Ward Closed
by Garry Stanton
Genre: Horror/Supernatural
Swearwords: One strong one only.
Description: A psychotic transsexual waxes lyrical on her odd, scary habits.
_____________________________________________________________________
by Angel
Yes, that’s right. No, no. I’m no angel, you’ve got that right. Or maybe I am, how would you know? But, yes I wasn’t always this gorgeous Marilyn Monroe look-alike Angel. Alfred. I know, so old-fashioned that old moniker. Monica. I like the sound of that better. Are you going to turn that thing on? The all-seeing eye, all hearing anyway. It is on? So, from the beginning, or is there license for tangential path finding? Well, I could begin from the beginning, it’s a good place and all that but boring…but I mean,… I thought you wanted to know how I did it. I mean I did do it you know. I really did and it was…it was good. I was walking, alone I was but with the eyes of men, men in the dark, upon me no doubt, boring in. It was up by the meadows, at Forrest Road, onto the meadows beside the old hospital. God, old hospitals are spooky. All closed up,
the look
boarded up, echoey. Those black glass apartments they’ve built next to it make it look even creepier, you know, out of time. Baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time. So true. Well, I heard a noise inside the old place. Yes. Yes I did, scaled the wall, the construction partition thing. It was easy. No, I never ripped my tights. Stockings actually, darling. What was the noise like? Like….someone…sawing…like…amputation equipment. Is that a bit specific? Well that’s what it was. A buzzzzzzing sound.
pause
Did I tell you I was Alfred, after my granddad Alfie, he was in the Boer war? I’m Angel now, well Angela to be precise but Angel has been more…in demand…profitable like. I have been woman long time so much that it interrupts my grammar and syntaxes so focused am I on being woman not man. It was a mistake. Big error man. Do you like the look officer? Can I call you officer? Officer officer? Thank you I’m coyly flattered. My eyes are staring at an unspecified point in the ether now I am in danger of losing the way so to speak. Do you get it? Do you get it? I smelt blood when I got in. To the hosp…yes…I got in easy. Boys can climb you know. But I am woman, I know that, but…it’s all in the muscles…
the darkness
dark but easy. I followed the soft sounds of sawing. Do you know alliteration? No? I shall explain at a later juncture. The sounds were blending with other senses…a sound of dampness and old death, can it, can some death be older than others?…can dampness have a sound? And the stench of electricity but I would have thought the power would have been off wouldn’t you? Yes, you too.
sigh
I am no angel you know. My mother called me angel when I was a baby. Baby angel with pink on. She has a lot to answer for…
the laugh like a cry
I did it. She knew nothing about it. Have you found her yet? Was it bad, any head there? I cannot recall what I did with it to be honest. Maggots I suppose. Oh, you are noncommittal rascal, rapscallion…!
..I told you to watch out for the tangents. The tangential wanderings of the slightly off beam! Slightly? That was kindish. I first saw the first one in the reading room at George the fourth bridge, yes the library. I recogniscented him, from the old time. Reconnaissance and recognisance, get it? Pardon? Well since you are asking I am, or was, researching for my book on Pilate. Pontius. He was an ancestor of mine you know. Watch me preen it’s a cool association n’est-ce pas? They have a good biblical bit in there…he was looking, sideyways on to me, all aquiline nose and forgotten torment. Torment by him, not me. He did not recall me, I am sure, but then he wouldn’t would he boy in blue? (Did you find the head yet I am partial to them they make good friend funnily enough. So many expression and you can play with them they always agree). The head when still attached saw me and turned away perhaps it laughed I’m not sure but then it looked out the window and put a coat on. Before he left he looked at me again, seeming to register something….something even he could not know. Not yet anyways. I went back to my researching or pretended to but I knew him and where to find him…don’t ask me how…whomsoever me is…it does no…good officer. When I walk across the lovely hardwood parquet I take off my heels it attracts attention…what, you think I want attention like that? Silly saucisse! No no no. Clicking too hard is not good in a real lady.
the knuckles click, a testosterone cry from the deep
At the school I was at they called me a poof, so what eh? But it was a deal that was big then let me advise thee. I wasn’t a poof I was a girl alive within dead testosterone, an oestrogen oddity. That’s where we get the word Easter from…fertility and Pagans. I am interesting, eh? I a girl a female earthbound entity inside cock and bull. Funny, is it? Is that fucking funny? Are you laughing…?
the rage
no it is not…we are getting somewhere but the mind is a jungle of lions and tiggers, a thicket of parrot doxes and contrapythonic up the garden pathies, pathinogens…yes. Yes. Uh huh. Uh huh. No. Just recently. One by one
the lucidity
In the dark I like them. One of them even came to me for…favours. Well not favours as I am not that cheap but oh irony of ironies he was coming to the poof for funnings. Now that has humour hanging off it, like a cat on your cardigan sleeve. Get off, Kitty. Back to the hospital? Very well. Well that’s the end and the beginning and all the marrow in the bones. Ends. Beginnings, bones of tales…, tails of bones…no I didn’t take them there, they delivered themselves there. Silly officer! Playground antics…by their. may leave school but it never leaves you. What? The sawing sound? Yes doctor. Yes officer. No sir. You think it was in my head, little Angel’s miswirings! Did I actualise the sound of amputation? What did I cut off? I think you know. We all know, lantern jawed officer, Edinburgh’s finest. You guys do a
ward closed
good job, a thankless task. I’ve seen John in the Oxford the barnacled oar of truth and dark diseased justice with those pints lined up, reading the pink on a Saturday when he should have been…he is retired, I believe. What? None of my business? And you, white-coated marvel of modern scientific enquiry…am I fascinating enough? Twisted old Angel! Less of the old if ye do not mind!
the quiet
How many? Well there is a precise answer to question. Six. I am clear now. The class register, etched on Angel’s mind mind you, had twenty and eight names, er… culprits six then. And where are they? The old infirmary. A bed each, even. No shortage problems this week! Oh, yes there are bats, the odd skinny fox perchance. And pigeons. The rats come up from the filth and are invariably…peckish. What are you asking? Did I carefully plan it all out after carrying the burden of otherness, of freakishness all those long years? Yesiree bob! Did I work it out with a pencil as in the manner of the constipated mathematician? I did, guid doctor! What’s your name again? I thought it was…in summary, gentlemen, if I may be so formal, I should like to posit my position, as I saw it. I saw it (sawed and sawed and sawed without the benefit of electricity and or anaesthesia, naturally) as my responsibility, in order to move on, to mete out a suitable punishment to my tormentors a spiritual recompense to myself. You’d like the names, yes, but however I can only recall faces, faecal matter…heids to be precise. I am now Angel not Alfie with all the burdens this involves. There are many responsibilities one must acknowledge when one is active in the teaching profession.
Swearwords: One strong one only.
Description: A psychotic transsexual waxes lyrical on her odd, scary habits.
_____________________________________________________________________
by Angel
Yes, that’s right. No, no. I’m no angel, you’ve got that right. Or maybe I am, how would you know? But, yes I wasn’t always this gorgeous Marilyn Monroe look-alike Angel. Alfred. I know, so old-fashioned that old moniker. Monica. I like the sound of that better. Are you going to turn that thing on? The all-seeing eye, all hearing anyway. It is on? So, from the beginning, or is there license for tangential path finding? Well, I could begin from the beginning, it’s a good place and all that but boring…but I mean,… I thought you wanted to know how I did it. I mean I did do it you know. I really did and it was…it was good. I was walking, alone I was but with the eyes of men, men in the dark, upon me no doubt, boring in. It was up by the meadows, at Forrest Road, onto the meadows beside the old hospital. God, old hospitals are spooky. All closed up,
the look
boarded up, echoey. Those black glass apartments they’ve built next to it make it look even creepier, you know, out of time. Baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time. So true. Well, I heard a noise inside the old place. Yes. Yes I did, scaled the wall, the construction partition thing. It was easy. No, I never ripped my tights. Stockings actually, darling. What was the noise like? Like….someone…sawing…like…amputation equipment. Is that a bit specific? Well that’s what it was. A buzzzzzzing sound.
pause
Did I tell you I was Alfred, after my granddad Alfie, he was in the Boer war? I’m Angel now, well Angela to be precise but Angel has been more…in demand…profitable like. I have been woman long time so much that it interrupts my grammar and syntaxes so focused am I on being woman not man. It was a mistake. Big error man. Do you like the look officer? Can I call you officer? Officer officer? Thank you I’m coyly flattered. My eyes are staring at an unspecified point in the ether now I am in danger of losing the way so to speak. Do you get it? Do you get it? I smelt blood when I got in. To the hosp…yes…I got in easy. Boys can climb you know. But I am woman, I know that, but…it’s all in the muscles…
the darkness
dark but easy. I followed the soft sounds of sawing. Do you know alliteration? No? I shall explain at a later juncture. The sounds were blending with other senses…a sound of dampness and old death, can it, can some death be older than others?…can dampness have a sound? And the stench of electricity but I would have thought the power would have been off wouldn’t you? Yes, you too.
sigh
I am no angel you know. My mother called me angel when I was a baby. Baby angel with pink on. She has a lot to answer for…
the laugh like a cry
I did it. She knew nothing about it. Have you found her yet? Was it bad, any head there? I cannot recall what I did with it to be honest. Maggots I suppose. Oh, you are noncommittal rascal, rapscallion…!
..I told you to watch out for the tangents. The tangential wanderings of the slightly off beam! Slightly? That was kindish. I first saw the first one in the reading room at George the fourth bridge, yes the library. I recogniscented him, from the old time. Reconnaissance and recognisance, get it? Pardon? Well since you are asking I am, or was, researching for my book on Pilate. Pontius. He was an ancestor of mine you know. Watch me preen it’s a cool association n’est-ce pas? They have a good biblical bit in there…he was looking, sideyways on to me, all aquiline nose and forgotten torment. Torment by him, not me. He did not recall me, I am sure, but then he wouldn’t would he boy in blue? (Did you find the head yet I am partial to them they make good friend funnily enough. So many expression and you can play with them they always agree). The head when still attached saw me and turned away perhaps it laughed I’m not sure but then it looked out the window and put a coat on. Before he left he looked at me again, seeming to register something….something even he could not know. Not yet anyways. I went back to my researching or pretended to but I knew him and where to find him…don’t ask me how…whomsoever me is…it does no…good officer. When I walk across the lovely hardwood parquet I take off my heels it attracts attention…what, you think I want attention like that? Silly saucisse! No no no. Clicking too hard is not good in a real lady.
the knuckles click, a testosterone cry from the deep
At the school I was at they called me a poof, so what eh? But it was a deal that was big then let me advise thee. I wasn’t a poof I was a girl alive within dead testosterone, an oestrogen oddity. That’s where we get the word Easter from…fertility and Pagans. I am interesting, eh? I a girl a female earthbound entity inside cock and bull. Funny, is it? Is that fucking funny? Are you laughing…?
the rage
no it is not…we are getting somewhere but the mind is a jungle of lions and tiggers, a thicket of parrot doxes and contrapythonic up the garden pathies, pathinogens…yes. Yes. Uh huh. Uh huh. No. Just recently. One by one
the lucidity
In the dark I like them. One of them even came to me for…favours. Well not favours as I am not that cheap but oh irony of ironies he was coming to the poof for funnings. Now that has humour hanging off it, like a cat on your cardigan sleeve. Get off, Kitty. Back to the hospital? Very well. Well that’s the end and the beginning and all the marrow in the bones. Ends. Beginnings, bones of tales…, tails of bones…no I didn’t take them there, they delivered themselves there. Silly officer! Playground antics…by their. may leave school but it never leaves you. What? The sawing sound? Yes doctor. Yes officer. No sir. You think it was in my head, little Angel’s miswirings! Did I actualise the sound of amputation? What did I cut off? I think you know. We all know, lantern jawed officer, Edinburgh’s finest. You guys do a
ward closed
good job, a thankless task. I’ve seen John in the Oxford the barnacled oar of truth and dark diseased justice with those pints lined up, reading the pink on a Saturday when he should have been…he is retired, I believe. What? None of my business? And you, white-coated marvel of modern scientific enquiry…am I fascinating enough? Twisted old Angel! Less of the old if ye do not mind!
the quiet
How many? Well there is a precise answer to question. Six. I am clear now. The class register, etched on Angel’s mind mind you, had twenty and eight names, er… culprits six then. And where are they? The old infirmary. A bed each, even. No shortage problems this week! Oh, yes there are bats, the odd skinny fox perchance. And pigeons. The rats come up from the filth and are invariably…peckish. What are you asking? Did I carefully plan it all out after carrying the burden of otherness, of freakishness all those long years? Yesiree bob! Did I work it out with a pencil as in the manner of the constipated mathematician? I did, guid doctor! What’s your name again? I thought it was…in summary, gentlemen, if I may be so formal, I should like to posit my position, as I saw it. I saw it (sawed and sawed and sawed without the benefit of electricity and or anaesthesia, naturally) as my responsibility, in order to move on, to mete out a suitable punishment to my tormentors a spiritual recompense to myself. You’d like the names, yes, but however I can only recall faces, faecal matter…heids to be precise. I am now Angel not Alfie with all the burdens this involves. There are many responsibilities one must acknowledge when one is active in the teaching profession.
About the Author
Born in Edinburgh and now living in Fife, Garry Stanton is a musician to trade, as well as a teacher in training. His debut album, Indigo Flats, was released online in 2010.
Garry also writes, having completed several short stories, his first novel and a lot of poetry, some of which has been published in the Edinburgh-based poetry magazine, Harlequin.
Garry also writes, having completed several short stories, his first novel and a lot of poetry, some of which has been published in the Edinburgh-based poetry magazine, Harlequin.