Mom, Dad, and the Devil

CW: mental health, mentions of suicide, physical violence, gore

It’s a short walk to my car from St. John’s Mental Health Clinic. At the end of my shift, I take the same route every night down Renforth Street. The distressed bulbs in the street lights cast a dim glow over the hopeful drunk homeless, their hands outstretched like kids on Halloween vying for their nightly sugar rush.

I always give them whatever loose coins I have. Sometimes it’s a few dimes, a couple of quarters, a dollar. You never knew their situation — how they got to where they were. 

As I waited for the walk symbol at the intersection of Renforth and Gordon, I wasn’t surprised when I heard the familiar words:

“Spare change?”

The man was new on this corner. He was sitting on a blanket, leaning against the brick wall of Rick’s Coffee and Donuts. He had a cardboard sign beside him: 

Will Dance for Money. 

I smiled; even the most unfortunate of our world have time for humor. I fished into my purse for some loose change. 

You don’t make much as a medical resident; it’s not what people think. And the hours were tough — you put in long hours, but I’m OK with that. I got into medicine to help people, to really help people. 

I know a lot of my peers are in it for the money: the big house, the fancy car, the vacations to the Bahamas. I’m not like that — into money that is. I’ve always wanted to make a difference. 

“Cold out here eh?” I said, vapor emanating from my breath.

The man grinned thinly through his thick graying beard. “Getting close to enough for a night at the motel.”

I found some coins at the bottom of my purse, a couple of quarters and a dime, and dropped them into the overturned baseball cap he held out. “How much more do you need?”

He looked into his hat and shuffled the coins around, his crusted eyes mentally calculating his loot.

“Maybe another forty bucks?” he said, his voice frail and gravelly. 

I frowned; it was a quarter past ten on a Monday night. It was a slim chance he would get an extra forty dollars by the night’s end.

It was sad, how people ended up like this. I often wondered what had happened to them. What misfortune had befallen them to get here?

I chose psychiatry because it was so fascinating. Why are people the way they are? I often found myself uncovering hidden gems from my patients’ pasts, like digging up buried treasure, only to find it was the event that created the person. Genetics played a part, but there was always some trauma, some mishap that altered the direction of the wind on the sails of a person’s life. 

“Give me a minute,” I tried to give him a warm smile, not sure if it came off that way.

I walked into Rick’s Coffee and Donuts, ordered a large coffee, two cream, two sugar, and a carrot muffin. And then I asked for cash back, forty dollars.

When I returned from the coffee shop, the man had a cigarette between his lips, smoke billowing into the winter night.

His eyes lit up when I handed him the food and drink. When I pulled out the two twenty-dollar bills, I think he almost had a heart attack.

His face was like a kid on Christmas morning. “Th-thank you. Thank you.”

The look on his face reminded me of my dad, in the early days, before the thing happened.

Some people get into medicine because they have dealt with a loss. And maybe, pursuing the path of helping people was a way for them to cope with this loss. As if it could somehow suture the wounds of the twisting knife of fate. Maybe I got into psychiatry because my mom was schizophrenic; maybe I did it because she drove my dad insane; maybe it was because of what my dad did to himself when he could no longer take it.

I knew there was something there, buried, driving me forward, pushing me to intervene in my patients’ lives before it was too late.

Perhaps it’s why I decide to help; not just with my patients, but with everything in life.

“Happy to help,” I said. I had that warm fuzzy feeling inside when you know you just made a person’s day.

I turned to leave, the image of the man’s smile still on my mind. I was stepping off the sidewalk to cross the street when I heard him call out, “hey wait!”

I looked back at him; he was standing, coffee in one hand, muffin in the other.

“Do… do you think you can give me a ride to the motel?” 

I felt something stir deep within me. It wanted to say something, I think the word no. And then I heard my mom’s voice: always be kind, Cara. Always be kind.

“My car’s this way.”

***

Even the smell of freshly brewed coffee and carrot muffin couldn’t dampen the man’s stench. I knew the homeless had a smell to them, usually from the lack of bathing; but Lloyd smelt of something rotting, like old blood mixed with urine, and a hint of campfire.

It was strange that Lloyd didn’t know the name of the motel he wanted to stay in. He said he knew where it was, so I drove with his directions.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Lloyd said, his mouth full of muffin.

 “I’m just glad I can help you tonight,” I said. “January’s a cold month. I don’t know how you do it every night.” With my hands on the wheel of my Toyota, Taylor Swift’s melodic voice hummed through the Corolla.

“Hey, do you mind if I smoke in here?” he said.

I furrowed my brow. “I would prefer if you didn’t.”

I looked over at him; his shoulders were slumped a little; his head was slouched.

“Only if you open the window,” I said.

After he rolled down the window, I saw him take out a Zippo lighter and a cigarette from the pocket of his fraying ski jacket.

Flick.

I saw the flame light up his face, he was smiling.

I wondered what happened to Lloyd. It felt awkward to ask, but the psychiatrist inside wanted to know. 

“Do you have family Lloyd?” I said, knowing the answer.

“Parents passed long ago. I didn’t know them well. No brothers or sisters.” He took a drag of his cigarette. “You?”

“I guess that makes two only children in the car. My dad’s passed.” I paused at the flash of an image of a lifeless body dangling from the banister in my childhood home. “My mom, she’s been in a safe place for a long time.”

Lloyd didn’t seem to be paying attention; he was blowing smoke out the passenger window.

“Right here,” he said as he grabbed my shoulder.

I hit the brakes and looked out the window of the car, confused. It wasn’t a motel.

We were on a dimly lit street in front of a house. It was an isolated home, among ruined uninhabited ones. The feel of the neighborhood made me shift in my seat slightly. 

“I know it’s not the motel,” he said, his voice sounding more gravelly now, “I just have to get something from a friend. I’ll be right back.”

He dashed out the car door, slammed it behind him, and went around the side of the house.

It was a small home with a stucco exterior. Crawling vines draped across its front. The windows were dark. If Lloyd had a friend, they would be asleep. 

I felt the stirring again inside me. A voice; a character. Drive, it said. And then my dad’s voice was there: never assume the worst in people, Cara. Always come from acceptance first.

I left the car in park.

When Lloyd returned a few minutes later, he had something in his hand. It wasn’t coffee or the muffin; it looked like a cloth. He got in the car; his grin touched his ears.

“Sorry for the delay, just needed to say hello.”

And then he reached over with the cloth, covered my face, and all I could smell was nail polish remover.

***

I must’ve been in a basement because the air felt cold and damp, even for January. There was a smell, like cleaning product mixed with overcooked meat. A single light bulb hung from the concrete ceiling in the middle of the room, projecting a ghostly illumination across the walls.

I tried to move my arms but couldn’t, realizing they were bound with rope to a chair. When I shuffled, the chair was stuck. I looked down and saw the chair’s legs bolted to the floor.

Standing across from me, the dim lighting casting a ghastly glow across his face, was Lloyd, grin in tow. He had changed out of his rags and was dressed in a gray muscle shirt and jeans. His black eyes were ravenous, like a rabid dog watching a juicy morsel of meat. His grizzled beard was wild and twisted as if a current of electricity had run through him.

“She awakes,” he said. I felt the hairs prick on the back of my neck.

Just behind him, in the corner of the room, was a corkboard fixed to the concrete wall. I felt my heart start to pump, slow at first; and then it raced, like a galloping derby horse. There was something pinned to the corkboard. 

Neatly arranged in rows, with different colored pins, were the long locks of women’s hair. 

I screamed.

***

Flick.

The flame from the Zippo lighter in Lloyd’s hand danced disturbing shadows across his face. The noise was a trigger for me now. Over the past few days, the number of burns on my arms and legs was growing.

“Lloyd,” I said, trying to steady my breathing, “this is insane, you have to stop this.”

“Lloyd, this is insane, you have to stop this,” he parroted in a childish mocking tone. In my psychiatric residency, I had many patients, but nothing prepared me for this.

All of my communication techniques were failing me. I knew that Lloyd was a deeply disturbed individual; he was psychopathic. He put barriers around his past and it was hard to breach them. I was hoping for some kind of leverage, something I could use on him to let me go; but it was like trying to scale a castle wall with a step stool.

It wasn’t fair. How could a good deed put me here? Wasn’t there such a thing as karma?

I thought of my mom, black hair flowing across her face, vibrant and strong, before the medication and the mental health hospital. What would she tell me?

Keep looking, Cara, she would say. You’re a smart girl; you can do anything you set your mind to. 

I looked at Lloyd. I knew there was something in him, something that happened to him that made him like this. If only I could find it before I ran out of time.

Lloyd lumbered toward me.

Flick.

***

I was losing track of time, but I was recognizing a pattern. Lloyd came down twice a day: once to give me food and water, and the other for his hour of fun. After the searing pain had stopped, I would hear him walk somewhere behind me, climb a set of stairs, and then slam a door behind him. After that, silence. 

I had a good twelve hours to chew at the rope binding my hands to the chair before Lloyd came back.

My teeth hurt and my gums bled, but it was nothing compared to the burns. I was making progress. Little by little, I was chipping away at the rope. I hoped Lloyd didn’t notice.

The corkboard with his prior victims’ hair was always in view as if beckoning my raven black locks to join them. I had counted the locks of hair: thirty-two of them. Thirty-two women have sat in this chair.

I felt sick, but I knew I had to focus. I had my mind; it had gotten me into medicine and it would get me out of this hell. 

I thought of my dad before my mom began having her episodes. He was such a different person then. Patient, tolerant, and kind. What would he say to me? Everyone has a story, Cara. The abusers were once the abused. They have felt real pain; that is why they act.

I still had hope I could get through to Lloyd. I knew there was something buried, something I could use to turn him.

***

After weeks — I think it was weeks — I was losing my sanity. The doctor had become the patient. At times, I would catch myself laughing hysterically, or maybe it was Lloyd; everything was melding together. My arms looked like bubble wrap and I wanted to die.

I think Lloyd knew because today was different.

He took a pair of scissors and snipped off a lock of my black hair. I saw him roll up the hair, tie it with a small pink bow, and then pin it up on the corkboard.

He also brought down a small tin can and placed it down in front of me so I could read the label: kerosene.

I felt my brain scream.

“Lloyd, please,” I said, feeling myself shaking.

“Fire, Cara!” he said, his ghoulish teeth visible in a grin through his beard. “Fire!”

In all these weeks, I had never broken through to him. I pictured Lloyd as a child before he became the monster. I wondered what that child was like. Was he a good child? What happened to you, Lloyd? Did anything happen at all? Or are you just the way you are? In a sense, I pitied him. Fate had created him, and he was as unlucky as any psychopath ever was. Born a monster. Forever destined to live a monster’s life.

Regardless of his misfortune, I knew what I had to do: let my own monster out.

I felt that stir inside of me again. That subtle voice that was always there, yet never allowed to awaken, like a flickering ember, always doused before it could spread.

And then, I let it grow. I fed it: newspaper, and sticks, and logs, and picnic benches. I fed it until it was an inferno, raging like a wild beast ready to devour the world.

Flick.

Lloyd waved the Zippo in front of my face, giggling to himself as he brought it close to my skin. I could feel the familiar heat nearing my cheek. 

“Fire!” he said. “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

All at once, I ripped my hands free of the bonds, the whittled rope breaking under my demon strength. I lunged forward, my feeble legs finding a sudden surge of power. I tackled Lloyd into the ground like a linebacker and bit him savagely in the neck, my teeth sinking into his flesh. I was a ravenous vampire having its first meal in months. He screamed and the lighter flew out of his hand, clattering onto the cement floor. I sprinted to the corkboard, Lloyd roiling on the floor in a daze. Grabbing two pins from the board — one had a pink bow on it — I ran at Lloyd. Jumping like a gymnast in a floor routine, I landed with my hips locked down on his chest. I pinned his arms with my legs and raised the pins over my head. I was a cobra poising before striking its prey. With the full force of the devil, I brought the pins down with punishing malice and punctured his eye sockets. I would never forget the sound of that scream, like a ravaged animal caught in a trap. 

Moving with quickness, I picked up the can of kerosene and drained its contents over Lloyd. The liquid poured out like a majestic water spring, covering Lloyd’s body in a shimmering elixir. And then, I dove for the Zippo.

Flick.

I tossed the lighter at Lloyd’s body rolling on the floor, his hands clawing at his eyes in agony. And then I saw it: flames. His whole body erupted in an instant and his scream was the piercing wail of a banshee.

I stood there and watched. I watched as he rolled and screeched as his body burned. I watched as his skin sizzled, crackled, and blackened. I watched until the screams stopped, until he stopped moving, until I knew for sure he was dead.

With his body still burning, the smell of charred flesh filling my nostrils, I left him there. I climbed the basement steps and pushed open the door to freedom.

*** 

I’ll be finishing my residency soon; two years can go by quickly. Some things you want to forget, but some things you need to remember.

I wish I could say I read about Lloyd’s past in a tucked away article in an old newspaper somewhere — that he killed all those women because he was abused as a child, or that his parents were arsonists and attempted to burn him alive.

Sometimes I think about how I would feel if I found an article like that.

Would it change the way I felt?

After a long day of seeing patients, I’ll often lie in bed at night, staring at the ceiling. Images dance, there on the ceiling, flickering like flames.

I was the devil that day, but you need a second devil to deal with the first.

When I put myself back there in that basement, Lloyd screaming on the floor and the can of kerosene in my hands, I think to myself: would I change anything?

The answer is always the same: I dump that kerosene can and light him up. Over and over again.

Flick.