Date: Sat, 25 Feb 1995 12:46:06 -0700 Reply-To: Greg Palmer Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Greg Palmer Subject: "Life's Blood" Part 2 *** Part 2 of "Life's Blood"... comments, flames, and story requests go to: gpalmer@xroads.com. *** "The door that someone opened, The door that someone closed again The chair that someone sat in, The cat that someone pet The fruit that someone bit into, The letter that someone read The chair that someone knocked over, The door that someone has opened The path where someone is still running, The forest that someone crosses The river that someone dives into, The hospital where someone died." -- "Le Message" by Jacques Prevert Translated by yours truly "Life's Blood" Part 2 by Greg Palmer, Copyright (C) 1995 (Some profanity, and an *extremely* violent scene that may disturb some of you. No sex...yet. :) ) SEATTLE, March 1995 Slanted beams of afternoon sunlight lanced through the windows, making long shadows on the dojo floor. Greg was doing bench presses on the weight machine when the door opened. He didn't look up as Anne hurried into the dojo. She walked over to the dark-haired young man, watched him grimace as he felt the burning in his triceps and chest. "Greg...Duncan called me, asked me to talk to you." She looked uncomfortable. "Is everything going OK?" The young Immortal finished his set. He sat up on the bench and looked at Anne impassively. "Yeah...everything's just great. Peachy." His appearance belied his words. Strands of black hair had escaped their ponytail and hung limply in his face, partially obscuring his eyes. His face had lost color; it looked haggard and drawn. He coughed into his hand. "Just what did he tell you, exactly?" "Not much," she said. "He's got a real bad habit of doing that." Emotions Greg couldn't identify crossed her face. "He asked me if I knew anyone at the hospital, any psy...people who help people with their problems." She became more uncomfortable, if that was possible. "Anyway, I thought I'd take you down there and introduce you to someone, Dr. Martin. He's a very good friend of mine; he said he'd be happy to talk to you." "He did, did he?" Greg wanted to say something derogatory about psychiatry, and Dr. Martin in particular; but he liked Anne and didn't want to push her away, if he could avoid it. "I'm thrilled, Anne. I can't tell you just how much that makes my day." He sighed, unable to see how he was going to get out of this predicament. "All right, I'll go." He flopped back onto the weight bench. "Great!" Anne looked relieved. "But first, I need to go upstairs and talk to Duncan. You can go down and wait in the car; I'll be back down in a minute." She headed for the lift. "Don't bother," said Greg. "He's not here. He and Richie went to Joe's for a while. Said they'd be back by six." He gave Anne a smile that didn't reach his eyes, showing straight white teeth. "It looked as if they were having trouble thinking of things to say." Anne ignored the comment, and the smile. "Oh well, you know your uncle," she said derisively. "C'mon, let's go." Anne turned and walked towards the door. Greg grabbed a clean shirt off a hook on the wall and after a moment, followed. In the car, on the way to the hospital, Anne said, "You know, I'm really glad you decided to come with me on your own. Duncan said that you'd probably resist it. You made the right decision; I know how hard it is for people to open up, sometimes." "Let's get something straight, Anne. I don't want or need to talk to a shrink. I'm not asking anyone for help, either. I know that Duncan would just clobber me and drag me over there, if I said `no' to you. This is by far, the easier, and less painful option." He fished matches and cigarettes out of his pocket, lit one, and drew smoke into his lungs. "Mind if I smoke?" Dr. Anne decided not to push the issue. Instead, she rolled down the window. "Those things will kill you, you know." She sniffed the air inside the car and made a grimace. If only it were that simple, he thought. *********** "Anne!" the bearded and bespectacled man at the desk said. "And this must be Gregory." He extended his hand, and after looking at it for a moment, Greg shook it. "Pleased to meet you," he muttered. "Please, sit." The doctor gestured at a chair in front of the desk. "Thank you, Anne. I ought to have my preliminary assessment in a half an hour, or so," he said. "OK, John." She turned to Greg. "I'll be in my office, catching up on some paperwork. When you're done, just ask a nurse to show you where it is. See you in half an hour," she told him, and then walked out, shutting the windowless door behind her. "So...what's on your mind, Gregory?" Dr. Martin asked. He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. (Je t'aime; Je t'aime toujours...Gregory,) Yvette's voice whispered. "Too much." He imitated the doctor's posture. "And it's Greg." "My apologies, Greg." The doctor put his hands back on the desk, where they started fiddling with a pen. "What do you say we get started?" he asked, finally. "Fine by me." "OK, first what I want to do is something called word- association. Do you know what that is?" the slightly pudgy psychiatrist asked. "Yeah...you say a word, I say the first word that comes to mind, right?" "That's it exactly." He took out a sheet of paper from his desk and clicked the knob on his pen. "OK. Remember, just say the first word that pops into your mind, nothing you say can get beyond this room." "Yeah." "All right, let's start. Life." "Death." The pen began to scratch the paper rhythmically. "Father." "Teacher." "God." "No." "Water." "Blood." "Human." "Different." "Good." "Two." "Evil." "Killer." Martin continued to fire off a dozen more words, writing down Greg's responses unemotionally. "Ah, I see..." "What do you... `see'?" Ignoring the question, Martin said, "OK, I think we're in the right frame of mind now, Greg. Next, I'd like to show you a series of pictures, and have you tell me what they look like. OK?" Realizing he wasn't going to get an answer, Greg said, "Fire away." Opening a desk drawer, Martin pulled a small stack of black and white photos out of it. He handed Greg the first in the stack. It was a vertically symmetrical pattern. "Hummm... I'd have to say this one looks like..." His brow furrowed in concentration as he turned the photo upside- down and looked at it from all angles. "Take your time..." The psychiatrist leaned forward in his chair. "An inkblot." The pen began to scratch again, and then stopped. "Look, Greg, giving answers like that just wastes my time and yours. You don't really want to waste our time, do you?" Martin asked. Greg smiled insolently at the doctor. "Why not? It's the one thing I have an unlimited supply of," he explained. "What's that supposed to mean?" John Martin looked perplexed. "Just show me the next card." Martin and Greg went through the entire stack of cards, Greg giving the doctor his perception of the abstract pictures. The doctor looked more and more disturbed as time went on, although he tried to hide it from his new client. When they reached the last card, Dr. Martin leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head again. "I'm going to be completely frank with you, Greg." "Thought your name was John." "You're extremely hostile and cynical. I don't know what cards life has dealt you in the past, but in my opinion you could use a few more sessions with me, here. I need to get to know the events that caused these changes in your personality. In fact, from your answers to the word-association activity, it looks as if you're at least slightly predisposed to antisocial behaviors." He rested his hands on the table; they resumed their fiddling with the pen. "In fact, if I don't see you again in the next week, I'm going to get a court order." Greg stood up, instantly. Startled by the sudden violent movement, Martin reflexively pushed his wheeled chair back towards the wall. Greg's bright green eyes stared intensely into the doctor's watery blue ones. "Not a chance, Martin. I agreed to come here once, and once only. There's no way in *hell* you're getting me back here. What's in here," he tapped his temple, "isn't for you to know." The doctor looked towards a spot on the wall. "My decision is final." The expression on Greg's face changed. "Sure I can't change your mind, Doc?" Greg asked. He reached across the desk and grabbed the doctor's sweater. It was absurdly easy to pull him over the desk and from there, to the floor. Dr. Martin tried to make some kind of sound, but all he could do was gasp; his wind had been knocked out of him from the impact with the floor. "What's your `final decision', now, Doc?" Greg laughed. The overweight doctor panted noisily as he tried to give his reply. "...court--order. See you...here." "Shut up!" He sank his boot into the doctor's flabby midriff. Once, then twice. "Shut up, god damn you!" Greg kneeled; he reached down and grabbed a handful of the doctor's curly hair. "I'm going to give you one last chance, you bastard. Are you going to get that court order?" "N-- Yes." "Then we're just going to have to work on changing your mind, hmmm?" He used his grip on the doctor's hair to smash his face into the linoleum. Once, and then faster, in some kind of obscene rhythm. "What do you say now, mindfucker?" Greg asked. "Huh? What do you say?" His breath quickened from the exertion. He stopped beating the doctor's head into the floor and looked at him. His horn-rimmed glasses were shattered and cracked and were only half on his face. His squashed nose leaked blood in twin rivers. Flecks of broken teeth dotted his lips and beard. His eyes, open, stared unseeingly past the angry young man's shoulder. The eyes then rolled back into his head. He raspy breath whistled through his mouth. "You...fuck," Greg spat. Let's see you get that court order now," Greg whispered into the unconscious doctor's ear. He stood and opened the door, exited, and closed it behind him. The hospital hallway was quiet and almost unpopulated, only a few nurses appeared to be on duty. They glanced at Greg as he walked by, and resumed their nursely duties. As he walked down the quiet, shadowy corridor, he begun to think about what he'd just done. You killed him, a voice in his mind said. Nah, he'll live; you only hurt him a little, another voice replied. The internal argument began to grow louder and more heated as Greg headed for the door with the legend "EXIT" marked above it, in glowing red letters. He kept walking, occasionally and then more often glancing into the corners, at the shadows which began to move; and then stopped when he gave them his full attention. He broke into a run, startling doctors, nurses and patients in the more busier wing of the hospital near the emergency room doors. He didn't stop running until he got to the sliding glass doors and felt the sunlight on his face. The automatic doors opened and Greg left the hospital, on foot. He walked aimlessly for a while, the way he had when he first came to Seattle four months before. He tried to think about what he'd done, but the truth was, the events in the hospital were starting to fade from his memory. He barely remembered even what caused him to run away from the place. He found himself in front of a seedy watering hole not far from the hospital. I could use a drink, he thought. He pushed open the door and walked inside. The dim light provided by the overheads was barely enough to allow someone off the street to avoid the clustered tables in the center of the bar. Along the left hand side was the bar itself, stocked with rows upon rows of poison in glass bottles. Greg approached the bartender and said, "Gimme a beer. Whatever's on tap." "I'm not serving you, kid. Cops already want to take away the liquor license. Show me some ID or get the fuck outta here." The bartender folded his arms across his chest. Although he would forever look the age at which he'd first died, twenty, Greg's ID stated he was twenty-two years old. He showed it to the bartender, who didn't look too closely at it. "All right." He filled a pint glass with some generic, watered down American beer. "That'll be two bucks," he said as he put the full glass on the sticky bar. Greg put the money in the bartender's hand and went to sit at an unoccupied table, facing the door. Sipping at his watery beer, he looked around the rather large room. The bar was rather empty at this time of day, maybe it was this empty all the time, thought Greg, as he realized he'd just paid two dollars for the swill he was drinking. A grizzled old man sat close to the door, sipping on a glass of whiskey. From the look of him, he'd been in there most of the afternoon. Two immaculately dressed and affluent-looking people who weren't businessmen sat at a far table, discussing something in subdued but heated tones. Neither the old drunk or the dope peddlers interested Greg. He just wanted to sit, and think for a while. He knew he'd hurt Dr. Martin, maybe killed him. This was just a fact to him, he had almost no memory of actually hurting the man. He figured Anne was just now coming to check on him, and had found Martin lying there on the floor of his office. Which meant Duncan... The buzz of the Quickening wiped Greg's mind clear of these thoughts. He expected Duncan or Richie to walk in the door any minute, but instead another Immortal appeared. Greg involuntarily swallowed in fear. Curse Duncan for not allowing me to touch a real sword, he thought. He scanned the room for other exits and found none. Preparing to jump to his feet anyway, he checked himself as he noticed the other Immortal carried no sword. The other Immortal was male, and about six feet tall. He wore a finely-tailored gray suit made of some expensive, lustrous material. His hair, the color of honey, poured from his scalp and pooled near his shoulders. His eyes, set in a deeply tanned and lightly etched face, were a cool gray to match his suit. He appeared to have been about thirty-five when he suffered his first death. Looking out of place, the Immortal man walked over to Greg's table and took a seat across from him. He spoke. "You're MacLeod's Student." The other man spoke with a refined British accent. "Yeah, I'm his Student," said Greg, wondering if he was. The man smiled. "Pardon me," he said. "My name is Barnes." He paused. "Michael Barnes." ************* "Mac, what the hell happened?" Richie asked as Duncan replaced the phone in its cradle. "I don't know, Richie. That was Anne," he replied and paused as he thought of a way to phrase his next sentence. "She said there was an...incident with Greg and the doctor she took him to see." "Oh jeez, Mac. What did he do to him?" Richie's concern for his friend and the doctor was evident from the anguished expression on his face. "I don't know," MacLeod admitted, "but Anne's waiting there for us. Let's go." [End part 2] (...part 3 will be coming shortly...) If you read this and liked it, please send me some mail telling me so! I haven't gotten as many responses from "Life's" as I got from "Birth's" and I'm wondering if you all are liking it but not commenting, or if everyone thinks it sucks. Even if you hate it, please drop me a note telling me so. I really want to know what everybody thinks of my writing! =========================================================================