MEMORANDUM FOR: Department of Military Psychiatry

                                         Attn: Colonel Cary Maguire

                                         Richard Benjamin Armed Forces Institute of Research                           

FROM: Zack G. David, M.D.

              Department of Veterans Affairs (Seattle, WA)

SUBJECT: Transcription of Recorded Narrative, Case #WS6033, Ref. “Redmark, P.”

            Per request: A transcript of the last personal recorded narrative of Buck Sergeant Preston Redmark (Medically Retired).  As you know, Redmark was a former patient of my uncle, Martin David, in the mid-Thirties.  Dr. David is not shown in the brightest light during his cameo here, but I’ve been faithful and edited nothing out.  To do so would rob you of a crucial understanding of Redmark’s reluctance to accept even conventional forms of psychiatric treatment. 

            Note of interest: Though it cannot be captured in print, Redmark’s voice changes quite drastically when speaking the dialogue parts of ‘Fast Eddie,’ his own perceived doppelganger. 

            This narrative was originally recorded on Redmark’s Personal Robot (‘Sly’) and was discovered, after Redmark’s death, by DHS officials who quickly classified it.  The bootleg copy from which I made this transcript was turned in to a Veterans Affairs clerk by an anonymous woman on 17 March.  That copy has been erased, per direction.

            For ease of understanding, I have broken the account into rough hewn “chapters.”  I’ve also made periodic footnotes to act, hopefully, as a useful historical supplement for any other persons allowed to read this account. 

                                                                                                            //Signed//

                                                                                                            Zack G. David, M.D.

                                                                                                            22 March 2066

 

 

CHAPTER 1

           

            Fast Eddie said I was “a man whom Fortune hath cruelly scratch'd,” because I died so young and of unnatural and ruthless causes, even it was only briefly.  I came back, see?  But life begins and ends with lies.  Lies and, sometimes, dirty, rotten tricks. 

I was born premature, in a rusted bathtub in a ditch by the side of the road in Coober Pedy, Australia.  Not a big place, just a small mining town where my vacationing parents got stranded in the fall of 2010, hitchhiking across the Outback after their rental car broke down.  They were making south to Adelaide, but never made it.

            That's a little lie Father used to tell his friends.  Utterly harmless.  Like me, he was a whole-heartedly honest person but a consummate bullshitter.  Only fools would have been recklessly blazing around Down Under so close to term…and my parents, while strange, were never fools.  But when talking about the duller aspects of life, I was taught, feel free to exaggerate.  Liberally. 

            So excuse me if I use the expression "back when I was really alive," I only mean before the accident that paralyzed me thirty years ago.  It's an exaggeration, really alive, because technically I'm still alive.  Just never feels that way. 

And if you think twenty-four is a small number of years to spend here on Earth, then I agree.  It’s small on average and assuming you’re lucky enough to be born American.  But God bless America, by the way, because life expectancy in thirty percent of this hollow world can be measured in single digits.  Luckily, I suppose, my twenty-four year old life only ended for a minute.  After, I woke up frozen in place, a hit-and-run victim prone in the street and staring up into the bloodshot eyes of an emergency med tech who seemed amazed I was alive at all, though, granted, I was unable to move from the neck down except for three fingers on my left hand. [1]  Not enough to masturbate with, even if I could reach it.  Of course, nothing going on down there.  Hasn't been for three decades. 

            Life as a quadriplegic is nothing to sneeze at.  Try “living death.”  And it was no accident but miscalculation that left me breathing still.  And also, it was the third failed attempt on my life.  I hate incompetence.  But they’ve finally stopped, I think, and why shouldn’t they?  I was effectively neutralized enough.  I'll tell you all about it, about their little plot.  Let me just say this--a friend once told me there's no such thing as coincidence, but for a long time I didn't believe him. 

I really should have. 

#

            I’ve banged my head trying to find the perfect starting point to the story, but I’m not a perfectionist so let's begin right after the suicide bombing. 

January 2034, Kabul, Afghanistan.  The year before I died.  I was twenty-three.

“This guy Redmark finished his deployment the hard way,” the nurse said as they wheeled me into surgery.  I’d finished by almost getting blown up in an IED attack, but unfortunately I escaped the Reaper that time.  Four days after the operations that saved me I was sent to convalesce in a G.I. hospital in Germany.  I didn't recall the details of the attack at the time, due to the brain trauma.  Didn't recall much of anything then.  An obstacle I’ve overcome; I remember it all now.

            "Preston, we know this is hard," the kind doctors told me, "but as your new eyes heal, we're going to have to run you, like a rat, through an array of exotic and humiliating tests.  Brain scans.  Very typical.  The usual stuff, to evaluate your behavior for signs of cognitive impairment.  Hang in there, though, killer, ‘cause you'll be back home watching the VIED before you know it." 

            The bombing on the Dead Road to Kabul, they said, left me with no broken bones or other physical injuries besides the shrapnel that took my old eyes and a touch of mild Traumatic Brain Injury.  I told them there was no such a thing; Traumatic Brain Injury isn’t a picante sauce.  I could sense them shrugging at the joke.  Doctors have no sense of humor.[2]                

            The testing lasted less than a week then came to an abrupt stop. 

"You were in an accident before this,” they said.  “A car wreck last year?”

I nodded.  “When we lived in England.”

“Yes, it’s here in your records--diffuse axonal and other injuries to the brain.  Jesus, that’s some bad luck.  Serious stuff.  You shouldn’t have even deployed with that kind of… And it put you in a coma, huh?  Did they do any cognitive tests on you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, your close proximity to the suicide bomber this go-around… the shock waves really did a number on your previously damaged axon, which was still very fragile.  It’s literally going berserk now.  In layman’s terms, the tissue is damaged on the molecular level but is going to attempt to repair itself, to compensate for malfunctions in the sodium channels by making new, but ultimately futile, channels.  These faulty new channels will, in turn, allow positive calcium atoms to--“

I tuned them out.  It was my turn to shrug at them.  My new eyes were working, and I could see the acne on their childish, ignorant faces. 

“You understand?”

“Sure,” I said.  “But continue in English, please.”

“You’re going to have some problems.  You’ve got to protect that noggin.  Another injury to the head and you’re toast.  But right now, you’re going to have some issues, post traumatic stress being a big one.  It’s normal for what you've been through.  We're going to put you on a few extra meds for a while.  For headaches.  Mm, possible hallucinations.  So you don't go hurt anyone--especially yourself.”  They smiled as if someone had told a joke.  Had they?

“When can I get out of here?”

“Today.  Do you have someone to go home to?  Someone who loves you and doesn’t chew their toenails and would never cheat on you during your deployment?”

One of the nurses whispered into the chief neurologist’s ear.  I said nothing.

“Oh.  Well, that's fine, no need to worry.  We'll get in touch with your base--you’re from Holcomb?  My buddy works there, Major von Daniken--and someone will pick you up at the airport.  Sea-Tac, right?  Well, congratulations!  We’re releasing you back into the great wide open!" 

And so they did.  I always wondered if they tagged me before letting me out, but after thirty one years of looking, I've never found the implant. 

#

            I returned to Washington State.  Home, if there was such a thing. 

Not anymore. 

A sponsor from Holcomb picked me up, all right.  I didn’t know the guy.  Handled me while I underwent the med board and subsequent discharge from service.[3]  I'd joined the Cyber Corps, also known as the CyCo, or the C-Corps, in 2030, after being a Longarm contractor for two years.[4]  Out of the five services to join, the C-Corps was the best in terms of "quality of life," which is another way of saying less bullshit, less getting shot at, and better base swimming pools.  But they gave me the boot and I couldn't blame them.  The war made me quite unsalvageable.

            My house in Pondweed was still there, of course, but the pad was barren and smelled like the bottom of a tombstone.  The reminder of my life before the deployment to Camp Skylark no longer existed.  My darling English wife, Wendy, and the lion's share of our belongings were gone.  She'd held a yard sale of our stuff, leaving me one spoon, which she’d bent, a busted recliner, a cheap built-it-yourself desk, and my cherished Isaac Maimon painting of French women having coffee.  This, she had scoured with a steel wool pad. 

            I endured all that--the TBI, PTSD, the divorce, the end of my career, the gross sale of our furnishings and wanton destruction of fine art.  But I'd also acquired bad breath from stress-related gastrointestinal problems, and I admit I was pretty touchy about it. 

#

"Don't you think you're taking a lot of pills?" Mom asked.    

"I don't like to," I said, not telling her that I was also consuming a lot of medical hemp, which I didn't mind so much.  No one minds being high; that's why they call it high. 

“I was reading Natural Cures…,” she started.

I scratched my eyelids.  “Mom, please change the subject.”

"Did you hear about the King of England?"

Damn, not the news.  I'd heard he was knifed in the back.  But I didn’t care. 

With the pills, dope, and high alcohol content of my blood most of the day, I kept up a steady stupor while watching the news on the tiny VIED-sphere I'd bought.  It was always the same anyhow:

"--King of England stabbed in the back as he..." 

"--wailed as this Tel Aviv religious school was destroyed by..."  

"--bodies of earthquake victims washed ashore all night..." 

"--as the disease ravages Louisiana and parts of Mississippi..." 

"--who was reportedly raped by all three of the priests before being..."

Zap. 

"Yes, Mom, I hear it all.”  And dissociated, I shrugged it all off. 

#

By the end of that first week home, I felt no need to call Mom anymore to let her "know how I was doing."  If she cared, she would've come there.  Father had an excuse, at least; he’d died five years earlier from Gulf War Illness.[5]

After six weeks home, I'd neglected to pay my bills.  I was already behind since Wendy could never be bothered with such trivialities when I'd been in Afghanistan.  She'd refused to do a lot of things--pay bills on time, be faithful, bring our unborn baby to term.  I'm not bitter.  She's probably an ugly old bag of lizard skin by now and she'll get what's coming to her, if she hasn't already.  Fast Eddie promised that much and I grew long ago to trust him.[6]  More or less. 

I got a warning in the mail saying my power would be shut off, but that didn't sink in; I had other problems.  For starters, my memory imploded, for lack of a better word, and I forgot my damn first name for three days.  But how do you explain that one to the power man? 

   #

It’s not a free country when you can’t sit around in public like an old whino.  I began dressing like one, too, since the power was out and I couldn't do a wash.  Saturday morning--two minutes 'til noon--I got up, put on a Mind the Gap shirt and my old camouflage C-Corps jacket.  Opened my front door to go out and stopped to read the note tacked beside it: 7 KNIVES.  The note had a down-pointing arrow, so I looked. 

There on the floor was a wooden beer crate.  Sure enough, it was full of knives and many more than seven.  Ka-Bar, tanto, S-guard Bowie.  Switchblade, dagger, spear point pigsticker.  Various others.  I put a switchblade in my jacket, a pocket knife in my jeans, grabbed my skateboard and left. 

Riding down to the business part of town, I enjoyed the exercise and crisp weather, but was overcome by exhaust dioxides.  Hell, the air in Kabul was cleaner.  Forget Tacoma Aroma--air in Pondweed is like sucking a tailpipe.  Whole place is a toxic dump shunned by pols who’d never make a name here, abandoned by the enterprise of commerce, given a wide berth by the cops who ruin their tire alignment patrolling pot-holed roads.  Even the hapless teachers had made their exodus.  Pondweed is another roadside victim of the American Dream getting splattered by the hot wheel of Entropy, but it's my home and if the Dream's going to die here, I figure I will with it.[7] 

Why not?  I did once already. 

So I skated the half klick past polluted Latchky Pond, passing boarded up stores and transmission shops until I approached a strip mall which grew like a goiter from that neck of town.  If it had seen better days, it was only a couple.  Skidding to a stop, I entered the Sup-R Smoke and Liquor Shop, aka the Stop n' Rob, and greeted Willy, the skinny Vietnamese who was restocking the porno mags and who always looked like he didn't like anyone and especially not me. 

"Just this," I said, putting a liter of beer by the register. 

"$11.30."

I reached in my back pocket and felt my own ass.  No wallet.  Damn!  There was some cash in my front pocket, though. 

"You're paying cash?  You don't have Skinbee?" he asked, sneering-like. 

"No.  I've got a ten and an Injun."  I took a quarter from the loose change tray on the counter.  "And a quarter.  Actually…,” I realized I also my credit card in my other pocket and put that on the counter.  “What do know?  Throw in that Hustler, too.  The one with the hot blond.  I'm feelin' lucky." 

"Go get her." 

I stepped out and sat on the curb, cracked open my beer and drank from the bag.  No other persons around the strip; business was dead, which was good for me.  I hoped no further interaction with humans would be necessary for the rest of the day. 

This was not me, but I'd reached an impasse.  I was not who I was, but I didn't know where to turn.  I'd been splintered from the war… and other things.  My cognitive abilities were wrecked.  Plus I was being haunted by a strange inner ghost of unknown origin who kept whispering urgently to me, "You'll never be the man you once were."  It had also been whispering that there were people trying to kill me. 

The vice-peddling Willy called the cops while I was internally pissing and moaning.  I didn’t hear him, but can imagine the call when something like this:

"Same asshole as last time.  Jerk in his mid-twenties, short black hair.  Got piece missing from left side of his head, two long scars like tiger try to take him out.  Hair doesn't grow there.  He just sitting there on sidewalk, sometime move his head around like retarded." 

A cruiser pulled in the lot, into the stall for the Sup-R, and a burly male officer got out with a groaned mixture of condescension and authority.  I thought I was about to get a spanking. 

I squinted and took a long slow swig, disconnected from the unfolding scene.  It was just like watching a reality show.  Through the glass door of the store, the shaded eyes of Willy were visible.  Guess the prick wanted to watch, too.

            "Hey there, Rip Van Winkle," the officer said.  "Remember me?  Come on, get up." 

            I shifted my weight onto my left cheek; the right one was taking a nap. 

            "Remember you?"

            He didn't seem to care for that question and he looked concerned that I was giving him the business.  He wasn't the right guy to give business to.  Quinn, his badge read… Officer Quinn didn't stand for business from young punks; he'd made a career out of not standing for it, no doubt.  He hitched up his belt in a losing battle to cover his paunch.  Surely he didn't like people looking at it.  Everyone is sensitive about something. 

            "Town's too small for you to've forgotten my pretty face already, Mister Redmark.  Especially after only a week." 

            “A week?” I asked.  “We've played this game before?  Isn't there a meth lab around here you could be harassing?"

            "Sure, smartass.  Five within a three block radius, as a matter of fact," he said.  "And that's not counting the Sleepy Time lab at the old cannery.  But they're all still asleepin' right now.  Tweekers get awfully cranky when you wake 'em up at this hour.  Now let's go.  Get up!"

            "Okay.  Okay, wait.  Let me show you a trick."  I took the bag, beer bottle inside, and tried to balance it on top of my head.  "Pay close attention.  You only get to see this once." 

I threw the bag down, hoping to hear the satisfying sound of shattering glass.  It hit Quinn's boot and bounced off with a tink. 

"Well, fuck you."  I grabbed my board and jumped up to flee but was unable to jump spryly due to my ass being asleep.  That was it; he'd had enough.  The cuffs came out and that lumpy ex-linebacker laid me out in the parking lot.  With my face scrunched up against my right eye, I watched with the left as my skateboard rolled its way into traffic, where it met its destiny under the wheel of a moving van. 

"Damn it!  Get off me, you bastard!  You owe me a board." 

"That's gonna happen," he told me, and I said something like, “Have another Dunkin', fatty."

#

I lived my life swallowing days and spitting out the nights like prune pits, consuming and discharging time in an endless cycle.  Besides trouble with the law I also had weird people coming over to check up on me, my old overweight brothers and sisters from the Cult of Twelve, from the days before I had dodged mandatory military service by taking a job as a combat contractor.  They came over too often, obligated by faith or peer pressure to ring my doorbell arbitrarily and annoyingly.  They would stand there and wait outside the rotting screen door with their flabby arms held up and ready to spread wide in expectation of a traditional greet-hug. 

They should've known better… but as a collective, they’re a stubborn enemy. 

"Leave me alone, for the love of God,” I said, choking out the words like a cat retching up fur.      

Enter the Villain; one of many.  Peter Smith had been a hacker in a past life.  After an FBI bust, the freckled fatboy moved into real estate.  He handled the paperwork on our house even.  "It's for the love of Him that we can't do it, Humpty," he answered.  "You know that." 

He held his hairy, spotty arms out.  I frowned at them but they stayed up.  I couldn't stand it when they called me Humpty, and I sure as hell wasn't going to hug him for it. 

You won't find this in any King James Bible, but the parable of Humpty Dumpty goes something like this: Humpty Dumpty is a metaphor for Lucifer.  Humpty Dumpty sat on a Great Wall, symbolic of the divide between Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell.  The egg man straddled that divide just as Lucifer had, trying to be both good angel and bad usurper.  Like Lucifer, Humpty had a great fall off the great wall, from which all the King's horses and men, i.e. God's creations, could not restore him.  It was ridiculous tripe typical of the sermons the C12 preached.  When I left the cult, they started in with the Humpty Dumpty business, egging me on (no pun intended) to view my situation as similar to Lucifer's in order that I might avoid a similar fate. 

"I have AIDS now," I said.  "Going to that Chinese massage parlor on Bridgelane and my condom broke once.  Came down with a case of Hong Kong Ding Dong, too.  One of those girls was infected with everything under the sun, I guess.  Don't know which one, and I've screwed 'em all just about."  I gave Peter a knowing look; he crossed his arms and fumed.  "I'm telling you, you guys better stay away.  Serious, it's that airborne AIDS, it's mutated.  You don't want that."[8]

"God will protect his flock," Peter said, putting his hands in his pockets.  "And you don't have AIDS, anyways.  If you did, we wouldn't come over anymore.  Let the fornicators die off; that's His will.  Kelly?"

His companion, a young blond in a blue-plaid dress, nodded and reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope. 

"Thanks, Kelly," I said, taking it.  I knew what was inside, so instead of opening it, I studied her face.  Her cheeks were getting rounder and rounder.  She reminded me of a cartoon chipmunk. 

"You're welcome, Humpty."  She smiled. 

            "Can I be honest?  When I talk to you guys, I feel like a dead bug--something--tacked to a board, like--"

            "Like a butterfly?  A dead butterfly?  Preston, we don't want you to feel that way," Peter said. 

            "Yeah," I said.  "Well, then stop doing it.  It's like you're examining me all the time.  I'm living under a microscope here."

            "No, see, you're not a butterfly to us at all.  You're still just a little, tiny caterpillar."  He showed me with his finger and thumb how little and tiny a caterpillar I was.  I tongued an incisor and was about to call him an asshole. 

"That's a joke, buddy,” he said, cracking a chub-lipped smile.  I didn't smile back.  It was getting so I couldn't stand looking at any member of the Cult of Twelve.  Their strange predilection for being obese, derived, like many of their beliefs, from unusual--or contrived--interpretations of obscure Biblical passages, was infuriating.  But it was one of those things they'd never bothered to explain.  I'd always been "too new" to understand.  Faith required blind obedience, they said. 

            "Wow.  You've got a hell of a poker face there,” Peter said, staring at me. 

"Language, language,” I said.  “Don’t you mean heck of a poker face?"

            "No, no.  Hell’s not a curse word.  We believe in Hell." 

            "Amen," Kelly said. 

I shrugged. 

            "We gotta get going, Humpty-buddy," Peter said, taking a step back.  "We'll try and come by tomorrow.  Unless, of course, you want to stop by church tonight?"  His eyes once widened in anticipation when he me asked that.  Now those black buttons lowered when he asked, as if he were expecting an insult, and I grinned a little inside when I saw slight frown marks sneak in, too.  I gave him what he expected.     

"Not unless you want everyone there to get sick and die from fucking airborne AIDS.  And stop calling me Humpty, jerk-off." 

 "Yeah, yeah."  Peter shook his head ruefully.  "God is testing you right now.  You're not cold yet, Humpty, only lukewarm.  And while the Living One would spit you out as you are, we'll continue to try and warm you back up.  Before it's too late.  There won't be any signs for the Rapture.  You get caught with your pants down, you won't make the cut.  Then you’ll get all the sex you want--from Satan’s penis.”

I really started laughing at that one, and Kelly turned bright red.

“Come on, Kelly,” Peter said.  “Let's go.  We’re wasting our time."

"See you tomorrow," she said with sugar, waving as they turned.  The sound of crunching gravel was a symphony. 

I stood to stare at Kelly's legs.  Even with the extra weight she was sexy, and young.[9]  But old enough.  I'd endured a long drought, Wendy having left me while I was deployed, and even before then our relationship had, for several weeks, been too strained to have sex, with the exception of one drunken night of which the details were foggy.  That must have been the night she got pregnant, my plastered soldiers managing to capture her inebriated flag at last.  I'd always wanted a child, but in a way I'm glad it didn't happen.  Not with her. 

Despite the line of bullshit I'd fed Pete, I had never been to a massage parlor.  The thought was tempting, and more so every passing day.  But I put it out of my head and turned my attention to the envelope Kelly had handed me.  I smelled it and it smelled good, like her.  Inside was a verse from the Bible, I knew.  That was the routine. 

Without opening it, I ripped it up and tossed it in the garbage.