Belt Buckles & Pajamas

  BELT BUCKLES & PAJAMAS

  Copyright © 2007 Michele LeBlanc

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  * * *

  Published by

  KANAPOLIS FOG PUBLISHING EMPORIUM

  Anderson, Indiana

  PRINT EDITION ISBN: 978-0-6151-4714-7

  With Thanks to

  Jessica, Amy, Brian, Mary

  and Special Appreciation

  to Chris Baty

  Contents

  One: In Which We Meet Some People

  Two: An Encounter With Stuart

  Three: Violet Is A Whore

  Four: More Than Just A Name

  Five: Theodore And Daphne Share A Dream

  Six: The Cemetery Revisited

  Seven: In Which The Bad Doctor Joins The Good Doctor

  Eight: Bolts Of Lightning

  Nine: In Memoriam Of A Hero

  Ten: Andie Gets All Professional

  Eleven: The Search For Glen

  Twelve: In Which No One Dies That We Know Of

  Thirteen: Group Therapy With The New Group

  Fourteen: Stuart Builds A Machine To Save Us All

  Fifteen: Lunch Does Not Start Well

  Sixteen: Shy Boy On The Couch

  Seventeen: All In The Family

  Eighteen: The Bad Doctor Returns

  Nineteen: Recalibrating The Reflection Things

  Twenty: Andie Tells Us A Story

  Twenty-One: More Wheel Of Fortune

  Twenty-Two: In Which We Are No Longer Safe

  Twenty-Three: The Lady Is Informed

  Twenty-Four: Dreams Of A Happy Nature

  Twenty-Five: Discovering The Past, But Not Ours

  Twenty-Six: The Hitchhiker

  Twenty-Seven: Reverse

  Twenty-Eight: Return Of The Screech Owl

  Twenty-Nine: Strategizing Means Pretty Pictures

  Thirty: Slumber Party

  Thirty-One: In A Pissy Mood

  Thirty-Two: Journey Through Darkness, Part One

  Thirty-Three: Journey Through Darkness, Part Two

  Thirty-Four: Journey Through Darkness, Part Three

  Thirty-Five: Morning After

  Thirty-Six: Shy Boy Gets A Kiss

  Thirty-Seven: Plan C

  Thirty-Eight: Andie’s Return

  Thirty-Nine: Arts And Crafts

  Forty: Never Been Kissed

  Forty-One: Feeding The Screech Owl

  Forty-Two: Andie Tells Us Another Story

  Forty-Three: Finishing The Tags

  Forty-Four: Spin That Wheel

  Forty-Five: Mean Old Doc

  Forty-Six: Favors

  Forty-Seven: All Grown Up

  Forty-Eight: Kareem And Shy Boy

  Forty-Nine: The Mystery Of Melissa

  Fifty: Clean Wheel Of Fortune Is Boring

  Fifty-One: Dream A Little Dream

  Fifty-Two: Doctor Martin’s Fascination

  Fifty-Three: Remembering The Dead

  Fifty-Four: Two Lights

  Fifty-Five: Gordon

  Fifty-Six: Anyone Else In There?

  Fifty-Seven: Rest And Reflections

  Fifty-Eight: Prognosis Good

  Fifty-Nine: Final Spin

  Sixty: Midnight Mayhem

  Sixty-One: Aftermath

  Sixty-Two: Reunion

  About the Author

  One: In Which We Meet Some People

  The doctor comes in. She’s pretty. She looks friendly. I hope she isn’t mean. Some of the others look mean to me. They scare me.

  “Well, good morning everyone,” the doctor says. “Let’s all introduce ourselves. I’ll start – my name is Andie. Now, who wants to go next?”

  No one speaks. We all look at each other, around the stark white meeting room, at the floor, anywhere but her. Stuart starts to giggle. Theodore won’t meet anyone’s eyes. Glen is looking out for trouble. I know Violet is going to say something soon, if no one else does. She always wants attention.

  “Well, isn’t Andie such a sweet name. I think we could have some fun, Andie girl, once we get to, you know, know each other, if you know what I mean.”

  Violet is a whore. She thinks everyone wants her. She’s right.

  “Well, I do want to know you, but it would help if you told me your name.”

  Violet leans close into the doctor’s face. Almost kissing her, she breathes out her name in that musky-throated way that turns people on. “Violet.” She pulls back, smiling at how the doctor is embarrassed, how the doctor is pushing her black-rimmed glasses back up the curve of her nose, how she managed to get under her skin within the first ten seconds she met her.

  “Okay, thank you, Violet,” she stammers out. “Who’s next?”

  Stuart giggles.

  “Okay, you just volunteered, what’s your name?”

  “Don’t you know already? I know you do, THEY know, why don’t you?”

  It’s another THEY day for Stuart, I guess. I look around to see what set him off. Oh, there’s a camera in the corner. The blinking red light taunts him, each on and off sequence a little wink of the eye of Big Brother: now I’m watching, now I’m not, on and off and on and off.

  “Well, I’m here all by myself, I’m not THEM, I promise you that. I have a name, remember? I’m Andie. What can I call you?”

  He glares at the camera. She takes his hand, drawing his eyes away from the spying lens and to her own. “Please, tell me your name.”

  “Stuart. You can call me Stuart. But that’s all I’m going to tell you. Until I know you’re real.” He turns away, she accepts it – for now, I presume.

  Theodore looks up, as if Stuart’s acceptance cleared the way for his own. He usually doesn’t talk to the doctors. Maybe he thinks Andie is pretty. I know I think she is. Not sexy, like Violet, but pretty. Like best friend next-door slumber party and talk about boys pretty. Or how I always thought that should be. Damn Melissa for ruining all of that.

  “You’re human,” Theodore says, and I realize how right he is. Doctor Martin, our usual doctor, is anything but human, and I wonder how she ever came to work for someone like him. The contrast is almost enough to make me think she isn’t human, but her presence is so overwhelmingly convincing that I push that thought back.

  She takes Theodore’s hand, just as she took Stuart’s. I want her to take mine; I reach out, but she only sees Theodore’s hand, and mine goes ungrasped.

  “We’re all human,” she tells him. “Tell me who you are.”

  “I am the conduit,” he replies. “I am the beacon, I am the source. The contagion will spread through me, until there is no one left. We are doomed, this fragile race, this blight upon a wrecked orb twirling through the cosmos. And it shall come to pass, that the spore will cough its microbes upon the prevalent wind, and none shall escape and all will be one. There will be harmony throughout the universe, when the seed shall have a common strain and all the bastard off shoots have been shorn from this realm. The mighty, the weak, the good and the bad, there shall be no distinction when the wheat is reaped, when the land is raped, when the children are culled.”

  She continues to hold his hand, looking at him not with comprehension but with compassion. I can feel his heart beating, gone rapid during his tirade. It slows down as she continues to sit there, holding his hand. The fire leaves his eyes, his breathing no longer echoes in my ears.

  “So, what’s your name?” she asks again.

  He stares at her.

  “Well, I can’t go on calling you �
��Mister Conduit Beacon Source’ and all that, can I?” she asks, her eyes twinkling, the corners of her mouth curling up in an oh so sweet smile. He is hers, that quickly, as “Theodore, I am the human Theodore,” leaves his lips. There is only Glen left, now. Surely Glen will be my rock.

  She looks at me now. She notices when I pull my hand back, still extended from when I listened to Theodore’s rant. She notices, but does not judge. Her face remains impassive yet angelic. She smiles, my heart melts, and I wonder how long it will be before I am crying on her shoulder.

  “Stop.” Glen! Thank you!

  She actually seems surprised at the authority in Glen’s voice, at how his simple command causes her outstretched arm to cease its movement toward me in an instant, obeying despite any of her own intentions.

  “You must leave her alone,” Glen continues. “She must not be harmed.” Bless him, God bless him.

  Andie looks at me, looks at Glen. “I’m not here to harm anyone; I just want to get to know everyone.”

  “You can’t know her,” Glen tells her. “Not until she says it’s okay. I won’t let you. She is to be safeguarded from intrusion.”

  “Okay, so can I know you?” she asks him. “Is that all right?”

  Glen ponders this. I can tell he is actually considering whether it would hurt me for her to know him. What a sweetie!

  “Yes, I suppose that would be acceptable. Perhaps if you knew me, you would realize that she is safe, and that you need not interfere with her protection.” He stands up, puts his arm across the solar system pattern emblazoned on his t-shirt. Okay, he’s a sweetie, but sometimes he is a bit, well, dramatic. “I am The Guardian! Defender, Protector, Shield of my lady. I am The Guardian!” He kneels in his silly Guardian salute to me, and I hide my face. I can feel my ears burning red. He knows I don’t like the salute, I tell him to stop but he won’t.

  He looks up at Andie. “But you can call me Glen, if you want to.” Hmmph. Maybe he likes her too? What the hell is going on here?

  Andie smiles at him, “Thanks — I think it would be a little easier if I did.” She turns to me, again. I pull my legs up, resting my feet on the front of my chair seat, hiding my face in between my knees. Some protector Glen turned out to be, she is back at me already. Barely a minute’s respite he gained me.

  “Anyone else ready?” she asks, looking at me, knowing I’m the only one who hasn’t gone yet. She was so nice earlier, when I was just watching and listening, and I want to talk to her, but I keep my face down, where she can’t pull me out with those soft brown eyes that speak of walks in the woods and drinking wine by the fireplace and sharing a dog who smells when he gets wet but loves you no matter how many times you push him out of the bed.

  “Daphne?” she asks, and I feel her pulling me up, lifting my head with those warm hands that aren’t made of steel, that don’t strike with the flat making the noise that echoes in my sleep.

  I scream “No!” Before the word has left my mouth Glen has shoved her away from me. She tumbles into one of the folding chairs and it hits the carpeted floor with a soft clang. Sam the orderly has his knee in Glen’s back before the sound has faded, twisting Glen’s arms behind him; Glen is crying as Sam injects the tranquilizer. Andie is staring at me. I try to tell her that it isn’t Glen’s fault, but nothing comes out.

  Two: An Encounter With Stuart

  We are walking in the woods behind the dorm. Stuart is insisting that I go with him. I don’t really like Stuart, but no one else does either, so I go along.

  “I can’t believe they thought they could get away with this,” he says, agitated more than usual. “It’s like they think I’m stupid!” He stops. “Do you think I’m stupid, Daphne?”

  I look at him, not sure of what I think of him. It is getting colder; the sun has almost set. I decide ignoring the question would be best. “We need to get going,” I tell him. “They’ll notice if we don’t make it back in time for supper.”

  He accepts the redirection easily enough and leads on. We go past the first line of trees and come into a small clearing. There are a couple dozen gravestones surrounded by a broken down fence.

  “See? I told you it was here!”

  I kneel by one of the stones. The markings are faded, but I can make out what was chiseled there: “# 37-433” on the top line, “07/04/1956” on the line below it. No name, just a number and a single date.

  “The bastards think they can just ERASE US!” he shouts. “That we DON’T MATTER!”

  “Maybe they didn’t know?” I suggest timidly, without much belief in the idea or in swaying Stuart to believing it.

  “Didn’t know?” he asks incredulously. “Sure, maybe there are a couple people here that they weren’t sure of when they were born, but EVERYBODY? And even if they all came in as John and Jane Doe, couldn’t they have put whatever name they called them on there? Couldn’t they have given them a little dignity?”

  I have no answer for him. For once in his freaked out conspiracy laden life Stuart is right.

  “I tell you,” he continues, “this is where we all end up. Once they are done with the experiments, anyway. Once they have everything they want sucked out of our brains.”

  Okay, maybe he isn’t completely right.

  “We better get back.”

  We didn’t talk on the return trip. Stuart was too busy thinking about the cemetery; I was worried about getting caught outside again. I didn’t want to get put back on notice, there’s no one to talk to when you are alone, no one to understand. No one to watch who’s more messed up than you.

  We make it okay. Sam wasn’t around. Kareem – by far our favorite orderly in this place — might have seen us but he is always cool, as long as we don’t cause any trouble. And we don’t. Until supper, anyway, when Stuart starts screaming about being buried alive and that he will never, ever be number three seven dash four three three. It takes both Sam and Kareem to hold him down and tranq him up and then it’s quiet again.

  Three: Violet Is A Whore

  I am sleeping. Sleep is real scary at first, but when you wake up and it’s morning then you realize sleep is the best thing that was ever created. Once you are awake then you can forget about the part about having to lie there and try to fall asleep because you need to fall asleep to make it to the morning. If you don’t make it to the morning it is your fault for not falling asleep.

  The door opens and I keep my eyes shut. Sleep, sleep, sleep. I chant the words, hoping their spell will take hold. Go to sleep, I tell myself. Make it to the morning. It is your fault if you are not asleep.

  He stands in the darkness. I keep the blinds shut tight because I don’t want to see him; if I see him it means I am awake. I hear the belt buckle as it hits the floor. The sheets are pulled back. The cool air caresses my bare legs softer than any lover’s kiss could. I keep my eyes squeezed tight as he lies down next to me. Hands pull down my panties, fingers poke inside of me, and it begins again. I am crying, but he only whispers words of love. His hand muffles my screams as he enters me.

  I am awake. Violet holds me as I sob against her breast. She is not supposed to be here, we are supposed to sleep alone.

  “There, there,” she coos, stroking my hair. “It’s okay, it was just a nightmare. I’m here with you, Daphne. I’m here with you.”

  She’ll sleep with anyone. Even someone messed up like me. She’s a whore. I love her.

  Her caresses turn from comfort to need. She guides my hands between her legs. We cling to each other.

  Eventually, we sleep.

  Four: More Than Just A Name

  “Okay, good to see everyone again this morning.” Andie is smiling, pretending that Glen didn’t attack her, that she still likes us all, that today will be better than yesterday. They always pretend that last one, sometimes enough so I think maybe they actually believe it. After a while, though, they quit. On us. On themselves. On believing. They always quit.

  She smells like coffee today. It is a good smell. A morning a
fter everything is going to be okay and last night didn’t happen and we woke up so we slept so nothing happened we were asleep none of it was our fault smell. And Mom would have bacon and eggs and Dad would pat her on the ass when she was cooking and she would laugh and everyone would love each other again. And if I cried Mom would keep cooking even if the eggs were burning and Dad would read the paper until I stopped.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I look up from the smell and Glen is shy and how can he protect me from her if he is infatuated with her? If he sees her eyes and not mine when he closes his own?

  “It’s okay, Glen,” she says in that soft silhouette of a voice that pulls me to her so much that I almost want Glen to release me from his guardianship, to drop the barrier separating me from Andie. “I know you were just looking out for Daphne. What you have to understand is that I am here to help her. I’m on your side, Glen, we both want what’s best for Daphne. Let me help you protect her – don’t you think she’d be safer with both of us looking after her?”

  “Perhaps you are correct.” He stands up, arm across the solar system. Sam moves closer, but Andie halts him with an open palm. Wow! The man-mountain Sam stopped in his tracks with a simple gesture by the lovely doctor – there are more levels to this woman than I can fathom. Glen continues his Guardian salute, dropping to his knees, face down, eyes closed, and shooting out his arm in an upright rocket blasting emulation. “Welcome to the Guardianship, Lady Andie.”

  “Thank you, Glen. I am honored.”

  Glen peeks up from his salute. He clears his throat and waits. Andie looks at him, confused. He clears his throat more loudly. Stuart giggles.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, of course,” she says, before dropping to her own knees and copying his salute.

  “While you’re down there, honey…” Violet says, her leer making her intent quite clear. I flush red – from embarrassment or jealousy I could not say.

  Andie returns to her chair, a little flushed herself. “Violet, did you have something you wanted to talk about today?” she asks. Great, open the door a little wider why don’t you – as if Violet needed an invitation to enter anywhere.