Paradise Lost: Rehab Camp

           “Patients of Hortonhouse, I welcome you with the widest, deepest, and most open of arms, hearts, and such, to this, our flagship rehabilitation ranch.”

At the time I thought that he meant it. 

The doctor’s grin was beef burger broad. 

           “It is my firm belief that functioning in the modern world strictly follows a sense of independence in the intra-psychic world.” Something, something, camp to make you get better. “You have all been selected for your potential…” the least crazy of the mental institution from which we had come, “…shedding those cognitive and emotional shackles that kept you stuck…” I fidgeted with the bronze coin in my pocket, my luck, a secret, “…learn to work as a team to thrive…” I couldn’t say the idea of spending a few weeks in the wilderness without McDonald's or a television sounded appealing, “…and see holistic reprogramming of your entire brain…” but I was willing to try just about anything.

           The lecture continued, garnering varying levels of attention. With my battered attention span, I was unable to catch much, but I scanned it for keywords and filled in the blanks. It was wordy, abstract, and probably fallacious (knowing the doctor). 

           But he was trying to inspire.

           Twenty minutes and it was over. He removed himself. The usual with doctors.

           He left us with Stefanus, an ex-patient. A rugged and hirsute man, he was ripped like a bear from a gay porno, with a granite jaw and steely gaze. He was our appointed survival expert.

           That was the task. Survive for three weeks, live off the land, with none of the comforts of modernity.

           The joke was that we thought we had a safety net.

           “How you gonna learn if I done it for ya?” Stef’s voice was pure thunder, there was no protection from it. “You’re a bunch of whiny little bitches, just get working.”

           “Don’t you fucking dare,” Claire (personality disorder undisclosed) said. Her rant was wordy and ended with, “and where are our goddamn meds? I’ve been on Effexor for seven years I can’t just stop it.”

           The others shrunk when Stef stepped towards her, through the circle of half-fearful, half-furious patients. “You think our ancestors had antidepressants?”

           She didn’t back down. “I don’t give two dicks about that. If I don’t get my pills I’m gonna be of no use to anyone.”

           Stef grinned like a hyena, baring his fangs. “Well why don’t you just go crawl up in a ball and die then?”

           She was livid and belted off some choice insults that ricocheted off Stef’s beer Keg chest like pebbles thrown by a tantrum-throwing two-year-old. 

           “Don’t stress,” I said to her. She recoiled as I touched her shoulder. “There’s no way a psychiatrist would abandon us with no medication. They’re just testing us.”

           Going cold turkey terrified all of us. We spent the rest of the day fuming and cursing around broken tree stumps, in a foul mood as we craved like animals for cigarettes, realizing that we’d got ourselves into serious shit.

           But it was on the day when Linton got eaten by a crocodile that we finally understood that no one was coming to save us.

           After coming to terms with the fact that we would just have to put up with severe withdrawal, we decided that the easiest place to find shelter was in one of the caves on the rocky shoulder of a nearby mountain, surrounded by forest and hugging a stream. It reeked of mossy damp, like rotten cheese, and was moist, but out of reach of the elements.

           “I’m hungry as tits,” Rory (developmental disorder undisclosed) said, “how much longer can we survive without food?” 

           “A few months actually,” I said, “humans can go up to three months without eating. We have water.”

           “It tastes like piss,” Claire said, “we need to purify it or we’re all going to get sick.”

           “Seriously guys I gotto eat something,” Rory said, “months or no months I’m gonna die if I don’t get something to eat. Can’t we make like a hamburger out of a springbuck?”

           We’d searched the plains for berries and discovered some. Most of them had caused diarrhea and vomiting, and, in one case, irreversible psychosis. Tatiana (schizophrenoform disorder undisclosed), who had lapsed into a huddle in a corner, was talking to the shadows.

           “Spir…its, singinging, sing sp sp spirits,” she stammered then, in a song-like tone.

           “Maybe it’s time to hunt something,” I said. I offered a spear I had widdled, having used my coin to transform a long, straight acacia branch. “Anyone have any experience with that?”

           Nobody offered.

           “Linton should do it,” Rory said. “He’s into all that sports rubbish.”

           Linton was the tallest of us, and almost as built as Stef, who we’d seen little and less of every day. Most times he simply popped in, observed us, seemed to take a mental note, and then left. Deaf to our complaints. But Linton was a gentle giant and soft-spoken.

           He shrugged.

           “We should take a vote,” Claire said, “none of us can force someone to…”

           “Hell, fuck, yeah we can force him,” Rory said. “If we’re going to survive we need to know what we’re best at. Linton’s got this.”

           “There are wild animals out there,” Claire said, “putting someone in danger shouldn’t be taken so lightly. I’m sure the doctor will be back soon.”

           Tatiana was quivering in the corner. “GREEEEEEEEN AND GOOOOOONE” she bellowed.

           “Look, someone’s gotto do it,” I said. “Linton, can you do this?” Oddly, my eyes didn’t falter in that moment, as was my tic, when I stared into his. He looked away and nodded. “Alright I’ll come with you to the watering hole, maybe we can find some fish.” I felt quite brave at that point.

           But Linton would soon take his last breath, lying face down in the mud, chunks of mottled flesh and blood coloring the water like soup.

           When the others came back for him a few days later he was completely stripped of meat.

           “The otters! Ott hers, hers is the other!” Tatiana hadn’t shut up for over three hours. Even after I tried to calm her, she only cooed, then lapsed back into obsessive shrieking. It was spooking the camp.

           We had learned that to catch fish it was best to stick to the streams that trickled down from the mountaintop. Finally, we discovered perfectly edible plants; marula, wild guava, and spekboom. This had taken some experimentation, one fatality, four near-death experiences, and a fair amount of soiled clothing.

           Our new lifestyle took up a considerable amount of our daylight hours, and when night fell we were too exhausted to complain or question our abandonment.

           My coin made sparking a fire against stone easy. By evening we sat in a circle around the flames, the warmth of it comforting our sore bones. It had been far more than the three weeks promised. 

           Rumors were starting to spread.

           Flashes of silhouettes, things standing on two legs and watching, but vanishing upon inspection. As one with drug experience, I explained that these “shadow people” were just a mental trick and that there was nothing to worry about.

           And because they wanted to believe it, they did and associated me with a grounding, containing influence.

           I was convinced of my theory and quite impressed with myself in general. I was the leader and the sanest.

           But I was very wrong.

We didn’t have much in the way of possession, but some of them were going missing during the night, or when we were away, spears, rags, and some leftover food. It was happening on a more frequent basis every day.

           The tracks had been impossible for us to decipher, because the forests were home to many creatures, and we just really didn’t have any expertise with it.

           We all knew what had to be done.

           But nobody was up for it.

           “I’m dead,” Rory yelled, “if you make me do this.”

           Rory was the fattest and whiniest person in the camp. He had very little skill in hunting or spearfishing, and very little work ethic at all. He was also the youngest. 

           “We each have our part to play,” I told him, “You’ll be fine. It’s probably just some animal, and it’s more afraid of us than we are of it. Probably harmless.” He almost whimpered. “You will be our watchman, our guard!” I said, putting his hand on my shoulder, “You’ll save all of us!” I was trying hard to inspire him.

           “Do you mean I could be like an assassin?”

           “Yes, sure.”

           “So where will you guys be?”

           “Not far,” I lied, “just light the fire as soon as they get here. We’ll see the smoke and be there in a second.”

           I hoped that he knew how to light the fire. But the fact that I even had to question that emphasized his expendability. In an ideal world, everyone would be safe and have valium and gumdrops.

           But this was not an ideal world.

           Claire was uncharacteristically quiet. She had taken to counseling members of the group. She had a fondness for everyone that could only be described as unconditional. But in this, she didn’t have an opinion. Yet.

           The measurement of time was a concept that had changed considerably for us. There were no hours and minutes, only falling light, and degrees of the sun about the Earth. I took perhaps three-quarters of daylight before we saw the smoke.

We ran.

Eager to see who our intruders were, all of us raced through the forest in semi-circular formation as I had instructed.

Yet on our return, there was nothing, only stillness.

My heart sank. As a leader, there was no such thing as intentionality. You either helped, or hindered, and were judged solely on performance. If I had sacrificed a member (even if he was the laziest) it would not reflect well on my tenure.

Feigning concern, I got up. “We have to save him,” I forswore and leaped into action.

What to do?

It was my talent to generate ideas. It had got me this far.

           When I told them what to do, they seemed a bit baffled, but there was no time to explain. Half of the group split up into an arc, ran towards the cliffs, and began to yell “Rory! Rory!” as loud as they possibly could.

           The other half fanned out, each running in a different direction over a reflex angle about the northern span of plains, waiting for the response. 

           The voices echoed chaotically from the cliffs, as if amplified by a surreal megaphone, raining down upon our valley.

           The creatures, if they could think, must have fancied us as some sort of Gods, because they dropped him some distance in front of my path, unscathed.

           “They were like us only bigger, hairy all over like wearing goat fur tracksuits, and had those cavemen eyebrows you know? Like you see in cartoons.”

           “Rory, for fuck's sake,” I tore at my hair as he rattled on about the Flintstones, “where did come from?” He continued to describe various TV shows. “Jesus man, did you learn anything useful about them?”

           “Back off mate,” Claire said, coming in between us, “this guy could’ve been eaten or beaten, show some compassion.”

           I sighed. There was no getting past her. If I was the head of operations, she was the head of human resources.  I wanted to wring her neck. 

“Claire for the love of God Almighty will you just shut up and let me…”

           But she was furious. This had been a mistake. “And who do you,” her voice inflected as a finger poked my chest, “think you are?”

           I took it for a while, thinking how to diffuse the situation.

           “Okay, listen. We need a plan. These things are taking our stuff twice as fast as we can make it. For everyone’s safety, we need some more intel.”

           “Maybe for once you need to think about people’s safety, rather than whatever it is you want the group to do. I don’t think what you did to Rory was cool.”

           But the guy was smiling. “It was actually kind of fun.”

*** 

           The obsession with these ape creatures had grown amongst our group, despite my constant reassurance that they were most likely no more than a tribe of chimpanzees or gorillas.

           “They were people I swear it,” Rory would say. “They’re stronger than us and faster than us.”

           Everyone trembled at this.

           “But we’re smarter,” I said.

           Still, it ran through the camp like wildfire. Ape people who had us in their sights. And nothing I could say would change that. They were too afraid to leave, but also too afraid to stay. Wherever we went, they feared, we would run into these creatures. Some would say they caught glimpses of them and heard a sort of language that was almost human.

           “You’ve got to do something,” Claire said to me, “this stress is killing the camp, we can’t survive on a diet of terror.”

           “What do you expect me to do?” I grunted. 

           “My job is to look after their hearts, yours is to figure out plans. So don’t come with this bullshit complacency.”

           My inaction was starting to cause rumbles in our clan.

           Tatiana, who had taken to living in her own filth deep within the cave, had become a sort of oracle, and shaman. Members of the group would bring her gifts, in exchange for messages from the spirit world, and fortune-telling.

           It was the day that Rory got his foot caught in a crude snare that everything fell to shit.

           According to him, Tatiana had revealed a vision of something that went like “Beware, the care of the thing there, snap snap all around, root on the ground.”

           We didn’t know how to make traps. And I didn’t know how to explain away their superstitions in a way that they would understand.

           I used my coin, now sharpened, to cut through some of the leafy strings holding the thing together. Exasperated as I was with my tribe I cut a huge gash into the side of my hand but hid it from view.

           Rory’s foot was mangled from jagged stone teeth that lined the beams of the wooden trap’s jaws.

           Someone had to find these creatures.

           At that point I had run out of ideas. I’m not sure whether I volunteered, or if I was forced out, but they looked to me to do something. So I went alone out of the camp, through the forest, and into the open plains. Nothing to guide me but a general direction, a trajectory from our camp to where they had dropped Rory in the plains, a speculative trajectory.

           For how long I traveled was unimportant.

           The wound on my hand had begun to fester, turning first red, then yellow, then blue, then green. I was too weak to hunt, and had no idea where I was in relation to a water source.

It all became a blur of exhaustion, thirst, hunger, and delirium.

           When I finally collapsed, I thought it was all over.     

           And in one sense it was.

           I awoke to the doctor's wan face, "....you survived…”

           Stef sat on a rocky outcrop sharpening a bleeding panga.

           Everything was a blur about me, “Take me back, just take me back.” I felt the words in my head. Did they come out? 

           “…careful…the fever…”

           I pulled myself up from the ground, limbs numb and dead, like cranking tree stumps into an alert position. I looked around. Just as Rory had described. Human-like creatures, built like trucks, covered in fur, with jutting eyebrows. I saw clothing made of hides and the rags we had lost. The colors fuzzed up my throbbing vision, but I was there, I was lucid within the fever dream.

           They spoke a tongue I couldn’t quite place, simple, reliant on many hand gestures.

           “Supremely…happy…no need…content….No…pathologies…only need…” I leaned in towards the doctor. “…gift…you…”

           I felt a sneer brush my face. When I spoke my words rippled out into the ether. I thought I told him, “You think you’re helping us?”

           But I had to admit that in a way I’d never felt more alive and present than I had in my entire life. The anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, and the rest never once crossed my awareness.

           “…stay…” but when he said that I snapped.

           In a sort of swiftness that one can only gain from pushing their body to the physical limit I slashed Stef with the jagged edge of my coin. He dropped his panga and in a fluid motion, I snatched it before it hit the ground and brought it up to the doctor’s throat.

           The Doctor didn’t quake. “…no need…”

           He explained the deal to me but had to remind me at a later stage when I finally emerged from the coma in Bel Anoui Hospital. I had to choose between myself and the others. He had only room (or juice as he called it) for one trip.

           Those days lying in the ward were the hardest, grappling with the moral implications of what I had done. Of the lives I had left behind.

           However, after arriving home, and making up for lost time not eating McDonalds, and plugging away at my screens, I soon forgot about it. I learned to reembrace the illusion that I was fully satisfied.

           My hope is that this will offer some insights into and avenues for further research in this field. While the idea that during times of stress related to survival, psychopathology is subverted by basic needs, no other study has attempted such an in-depth and daring take on the theme. I hope that as a first-hand participant, I can provide a wealth of qualitative data for further exploration.

           But I will not go back.