The Psyching: A Short Thriller Read online

  I feel sick. Someone has locked me in here. The door only locks from the outside. For some reason, somebody wanted to trap me in here. I’m locked in the closet, locked in a psychiatric ward.

  Oh God.

  I feel around in the pocket of my short white coat and I’m incredibly relieved when my fingers close around my phone. I pull it out of my pocket. I’ve got one bar of reception, but hopefully that will be enough.

  Of course, who should I call? I don’t want to page Jack. After all, what if he’s the one who locked me in here and he expects me to contact him first?

  I decide to try Danni’s cell phone, but she doesn’t pick up.

  The only other person on the floor that I can think of is Sally. Except I can’t call the floor because the phone lines are still down. But I can call the operator and page Sally overhead.

  I reach the operator, and ask them if they can page Sally. There’s an awkward moment because I have no idea what her last name is. Who remembers nurses’ last names, for Christ’s sake? But the operator acts like I’m worse than Hitler for not knowing.

  I hear the page boom out overhead, even from within the supply closet. Finally, I hear Sally pick up. “This is Sally on the psych unit,” she says.

  “Hi, Sally,” I say. “Um, this is Wendy.”

  “Who?”

  See? She doesn’t even know my first name. “You know? The medical student.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Listen,” I say. “I’m sort of locked in the supply closet and I need you to get me out.”

  For a moment, I had been worried that maybe Sally and Jack were in cahoots, and maybe she wouldn’t let me out of the closet. But the amount of time she spends laughing after I tell her my dilemma completely reassures me that she is not planning anything nefarious.

  “Welcome back,” Sally says as she opens the door to the supply closet, still chuckling.

  “Somebody locked me in here,” I say, raising my chin, trying to maintain what little is left of my dignity.

  “The handle sticks,” Sally explains. “You have to jiggle it.”

  I’m still not entirely convinced.

  11:35 a.m.:

  I spend about 10 minutes staring at the door to Room 237, wondering what the hell is in there. I swear I can hear music coming from inside. Weird, creepy music.

  The ironic thing is that if Jack hadn’t told me not to go into the room, I never would have considered going in there in a million years. Stupid female curiosity. I really hate being a stereotype, but here we are.

  I am not going to open that door.

  Midnight:

  I wander by the resident room, and happen to notice that the computer is on, and there is a jumble of words and paragraphs on the screen. Jack was recently called away and he must have been working on his novel. I guess he forgot to close the document.

  I know he told me that he didn’t want anyone to see it until it was finished, but I can’t help myself. I’m curious. If I can’t know what’s in Room 237, I need to at least read this novel.

  I sit down in front of the computer and start reading.

  12:30 a.m.:

  “So what do you think?”

  I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of Jack’s voice. I tear my eyes away from the horror that was on the computer screen, and back away from the monitor. “What?” I say innocently.

  Jack raises his eyebrows at me. “My novel. You were reading it, weren’t you?”

  “No,” I say quickly. I jump out of the chair, preparing to bolt from the room. My legs feel like they’re spring-loaded. “I mean, I just glanced at it. That’s all. I swear.”

  Jack smiles crookedly. “It’s almost done, you know.”

  “You don’t say,” I mumble.

  “I just need a title,” he says. He takes a step towards me. “Any thoughts?”

  I back away from him. “Not really. I’m not a creative type.” I glance down at my silent pager. “I actually have to go. I was… you know, paged.”

  Jack raises his eyebrows at me, but thank God, he lets me out of the room.

 

  12:45 a.m.:

  As I back out of the resident room, I hear a voice coming from the right: “Lick.”

  It’s Johnny, whose lips are a horrifying six inches from my ear, close enough that I can actually feel his hot, malodorous breath. I nearly jump out of my skin, but manage to keep from screaming through the grace of God. I give Johnny a dirty look, then quickly hurry towards the nurses station.

  Danni is sitting there, messing with her phone. I hope she isn’t texting with Dr. Sadler. More importantly, I hope she isn’t sexting with Dr. Sadler.

  “Hey, Wendy,” she says. She flashes me a sleepy smile.

  “Hey,” I say, sliding into the seat next to her. “I just saw the novel that Jack has been writing…”

  Danni stares at me. “And?”

  I heave a sigh. I’m not sure I can trust her, but I can’t keep this to myself any longer. “Danni, it’s awful. It’s the worst written piece of drivel I’ve ever seen. It’s about this detective who doesn’t play by the rules, but he always gets the job done. It’s so painfully clichéd.” I wince at the memory. “There’s even a detective who’s one day away from retirement and then gets murdered.”

  Danni frowns. “Did you tell him how bad it was?”

  “Of course not,” I say, shaking my head. “Do you think I want to fail this rotation? I ran out before I had to tell him. Anyway, I’m sure he could self-publish it or something.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Danni says. She gives me that disturbing, doe-eyed stare. “By the way, there’s something really important I have to tell you.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “What?”

  “I don’t want to freak you out…”

  God, Danni is so melodramatic. “Just tell me.”

  “So…” Danni takes a breath. “You know that patient who keeps saying ‘lick’?”

  Is she kidding me? Does she think it’s possible that I could’ve been on this unit all night and not know who that patient is? “No, I’m both blind and deaf.”

  Danni frowns. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t understand the concept of sarcasm.

  I sigh. “Yes, I know who you mean.”

  “I just realized something scary,” she says. Her eyes widen into nearly perfect circles. “What is ‘lick’ spelled backwards?”

  “What?”

  “What is lick spelled backwards?” she repeats.

  I roll my eyes, and think for a second. “‘Lick’ spelled backwards is… ‘Kill,’ I guess…”

  “Exactly!” Danni says. “What if that patient is psychic and he’s trying to give us a message?”

  “Um, then why wouldn’t he just give us the message ‘kill’? Why would he spell it backwards?”

  “The mind is very mysterious,” Danni says sagely.

  “It seems just like a really dumb way to convey a message,” I comment. “How did you even notice that ‘lick’ spelled backwards is ‘kill’ anyway?”

  “I always reverse words in my mind,” Danni says. “Ever since I read The Shining.”

  “Great.”

  Even though I think what Danni said was beyond ridiculous, I’m embarrassed to admit that I get a little bit creeped out by it. It does seem like Johnny might be trying to give us some sort of message. I mean, what sort of person walks around saying “lick”? (Well, other than a psychiatric patient.)

  What if Danni is right? What if “lick” really means “kill”?

  1:45 a.m.:

  And now, Danni has suddenly disappeared.

  I can’t find her anywhere. This is a locked unit, so I know she must be somewhere. But I feel like I have checked every crevice of every hallway, and she is nowhere to be found. She just suddenly vanished into thin air.

  What if she’s lying dead in Room 237?

  Yes, that seems unlikely. But not impossible.

  I finally worked up the nerve to ask Sally about it and
she laughed and said, “I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

  I want to talk to her more about the whole lick/kill thing. I feel like if I talk to her about it, she’ll say something so stupid that I’ll realize that I’m being ridiculous to believe her. Plus I want to verify that she’s alive and not hacked to bits.

  Where are you, Danni?

  2:35 a.m.:

  As I walk by Room 237, I see Johnny standing in front of the room. He gives me a meaningful look, then says, “Lick.”

  I had gotten used to Johnny saying “lick” over and over. But now that stupid Danni said that to me, all I can think is that it’s a warning.

  What if “lick” means “kill”??

  Johnny steps away from the door, and I am face-to-face with Room 237. I hear that soft music coming from inside again. I know Jack told me not to enter this room, but I’m not sure if I can help myself. I need to know what’s inside. My self-restraint disappeared around one in the morning.

  I put my hand on the handle to the door and push it open.

  Oh my God, there is blood all over the floor.

  No wait, there’s ketchup all over the floor. And mustard. And mayonnaise. And pudding.

  I lift my eyes and see a morbidly obese naked man in the middle of the room, covered in ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. And what appears to be chocolate pudding, oozing out of the fat folds on his abdomen. He’s dancing around to that bizarre music. When he sees me, he smiles really wide. I see that he has cream cheese all over his face like war paint.

  He holds out his hand to me. “Come join me, young girl!”

  I know the wise thing to do right now would be to run. But somehow I’m paralyzed by the weirdness of it all. I can’t make my feet move from that spot. (But at least I don’t join him.)

  Then I feel a hand pulling me out of the room, saving me. The door slams in my face, blocking out the horrible sight of that naked man covered in condiments. I look up and realize that the hand belongs to Sally.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” she snaps at me. “Didn’t Jack tell you not to go into that room?”

  “What was that?” I ask shakily.

  Sally shrugs. “That’s Mr. Torrence. He does that every night. We just stay out of his way.”

  She gives me one last look, then shakes her head at me and walks away. I guess that solves the mystery of Room 237.

  3:05 a.m.:

  Where the hell is Danni? Seriously.

  4:15 a.m.:

  I tried to grab a few hours of sleep in the resident room, but the couch in there was really uncomfortable and smelled like moldy cheese. Sally offered to let me sleep in a patient room, but that frightened me far too much. I mean, what if somebody mistook me for a patient and I ended up locked in here forever? At the time, it seemed like a really real possibility.

  So that’s why instead of sleeping, I’m wandering around the locked psych unit in circles like a zombie. (Or a schizophrenic.)

  But I’m not the only one.

  As I walk down the hallway, I see Johnny stumbling towards me. “Lick!” he says, more forcefully than I would’ve expected. His eyes are wide, almost frightened. I look behind me, at where his gaze is directed, but there’s nobody there. Nobody I can see, anyway.

  “Lick!” he hisses at me. The urgency is clear in his voice.

  I feel goosebumps travel up my arms. Is Danni right? Does “lick” really mean “kill”? What is Johnny trying to tell me?

  He stops about a foot away from me. I can smell his sweat, dripping down his temples, rolling down his cheeks. “Lick,” he says, in a crackling voice that comes from deep in the back of his throat.

  He leans forward. Before I can think to leap away, his broad hands grasp my shoulders so I can’t escape. His moist tongue shoots out of his mouth, and faster than a bullet, that tongue is on my face. It’s everywhere—on my cheeks, my forehead, my chin. He’s licking me! Lick doesn’t mean kill! Lick means lick!

  Oh God, lick means lick! Lick means lick! Somebody help me!

  4:30 p.m.:

  “It’s not like you’re the first person to be licked by Johnny,” Jack tells me, as I scrub furiously at my face with antibacterial soap. After pulling Johnny off me, Jack was kind enough to escort me to the staff bathroom. “He’s a serial licker.”

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” I groan. I wonder if there’s a way to take a shower without having to go into a patient’s room.

  Jack shrugs. “Well, the guy has been going around saying ‘lick’ all night. Wasn’t that warning enough?”

  I decide not to tell him how I had believed Danni’s stupid theory. It’s just too embarrassing. I think I’ve already experienced enough humiliation for one night. I may have broken some sort of record.

  “Anyway, you’re lucky I got there when I did,” Jack says. “You only ended up with a first-degree lick. It was just a superficial licking.”

  “What would count as a non-superficial licking?”

  Jack just gives me a look. Ugh.

  I turn the water off, then dry my face with a paper towel. I just want to go home at this point. But I guess I’ll stick it out for the next few hours.

  God, I’m tired.

  I turn to leave the bathroom, but then I discover Jack is standing in front of the door, blocking it. That’s when I notice that he has turned the lock on the bathroom door. It seems like sort of an odd thing to do. Why would he lock the door to the bathroom? It doesn’t make any sense to me.

  Then I see the crooked grin on his face and the glint of a knife in his hand…

  THE END

  Did you enjoy reading The Psyching?

  Please send me an email at [email protected]. Or consider leaving a review on Amazon!  

  Check out my website at:

  https://doccartoon.blogspot.com/

  In the meantime, please enjoy an excerpt of my complete novel Suicide Med…

  Suicide Med

  “I wish I had become a ballet dancer instead.”

  I use the back of my forearm to swipe at strands of dark hair that have come loose from the tight bun at the back of my head. The attempt fails and the escaped locks fall back into my field of vision just as my glasses slide down the bridge of my nose. This is getting annoying—I wish I could use my hands to clear my vision. Unfortunately, my hands are clad in two pairs of latex gloves that are covered in preserved bits of Agatha’s insides. Agatha is dead.

  “Or maybe a figure skater…”

  I try to tune out the ramblings of my lab partner, Wendy Adams. It seems like Wendy’s irritatingly bubbly voice has been a soundtrack to every dissection I have ever done. It might have been more tolerable if Wendy offered to help. Instead, she sits perched on a stool, intently watching my handiwork. I’m tempted to rub my dirty gloves in Wendy’s face.

  “Anything but a doctor,” Wendy concludes.

  You’re not a doctor yet, I nearly point out, but I hold my tongue. I need to focus right now and the last thing I want to do is to get drawn into an argument.

  It’s close to midnight on a Saturday night, and Wendy and I are the only two medical students in the first-year cadaver lab. I specifically chose this time, because I knew the lab would be quiet and free from any distractions. I was right—all I can see are rows and rows of dead bodies covered in a layer of clear, thick plastic to prevent desiccation; all I can hear is the whir of the fans working above my head. It would have been the perfect studying atmosphere if Wendy hadn’t insisted on coming along.

  “I had a dream about Agatha last night,” Wendy says in a hushed voice, even though we’re the only two people in the room.

  During the first week of anatomy class, we named our cadaver Agatha. I hadn’t wanted to name her—after all, this had once been a real person who had a real name of her own. But I felt silly voicing my objections, so I stayed quiet as the other members of my lab group tossed around name suggestions. It had eventually come down to Agatha or Medusa. I was relieved when the group settled o
n Agatha.

  Agatha does seem like an appropriate name, somehow. “Agatha” is a frail old woman who has metal rings around her sternum and blood vessels grafted onto her heart. Of course, it’s impossible to know for sure, but I can make an educated guess that Agatha died of heart problems.

  I try to imagine what sort of woman would make the decision to dedicate her body to a medical school. After everything I’ve seen this year, I know that’s one thing I myself would never do. The last thing I want is a bunch of snotty twenty-two-year-olds making fun of all my subcutaneous fat.

  “Do you want to hear my dream, Lauren?” Wendy asks.

  Do I have a choice? “I’m trying to learn the brachial plexus,” I mumble.

  “It was so freaky,” Wendy says, shivering under her green scrubs. “I was lying in bed and I saw Agatha walk into my room. Alive. She was wearing this long, fancy dress, but the weird thing was that she had gloves on her hands. Then she told me…” Wendy leans forward, her blue eyes wide, “that she was going to dissect me. That’s when I realized that I was actually on a lab table and I was naked. And my abdomen was—”

  “Listen, can we focus, please?” I snap. I don’t want to admit how disturbing Wendy’s dream is, especially in a deserted cadaver lab on a Saturday night. Since I started gross anatomy class, I’ve had many dreams that it was me or a loved one lying on the table before me. “Our final is Monday morning and I don’t want to fail, okay?”

  “I’m going to fail anyway,” Wendy sighs. “I just can’t… focus.” She picks up the lab manual and flips through it. “This is like gibberish to me. It’s impossible.”

  I hold up the musculocutaneous nerve between my forceps. The nerve is thick and yellow.

  “I’m hungry,” Wendy announces. “Are you hungry?”

  “You’re kidding. You want to eat in here?”

  When I’m in the anatomy lab, food is the last thing from my mind. The smell of formaldehyde combined with the image of lacerated flesh is enough to kill any appetite I might have had. A few times, I’ve seen one of my classmates popping candy in their mouth and I’m always in awe.