The Horror Library - The Best in Horror Fiction

+PAIN+ (Chapters 1-3)
By R.J. Cavender

Printer-friendly version

CHAPTER ONE

+++

One of my first memories as a child, is of me watching my little brother Richard through the wooden bars of his playpen when he was an infant. I was three years old at the time.

My baby brother was lying on his back cooing contently, and gleefully chewing through his bloodied little fingers. He was teething, and all that was left of his digits were tiny twitching stubs.

He had to have reconstructive surgery for that.

He had to have many operations over the years. Operations that nearly bankrupted my parents in a mere attempt at keeping him alive.

I sometimes envied Richie.

He was born without the ability to feel pain at all. It doesn't register with his nerve receptors, and his brain doesn't process the stimuli of either pain or pleasure.

He's as numb as they come.

The official name for his ailment is Hereditary Sensory Autonomic Neuropathy Type 5, or HSAN-5 for short. It's rare and it's almost always a death sentence for those who suffer from this disorder. My brother is one of the 'lucky ones' to live past their twentieth birthday.

My brother Richie is a famous case-study for this particular disorder. His name can be found in several medical journals.

A persons brain registers pain as an indicator of fear and as a form of protection and self preservation. We hurt, endorphins are released, and then we react accordingly. Fight or flight. Survival of the fittest. Darwinism in action and reaction.

Richie doesn't react.

He had to wear braces on his legs at 3 years old, as his bones were in a perpetual state of healing. He would run and stomp with such ferocity that he'd splinter at least two or three bones on a weekly basis. Amazingly, he'd never let out so much as a whimper.

Richie had one time walked around on a broken leg for a week and no one noticed anything until the bone ripped straight through his knee. We were at the Department of Motor Vehicles at the time. The woman behind the counter turned chalk-white and then passed out cold.

Richie didn't speak a word until he was eleven years old. They were hoping he'd be a genius, as Einstein didn't speak until he was near that age too.

My brother's first word was 'watch'. He turned to me in the back seat of Dad's sedan, as we pulled away from the In-N-Out Burger drive-thru. He turned to me, a big smile on his face. Threads of drool sparkled in the afternoon light, as he brought the plastic spork up to his eyeball.

"Waaatch!" Richie squealed, as he put the spork up over his right eye like a pirates patch. Somewhere in his mind he'd just made a connection between the word 'watch' and the act of seeing. The doctors had said they honestly never expected him to speak.

I was frozen in my seat and speechless.

Dad slammed on the brakes, clearly in shock.

Richie giggled manically as we sped toward the emergency room. His eyeball hanging by a thin thread of twisted vein and gore, plastic spork sticking out at an odd angle. My brother ate his french fries by the fistful, unaware of any of his own personal pain, and oblivious to the fear and panic that my father and I were experiencing.

And, I think this is where I began envying Richie. Or resenting him. Or...God help me for saying this, but maybe that's when I started hating him.

Perhaps 'hate' is a strong word. I didn't hate him then. I didn't know how to hate quite yet. I hadn't been eaten up and shit out by the world at that point. I was a wide-eyed optimist still. It seems like three lifetimes ago.

There are less than fifty people in the entire United States with the same disorder as my brother. Less than three hundred worldwide cases have ever been documented.

By the time I reached high school, I didn't mention my brother's existence to anyone at all. He was my skeleton in the proverbial closet. I didn't have friends over to my house for fear that they'd tell everyone about my brother.

By this point in time, Richie was pretty much confined to his room. He looked like a living skeleton. The scars that covered his body were the only real indication that he still had skin stretched over his pointy bones. He'd long since scratched his eyes out, and he didn't seem to hear us anymore when we spoke to him.

He rarely was able to come to the table to eat with my parents and I. He lived full-time in his room and in his own world.

I began to self-medicate to take care of my own pain.

Some people 'experiment' with drugs. I did drugs like I was working on a master's degree. I dedicated myself wholly to the pursuit of pleasure through blissful fucked-upedness.

I ingested pills, drinks, potions, and compounds. I scarfed powders, and papers, and herbs, and injections. Somehow, I still managed to maintain a three-point-eight grade point average in high school.

My pain was physical, mental, spiritual and psychological. I felt everything that came my way. Heartbreak was a daily occurrence. Headaches were constant. If I didn't have my music, then I would have had absolutely nothing in this world.

It seems whatever my brother lacked in the sensory department, I was endowed with doubly. Maybe even threefold. I felt everything. And I tried every substance known to man in an attempt at turning this function in my mind off.

I wanted to spend just one day in my brother's mind.

I wanted to know what he was reaching for. All those times he'd sit on the edge of the bed, his arms outstretched in front of him, his fingers feeling the air as he blindly stared into space and babbled.

Richie no longer had a tongue. He'd bit it off several times, but the third time he swallowed it and the doctors were unable to re-attach it.

When I was younger, mom told me he was talking to God when he babbled and gargled in his room. This disturbed me for many years to come. I couldn't help but wonder what my brother would have to say to a god who had done this to him. It hurt me to even think about it.

Richie would laugh and touch the air in front of him like he was playing a harp, or like he was tickling an angel. He would throw his head back and guffaw, all the while basking in the glow of someone or something unseen and entirely enrapturing.

The last time I saw him do this was the night I graduated from high school.

Three months later, I was on tour with my band.

If you were alive in nineteen-eighty-seven and had a radio, you've heard our only top forty hit. We never had another one, but our song ruled the summer that year. Our album went platinum. Our tour sold out in every major city we played. We were huge internationally, and still have a decent following in Japan and Germany to this day.

You'd think I would have had a wonderful life. A full life. A happy life.

I made millions with one song.

The record company still owns the rights to this day. The rights have been sold to several movie companies over the years, and presently the song is being used in a commercial for the new line of cars from Mitsubishi. For these newest ventures, I haven't made a single cent.

I've been bankrupt since the mid nineties, when the last of my savings made that fateful trip up my nose. My drug usage had gotten the best of my finances, and my physical and mental state had taken the hardest hit.

I was close to losing my mind.

I was a has-been, an eighties artifact. My entire life and my love of music were singularly defined by one mediocre song I wrote in less than ten minutes. All attempts at a reunion were unsuccessful, as everyone else in the band were either permanently in rehab or long dead.

Touring was the worst part for me. The roar of the crowd and the manic look on their faces. I could feel the pain of every person at the concert. It would crash over me like a wave. It was like a collective energy distilled and purified to it's most venomous potency, then directed and distributed right to my aching brain.

My band mates hated me, with good reason I guess. I would spend hours after a show just crying and shooting up in the back of the tour bus.

It was a physical pain that would fill my entire being. It was a mental pain that would wrap itself around my brain and not let go. It was a spiritual pain that would fill my heart with a throbbing bleak blackness that threatened to consume my soul.

Heroin wouldn't numb anything. It just made me feel tired and miserable. Weed made me paranoid and miserable. Pills made me nauseous and miserable. Speed and coke just made me more acutely aware of my own festering misery.

I tried new drugs as they hit the streets. I mixed drugs with alcohol, and then with more drugs. I shot things into my veins that would have killed most people. I was on a suicide mission and everyone around me knew it.

That's when I was court ordered into rehab. It was nineteen-ninety five and I was twenty-six years old. I looked like a walking corpse and I felt like a screaming raw nerve. I had no one and only a memory of success to refer to.

That's the year that I met God.

+++

CHAPTER 1.5

+++

In my dream, I'm on the open road-

Driving fast in my old Mustang,
The air conditioning hardly working at all-

It's hot-
Hotter then hell outside,
Inexplicably hot...

And I'm tearing through the long expanse between Phoenix and Tucson

Possibly one on the most mind-numbing drives in all of America

I have the oldies station on-
I'm singing along-

My clothes cling to me, heavy and wet

Liquid heat waves roll off the sizzling blacktop-
Cacti simmer in the unrelenting summer swelter-

The song on the radio fades out
And into the first few haunting notes of 'Sleep Walk'-
But, it sounds wrong, as if played on an untuned guitar...
The drum accompaniment sounds almost violently industrial

I roll the window down, and as I do...it melts-
Spilling over me like a transparent crashing wave-
Searing and molten hot, over my face and upper body

I shriek, the tires shriek back from the blacktop

The lines on the road blur, and the asphalt bubbles-
Tires dig into the road, the gummy tar of the highway
Now like pudding...
Melted from the blistering summer sun

The vehicle slides quickly to one side-
All four tires pop at once-

I am ejected through the windshield

And I am flying-
Like a Phoenix, I burn through the air...
I am crackling and engulfed in flames
But, I am more alive than I ever have been before-
I see everything through new eyes...
I am flying and watching the earth burn below me

The mountains surround me with flames that lick the heavens
The miles of desert around me-
Sizzling and bursting with the beauty that only fire can bring...
And for the first time
I am free...
I am burning and I am free...
and I am sailing among the clouds

Just another flame, on a sea of fire

And a voice tells me I am not alone
And a voice tells me not to be afraid

And I am not afraid, for I am not alone.
And I am not afraid, for I am not alone.
And I am not afraid, for I am not alone.

+++

CHAPTER TWO

+++

God is many things to many people. To a child, God is Santa, an all-knowing being who maintains a yearlong checklist of your good and bad deeds. To an alcoholic, God can be found at the bottom of any brand-name bottle. To a dying man, God is the promise of just another day. To a junkie, a cross-town venture to a last ditch dealer can seem an Exodus of Biblical proportion.

To me, God came in the form of a three-hundred-pound orderly at Hacienda Rehabilitation Center in Tucson, Arizona. He'd been smuggling me extra meds for the entire tenure of my stay, and it made all the difference. Without his help, I would have never survived my stay and 'treatment'.

I had known God for years. He was one of the main suppliers in Sierra Vista, where I grew up, and his reputation was something of an urban legend. I had known OF God, not known him personally, that is.

God had another nickname. It was 'World's Laziest Bastard', and it was a title that suited him well if everything I've heard told was true. Word had it that God had dropped out of school his freshman year, at age sixteen. He hated school and most everyone in it, and preferred a world of solitude in his bedroom at home. At this point he did not weight three-hundred-pounds, but was just an average guy with below average intelligence.

His mother worked two jobs and was never home, so it was up to God to do as he saw fit with his life. She babied him, and felt sad that he'd had such a miserable experience with school. She never pressured him to get a job. She bought him everything he needed. He took to playing video games and stockpiling pornography in his bedroom. He rarely went outside. And he ate. He ate a lot.

He began selling drugs from home. It was perfect. He had no criminal record, no suspicion, and a house free to do whatever he wanted with from sun-up until way past dinner time. People would come to him, only people he knew and they'd either drop off drugs or pick up drugs. No one was exactly sure how long it'd been since God had ventured outside his rusty double-wide trailer.

God's neighborhood was one of the oldest ones in Sierra Vista, and it was simply known as The Loop. In the early sixties the land was set aside for high ranking officer's housing for nearby Fort Huachuca, but for one reason or another the development deal fell through. So, what once was to be a place of prosperous family housing had now degenerated to one of the slummiest of all the rundown 'trailer communities' that had sprouted up all over the desert surrounding the Fort area.

The Loop was exactly what it sounded like. It was a half-mile loop that was littered with some of the most dilapidated travel trailers and mobile homes that had ever had inhabitants. It was also a dangerous place for teenagers to get their drugs from. But, unless I wanted to just score a few joints or a Valium or two, this was the place I had to visit. God had the best drugs. Sometimes one has to go through heaven and hell to be blessed with fine pharmaceutical grade brain-rot. This was the price I had to pay.

There were rules for every visit. We had to park the car as far away from his house as possible. There was another trailer park a half mile up old Ramsey Canyon Road, and we'd always park my car in the front lot by the mailboxes. We'd walk up the back way to The Loop, cutting through littered back fields and abandoned lots. Once we got to God's trailer, I headed back to the car. He didn't like strangers, and since I didn't know him in school I wasn't welcome in his place. I'd make the walk back to the car alone.

Once I got back to the car, I'd wait about five minutes and then head towards The Loop. By this time, Ratso would usually be making his way up Ramsey Canyon. God had set these rules up to avoid any unnecessary suspicion and to keep the traffic to his home to an absolute minimum.

It was usually Ratso and I making this journey about once a week, sometimes more and sometimes less. I can't even count how many times I'd made this trip to The Loop.

Ratso's name was Brad Pero, but anyone who knew him only knew him as Ratso. And it was an accurate enough name, as his face had a definite rodent-like quality to it. I always thought of him as more of a lab-rat, though. He'd ingest nearly anything I would, and for that reason alone he made the best drug-buddy ever. We didn't really have much else in common, but sometimes these things are enough.

Ratso was kicking rocks as he made his way up the road. I could tell from a distance he was pissed off. This wasn't going to be good.

"Fucking fat bastard is dry," Ratso spat out, his face all red and ugly with hate. And I nearly laughed, and probably would have had I not just found out my day had just turned to shit. But, I just wanted to laugh at Ratso, and tell him what a retard he looked like. What an obvious degenerate he was with his ripped jeans and shoulder-length hair, his holy sneakers and a faded DIO T-shirt. The same damn shirt he always wore.

I mean, I've always had a soft spot for the underdog. Don't get me wrong. But, the underdog always shows some sort of promise and if nothing else a determination and tenacity that outshines whatever adversity comes their way. But, I've never had any affection for the losers in life.

Ratso, as I knew then to be true, was just another fucking loser. He wasn't able to fly under the radar. Cops would spot him, and they would want to ask questions. Just because you're a junkie, it doesn't mean you have to look like a junkie from an ABC After School Special. There's no need to be obvious.

And, that was ultimately Ratso's demise. It was a Friday night, and he was heading back from The Loop. I was already back at the car. The police stopped him, and he pulled a gun. I have no idea what he was even doing carrying that gun, but he was. They fired shots first, and in fear he fired back. He was just a fucking loser. But, he affected me. We had a few moments.

That's all that makes up a life, really. Moments. Moments that change you and sculpt you, and turn everything around until you don't recognize what is real and what's not anymore. A full life is just a collective series of spectacular little moments that you'll remember forever.

And, a lot of downtime in between.

+++

CHAPTER 2.5

+++

In my dream, I'm falling.

And, I'm trying to will myself not to be falling.

But, I keep falling faster and faster. Harder and quicker. Plummeting and flipping, cart wheeling and screeching my way toward my own certain doom.

I'm shrieking and flailing. My voice all but gone, frozen in one long perpetual scream.

And all around me, only the darkness. And projected on that darkness, like fluid ghosts, are the faces of every girl I'd ever hurt in my past. Every beautiful face, every pouty-lipped mouth. Each one a detailed face of someone, somewhere, at some point in my life that I had hurt or broken. Each and every face carries a look of heartbreak and betrayal. Thousands of faces, as far as the eye can see.

And in an instant, they all began laughing. Each one is laughing at me, and following my downward spiral with their empty ghost eyes. Each cruel sneer snaps at my soul. They are all laughing, and leering, and waiting to watch me die.

And, it's almost like being underwater when I'm falling and floating at the same time. Tumbling and crumbling, and trying to make it all stop.

Then the faces disappear, and all I'm left with all around is only the darkness. Only the darkness to hold me. Only the darkness in my dreams. Only my body. Only me, all alone, silently screaming and I'm falling and screeching and whaling and flailing and dying...

That is when the ground comes into view.

In the same moment I spot the rocky landscape below, it seems to rise up, to meet me, as if zoomed in instantaneously on some expensive high powered telescope.

In the exact second I see the earth clearly for the first time, my body hits it full-force. It's like the rumbling impact of a meteorite.

My World, my Life, my Body...colliding with the rocky, ragged coast. I recoil and bounce, my bones breaking, shattering, puncturing through the skin. I hit for the second time, face-first. Everything from inside me explodes out behind me through the cracked rips of my back.

My spine snaps. My skull shatters. My body snaps and fractures in a hundred different places beneath the skin. My broken body paints the pointed rocks below me with a blackened red. I am alert and aware and can feel every agonizing instant of it.

I begin to bleed out and die.

And I can feel every single heartbeat progressively grow weaker. I feel every wet, gurgling breath grow more shallow than the last. I can feel everything. Everything. As I lie there and suffer.

I don't die. I just lie there, suffering the worst pain of my life...or my death, as it were. And, I feel every detail of it in my dream. And I don't die.

Then comes the time in my dream, when everything begins to move in time-lapse.

The world moves around me. The sun rises and falls, and I lay there rotting. Skin falls from the bone. Hair crumbles from my misshapen and shattered skull. I'm becoming one again with the earth. I lay there, feeling my body being broken down by all the forces of nature.

As I lay there, days pass...then weeks. Then years. As I lay there.

I'm forced to watch myself from above, like a hovering angel, with only one view. An angel with only one mission. To watch myself become nothing but dust.

I know that there will be no escape from this. This is my destiny unfurling itself before me. My every thought is haunted by the faces of the people I've hurt. Every face of every girl I've ever hurt clouds my thoughts and rattles my dying mind.

And I have so much time to think about every heart I've shattered. I have all the time in the world. I have all the time in the world to relive every mistake.

I have so much time to savor all this pain.

+++

CHAPTER THREE

+++

A moment.

The cam is on. Its little electric pupil wide and unblinking. I take another drag off my cigarette and down the shot of gin and methadone. I apply the last few pins and wipe away the blood.

I move my arm into view, and suddenly the chatroom is flooded with hundreds of posts. I wiggle my fingers for dramatic effect. The endorphins have kicked in, and although I feel the searing white pain, I'm too high from the rush of natural chemicals to care.

I follow the incision path, and slice all the way up to the elbow joint. I shutter and jerk, my body responding to the overloading rapture of pain. My arm shakes, throwing droplets of blood across my lap and keyboard.

Thirteen new guests have paid their way through PayPal in the last half-hour, and the instagreeter sends them off their passwords immediately.

It's a good night. Lots of interesting regulars and it seems that word of mouth has spread about the live shows. I lance a dozen more needles through my arm rapid-fire, fighting the urge to pass out.

I type in a 'BRB', and stumble into the kitchen. The apartment is warm and funky smelling. I turn on the air conditioner. Summer is finally here.

I stumble out of the kitchen with two beers, a bong straight from the freezer, and the package of stainless steel kabob skewers. I nearly topple the Christmas tree, as I wing it with my 'dissected' arm, still strapped to the plywood backboard.

I've kept the house exactly the way it was the day Crystal left. Her presents are still under the tree, a bit dusty by now. It's been nearly six months, but I just can't bear to take it down. Maybe she'll be home in time for next Christmas. Then she'll see we already have the tree up for the year, and she'll understand how my life has been on hold since she left me.

I left a bloody trail behind me on the matted tan carpet. I didn't expect to ever see my security deposit back on this place anyway. The carpet is pretty cruddy since the vacuum has been broken for months.

I prepare a needle, all under the watchful eye of my webcam. People have all sorts of comments, the page is rolling forward with dialogue. I ignore it all. I'm here to work, not to talk. I put the needle to an exposed vein in my arm.

Actually, all the veins in my arm are exposed. The ones on the underside at least. My right arm is splayed open like a biology class specimen. It's interesting to see how muscles work, really.

It's amazing I can stop the blood from gushing with a tourniquet and by concentrating and lowering my heartbeat. I'm calm. Subdued. Relaxed and trance-like. I'm on a fucking buttload of high grade pharmaceuticals, too. That always helps.

Then a lightning bolt tears through my sedated brain. I'm bucking and panting. My mouth is foaming. I'm having another seizure.

Everything turns a hazy white. I feel my face pulsing, and my vision just sort of fuzzes out to a thick throbbing blackness. I'm at peace, if for only a second.

My peace is only savored by the second.

+++