Razor Burn

by O. J. Anderson

Table of Contents
Chapter 11
Chapters 12-13
appear in this issue.

Chapter 14

The wispy receptionist would be better suited teaching kindergarten children to cut bunnies from construction paper with blunt scissors. She says, “I’m sorry, Mr. Razor, but they’ve just begun their activity time. If you’d called ahead I would have suggested that you come by later in the week, during the visitors’ ice cream social.”

“You don’t understand,” Kate says. “This is very important.”

She clasps her hands together. “We like to think all our guests are important.”

“No,” Razor says, “Voelkler isn’t important. What he’s going to tell me is.”

The woman starts to say, “I’m sure that...”

“You don’t seem to be listening, woman.” This knocks the sugar coating off and sets her back on her heels. “Either you point us in the right direction or I’m going to tear this funny farm apart until I find him. Then I’m going to drag that chimp out of here by his tongue and give him an all-natural ass-kicking that I doubt coincides much with the Shady Brook wellness doctrine. You have three seconds to decide.” Razor holds up three fingers and begins counting.

The receptionist scrambles for the intercom and presses a button. “Nurse Margaret please!”

A few seconds later a rough voice comes back, “What?”

“We have visitors for Mr. Voelkler.”

“Yay.”

It is arranged that they will meet the amiable sounding Nurse Margaret at the south end of the main building, and she will take them to the activity area where the Candyman is.

As they walk out the door: “Enjoy your visit!”

On the way around the building, Kate says, “Very sophisticated, Razor, really. First class.”

The wellness center campus looks more like a resort for the fabulously rich and hopelessly bent. They’ve got indoor and outdoor pools, a mini petting zoo, tennis courts, a tranquility and meditation yard, a Zen pond, and an outdoor concert area. It’s the kind of place that no one in their right mind would ever want to leave.

They walk past a puree kiosk where Razor picks up an iced strawberry/rhubarb and a large bag of mixed nuts. The young lady working the stand is very knowledgeable and pleasant. She is visibly aroused at the sight of Razor’s giant, blown-out physique.

A curving rock path takes them through well-manicured cubist topiaries to a lush grassy opening where they find the awaiting Nurse Margaret. Her white uniform sleeves are rolled almost up to the shoulders exposing a pretty good set of guns; one arm has a tattoo of a dagger. Her hair is short, her face unbothered by makeup, leathery and creased instead. Razor gathers that the nurse doesn’t suffer fools well.

“I see you found the puree stand all right,” she says.

“Mm-hm,” Razor grunts, sucking on the straw.

The nurse turns and walks, leading them out to the activity fields. “You should try the mango/kiwi or the Four Citrus Blast. Those are my favorites.”

“Maybe I will,” he says. “Nuts anyone?”

“What do you know about Voelkler?” Kate asks.

Nurse Margaret’s turns and gives Kate a once-over, as though noticing her for the first time. “I know we’re gonna have a hard time finding that little bastard. There are about three hundred patients bouncing around here, most of them hopped up on P-Dex, whammies, or bing bongs. And I don’t know which group he’s in. So start looking.” Nurse Margaret describes Voelkler as “a cross between a gerbil and that guy from Psycho.”

The three of them walk the perimeter of the main activity area, watching a few matches here and there.

Men’s Group 4, at the southeast edge of the field, competes against each other in a five-hole chip-and-sprint golf match that ends when one of them blows out a velcro strap on one of his sneakers, nearly impaling himself on his iron wedge and cracking a few ribs. The rest of the group carry him off to the infirmary.

With a light touch, Ladies’ Group 11 devastates Men’s Group 7 in mixed badminton. Then Men’s Group 7, still pissed and shamed from the defeat, takes on Men’s Group 1. The match quickly takes a turn for the worse after all the first-set trash talking from Group 1 and turns into a full-contact battle. One of the guys from Group 7 tomahawks his racket at an out-of-bounds Group 1 player. The two groups then bum-rush the net and proceed to smack the ever living crap out of each other.

The northeast area of the field sees another colliding clamjaphry of mental invalids when croquet mallets and field hockey sticks come together in a profanity-riddled and highly unsportsmanlike cross-training event that only the most robust and medicated walk away from.

“Idiots,” Nurse Margaret says. “C’mon. Let’s look over here.”

They head up to the convalescent horseshoe pit where the walking wounded — bandaged and splinted from all sort of sports- and lassitude-related injuries — play light horseshoes and share healing words with each other. Nurse Margaret asks them, “Any of you boneheads seen Voelkler?”

Four of them say no, but one suggests they check out the three-legged race. “That’s his sport,” the one wearing the neck brace says.

And that’s where they find him: tied to and crushed under a four-hundred pound pudding monster at the turn-around point. “Get off me,” he groans.

“I can’t,” says his partner.

Razor takes Voelkler by the neck and separates the two quite handily. They escort him to one of the cement poetry tables near the fish pond.

The Candyman asks Kate, “Got any cigarettes, babe?”

Razor smacks his across the head. “Tell us about your little curse or I’ll slap what’s left of your brain right out of your skull.”

“Damn! I don’t know what you’re talking about, babaloo.”

Razor slaps him again. Harder. Hard enough to land Voelkler on the ground. “I’ll knock you off this planet if you dick around with me. The curse.”

Wobbling to his feet, Voelkler says, “Ah, yes, the curse. Now I remember everything. What would you like to know about the curse.” Sitting down, he waves his hands like he’s debuting a new magic trick.

“You can start by telling us what it is,” Kate says.

“Girlfriend, that I do not know.” Voelkler’s hands fly up to protect his head. “Please don’t hit me! Please! It’s the truth. Don’t hit me again. It hurts.”

Razor doesn’t hit him. Instead, he reaches over and shoves two fingers up his nostrils and drags him across the poetry table by his nose. “You like living here, turd? Huh? You like this hopscotch and lollipop la-la land they’ve got you in? All doped up every day, honey dripping from your mind.”

“Eeeeeeech. Eeeeeeeeech.”

“I got a newsflash for you, turd. I’m gonna send you down to The Fortress for about thirty years. And you don’t look like you can stand up for yourself too well. Ever hear about the curse of the weak little man in prison?”

“Start talking,” Kate says.

Razor lets him go.

Voelkler flops down onto the poetry table and says, “Damn, dude.” His nose is red and twitching, like a rabbit’s. He goes cross-eyed trying to look at it. Eyes glaze over. “Ooooo.” Rapid blinking and twitching. He seems to be drifting over onto another frequency.

Raising his hand, Razor is about to jab an iron finger into his eye, but Kate stops him.

“This guy’s brain is tweaked,” she says. “He’s in another dimension.” Kate pats Razor’s bulbous brachioradialis muscle a few times and tells him to let her handle this.

He knows that Kate thinks she can get something out of Voelkler with some kind of frou-frou psychoanalytic mindplay crap she learned in school, and he’ll let her give it a shot, but Razor knows the deal with these rice-heads: you want information, you have to wring it out of them.

Now Voelkler moves his jaw around like there’s taffy stuck to his teeth.

Kate says, “Tell me about the curse, Candyman. Tell me about the curse. Is it a drug? Did you import the Dalls-Crik virus?”

Staring deeply into Kate’s eyes now, the Candyman’s eyes widen. Then, as though he has a chill, he shakes himself back into a semi-lucid state and says, “I’ll talk to you, but not him. I don’t like him. I would like you to give him a message though.”

“A message?” Kate points at Razor. “For him?”

“That’s right. Tell George of the jungle here that he can’t threaten me with The Fortress because they’ll never let me leave Shady Brook. Never!”

Razor jumps up. “I’m gonna break everything you got, punk.”

Jumping back, Voelkler shouts, “Better control your pet monster, lady!”

Kate throws herself in front of him screaming, “Razor! Stay cool, Razor!”

“If he touches me one more time I’m not telling you anything,” Voelkler says as he crab-walks backwards along the crushed stone walkway.

Wearily, Kate says, “That’s enough, Razor. I mean, really, enough already.”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Voelkler says, “but you gotta get me out of here.”

They make a truce and reconvene around the poetry table where Voelkler’s eyes roll back in his sockets. His eyelids flutter and he puckers his lips like he’s about to spit out a watermelon seed. One of his little drug-induced lapses from reality; another load of braincells boarding the train headed for a full-time retirement community in Dementiaville. Kate snaps her finger in his face and asks who “they” are.

A minute later he settles down, exhales, and says, “Thore. They own this place.” He taps the table with an emaciated finger. “The Shady Brook Wellness Center is owned by the Thore Corporation. Everyone here is a former Thore employee. Everyone. All people who know something, who’ve seen things. This his how they dispose of us. They take our minds here. I don’t have much time left.”

“Are they listening?” Kate asks. “Is that why you’re whispering? Are they watching us right now?”

Voelkler pushes back and says in a normal voice, “No. They don’t have to. Who believes anything a bunch of over-medicated zombies on a nut farm have to say? I’m a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic with a drug problem. I’m harmless to them.”

“Good point. So why should we believe you?”

“Because I’m a professional addict, that’s why. Been one all my life. I know how to get high and still function. I’ve been doing it for years and no one’s noticed. But this stuff here, I don’t know what it is. It’s like an army of ants eating away at my mind. I don’t think I can fight it off much longer. Pretty soon I’ll end up like the rest of these zombies. And another thing, I’m may be a user, but I am neither paranoid nor schizophrenic. You check my medical records and see who made that diagnosis. I guarantee you he’s getting paid by the Thore Corporation.”

“Now you’re sounding paranoid,” Kate says.

“I know!” Voelkler pounds the table with his fist and winces. “Once they hit you with the label they’ve got you by the balls.”

“Tell me about the curse.”

Voelkler shakes his head. “I’m not sure exactly what it is. I only know that it’s big or they wouldn’t even bother with it. Whatever it is, it’s going to bring in billions for them.”

The Candyman twitches a few times, then continues, “Check this out: the last two years I worked at the clinic I was getting all kinds of new meds. Weird stuff even I’ve never heard of. No names or anything, just alphanumeric designators like PR 512 and TX 335. I might have the 512 for a week, then the 335 for six weeks. It was always like that. I could tell which ones weren’t working by how long they lasted at the clinic.”

“Working on what?”

“Well, xenobarbitol addiction supposedly. But I knew better. See, a lot of the users coming into the clinic were on a list sent over from the ChemTECH lab saying that so-and-so had volunteered to participate in a new treatment study and that he was to be given a dose of the PR 512 or the AZ 403.

“Junkies on the streets are perfect for this sort of experiment; they need the money and they’ll let you shoot them up with pretty much anything to get it. Nobody knows who most of these people are or where they come from, and they die or burn out all the time. Perfect test subjects.

“But these meds were given in addition to the xeno. If it’s supposed to treat the addiction, why give the xeno too? And everyone knows there’s no cure for it. You can’t just cure an addiction like that.” Snapping his fingers.

“Well, why not?” Kate asks. “Maybe that’s what they’re trying to do.”

Voelkler looks at Razor and says, “Was she born in a potato field? Come on, girlfriend, the whole idea of a cure is anathema to a pharmaceutical company. Who do you think paid for the clinic where I worked? Bikharmer Pharmaceuticals, that’s who. And where do you think the city buys all that xenocylibin to treat those people every day? No, cured people don’t spend money on drugs to get better. A cured person is a lost customer.

“Now, a cursed person, that’s a different species altogether. Big spenders. Lots of dough. Just look at the flu. Now that’s brilliant. Got its own season, like a vegetable made out of money. Every year hundreds of millions of people spending twenty dollars each for a flu shot. Absolutely brilliant.”

“So what’s this got to do with Thore?”

“Thore owns Bikharmer Pharmaceuticals. Bikharmer owns ChemTECH and the clinic. Once Bikharmer gets a working vaccine, Thore will begin marketing it with a media blitz. They’ll start generating anxiety. Some experts will be on TV talking about how it could happen here. Someone else will write a book about it claiming its inevitability. Then comes the Sunday night movie to show everyone what it looks like. By the time the curse hits the streets, people will wonder what took it so long.”

“That’s some conspiracy, Voelkler.” Kate smirks at Razor.

The Candyman doesn’t cotton to Kate’s condescension. He fires back with agitation, “The Thore Corporation is an insatiable monster I tell you! Seven of its tentacles are busy shining a steamy pile of poo while the eighth is spooning it onto your plate. And you’re all set to dig in, girlfriend. Don’t tell me you’re the police and you haven’t figured it out yet. Thore already owns everything they need to pull it off. Film studios, TV networks, book publishers, magazines, newspapers, hell, they might even own you.”

“Now, see,” Kate says, “there’s the first hole in your theory. The Garden City Reader is owned by Thore and they’re reporting them as voodoo murders.”

Voelkler seems surprised. “They’ve already released?”

“Why do you think we’re here?”

“Then I’m right. And you have to believe me,” he says. “What’s it like?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you.”

“But you said the Reader is reporting it a voodoo murder. That must mean it’s fairly gruesome, right? Blood and guts. It’s got a high media fear factor, right? Mm, that’s the stuff that sells. Ah, but you also said murder, which means test subjects are dying. That explains it. It isn’t ready yet. No one is supposed to die, not right away at least. They’re still tinkering with the recipe of either the virus itself or the vaccine.”

“And you expect us to believe all that?”

“Look, there are only two kinds of people that drug companies don’t care about: the healthy and the dead. Their target demographic is everything in between. They can still do something about the healthy ones, but a dead man’s no good to anyone.”

“Okay, Voelkler, all right.” Kate signals for a time out with her hands. It’s time to provoke the Candyman. Get him riled up, see what slips out. “You know what? Here’s what I think: you had a pretty good thing going, easy access to high-grade dope, you were consuming as much as you wanted, dealing on the side for extra cash, then you got caught. Simple as that. Now you’re grinding the axe. The party’s over and you can’t deal with it. This is all a big revenge drama. Am I right?”

He stays calm. “Who caught me? I didn’t get caught. I was silenced. They sent me here under the pretense of mental instability when I tried to warn the others. And I was only dealing to junkies anyway. Not like they were kids or anything. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Wasn’t a big deal?” Kate says. “Some of these junkies have practically imploded and you think it’s no big deal?”

“Hey, I was selling pure grade pharmaceutical xenocylibin at a good price. It was a lot cleaner than the junk coming out of those kitchens. I’ve got nothing to do with how people are dying these days. You want answers, go find out what ChemTECH’s been sticking in their arms.”

To be continued...