Mister Hands by Grant Brown
A psychologist in a mental asylum laments the lack of progress in his most confounding patient, Corny Bird.
The people in this place both confuse and disgust me. Do you know what they call me here?
Never will there come a day where I do not baffle myself for not spontaneously quitting this establishment. The people here are all insane. For example - yesterday, Corny Bird (I absolutely refuse to believe that's his name, but the records indicate it so, and he has never admitted to anything else so long as he has been my patient) vomited on himself after becoming sick with guilt, and reportedly smeared bile on my office door. It looked more like urine, though. His room is very close to my office. On the late nights, I can hear him through the wall.
Corny Bird gives me this tingly feeling of discomfort - déjà vu. I'm quite certain that him and I have met in many lives before. He doesn't help with this because sometimes, he tells me we are one and the same. He is one of many of my patients who claims to be connected to me. My colleagues in the industry tell of similar stories. I imagine my patients view the world as a cobweb. The past is connected by a string, and there is nothing preventing you from climbing toward that intersection of web. But nevertheless, the spiders that we all are - we climb forward into the future, because we feel the vibrations on the line from the fly we are all sure to catch. We continue into the future because we hope it brings us food and goodness. All too often, the fly breaks free of the web first, though. I have to catch the fly... Before he snaps my web.
All the patients have funny names; a few of them I named myself. It is barbaric and idiotic, but nevertheless I participate. Perhaps I can be exempt from the guilt of nicknaming the ill because I know it is sinful. Perhaps Corny can be exempt from the guilt.
One of my favourite pass-times is writing haikus. I became obsessed with them after a sad, sad day some time ago. Out of every difficult time, the light of opportunity shines just that bit brighter. Most of my haikus are about what is on my mind at any given point. As of now, I am thinking of my stained door.
I can't get it out.
My door is yellow.
I'll never get out.
Do you know what they call me in here?
I'm called Mr. Hands.
The name wasn't my first choice.
It is a mean name.
The orderlies here are woefully incompetent. I detest every minute I'm forced to be in their proximity and oh yes, do they know it. They won't clean my door! It's yellow, now, like someone dropped their drawers and urinated on it.
I know the God-awful patients here seek to hurt me. They want to hurt me like Corny Bird hurt me. He didn't hurt me physically, of course. No, he was a vermin of the worst kind. The pain he causes - it's in my head. It's all in my head. But, it's okay. He's not threatening anybody anymore.
My office's overhead lamp is flickering. I hear the rumble of thunder in the frightful twilight. If we have another power outage, the cold will sweep in - I hate the cold with every fiber of my being. But when the power goes out, the doors open, too. If the power went out... I could go back home to my family. If they're still there. I'm not sure. It may be too late. Corny may have already gotten to them.
I hear one of the orderlies asking me if I need any help. I'm working, God dammit! Why don't they ever leave me alone? So many papers. Too many. I can't hold the pen with my right hand so I have to switch to my left. This is extraordinarily awkward and the quality of my handwriting sinks like a blade into soft flesh. I wouldn't know what that feels like, of course. But Corny would.
The next morning, I eat breakfast. Seldom do I ever eat, because I know what they put in the food here. It is cruel to the patients, and on a surface level, I can sympathise with them. I once saw one of the cooks pluck a rat's tail out of the meat grinder. It was the first flash of pink I'd seen in the winter months. It made me miss spring, and it made me miss my darling. I eat breakfast because I am starving and she didn't make me breakfast before I left for work. We had an argument about it. She never makes me breakfast anymore because she is screwing the mailman. I am intuitive in this way - I know these things. I know what she is doing. But we have a child. We have to stay together for her.
God fucking dammit!
I can't hold this pencil right.
I use my left hand.
Time passes. I'm not sure how long because this place makes you lose track of everything. Even my fucking pencils. God dammit! Corny Bird died in his room last night. He killed an orderly before killing himself. Good riddance, and what a waste of my time and resources. He was a lost cause, but it is the eternal duty of a psychologist to try, try, try, even if it's pointless. And more often than not, it is. The orderlies inform me that he and the orderly were both strangled, but they keep getting his name wrong. That's not Corny, they tell me, even though I know it is. I try to examine the body, but ever-impatient and rude as they are, they will not let me. He was my patient. No matter how much I detested him, I still owed him my services. And I know that's Corny. I'd recognize my least-favourite patient by touch alone. I have.
The last time Corny and I met, he told me he was scared of his cell-neighbor. He said he could hear him counting on the other side, even though the walls were made of concrete. I assured him he did not hear anything - it's utterly impossible he would have even been able to hear his neighbor screaming on the other side. In the halls, you hear everything. And I was walking them that night. Personally, I heard nothing. I couldn't have been far when he died.
I am of the opinion that Corny Bird was a manic depressive and, when seeing the atrocity he had committed in what was likely another episode of psychosis, suffocated himself with his own two hands. There was nothing else at his disposal, after all. I'm no forensic scientist. But it's a hunch. He wasn't confined to a straitjacket because it really did appear he was getting better. The problem for me, though, was that he never seemed to remember why he was put here in the first place. And that never boded well for patients' odds of seeing the outside world again. He didn't remember what he had done. What he had done to me.
The Bird ate his chick
well before she learned to fly.
Fly, fly, Mr. Bird.
I take this as a success. I can personally only think of one reason he would kill himself... That is that he remembered what he had done. And he felt guilt. Life is all about perspective, is it not?
The orderlies come into my office. They are like angels, in their white overalls, hovering over you in the basking, industrial lighting of the hallways. But they are not angels, oh no, don't ever let them fool you. They are pests like the rats I know they put in the grounded meat we all eat. Every time, they annoy me at first, then they bore me to the verge of falling asleep. It's like a spell they put on you... I think they put grounded sleeping pills in my food.
I am only trying to work, but they are always coming in and disturbing me. They ask me my opinion about Corny Bird's untimely fate. Of course, they don't refer to him as such. They can't remember his name. It was Corny. I would know. But I know who they're talking about just the same. I really did believe he was making progress, I tell them, even if I despised him just the same as everybody else. I tell them my honest hypothesis as a man of science and as a man of psychology.
Manic depressive.
Deluded of his girl's death.
Guilt finds everyone.
You know what they call me in here, right? The neanderthals they are. Do you know why I like haikus? Talking so much about Corny Bird brings back bad memories. As fuzzy as they are, I still remember the purple of my daughter's face and the blood spurting from my hand.
Haikus have five syllables. Then seven. Then five again. And in three lines. I have seven fingers. Five each to a pair, but unfortunately, one of mine is missing three.
I'm called Mr. Hands.
Since I have haiku fingers.
Left; five - the right? Two.
(Seven in total.)
I hate this damned pen.
It's not the pen, it's my hand.
I blame Corny Bird.
The orderlies suspect me of murdering Bird. I tell them with practiced confidence, they're simply mistaken and to take their paranoia to pastures anew. I was walking the halls that night, and Bird himself told me he was suspicious of his neighbour. It was probably him, for all I know. The orderlies and I got into quite a feist. My feathers are ruffled. Like Bird's. They no longer flutter, and now he is a stiff and pale corpse on a window sill, easy pickings for the soaring hawks above our respectable institution.
But now, thankfully, I have a new office, where the hawks do not see me because the window is thicker and frosted and barred, and I will be serviced by different, less troublesome orderlies. There is one issue, however; they forgot my pens and papers.
It's then that I realise that I have been locked in my new office. I look around, and it is dark outside. The window bangs and booms and a flash of light blows out my gaze as lighting strikes a tree. I stand in mild astonishment as its mosaic burns before my eyes. I don't know why - but something is funny to me about this. I burst into an insatiable cackle, but I am soon taken again by the fear of being trapped in my room. And I don't have my papers!
Doctors need paper.
To scribble and to prescribe.
I need my papers.
The orderlies are not answering despite my desperate pleadings. I am trapped in my new office and as the tree outside burns, a bright white light rising from its suddenly-hollowed shell, I begin to laugh yet again, but I still do not know why. The lights have gone out, and I can't get them back on. The cold is sweeping in - I hate, hate, hate the cold. I'd do anything to prevent that from happening. I feel like I have no control over my life. But when the cold sweeps in, the doors open. Maybe the lock will release. Or maybe it won't.
Claustrophobia.
I have claustrophobia.
And I'm trapped in here.
The night passes restlessly.
The next morning, I speak on the phone with my wife. I tell her I'm not sure Corny Bird is actually dead. He's still out there... Somewhere. Maybe coming for her. She should be careful. But she doesn't listen. She's busy, she tells me. Oh, no, but I know she is fucking the mailman. How could she do this to me? To our daughter? I scream at her and slam it back on the receiver, then I look. It looks ancient. Why on God's green and grey Earth would they give me such an archaic piece of junk? It has a cobweb strung from the receiver to my desk.
Well, that's wonderful.
They can't give me better things.
I've earned the nice things.
And then the door to my office finally opens. By comparison, my filthy - paperless and penless - desk is a minute nitpick at best. Finally, they've let me out! Still, I feel trapped. I leave in search of horizons anew. That way, I can begin to escape this tight feeling. It's in my chest, I can't breathe no matter how much distance I put between myself and my new office.
I run to the orderlies and tell them I'm taking my leave. Of course, the wretched clowns that they are, even in this new wing of the institution, couldn't be bothered with my presence. Pathetic little wannabe officers who could not pretend to care for one instant about a psychologist's work. Even willingly approaching them seems to fill me with this very real drowsiness.
I go to the courtyard and breathe in the fresh dew of the morning, and laugh again, though I still can barely breathe. I am especially tired now. I lay down on a bench.
So I go back home.
And I meet with my darling.
Our family's perfect.
She's making dinner, how very wonderful. I relax on the couch and look at our coffee table. She grabbed the mail; perfect. I smile, but the knowledge of knowing Corny Bird died today plagues me. Or was it yesterday? It is hard to keep track of time in that place. Is he dead at all? Why did the orderlies keep getting his name wrong?
Our daughter is with me. When I look at her, I see Bird and I see his chick. I'm still smiling, but I feel no relief. Because I've had a revelation.
A terrible revelation.
Corny is not dead.
That murdering psychopath is here, in my house.
The bird has flown in,
nesting in my daughter's brain.
He has to get out.
I lunge after him. Corny in my daughter's body tries to run down the hall and I press him up against my bedroom door. He's pissing on my office door again, god dammit. He better not do it again. I'll make sure he won't. I will make him leave if it is the last thing I ever do. I am saving my family. Now I am determined. I pick up Bird and take him to my daughter's room. Look around you, you blasted maniac! My daughter's rock band posters, her childhood doll house. This is the life of the girl you've possessed! She will be avenged. I see the light of Corny's eyes leave her irises. I drop him on her bed. My daughter now sleeps soundly, her soul freed from the Bird.
My wife stands in the doorway. She doesn't understand. How could she?
I sit up from the bench and see the orderlies again. I'm thinking of going back home to check in on my wife and daughter.
The orderlies are explaining to me that Corny Bird's throat had seven bruises from seven fingers. They claim - with easily refutable lack of evidence - that no one else in the institution has seven fingers except for me. Of course, I explain that they are wrong. I had ten fingers when I killed him in my daughter's body. It was my wife who cut three of them off when she swung at me with the butcher blade. When she did that, I understood Corny was still living, now in her body. So I removed his soul from her, too. It was harder, now that I was missing three of my fingers. But I got him out assuredly enough. And my wife, too, slept from the exhaustion of possession. Oh, he was a terrible ghoul. But now, he is gone. And the world is a better place.
Fly away, birdie,
go find a different nest,
I saved them from you.
I hate you, Corny Bird. I'll pluck you from your nest and destroy your frail feathered body for what you did to my family.
But even a hate that burns as bright as mine does not stop me from coming into work the next morning.
I have new patients. The perfect thing to distract me.
One of them is a mailman. He uses an alias. I think the name he's given me is odd, but it's what his paperwork says, so I don't question it. I can't for the life of me remember what he calls himself, but it does not matter right now. He asks me about my hand, I tell him not to worry. Then he confesses that he is sleeping with a man's wife, and he feels a great deal of agony over it.
My wife grabbed the mail.
She would never grab the mail.
This man fucks my wife.
Now I remember.
Of course! This is Corny Bird.
He just will not die.
But this time, he did. I wasn't there for it. I wish I had been. It wasn't for a lack of trying. Someone choked him to death. He probably did it to himself. Not me, of course, though yes, I'd be lying if I told you I never thought about putting an end to him. I have a reputation to uphold, and could never participate in such barbarics. Not long after his death, I am transferred to work at an asylum. My expertise are so beyond that of the average doctor that I am better used for more extreme personalities. The orderlies tell me the mailman is a fantasy, and that I should consider seeing a therapist so I can do my job better. Pish-posh.
I take a great deal of pride in my work here. I am a hero among common men, a master rehabilitator.
I saved the world from Corny Bird. And for this, I am rewarded with a new office that, over the years, I have transformed into something of a home.
The walls are white so it doesn't stand out too much from the rest of the institution, and I had them covered in pillows so the more rowdy patients can't hurt themselves by slamming into them. It is easier for my patients to adjust to the new surroundings this way. I wished away the cobwebs and got a new phone where I talk regularly with my wife, and sometimes, if I am feeling generous, even Corny. I bestow upon him forgiveness like the saint I know I am. My daughter doesn't speak to me. Though I imagine someday, she will. And today, I was told by the orderlies that they got together and decided to buy me a new chair. I must say, I look forward to sitting in it.
The great Mr. Hands:
He saved them from Corny Bird.
He won't fly again.
 |
| Photo by Ron Lach, from Pexels |
Never will there come a day where I do not baffle myself for not spontaneously quitting this establishment. The people here are all insane. For example - yesterday, Corny Bird (I absolutely refuse to believe that's his name, but the records indicate it so, and he has never admitted to anything else so long as he has been my patient) vomited on himself after becoming sick with guilt, and reportedly smeared bile on my office door. It looked more like urine, though. His room is very close to my office. On the late nights, I can hear him through the wall.
Corny Bird gives me this tingly feeling of discomfort - déjà vu. I'm quite certain that him and I have met in many lives before. He doesn't help with this because sometimes, he tells me we are one and the same. He is one of many of my patients who claims to be connected to me. My colleagues in the industry tell of similar stories. I imagine my patients view the world as a cobweb. The past is connected by a string, and there is nothing preventing you from climbing toward that intersection of web. But nevertheless, the spiders that we all are - we climb forward into the future, because we feel the vibrations on the line from the fly we are all sure to catch. We continue into the future because we hope it brings us food and goodness. All too often, the fly breaks free of the web first, though. I have to catch the fly... Before he snaps my web.
All the patients have funny names; a few of them I named myself. It is barbaric and idiotic, but nevertheless I participate. Perhaps I can be exempt from the guilt of nicknaming the ill because I know it is sinful. Perhaps Corny can be exempt from the guilt.
One of my favourite pass-times is writing haikus. I became obsessed with them after a sad, sad day some time ago. Out of every difficult time, the light of opportunity shines just that bit brighter. Most of my haikus are about what is on my mind at any given point. As of now, I am thinking of my stained door.
I can't get it out.
My door is yellow.
I'll never get out.
Do you know what they call me in here?
I'm called Mr. Hands.
The name wasn't my first choice.
It is a mean name.
The orderlies here are woefully incompetent. I detest every minute I'm forced to be in their proximity and oh yes, do they know it. They won't clean my door! It's yellow, now, like someone dropped their drawers and urinated on it.
I know the God-awful patients here seek to hurt me. They want to hurt me like Corny Bird hurt me. He didn't hurt me physically, of course. No, he was a vermin of the worst kind. The pain he causes - it's in my head. It's all in my head. But, it's okay. He's not threatening anybody anymore.
My office's overhead lamp is flickering. I hear the rumble of thunder in the frightful twilight. If we have another power outage, the cold will sweep in - I hate the cold with every fiber of my being. But when the power goes out, the doors open, too. If the power went out... I could go back home to my family. If they're still there. I'm not sure. It may be too late. Corny may have already gotten to them.
I hear one of the orderlies asking me if I need any help. I'm working, God dammit! Why don't they ever leave me alone? So many papers. Too many. I can't hold the pen with my right hand so I have to switch to my left. This is extraordinarily awkward and the quality of my handwriting sinks like a blade into soft flesh. I wouldn't know what that feels like, of course. But Corny would.
The next morning, I eat breakfast. Seldom do I ever eat, because I know what they put in the food here. It is cruel to the patients, and on a surface level, I can sympathise with them. I once saw one of the cooks pluck a rat's tail out of the meat grinder. It was the first flash of pink I'd seen in the winter months. It made me miss spring, and it made me miss my darling. I eat breakfast because I am starving and she didn't make me breakfast before I left for work. We had an argument about it. She never makes me breakfast anymore because she is screwing the mailman. I am intuitive in this way - I know these things. I know what she is doing. But we have a child. We have to stay together for her.
God fucking dammit!
I can't hold this pencil right.
I use my left hand.
Time passes. I'm not sure how long because this place makes you lose track of everything. Even my fucking pencils. God dammit! Corny Bird died in his room last night. He killed an orderly before killing himself. Good riddance, and what a waste of my time and resources. He was a lost cause, but it is the eternal duty of a psychologist to try, try, try, even if it's pointless. And more often than not, it is. The orderlies inform me that he and the orderly were both strangled, but they keep getting his name wrong. That's not Corny, they tell me, even though I know it is. I try to examine the body, but ever-impatient and rude as they are, they will not let me. He was my patient. No matter how much I detested him, I still owed him my services. And I know that's Corny. I'd recognize my least-favourite patient by touch alone. I have.
The last time Corny and I met, he told me he was scared of his cell-neighbor. He said he could hear him counting on the other side, even though the walls were made of concrete. I assured him he did not hear anything - it's utterly impossible he would have even been able to hear his neighbor screaming on the other side. In the halls, you hear everything. And I was walking them that night. Personally, I heard nothing. I couldn't have been far when he died.
I am of the opinion that Corny Bird was a manic depressive and, when seeing the atrocity he had committed in what was likely another episode of psychosis, suffocated himself with his own two hands. There was nothing else at his disposal, after all. I'm no forensic scientist. But it's a hunch. He wasn't confined to a straitjacket because it really did appear he was getting better. The problem for me, though, was that he never seemed to remember why he was put here in the first place. And that never boded well for patients' odds of seeing the outside world again. He didn't remember what he had done. What he had done to me.
The Bird ate his chick
well before she learned to fly.
Fly, fly, Mr. Bird.
I take this as a success. I can personally only think of one reason he would kill himself... That is that he remembered what he had done. And he felt guilt. Life is all about perspective, is it not?
The orderlies come into my office. They are like angels, in their white overalls, hovering over you in the basking, industrial lighting of the hallways. But they are not angels, oh no, don't ever let them fool you. They are pests like the rats I know they put in the grounded meat we all eat. Every time, they annoy me at first, then they bore me to the verge of falling asleep. It's like a spell they put on you... I think they put grounded sleeping pills in my food.
I am only trying to work, but they are always coming in and disturbing me. They ask me my opinion about Corny Bird's untimely fate. Of course, they don't refer to him as such. They can't remember his name. It was Corny. I would know. But I know who they're talking about just the same. I really did believe he was making progress, I tell them, even if I despised him just the same as everybody else. I tell them my honest hypothesis as a man of science and as a man of psychology.
Manic depressive.
Deluded of his girl's death.
Guilt finds everyone.
You know what they call me in here, right? The neanderthals they are. Do you know why I like haikus? Talking so much about Corny Bird brings back bad memories. As fuzzy as they are, I still remember the purple of my daughter's face and the blood spurting from my hand.
Haikus have five syllables. Then seven. Then five again. And in three lines. I have seven fingers. Five each to a pair, but unfortunately, one of mine is missing three.
I'm called Mr. Hands.
Since I have haiku fingers.
Left; five - the right? Two.
(Seven in total.)
I hate this damned pen.
It's not the pen, it's my hand.
I blame Corny Bird.
The orderlies suspect me of murdering Bird. I tell them with practiced confidence, they're simply mistaken and to take their paranoia to pastures anew. I was walking the halls that night, and Bird himself told me he was suspicious of his neighbour. It was probably him, for all I know. The orderlies and I got into quite a feist. My feathers are ruffled. Like Bird's. They no longer flutter, and now he is a stiff and pale corpse on a window sill, easy pickings for the soaring hawks above our respectable institution.
But now, thankfully, I have a new office, where the hawks do not see me because the window is thicker and frosted and barred, and I will be serviced by different, less troublesome orderlies. There is one issue, however; they forgot my pens and papers.
It's then that I realise that I have been locked in my new office. I look around, and it is dark outside. The window bangs and booms and a flash of light blows out my gaze as lighting strikes a tree. I stand in mild astonishment as its mosaic burns before my eyes. I don't know why - but something is funny to me about this. I burst into an insatiable cackle, but I am soon taken again by the fear of being trapped in my room. And I don't have my papers!
Doctors need paper.
To scribble and to prescribe.
I need my papers.
The orderlies are not answering despite my desperate pleadings. I am trapped in my new office and as the tree outside burns, a bright white light rising from its suddenly-hollowed shell, I begin to laugh yet again, but I still do not know why. The lights have gone out, and I can't get them back on. The cold is sweeping in - I hate, hate, hate the cold. I'd do anything to prevent that from happening. I feel like I have no control over my life. But when the cold sweeps in, the doors open. Maybe the lock will release. Or maybe it won't.
Claustrophobia.
I have claustrophobia.
And I'm trapped in here.
The night passes restlessly.
The next morning, I speak on the phone with my wife. I tell her I'm not sure Corny Bird is actually dead. He's still out there... Somewhere. Maybe coming for her. She should be careful. But she doesn't listen. She's busy, she tells me. Oh, no, but I know she is fucking the mailman. How could she do this to me? To our daughter? I scream at her and slam it back on the receiver, then I look. It looks ancient. Why on God's green and grey Earth would they give me such an archaic piece of junk? It has a cobweb strung from the receiver to my desk.
Well, that's wonderful.
They can't give me better things.
I've earned the nice things.
And then the door to my office finally opens. By comparison, my filthy - paperless and penless - desk is a minute nitpick at best. Finally, they've let me out! Still, I feel trapped. I leave in search of horizons anew. That way, I can begin to escape this tight feeling. It's in my chest, I can't breathe no matter how much distance I put between myself and my new office.
I run to the orderlies and tell them I'm taking my leave. Of course, the wretched clowns that they are, even in this new wing of the institution, couldn't be bothered with my presence. Pathetic little wannabe officers who could not pretend to care for one instant about a psychologist's work. Even willingly approaching them seems to fill me with this very real drowsiness.
I go to the courtyard and breathe in the fresh dew of the morning, and laugh again, though I still can barely breathe. I am especially tired now. I lay down on a bench.
So I go back home.
And I meet with my darling.
Our family's perfect.
She's making dinner, how very wonderful. I relax on the couch and look at our coffee table. She grabbed the mail; perfect. I smile, but the knowledge of knowing Corny Bird died today plagues me. Or was it yesterday? It is hard to keep track of time in that place. Is he dead at all? Why did the orderlies keep getting his name wrong?
Our daughter is with me. When I look at her, I see Bird and I see his chick. I'm still smiling, but I feel no relief. Because I've had a revelation.
A terrible revelation.
Corny is not dead.
That murdering psychopath is here, in my house.
The bird has flown in,
nesting in my daughter's brain.
He has to get out.
I lunge after him. Corny in my daughter's body tries to run down the hall and I press him up against my bedroom door. He's pissing on my office door again, god dammit. He better not do it again. I'll make sure he won't. I will make him leave if it is the last thing I ever do. I am saving my family. Now I am determined. I pick up Bird and take him to my daughter's room. Look around you, you blasted maniac! My daughter's rock band posters, her childhood doll house. This is the life of the girl you've possessed! She will be avenged. I see the light of Corny's eyes leave her irises. I drop him on her bed. My daughter now sleeps soundly, her soul freed from the Bird.
My wife stands in the doorway. She doesn't understand. How could she?
I sit up from the bench and see the orderlies again. I'm thinking of going back home to check in on my wife and daughter.
The orderlies are explaining to me that Corny Bird's throat had seven bruises from seven fingers. They claim - with easily refutable lack of evidence - that no one else in the institution has seven fingers except for me. Of course, I explain that they are wrong. I had ten fingers when I killed him in my daughter's body. It was my wife who cut three of them off when she swung at me with the butcher blade. When she did that, I understood Corny was still living, now in her body. So I removed his soul from her, too. It was harder, now that I was missing three of my fingers. But I got him out assuredly enough. And my wife, too, slept from the exhaustion of possession. Oh, he was a terrible ghoul. But now, he is gone. And the world is a better place.
Fly away, birdie,
go find a different nest,
I saved them from you.
I hate you, Corny Bird. I'll pluck you from your nest and destroy your frail feathered body for what you did to my family.
But even a hate that burns as bright as mine does not stop me from coming into work the next morning.
I have new patients. The perfect thing to distract me.
One of them is a mailman. He uses an alias. I think the name he's given me is odd, but it's what his paperwork says, so I don't question it. I can't for the life of me remember what he calls himself, but it does not matter right now. He asks me about my hand, I tell him not to worry. Then he confesses that he is sleeping with a man's wife, and he feels a great deal of agony over it.
My wife grabbed the mail.
She would never grab the mail.
This man fucks my wife.
Now I remember.
Of course! This is Corny Bird.
He just will not die.
But this time, he did. I wasn't there for it. I wish I had been. It wasn't for a lack of trying. Someone choked him to death. He probably did it to himself. Not me, of course, though yes, I'd be lying if I told you I never thought about putting an end to him. I have a reputation to uphold, and could never participate in such barbarics. Not long after his death, I am transferred to work at an asylum. My expertise are so beyond that of the average doctor that I am better used for more extreme personalities. The orderlies tell me the mailman is a fantasy, and that I should consider seeing a therapist so I can do my job better. Pish-posh.
I take a great deal of pride in my work here. I am a hero among common men, a master rehabilitator.
I saved the world from Corny Bird. And for this, I am rewarded with a new office that, over the years, I have transformed into something of a home.
The walls are white so it doesn't stand out too much from the rest of the institution, and I had them covered in pillows so the more rowdy patients can't hurt themselves by slamming into them. It is easier for my patients to adjust to the new surroundings this way. I wished away the cobwebs and got a new phone where I talk regularly with my wife, and sometimes, if I am feeling generous, even Corny. I bestow upon him forgiveness like the saint I know I am. My daughter doesn't speak to me. Though I imagine someday, she will. And today, I was told by the orderlies that they got together and decided to buy me a new chair. I must say, I look forward to sitting in it.
The great Mr. Hands:
He saved them from Corny Bird.
He won't fly again.
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