Sanity Read online

  Sanity

  a novel

  by

  Neovictorian

  (feat. Neal Van Wahr)

  2nd ed. (corrected)

  © 2018, 2019 by Neovictorian

  All rights reserved

  SCENES

  1. 8 years ago, San Jose, California April 19, 7:35 pm

  2. Today, Skyline Drive, Reno, Nevada May 27, 5:19 am

  3. 24 years ago, Santa Maria, California September 17, 12:15 pm

  4. 22 years ago, Santa Maria, California August 14, 9:54 am

  5. 20 years ago, Santa Maria, California September 17, 12:27 pm

  6. Analog Science Fiction, June, 1974: An Excerpt from Heights, the new novel by Phillip Duke

  7. 14 years ago, Santa Maria High School, Santa Maria, California May 15, 8:19 am

  8. 14 years ago, Santa Maria, California May 18, 12:08 pm

  9. 13 years ago, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California January 20, 12:30 pm

  10. 13 years ago, Palo Alto, California January 20, 6:56 pm

  11. 13 years ago, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California January 27, 1:58 pm

  12. 13 years ago, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California January 27, 1:59 pm

  13. 13 years ago, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California January 27, 2:10 pm

  14. 13 years ago, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California January 27, 2:26 pm

  15. 13 years ago, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California January 27, 3:13 pm

  16. 12 years ago, Black Rock Desert, Washoe County, Nevada May 30, 6:37 pm

  17. 12 years ago, Black Rock Desert, Washoe County, Nevada May 30, 9:50 pm

  18. 12 years ago, Reno, Nevada May 31, 6:37 am

  19. 8 years ago, San Jose, California April 19, 6:52 pm

  20. 8 years ago, Cima Dome, Mojave Desert, California May 1, 4:52 am

  21. 8 years ago, Santa Maria, California April 27, 7:57 pm

  22. 8 years ago, Cima Dome, Mojave Desert, California May 1, 5:57 am

  23. 8 years ago, Cima Dome, Mojave Desert, California May 1, 6:23 am

  24. 8 years ago, Cima Dome, Mojave Desert, California May 27, 5:35 am

  25. 8 years ago, Barrett Gold Mine, Nye County, Nevada, June 1, 2:17 pm

  26. 6 years ago, The Lucky Lady Bar & Grill, Nye County, Nevada March 3, 7:47 pm

  27. 3 years ago, Washington, DC April 22, 10:33 pm

  28. Today, Skyline Drive, Reno, Nevada May 27, 6:19 am

  29. Today, Skyline Drive, Reno, Nevada May 27, 7:14 am

  30. 3 years ago, Washington DC, April 23 12:57 pm

  31. Today, Third Street, Reno, Nevada May 27, 7:47 am

  32. Today, Office, Third Street, Reno, Nevada May 27, 8:33 am

  33. Today, Office, Third Street, Reno, Nevada May 27, 8:36 am

  34. 3 years ago, Washington DC April 25, 8:12 am

  35. Today, Office, Third Street, Reno, Nevada May 27, 8:44 am

  36. 3 years ago, Rosslyn, Virginia April 25 8:31 am

  37. Today, Office, Third Street, Reno, Nevada May 27, 11:59 am

  38. 3 years ago, Fairfax County, Virginia April 25, 9:44 am

  39. Today, Office, Third Street, Reno, Nevada May 27, 12:08 pm

  40. Today, Aboard N916F, Reno Tahoe International Airport, Nevada May 27, 1:26 pm

  41. 3 years ago, Fairfax County, Virginia April 25 9:49 am

  42. Today, Aboard N916F, Enroute to Juneau, Alaska, May 27, 1:44 pm

  43. Tomorrow, Juneau Alaska May 28, 8:42 am

  44. 3 years ago, Fairfax County, Virginia April 25, 10:02 am

  45. Today, Aboard N916F, Enroute to Juneau, Alaska May 27, 2:04 pm

  46. Tomorrow, Juneau, Alaska May 28 8:47 am

  47. 3 years ago, Fairfax County, Virginia April 26 8:15 pm

  48. Today, Aboard N916F, Enroute to Juneau, Alaska May 27, 2:31 pm

  49. 3 years ago, Fairfax County, Virginia May 13 10:07 pm

  50. Today, Aboard N916F, Enroute to Juneau, Alaska May 27, 4:40 pm

  51. 3 years ago, Chevy Chase, Maryland May 18, 11:22 pm

  52. Today, Aboard N916F, Enroute to Juneau, Alaska May 27, 4:54 pm

  53. Tomorrow, Juneau, Alaska May 28, 9:02 am

  54. 3 years ago, Chevy Chase, Maryland May 18, 9:14 pm

  55. Today, Juneau, Alaska May 27, 6:14 pm

  56. 3 years ago, Chevy Chase, Maryland May 18, 11:23 pm

  57. Today, Juneau, Alaska May 27, 6:55 pm

  58. Today, Juneau, Alaska May 27, 7:16 pm

  59. 3 years ago, Chevy Chase, Maryland May 18, 11:44 pm

  60. Tomorrow, Juneau, Alaska, 9:45 am

  “The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him. You must thoroughly research this.”

  -- Musashi

  1. 8 years ago, San Jose, California April 19, 7:35 pm

  The second I remember clearest is that James is chewing his second bite of steak when the first pop! comes from somewhere out in the main mall. He’s still holding the fork pointed up at the ceiling and I swear to God I can hear every clink of glass that was in that moment, see the untouched baked potato oozing melted butter on James’ plate, the green bottle of 18-year scotch on the top shelf of the bar behind him, the red/brown paint on the walls and a thousand other things, all at the same time.

  By now there’ve been enough of the shootings that some people are aware, one might say, but not one of the others there does anything more than move their heads toward the sound but James and I look at each other for some part of a second and we know, then pop!pop!pop! three more and they’re louder. More like boom. I grab my whisky glass, it’s the heaviest thing at hand, without thinking or hesitation we’re down low on our hands and knees, partly under the next table toward the door and James has got his steak knife. I look at him and he looks at me and we don’t need to say anything at all, we talked this through a few times before: “What would you do if…” and the door from the mall slams open and two quick rounds go off, loud as the end of the fucking world, it’s obviously a rifle not some 9mm. I’m sure people are screaming but it’s quiet in my bubble now.

  ~

  I remember researching the shooting at Virginia Tech back in ‘07, the guy who did it, what when where and how, the psych drugs he was on like almost all these dudes, but the impact on my mind of these dry facts was nothing compared to the story of some poor bastard undergrad cowering in a lecture hall and as the shooting got closer telling others, “It’s okay, they’re coming, they’re coming to help us!” but “they” weren’t coming, not in any kind of timely fashion and a minute later the guy was dead.

  The first bullet went through his supplicating hands. Lesson number one is, They are not fucking coming.

  ~

  A lot of times running fast and far away is your best chance but I look left and the exit door to the outside is about to be traffic-jammed with screaming, pushing people, the ones coming to the back of the line aren’t going anywhere, and there are three more shots and two of them start to fall, I actually glimpse a ragged hole in one man’s blue dress shirt and I look over at James and I go left and he swings around the base of the table right, two more shots and they seem right over my head.

  I can’t see the shooter yet but those two locate him and one deep breath and I pop up, everything seems to have slowed down now there is the smell of burned gunpowder and yes, blood, it’s uncanny that you can smell at a time like that, but I’m not hearing anymore, the last two
shots were just bursts of air pressure on my face, I pop up like I’m on a spring, arm back for the best fastball of my life, the space right around him seems so clear, like diamond, you can see so much in so little time when you’re focused like this everything but his figure is fog and what’s clear is everything in the world to me now, black thin hair, combed over his bald spot, patchy beard, black skintight shirt, a little bulge of fat over the hips, he’s facing quartered away to my right some kind of AK clone with the butt shoved in his right hip, a couple of magazines sticking out of the pouches in a green web belt at his waist, and my vision is down to a square inch above his right ear, my arm seems to go in slow motion but I know where the glass is going, it’s in the air and I’m following right behind it like I can fly too, I feel the pressure wave of another shot going off just before the glass hits, his head jerking sideways, and now I’m on him, he’s off balance and I hit him in the hip with a form tackle, lifting the motherfucker off his feet and keeping him up off the ground, unable to do anything as I twist and do my best to make sure his head hits the floor first, he’s hanging on to the rifle with both hands and can’t break the fall, but as we hit it’s mostly on his shoulder. He grimaces with the pain but instinctively he’s trying to swing the muzzle around but it’s a bad move because I’m too close and the muzzle is too far, pointed in the wrong direction, I stop it with my right forearm lever up and slam my left fist into his jaw, I can feel the chafe of his beard against my wrist, his head jerks away and I feel him heave trying to get me off but I’ve got all the leverage and I pin his neck with my forearm long enough to get to my knees and now I start hitting him with my right, hard and fast and I feel his cheekbone crumble but I hit and hit and hit, it’s all a little foggy now just impressions, pieces of sound and light, my arm is like a machine blood is streaming out of his mouth and nose and he’s not moving.

  I rip the rifle out of his cradled arms and now I start to hear again, screams with pure agony in them and sobbing and coughing and a ringing in my ears from the shots, I’m sucking in air so hard it hurts my throat but I don’t feel like there’s any oxygen in it, I stagger a few steps toward the bar and lay the rifle down on it, see the bartender in a fetal position on the floor behind and gasp “Secure the fucking weapon,” I should wait to see if he does but I don’t, turn to my right and I see James on his side, facing me. There’s a black trickling hole where his left eye used to be. His steak knife is under his hand, pointed at the shooter. The pool of spreading blood behind him makes clear that this is it.

  There will be time to touch him in a minute, nobody, is going anywhere, now. I feel the breath coming a little easier and I stagger back over to the shooter, dirty insect bastard that shot my friend, my brother, my right hand is throbbing maybe it’s broken and I don’t care, he’s still unconscious and I kickstomp his bearded face, making sure the heel is hitting him in the eye, and I raise my foot again but I feel a squeeze on my shoulder, jerk my head around but no one is there, and I hear James’ voice whisper “It’s cool, man. This was it, and we did right. Perfect. Let’s take a rest.”

  But there’s no one there, and I wonder how I can hear him whisper with all the screaming, James is still down but I know he’s right and I sit, he’s always right and my heart is hammering, hammering but I focus on it until I can see it and start to slow it a little at a time, if I tried to slow it too much too fast it would stop. I can breathe alright now but suddenly my stomach is not in my control and I vomit out the beginnings of dinner, wave after wave, sweat running into my eyes. In seconds there’s nothing but faint final retchings of acid left and I spit it out and wipe my eyes with my shirtsleeve, I feel fine now, great. We did it right. Mohamed or whoever-the-fuck isn’t moving and it really is okay to take a rest. I lean back against the bar and close my eyes and wait for the police.

  2. Today, Skyline Drive, Reno, Nevada May 27, 5:19 am

  The city is never silent.

  Day, night, there are always machine sounds, engine sounds, tire squeals, buildings breathing, horns, people breathing, wind, Earth breathing.

  I’m on the back deck with my second cup, looking at the halfblue halfyellow tablet in my palm when the sounds die and disappear, first the wind, then the car that just passed my house, the tiniest whisper of the city, my heartbeat that sounds like wind in my ears, the sound of my cells burning fuel. Engines. All. Stop.

  I’m embedded in amber, motionless and without the possibility of motion, they’ll find me in 10 million years, I can’t feel the weight of the tablet in my palm anymore, can’t feel anything, but I can see, and the hint of red dawn behind the hill is getting brighter, whiter, until there’s nothing but light, no thing, only the light. There is no time, only sight, but as soon as it gets so bright there should be pain, it begins to slide back to red again, dims to just dawn, and I can see the outline of the hills. I’m breathing and I can taste the air, taste the hint of city smog, of coffee and the pine across the yard. I look at the pill, it’s a tiny thing, “60mg” it says but I feel the weight of it in my palm.

  My left shoulder hurts as much as it always does this time of day, a dull beating throb, but the light has changed my eyes, now I can see the whole channel where the bullet entered and exited, through and through, the little scar in front and the bigger shallow crater behind. For an instant my eyes are sending an energy, a frequency into the old wound, and it heals a little.

  It’s pleasant, it’s comfortable, for now I’m not especially concerned about the Light and the silence. It happened, that’s all. I do feel very well, there’s some kind of vibration, energy in my solar plexus, it’s flowing up my spine into my scalp, and I hear now, hear water flowing underground, and my shoulder hurts a little less than usual this time of day, and I snap the pill down on the table like a domino, a faint metallic sound.

  3. 24 years ago, Santa Maria, California September 17, 12:15 pm

  Me and James squat, drawing in the fine playground dirt with sticks, dry sticks because the rain hasn’t come for months, drawing our own hieroglyphics, stuff our parents can’t know, the secret symbols of a new and ancient language. Me and James like to play at recess with other kids sometimes, do the monkey bars or kickball, but we have a bond, we couldn’t say how, but we know. No one else in our class, or any other grade, or our teacher Mrs. Perry or the principal or our parents get it—what we know. We know something almost no one gets. We wouldn’t call it intelligence, because that’s not all of it.

  The pain between my shoulder blades is completely unexpected and off-balance I slam in the dirt, twisting so that the right side of my face absorbs the impact. I can hear the sound in my ears, in my skull, a strange high-pitched ring as the shock waves travel through bone and tissue, and I instinctively roll over to see what hit me, I can’t see much through the water in my eyes but I recognize the shape, it’s Miguel, a tall fat fifth-grader who just started at our school this year. Everyone keeps their distance, because the kid must weigh at least 150 and he has eyes like a pig.

  I hear James yell and the sound of his body hitting the ground and I smell dust again, taste it, and I try to get up, a rage flows through me like hot sweet wine, but my body isn’t working right and the best I can muster is to sit up and he turns and walks away, mutters something like “Fucking fags” and laughs and I feel It rising in me, it’s the first time in my life that I really want to kill, it’s the lizard the predator the alligator with an antelope in its mouth, but by the time I get up he’s halfway across the playground, and the rage has nowhere to go, leaving a cold, sick empty feeling, and I turn and help James get up, the tears starting now, but not because I’m beginning to feel the pain in my face. The injustice of it, the pure stupid evil, was so sudden, I wasn’t ready…and then it just walked away laughing.

  ~

  Mom picks me up at the school nurse’s office, stinging orange disinfectant painted on my scrapes under a couple of taped-on gauze pads. In the car the coil of wire wrapped around my guts starts to unwind a little a
nd I tell her what I’m feeling: I want to take my baseball bat and smash his face.

  “No, NO,” she says, shaking her head. “That boy probably has a terrible life, he’s just acting out. I talked to the Principal and he’s going to be suspended. The adults will take care of this.

  “You remember what Jesus said, Cal: ‘Turn the other cheek.’ ‘Do good to those that harm you.’ We’re a Christian family and you will not do anything to him.”

  And I feel a terrible urge to destroy something, that thing, start in my chest and come rushing up my throat like vomit, but I choke and swallow and push it down, down, because Mommy says, and since before I could talk Mommy has been telling me that Good Boys do what Mommy says and just for one splinter of a second I see the terrible contradiction in that, it’s like I’m older, like I’m a grownup, but then the thought pops and disappears, like turning off the TV.

  4. 22 years ago, Santa Maria, California August 14, 9:54 am

  Sitting in church is prison, my mind is spinning like an electric motor, going over the Hardy Boys book I read this morning, the height of Mt. Shasta, the mole on the bald spot on the back of the head of the guy in front of us, the hymns posted in little sliding numbers on the rack on the wall, anything to occupy the time while the man in the suit up on the raised podium drones about something that I know I’ve heard before.

  My eyes seem to unfocus by themselves, without my thinking about it, the man on the podium goes to static, a radio untuned, and now I’m seeing pictures projected on a screen, words and pictures, and I don’t notice the strangeness of this sudden show because it’s all so much more interesting than today’s talk on the Beatitudes, blessed are the meek, something, the pictures come one a second, like my heartbeat, huge trees like nothing around where we live, then scrubby bushes like where we live, sand with footprints like a road, a hand, my hand, attached to a meaty hairy forearm and someone laughs and says, “Close work today, boys!” but not in English but I understand and I look along the sunlit edge of the sword and decide it needs just a bit more sharpening, because I’ll be pulling it out of someone’s guts today.