Confession

Elmer Ray Woolwine lay on his deathbed within the iodine halls of the Jester IV psychiatric facility in Richmond, Texas. He had been incarcerated in this facility since 1928 when he arrived at the tender age of 15, and he had seen many of the staff come and go. Elmer's former case worker had retired 3 years ago leaving doctor Robert Thompson with a patient that he would later describe to his wife as evil and repulsive. No one wanted to spend too much time with Elmer, alone or otherwise.

Robert sat in a brown plastic waiting room chair next to his patient's bed. "Soooo, Mr. Woolwine..." he began absently as he looked up from his case file. Elmer was in a state of half-consciousness, as he was most of the time, often nodding off or talking to himself. Sometimes he became belligerent; shouting obscenities and throwing things across the room. It was hard to tell if the source of his behavior was his schizophrenia, the lithium/diazepam cocktail he was usually on, or demons from hell surfacing now and then to take over his body. Robert figured it was a mix.

"The fuck you want?" Elmer mumbled in his Texas drawl, irritated as he rolled his head to gaze at his shrink.

"It's time for our weekly check in. How are you feeling?" Robert waited as Elmer raised the head of his bed with the remote. It was an achingly slow process.

"How the hell do you think I'm feelin'? I'm feelin' shitty! You'd feel shitty if you had cancer too, douchebag!" Elmer laughed at his own clever response. The laughter gave way to a fit of coughing.

"He looks as shitty as he feels." Robert thought to himself. Sparse wisps of gray hair lay greased to his ruddy scalp. His face was pockmarked and ashen. Black circles framed the bags under his cloudy eyes. These features along with the deep creases exacerbated by years of smoking made it look like he was wearing a halloween mask. The man reeked of piss.

"Right." Robert looked down at the file in his lap. Elmer's behavioral chart was always the same. It consisted of when his meds were distributed, when he ate his meals, and when he threw those meals at other people. This time, however, he noticed there were zero restraint incidents. "Well I see you've managed to go a week without fighting. We haven't changed your meds so is that because you're feeling weak physically or because you've decided to calm down?"

Elmer almost looked ashamed, then smiled a sheepish half-smile. "I've decided to change my wicked ways, Doc, for all the good it'll do me. I think we both know where I'm goin' when I leave this shithole of a life."

This was a particularly uncharacteristic moment of reflection. For the first time in a really long time Robert didn't feel entirely comfortable engaging a patient. "Well I don't know Elmer," Robert picked up his briefcase from the floor next to his chair "the Lord can be pretty forgiving." He concentrated a little too much on getting his stuff together, trying to avoid eye contact.

As he put the files back in his briefcase, a strange feeling overtook him. He looked up to see Elmer gazing into his face with a look in his eyes he couldn't quite place.

"That yer wife?" Elmer gestured at the picture halfway jutting from a pocket in his briefcase, the top of the photo stuck out just far enough so his wife was narrowly visible from Elmer's view. She smiled as if people like Elmer Ray Woolwine didn't exist in the world.

"Yes, it is." He tried to reply as blankly as possible.

"Your wife is real pretty." Elmers statement was laser focused, testing Robert for a reaction. The image of a stalking cat flashed through Robert's mind. He said nothing and closed his briefcase.

"I'm not good at tellin' how I feel doctor. I've lived a long life full of hate, and sometimes I've got regrets about how I lived it. Most of what I've done I done because I always had the voices tellin' me what to do."

Robert couldn't believe what he was hearing. He pulled his chair closer to the bedside. "I understand. When a person's lived a whole life being told they're evil it would be tough to talk to anyone."

Elmer stared at Robert for a moment that seemed like an eternity. Robert felt as if he couldn't avert his eyes. When Elmer's hand struck like lightning and grabbed Robert's resting on the arm of his cheap plastic chair, a panicked yell stuck in his throat.

"No one ever said those people were wrong doctor man, so listen to what 'ol Elmer's gotta say 'cause it's important" he hissed.

Elmer grinned and his mouth unnaturally consumed the lower half of his face. Impossibly sharp teeth filed to needle-like points filled the space jaggedly. His pupils dialated until the center of each eye contained a black pool where it seemed that any second something wet and slithery would emerge. The ashen hues of his sickly face were now swirling, subtly moving as if there was something writhing beneath. If Robert touched his face, he knew it would feel like a bladder full of ice water.

Robert's gaze darted to his hand held by the vice of Elmer's grip. The nails were brown and unnaturally shapen. He felt icy adrenalin consume his throat and belly, followed by a wave a nausea.

As he tried to pull away, Elmer's other hand struck like a viper, clutching his shirt and pulling him to the bed. Robert was close now and could smell rotten things eminating from that clammy, bloated face. Dead things.

Robert was transported to a cold, overcast day. Kneeling behind some hedges close to his house, he hovered next to a young Elmer Woolwine skinning the neighbor's cat. Robert felt the burns of the scratches, and he smelled the cat piss as it thrashed and howled trying to escape. He could see tendons and muscle there, almost like a textbook illustration.

Robert was pressed tight to a girl, no older than 16, feeling her chest rise and fall erratically. It was dark, but light enough that he could see the whites of her terrified eyes opened wide. The glimmer of a silver blade pressed against her throat was framed by the dark stream of blood trickling down behind her head. Robert sobbed as he felt her struggle to breathe underneath the hand crushing her face.

His eyes squeezed shut, Robert cried progressively harder with each vision. He begged him to stop. "Please" he plead weakly, "I can't anymore."

The more anguished Robert's responses became, the more Elmer's voice changed. His pitch became higher and more frenzied as he showed him tale after tale. Robert realized with dread he was saving the worst for last. The incident which had landed him in custody for life.

He felt himself being pulled into the chair, restrained so tightly he could barely breathe. He wouldn't dare look at what was holding him down, his eyes stayed squeezed shut. Were those tentacles gripping his thighs, his shoulders, even caressing his crotch? Robert slumped forward, drooling and sobbing quietly.

Transported to a sunny summer afternoon, A little boy's huge blue eyes turned upward toward him as he smiled and walked in step along a blinding white sidewalk. His mouth was moving, they were talking about something, but Robert couldn't hear. His shock of brown hair was messy from uncombed bedhead and sweat. He smelled earthy, like all kids smell when they've been playing hard on a hot day.

Robert felt the humid dirt of the cellar, smelled the iron of an abundance of spilled blood. The little boys rib bones were tiny in his hands, like a sparrow's.

Endlessly the images shrieked from the mouth of the demon who now sat upright in the bed next to him. Robert pitched forward and vomited into his own lap.

After it was over, Robert would not be able to recall how long he had been there. He wouldn't remember the details of how Elmer Woolwine morphed into a monster that evening. He didn't quite recall how he stuffed the vivid images of the evil things he had done his whole wretched life deep inside Robert's subconscious.

The nurses worked frantically to try to revive a perfectly normal looking Elmer Woolwine as he gasped for air before flatlining unceremoniously at 5:43 pm on October 13, 1965. "There was nothing you could've done to save him, Robert" his supervisor would later tell him, "he was bound for hell. Take some time off."

After three endless weeks of pain, Robert was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It had already advanced so quickly the doctors guessed he would only have 6 months left, tops.

They called it a miracle when Robert's wife became pregnant. It was a joyous surprise, helping to lift the heavy sorrow of his approaching death.

He did not live long enough to see the birth of his son.

He never watched the boy became more and more morbid in his behaviors as the years passed, claiming to hear voices that told him to do horrible things.

Robert Thompson recalled virtually nothing on the evening of October 13, 1965, but he did recall feeling as if something inside his gut burned, then grew cold as it died. What he didn't know was that something inside his gut had taken root. Waiting patiently to be set free.