Dead Easy (1 of 5 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Dead Easy by Wm. Mark Simmons. Copyright 2007 by Wm. Mark Simmons.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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DEAD EASY

by Wm. Mark Simmons


Chapter One

Here's a question.

Do people wear straightjackets because they're crazy?

Or do they go crazy because they're wearing straightjackets?

Because I can tell you right now those long-sleeved, buckle-down, canvas kook-shirts are so uncomfortable that you are likely to go mad if you're stuck in one for any extended period of time.

I don't know how long I'd been stuck in mine but I'd probably be well on my way to foaming and raving and going absolutely starkers were it not for the drugs. They kept me calm. Relaxed. Even while my own voice was screaming in the back of my head that I was in really deep doo-doo!

Doo-doo . . . ?

Given the normal vocabulary of my fight-or-flight responses, the fact that the voice shouting from my hindbrain was coming up with that word choice had to be another side effect of the drugs.

That and the inability to stay focused.

Or remember how I got here in the first place.

And: drugs were the only explanation as to why the babelicious Dr. Fand did not command my full attention while she was in the room for our latest session.

Well, more of a cell than a room, actually. With padded walls and recessed lighting and absolutely no windows to permit one to gauge the passing of time. Or weaken loony-town security by giving me something to bang my head against.

I had this warm, fuzzy sense of contentment that my well-being was so well looked after.

Or maybe that was the drugs, too. My attention had shifted from my psychiatrist to the cell décor and there was no other adequate explanation for that. Unless I really was as crazy as Dr. Fand professed.

"Not 'crazy,' Mr. Cséjthe . . ." She pronounced my name correctly—"Chay-tay"—but added some little foreign inflection that I couldn't quite attribute to any specific nationality.

" . . . a 'psychotic break' is a coping mechanism," she continued. "Your mind was traumatized by the accident, by the deaths of your wife and daughter. You blame yourself because you were driving, because you survived and they didn't . . ."

Maybe the drugs weren't that effective: memories began to burn through my medicated haze like napalm strikes in a thick London fog. Two years had passed since I'd awakened in a morgue next to what was left of Jenny and Kirsten, yet the sudden flash of pain tied to that memory was brisk and sharp.

Like fresh stitches as the anesthesia wears off.

"Your subconscious wrestles with the unfairness of life, the injustices of fate," Dr. Fand went on. "With pain. With regret. It tries to make sense of what seems so senseless. Like a skinned knee, it tries to heal your memories by forming a false skin—a scab, if you will—to insulate the trauma from the rest of your mind. It builds a layer of false memories, creates more acceptable 'realities' for you to inhabit while dealing with your grief and rage."

"Like this one?" I growled, shrugging against the heavy canvas and leather garment that pinned my arms across my body.

"Really, Christopher . . ." She paused. "May I call you Chris?"

"You can call me anything you want; you're the doctor." And my keeper.

And something more that I couldn't quite put my finger on . . .

Perhaps the drugs . . .

"Coyote-ugly" stories are legion. Romantic trysts struck up at a bar with attractive strangers after an injudicious amount of alcohol, leading to sobering morning-after revelations. "Babes" or "studs" reverting to their pre-buzz, unenhanced appearances. And the hung-over temptation to gnaw one's own arm off, coyote-fashion, to facilitate escape without waking the stranger clinging to it like a steel trap.

I wondered if Dr. Fand would look any different after the drugs wore off. She was more of a babe than anyone sober would expect of a psychiatrist. In fact, Doctor F was more of a babe than anyone might produce without the benefits of an airbrush or the latest photo-editing software with all of the graphical plug-ins.

So . . . probably the drugs.

She had blonde hair, so white with silvery highlights that age might have been inferred had any lines begun to etch her flesh. Instead, the corona of platinum hair that was not precisely white and not precisely silver, gave her an ethereal appearance. Her tilted, lavender eyes added an exotic cast to her features. Small nose, wide mouth, skin like porcelain, kiln-fired with attar of rose. She wore a white blouse that seemed tailored to accentuate how her bosom stressed the crisp, not quite opaque fabric. Her abbreviated suit jacket looked more like a bolero vest with sleeves and her matching dark skirt was short enough to show the better parts of her thighs before she sat down on the folding chair she'd brought in for our latest session. If the gems that glittered at her throat and dangled from the peekaboo lobes of her ears were real, then head-shrinking was more likely avocation than primary paycheck. She had to be independently wealthy.

Of course, I might just be the one pro bono case in her life-files of the rich and insaneous. That . . . or it could just be the drugs.

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