> PARENTAL ADVISORY: I'm single.

the fantastic life and suicide
of mister mary holiday

-- December 1st, 1996 --
``The Promulgation of Maryland as an Eternal Alternative."

"Or is it the end? It's gotten more and more difficult to tell one from the other lately. "Anyway, it was a massive coronary. At least that's what I assume it was. I wasn't a doctor and I wasn't even awake at the time, so that's the best I can do for technical details. I'm sure my wife now gloats to friends and family about how she saw it coming for years and warned me to cut back on the fatty foods and cholesterol, but personally, even after all I've been through, I'd still rather die than jog. "I didn't realize anything was different at first. I woke as I usually did: groggy, tired and without any suspicion that I was a dead man. Usually that was because I wasn't. "In front of me in a blurry haze stood a short, unimposing man in a small finely tailored gray suit. I went for my gun. "'It's quite all right,' said the bored little man as I unloaded smoking imaginary round after smoking imaginary round into his drawn expressionless face. I looked at my empty hands. I had failed to pick up the gun or even open the bedside drawer. My hands passed right through them both as I tried again. My eyes went to my wife of thirty years who lay sleeping soundly beside my motionless body, her graying hair in pink curlers. I never understood how she could sleep with those on. "John Campbell,' said the man, holding a worn black leather book gravely to his chest, 'You are dead.' "I can't remember what I said, but I'm sure it was some sort of question. "'You are dead,' he said again. This seemed to answer at least part of my question. "He had a comfortingly neutral face with tiny soft-black empty eyes that narrowed but never closed in on you. The corners of his mouth scrunched up comically when he talked as if every word were a really stupid joke and he had to grimace politely so as not to offend himself. "'Dead?' I said. "The man nodded. I looked down at my body again. It was an odd experience. In life you can see yourself in mirrors, photographs and drawings, but you aren't really confronted with how stupid you look until you're staring at yourself caught mid-sleep by death, drooling heavily into the very early morning. "'And you're... you're Death?' "He shrugged non-commitally; something I had never pictured Death doing. 'That is one of my names,' he said. He turned away and said, 'This way,' as he walked off. I followed him. "In a wave of his hand the room faded out and we were suspended in a sea of blackness. No floor, no ceiling, no walls, no sound. What looked like a neon blue movie screen sprung up in front of us and was suddenly filled with familiar things. Faces and images and places and feelings. It was very surreal, like a silent music video. Fleeting, narrow pictures wound around and past me, all lost in time until I realized I was watching my own life. It was kind of like that feeling you get while you're trying to figure out if you've seen the movie you're watching before and if not, why you seem to know every third bit of dialogue. It went through my birthdays, my holidays, my ups and downs, the day I graduated from high school, university, and my first day on the job with the firm in New York. "The perspective was odd; it was as though there was someone standing just to the right and three steps ahead of me looking back, watching the expressions of the people I talked to, and watching their faces as they walked away. I had a sense of every feeling and more empathy for others at this time than I cared to deal with. "Looking back, I now feel slightly guilty for not feeling great sadness, having looked upon my life for the very last time, but instead I felt wide-eyed and excited and into something new. Death is like Christmas for the soul. "I'd lived a full life. As much to be thankful for as regretful, and that seemed pretty good by my standards. I had never been a religious man. I had never given religion much thought, having been raised in a poor Irish Catholic home that found things like the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit less important than paying the bills each month and making sure their kids got a good education. I supposed that's where my parents got rid of their religious guilt, by sending me to a Catholic school. But this far into my life I couldn't remember very much of it. I knew the basics. Heaven or Hell or Purgatory, depending on which Christian school of thought you subscribed to. "'Judgment,' said the little man. His voice wasn't impressive at all and I had to pinch my finger to keep from grinning. Death should have a much deeper and commanding voice, and maybe a scythe. I always thought Death was supposed to have a scythe. I waited anxiously as the man dropped his briefcase on a table, opened it and pulled out a sealed envelope like they have at the Academy Awards. It had a big red seal over the back. "He took his sweet time opening it, and I was anxious as hell. 'Well, what is it?' I asked impatiently when he'd finally pulled the little slip of paper out. 'Heaven?' I said hopefully. His eyes didn't rise to meet mine, and I felt my palms getting wet and my stomach turning as I reeled with paranoia. I sank a little and said, 'Purgatory?' in a quiet voice. "'Maryland,' he said simply. "It seems like I must have stood there with a stunned look on my face for half an hour, but it could only have been a minute or two. Finally I managed to say, 'You mean... in America?' in a really confused voice. "'No, no. It's not as though you murdered anyone.' He grinned a little, and it didn't become him. 'No, this Maryland is in a hat. Here, these are your tickets.' "I stared at the gold embossed tickets he handed me. They had tiny skulls and crossbones on them and a big pillowy word balloon next to them that had "MARYLAND" written in it. I was completely lost. I looked at him imploringly. 'What are these for?' "'Those are the mandatory rides,' he explained, though I was still lost. 'Consider it penance for your sins.' "I studied them a bit closer. 'But roller coasters make me sick,' I said. He shrugged. "'Then you should have went to Church more.' "And then everything sank."

In a room that was almost entirely destroyed, Mary growled through clenched teeth and hurled himself at a wall. "They're on my rides!" he screamed as he collided with an intricately crafted ming vase, shattering it into billions of pieces and adding another layer of junk on the floor. It didn't even slow him down for a second. "They're everywhere!" he cried, clenching his fists. "RAAAAARRGH!!" Maxine walked in, watched, in silence, Mary flopping around like a seal with a harpoon in its back for a few minutes and then asked the bunny, who was standing in the corner watching all of this silently, a question. "What's his problem?" "Some say he's just hyperactive," the bunny said, not taking his eyes off Mary for a second. Now he was slamming his head against an 17th century painting of a homely lady with her hair tied back and a rose in her lap. "I'm siding more with the idea that it's something altogether deeper and more troubling. Some sort of psychological trauma that we're only just now beginning to see the surface of." Mary was trying to eat the painting now. He tore large ambitious bites out of it, turning after each one to hiss at them. He chewed as though the painting were his enemy. "BAD PEOPLE!" he yelled through a full mouth. "BAD!" He had difficulty swallowing. "How long has he been doing this?" asked Maxine as though she were at the zoo, watching a gorilla discovering its own renewed sexuality. The bunny checked his watch. "Four hours, maybe?" he said with some uncertainty. "I don't know. I left for a drink somewhere around the second hour and when I came back he was still at it. In fact I think he may have moved some of the furniture from another room in here while I was gone, because I was pretty sure he had run out of things to break." "He's still upset about all these people? Christ, it's been four months." They paused while they watched Mary walk out the door, scream some sort of shrill battle cry at the top of his voice and then run back through the room at top speed and smash completely through the opposite wall, leaving a Mary-shaped hole in the fake plaster. They heard another crash in the adjoining room. They ran to his aid.

Admiral Theodore Holden's nipples, in over twenty years of faithful and proud military service with Interdimensional Naval Command in cooperation with the rest of his body, had never been called upon to endure such pain. However this was a very necessary distraction considering the stress and shall we say, 'uncomforts' other specific parts of his body were now undergoing. He'd given up trying to call for help. His jaw ached from the black ball-gag in his mouth, his legs and arms were held firmly in place, and a burning sensation at his wrists and ankles kept him from struggling too hard. All had been darkness and quiet for several months now. Feedings were random and seemingly patternless but carefully executed with medical precision and care. The thick silence he felt buried in was broken only occasionally by distant words or sounds. In his time here, he had heard many particularly strange noises which forced his eyes wide with fear and anxiety, and sometimes there would be both and he'd be left alone with his imagination to piece everything together. This was one of those times.

In the dimly lit hallway outside Elliot's room there was the sound of a violent ebbing orgasm, coloured lights flashed out from under the wooden door and there was the slight smell of ozone. Doctor Benway approached slowly - as he usually did - and knocked only when he hadn't heard anything remotely passionate or squishy during a very slow count to ten. "Come in," Elliot's mellowed voice answered, and Doctor Benway allowed him a few courtesy moments to rustle away his inflatable Mary Holiday doll with the gaping mouth, lusty eyes and cynical but willing look about it. Only then did he enter, keeping his eyes low although the shadows kept Elliot mostly obscured; tails of smoke slithered out of the darkness now and then. "What would you like, doctor?" Elliot said. "I was just wondering what your next commands are. We're just drifting right now and I figured..." Elliot pulled the sheets around his body as he got up and walked over to extinguish his cigarette in an ashtray across the room. "Yes," he said, mashing the filter down hard. "Did you read that poem?" "No, I assumed you'd want to be the first of us." Elliot crawled back into bed, lay on his back and stared dreamily into the Mary Holiday posters on his ceiling. "It's brilliant," he said, rather flatly and without emotion. Doctor Benway wondered at this. "Is something wrong with that, captain?" Elliot's eyes startled him a little bit. "You don't sound too excited is all I mean," he added. "I'm just thinking is all," said Elliot. "Trying to figure out our next move." "Have you had any luck with the," he glanced over at the large wooden crate in the corner of the room, "'coercion'?" "Luck isn't anything I need for that right now, doctor." Elliot clasped his hands behind his head. "I haven't even tried yet. I'm just waiting for the right... mood." He licked his teeth slowly, staring at the crate. "But anyway," he said, snapping mostly out of it. "What is it you wanted again?" "Commands." "I want you to send out more flyers." "Very well," said doctor Benway and he turned to leave. "And set course for 1985, March twenty-first. There's a Luba concert I've been meaning to go to for the past decade or so." "As you wish."

The bunny sat in the waiting room of the medical emergencies ward. He chain-smoked and took the occasional hit from a mickey of whiskey he'd been keeping in his boot the past month. He began to pace with worry, his stomach cramping painfully from anxiety. He heard a voice from the other room. "Auntie Em, Auntie Em..." The bunny rushed to Mary's bedside, but he had already collapsed unconscious again. A nurse had heard him as well and came in. She adjusted the pillows under Mary's head and smoothed the white sheets over his gaunt, motionless body. He looked very small in the large white bed. "He seems to be coming out of it," the nurse said in a trained reassuring voice. "If he wakes up before I return and his head still hurts, be sure to give him these," she said, and set a prescription bottle on the tray by the side of the bed. "What are they?" the bunny asked. "Just some ordinary painkillers," she said. "They'll take the pain away." "I will," mumbled the bunny to himself after she had shut the door. He looked around. There was another patient in the room, but he was unconscious as well. The bunny picked up the little brown bottle and turned it around in his paws, reading the label before he slipped it into his front pocket and went back to the waiting room. He tried to get a Coke out of the vending machine but it stole his quarter.

When night came, Maxine had joined the now very comfortably numb bunny in the waiting room. Mary had not yet awaken fully, though they had both been assured repeatedly that he would soon. "Feeling any better?" "Yeah," said the bunny blankly. "I'm fine." "You seem a bit calmer than earlier," she said. "Yeah," said the bunny even more blankly. "I am." The nurse walked past them and slipped into Mary's room. "You know you don't have to wait here," Maxine said. "Why don't you go get some rest? I'll wait up. We can switch in the morning." "Yeah," said the bunny. "Maybe that's a good idea. I should sleep." He got slowly to his feet and wandered out the door, having only minor difficulty with it.

"Shall I tell them you're awake?" asked the nurse. "What? No way!" he turned to the man in the next bed and grinned. "Tell them I'm dead. Or to go away. And when can I get the hell out of here?" The nurse frowned. "We're calling in a mood specialist to have a look at you. Hopefully he'll be able to shed some light on your condition." "Fine, whatever," said Mary. "Go away. And next time you come in here, you better have Jell-O. And it better be green." The nurse muttered something under her breath as she left. "Who are they?" asked the man in the other bed. He was a middle-aged man with his bed sheets pulled up high around his neck. "Who?" "The people she wanted to tell that you're awake." Mary rolled his eyes. "Oh, God. You don't want to know them, John. Really, you don't. They're even more annoying than I am." "Hard to imagine," John said with a grin. Mary smiled. "Yeah, but I'm serious. There's this giant worried bunny who doesn't even have a name. We're just supposed to call him 'bunny' or 'hey you' or something. Then there's this woman I kidnapped who turned out to be a wanted serial killer and now won't go away. It's so irritating," he shivered. "You seem to lead an exciting... death," John said with some uncertainty. "I'm impressed by how often people mistake annoying things with exciting ones. How did you get here, anyhow?" "Back spasms."
"It were a journey like the path to heaven, To help you find them." - John Milton
"No, not the hospital. The hat. Maryland." "You really want to know?" Mary must have hit his head particularly hard. "Yes," he said. "Well, I guess I'll just start at the beginning then..."

©Copyright 1996, Brad Turcotte