Today was the day I finally realized that the universe was coming to an end.
It had been subtle, at first: broken objects reappearing, intact and unmarked, in their original places; groceries I’d already eaten sneaking unseen back into the fridge; a subtle sense that tomorrow was already stroking my memory though today had still not yet begun. I awoke, some mornings, rolled out of bed, and padded sleepily to the bathroom, only to return and discover the bed in perfect order – hospital corners and all – and the pyjamas I had been wearing only seconds ago hanging neatly over the chair instead of off of my own bony shoulders (replaced instead by a clean-and-unworn version of yesterday’s navy cotton suit). Morning arrived at times I was sure it should have been night, and when I began preparing myself for sleep I was often shocked to discover a blinding blade of polished dawn slicing instead across the wooden floor. It was clear, now, to me: the continuous expansion, the exponential growth of disarray and disorder, was finally reversing itself. Time was going backwards: the thermodynamic arrow had been reversed, and we were a- (de-?) -ccelerating rapidly with it. The world had been stretched to its ultimate limit and was now retreating back to center like an enormous elastic band – it was a colossal clam, one of near-omnipotent proportions, pressing shut its gaping Kraken maw to squeeze the grainy world back once again into a perfect polished pearl.
The thing was, though, that despite this – despite clear and obvious evidence of universal de- (re-?) –cay – nobody believed me. Even the scientist himself was expunging it from his records: “At first, I believed”; “I thought that”; “I was misled”; “I realized that I had made a mistake” (Hawking 154). But didn’t he know that even this was a reversal? He was going back on his previous truths, slithering and retracting them back inside himself like the spindly, crackling appendages of some enormous modulating insect. How would he feel, then, when the limp, flaccid neurons surged erect with a new- (old-?) –found rush of synaptic pulses, when his gnarled fingers straightened and unfurled once more, and he peeled himself like a band-aid from the mobile prison of that confounded chair? He would have something to say then, wouldn’t he? Ha! They would all know I was right after that.
But no, they said; no, no. Time would not reverse itself; everything would just become more disordered, more warped and explosive until it all dissolved into an unliveable state of confounded buggery. Food, they said, would cease to transfer useable energy; air would clump into mucous globs and become unbreathable; vines would pierce unwilling brick like parasites and slither their way through the foundations like some malicious, serpentine cancer. Nothing would be in order, nothing would be functional – everything would be broken and mutilated and not-quite-dead, and we would each burst, then, in our own turn, into simple particles as well.
But they didn’t think I’d tried that already? Ha! The fools! Of course I’d tested their theory; what did they think I was, ignorant? I’d taken objects from all about the house and hid them in the strangest of places: a pair of underwear in the freezer, a bag of apples in the washing machine, a tiny row of shot glasses sideways and upside down trailing from the bathtub, around the toilet, and left through the bathroom door. I’d smashed eggs in gleaming ejaculations down the driveway and put icing sugar instead of coffee grounds in the filmy snakeskin paper liners of the machine. I’d even ripped holes in my clothing in inappropriate (perhaps obscene) locations, and then plucked voraciously the white, mothy hairs of my eyebrows till naught was left but the naked planes of skin.
Et voilá! The underwear, folded and pleasantly lukewarm, snuggled tightly in the drawer with its brethren; the apples, un- (re-?) -touched and un- (re-?) –marked, in the large glass bowl on the table (also un- (re-?) -marred, though I’d smashed it just Monday). And here! The shot glasses sat guiltily straight-lined in the cupboard; the bulbous eggs, still pregnant with infertility, clustered in their familiar docks in the refrigerator; and a steaming pot of (black!) coffee to drink with my new- (old-?) –ly re- (de-?) –stored corduroy slacks. But still, even then, the sticky strokes of condescending eyes caressed my face. I was not mad! I was prophetic! But still they refused to believe me. Till the very end, to the very moment, they refused to admit that I was correct. And so, with growing anger, I retreated; and my forehead pursed and puckered, buckling under the weight of my still-enormous eyebrows as though two white wooly caterpillars were fighting fiercely over the small patch of real estate that remained above the arcing bridge of my nose.
For months, I grew steadily younger and younger, but still they would not believe me. I grew muscles, then lost them; my skin burst forth with new (old?) dark hair, then shed it like the molt of some animal; and I shrank, steadily at first, then faster and faster until I was so small I could no longer lift myself from the bed. I thrust my infantile fists, mewling with derision, at each of their faces in turn, but still they ignored my protests: their sharp, angular faces, spitting forth those twitching, percussive sounds of their speech, never once wavered with recognition, even as my own truths grew inside of me at a morbid rate of inversion to my corresponding physical diminution. They fed me spoonfuls of newborn mush, the fetid scent of it assaulting my nostrils as I swallowed, and swaddled me in cotton into which I both spitefully and involuntarily released the contents of my juvenile bowels. My teeth escaped the sanctity of my mouth, waved once from their newfound freedom, and were gone; my movements, once ripe with the coordinated fluidity of experience, were first floppy and uncontrollable, then barely noticeable at all. My eyes, once sharp and clear, refused to focus – and so, for the most part I kept them closed, as it hurt me too much in my head and my heart to force them open and look about.
I tried, for the final time I think now, to explain – to stroke the blurred face of an indistinct caretaker and persuade them, earnestly, pleadingly, to hear me out – but my mouth could no longer make sense of the words, my hand could not lift its own weight from the bed, and my eyes sadly refused my request to see. It was in the final stages, by now, and there was nothing either one of us could do about it. The sounds of the world blurred into one cacophony of noise, then fell strangely silent as though muffled through cloth. I felt them, for one last time, swaddle me tightly, hold me close, and release upon my unresponsive face their quiet tears – or perhaps they were mine, I did not know – in what I knew was a final goodbye. And yet, still, resentment filled me – you didn’t listen, I wanted to scream, to fight and kick and bite and cry out – but I could not move, I could not see, I had barely enough left in me to pretend. And so, I resigned myself – relaxed my clenched fists and breathed out my last – before the world closed up around me and I was lowered affectionately back, once and for all, into the cave of the cocooning black womb from whence my larval form had come.
If they’d caught it in the early stages, the crowd whispered, he could have had more time. It was obvious, years ago, what was happening, but only to a mind trained to see the signs. How could the family have possibly seen it, when they didn’t even know what they were looking for? And even then, they couldn’t have stopped it – only slowed down its progress a little. Still, it seems best this way, they said – poor man was barely lucid near the end.
He was breaking things for no reason – smashing them against the floor and whatnot – and wreaking havoc all over the house. That poor girl was suffering enough, what with her father starting to forget her first name even, and then on top of it having to replace broken crockery, restore ruined groceries, reinstate pilfered artifacts, even feed and diaper him in the last few months. Poor thing never complained though, they sighed sympathetically, even when he screamed at her. They say she barely recognized him anymore, by that point – which was almost better, you see, as by then he was so far gone that he couldn’t remember who she was anyways.
Lovely service, though, they murmured, as the creaking casket was slowly lowered into the willing earth. He’s in a better place now, dear, they consoled, as one by one they pressed themselves against her, hungry animals tasting the sweet aroma of her sadness. They pressed her, gently, eyes raking the back of her charcoal gown in the fluttering autumn wind. She nodded, every time; clutched a hand here or there, accepted a hug or cold kiss of required sympathy, and retreated farther inside herself each time. He always said the universe was ending, she thought, as the last of the mourners ghosted silently from the cemetery, and the dirt began to fall upon the creaking coffin. He told me, every day – the world was ending, he cried out, and not a damned one of any of them believed him. The hot stripes of tears carved pathways down the solemn lines of her face. Well, I believed him. I always believed him. The hole was filling rapidly; she turned away. He was right all along, she thought, at last, as she turned her back on him for the final time; and as she walked, she watched with resigned solemnity the hem of her somber dress begin to dissolve and dissipate like weeping smoke against her legs in the approaching dusk.
The Half That is Broken: Narrative Comparison of Schizophrenia and Motor Neuron Disease
There are many things that I do that I don’t really mean to do; there are many things that happen to me, about me, near me, that really aren’t my fault. Things break, things cry, things bleed, things scream; sometimes I am one of those things, sometimes I am not. It’s involuntary, I tell them – that fancy, clinical word that means ‘I didn’t really do what I did’ – but they just roll their bulbous noggins back and forth on those white-collared, chicken-fleshed rubber necks of theirs and feed me more of their chalk-powder pills.
They say I walk like a stick insect, or a bolt of lightning – tall, jagged, twitching steps with my fingers drumming a rapid staccato against my thigh. (Fasciculation, I say. Sexual frustration, they snarkily retort.) It never used to be that way; in fact, I had always considered myself to be a man of grace and fluidity, with the determined stride of he who knows exactly where he is going. I don’t ‘go’ places anymore, though: I stagger; I totter; on good days, I mince. And all the while, those cursed digits crackle a tempo of the sort of pace to which my now-discombobulated body can no longer manage to keep up.
It’s not just in my movements, though – the decay has even begun to manifest itself in my appearance. My hair, once suitably well groomed, now bursts in great tufts from every spot on my head it is not supposed to be: my ears, my nostrils, the tip of my nose, the creases where my eyelashes and my eyebrows meet. I awoke, one morning, to see it had spread across my chest and stomach to meet its wiry brethren beneath my waistband; and yet when I moved, it floated off of me in a great cloud of amber smoke and settled on the cold tile floor. I told the staff this, of course – my body was rejecting its own products! Surely this was cause for alarm! – but my panic elicited no higher response than condescension. You shouldn’t pull your hair out like that, they spat with their patronizing tongues, or soon you won’t have any left to pluck. In response, I swore fantastically and made a series of obscene gestures – conduct that merely landed me an additional dose of medication that made the room spin and my tongue turn to marshmallow. When I woke up, the air felt spongy, like moss, and my body stank of rot and antiseptic. My head ached like I had been smashing it against the floor. My temples were raw and stinging as if they’d been branded, and when I looked at them in the mirror, I had a pair of round, weeping pink marks that still buzzed with static remnants when I brought my spindly fingers up against them.
They give me nightmares, these ‘treatments’ of theirs. One night, I dreamt my skin had been stitched to the bed by a million tiny needles: I could see the blood seeping slowly, thick like syrup, from the fleshy seams and crystallizing like salt at the edges of the cloth. Just last week, I spent the majority of my twilight hours watching the muscles in my arms and legs move and slither and warble and hiss like snakes beneath my translucent skin; I awoke to the techs stabbing needles into my chest and rubbing salve into the bite marks on my wrists and ankles. I spent the witching hours, pre-dawn, and the rest of that morning strapped into thick, time-worn buckles with a leather bite guard locked around my drooling jaw, despite my muffled protests that it was only a dream, everything was all right now, and the restraints were an unnecessary excess.
They refuse to see the disconnection, though; it’s chicken-before-the-egg for them, they can’t see that their treatment causes my symptoms and not the reverse. I’m not mad, I’ve never been mad, I’m a perfectly capable human being – in a psychological sense, that is. I do need treatment, I do need medicine – but it’s for my body, not my mind.
The dexterity of youth has long since left my wobbling arachnid limbs, but so now has even the relative legerdemain of health. My legs, once functionally capable enough to carry me a few miles at least, now struggle with the simple task of propelling me from my stiff, cardboard cot and to the bathroom down the hall. My hands, once raising the delicate arousal of the tinkling piano keys, now spurt stiffly like stray hairs from my artless hands, hands that hang like meat hooks from the weakened wrists to which they are attached.
Even my most involuntary movements – breathing, swallowing, controlling my bowels – leave me heaving with the effort of their completion. There are days when I feel every inch the enormous infant, the carnival monstrosity of ‘boy who should be a man’ with a million mocking fingers pointed directly at my shamefaced, ginger brow. Just recently, I was stuttering my shoddy way across the room when I felt my guts churn and suddenly vacate themselves into my starched white hospital pants. Mortified, I stumbled to the bathroom and tried furiously to clean myself, only to be discovered by another patient who immediately ratted me out to the nurses. I was chastised like a naughty child – no, like a dog caught rolling in something filthy – then forced to soak in a fetid stew of my own soapy excrement, their lips curled with a brushstroke sneer, as they pretended blithely like it was possible to bathe away my gross indignity.
I’ve come to them, time and time again, with suggestions: benzodiazepines (for spasticity); protein supplements (for atrophy); anticholinergics (for salivating); alcohol (to help me forget). But, day, after day, they ignore me: chlorpromazine, perhenazine, haloperidol, they say. Our pills, our say, our final word. There will be inevitable symptoms, they tell me: rigidity, tremors, spasms, restlessness. (So, they admit, then, that their drugs cause my nightmares!) They roll big, cold, clinical terms around their mouths like ice cubes: drug-induced cumulative tardive dyskinesia; psychosocial cognitive stabilization. I shout my own back at them: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; progressive bulbar palsy; inconsiderate misdiagnoses! I spit fire to combat their ice; but in the end, even fire cannot calm electricity.
I can feel my body failing from the outside in, stiffening like Dorothy’s Tin Man (oh Doctor, if you only had a heart!) until eventually I know I’ll collapse into a quivering pile of my malfunctioning component parts. A leg, there – he used to run with those, they’ll murmur. A hand, over there – they say he used to be a musician. And there – there, beneath the lumpy mass of corporeal muck – a brain, the only part of him yet glowing with the final glimmers of cognition.
And so, it has come to this, finally: me, or at least, the shaking, sallow subhuman that used to be me, curled like a larvae in my wheelchair, barely able to feign intelligence. In the corner, there, the tiny shadows of cobwebs in the dusk; on the table, next to me, the note I tried to write but could not grip the pen to do so. (It is crisscrossed with jagged scribbles, the final disgrace of which does not escape me.) And here, in front of me: the bed, the stark, sharp, mocking bed that must be made for me, now, each night: a true final resting place. With a great heave, I muster the last of my strength and roll pathetically forward onto the mattress. My arms, like dead fish, flop at odd angles behind my back; my face drops squarely between the pillow and folded blanket. My drooling mouth soaks the cotton; in a final retort, my bladder empties. But I can barely smell the sharp, sour stink of urine – there isn’t enough air with the way I’ve fallen, and that’s how I’ve planned it. My arms, once merely too weak to protest my abuse, are now so feeble that they cannot even turn me over and give me a deep, oxygenated breath of salvation. Ah, the wondrous bliss of the utter inability to change my mind. I taste cloth, then copper, then coldness. My fingers give one final twitch – voluntary or no, I no longer have the capacity to discern – and then finally, blissfully, peacefully, I feel my world dissolve to gray.
When they found him, he was facedown on the bed, his hands curled behind him as if surrendering to an arrest, the pilfered wheelchair guiltily overturned in the corner of the room. His face was completely blue, and he’d nearly managed to bite through his tongue – a mix of blood and urine had soaked nearly all the way through the mattress to the concrete floor beneath. A note, or what they assumed was a note, was crumpled in an angry ball on the nightstand; they couldn’t be sure, at first because it was smeared with feces and no one wanted to touch it, then finally because it was revealed to contain only a single word: “MISDIAGNOSIS”.
He was wrong, though, they told each other, as piece by piece the coroner extracted the torn cloth strips of uniform that he’d shoved one by one down his throat. It’s not surprising, really, that he committed suicide in the end – manual asphyxiation, though, how melodramatic! – but really, there was no need for it. Schizophrenia was a relatively manageable disease, if the treatment was undertaken properly; he’d just refused to take their direction. And so, in the end, an esophagus full of scrub pants, a tongue half-severed in anger, and yet another spray of human waste across the wall was his last, utterly undignified attempt to prove to all of them that they were wrong.
He was so simian, in the end, they admitted, grimacing over their coffee. Flinging poop, and screaming at mirrors, at biting at his own limbs; and even when he wasn’t managing to avoid the necessary doses of antipsychotics, all he did was complain about the side effects and chastise us for causing him pain.
He believed, they said – to the very end, in fact, he believed – that the body had been corrupted by the mind. And he was very nearly right: one component part of him had been broken, and it was causing malfunctions in the other. And yet, the body – the repugnant, corpulent, rotting, fleshy body – was not the problem, was in fact the only healthy part of him left; a smooth, fragile porcelain shell that finally burst and cracked beneath the weight of its rotten contents. From the very moment he’d arrived here, they told each other self-assuredly, from the very moment he’d stepped through the asylum doors, he’d insisted that the connections within him were out of order. And they were; we must give him that much, mustn’t we? But much as he’d refused to admit it – as to the very end the man had refused to accept – it hadn’t been a healthy mind in a broken body that was the problem; no, it had been, till those final moments, in fact a tainted mind that first poisoned, and finally destroyed, the only physical self he had left.
