In Search of the Bluebird

THE NUTS OF THE ROUND TABLE (Excerpt) ...It would be hard to guess how these meetings around the round table had come to be except for that it was probably at once and on its own; one day, without realizing it, had become routine. They gathered around the table at recess time, after lunch, and at breaks; but it was the stretch after dinner through to before bedtime that their meetings were less casual; more official, perhaps to a degree even important. One at a time swiped their loafers to the round structure. Figures fulfilling a daily prophecy. A congregation summoned by forces belonging to the divinity of the insane. The madman has a different God; one who is too, crazy, as the crazy is made in His semblance. The universe is filled with loony gods! Heaven is an asylum—revolt! Spike The Rat—as they called him—once screamed out of a free window in sector four. One for each semblance! One! My loveds! The god of crickets and the god of trees. All the gods want to be seen! The god of bacteria has an inferiority complex! A guard, who happened to be very religious and was built like a large animal, subdued him with extra catholic force, applying a heavily anti-blasphemous full nelson on the man. Inflexible and un-lenient—in both physical and abstract senses—the guard, who was a very large, very unintelligent person, beloved to excruciating extremes by his mother who was half deaf and very kind, had done his job here exceptionally well. And his god was proud. The god of dumb guards—faithful to the constructs of his semblance—sent a lightning bolt of approval down into a Toyota Camry parked not two blocks away from the nuthouse. Unfortunately for the guard, it was his car. Spike The Rat was after some years vindicated and eventually released, to later become, for a short time, a Tele-evangelist of moderate influence. The pious stint was short lived after a rather embarrassing—nevertheless traditional—sex scandal involving one transexual, two Asian midges, and a Labrador retriever. He resigned from the church at once and moved northeast where he’d later end up as a president—simultaneously—of two obscure organizations: The Tunguska Social Club and the S.E.E.N., Society for Extraterrestrial Evangelism in Nantucket. He was later targeted and assassinated, allegedly, by a former member of B.U.F.O.R.A., the British UFO Research Association. Around the asylum, however, it is commented by some others, that the assassination never took place. That it was all a government coverup after fifty-two people—who today are still unaccounted for—witnessed Spike The Rat’s extraterrestrial abduction in the middle of the desert one twenty-second of November somewhere Nevada. The fact remains: his body has never been found... 3 IRREVERSIBLE PSYCHOPATHS (Excerpt) Maximilian was born with all his teeth and that’s why the doctors knew right away. But they didn’t want to jump to conclusions and that’s when the Magneto Encephalography was ran on his head. Regretfully, it was just as they had suspected. “Mrs. Dobbs I’m sorry, your son is a psychopath. You can either kill him or keep him in captivity: away from everyone. It is inevitable that he’s going to be a disastrous element out there. You yourself have seen firsthand what he’s done to poor nurse Grace’s fingers; god only knows where this will escalate. Now, you shouldn't be saddened or feel ashamed Mrs’ Dobbs; although admittedly rare, Maximilian is not the first, nor will he be the last child to be born a psychopath.” And so the Dobbs’s went ahead and did what they needed to do: they raised Maximilian Samuel Dobbs best to their capacity given all the challenges that his characteristics presented; but nevertheless raised with all the love, care and nurturing any one child needs and should receive—if only with the added attentions to the demands of those elements specific to such special needs. Inherent and Irreversible Homicidal Tendencies: these five words from the doctors were a looming reminder in the Dobbs household. The boy was born with extravagant strength! Even while still a baby it was imperative to stay away from his jaws. Bathing, grooming, and dressing him him was especially difficult; feeding him was nearly impossible—potentially tragic. During his first few years, a special cradle and playpen was constructed for him. They were cage-like units fashioned out of cast iron and a kind of titanium alloy nestled in a hard foam to absorb the extreme hyper-action and violence—this protective layer of cushioning he would eventually peel off and ingest, leaving only the bare metal to scrape and scratch at leisure. The contraptions were so bulky and so extremely heavy that it took four sizable men to bring it in and set it into place. The order was placed by Mrs. Dobbs under the pretense that it was for her eccentric Australian husband who was a collector of rare, exotic (and sometimes deadly) wild animals. As Max grew bigger and into those awkward and hormonally pyrotechnic years of puberty, his parents felt that not only was he entering an age where privacy was becoming more and more important, but also seclusion was becoming imminently necessary. He would need now to be not only isolated from the society he would most certainly turn into a playpen of destruction, but the mere existence of an outside world had to be totally concealed. It was imperative than any hint of any thing that could potentially galvanize in him anything remotely resembling interest (let alone temptation!) had to bee kept away from exposure. As far as he knew, the world consisted of his home, his loving parents, his chains, and the unquenchable urge to use his powerful mandible in countless manners. The basement had been personalized to cater to these demands; where reinforced steel chains were worn securely fastened around every one of this limbs and neck—each one of these bolted to the stone wall. It had been possible—though by no stretch easy—for the Dobbs to maintain a loving and nurturing environment all the while keeping such a narrow, minimal worldview for Max. It was evident that yielding to the natural and compelling inclination of parents to want to ‘give their children the world’ would prove disastrous. A newer kind of tough love, and restraint, was practiced here for the greater good of humankind. Often during the course of a day, it was common for Max to thrash about and grunt and scream like an agonized savage—tugging, rattling at his chains until finally giving up exhaustedly, collapsing into a deep nap. He liked hotdogs and spoke English perfectly; his vocabulary, however was truncated by the obscuring of all those words related specifically to the forbidden world. It was necessary to speak carefully and not slip! Certain (often seemingly harmless) words could very well spark dangerous curiosities in him! Words like: Taxi, Sidewalk, Sky, Flower, Girl, Sea, Dog —words such as these that were some among so, so many forbidden words....