Intake

            “I lost my life, that’s all.  I just came here to find it, ” the man said.

            Peter smiled at him automatically.  He practiced this smile in his bathroom mirror, studied the upward flash of his lips around his teeth.  There had to be a rhythm – not too prompted, not too planned – so that it seemed the most natural reaction in the world, no matter what had just been said.  He trained hard at such facilitation. This was his job: to get them to open up, to talk.

            “Lost it, hmm?  Quite a problem.  Do you have any idea where you left it at?”

            The man – kid, really, couldn’t be more than twenty – shrugged, studying a piece of nothing on Peter’s desk. 

Peter snuck a peek at the file casually open before him.  “What do you think, Rick?”

            The name helped.  Rick made eye contact with Peter, then shrugged again.  “Ah – I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in the last two days, in the Pit.”

            Peter nodded, as if to music.  “So, the Pit?”

            “The space under my bed, the Pit.  I kept monsters down there when I was little.  Rubber snacks, dragons, action figure of the Wolfman – “

            Peter’s professional nose twitched.  “Hm.”

            “What?” 

            “I’m just thinking about the name.  The Pit.  Sounds pretty ominous.”

            Rick scrunched his face, suddenly angry.  “What are you talking about?”

            “Well, to have this gaping space beneath where you sleep, populated by monsters, sounds kind of scary - ”

            “What do you mean, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”  The kid abruptly threw his head back as if to stare at the ceiling. Now his knees swayed to a silent teenage cadence: la – la – la – I can’t hear you – la – la – la –

            Behind Peter, Frank rustled restlessly.  Rick tried hard to ignore the subtle menace in the movement.  His hand hidden by the desk, Peter shooed Frank back.  Now was not the time for strong-arm tactics, not yet.  Forced insight helped no one at this stage.  Instead, Peter spread his arms, palms up and out – the universal sign of non-confrontation.  “I’m sorry, Rick, it was rude of me to interrupt you.  Tell it in your words, about the Pit.”

            Rick looked up at Peter in a child’s sulk, as if scolding him.  “Nothing to talk about.  It’s just a name.”

            “Just a name.”

            “Yeah, a name.  Everybody has to name things names.  What’s your name?”

            Peter told him again.

            “See, “ Rick said in triumph.  “You got it too.”

            Peter noted the emphasis.  “Got named?”

            “Yep.  Labeled, etched on your forehead for identification.”

            “Sounds like branding cattle.”

            Rick laughed and leaned back in his chair.  “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.  They’ve burned all kinds of labels into me.” 

            Peter leaned back as well, trying to match Rick’s posture without obviously imitating it.  For some who came in, the perception of authority was very important: someone to tell them what was wrong, what they had to do.  Like most of the young ones, though, Rick couldn’t stand someone above him ordering him around.  They grew angry in the face of direction and were unafraid of violence, even with Frank readily coiled.  No, at this point emphatic identification was the key.    

            Even just this little bit helped.  Rick’s ease had opened him up – not much, just slightly – so that the Vacuous glow slipped around him, like pale green light leaking beneath a door.  Vacuous wasn’t the official name for it, though Peter could think of it no other way.

            “Who’s they?” 

            Rick stiffened a little.  Peter waited, willing his face to smooth. 

            “You are, “ Rick said finally, quietly.  “All you people, with your judgements and your fingers.  Bosses.  Authorities.”     

His mouth shut as if on a spring. Two minutes passed. Peter shoved away the urge to speak.

“My fucking mother.   She’s a they.  She’s the they.”

The file said Rick had still lived with his mother. “Mom rules the roost, eh?”

“Ain’t that the truth.  The hen in charge of the hen house.  Peck peck peck.  When’re you going to get your own place, peck peck peck.  Just like your father, peck peck peck.  Work my hands peck peck no thanks peck peck need to earn your keep peck peck peck peck . . . “ His face grew increasingly violent.

“Always picking at you.”

Rick kept going, not quite to himself.  “ . . . college just didn’t work.  I told her: just let me go to freakin’ trade school!  But noooo!  She can’t have a welder in the family, needs a doctor or architect  . . .  some DAMN THING!   That bitch, I just wanted to get away from her – “

“So why were you still in her house?”

“Because she TRAPPED me in there!  Sucked me in.  She drove Dad away, but she made damn sure she kept her claws in the little one.  That was her plan all along.  Make me fail, keep me stuck in that same bedroom I’ve had since I was three – “

He was out of his chair at this, fists smashing down on the desk.   “GODDAMN HER! GODDAMN HER!”

“Rick, “ Peter said quietly as Frank stepped forward.

Rick dropped back into his chair, lip trembling.  “She’s the one that lost it . . . lost my life.”

Peter bowed his head slightly as the Vacuous shimmered through, back-lighting Rick’s head, imitating a halo. It’s creeping glow urged Peter forward; the momentum had changed.  Time to force the issue.  “That’s not true.”

            Rick opened his mouth to challenge, but Peter calmly bowled over him.   “It wasn’t her life to lose.  Anyway, lives can’t just be lost.  Sure, it might seem like it, that you could just toss them outside without much thought, but  . . . I believe the expression is ‘don’t believe the hype’?  That’s what it is – hype, about the ease of throwing your life away.   Lives are stubborn things: they tend to twist, cling.  Can’t just misplace them like a set of keys.”  

            His words penetrated Rick’s face, clarity forcing itself upon his brain.  “So what the hell happened to it, ” Rick muttered.

            “Well, they can’t be lost, but they can certainly be taken.  You came with the right purpose but the wrong idea.  The true question is, who took your life?”

            “MY MOTH – “

            “No!”  Too much exasperation, too much regret at what was coming.  Peter reigned in, strained for sympathy.  “No.  Not her.”

Rick’s face broke like a cloudburst.  It was often like this: they rail and fight and resist so that it seems you are trying to hammer a blade of grass into a brick . . . and then suddenly the brick splits wide apart.  “I don’t know, “ Rick sobbed.

            “Look in the Pit.”

            Rick’s eyes just wavered at him.

            “You said you lost it in the bed.  If I followed you, the Pit is under your bed.  So close your eyes and tell me . . .  Rick, what’s under your bed?”

            Rick had to open his mouth three times to say it.  “The bullet.”

            “There’s a bullet laying under the bed?”

            Rick barely nodded.

            “How’d it get there, Rick?”

            “Pit.”

             An utter quiet.   Peter breathed it in before Rick’s whisper broke it.

            “The pit of my mouth.  I tried to fill it.”  Rick reached around, absently fingered the fist-sized hole in the back of his head.

            “Yes.”  Peter tried for empathic agreement but got only a breathy syllable.  Dawning realization used to be something to him.  A breakthrough, the first step in understanding what had to be done.  Now it just felt like an anti-climax, verbal banter before Frank took them down. 

            Peter pressed on valiantly.  “Rick, you have to do some soul-searching.  I mean this literally.  You didn’t lose your life: you threw away your soul.  And you need to look for it before any progress can be made.” 

            Rick twisted his hands into claws, his face lined with two glistening tracks.   “I know!  I know, that’s why I came here . . . find it here . . .”

            “Rick, it’s not here.  And you know that.”  Peter dropped his voice a quarter octave.  “And you know where you need to look.”

            Rick’s sobbing dried up as silence sunk across him.  Peter recognized this gathering of energy, the confused calm before the storm.  He pushed slightly away from the desk, to allow Frank room to move.

“What do you mean.” Rick’s dark eyes burned with challenge.

            “You know.”

            The realization came with just a shrinking of the pupils, a downward glance at the emptiness between his feet, the depths that stretched below his chair.  “The Pit?”

            “No no, ” Peter attempted to reassure.  “Think of it as – “

“purgatory, ” Rick realized.

“ – somewhere that gives you the time to re-evaluate things.  Somewhere to take time, to consider, to – “

            “ – to suffer – “ Barely a whisper.

            Peter tried to clamp his disappointment from his voice. “ – to search.  To make decisions.  It’s not uncommon.  Really, Rick, you’ll be surprised how many are down there.  More and more people coming to me, this  . . . this big emptiness in their existence.  A vacuum just shining all around them.  They need to fill that void, need to find their souls again.”  This last part was more to himself than to Rick. 

            “What if I don’t” – Rick started tough but his voice broke – “wa –nmt to?”

            Peter knew the order, knew how it had to go down, and he clung to that order like a jagged but sheltering rock in a storm.  “I’m afraid there’s not much choice in the matter.  You have a decision to make, and you need your soul, one way or the other.  Around here they’re like membership cards.  No soul, no service.   And . . . well, with Frank’s kind, you’ll need it like currency.”

            Rick’s lip quivered as he locked his hands onto the arms of his chair.

            “Rick, I know it’s frightening, but there isn’t really any other option – “

            The storm broke.  “Fuck you old man, I’m not going anywhere!” 

            “Frank, “ Peter intoned with regret. 

Rick was quick, lunging out of the chair and hefting it like a baseball bat.  He never had a chance.  Frank sprang across the top of the desk, spearing the kid with his shoulder.  The chair dropped with no noise.  Frank’ arms bulged as he wrapped the kid up in a basket-hold.  Rick’s face contorted with screams. 

“Don’t hurt him, “ Peter cautioned.  “Not here.”

Frank would have sneered if he’d had a mouth.  He settled for a glare, his lidless eyes mocking Peter’s mercy.  Frank’s legs shoved forward, propelling himself and his captive down.  Peter watched them fall for miles, turning away only once Frank ascended and settled once more behind the desk.

He bristled against Frank’s silent confidence.  “He’s not damned yet.  He can still choose.  He can return.”

Yet Peter doubted.  Like so many of them, this one left Peter not with tears of sorrow but with those of rage and obscenity.  To search for your very soul, with such feelings as your starting point . . .

Peter took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes.  He felt as if he’d been doing this for an eternity.

Across the heavens, another figure crested, iridescent with the Vacuous. 

“Next, “ Peter called.