Looking Back

Published on June 2016 | Categories: Topics, Books - Fiction, Thrillers | Downloads: 61 | Comments: 0 | Views: 386
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A Short story about one young man's madness and it's results..

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Looking Back
By T. Patrick Rooney

If you looked back at my life and saw everything, even the embarrassing personal thoughts and feelings, you would wonder how I stayed out of the asylum for so long. You would rather understand why I ended up where I did and you would most likely thanks you various higher powers that there were no more like me around. It sounds like the beginning to some sort of novel, but sadly for me this really happened and I have ended up here until death takes me, unsafe, unloved and labeled criminally insane. My entire family is from Muncie, Indiana and I would say about 12 of my 18 first cousins all still live there, along with various aunts and uncles. Very few have escaped the small towns clutches and found their way to bigger and better places. It all started when I went with my parents on a summer vacation to Norfolk, Virginia, to visit with my aunt and her family there on the naval base. My uncle was a career Navy Officer and spent most of his years traveling the world in the bowels of an aircraft carrier. My aunt was one of my favorite people on the planet, and other then my mother was the one human I could trust to tell anything to. We arrived very late one night and my brother and myself slept on the floor. We were awakened to the sounds and smells of bacon cooking and coffee brewing. Breakfast has and will always remain one of my favorite times of the day, especially the unhurried rare mornings where you can linger at the table and enjoy the coffee. Of course all of that comes later, at this point I am 7 years old and orange juice is the greatest drink in the universe, it wasn't until the following summer that I was introduced to the wonders of kool-aide. My uncle announces at the breakfast table that the whole family is going on a tour of his aircraft carrier. Sounded like fun to me to get to see where the planes take off and such. We happily drove down to the dock and I must say the lines of sailors in their dress blues and the crisp salutes and such were very impressive. But the jets were fantastic, I learned that day that calling them airplanes was incorrect, these were jets. So we took the tour, we saw the mess-hall and the barracks, we saw the giant elevator the jets rode up and down, it was all very fascinating. There were several areas off limits to non-military personnel, mainly the bridge and the engine room, and of course weapons storage. It was awesome, I was completely enamored, and I asked my uncle on out way up to the crows nest, our last stop of the tour what I had to do to join the navy. After laughing for a minute, he looked down and noticed I was completely serious. So as we come out of the door onto the platform called the crows nest he tells me that I would have to become eighteen years old and be willing to go through basic training. Upon asking what basic training was, my uncle informed me that I would have to exercise and such, but also jump the tower. What's jumping the tower mean I asked completely willing to do whatever it took to join up right then and there. Well its like this and he picked me up underneath the arms and dangled me over the railing of the crows nest. Looking down I could see my sneakers dangling over what appeared to be white dots on the deck far below. I suppose if someone were to tell me that it was only 100 feet or so now, I would probably rationalize my reaction by saying I was only 7 years old

at the time. But as it stands I was in fact 7 years old and my uncle yells out over the sounds of the ocean and talking and horns blowing in the harbor that jumping the tower is about like jumping off the crows nest, and with that he tosses me up into the air. It was only a split second I am sure of it but.. he caught me under the arms again and set me down. I had never thought the least about heights before that moment. In fact up until then climbing trees, the higher the better, were one of my favorite things in the world. At that instant though I was terrified, I don't recall a single moment in my entire life when I was that scared. He pulled me back over the rail and set me on my feet and I collapsed crying. I was 7. It was quiet horrifying. From that moment on, my life was defined by terror of falling. I was so worried about things that later once we were back home I brought chairs into my room from the kitchen table. I set them next to my bed so I would not fall out of it during my sleep. It got into my head so much that I would have dreams of some wispy ethereal creature pulling me toward the side of the bed trying to get me to fall in my sleep. My dreams were horrific from then on I fell to my death thousands of times. They say you cannot die in your dreams and they say that you always wake up just before you hit when you dream of falling. Lucky bastards, I have hit thousands of times and I have died in my dreams so much that I began to dread sleep. I started to loath sleep almost as much as I did tall buildings. At twelve years old my parents, bless them, took me to see many psychiatrists and mental health specialists. They even took me to Germany once to a sleep clinic there. The sleep clinic set me up in a bedroom with cameras running so they could watch my sleep patterns and try analyze why I could barely sleep and usually always ended up falling from whatever bed I was sleeping in. The next morning they ran the tape back for my parents and I and had several questions. Clearly visible on the tape at three different times while I was sleeping you could see my hands off to the side or tucked up under my pillow and yet a handful of my tshirt material is grabbed by something unseen and I am pulled slowly, slowly towards the edge of the bed until I fall out. They could not explain it at all, saying I was a unique case. The next night they insisted I go through it again with the cameras. This time however one of the doctors, Doctor Heidelburg, was going to stay in the room with me and try to see if he could stop my hands from pulling shirt like they had the night before. You see the doctors at this point were convinced that somehow I was doing this to myself. They scoffed at my ethereal nightmare visitors and claimed it was all in my head. So the tapes rolled again and the doctor sat in a chair at the end of my bed drinking coffee all set to watch me sleep. Sleep was a long time coming that night. Eventually I did drift away though. The time code on the tape clearly shows that I starting dreaming at around 12:30 am. At 1 am the doctor gets up from his chair and grabs my tshirt that was be pulled by something unseen again towards the edge of the bed. He stoops over my sleep form both of my hands are clearly tightly clenching my pillow in the camera's shot. He reaches down and grabs the material of my tshirt and tries to pulling back toward me. His sleeve lurches and he stumbles his face hitting the nightstand beside the bed. He falls to the ground and immediately screams loudly as he is drug under the bed. He was never seen again.

Two days later I was back in New England and locked here in this room, where I have been since I was twelve years old. It's been 8 years now, and the management of the hospital has changed over last week. The new council of doctors who run the place reviewed my case and determined that the previous administrator was inhumane in denying me a bed to sleep in. They looked at the video and didn't believe it at all. They scoffed and laughed saying it was some sort of a movie trick. They think the German doctors at the request of my parent's rigged up the video so they could put me in here for life. I laughed in their faces. There is a reason I am here, it's written on my folder. In big bold red letters on the top of the dossier it is stamped. Criminally insane. The German clinic said they would not press charges against me for killing the doctor. Although there was never a body to be found. They said if I was locked away forever they would be satisfied. Well I am still locked away, but I didn't kill that doctor. Tonight after my last meal they are going to bring in a bed for me to sleep in. Great. The dreams have gotten worse over the last few years, I get the feeling that I am about to go where the doctor has gone. We will see.... tonight we will see. I am going to stop writing now in my little journal the new council of doctors gave me. My meal is here, and after I eat well let's just say I don't expect there to be a tomorrow at all.

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