Dead Easy (2 of 5 free samples)

---

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

---

Previous | Next

Chapter One (CONT'D)

"Let's talk about what's real, Chris."

I dragged my attention back to the conversation.

"Up until the accident you had no difficulty with separating fact and fiction, fable and reality. I imagine that you read fairy tales to your daughter when she was little. Maybe watched monster movies when you were younger. But you understood the difference between make-believe and reality. Until the car crash."

"So . . . you're suggesting brain damage?" I asked.

"Not in the manner of which you speak," she said, crossing her legs in a manner that threatened to re-distract me. "Not a physical injury but emotional trauma." It came to me that she wasn't wearing stockings or hose. "It is as if your mind has drawn upon fable and fairy tale to construct a psychic hedge-maze, a place to wander about, insulated from the harsh realities of a cruel and apparently senseless world."

"So you're saying I've like rearranged my perceptions of reality to . . . to . . ."

Trying to follow a coherent line of thought was like trying to tune in a distant radio station on bad batteries.

" . . . um . . . like . . . create an alternate world . . . inside my head . . ."

I needed to keep my responses short. I only had so many functional brain cells. When I wasn't diverting half of them to assist my speech center, I could actually feel my mind starting to clear.

" . . . where I can hide from my own pain and loss?" I finished weakly.

She clapped her small, perfect hands in a similitude of delight. "Very good, Chris! I believe that we are starting to make some progress here."

"Progress," I repeated.

"Yes, the first steps toward recovery are anchored in recognizing that one is ill. Denial is counterproductive to therapy and recovery."

"Therapy," I said. "Recovery."

"Yes," she said. "As pleasant as it may be to live in a fantasy, isn't it better to build the sort of a life that we want in the real world?" She looked at me and waited. "Isn't it, Chris?"

My lips were dry and I licked them. "I'm thinking . . ." Not very well yet but enough to know that something was terribly wrong.

Wrong beyond occupying a rubber room with no time sense or idea of how I got here in the first place . . .

"Well," she said, "whether or not we think we're ready to take on all the aspects of a fully actualized personality, we still have responsibilities whether we're ready to acknowledge them or not." She looked at me expectantly.

"As . . . for example . . . ?" was my eventual response.

"Your son."

I groped around in my mental fog for a minute or so. "Will?"

She leaned forward. More distraction: she wasn't wearing a bra, either. "Is that what you've decided to call him?"

Named him? What would she say if I told her we'd actually met during my little trip to New York six months ago? And bonded while cleaning out a Nazi fortress in the Rocky Mountains shortly thereafter? When it came to father and unborn son camping trips, nobody had more merit badges than the Cséjthe clan.

That is not, however, the sort of family business one shares with one's shrink. Particularly when sporting the me-so-crazy line of active wear. I pulled helplessly at the buckled sleeves anchored behind my back. "How long have I been here? Is he born yet?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes. An hour ago. His mother died in childbirth."

I wasn't prepared. "Lupé?" More napalm spattered across my mind, the fog recoiling from its fiery remembrances. "Oh my God!" I choked on a sob but tears would not come. The drugs oozed back and forth in my skull, attempting to quench the flames.

"The important thing is that your son is alive, Chris. He's alive and must be looked after. I have some papers for you to sign so that he can be taken care of. You realize that you are in no shape to do that right now. And he would be better off in a foster home than a state orphanage. Don't you agree?" She held up a piece of paper.

The drugs sizzled across the overheated parts of my brain like the tarry sludge of boiled-down coffee at the bottom of the pot. The paper looked more like parchment than an eight-and-a-half by eleven sheet of twenty-pound white bond.

"My son," I whispered.

"And you want what's best for him, of course."

"What's best for him," I murmured.

Previous | Next