Escana

T
he
water was everywhere. A streaming cascade pelting down upon the rocks
below as if from heaven. It rang in his ears in an oddly reassuring
way, yet what should have been a cacophony seemed muffled as if from
a great distance.

The
drop was sheer, all he need do was close his eyes and hope, but some
semblance of his former self kept tugging at him and willing him back
into the cavern. He knew all too well that this wasn't over.

Slow
and staggering, his soaking steps guided him to a stone outcrop.
Aching both within and out, he slumped back against the rock face
with a sigh.

There
was no way of explaining this, it went so far beyond anything he had
heard of, anything he could have possibly imagined before that day.

He
felt his head resting in his hands now, his chest betrayed him and a
faint sobbing racked his body before he locked it down. He knew it
all now, he knew everything.

Sighing
in relief, he put down the blunted pencil for the last time and
closed the notepad. His life work was finally complete.

It
was a beautiful place to write, or so he had been told by the bubbly
driver as he ploughed his way through a decidedly one-sided
conversation. If aesthetics were all you cared for then the man was
quite correct. Lush fauna and sweeping greenery dotted by benches
along a winding path hinted at a peaceful place of recovery.

Sadly
the beauty afforded to him held no positive effect on his condition.

It
had been five months now since he had been forcibly committed and for
all intents and purposes it had made precious little difference to
his state of mind.

He
had moved back in with his parents so they could keep an eye on him
(their words) after the divorce papers had gone through. This was the
socially acceptable way of saying that they were expecting him to
make an attempt on his life. There was a nervous tension surrounding
his every interaction now, as if in trying to fix him they had bent
the arms of a bow too far when stringing. They were all waiting for
the recoil, the inevitable snapping and the damage that it would
cause.

It
had been like old times at first, watching the big games with the old
man and pottering about the greenhouse with him. Carrying about
baskets full of towels and clothing for his mother and distributing
them throughout the various rooms of the large house. Nobody had
issue with the fact he had stopped writing shortly before the
divorce. Everyone assumed it would flow back given enough time. It
hadn't. In fact there was a certain simple sense of belonging and
empowerment that came from helping his elderly parents. After all,
they had helped him so much throughout the course of his troubled
life, it was time he returned that favour with interest.

They
were all under one roof now, the empty nest syndrome had long been
expunged and the homestead had a real communal atmosphere that had
developed between the 'seven children, three grandchildren, two
girlfriends, three wives and one husband' as his mother was prone to
repeating.

It
was all open arms and commiserations when the taxi had rattled up the
stony driveway. He had told them by phone first of course, that
didn't exonerate him from the arduous task of repeating it in front
of the entire family in person. From the pained looks of his siblings
they had already heard every detail repeated endlessly by his
nattering mother.

Yes,
everything had a sense of returning back to normal. He had his small
room back and had finally started pouring over innumerable drafts of
his unpublished work. While he never went as far as to type anything
new it helped all the same. It was only on the third day he had
noticed that aside from a little tidying, nothing had changed since
his visit last Christmas.

His
first decision upon returning had been to keep ludicrous hours in
order to get some quiet time to himself and focus on trying to write
again. Had the house always been this loud and distracting? Who was
he trying to kid? It always had.

This
anti-social choice had been met with stern disapproval from the
majority of the family, who had been drilled into the belief that
everyone should sit down at the table for every meal.

Perhaps
that had been where it had started, with that single action causing
affront and the subsequent obsessive behaviour. Admittedly he had
spent a lot of time holed up in his tiny room waging war on his
battered old keyboard, trying to force some semblance of his former
creativity out. His therapist had told him that this was a
side-effect of the separation, that all the energy he had previously
expended on his significant other had taken its toll and it would be
some time before it would return.

They
had made a damn good team, even he had to begrudgingly admit that. He
had been the main creative force and she the compulsive editor,
writing and re-writing in a terrific imitation of his own style. They
complemented each other with ease, his shortcomings made up by her
strengths and her own flaws exposed by his insight.

At
first his efforts without her help had been bloated and pompous,
lacking in any sort of quality or pacing. Then there came the
drought, where he was unable to string more than a few words together
and the whole work was peppered with seemingly random short sentences
leading nowhere. His friends had told him that the strain of his
relationship was to blame, not the lack of an editor in his life. He
knew they meant his wife, he also wished he could believe them.

It
was only in the last week or so that he had really recovered some of
his previous ability, it had felt like installing a giant tap on his
forehead and letting the pent-up creativity gush out.

He
couldn't understand why his parents' attitude toward him had changed
over the course of this struggle. Had he been so wrapped up in his
own world that he hadn't noticed their deteriorating relationship
with him? Were they disappointed with the lack of progress? These
were questions that had long troubled him, yet in her brief
visitations his mother never offered any kind of explanation so he
had stopped asking for one. His father refused to go anywhere near
the institute.

It
was a horrible thing, to live in a world like this. In another day
and age his talents would have been used to the advantage of the
entire community but in modern times he was the starving artist. He
felt as if he had been rendered entirely surplus to requirements on
account of the way his head had been hard-wired, incapable of fully
articulating all the ideas he had to offer in a way that anyone could
understand.

That
was the thought that consumed him most, even more than thoughts of
his wife. His
former
wife. The sense of utter futility raging
within him, being born with a talent that would remain unexpressed
because every idea and potential creation had already been realised
to even greater effect by someone with the connections and
temperament and clarity he didn't possess.

When
he had begun writing, the novel he had envisaged had few peers. It
was a bold endeavour and fairly original, insofar as anything could
be called original in the English Language. Yet when he had the final
sprawling draft in his hands it was a crowded market, he had been
beaten to the punch by some of the best and brightest the rest of the
world had to offer outside his tiny room. That was when the rejection
notes started flying in.

He
stared out the window at a line of trees, rapping his fingers across
the desk in time with the Muzak that was being piped through a small
speaker near the ceiling. He had earned the right to visit this part
of the institute on good behaviour, it strongly resembled a walk-in
prison he had seen the rich and famous spend their time in. They said
they were very proud of his progress, though he couldn't say what it
was he was progressing from. They never did tell him exactly what it
was he had done, not even in here did they speak of it. Apparently
there had been a plea of temporary insanity and an entire court
proceeding that he was unaware of. Selective amnesia, his therapist
had called it, but her eyes suggested that she knew exactly what it
was he had done.

He
didn't want to know. If his brain had shut down the action there was
a good reason for that. He wilfully suppressed even deliberating on
what could have happened, that certainly took its toll.

That
was when someone had finally decided he would be safer in the
'Clearer Minds' mental institute. Again the specifics eluded him,
someone had made the call and he didn't know if it was his parents or
his therapist or some other official he had met in his long journey
through both the mental health and justice systems. It didn't really
matter in a practical sense who had made the decision as ultimately
he had no choice but to comply. Instead of focusing on how he had
ended up here, he had been writing and rewriting with greater abandon
for the outside world.

A
flash of inspiration came upon him and he feverishly scratched out
another idea in his notepad. He had fought long and hard with the
officials for a pencil and it was one of his major victories when his
therapist had contacted them and suggested that he be allowed to
write.

Something
was wrong, he could feel it gradually constricting his guts, eating
away at him like some insidious disease. He had ignored it at first
but then it had started affecting his creativity. Was it the
repression of the world outside the institute? Perhaps the
combination of medication and depression had left him oblivious or
uncaring to the sensation initially, he wasn't sure. He knew that it
was growing stronger within him. His ability to write and rewrite his
final draft was all he had left to him and whatever this was, it was
crippling his efforts. It didn't feel like his previous dry patch,
something was wrong, as if an unseen force was willing him to cease
his work.

He
stood now, staring at the window, his sense of unease multiplying
with each passing moment. A voice was calling to him from outside the
glass, he couldn't see anything that would suggest such a sensation
yet he felt drawn to it. Was this madness that he had finally
stumbled upon?

'Mr.
Sandberg?' a prim voice spoke to him.

He
turned anxiously, wondering why he was being called by name.

'Mr.
Sandberg, a pleasure to meet you. I'm Julia Simmons, I've come to
speak to you about a matter of great importance.' She stuck a hand
out at him then, he stared down at it distrustfully and refused to
take it.

Nonplussed
by his rejection, she continued to talk to him in her optimistic
manner. Her bright voice could have been the soundtrack to a thousand
commercials and her immaculate appearance told him she was selling
something. He wasn't going to waste his time trying to observe her
any further.

'What
do you want from me?' he asked, his voice sounding strange in his own
ears.

'Jakob...
I can call you Jakob, can't I? We barely know each other and already
you're cutting straight to business. Can we not first exchange a
few... pleasantries?' She left no doubt as to what pleasantries she
had in mind, the plunging neckline of her shirt as she leaned toward
him and her sweetened breath hot upon his face made that very
apparent.

Before
he might have responded to such stimuli. The woman wasn't without her
charms and the attempts at flirtation were flattering if misguided.
Now every advance that had been made upon him brought nothing but a
pang of regret and thoughts of his ex-wife.

'Just
cut to the chase. Why are you here?' he told her briskly, turning
away from her.

'Very
well then,' she replied in that bright tone of before, as if the last
few seconds hadn't happened. 'I'm here representing a publishing
company that wished me to inform you that they've accepted the latest
draft of your novel.'

His
novel? There was no possible way that what she said was true,
something was very wrong here. 'I didn't send you a copy of my latest
draft, what are you talking about? Why not send a letter?'

She
laughed then, it was a high and entirely forced thing, he was
starting to dislike this woman a great deal.