The Forbidden Story of Patient 14892 A Short Story by Daniel Clausen

This is a story I wrote a long time ago (when I was 20). The story was published in Black Petals in 2004. I hope you enjoy the story.

The Forbidden Story of Patient 14892
A Short Story by Daniel Clausen



Sal woke up on his period. And he wasn’t sure if his name was Sal or Sally or if he was supposed to be a he or a she. The only thing he was certain of was that he was very depressed.

He stripped down to his underwear and was not completely surprised to realize that today he had breasts. He looked at his breasts in the mirror at length and tried to judge if they were in good proportion to his bulging stomach. He decided that they were not, which made him even more depressed. He suddenly reached for a cigarette and began to smoke.

Sometime ago, smoking had come back into fashion--around the same time psychiatry had become big business, and mergers had taken place between plastic surgery and psychiatric firms. It was hard to tell what had come before or after that—after all, studying history was deviant social behavior, banned by the state. Wanting to learn about history was considered the sign of a demented mind, not willing to let go of the past—or at least that’s what Sal’s psychiatrist kept telling him. Still, some people liked to do it in private—the “solitary vice” as it was called. History books had to be bought on the black market from dealers who had contacts with “historians.” Sal had experimented with history once, but he couldn’t remember where or when it had happened.

The world changes, despite popular belief. Sal knew this because he had read it in a book once and had decided that the book was right and not his psychiatrist. Sal noticed that people were changing at an alarming rate; buildings were changing, but not as much as people were changing (“It’s much easier to change a person than it is to change a building,” the book had said). Politics was changing, and so art was changing—both were changing people. Sal had gone through many changes. Sal used to be a man. Three times he had been a man. A woman twice. And a few times he had experimented with being a hermaphrodite and other transsexual organisms, some purely invented.

With depression at an all-time high, plastic surgery was coming into its own and the Picassos of Sal’s time were being employed in shops that made people’s bodies, and so Sal was a real piece of work in every sense of the word--the product of the demented mind of a surgeon who spent too many nights in coffee bars experimenting with Christianity (a banned religion).

Pat was waiting in a restaurant on the corner of Coca Cola Street. Pat had the body of a Jewish priest, and was on the brink of a mental breakdown, and so that morning he asked for a coke loaded with extra Prozac, while attempting to swear in Yiddish.

Sal came late. He too was feeling unusually depressed that morning. He was sure it had something to do with witnessing the public torture of a person found guilty of identity fraud. He always hated seeing people being tortured, but it was his civic duty and Sal liked to think of himself as a good citizen, despite his occasional disobedience.

Being a good companion was also important. He wanted to look nice for Pat, so he had put on a jean jacket with pink hot pants. He sat down across from Pat, who looked at Sal with her newly fitted discerning Jewish eye.

“So how do you like my anniversary gift for you?” Pat asked.

“Did you have this done in the middle of the night?” Sal said trying to act surprised.

“I wanted to surprise you. Do you like it?” he asked taking a drag on his cigarette, following this up with a drink of his Prozac cola.

“It’s nice, but did you have to make the shoulders so wide.”

“Oh that’s Pablo, he’s such a post-post-modernist pessimist expressionist.”

Sal shook his head. He had to admit that Pablo was good at what he did. Unfortunately, what he did was make Sal’s body a testament to the feebleness of the human body before all the major diseases were wiped out: all except the mental disorders.

“Pat, I got to thinking last night. Maybe we shouldn’t spend so much of our time in therapy anymore. Maybe we’re ready to move on with our relationship. I thought maybe you and I could go on a date, and who knows, maybe even have some physical contact.”

“Oh Sal, physical contact is so passé. Besides, why don’t you just use your orgasm stimulator? I hear now they have a stimulator with a twenty setting. Besides, dating and physical contact are really radical steps in our relationship. I don’t think we’re ready for that kind of a commitment,” he handed Sal a cigarette.

“Thank you,” Sal said, taking the cigarette. “I think we can handle it, and physical contact doesn’t always have to be about orgasms. What about the comfort of another person’s touch?”

“I experimented with that in college. It’s kind of creepy, to be honest.”

“Oh,” Sal said, disappointed. Somehow, though, it all felt right, despite Pat’s objections. He took two capsules of period-away and followed it up with some of Pat’s Prozac cola.

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you on your period?”

“Yeah, but it’ll go away,” Sal said. “Anyway, I just want you to think about it for a little while.”

“I’ll talk to my personal therapist about it,” Pat said.

“Okay,” Sal said and forced a smile. He tried to remain optimistic, but somehow he knew that Pat’s therapist would not approve. In a bold move, Pat shook hands with Sal.

“See, it’s no big deal,” Pat said.

Sal looked at his hand. It had never been shaken before. He looked at it, and felt a strange kind of satisfaction he couldn’t define, but then he realized that his hand was strangely shaped, and began to feel depressed again.

Sal walked away from Pat, still thinking about the handshake. He made his way to his taxi to begin work. He saw his image reflected back at him in the window of his car and he began to think.

Sal thought too much. His psychiatrist had warned him about the pitfalls of thinking before, but Sal couldn’t help himself, and that—according to his therapist—was why he had a nervous breakdown.

*

Sal found himself once again in his psychiatrist’s office. The ambulance had taken him there after his nervous breakdown. He had been loaded onto the stretcher, while an emergency team screamed reaffirming things at him: “You are a good human being!” and “Your parents love you very much!” and then they shot him with drugs and pressed his orgasm stimulator repeatedly. For a brief moment, he felt happy. But even that didn’t really feel like happiness; it just reminded him of what happiness felt like.

Sal sat in his chair, his legs crossed nervously, as his psychiatrist went on about how he needed more drugs, and more plastic surgery to make him feel better. He was lectured on the evils of allowing non-Theracorp artists to perform on his body, and the problem of thinking too much. He had heard it all before, but he sat there and listened anyway, because he was paying quite a bit of money.

“You need something new Sal. Something that will give you a new outlook on life. Have you ever tried being a sixteen-year-old fashion model?”

Sal looked at his therapist with a perturbed face and sighed, “No, I suppose I haven’t.”

“Well, no wonder you had a nervous breakdown. How can you truly be happy until you’ve been a sixteen-year old model? I’ll have all the arrangements made.”

Sal thought about something for a second while his therapist busied himself with paperwork. “You see that’s the thing, I don’t think I really want a new look. In fact, I think I’d like to return to my old body. You know, the one I was born with.”

“I don’t understand,” his therapist said, with his usual grin.

“I think I’d like you to change me back into the body I was born with, except make it older so it looks like my real age.”

“Your real age? And how old is that exactly?” the psychiatrist said, adjusting his glasses.

“Thirty-two, I think. I’m not actually sure. But I’m sure it’s older than sixteen.”

“Who’s been giving you these ideas about original age and body, if you don’t mind me asking?” his therapist asked.

“Uhhh, I don’t know. I think I read it in a book somewhere.”

The therapist began to look nervous. “I see, hmmm, well I’ll have to talk with my supervisor about that,” he said. “Hold on just one moment.” He went across the room, picked up a phone, and pressed a single button. “Feel free to have one of those Prozac pills with coconut cake. They’re dee-lish,” his therapist smiled and winked at Sal.

Sal took one and placed it in his mouth. He chewed on it and pressed his orgasm stimulator to give the cake a more erotic taste.

“Yes, he’s right here in my office, sir…Okay,” the man said into the phone. He walked back across the room and sat down across from Sal. “Soooooo, everything is looking A-okay. Some people are coming, and they’re going to ask you a couple of questions. I don’t think it should be too much trouble.”

Sal shook his head. The two of them waited. The therapist began to whistle and then checked his watch. “They should be here any second now.”

They waited.

*

Six men in suits burst through the door and sprayed Sal with a gas that immobilized him. They wrapped him in a straight jacket and took him away.

The next thing Sal knew, he was tied down to another stretcher being wheeled through a long tunnel where suited men were yelling negative things at him: “You are not a good human being!” “Who has polluted your mind with these impurities?” “Your pants make your thighs look fat!”

For the next few days Sal laid in a padded room, covered by a straight jacket that sprayed liquid every nine seconds that made his skin itch. He was fed through tubes and given elevator music to entertain /drive him crazy. At night voices would shout things at him: “You are not a swell person!” “Your shoulders are disproportionate with your head!” “You have a very unpleasant demeanor!” Followed by voices saying: “Wouldn’t it be nice to have another body?” “You’d look good as a Henry Winkler” (giggles of women and men), “You’re so attractive.”

It went on like this for days. Eventually a door opened and three men in suits dragged Sal out of the room and strapped him onto a platform. He blacked out.

The next thing he remembered was a white room with other people in straight jackets. A man came and injected drugs into his arm. He suddenly felt depressed. He looked into a mirror and realized that his body had been replaced with a new one that was exactly same as the rest of the mental patients’. The only way he could tell himself apart from the other patients was by the number on his straight jacket: 14892.

14892 looked around and tried to find someone to talk to, but all the other numbers were busy staring out into space. He figured there must be something to this looking out into space thing, so he too stared out into space

…and so it went for hours at a time. He would stare between sleeping hours, and between sleeping hours he would stare.

One day, 11145 interrupted him. “Hey, let’s do something. I’m bored.”

14892 looked up from his trance. 11145 was the first person who had actually tried to talk to him. 14892 asked: “What do you want to do?”

11145 smiled widely and thought. “Ummm, I know, let’s play a game. My favorite is ‘Who can smile the longest.’” 11145 smiled. And then he kept smiling. Two guards burst into the room and began beating 11145 with clubs, as he yelled, “I’m so happy! I’m so happy!”

“I have a chemical imbalance,” 11145 would later explain, with welts and bruises covering his body. “The chemicals in my brain won’t let me be sad. They asked me if I wanted surgery, and I said to them ‘Why would I need surgery when I’m so happy with the body I already have?’ and, of course, I smiled and then they smiled and, well, here I am. I just love the world.”

14892 liked 11145, despite his handicap. He said this once, and the guards came in and beat him with clubs, all the while 11145 smiled and laughed, and said “Oh, 14892 you’re such a goof.”

At night he was given electric shocks and forced to watch reeducation films featuring clones of dead actors. Charlton Heston played a mental patient like himself who made it through “The Program” to become a normal citizen. Toward the end of the film he smoked a lot cigarettes and drank a lot of coke and started shooting at ape people while riding a chariot.

People in suits asked 14892 where he got his ideas from, and 14892 always said he remembered reading them in a book somewhere. All this seemed strangely familiar to 14892.

He met 23267 one day staring at a wall, and asked him, “Have I met you before?”

The body remained still, and he realized that he had confused 23267 for 34567. He told 11145 about this and 11145 laughed and was clubbed again. Finally, they did something to his throat that made him unable to laugh, but 11145 still smiled.

One day 14892 realized that he had been in the asylum before. That he, like the other patients, was a delinquent, and that once he served out his time, he would be let out into society. This depressed him, or maybe it was the drugs they had been giving him. He couldn’t be sure anymore.

14892 would try to sleep during the days, and at night he would try to find a good place at the staring wall. Eventually, he began to forget what was day and what was night, and began referring to his time staring at the wall as Christmas, and the time asleep as brunch. The time he would spend staring at the smiling 11145 he called Guy Fawkes Day.

Patients received their food from needles. 11145 found this method of consumption convenient because it meant that he didn’t have to stop smiling to chew.

Something happened one day while 14892 was staring out at a wall. Two men clubbed him and took him to an office with a strange looking man who had the body of Alfred Hitchcock.

“Good evening,” the man said to 14892. “My name is Dr. Goodspeed. I’m the owner of Theracorp Industries.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” 14892 said.

“Oh, thank you,” Dr. Goodspeed said. “Mr. Oglethorpe…”

“Who is Mr. Oglethorpe?”

“You’re Mr. Oglethorpe.”

“Okay. But could you call me ummm…Sal?”

“That’s okay with me, Sal. Do you like the name Sal? I can arrange for you to have a new name.”

“Okay.”

“Mr. Oglethorpe, recently you were discovered trying to obtain your original body at one of our complexes. Here at Theracorp our business is to give our clients a happy, fulfilling lifestyle. We try to eliminate any problems that may arise, but occasionally we do run into a snag. Unfortunately, we do not have a complaint department. Did you know, Mr. Oglethorpe, that trying to obtain your original body is very serious crime?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Here at Theracorp, it’s our business to make sure all our clients are happy. But happiness has its price, Mr. Oglethorpe. You have committed a very serious breach of section 999 of the conformist laws, punishable by the NCP, the non-conformist police, a subsidiary of the police, which is of course a subsidiary of Theracorp.”

14892 tried to understand Dr. Goodspeed, but he kept thinking about how the wall looked during Christmas, and 11145 smiling during breakfast. “I’m really sorry if I broke any laws,” 14892 said.

“Oh, it’s okay. It’s not really your fault anyway. You see Sal, you have been to our reeducation facility many times. This worries us. We want to make sure that all of our clients are happy. And you Sal, you don’t seem to be happy.”

“Oh,” 14892 said. He thought for a second. “No, I don’t think I am.”

“Do you want to die, Sal?”

“Yes, I think I would like that very much.”

Dr. Goodspeed looked at Sal for a long moment. “How much do you want to die?”

Sal thought about the question. He began to cry. Then he wept. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“You can’t, you know. I won’t let you. And do you know why I won’t let you Sal?”

“Because you love me.”

“That’s right Sal. Theracorp loves all its clients.” Dr. Goodspeed smiled.

14892 realized that his name was Sal. It had been given to him by Theracorp, and that they owned the copyright to it. They could change it if they wanted to. All Sal’s rights were reserved, but this did not change the fact that he felt bad about his life.