doors wide shut

 

I woke up later that night to find my front door standing wide open. Window, too. There was a breeze blowing through and it caused the door to sway back and forth, making this eerie creaking sound. I went out into the hall, but there was nobody there. I went back inside and closed the door. That’s when I smelled it: Dolce & Gabbana.

There, sitting on the end of the couch, was Fanny. She looked different, though. She’d cut her hair short and dyed it red. Fire red. Even so, it was Fanny all right. She was still wearing scrubs.

I sat down next to her, asking her if she was really here. If this was actually real.

“Hey,” she said, “I don’t do lame-ass dream sequences,”

This was real, all right. No sugar-coated Fanny this time. Not in real life.

“Having trouble sleeping?” said Fanny.

How did she know?

“Arlen, I know you better than you know yourself.”

Cliché aside, she was probably right.

“You holding it together?” she said.

As best I can.

“Been to the hospital lately?”

How did she know?

“Nurses talk. Remember?”

Like Quaker Parrots.

“Right.”

I told her what happened, the whole awful truth. I told her they how they said her name wasn’t Fanny, and she wasn’t a nurse at all.

“My given name is Francine.”

Of course. Who would name their daughter Fanny, anyway?

“And I never said I was a nurse.”

Yes you did. Of course you did. At dinner. Remember?

“No, I did not. Try and remember, Arlen. Exactly, what did I say?”

Let me see. She said: “Well, I work right around the corner, at St. John’s Medical Center. I went to the UCLA School of Nursing.

OMG.

“See?”

I did see. Wow. She did the same thing I did to her. I knew I loved this gal.

“Turnabout is fair play.”

Touché.

Now discovering the truth, I wasn’t hurt at all. In fact, it was all so liberating.

I asked where she had been. Where had she been staying?

“The hospital. When it comes to comfort, nothing beats a good ole hospital bed.”

But you just said you were not a nurse.

“I’m an orderly, okay! Happy, now?

Not really.

“I’m essentially a janitor; same as you.”

Same as me. How perfect.

“How’s your head, Arlen?”

Okay. Still unruly; but okay.

“Still seeing tiny little creatures bouncing up and down like so many microscopic acrobats?”

Huh?

“Still snuggling-up to flies?”

How did she know? She was right; she did know me better than myself.

“Hey,” she said, “I don’t do clichés.”

Indeed.

“Sucking down antifreeze and putting your head through a wall isn’t going to cure you, either.”

So what is? I’ve got an awful headache.

She said she had just the thing: another bedtime story.

I trusted her. Maybe she wasn’t a for-real nurse; but still: she was my nurse. If I was lucky, maybe I’d slip right back into a coma.

Go for it, I told her, and I lay down in her lap. Good times.

“I call this one, ‘Down in Downey.’”

Down in Downey. Odd title, but go ahead.

“Just listen,” she said.

Yes, ma’am. Listening.

“So, there I am at Downey Psych. You do remember I used to worked at Downey Psychiatric Hospital, yes?

Affirmative.

“So there I am working at Downey Psych when they bring this patient in. According to him, he’s some kind of scientist. All I know is he talks like a scientist. Why not?

Why not, indeed.

“He starts telling me all kinds of crazy shit. This guy has so much useless information in his head, he just can’t keep it from pouring out of his mouth.”

Sounds familiar.

“His chart says they found him wandering the streets, playing in traffic, and he was brought in for his own protection.”

Very familiar.

“Seems he’s got all kinds of conspiracy theories. First one is about the Chinese.”

The Chinese?

“Seems he’s got this idea the Chinese have created a whole army of miniature soldiers and they are about to invade America.”

Fulmer?

“Next, he starts in about how people are killing themselves by trying to play-out the video game Frogger in real life.”

Salty?

“Calls it Frogging.”

Froggering.

“Right. Froggering.

“But these are nothing compared to what he whips out next.”

Let me guess.

“That’s right. He saves the best for last, and it’s a real doozy.

“He starts telling me all about this plot to take over the world, only the invading army is an alien force from outer space.”

Oh, my.

“While this is nothing new—I’ve seen as many sci-fi movies as the next geek—he’s got a unique twist on this one. Seems the invasion force is microbial, and that it’s from a planet called—“

Germanicus.

“That’s right. Germanicus. Says it’s already here on Earth, just waiting to pounce.”

At the North and South Poles.

“So you know the story?”

All too well.

“I thought so,” she said.

But she had one last tidbit of information, and this one was a real lulu.

“He says his name is James Aloysius McCarthy; but he tells me just to call him Jimmy.”

The Professor?

“If that’s what you want to call him.”

OMG! She knew the Professor. I mean, from before.

“Let me tell you, he was in bad shape. But for some reason, we really hit it off. I don’t know; maybe I just like helping people. Crazy as he was, he was the most interesting person I ever met. Crazy, yet cognizant; if that’s at all possible.”

It is. It surely is.

“They put him on a whole cocktail of medications: Thorazine, Lithium, Largactil; just to name a few. And while he did now have a tendency to drool a bit too much, the drugs didn’t stop him at all. He was still hell-bent on halting the invasion by alien pathogens from outer space. So much so, believe it or not, he even got me believing in it too. That’s how convincing he was.

“After several wild episodes, realizing the medication just wasn’t going to do the trick, they decided the only remedy left was electroshock therapy. I remember going to him the night before and telling him so. It was his idea at that time to escape from Downey. Downey was, after all, just a hospital, not a maximum-security prison.

“When he asked me if I wanted to go with him, to ‘Bust out of this joint,’ as he put it, I told him I was with him all the way. I love a great adventure.”

“So we tunneled underneath the hospital and scaled the outer wall.”

Huh?

“Not, really; but it sounds like so much more fun that way. In all honesty, we walked right out of the place. I had my Employee ID card, of course; told the security guard I was just taking him for a walk. Whatever. The guard couldn’t have cared less.

“So there were, on the run. At least, I pretended like we were on the run; made it more fun that way. But Jimmy; Jimmy really did believe the authorities were in hot pursuit. I let him go on thinking that; pretending he was John Dillinger really was all he had going for him now.

“Traveling by ravine, and the LA River, we went all over LA.”

Sounds first class.

“We went to the beach and the park.”

How romantic.

“A museum and a baseball game.”

Wait, I’ve seen that movie. That’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

“We went to the LA Stock Exchange downtown.”

Fulmer?

“Then to the top of the US Bank Building, followed by lunch at a fancy French restaurant.”

Yep; that’s Ferris Bueller, all right.

Then do you know where we went?

The True Love Wedding Chapel?

“No, silly. Disneyland.”

Disneyland? I hate Disney. I’m more of a Looney Tunes kind of guy.

“There we were, two Bonnie & Clyde wannabes on a mission to save the world.”

More like Starkweather and Fugate.

“We were all over that place. It was quite a scene. And then, right there in the Tunnel of Love, that’s when he told me exactly how we were going to beat back those alien pathogens from Planet Germanicans.”

How romantic.

“The answer was easy, he said.”

The battle plans.

“Right. That’s when he told me about the miniaturized spy and how he was hiding inside some dodo brain’s head. All we had to do was find that person, crack open their skull, and extract those plans.”

Good ole Professor.

Wait. You didn’t actually believe him, did you? You know he’s whacked out of his gourd, right?

“With his extensive knowledge on the matter, and my access to medical records, we made the perfect team. Now, it was all up to the process of elimination.”

You mean?

“You got a better idea?”

No, but splitting people’s heads open is no way to treat your fellow man.

“Somebody has to save the world.”

Of course.

“After that, my mother showed up and took us back to the hospital.”

Your mother? How did she know where to find you?

“I always ran away to Disneyland. I guess you could call it ‘My Thing.’

“Unfortunately, now with our plan in place, Jimmy was babbling more than ever. Poor guy; just didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut.”

That’s the Professor.

“Good news was, in the end they didn’t zap his brain at all. I’m glad. I would have missed my friend.”

Me, too.

Seems some big-shot attorney representing the family trust showed up just in the nick of time and got Jimmy out. Said he was being transferred to a private facility. But that’s not all.”

What?

“On the release form, there’s his name, big as black ink. It’s not James Aloysius McCarthy; and he’s no professor.”

Then, she just stops talking.

What? What was his name?

“Take a guess.”

I don’t know. Hoss Cartwright? Dr. Albert Michelson?

She just shook her head.

Geez. Really? What a horrible ending to such a wonderful story.

“The only thing else I can tell you, Arlen, is you need to check your fridge.”

My fridge?

“I think you’ll find what you’re looking for there.”

And with that, she was gone. Not out the door or even out the window, but just gone. Poof. Disappeared.

I thought about what she said; I thought about a lot of things. Then I thought about my fridge. My fridge? What about it? Those damn kids cleaned me out already.

So I went over and opened the damn fridge, What I found what something right out of Silence of the Lambs.

What I found in my refrigerator was a man’s head. A whole head: eyes, ears, nose, lips and all. Benjamin Raspail? Not hardly.

I don’t know who it was, or how it got there; but sure as shootin’ there was a human head right there in my refrigerator. Did Fanny put it there? One of those kids? The Professor?

OMG! Was my girlfriend really a serial killer? Was Fanny the Cranium Killer? I was kidding before.

What was I supposed to do with a human head? What did Fanny expect me to do? I had an idea, but it was all too much for me to process now. Or ever! So I went back to bed and pulled the covers up over my head. Personal bubble.

When I woke up the next morning, my front door was wide open. Again!

Next thing I did was check my fridge. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Either I had just had the craziest night of my life, or I was sleepwalking again? Regardless; one thing was for sure: I needed new locks.