Madman

‘For Madmen Only’ is what the sign read that hung on the door. This is not my memory. This is not my story. But the man who entered was exactly that. Mad. He read the sign and then he entered. What happened next was for him. What happened next was his story. ‘For Madmen Only’ is what the sign read that hung on the door through which he entered. There was no sign for me. There was no writing on the wall. There was nothing to tell me what to expect. All I had was a beautiful girl, a beautiful girl and a song on the radio of her Ford Explorer.

In high school it’s really the only thing you think about. Well, I guess it’s not really thinking. Thinking is that thing that happens when a movie plays in your mind, a movie of which you’re the director and the audience, the cinematographer and the executive producer. The actors you hire from the face book of everyone you’ve ever met and the soundtrack is everything you’re afraid to say out loud. Or else it’s snippets of conversation playing on repeat. Good or bad, usually not so great. This isn’t thinking. This is different. This is something that holds you captive, a feeling that courses through you. Sometimes it whispers and sometimes yells, but it is never silent. Not in high school at least. In this time of life, you’re its prisoner.

So here we are in the backseat of her Ford Explorer and the windows are starting to get a little condensation building up on the inside, fogging the outside world the slightest bit. What was once crystal clear rounded out. Things become shapes as bodies sweat chocolate milk from the school cafeteria. KZ 106, the classic rock station of Chattanooga, Tennessee is surely providing the evening’s sonic wallpaper. As we lay like pretzels, feeling as infinite as her car’s battery must be, I happened to look out the window.

There it stood. Whatever it was.

We had pulled off of Ringgold Road behind some muffler shop, a business that shouldn’t have any patrons or workers at this hour. We’re out of eyeshot from the road and there are no cars near us, at least no headlights. So where had he come from, this man I clearly saw?

We had known each other so long, had been doing this so long that there wasn’t always the need for words between us. But even if I wanted to tell her about the man standing outside in the dark; if I had wanted to point and tell her about his slender shoulders and persistent gaze; if I had wanted to describe to her his eyes lacking sclera, the eyes that looked like pupils exploding ink across the orbs like an oil spill in an otherwise pearl white ocean; I couldn’t have. Every word in my vocabulary was absent. Every thought was deceased. Even that voice that holds teenagers hostage was dormant. My vocal folds were shot with starch and my diaphragm was deflated. This night I learned that the norepinephrine and adrenaline that hijack my system don’t always promote me to throw a punch or run away. This time, they stalled me; shocked my system and I had to restart.

After a minute or two, she climbed back into the front seat. I pulled my clothes on and as we pulled out onto the empty road I asked if she saw the dark man under the tree. She hadn’t. No surprise, she was a screamer, you knew where she stood between the two options and it wasn’t by your side.

This was over ten years ago at this point. More than a decade since I saw the dark man with black eyes under the tree behind the muffler shop off of Ringgold Road in her old Ford. Sometimes I think back to that night. I wonder where he came from, who he was. I wonder what he was. And I try to imagine why he showed himself to me.

‘For Madmen Only’ is what the sign read for that man who entered the door, the man who made the choice to be indoctrinated. I had made no such choice. I just listened to that voice in my head. I just listened to that continuous voice and KZ 106.

But those eyes.

Those pitch-covered eyes.

Those mad eyes are still with me, still inside of me, and I’m afraid they’ll never leave.