Supermarket(60)

I was already feeling tipsy. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t had a drink since I wrote the ending of my novel. Since the night Frank robbed . . . I robbed the supermarket.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can get pretty much anything in this place.”

“Red, I gotta tell you something.”

“What is it, Flynn?” he said, face full of concern.

I told him all about the previous night, when Frank visited me in my room. I told him about the planned meeting at Muldoon’s. I told him about the conversation I had with Mia and how, deep in my heart, I felt this was the end.

Or, at least, the beginning of the end.

He clutched his glass as I told him my plan. I was prepared to get rid of Frank by any means necessary.

To kill him in cold blood.

I still didn’t know exactly how to do it, but I figured it would all work out in the end . . . or, at least, I hoped it would. Or it wouldn’t . . . then I didn’t know what would happen.

Red sat on his bed, listening. His face was blank. He checked the clock—five till ten.

“This is heavy, kid,” he finally said. “Listen, I have an idea but, just . . . just give me some time to think it over. Let’s meet tomorrow for breakfast, and I’ll have a solid plan in place. Okay?”

I realized Red was the father figure I’d always wanted. The man I would make up in my head as a kid, the kind of dad I dreamed of having. A guy I wanted to be like. A guy to go fishing with, or play catch with in the yard. Red was everything I wished I had growing up but didn’t. And yet . . . he was here now. When I needed him most.

“Okay, Red. I’ll see you in the morning for breakfast.”

This was different. I could feel it. Something wasn’t normal here . . . and normal for me had been living in a series of delusions inside a psych ward. This was different, and different was good.

I really felt, for the first time in a long time, that I could beat this thing.

“Flynn, I know it’s hard. I’ve been there, but you’re ready now, I can feel it.” Red stood up. “I’ll meet you in the cafeteria.”

He took my glass and gave me a hug.

“Thank you, Red,” I said as he walked me to the door.

“Now get outta here. If we’re gonna put an end to this, I got shit to plan . . .”





CHAPTER 18


BREAKOUT


I awoke Thursday morning to the sun on my face. I must have forgotten to close the blinds before falling asleep. The sun’s warmth blanketed my skin. It was the most at peace I’d felt in a long time. As I opened my eyes I realized that today was the day.

Today was the day I would kill a man.

I still wasn’t sure how you killed a man, especially one born out of a chemical imbalance in your brain. But I’d figure it out with Red’s help.

I swung my legs around the side of my bed and looked at the clock. 8:37 a.m. I felt an inner calm. A certain tranquility. Somehow, I just knew Red was gonna pull through. It was as if I already had tonight’s escape laid out in my head. It was like some kind of emotional foreshadowing. You know that feeling you get when you know something is going to go down a certain way?

I put on my clothes and walked toward the cafeteria.

In the hallway, I saw things differently. Looking at the other patients, I didn’t see people who were stuck in this facility. I saw people who were stuck within the confines of their own minds. The key to their escape lay deep beyond the layers of their subconscious. In a way, as I stared at them, I was staring at myself.

“Coffee, coffee, coffee!” Joe said yet again this fine morning as I walked past.

“Hey there, Joe,” I said, and like clockwork Ann came to give me the antipsychotic pills I would pretend to ingest and put in my right jacket pocket. As I placed the pills atop the mountain of others just like them, something hit me—I had officially run out of space to place any future pills. There had to be hundreds jammed in there. That eerily made me feel like it was a sign. Like this would be the last time Ann and I would do the medication mambo.

On the walls were pictures I never really noticed. Every year, the hospital gathered its patients for a yearly Christmas photo. Along the wall was every picture they had taken since the hospital had been built more than a hundred years ago. As I walked past the pictures, I came to the most recent ones. Looking deeply at a photograph, I spotted myself in the crowd. Looking at the photo even closer, all I saw was a shell of who I was.

I didn’t even remember taking these photos. I looked totally vacant. I had a hollow expression across my face. I could see everyone from the hospital in them, lined up like those class pictures in elementary school. While scanning a photograph’s surface with my fingertips, part of me was looking for Frank. In doing so, I noticed there was someone missing in the picture.

Red. Not only was he missing from this photo, he was also missing from the one from last year.

As I retraced my steps, walking backward, I noticed he wasn’t in a single Christmas photo taken during the entire decade he had been at the facility. I found this strange, but only for a moment . . . then I realized it.

His wife had died on Christmas, while skiing. To be honest, if something that traumatic happened to me on Christmas, I really wouldn’t want to take a photo either.

I continued on my way to meet Red for breakfast.