4 John Does

Orwell +10

"Hey, everyone! Come look what Mikey did!"

I open my eyes from their Thorazine haze, fingers stretching out against the green faux-leather chair. Donny is twitching from excitement, slanted eyes jubilant above a flattened nasal bridge. The distinguishable physical markers of Trisomy 21. "Nurse Betts, come see what Mikey did!"

In the chair next to me, JD yawns. "Out of the mouth of babes."

I rub my eyes with heavy palms and blink rapidly to focus them. Mikey is dabbing a brush against paper, putting on the finishing touches. "Hmmm, it's actually pretty good. Very Renaissance."

JD drawls, unimpressed. "It's a copy. An inspired one, but a copy. Romano's Battle of the Milvian Bridge."

"Why does that sound familiar?"

JD rolls his eyes at me. Whether it's from the antipsychotics or exasperation, I'm not sure. "See the big shining guy on the white horse? Dead center, you can't miss him. That's Emperor Constantine. The Roman ruler who decriminalized Christian worship. His donation granted temporal power to the papacy." His face wrinkles up in a sneer. "Last desperate act of a leper. A deathbed purchase. One ticket to heaven, please." He raises a finger as if he were ordering the soup du jour.

Mikey is tearing the painting into strips and shoving them into his mouth. His cheeks bulge out, like a chipmunk storing nuts. I run my tongue along the inside of dry lips. "What year is it?"

J.D. scrunches his forehead in contemplation. "Hard to say. The signs, they're all... fucky. Time moves different here."

Nurse Betts has waddled her way over to the scene. She's trying to persuade Michael to stop eating his art. Mikey can't fit anymore in his mouth, so he drops his linen trousers. A pink, gnarled stump puckers from the spot where a penis should be. He rolls the rest of the paper up into a ball and uses the fat end of the paintbrush to stuff it up his anus. Nurse Betts goes to forcibly restrain him, but is intercepted by Donny, who has clasped onto her enormous left breast and is twisting it with all of his considerable strength.

"Deacon! A little help here!" She cries out.

Donny is laughing as he grapples with Nurse Betts in an awkward dance. "Mikey gots no di-i-ick! Mikey gots no di-i-ick!" He sings as they sway. "Where's your dick, Mikey?"

Michael grins and swallows the watercolor wads. "I rent it from my body as I would a tail. A sixth digit, or an appendix. Useless vestigial artifacts!" He spits.

Mikey was the first to remember his name. Four John Does, found naked in an alley, holding... what did we have? It's lost in the memory fog. At first we were John, Johnny, Jo, and JD, Pinemont Psychiatric Facility's greatest mysteries. Then, in a session with Dr. Cole, John recalled his name was Michael.

Male nurse Deacon Riley bear hugs Donny, as Betts leads Mikey by the arm, down the hall to his room. Jo picks one of the ripped strands from the floor. "It's broken. Like Humpty Dumpty. Can't be put back together again. It was broken before we got here. One of many breaks in the circle. Even Ouroboros paused to swallow."

Donny cries out as he struggles against Riley's massive forearms. "Mikey! Hey! We should call you Michelangelo, like the painter! You're famous Mikey!"

I thump the drip chamber of my I.V. and close my eyes. "I just want to go home. Is it weird I don't even remember where that is?"

J.D.s voice echoes from behind my eyelids. "Maybe we'll know when we get there."