The Mental Patient

Chapter 23 - Fictional Killers Vs Me. Part 2

As always, I was never too far from a pad of paper or pen, I was too close to ideas being forgotten or miswritten, I couldn't let it happen. Every spark or wheel turn inside me, I marked them so small on the page, so I could fit more lyrics, stories and nonsense on the pages, I needed the pages to last through the nights, there's nothing worse than writing and running out of whiteness, by the time I got some more, brain-farts could be lost.

"So, you have an infatuation with serial killers?" He asks.

"Not really, I know of them and seen the movies. In all honesty, I prefer to create my own murders and murderers."

"Well, I have a little game that involves killers, you interested?"

"Doc, you know I love to play games. Why tempt me."

"How's about we play a fun word associating game?"

"If it beats talking about my dad or why I committed my own murders, I'm up for it."

"Okay, So I will say a name and you tell me the first thing which pops into your head."

"C'mon, hurry up, we've only got like twenty minutes before our sesh' is over."

"Hannibal Lecture..."

"Eating Disorder." Nailed it.

McKay blows raspberries, trying to hold back a laugh.

"Norman Bates..."

"Mommas boy. I've got no problem about dressing up as the opposite sex, though, running around butchering people in mommies clothes, it's a tad weird." I'm on fire.

"Dexter... The TV Show." The doctor is ticking serial killers off a list as he reads them aloud. I didn't make it past season two of this show.

"He's conflicted, but I like the idea of a killer who kills killers for killing. Am I killing this game or what, doc?"

"Yeah-Yeah. Sweeny Todd?" He's trying to catch me out here.

"False advertising... You go in to the fucking barber shop for a shave and get your whole head chopped off and put into a pie; trading standards need to have a word with him."

"Okay, let's try some real-life people. Ted Bundy..."

"Greedy. He kept all those women to himself and never shared or let them back into the wild. He was just never happy, what a weak, weak, selfish man."

"Ed Gein..."

"Where do I start? Jesus! Here's a man who has tried to gain control of his life from his dead mother with a calming rage and the creativity of dead or alive body parts. And when he..." My words need my undivided attention. I fall away from the conversation and begin a new life.

"And you've stopped talking, what is it you're writing now? You know, your poetry seems to be doing rather well out in the world, are you squiggling more down?"

"No – No, all this talking about fictional killers and psychopaths, has given me an idea. Picture all the great movies and characters set in asylums or surrounding crazy people. Angie Jolie, in Girl Interrupted. Christian Bale, in American Psycho. Jack Nicholson, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. You bundle them all together and see what happens. And, right at the epicentre sits me, pulling strings and puppeteering mouths. A director of the silver bladed screen."

"Interesting, you've interjected yourself into the movies you have seen, and beside the characters which have had some impact on you, in some way. Do you know why you would write something like this?"