widespread insanity

There doesn’t seem to be anything worth living for. Everything is so crazy now. I watched my only friend kill himself slowly last week, and everyone in town is losing their minds. I seem to be the only sane one left. Old Billy Jurgens drove his car in circles for six hours yesterday. I got dizzy just watching him. The only thing that stopped him was running head-first into a telephone pole out on route 41. Otherwise, he would probably still be doing it. That pole took off the hood of his car somehow, and it died in a fog of thick white smoke. Old Billy is fine, though. Not even a scratch. He just got out of the car, kicked the tire a few times, and wandered off toward 7-11, weaving aimlessly from one side of the street to the other. I miss Desmond. He would’ve gotten a kick out of that.

Desmond was such a good guy. The insanity didn’t seem to be affecting him either, at least not until he took one of those Swiss army knives they sell at Jim’s Pawn and started cutting small swatches of skin off himself. When I asked what the hell he was doing, he looked at me with a disturbed grin on his face and siad, “Well, Jimmy, I have to get the rash off somehow, don’t I?” I looked him all over after that, but the only marks I saw on him were the ones he put there with that damn hunting knife. What made him do it? I tried so hard to pry the knife out of his hands, but he had such a strong grip on it, I was afraid I’d rip his torn hand off before I’d get the blade away from him.

So now I spend my time sitting on the front porch of my grandmother’s house (thank God she died three months ago, before all this started), watching the people of Fort Myers slowly kill each other. It started slowly, about a month ago. I was in the local Publix, picking up my usual supply of frozen pizza and sandwich stuff, when one of the stockboys whipped past me on roller blades. He had a plastic bag on his head, I mean really tied down tight, and he was yanking stuff off the shelves as he went, laughing maniacally. When a manager tried to stop him, he grabbed the guy’s hand, stuck it in his mouth, and started gnawing on it. It took three very strong-looking men to drag him away–and by then the poor manager was never going to be able to type two-handed again. One of his fingers was gone, the others looked like they’d been in a meat grinder. That kid at the grocery store, after he’d chewed on Mr Store Manager, he looked at me and grinned. It reminded me a little of a circus clown, because it took up half his face. I remember thinking, “Christ, if he grins any bigger the top of his head will just topple off.” He kept that grin as the police handcuffed him and dragged him off to jail, all the while Mr Store Manager’s blood was dripping down his face and onto his green Publix apron. Like the world’s scariest Christmas tree, red blood and green apron. All he needed was some body glitter and a pinwheel cap.

Since then, it’s gone through three stages: the basic creepy crazy, like something out of a Stephen King story, then the calm, everything-is-okay crazy, where everyone hid away, and now, finally, the who cares, let’s kill everyone crazy. No one has really bothered me since Mrs Johnston, and she seemed harmless. It’s almost as though they can’t see me. Steve Long from up the street looked at me with his horribly empty eyes earlier, and when I raised my hand in a half-hearted wave, he just kept going with no sign of recognition. It was kind of eerie. Now I know how the guy in that old movie felt, the one where he wishes he’d never been born and suddenly no one can see or hear him, no matter what he does. Except I didn’t make any crazy wishes and there’s no kind-hearted ghost showing me how wonderful I really am. But Mrs Johnston scared me badly. I thought it was over for me then.

Mrs J lived next door, and she and Grandma had been best friends since she moved down here six years ago. They used to play gin rummy and pinochle on the porch in good weather. Sometimes I would join them, drinking beer while they had gin and tonic. Those were good times. We’d sit out here, drinking, laughing at bad jokes, just enjoying being alive and well. Until Grandma got sick. Big C, as my ma used to say. Breast cancer. They said they’d got it all after they cut the first one off, but they were wrong. Then they took the other one and said she’d be fine. And she was, at least until she slipped getting out of the bathtub and broke her hip. By then it was in her bones. Nothing you can do about that. Chemotherapy until she lost her hair, drugs that made her a zombie most of the time, and finally, blessedly, a coma that she stayed in for the last two weeks. At least she wasn’t in pain anymore. I was glad to see her die, only because it meant her suffering was over. After she was gone, Mrs J still came over a lot, but it wasn’t the same. There didn’t seem to be any more bad jokes to laugh at.

Then last week, right after Desmond died, Mrs J came over to talk. We sat on the porch, like old times, and discussed what was happening. “I’m scared, Jimmy,” she said. “I was watching the evening news, and not one word was said about what’s going on. But the anchorman, that nice Jim that’s been on channel 11 forever, he wasn’t there, and that Lois girl looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. She kept stopping and looking around aimlessly before going on with news of world events and sports scores. I don’t know, but I think she has it too. Whatever it is.”

I told her about Desmond, and she cried. Real heart-broken sobbing. She’s known him as long as I have, I guess, but I can’t seem to cry. It’s like a bad dream. I keep thinking I’ll wake up, and everyone will be fine, including Grandma. We talked some more about the crazy things happening here, and she went home to bed. The next day, she came after me with a sawed-off shotgun.

I can’t think about that yet. Not sweet Mrs Johnston, not the woman I used to tease about her flower-print dresses. Desmond was bad, but somehow she makes it all so much worse. My mother told me it always takes great tragedy to make the brain work properly, but I think she was wrong. Grandma dying made me think clearer, but once all this started, the old gray cells just put up a “Gone Fishin” sign and I haven’t seen them since. Maybe I’m joining them now. I feel crazy, but I haven’t started trying to kill people or even decided to drive in circles forever. It’s so hard to keep my thoughts in order. They keep getting all jumbled up inside my head. Remember when everything was simpler. All I had to worry about was getting to work on time and making sure I didn’t chop my fingers off in the press. No one was crazy except those guys in Libya and Iraq with the guns and nuclear bombs. Even the Columbine shootings seem normal compared with this.

I need to think clearly about this. I can’t just sit here and watch everyone around me kill each other, can I? Eventually they’ll get to me because I’ll be the only one left. Before it got really bad, Desmond asked me if I thought the whole world was going crazy. I told him no then, but now I wonder. Maybe this is more widespread than I think. After Mrs J, anything seems possible. Desmond once told me that the great truth of life is that there is no meaning. It looks like he was right.

Before, Desmond and I would go to the Northside Drive-In on Friday nights. It’s not a very popular spot anymore, but for three bucks you can watch two movies from the comfort of your car. We would go up there and hang out by the concession stand all night, trying to flirt with the girls who came up to the window. Sometimes we would get slapped, sometimes they just ignored us, but it was fun. Something to do besides sit at home and be bored. I can remember one night, after some girl had thrown her popcorn at us, we just sat on the ground by that little window, howling with laughter. Real gut-busting laughter. I may never feel that good again.

He ended it all last Tuesday by slitting his throat. By then he looked like something out of Creepshow, with almost all of his skin peeled off. In some places the bone was showing through. He looked at me right before he did it. “Jimmy, man, I love you,” he said, and that was it. I couldn’t move fast enough. I reached out, realizing what he meant to do, but it was too late. And two nights later Mrs J lost it. Now there’s no one left for me to talk to. So I’ll just sit here, drinking Corona, chain-smoking Marlboros, waiting for some psycho to pull my plug. I don’t have the guts to do it myself. I keep hoping that somehow everyone will go back to normal, Desmond will be alive, Mrs J will be sane, and I can go to the drive-in again.

How do people in third world countries manage to keep going when their family members are dropping like flies all around them? Do they have a better survival instinct than we do, or will mine kick in after I’ve been on my own long enough? I feel like I’m losing my mind, a piece at a time, and there’s nothing I can do about it. But I still haven’t reached the point of everyone else. I wonder if I will. I don’t know what to do anymore.

When I first moved down here I was really bitter. My parents had just decided to get divorced, and they sent me down to Grandma’s house so I wouldn’t have to watch them fight over the house, the cars, everything. I spent the first summer hiding in my closet-sized room, moping, writing bad teen-angst poetry, listening to heavy metal so loudly that the neighbors complained daily. After school started, I hid out in the auditorium during lunch so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. After about a week, I noticed someone sitting in the front of the auditorium every day. I tried to ignore this kid with long black hair, figuring he was just as nasty as everyone else at Cypress. He refused to let me ignore him, though. Once he noticed me, I was stuck talking to him.

He would search me out between classes and ask if I’d written any more death poetry. He’d offer to trade his Ding-Dongs for my SnoBalls at lunch. Finally I gave in and asked him why he was bugging me. “I’m new here too, and I’m tired of not getting along with anyone,” he said. “You seem like you might be my type of guy, unlike the rest of this stupid town.” “I’m straight,” I said, and started to turn away. “No, no, no, you got it wrong. You like Metallica and Cannibal Corpse. You hide away at lunch like I do. You’re not friends with the jocks or the Snob Squad. That’s all I meant,” he insisted. I looked him up and down. Black hair to the middle of his back, bright blue eyes, skinny body wrapped in black leather. He seemed okay. From then on, Desmond and I were inseperable. He showed me where to get the best leather in Tampa, the best pot in Miami. He read my poetry and said it was pretty good.

One of my best memories of Desmond is the two of us driving up to Tampa together. We rented a room in a motel that advertised free porn in all rooms. We went to the Castle for a while, but the super-goths that go there get on my nerves, so we got a bottle of Goldschlager and watched porn. We drank the entire bottle together and watched some girl go down on a big stallion. The image was so disturbing that I puked in the bathtub for twenty minutes. When I was done, Desmond looked at me with a completely straight face and said, “Mister Ed never pulled that trick, man.” I laughed so hard it made me puke again.

Mrs Johnston came over on Thursday raving about sharks in her bathtub. I agreed to go over to her house to see what I could do about it. She kept wringing her hands and saying, “The sharks will eat me if I go in there, Jimmy, what will I do?” I followed her over to her little one-bedroom house, praying I could somehow make it all beter.

Once we got inside, I went into the bathroom telling her I would kill the sharks so she could rest in peace. I turned on the faucet and splashed around, making what I hoped were proper shark-killing noises. I spent about ten minutes “killing” the sharks, and when I went into the living room, she seemed grateful. She hugged me and kissed my cheek, telling me I was a good boy. I started out of the house to go home, and she hit me from behind with a poker from the fireplace. I went down like a rock in the ocean, blood spurting from my lacerated skull.

“I’ll get you for killing my Lenny!” she screamed, and I barely got out of the way in time to see a poker smash against the ground mere inches from my cheek. I jumped up and started running away, giving her a chance to grab her dead husband’s shotgun from over the fireplace. She fired it at me and I felt a few pellets graze my leg. I ran and ran for what seemed like forever, until I reached the hospital. The doctor didn’t even ask why I had cuts and scrapes, just cleaned me up. I went home in a drug-induced haze. I haven’t seen Mrs J since, but occasionally I hear strange noises and gunshots from over there. I hope she’s okay.

It’s weird, how the human mind will fasten onto mundane things in the face of great adversity. When Mrs J was trying to air-condition my skull, all I could think about was the color of her carpet in the living room. It’s this pretty sea-blue color, and it reminded me of the way the Gulf of Mexico looks right before a big storm. There she was, trying to kill me, and I was pondering the color of the stormy sea. Maybe I am insane.

I keep thinking I could get in my car and just drive off, drive until I get away from this insanity. I have a full tank of gas and about a thousand dollars in the bank, so I should be able to run for a while. But every time I go to get my keys, I think of Mrs J screaming about sharks in her bathtub, and I can’t leave her like that. If she comes back to herself she’s going to need someone to talk to. I don’t want her thinking I deserted her in her time of need. Too many of Grandma’s friends did that for me to start now. Besides, Desmond still hasn’t been buried. I have to take care of him before I do anything else.

That’s what I can do today. I can take him to Fort Myers Memorial Gardens up on Colonial, and make sure he gets the interment he deserves. I can at least do that for him, even if I couldn’t save him. He’s probably still out in the backyard, I haven’t had the balls to go out there since it happened. Still lying out there with his white Metallica shirt stained dark red, probably with maggots crawling through his eye sockets and rats feasting upon his flesh….

I gotta get away from here. I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to lose my mind just sitting here watching everyone else lose theirs. Where can I go? I think the entire world is falling apart at the seams and no one knows it but me. I’ll just get in my car and drive until I find somewhere safe, even if I have to go all the way to Alaska. Just me and my stereo, eating up the highway, putting this crazy Florida town behind me. I’m really going now. Grabbing a few clothes and some food for the road. It’s not that hard. I’ll be okay once I get out of here.

Desmond and I always talked about taking a great road trip one day. We’d drive around the country, just sight-seeing and enjoying being young and alive, and free. His dream was to end up in LA, where we could set up a small music shop on the ocean, and watch chicks in g-strings all day long. Home free, man, just sit on the beach all day and sell music all night. Maybe even a night club after a while. Where is he? We can just go now, leave this boring one-horse town behind us. But I have to find him first. Maybe he’s at the mall, watching teeny-boppers try on clothes.

oh god i’m finally joining the masses. I always prided myself on being an individual but i guess I’m following the crowd after all. mom would be proud. Desmond? Grandma? Help me i think im drowning……….

Desmond just came over to share a few beers with me. He’s been at the beach all day. Later we’ll help Mrs J unpack the stuff she brought home from her trip to the Keys. Grandma’s making spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, my favorite, and then we’ll go see Matrix and X-Men at the drive-in. Desmond just got some killer pot from one of his beach bum friends, and we’re gonna smoke a fattie before we go. He’s the greatest. I hope we stay friends forever