down into hard, brown earth. That was when the man handed me a sheet of white paper. I crumpled it up and shoved it in my pocket. I heard him shut the briefcase and walk away. He didn't care. The fucking bastard didn't care about me. A rhythmic clicking of footfalls echoed in my brain as he faded into the distance.
     Rick was obviously choking to death, but he still kept on laughing. I was frozen into inaction. I wanted to tell him it wasn't funny now and never really was, but he kept on laughing like some crazy jack-in-the-box clown. His face turned from bright red to dark purple. I wanted to shake him and yell at him to stop the madness, but what was I saying? What was going on here? I still couldn't see clearly--there was an awful, garbled rushing sound in my ears.
     Rick's eyes rolled up into his head and I could only see the whites.

     I think that was when I lost touch with reality. His only existence was that hideous sounding laugh--mine was blindness. I looked around for help, filled with desperation, but through the haze the purplish faces all looked alien and distant. They were twisted with ideas I couldn't comprehend, and didn't want to accept. Rick had been laughing hysterically for about three minutes straight before he finally doubled over and sucked in his last breath like an enormous vacuum cleaner. I don't guess it was actually breath; it was more like a final gasp of exasperation. I looked on in disbelief. The stillness of Rick's body sent me into action. I checked his pulse like they do in the movies, but the whole episode was just a big fucking joke. Right? It was just a joke. Nobody dies laughing.

     The long white hall I was looking through had started to blacken. I was completely shut out. Everything was twisted in all the wrong directions. Life was going backwards and upside down. I was on the inside looking out. It was a time reversal, but I didn't know the quantum physics to stop it. Hell! I was just a liberal arts major. What was the deal? People don't die laughing--and life goes on. It's a joke--a stupid metaphoric phrase. I felt a hand on my shoulder and thrashed out at it. I swung my arms in anger and frustration. I refused to accept it. It was all wrong. It didn't happen to me. It didn't happen to anyone. I tried to run away from the hands around me and ran blindly into the darkness. I became lost in a snow bound blizzard of emptiness.

     I awoke the next morning. At least it seemed to be the next morning. My head pounded with savage pain. I realized my hands were suppressed. I couldn't move my arms. I was paralyzed.
     I could see a small caged in light in the ceiling I was looking up at. They had gotten me. I was trapped. The floor beneath me was soft. The walls were padded. The white ceiling above my head was an impenetrable blockade.
     I rejected all of it. But the whiteness surrounding me--the warm jacket wrapped around me--made it clear where I was.

     They let me move around the way I want to now. They trust me. But to make sure I'm not trying to trick them, each day an overly round, funny looking bald man wearing bifocals comes to talk with me. He brings me paper. (I wrote him a note a week ago requesting this. I refuse to speak until they realize the mistake they have made and let me go.) I don't ask (write) for much (so far they have given me what I want). The bald man acts absurdly polite (which doesn't help) and asks me stupid questions I have no answers for. His round eyes enlarged by the thickness of his glasses try uselessly to see inside my head. I want to talk to him--so I can tell him how goofy he looks. I'd like to tell him how absurd everything seems to me now, but every time I open my mouth all that comes out is this insane laughter. I can hear it, and it sounds like someone other than myself is laughing.

     They are so ridiculous here. I don't need help. They're the ones who need the help.

     The morning sunlight was shining with bright and happy annoyance through my barred window. I hated it with a passion. I tried to bury my head under the pillow, but the sunlight gleaming off the unadorned white walls of my room prevented further sleep. There weren't any drapes to cover the window. They wanted it that way. They wanted me to wake up with the first rays of sunlight. Happy, happy, happy! I felt sick.
     I sat up in bed and pulled a crumpled sheet of white paper out of the shirt pocket of my plain, white, institutional pajamas. I smoothed the paper out on the desk next to my bed. As I read the words my eyes started to turn glassy, and the white paper blurred into nothing. I looked at the typewriter on my desk. The nice, clean white sheet of paper I always kept ready was missing. I suddenly felt extremely angry. I wanted to smash the typewriter. Where was my damn paper! Then I remembered--my paper was in the desk drawer. And the man brings me fresh paper every morning. Happy, happy, happy!
     I still felt sick.
     I heard footsteps on the hard tile floor outside my synthetic, mostly empty room. I quickly hid the sheet of paper under the mattress--just before the short, fat bald man entered. I looked up at the caged in clock on the wall. Like clockwork he had shown up once again at the usual time. He handed me some paper.
     "I see you are doing better today," he said with an overly cheerful smile. I felt like laughing at his idiocy. Instead I looked at him with a blank expression. The potbellied man pulled my desk chair out and sat down. He watched me with what looked like a superior, Humpty-Dumpty curiosity. I felt like throwing up on his pathetic effort. He thought he was so smart, trying to manipulate me into telling him my secrets. Ha! Even if I said something he would still be too dumb to understand. Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall... White eggshell emptiness--no wonder he cracked. Round man's deceptively soft and understanding voice feigned sympathy as he asked me the usual question: "Would you like to tell me about it?"
     IT! I screamed in my mind. What kind of a word for it is it!? It was the same damn question every morning! If he's so smart, shouldn't he be telling me what it is? I grabbed my notebook and pen from the desk and wrote in large black letters: GO TO HELL! I held it up so that he could clearly see my comment for the day.
     The man looked at me with a dour expression that slowly changed to blandness. It looked as though he had just bitten into something distasteful, but was forced to swallow it out of politeness. I remained sitting cross-legged on the bed. I stared with a hard glare into his dim, beady eyes. I wanted him to leave so I could type on the nice, fresh sheets of white paper.
     "Perhaps later in the day you will be in a better mood," he stated after a long moment that seemed like an eternity to me. Then he stood up and with a slow, wobbling gait, departed from the room.
     With a huge breath of relief I retrieved the crumpled sheet of paper from under my mattress. My eyes began to burn with forming tears as I looked at it:

     The XXX felt good on my XXXwhite XXXXXXXlines... lines.... lineslinXXXXXX I was unusually... whiteXXX linXXXXXXXXX lineslinesXXXXs...

     In a moment of resolution I tore the sheet of paper into shreds and threw it into the wastebasket. I wanted to laugh, but my head hurt; it was beginning to buzz with excruciating pain (not again already). I jumped off the bed and quickly put a fresh white sheet of paper into the typewriter. I sat down on the chair, and immediately my fingers flew into action. After a while I began to feel better.