THE OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD OF UNDERTAKERS

There was a time several years before. It is three o’clock in the morning. I am driving my Cadillac, a symbol of hollow, empty status, aimlessly aware that I am going mad. I drive toward a place called Longcliffe. I knew this place because  my Grandfather died there. What I didn’t know was that he was there because of alcohol, not the garden variety of insanity. My plan was to turn myself in. The Gothic towers and spires of the century old hospital were superimposed against a full moon. My repeated thought was: If I go in there they will never let me out. They will keep me there and never let me go.

Day is night and night is day. Time warps. I don't know how long I have been drinking. A week. A year. Multiples of years? There are five liquor stores in town. I buy a bottle each night and on Friday night I get the weekend supply, hoping to make it until Sunday morning without guzzling both liters and running out on Sunday. I passed out on a sofa in the Elks club. I drove so drunk I had to shut one eye to identify the three yellow lines on the center of the road. I awaken, dressed in a suit and slumped on a couch.  The room is filled with surreal half light.  I don't know if it is twilight or dawn.  How long have I been out?  My world shrinks and becomes infinitely smaller. I am still untouchable enough that I am allowed by the local law to proceed through town at 15 miles an hour, hugging the center line and with the windows open in order to get enough fresh air to avoid passing out.

I did pass out. On a cement garage floor. On the winter night I ran out of Gin and hope  I closed the door of the garage and turned the ignition switch on a brand new Mercury station wagon. I came back to my private Hell staring at the ceiling of the hospital emergency room. My first words were; My God, I have fucked this up too.  And on to a padded ward and Nurse Ratched.

Suicide is a very selfish act.
 .............with each broken shoelace out of one hundred broken shoelaces, one man, one woman, one thing enters a madhouse./bukowski

ELECTRIC SHOCK

The worst part is conciseness. I am not really conscience, only perhaps half there. And I don’t know where or what there is.

I am slowly aware of the other zombies around me in varying stages of slow movement. They and the entire area seem to be surrounded by and permeated in a thick opaque whitish fog.

The forms start to morph into male zombies and female zombies. I knew by their clothing. I know, but don’t know how I know. They--and I are in various stages of becoming alive.

Some are still lying on gurneys, immobile, unconscious.

I don’t remember at this time that I was lying on a gurney on top of several hospital sheets. I was surrounded by medical personal. Busy. They are working quickly now. A needle is inserted into a vein in my arm. Electrodes are being prepared. Patches on my head and temples are swabbed with a coldish jell. A large syringe is fastened into the needle in my arm. They want me to count backward from ten. I never make it past seven. My last conscious memory is of the sheets being quickly folded over my legs and a rubber block placed in my mouth so I don’t chew or swallow my tongue or break my teeth when I convulse.

For several days I am only a semi-zombie and gradually life calms, the depression is defined and recedes, and slowly I begin to feel better. It took six or eight of these to get me onto a level playing field.