Cookie Cutter Man (20 page)

“Didn’t you take notes?” Daniel’s insides divided again. One
side was delighted to be fucking with the doctor, the other moaned in
exasperation.

As it stood, Daniel had no idea what would happen by the end
of session today. Would he be a good little sheep and tell them what they
wanted to hear? Or would the other side prevail, and he’d wind up sticking a
pen in Pazcowski’s jugular? The internal war waged on.

“Of course I did, Daniel, but—” The tone in Dr. Pazcowski’s
voice was identical to the part of Daniel that wanted to give in.

“Then why do you ask me?” Poking, poking the doctor, looking
for that one special button to push...

“Well, ah, I. It’s a way to start the conversation up, don’t
you think?” The doctor’s face was full of superficial good will.

“Don’t ask me,
you’re
the psychiatrist.” Daniel
looked away, acting bored and hiding his enjoyment at the color the doctor’s face
turned. Not
the
button, perhaps, but close.

“Daniel, why don’t you want to cooperate today?”

The fight drained out of him. Why didn’t he want to
cooperate? “I
do
want to, Doctor. I’ve just had a very long day.” Echo
had shown up again today. The need to cry suffocated Daniel like a bloody
quilt, but he wouldn’t cry again in front of this fucking quack, huh-uh. He
would chew his own tongue off and choke himself with it before he let that
happen.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Daniel. Would you rather talk
about that?”

“No.” Daniel looked down at the floor, shuffling his feet
like a chastised child.

“Then what shall we talk about, hmm? What we talked about
last time?”

Silence.

“Daniel?” The doctor’s eyes dug into him, squeezed in
through the pores in his skin.

“Ye-yes. That will ... yes.” Daniel’s eyes never left the
paper-soled slippers on his white-socked feet.

“OK then. I’ll begin.” Dr. Pazcowski looked down at his
precious notebook and shifted in his seat. “Now Daniel, you said you remember
shooting your girlfriend?”

“That’s not something you forget, Doctor.” A dull anger
throbbed in Daniel’s head, right behind his eyes.

“No, I should think not! Not if it really happened. But it
didn’t
happen, now did it?” Dr. Pazcowski leaned forward in his chair a little for
punctuation, and Daniel grabbed him by the bad tie he always wore, threw the
doctor to the floor, and beat his bald scholarly head against the tile until
the skull cracked and his brains, Simon’s brains, Echo’s brains, spilled out
onto the fl—

“Didn’t you have a visitor today?” Dr. Pazcowski interrupted
the horror-show in his patient’s mind.

“Yes, doctor.”

“And who was your visitor, Daniel?”

Daniel opened his mouth to speak but her name died in his
throat, just as he’d seen the rest of her die in the living room, with nothing
left behind those blue eyes that had once so dearly looked upon him but half an
empty skull and a bullet hole in the wall.

“Who was it, Daniel? Who came to see you today?”

He couldn’t say her name. Not after he’d broken her heart,
once before and then forever with a pull of the trigger. “I ...” Tears sprung
into his eyes, not yet falling but turning the world to a prism.

“What was her name?” Dr. Pazcowski leaned even further
forward in his seat, hands planted on his thighs.

Daniel was silent.

“It was Echo Allen. Wasn’t that her name, Daniel?”

“No!”

“There’s no need to shout.” The doctor leaned back a little
in his chair.

“No.”

“It wasn’t Echo Allen? Then who was it?” The doctor paused
long enough for Daniel to say any number of things, like how he sometimes
entertained himself with thoughts of glowing marquee eyes with words scrolling
across them, or setting psychiatrists on fire. But Daniel said nothing, so the
doctor did: “I thought you wanted to
cooperate
.”

There was a slight edge in the doctor’s voice, and Daniel
knew what happened to patients that wouldn’t ... cooperate.

“It was.” Daniel spat, the tears drying without falling.

“What was?”

This cocksucker’s gonna make me say it. “It was her name.”

“I want you to say it, Daniel. Say it out loud.”

He took a deep breath. “Her name was Echo Allen.”

“Good, now—”

“But it wasn’t her!” Why couldn’t the doctor
see
that?

“What do you mean it wasn’t
her
?” Dr. Pazcowski
checked his notes on reflex, in defense of being so completely caught off
guard.

“It
was
Echo, but it wasn’t
really
her.”

“You’ll have to explain this to me, Daniel.”

“I shot my girlfriend, doc ...”

“Then how could she possibly—”

“I shot her
four times
! In the
head
, in the
stomach
,
and
twice
in the
chest
!” Daniel was no longer in a doctor’s
office in a state-sponsored facility for the criminally insane. He was in his
apartment, standing in the hall, watching that bright red splash leak down the
wall.

“Daniel, there’s no need to shout.”

He was beyond the doctor now, beyond everything but the
sound her brain made as the mass of it slid down the plaster; that wet,
slurping whisper with tiny fragments of skull caught up in the cerebral mud
slide.

“I
shot
her! Do you understand me?
I killed her!
I
loved her and I
killed
her! I saw her fucking
brains
on the wall
and it—”

“Daniel!”

“It slid to the floor! And her fucking — oh God! – she fell
in her own stomach!” This was something he saw every night in his dreams.
Intestines had been blown out her fragile back in many small fragments and one
long, wormy strand that piled behind her on the floor, trailing back up to the
exit wound through which it had escaped.

“Orderly!
Orderly
!” Dr. Pazcowski yelled. The door
burst open and they were on Daniel, who thrashed and howled in a primal frenzy
of guilt and horror and hate for himself over what he’d done.

Daniel hadn’t gotten a chance to take a shot at that fucker
Crevvers, but he broke Thompson’s arm in two places, throwing the larger man to
the floor with ease, using the orderly’s own momentum to do it. That was when
Crevvers jabbed him with the needle, held him down while Thompson screamed.
Then the drugs kicked in.

Daniel once more sat opposite the doctor. His ribs still
ached from last session two weeks ago, but the swelling on his eye was down to
where he could open it again. The doctor stared at him with vulture-like lust
as he spoke.

“Now, Daniel, do you remember what happened the last time we
met? The unpleasantness?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“And we don’t want that to happen again, now do we?” Dr.
Pazcowski sat poised over his precious fucking notes, waiting.

“That prick Thompson sure doesn’t.” Daniel could still
remember the strange resonance Thompson’s screams held as the clinical calm
from the needle had overtaken him.

“What?” The doctor sat up a little straighter like he’d just
gotten a red-hot poker in the ass. “Daniel, are we—”

“I’m sorry. I’m very sorry for what happened and I don’t
want it to happen again.” Daniel put on his best look of regret.

“OK, then.” Dr. Pazcowski said and nodded as if he had just
made some large advancement in his field. “So, what shall we talk about?”

“That girl came to see me again today.” Daniel shifted a
little in his seat, showing real regret for letting that pop out. He suspected
there was sodium pentothal in some of these drugs.

“What girl?”

The doctor knew damn well what girl. “You know her. Echo.
Allen.”

“Yes, I do know her, Daniel, we’ve talked several times.
She’s very concerned about you. She loves you very much.”

“She told you that, did she?”

Dr. Pazcowski nodded. “How does that make you feel?”

Like killing myself, Daniel thought.

“Daniel? Does it make you feel good to have someone love
you?”

“It used to, before.” The time he was with her was really
the only time in his entire life that he had been happy. He thought of it now
and it felt like his soul was collapsing.

“Before what?”

“Before I shot her.”

The doctor gave him a long hard look and Daniel
tried
to comply, he really did.

“Well,” Daniel said. ”I
remember
shooting her, anyway
...”

“But that’s not the same thing, now is it?” Dr. Pazcowski
leaned forward, thinking he was on the very tip of some kind of breakthrough.

Daniel mumbled at the floor. All this was making him very
tired.

“What was that?”

“I said I didn’t really shoot her.” Voices in Daniel’s head
screamed, but they were a little further away than before. That was the one
positive thing he could say about the drugs they gave him three times a day;
they made it possible for him to exist within himself and not want to crack his
skull open against the wall, as much.

“That’s right! Very good! I think we may have had a little
breakthrou—”

“But she isn’t my girlfriend,” Daniel said.

“Who isn’t?”

“You know who I’m talking about, doctor.” Daniel sighed and
held his head in his hands, hands that wanted so badly to start pulling out his
hair.

“Why do you feel she is no longer your girlfriend?” The
doctor checked his notes again.

“Because I
shot
my girlfriend. I shot
my
Echo.
This
Echo is a different one.”

“A different what?” Dr. Pazcowski’s voice was filled with
curiosity.

Daniel felt more like a lab rat than ever. He gingerly ran
his fingers over the four tiny scars on the left side of his throat. If only he
had gone another inch to the right ... or on the other side, to the left...

It occurred to Daniel that he had spoken; only he hadn’t the
slightest idea what he may have said.

The doctor took his pause as an opportunity to give his
diagnosis: “That makes no sense, Daniel.”

“Fuck you.” He envisioned himself strangling the doctor with
his wretched tie until his head popped off.

“What did you say to me?” The doctor’s eyes opened wide,
creating a strange insectile appearance, and giving Daniel a strong sense of
déjà vu.

“There’s no need to shout, doctor.” Daniel felt his whole
stay in this government-sponsored dungeon worthwhile just to see this
expression on Pazcowski’s face, and he was hard-pressed to hold in his
laughter.

“I wasn’t—”

“Doctor?” Daniel raised his eyebrows in mockery of Dr.
Pazcowski’s expression of defied authority.

“I’m sorry, Daniel.” The doctor took a long, slow breath. “I
didn’t mean to shout, and I apologize. But what you said was very rude and—”

“You were rude first.”

“I was not!”

“
You
said
I
wasn’t making sense. You don’t
think that was rude? It’s what, clinical fucking psychology? Did they teach you
that at Princeton or wherever—”

“Harvard,” the doctor corrected, his smug know-it-all grin
coming back the second he mentioned his alma mater. For Daniel, the world
seemed very still.

“What did you say?”

“Harvard. I went to Harvard.”

The headache that loomed all day advanced.

“You went to
Harvard
?” They
all
went to
Harvard.

“Yes.”

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Daniel knew it now, had
suspected it for quite some time, but now he
knew
.

“What are you talking about?” Alma asked.

“Harvard, you cocksucker! They
all
went to Harvard!
How many—”

“
Orderlies
!”

“How many of you are there?” Daniel stood as the door
slammed open, so did the doctor.

“Doctor?” Crevvers asked.

“Yeah, fuck you!” Daniel stared at Crevvers, who was with
Shultz. “Try me on the outside some day, pal.”

“Hold back, Sven! Back!” Dr. Pazcowski said, raising his
hand to stay the orderlies.

“Do you want me to remove him, doctor?” Sven Crevvers asked.

“Remove my cock from your wife!” Daniel shouted at the much
larger man. The hypodermic cloud in his head began to dissipate, and Daniel
felt more alive than he had since first waking up here.

Crevvers surged forward, hate in his eyes. The doctor and
Shultz held him tightly.

“
Back
!” Dr. Pazcowski shouted.

Daniel stood his ground, right next to his heavy, metal
chair. “I’m sorry, Doctor.”

“Good, Daniel. See, Sven, he’s sorry—”

“Sorry I fucked his wife!”

Crevvers’s face flushed crimson and he ripped away from the
doctor. If Shultz hadn’t been there to catch his wrist, everything might have
happened very differently. Daniel’s headache cranked off the scale and his
knees nearly buckled, then it was simply gone. Daniel paced back and forth
across the room, keeping one eye on Crevvers and trying to calm himself down.

“I’m sorry for being rude toward you, Mr. Crevvers,” Daniel
said. And he almost meant it.

“And you’re calm now, Daniel?” Dr. Pazcowski asked.

“Yes, doctor, I’m calm. It was just my head, and I feel
awful for what I said about Mr. Crevvers and his wife.” He had to get the orderlies
out of the room.

Crevvers seemed to relax, a little at least.

“You’re not angry?” Dr. Pazcowski asked.

“No, doctor. Just sorry.”

“That’s OK, Daniel. We accept your apology, don’t we, Sven?”

“Yes, doctor,” Crevvers dutifully replied, staring at Daniel
with the stark violence of a natural-born predator.

“OK. Then the two of you may go,” Alma said, and because he
was going to be alone in a room with a person he had personally diagnosed as
dangerously psychotic, he added: “But wait in the hall.”