Born in rain
And there was Dr. Blumingstein being able to say nothing - Lucas had nailed him to the wall after all and he was now waiting for a retort, but to no avail; Dr. Blumingstein had nothing to say, he couldn’t possibly say anything; he had just started to sob. Lucas sensed that the crescendo was about to bolt. He was always proud of possessing the sixth sense, although he should perhaps have learnt how to make a meaning out of it and, indeed, decipher it while he had time, but time was a luxury of the past since he was now a living time bomb. No one could really blame him - he was dwelling into a vortex of insanity but he could finally see things in pure lucidity, at least to his own mind.
Back in the day when it all begun, two years ago, the rays of the sun had greeted good morning to Lucas. His sixth sense though presented sun to him as ominous and he pictured it grinning evilly to him with rotten teeth. “This is going to be a bad day,” he said to himself, but what could he do? Stay in bed and not go to work? Impossible; he had to give a presentation in front of the executive board of Adshine - the advertising company he worked for.
At the age of twenty-nine he was an aspiring advertiser who strived to get into the higher ranks of Adshine. His future as the director of Adshine’s department of political campaigns depended on the presentation he would give that day. So, it was logical for him to feel a little stress when he entered the meeting room at nine o’clock in the morning with all the senior executives having fixed their eyes upon him. As he got off with his presentation his strain subsided and he completed it in success.
“Well done,” Arthur Patterson, Adshine’s president, told Lucas as he patted him on the back. “You impressed the hell out of the board,” Patterson said “and most importantly, you impressed me,” he concluded.
Lucas smiled at him in gratitude and promised that he would never fail him. “It was a good day after all,” he said to himself. “My sixth sense must be playing games on me or perhaps the sun with the rotten teeth is supposed to be a good omen.”
After the presentation Lucas had taken care of his work for an hour - fortunately, he didn’t have much to do that day besides the presentation, so he called a his friends and arranged a basketball get-together than evening, at five.
Nothing pleased Lucas more than playing basketball with his friends and listening to ragtime music, especially songs composed by Scott Joplin. The basketball court was thirty minutes away from his place and he was there at exactly seventeen hundred hours. He didn’t use to arrive on time, he always got there ten minutes earlier so that he could warm himself up with stretching exercises. This time however he was on time for the game but late for the warm up, because at twenty past four, the time he used to leave from his house in order to go to the court, he decided to burn a CD with a selection of Joplin’s music so that he could listen to it on his new discman on the way to the game.
The friends had booked the court until six o’clock, so they started to play at five past five, as soon as the last one arrived. They hoped to enjoy an interval between the two twenty-minute game periods, but that interval came early, at 13:13 of the game when Lucas stepped on his ankle and broke it. As he was lying on the floor contorting from pain he saw with his mind’s eye the sun with the rotten teeth grinning at him jeeringly.
After he got hospitalized and treated, a friend of his got him back home. Lucas walked with the help of crutches and a cast that stretched from his sole up to his knee embraced his leg. Lucas took a couple of painkillers and went to sleep, but it was the most tremulant slumber of his entire life. In his dreams he saw the sun again, laughing mischievously at him, a laughter that reminded him the stereotype of Count Dracula’s evil laughter.
When he woke up the next day in sweat and fever he called Dr. Blumingstein who had treated him the night before, the doctor advised Lucas to take an antipyretic pill and reassured him that fever was a standard reaction of the human mind and told him that everything would go well.
Next, Lucas called Arthur Patterson to let him in on his mishap.
“The doctor says I will be able to walk in a narthex in about twenty day Mr. Patterson and in the meantime I will be using my crutches to come to work.”
“That’s absolutely out of the question, my son. I have walked in crutches myself and, let me tell you this; it’s not easy at all to go to work when you have to use your hands in order to do the walking. Plus, you have to roam around the city all day and your walking resorts deem this impossible. Don’t worry my son, I hereby grant you a month’s leave of absence - use this time to recover and prepare yourself for your future activities as the chairman of the political campaign department.”
A week had passed since that call and although Lucas was happy that he got the promotion, his happiness was overshadowed by the image of the malignant sun every time he woke up from a restless night’s sleep. Lucas did not know what to make out of this image. Surely, breaking your ankle is not the best thing that can happen to your life, but on the other hand, he had gotten the promotion.
Lucas was in a taxicab, on his way to the hospital. He had an appointment with Dr. Blumingstein who examined the new x-rays of his patient’s ankle. He said everything was fine and Lucas informed him that when he was standing up he felt as if his blood surged down his ankle and strutted it; he felt as if the gathered blood around his ankle wanted to break free from the confining flesh, he felt as if his leg would explode. In other words, he felt terrible pain. Dr. Blumingstein rushed to placate his fears and told him that this was the standard procedure in such kind of traumatizations.
The same discussion took place during Lucas’ visit to the hospital a week later, but in his third weekly visit things got smelly. To be exact; things and his leg. When Lucas entered Dr. Blumingstein’s office the profound stench springing out of Lucas’ leg ravaged the doctor’s nostrils. The doctor did not talk and neither did Lucas; the first was afraid to talk while the second was afraid to listen.
And there was Lucas now, two years later, sitting on a bench at a park trying to put his thoughts in order. He wanted to prepare his speech, but he couldn’t get to it. All he could thing was the pain, the grief and the misery that had suffused him during those two years. That and the sinister sun that he had never ceased to see in his mind since the day it all begun. Plus, he was thinking about his poignant and enduring research he had endeavored during that time. He had learned all about the art of torture, from the ancient Chinese torture techniques to the updated techniques CIA was teaching its agents so as for them to apply and also pass their knowledge on to the legitimate instruments of CIA-supported regimes around the globe.
Nevertheless, Lucas was not interested in the art of interrogation, only that of torture. It was a cloudy evening and when the time approached five o’clock he got up and walked, yes, he walked with his artificial leg, to the building where Dr. Blumingstein lived. He got in the elevator and to the thirteenth flood, where the doctor lived. He rung the doorbell and when Dr. Blumingstein asked who it was he said it was him, Lucas, and needed to talk to him. The doctor let him in and they sat in the living room. They discussed about Lucas’ health and Lucas informed him that he could walk pretty well, but he had to rely on his good leg, the right one, which resulted in him getting tired easily.
“I wanna show you something Dr. Blumingstein,” Lucas said to him at a point. He reached his hand into his pocket and took out four long nails, the kind of nails used in railroad tracks.
“What are these?” the doctor asked in half-curiosity and half-fear.
“These are the instruments of purification,” Lucas replied and added: “let me show you something else,” as he reached into his other pocket taking a Smith & Wenson gun out of it.
The doctor froze instantly, just like he had frozen when the reek of Lucas’ leg had struck him almost two years ago.
“Don’t move Dr. Blumingstein, the gun is loaded. Now let me introduce to you the last instrument.”
Lucas took a hammer out of his jacket’s inner pocket.
“Now stand up against the wall Dr. Blumingstein,” Lucas ordered him, but the doctor hesitated. “Don’t let me say it twice,” Lucas threatened him while he pointed the gun at him.
The doctor stood up and walked against the wall.
“Good. Now place the little table next to you against the wall and stand on it, facing me,” Lucas ordered next.
The doctor did as he said.
“Take this nail. Good. Now take the hammer and don’t try anything funny, cause I’ll shoot you at a heartbeat. Good.”
The doctor was soaking wet from fear.
“What is your good hand?”
“I….I’m…..I….I am right-handed.”
“Jolly good then, peg your left hand on the wall using your right one.”
Dr. Blumingstein did not move. Lucas fired the gun and the speeding bullet smashed the wall, next to the doctor’s face.
“You know, these gun silencers are difficult to come by, but they actually do their job. Now, do what I told you or the next bullet will not miss,” said Lucas in a cold, unearthly voice.
Dr. Blumingstein was shivering.
“Hold the nail with your index and thumb and hit it hard,” Lucas advised him, “because if you won’t, you’ll have to hit it again and again until it can’t go any deeper.”
Dr. Blumingstein did as ordered and he got the entirety of the nail pinned in the wall. He dropped the hammer and shouted out in agony.
“Are you starting to feel the pain I felt, doctor? The pain I felt and still feel deep in me? You destroyed my life doctor, you gave birth to my only fear, that of amputation. I won’t dismember you though, I promise.”
And with that, Lucas took another nail and lifted the hammer of the floor. He pinned the doctor’s right hand on the wall.
The doctor cried out again.
“Shut your mouth up or I’ll kick the table of your feet and your palms will be forever damaged by the weight of your body. Did I ever complain or cried when I felt pain? No, I did not. So, I request that you do the same.”
Lucas grabbed another nail and placed it on the front of doctor’s right leg, at the height of the ankle. “Don’t you try to move,” Lucas threatened him as he aimed at the doctor’s manhood with the hammer. He then rushed to clinch Dr. Blumingstein’s leg on the wall and he repeated the process with the doctor’s left leg.
The doctor could not make a sound, he was terrified and in terrible trepidation. His mind could not function, but he did not shout because the thought of hope, no matter how distant it may seemed, had not abandoned him.
Lucas sat on the sofa.
“Perhaps you think I am crazy. Perhaps I am. But don’t think that I’m doing this so at to write ‘He deserved it’ on the wall with your blood. Nor will I send epistles to TV channels to inform them why I did what I did. I won’t write a manifesto like a new Unabomber. Society is fucked up, humanity is fucked up, there’s no chance that the people of this world will ever think as a single mind, that the inherent genital flaws of man will ever get cured. I’m just doing this to get rid off the sun that laughs at me. You ruined my life doctor and I’ll ruin yours, it’s tit for tat, it’s as simple as that; action or even the absence of action breeds reaction. You brought this to yourself. You gave an oath, to Ippocrates and to yourself, and you didn’t stand up to it. So, you see, it’s time for vengeance to ensue.”
Lucas stood up and walked towards the shivering doctor.
“Goodbye,” he said and kicked the table that was holding the doctor - he left the holding part to the nails.
Lucas walked to the balcony. It was raining now and the drops of the rain caressed him just like the rays of the sun had, almost two years ago. He climbed on the ledge and jumped. For a few seconds he felt as if he could really fly. Then he felt nothing. Only the rain extinguishing the sun in his head. The sun was dying into a fog of steam. The doctor was dying into a brume of pain. Lucas had died with a smile.
Back in the day when it all begun, two years ago, the rays of the sun had greeted good morning to Lucas. His sixth sense though presented sun to him as ominous and he pictured it grinning evilly to him with rotten teeth. “This is going to be a bad day,” he said to himself, but what could he do? Stay in bed and not go to work? Impossible; he had to give a presentation in front of the executive board of Adshine - the advertising company he worked for.
At the age of twenty-nine he was an aspiring advertiser who strived to get into the higher ranks of Adshine. His future as the director of Adshine’s department of political campaigns depended on the presentation he would give that day. So, it was logical for him to feel a little stress when he entered the meeting room at nine o’clock in the morning with all the senior executives having fixed their eyes upon him. As he got off with his presentation his strain subsided and he completed it in success.
“Well done,” Arthur Patterson, Adshine’s president, told Lucas as he patted him on the back. “You impressed the hell out of the board,” Patterson said “and most importantly, you impressed me,” he concluded.
Lucas smiled at him in gratitude and promised that he would never fail him. “It was a good day after all,” he said to himself. “My sixth sense must be playing games on me or perhaps the sun with the rotten teeth is supposed to be a good omen.”
After the presentation Lucas had taken care of his work for an hour - fortunately, he didn’t have much to do that day besides the presentation, so he called a his friends and arranged a basketball get-together than evening, at five.
Nothing pleased Lucas more than playing basketball with his friends and listening to ragtime music, especially songs composed by Scott Joplin. The basketball court was thirty minutes away from his place and he was there at exactly seventeen hundred hours. He didn’t use to arrive on time, he always got there ten minutes earlier so that he could warm himself up with stretching exercises. This time however he was on time for the game but late for the warm up, because at twenty past four, the time he used to leave from his house in order to go to the court, he decided to burn a CD with a selection of Joplin’s music so that he could listen to it on his new discman on the way to the game.
The friends had booked the court until six o’clock, so they started to play at five past five, as soon as the last one arrived. They hoped to enjoy an interval between the two twenty-minute game periods, but that interval came early, at 13:13 of the game when Lucas stepped on his ankle and broke it. As he was lying on the floor contorting from pain he saw with his mind’s eye the sun with the rotten teeth grinning at him jeeringly.
After he got hospitalized and treated, a friend of his got him back home. Lucas walked with the help of crutches and a cast that stretched from his sole up to his knee embraced his leg. Lucas took a couple of painkillers and went to sleep, but it was the most tremulant slumber of his entire life. In his dreams he saw the sun again, laughing mischievously at him, a laughter that reminded him the stereotype of Count Dracula’s evil laughter.
When he woke up the next day in sweat and fever he called Dr. Blumingstein who had treated him the night before, the doctor advised Lucas to take an antipyretic pill and reassured him that fever was a standard reaction of the human mind and told him that everything would go well.
Next, Lucas called Arthur Patterson to let him in on his mishap.
“The doctor says I will be able to walk in a narthex in about twenty day Mr. Patterson and in the meantime I will be using my crutches to come to work.”
“That’s absolutely out of the question, my son. I have walked in crutches myself and, let me tell you this; it’s not easy at all to go to work when you have to use your hands in order to do the walking. Plus, you have to roam around the city all day and your walking resorts deem this impossible. Don’t worry my son, I hereby grant you a month’s leave of absence - use this time to recover and prepare yourself for your future activities as the chairman of the political campaign department.”
A week had passed since that call and although Lucas was happy that he got the promotion, his happiness was overshadowed by the image of the malignant sun every time he woke up from a restless night’s sleep. Lucas did not know what to make out of this image. Surely, breaking your ankle is not the best thing that can happen to your life, but on the other hand, he had gotten the promotion.
Lucas was in a taxicab, on his way to the hospital. He had an appointment with Dr. Blumingstein who examined the new x-rays of his patient’s ankle. He said everything was fine and Lucas informed him that when he was standing up he felt as if his blood surged down his ankle and strutted it; he felt as if the gathered blood around his ankle wanted to break free from the confining flesh, he felt as if his leg would explode. In other words, he felt terrible pain. Dr. Blumingstein rushed to placate his fears and told him that this was the standard procedure in such kind of traumatizations.
The same discussion took place during Lucas’ visit to the hospital a week later, but in his third weekly visit things got smelly. To be exact; things and his leg. When Lucas entered Dr. Blumingstein’s office the profound stench springing out of Lucas’ leg ravaged the doctor’s nostrils. The doctor did not talk and neither did Lucas; the first was afraid to talk while the second was afraid to listen.
And there was Lucas now, two years later, sitting on a bench at a park trying to put his thoughts in order. He wanted to prepare his speech, but he couldn’t get to it. All he could thing was the pain, the grief and the misery that had suffused him during those two years. That and the sinister sun that he had never ceased to see in his mind since the day it all begun. Plus, he was thinking about his poignant and enduring research he had endeavored during that time. He had learned all about the art of torture, from the ancient Chinese torture techniques to the updated techniques CIA was teaching its agents so as for them to apply and also pass their knowledge on to the legitimate instruments of CIA-supported regimes around the globe.
Nevertheless, Lucas was not interested in the art of interrogation, only that of torture. It was a cloudy evening and when the time approached five o’clock he got up and walked, yes, he walked with his artificial leg, to the building where Dr. Blumingstein lived. He got in the elevator and to the thirteenth flood, where the doctor lived. He rung the doorbell and when Dr. Blumingstein asked who it was he said it was him, Lucas, and needed to talk to him. The doctor let him in and they sat in the living room. They discussed about Lucas’ health and Lucas informed him that he could walk pretty well, but he had to rely on his good leg, the right one, which resulted in him getting tired easily.
“I wanna show you something Dr. Blumingstein,” Lucas said to him at a point. He reached his hand into his pocket and took out four long nails, the kind of nails used in railroad tracks.
“What are these?” the doctor asked in half-curiosity and half-fear.
“These are the instruments of purification,” Lucas replied and added: “let me show you something else,” as he reached into his other pocket taking a Smith & Wenson gun out of it.
The doctor froze instantly, just like he had frozen when the reek of Lucas’ leg had struck him almost two years ago.
“Don’t move Dr. Blumingstein, the gun is loaded. Now let me introduce to you the last instrument.”
Lucas took a hammer out of his jacket’s inner pocket.
“Now stand up against the wall Dr. Blumingstein,” Lucas ordered him, but the doctor hesitated. “Don’t let me say it twice,” Lucas threatened him while he pointed the gun at him.
The doctor stood up and walked against the wall.
“Good. Now place the little table next to you against the wall and stand on it, facing me,” Lucas ordered next.
The doctor did as he said.
“Take this nail. Good. Now take the hammer and don’t try anything funny, cause I’ll shoot you at a heartbeat. Good.”
The doctor was soaking wet from fear.
“What is your good hand?”
“I….I’m…..I….I am right-handed.”
“Jolly good then, peg your left hand on the wall using your right one.”
Dr. Blumingstein did not move. Lucas fired the gun and the speeding bullet smashed the wall, next to the doctor’s face.
“You know, these gun silencers are difficult to come by, but they actually do their job. Now, do what I told you or the next bullet will not miss,” said Lucas in a cold, unearthly voice.
Dr. Blumingstein was shivering.
“Hold the nail with your index and thumb and hit it hard,” Lucas advised him, “because if you won’t, you’ll have to hit it again and again until it can’t go any deeper.”
Dr. Blumingstein did as ordered and he got the entirety of the nail pinned in the wall. He dropped the hammer and shouted out in agony.
“Are you starting to feel the pain I felt, doctor? The pain I felt and still feel deep in me? You destroyed my life doctor, you gave birth to my only fear, that of amputation. I won’t dismember you though, I promise.”
And with that, Lucas took another nail and lifted the hammer of the floor. He pinned the doctor’s right hand on the wall.
The doctor cried out again.
“Shut your mouth up or I’ll kick the table of your feet and your palms will be forever damaged by the weight of your body. Did I ever complain or cried when I felt pain? No, I did not. So, I request that you do the same.”
Lucas grabbed another nail and placed it on the front of doctor’s right leg, at the height of the ankle. “Don’t you try to move,” Lucas threatened him as he aimed at the doctor’s manhood with the hammer. He then rushed to clinch Dr. Blumingstein’s leg on the wall and he repeated the process with the doctor’s left leg.
The doctor could not make a sound, he was terrified and in terrible trepidation. His mind could not function, but he did not shout because the thought of hope, no matter how distant it may seemed, had not abandoned him.
Lucas sat on the sofa.
“Perhaps you think I am crazy. Perhaps I am. But don’t think that I’m doing this so at to write ‘He deserved it’ on the wall with your blood. Nor will I send epistles to TV channels to inform them why I did what I did. I won’t write a manifesto like a new Unabomber. Society is fucked up, humanity is fucked up, there’s no chance that the people of this world will ever think as a single mind, that the inherent genital flaws of man will ever get cured. I’m just doing this to get rid off the sun that laughs at me. You ruined my life doctor and I’ll ruin yours, it’s tit for tat, it’s as simple as that; action or even the absence of action breeds reaction. You brought this to yourself. You gave an oath, to Ippocrates and to yourself, and you didn’t stand up to it. So, you see, it’s time for vengeance to ensue.”
Lucas stood up and walked towards the shivering doctor.
“Goodbye,” he said and kicked the table that was holding the doctor - he left the holding part to the nails.
Lucas walked to the balcony. It was raining now and the drops of the rain caressed him just like the rays of the sun had, almost two years ago. He climbed on the ledge and jumped. For a few seconds he felt as if he could really fly. Then he felt nothing. Only the rain extinguishing the sun in his head. The sun was dying into a fog of steam. The doctor was dying into a brume of pain. Lucas had died with a smile.