Soul Full

The man opened his notebook, checking once again to be sure he had an appointment at ten o’clock that morning.
Better take some notes to get my thoughts in order, he thought to himself.
Before he could start, his breakfast arrived. He looked at it, checking for the Belgian waffles, wheat toast, and bacon he had ordered. Finding them all present, he began to eat his bacon. He placed his bread on a napkin to the side of his plate for later.
“Is everything all right, sir?” asked the perky red-headed waitress, curious about the man who went about eating breakfast with such apparent intensity.
The man jumped. “Yes, everything is quite satisfactory,” he said quickly. “And you can call me Rosencrantz.”
The waitress looked puzzled.
“Um, just RZ is fine,” he said, mentally sighing at the youth of today. You had to keep things simple.
“Ok, RZ, I’ll check on you in a bit.”
She left and Rosencrantz went back to his breakfast. He studied the bottle of what he suspected to be syrup, then gingerly picked up the bottle where there were no greasy fingerprints or globs of a syrupy substance. Returning to the Belgian waffles, he squeezed some on a small area.
Looks like syrup, Rosencrantz thought hopefully.
Next he found the butter, contained in little sealed packets. He opened the small containers and spread butter all over his waffle. The part with the syrup got it last.
Rosencrantz carefully picked up the fork that he had placed on a napkin next to the one with his bread. He paused, as if just realizing something.
If this isn’t syrup and it gets on my fork, what will I eat the rest of my waffles with? he thought.
After a second of contemplation, he put the fork back on the napkin and picked up his spoon. He proceeded to saw his way through the syrupy portion of the waffle and finally took the long awaited bite.
It was syrup! With this revelation, he once again carefully picked up the syrup bottle and smothered his waffles.
Rosencrantz was soon finished with breakfast. He paid his check and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He walked quickly and though passers-by could see he looked at the ground directly in front of him, they took no note. He made sure that he did not look back or do anything else suspicious that would be reported to the police and filtered back down to his psychiatrist.
Avoiding every crack and piece of trash, Rosencrantz made his way to the doctor’s office. Dr. Clark kept an immaculate reception room with pictures on the walls of famous paintings he had only seen copies of. There were no windows in here, the walls were a drab white, and the pictures creeped Rosencrantz out.
I bet those pictures have been copied so much that their souls are gone, Rosencrantz thought. He shifted uncomfortably, trying to feel whether his soul was being taken as a replacement. I bet that’s why the pictures are here; they probably get changed every time they take their fill of souls.
The door to the office of Dr. Clark opened and his pudgy, baling head poked out from behind the door.
“Ah, nice to see you again, Mr. Carlson,” he intoned as he noticed Rosencrantz and opened the door all the way.
Rosencrantz stood up. “Nice to see you, too,” he said, plastering what he hoped was a convincing smile on his face.
“Come in and tell me how you’ve been,” Dr. Clark invited.
“I’ve been doing pretty well,” Rosencrantz began his well rehearsed lines. “The medicine is working. I haven’t been repeating or setting up rituals.”
He made sure he said this while looking Clark in the eye.
Clark wasn’t impressed. “Rituals and repeating aren’t the only behaviors displayed in obsessive compulsive disorder. I know you know that. Why don’t you tell me what obsessions and compulsions are and then when can review your behavior again.”
“An obsession is a compulsive, often unreasonable, idea or emotion. A compulsion is an irresistible impulse to act, regardless of the rationality of the motivation,” said Rosencrantz, trying to keep from sounding like a five year old reciting the alphabet.
“Very good,” said Dr. Clark, steepling his fingers. “And what do you know about your obsessions and compulsions?”
“That they are groundless and only hold me back from leading a happy life.”
“Very good. Now, tell me, how have you been?”
“I have not noticed any obsessive or compulsive behaviors. I am sleeping well and I have been going out with other people more often. My boss said the report that he faxed you would prove that I am a productive and cooperative worker.”
I sound like a robot. I don’t want to be assimilated.
Dr. Clark was happy with Rosencrantz’s answer. He felt that people who were able to look at their lives objectively and relay important information in a rational way were on their way to being productive members of society. Rosencrantz thought Dr. Clark was a stupid dick and had vowed on meeting the man that he would resist the man’s idea of conformity to the end.
“I’m glad to hear how well you are doing,” Dr. Clark said. “You know that you’re on the highest dose of your medicine. Soon we would have had to take more drastic measures.”
“We.” Does he think he is a king or something? Or is the government one giant collective body?
After a few more minutes of idle chatting, Dr. Clark dismissed Rosencrantz who went to a half day of work.
---
Rosencrantz was at home, enjoying a nice glass of cold water when he heard the knock at his door. He wasn’t pleased; people weren’t welcome in his house. It was his private sanctuary. Everything was his and only he touched it.
The knock came again along with a call of, “Open up dad!”
It was his son, Theoden. Rosencrantz muttered a curse but knew he had to open the door. Normal, healthy fathers didn’t ignore their children and leave on the front stoop.
Once inside, Theoden looked his father over, then walked to the kitchen, dragging his hand over every surface he could think of. Once in the kitchen, he began to rifle through Rosencrantz’s cupboard.
“So where are your glasses?” he asked.
“The same place they’ve been since you were five,” growled Rosencrantz.
Theoden raised an eyebrow. “Tough day? Does your doctor know you haven’t rearranged your cabinet in twenty-two years?”
“I discussed it with him and we decided that it wasn’t necessary to play musical chairs with my dishes,” Rosencrantz lied.
Theoden continued rifling through the cupboards before finally opening the one with the glasses in it. He took out several which he seemed to deem the one he was looking for.
Theoden was testing him. Rosencrantz sighed, not surprised. After all it had been Theoden who had told the government of his odd habits.
Anyone acting odd was suspected of subversive plots and was immediately interrogated. When it was discovered that Rosencrantz merely had a mental disorder, he was handed down to a shrink. Only the government licensed and paid psychiatrists and doctors in general which meant they were all mindless zombies.
“Are you here for a reason?” asked Rosencrantz sharply. He winced at his tone and tried again. Theoden was his son after all. “What I mean to say is that I thought you were on active duty overseas.”
“I’m on a thirty day leave,” drawled Theoden, sprawling his six feet, three inch frame in a kitchen chair.
“How much longer before your time in college is paid for?”
“It’s been paid for a year now.”
“Then why are you still on the active duty roster?!” demanded Rosencrantz.
“Because I want to be,” growled Theoden, glaring at his father. “Do you have some sort of problem with me being willing to give my life for this country? For our freedom?”
“You’ve already given the mandatory four years in the service when you turned eighteen and then fi-I mean four more to pay for a higher education. And who exactly has been threatening our freedom recently?” Rosencrantz’s voice rose as he lost his patience. “Could it be the people who ban non-military literature? Could it be the people who are able to suspend the first amendment at will? Or is it the people who rounded up the homeless and put them to work on farms, growing food for our ever growing army?
“Now that I think of it, though, those are the people you work for. So, then, logically the ‘our’ in ‘our freedom’ is that of the government. And to that I have just one thing to say, Are you mad?! The government has become a power-hungry insatiable being. It has become a monster that lives and breaths and stalks in the shadows. It isn’t for our protection anymore, it exists for itself now.”
Theoden’s face had become steadily redder during his father’s speech. His fists clenched and unclenched at his side.
“You’re the one who’s mad! I ought to call Dr. Clark right this instant. In fact, I should call the police; they’d lock you away like the danger to civilized society that you are. You and your preaching. It seemed so harmless when I was a kid, almost like a game, our own little secret. Reading me forbidden books, making me memorize poems and Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, teaching me the rules of debate and making me argue against laws in mock trials.
“You know what? I have something to tell you, something I should have told you a long time ago. Those worlds you taught me about? They’re dead. There are no more white knights, kings, or rabbit holes! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and everyone else you read about are dead!”
Theoden finished his speech yelling. His eyes were wild and he stared, panting, at his father as though waiting for some sort of response.
“Do you remember the park I used to take you to? The Thomson Forest Preserve? Do you remember coming home and asking me if trees really used to grow all over the place?” Rosencrantz asked tiredly. He didn’t wait for a response. “I told you that there was no ‘used to’, no past or future. I told you that time isn’t a swiftly flowing, irrepressible river, like so many think. It’s a lake, calm and smooth. You can go anywhere you want on it and you can enter and exist wherever you feel like it.”
Rosencrantz gave a short laugh. “You didn’t believe me at first. You said you couldn’t see the trees, only buildings. I said you were looking for the trees, but not expecting them. You weren’t making them part of your reality. You tried again and… you told me you could see the trees and squirrels. You described the timber wolf that had been extinct for thirty years to everyone else. But I knew, and you knew, people had just stopped looking.”
Rosencrantz sighed and turned around to place his glass on the counter. There had to be a way to make Theoden see that he had to use his mind, not just his physical strength, to find the free world that he sought.
The glass was meticulously rinsed and put away. Rosencrantz then washed his hands, reached for his son’s glass, washed it, then washed his hands again.
Suddenly, he felt a sharp prick in his side. He let out a short, sharp gasp of pain and turned to see Theoden holding up a hypodermic needle. The plunger was down.
“What…?” asked Rosencrantz, confused.
“I’m sorry father, but you are a danger to yourself and others. You lied when you told Dr. Clark you were getting better. Lying to the government is a crime. When you wake up, you’ll be in a special place made for people like you.”
Rosencrantz immediately made for the door. He threw it open and sprinted into the hall. He headed for the only stairs in the building, the emergency stairs. As he ran, he heard Theoden call out, “The confinement would only be temporary, until the tranquilizers and such began to work with the therapy and the government could be assured of your loyalty. Then you can go back to work and have a normal life.”
Normal life of a mindless drone thought Rosencrantz but he said nothing out loud as he reached the door and slammed through it, already breathing hard. The klaxon went off and the doors locked on the inside of the stairwell except for on the bottom floor.
Rosencrantz continued running, thankful that he lived on the third floor of the building. He could hear Theoden behind him and could feel the medicine starting to slow him down and slur his thoughts. Out the bottom door, through the empty main lobby, to the side, behind the fake plants, through the employee door, down a hall, and into the kitchens. He didn’t stop running.
Once in the kitchens he ducked and ran low to avoid being seen over the counters. Quickly Rosencrantz began to double back. By now the automated computer system had decided there was nothing wrong and the klaxons were off.
Rosencrantz snuck out the kitchen door while his son’s back was turned and strolled out of the lobby, putting all his focus on not stumbling. Before he left, he grabbed a pair of dingy, paint covered clothes from a laundry bin outside the laundry room in the hall.
He smiled to the attendant who had come back in after the alarm had turned off.
“Good day Henry,” he said. If Henry noticed Rosencrantz’s words were slightly slurred and that he was carrying a bundle of clothes, he didn’t show it.
Rosencrantz wandered into the alley next to the building and spotted the apartment trash bin. He lifted the lid and threw the clothes in, making sure to make plenty of noise before he opened the sewer drain beside the bin and lowered himself down. He hated germs and doubted anyone would look for him down here, especially after being seen with the old clothes and making such a noise with the bin.
Rosencrantz felt a bit of slime touch his lips and he shivered. Live free or die, he reminded himself as he drifted off.
---
That night Rosencrantz awoke, climbed out of the sewer and hailed a taxi after walking a couple of blocks over. To explain his disheveled appeared he told the driver he’d been mugged. The driver was sympathetic.
“It’s a shame. So, you want to go to the hospital…”
“Henry David. No thanks. I think I’m fine; I really just want to get home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Just a couple blocks from the Thomson Preserve.”
Rosencrantz paid the man and thanked him after the ride. He knew the driver wouldn’t be able to identify him as Rosencrantz. Henry David was too filthy to be accurately described and had a different accent.
Rosencrantz walked into the preserve and began to search for a home.