Comfort for a madman

The stench of blood hangs heavy in the air, and the red that always goes hand in hand with it stains the fallow fields. Groans and screams and cries accompany the sound of bullets, interspersed with the occasional cheer from those who had gotten a lucky few hits. Like a baby bird going back to its mother, the cry of the bound man in front of me rises up to join them.

In sharp contrast to the cry of the man, the officers surrounding him share laughs and smiles. This is standard procedure, and only too necessary when we need so many people and they all insist on running away. One of the smiling officers tell me there is nothing to worry about.

The red-hot iron D in my hand thrums eagerly. I wish I could share its tactless alacrity, but my fingers tremble and my feet refuse to go the way I tell them to. I don’t bother giving the officers any more pleading looks- I have wasted enough of those already. I let the brand guide me instead, trusting in its desire to do its work. The trust is not misplaced. The brand leaps forward excitedly, and within moments I am in front of the man, my hands smoothing away his long hair in preparation.

He is irish, I note distantly. Not that it is much of a surprise. Most of the deserters are Irishmen, nowadays, men who joined as hot-headed youths and are now tired of spilling their blood for another country. I don’t blame him, and I don’t need to. I only need to do as I am told.

I envy the brand for its calm dedication to duty, and I grip it tight in the hope it will lend me some strength. It pulses forward, and I follow devoutly as it presses tight into the man’s cheek in a twisted caress. He screams and screams and screams, drowning out the groans and laughs and even the sound of the faithful brand…

Wakefulness smothers me with a start, sending me shooting up like a jack-in-the-box left waiting far too long. The room is dark and quiet, except for the sound of the neat white walls silently judging me. Turning my head reveals that I have not imagined company- two men stand next to my bed, frozen, no doubt surprised at my sudden spell of wakefulness.

The moonlight affords me the barest glimpse of their faces. One tall, the other short; one thin, the other stout. The first has sunken black eyes the color of death, and a curved nose that hints at a vulture ancestor. The second looks remarkably like a pig- pasty , pink, his mouth curved into a sneer.

They retreat the moment I see them, and by the time I struggle to my feet they have leapt out of the window and disappeared. I don’t bother to follow, already knowing it would be a useless fight. There is little doubt that these are the same intruders who have broken in night after night since I came here and tortured me relentlessly. Tonight’s nightmare was a particularly ingenious invention, I have to admit. Even as a medical graduate, it is difficult to imagine a device that could trigger a selected memory.

For a moment, I think about calling the attendants, but I already know what will happen. It has happened a hundred times.  They will come in, listen to my story with that sad, pitying gaze which drives me quite mad, and then point out that the doors and windows are all locked. Are they so unintelligent as to be unable to comprehend exactly how clever these men are, and that locked windows are nothing to them?

A sigh escapes my lips. The exhale sounds loud in the silent room. It would be a blessing to leave the stifling room and breathe the fresh air outside. Ah-if only such luxuries were granted to me! But no matter- the world outside is not the only one which holds the promise of freedom.

 I cross to the other room, the one that hadn’t watched me in my temporary weakness but only in my professional intellectualism. It holds in it a delicate feeling of camaraderie and, even more attractively, the beguiling call of a hundred books. The books are more than a mere escape, though after some nights of particularly harsh torture, when I was left bleeding and bruised, they served well as one. But they are also my greatest treasures, which hold in them all the respect society still affords me. Perusing them night after night returns to me the dignity I had lost when nobody would believe in the men who would torment me.

I slip a book I had started last night from the shelf. I had only departed from it with regret to rest my eyes, and not only because of it’s power. Every moment away from my book and my pen is a moment I am a useless man, and I have not a moment to spare for uselessness. The day my fingers pulled the trigger and the father of seven children fell was the day I wrote the rest of my life away to a journey for redemption. And if there was anything that could make up for what I have done, if there was anything that could restore me as a man to be respected in others’ eyes, it is what I am doing.

For am I not a part of making history, with every word I write and every list I make? Is this not what I had aspired for from the moment I heard the idea of the Oxford English Dictionary, and their call for volunteers to send in quotations? It has been years of work, but now at last I am a true contributor to a dictionary which would be unheard of in its magnificence, a blessing to all mankind.

I flip the book to the right page and focus. I have to screw up my eyes- they are not what they were in youth.

The first word which I could use draws my attention within minutes of beginning. I set the cool tip of the pen against the paper and begin to write.

FASTIDIOUS

Adjective

“The man was extremely fastidious.”

I was excessively fastidious as I wrote, each letter the same size, every word organized exactly the way it should be. After all, it is my painstaking accuracy and dedication that set me apart from the thousands who sent in quotations for a variety of words each day. It is what makes the dictionary editors send me requests when they were working on a word, thus making me an inextricable part of every step of the process. It has made me my only friend since I had been transported to this wild, lonely asylum.

FEAR

Noun

“Fear gripped the man.”

And of course, I have to admit, it is the meticulousness that saves me. Its something to grip on to, an intellectual challenge that not even the fear of what would come after the sun set could distract me from it. It cannot completely remove my fear, and despite the distraction of my work I am constantly afraid. But it is all hidden under a layer of keen concentration, and what more can I ask for?

And so the fear only clambers out when the sun falls and I have to stop reading and lie in bed, silently waiting for the men who will come and inflict pain on me once again. For nearly fifteen hours a day I am not half as shackled as I would be otherwise.

FIGMENT

Noun

“’It is a mere figment of your imagination.’”

Perhaps those shackles could be thrown away entirely if only those who are supposed to be caring for me would pay a little attention. But they insist that every man who enters my room, every wound I receive, every insult the intruders fling at me in that odd, jeering way is merely a figment of my imagination. Their stubbornness is infuriating- or it was, until I realized it might not be stubbornness at all.

They must all be working with the intruders. I’m sure of it, there is no other reasonable explanation for their pigheaded refusal to see what is right in front of them. It cannot be that I am truly insane, since I have mulled the possibility over a hundred times and logically concluded that I must be sane. That leaves the attendants turning against me, an eventuality only all too possible.

And so, for now, I must satisfy myself with the temporary escape my books and work offer me.

FORGAVE

Verb

“And she smiled and forgave him everything.”

I suppose there is one person I have to thank above all else for this momentary salvation. It is Eliza Merret, the widow of the man I had killed. She came to the asylum once to meet me, upon my request. Perhaps she sensed my true regret; perhaps the doctors told her of my illness- but she forgave me. I couldn’t believe it- cannot, in fact- for I have not even forgiven myself yet! But she is true in her forgiveness- she brings me books, and she brought me the news of Oxford’s call for volunteers. I destroyed her life that day, and she has repaid me by saving mine!

It  is goodness I cannot fathom, and every time I see her again I feel a little lighter.

FUN

Noun

“Now he was laughing and it was clear he was having real, true fun.”

I love it when she comes to visit me, and not just for the books- I truly enjoy her company. It is exhilarating, refreshing, and even though we only talk about only ordinary matters I find myself captured by her. But every moment I spend with her I am on my guard, afraid of overstepping into a widow’s boundaries, terrified of poisoning her memories of her husband. It is happiness too guarded to be real joy, and it is always a mixture of relief and sorrow when she leaves.

There is only one person I can have real fun with, in some sense of the term. He too, was the product of the Oxford English Dictionary. Every so often, he stirs himself up from the tiny heaven of printing presses and piles of words into the grey walls of the Broadmoor hospital, and those are the hours when I am at my happiest.

He is due to visit me today, and he will be here anytime. Anticipation floods me. It has been flooding me since I received the letter last night.

The next word I see holds a particularly interesting usage.

FUTURE

Noun

“There were fifty different futures in which he died.”

The knock rings loud upon my ears, which are so tired of silence. I cannot stop the smile that lights up my face as I open the door.

He is standing there, sure enough, looking like a version of myself from a different future. I am struck with the strange feeling of looking in a mirror every time I see him. If I switched our clothes and copied his confident gait, I have little doubt I could pass for him anywhere. The feeling only increases my chumminess toward him. He is what I wish I could be, what I would have been in a different future where circumstances hadn’t oppressed me so.

“Dr. Murray.”, I greet impassionedly, and he smiles at me.”Do come in.”

“Dr. Minor. It is a real pleasure to see you again.”

He nearly trips over the bowl of water near the door on his way in.

“Careful!”, I exclaim. “It is to keep out evil spirits. They dare not cross the water.”

He nods, looking at me strangely. I bend to scribble one last word before closing the book and returning it to its shelf.

FRIENDSHIP

Noun

“Their friendship would go on for ever and ever.”

“Is that for the dictionary?”, he inquires, nodding toward my writing. I love the way he says dictionary, softly, crooningly, like it was his child.

“Yes.”, I pull open a bottle of wine ad two glasses. He takes his with a smile of thanks.

“It has been poisoned.”, I warn him. “The men who come in enjoy poisoning my alcohol. They know I cannot do without it.”

A month ago, Murray might have panicked, but this time he merely looks at me sadly, pityingly. At least he understands my situation and the pain I am going through.

“You know,”, he says conversationally. “The verb poisoning is really quite interesting. It wasn’t used as a verb until 1400.”

And there it is, the topic that will always unite us. I sit, gesturing at him to do the same. “Indeed, nearly a century after poison, I believe.”