Episode 17 Sanctuary Beneath the City

Billy Beaner – Episode 17

Sanctuary Beneath the City

Another session with Dr. Martinez.

I was tired.

Not the kind of tired that sleep cures.

The kind that lives in the bones.

The kind that drips slowly into the brain like poison.

Dr. Martinez asked about my parents again.

As if the past has something to do with the present.

I laughed.

“You want the origin story?”

He nodded.

So I told him.

“My parents were cruel people,” I said. “Mean. Hateful. Experts in humiliation.”

“They were masters at pain. Their only real emotions were anger… and fear of what the neighbors might think.”

Dr. Martinez scribbled something in his notebook.

“They sucked the color out of life,” I continued. “Everything became gray.”

I laughed softly.

“Christmas was a good example.”

“We’d get gifts when we were little and excited. But we weren’t allowed to open them. Not until late in the evening, when the excitement was gone.”

“And then we had to pretend to be surprised.”

“Every gift. Every time.”

“If we didn’t smile enough… there was punishment.”

Dr. Martinez looked up.

“That sounds very controlling.”

“Controlling?” I said. “No.”

“It was artistic cruelty.”

“They hated laughter. They hated music. They hated fun.”

I leaned forward in the chair.

“Oh great Satan, thou hast done well with them.”

“A family of psychopaths.”

“My father was a misanthrope,” I said.

“He told jokes about stupid people.”

“Which was everyone except him.”

“To him I was a ‘little idiot.’ A clown. A monkey.”

“He hated clowns.”

“He hated monkeys.”

“He worked with laboratory monkeys. Called them nasty little animals.”

I smiled.

“He made sure I understood I was one of them.”

“And my mother…”

I paused.

“My mother was something else.”

“A master of deception.”

“A witch without a coven.”

“She liked to recruit people.”

Dr. Martinez frowned slightly.

“Recruit?”

“Yes,” I said.

“The public.”

“I was four years old.”

“My brother was seven.”

“We were in a grocery store. There was a display of penny candy.”

“My brother told me to get on my hands and knees. He climbed on my back and grabbed three candies.”

“The next moment the store manager appeared.”

“Suddenly we were criminals.”

“Shoplifters.”

“Threatened with jail.”

I leaned back.

“That little performance had my mother’s fingerprints all over it.”

“The barbershop was worse.”

“I was four.”

“Mother left me alone there.”

“And before she left she asked them to punish me.”

“The barbers told me they had put chemicals in the shaving foam. Said customers would get sick.”

“They said I had done it.”

I shook my head slowly.

“I didn’t even have the vocabulary to explain what happened.”

“My father tried to understand.”

“But my mother told him I had imagined the whole thing.”

“It sounds small,” I told Dr. Martinez.

“But it wasn’t.”

“I fantasized about revenge for years.”

“When I was thirteen I planned to go back and kill the barbers.”

“But by then the shop was gone.”

“So I redirected my anger.”

“To the public. The public my mother seduced to punish me.”

“Am I a bad boy?”

“That’s what my mother always told me and the public.”

“My father believed her.”

“Am I evil?”

I shrugged.

“No.”

“I’m a product.”

“A product of my environment.”

“We all are.”

“I was just trying to survive in a world of fear.”

“After the barbershop incident I began wetting the bed.”

“My father was furious.”

“He shoved my face into the wet sheets.”

“Later he did the same thing to our puppy.”

I looked down at my hands.

“I felt bad for the puppy.”

“That was the only spark of love in the house.”

“As a teenager I discovered alcohol.”

“Then drugs.”

“Anything that made the world disappear.”

“LSD was my favorite.”

“My salvation.”

“I was suicidal.”

“One day I heard on the radio about a lone gunman in a church tower.”

“That’s when I thought I knew what I wanted to be.”

“A dark hero.”

I laughed bitterly.

“Suicidal and homicidal.”

“But then something happened.”

“I began seeing them.”

Dr. Martinez stopped writing.

“Seeing what?”

“Demons.”

“They move through the air like fish through water.”

“Dark shapes.”

“Grinning.”

“Waiting.”

“I stopped wanting to die.”

“Because if I died…”

“There would be no body to hide in.”

“And then the demons could take me.”

I looked at Dr. Martinez.

“My spirit is weak.”

“My mind… feral.”

Dr. Martinez closed his notebook.

“And the sewer?” he asked quietly.

“Why the sewer?”

I smiled.

“Simple.”

“It’s underground.”

“The demons don’t like the dark water.”

“The city forgets what flows beneath it.”

“And people…”

I leaned closer.

“People rarely look down.”

“It's safe for me there. I could hide there. A sanctuary from civilization."

“That’s how I survived.”

“That’s why I ended up in the sewer.”

“And honestly…”

I shrugged.

“I liked it. I felt safe. I was happy.”