Mercy

At the hands of my psychotic, macabre wails, a naissance of chaos so unsettling was set loose to wreak havoc upon the fainthearted unfortunate enough to have been in earshot the moment Billie Joe thrust me into the sinister depths of a bathroom that ultimately represented a vomit-stained closet. His intentions behind such a betrayal were so incredibly impossible to fathom that, instead of attempting to grasp at any straws of ideas pertaining to just what the fuck he was playing at, an invisible switch in my mind was irrevocably set to obey. As soon as the old bastard had ordered me to scream, my vocal chords obliged without hesitation or feeble second thought. He was acting exactly as Elliot had, using a derogatory nickname to clearly establish that he wasn’t fucking around any longer, and if I so much as hinted at questioning his authority, he would render me so mentally and physically disabled that not even antipsychotics would be adept in quelling my insanity. Of course, my qualms with Billie Joe at that moment were beyond irrational, but he’d managed to trick my psyche into believing he was the goddamn embodiment of a man I feared above all. Even his substantial southern drawl was temporarily masked to make the situation all the more real.

At that moment, Billie Joe Armstrong was Elliot.

“You call that a scream, Slut?! My God, my fucking mother could do better than that, and she’s been dead and buried nearly fifteen years!” the old man scoffed, his derision intensified exponentially as his fist pounded menacingly against the bathroom door.

“LET ME OUT! IT’S DARK, AND I’M SCARED! LET ME OUT, ELLIOT!” I sobbed, clawing at the door until the pads of my fingers were bloodied and raw.

“Give me a goddamn reason why I should! Maybe I need to put that collar back on you and start all over again because you’re obviously a fucking failure! Every time we do this dance, you try to defy me, and for what? Your pride? Your ego? Get over yourself, Slut, you’ll never be anything more than the whore I first met on the corner!” Billie/Elliot roared, though his voice cracked and broke at the end of his demeaning rant. I could faintly hear his coughing through the door, though the sound was muffled by tissues and my adamant scratching at the door.

Once the threat of the shock collar being reintroduced into his methods of torture was clearly enunciated, I fell silent. If he desired to electrify me every time I made a sound once more, then surely he wanted me to be silent in that instant.

“Did I give you permission to stop screaming?” he growled.

“No, I’m sorry! Just, please, don’t use the collar again!”

“Iiii caaaaan’t heeeeeear youuuuuu,” the old bastard’s altered voice sang out, mocking me to higher levels of hysteria.

“DON’T USE THE COLLAR! I’LL BE A GOOD BOY, I SWEAR!”

A disturbance could be heard from outside the bathroom as what I assumed to be the hospital room door flew open with a deafening bang!, followed by a handful of medical personnel proceeding to draw a conclusion as to what exactly the disturbance was that Billie Joe had created. The old man was silenced at once, and for a moment, I couldn’t quite understand why. It wasn’t until the bathroom door was peeled open and my trembling, wretched form fell onto a co-worker that I realized he’d been sedated. Seconds later, I too found myself drifting away into a dreamless, blissful sleep that only a medically altered state of consciousness could provide.

When I woke, however, the situation became far less peaceful as a harsh reality managed to kick me in the balls. I found both my arms and legs restrained against the hospital bed I was situated upon, an operation often used on patients who were thought to be a danger to themselves or others, and immediately I sensed an onslaught of panic mounting with each passing second. I felt absolutely certain that Elliot had proposed the use of restraints on my typically reserved person, seeing as I’d never displayed such outright psychosis beforehand. Of course his rationalization for locking me up would have been carefully calculated and thoroughly prepared to come off sounding reasonable and completely necessary despite the maliciously sadistic undertones laced within his cheerfully helpful demeanor. Oh, yes. It was undeniable how significantly Elliot would relish seeing me helplessly chained to a bed, yet as my eyes failed to land upon a recognizable face, I grew increasingly perplexed.

Shouldn’t Elliot be hovering over me, admiring the handiwork of the medical personnel with horrific approval?

“Welcome back, Mike. There’s no need to be frightened. You’re still in the hospital,” a woman announced the moment my wide-eyed gaze locked on to hers. The way she carried herself made it impossible to deny her authoritative presence, yet there was a gentleness about her that made her completely approachable. Even as she cautiously inched towards me, necessity and instinct driving her forward, I never felt threatened. It was as if she were the embodiment of everyone’s mother neatly packaged in a skirt that combined professionalism with subtle attraction and fittingly inquisitive spectacles.

“How else am I supposed to feel, hm? I’m fucking restrained like…like a crazy person! I don’t understand…am I being punished for something?” I whimpered.

“Why would you say that? You had a psychotic break. We don’t generally punish people for being mentally unstable, we try to help them understand what’s going on,” the woman continued, the buoyancy and comfort of her voice enough to reduce my rapid panting to more relaxed, shallow intakes of breath.

I was temporarily unable to speak. Psychotic break? Had I honestly lost my mind?

“I…I don’t understand,” I stammered, gulping when it suddenly became apparent that I was speaking with a shrink.

“You’ve suffered through something so traumatic that all it took was Mr. Armstrong reenacting the abuse to, in a manner of speaking, break you completely. We’ve spoken with him, and he assured us that he meant no harm in his unorthodox stunt. He simply wanted, and I quote, ‘Someone to help the Fairy for once.’ Why do you think he wants someone to help you?” the shrink asked lightly, patiently waiting for a response that she knew in her heart she’d never receive.

“You already seem to know that I’ve suffered through something traumatic. Isn’t that enough?”

“No. You need to vocalize what happened to you to make it real. To make it easier to accept and live with. Now, we know you’ve been abused by the bruises and the burns all over your body, and if we ran a rape kit I’d bet money that we’d find evidence of sexual abuse as well. All I need now are the details from you. We want whoever it was who hurt you to never get the chance to hurt someone else again.”

Slowly, I shook my head. There was no way in hell that I would open myself up to this woman, seeing as I’d only known her for all of ten minutes. Her optimism towards me implicating Elliot was nauseating, and I simply couldn’t bear to relive every horrifying detail at my own expense. I refused to put myself through the pain of reiterating what that controlling prick had done to my body over and over again.

“He was already put in jail once, and he got out. I’m sorry, but you can’t help me,” I moaned, tears spilling relentlessly down my cheeks.

“Very well. If you won’t talk to me, would you mind speaking with someone you’ve reluctantly grown close to over the past few weeks?”

Yet again, I found myself drowning in a murky pool of bewilderment. I had absolutely no idea who she could be talking about, unless…no. It would have been much too unethical to place me in the same room as Billie Joe considering he was the exact cause of my mental breakdown in the first place.

“I have no idea who you’re talking about,” I stated, eyes narrowing in distrust.

“Don’t you? Mr. Armstrong’s been asking about you from the moment the sedatives wore off, and he claims to already know a great deal about what you went through. Please, just talk to him,” she pleaded, though she stood to assist the old bastard into the room without first earning my blessing. My body began trembling at once, but the fear rapidly faded as I realized what he was wearing.

With a shit-eating grin, Billie asked, “Ain’t this thing a riot?”

It was impossible to deny the hilarity in the scene being played out before me, and the tiniest of smiles illuminated a minute sense of joy on my otherwise darkened features. The old man was shamelessly clad in a straight jacket and managed to be giggling about said fact as if being deemed insane was the most fucking gut-busting joke he’d heard all day.

“At least your getup is somewhat comforting,” I sighed, wriggling about to show how I was completely confined within the bed.

“Damn straight, I get to hug myself all day… but you’re locked up exactly the way Elliot had you. Ain’t fair, Doc. Let your little lab rat free.” Billie frowned, glaring at the restraints tightly fashioned about my wrists and ankles.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that until we’ve decided that he is no longer a threat to himself or others,” the shrink explained, but the old man would hear nothing of it.

“You gonna kill yourself the minute she unshackles her goddamn contraption there, Fairy?” Billie interrogated, eyes blazing.

“No.”

“You gonna kill me?”

“No.”

“Well, by God, I do believe I solved the problem,” Billie sneered, then strategically added, “and, while you’re add it, take this damn jacket offa me. I ain’t gonna be violent neither.”

Rolling her eyes in apparent exasperation, the shrink nodded curtly before removing every last restraint from my limbs. She then rounded on Billie Joe, reluctantly unwrapping him from his cloth prison like a gift she was certain to dislike. Once freed and sporting nothing but the same damn uncomfortable hospital gown as I seemed to be wearing, he hobbled to the foot of my bed and sat down, smirking at me.

“Check it out, Fairy. We match,” he chuckled.

“Lovely,” I retorted sarcastically, folding my arms across my chest and stealing a furtive glance at the woman who stood wordlessly observing the pair of us. She was enthralled by the interaction, and decided it would be best to sit down, shut up, and take notes instead of drilling me with question after pointless personal question.

“Aw, well if you ain’t into the whole twin vibe, then you could gimme another one of those magical sponge baths. Wouldn’t have to worry ‘bout me lookin’ better’n this goddamn gown than you do then ‘cause I ain’t gonna be wearin’ one,” he announced mischievously, placing an impish hand on my thigh and winking at me. My face burned with embarrassment, and the horrified stare the shrink had adopted undoubtedly worsened my mortification.

“Mike, did you-?” she started, but Billie quickly cut her off.

“I’m jokin’, Doc. Relax.”

“Oh,” she said, though by the way she continued to stare disapprovingly at us made her acceptance of the old man’s lie debatable.

“So, Fairy. Can you please come stay with me ‘til I bite it? I’m ‘fraid he’s gonna kill you if ya keep goin’ back to him,” Billie implored, eyes glowing with determination as his hand weaseled its way into mine. Honestly, the attention he was showering upon me was demoralizing, especially after the furious scene he’d made back in his own hospital room.

“He doesn’t want to kill me. He wants to control me,” I muttered, swiftly removing my hand from Billie’s grasp. The old bastard looked notably crestfallen, and he made no further attempts at physically consoling me.

“Don’t you dare start with that bullshit. Didn’t you see how easily I was able to scramble your brains? That’s all ‘cause o’ him, Fairy, and once he gets tired o’ rapin’ ya and turnin’ ya into a fuckin’ dog, he will kill you. He has no soul.”

As the shrink feverishly attempted to scribble down everything Billie Joe had relayed to her, I answered apathetically, “Neither do I.”