“Criminally Sane”
In January he realized that he was completely sane.
Every day after that he sat trembling behind his desk, the cigarette he never smoked clenched against his palm, dangling above the papers he never read. He was certain he looked like a mouse, and a quick glance at the mirror he never looked at proved it. He suddenly realized he had looked at the mirror he never looked at, and grinned.
He put the cigarette he never smoked in his mouth, then took it out, remembering he never smoked it. He paused on the crossroads of decision, trying to decide if he should smoke the cigarette he never smoked; eventually he decided against it and dropped it on a spotless ash tray, which sat just above the drawers he never opened, and the cold pistol he never fired.
In April he discovered that his batty wife, whom he loved, was completely sane. It was then he knew he hated her.
Every day after that he sat trembling behind his breakfast table, the fork he never used clenched against his palm, dangling above the turgid eggs he never ate. Every morning the turgid eggs he never ate sat there maliciously, shaking slightly, like jello, regarding him sadistically with eyes it didn’t have.
Every morning he would shudder and go to sit behind his desk, with the cigarette he never smoked clenched against his palm, dangling just above the papers he never read.
Every morning, sitting behind his desk or his table, he wished desperately that some signs of insanity would crop up. One little hallucination in the hall, a single chance meeting with Jesus Christ in the bathroom, anything that would relieve him of his aching sanity. He yearned for a cure to his sanity, and every Thursday he went to his psychiatrist, hoping beyond hope that he would be discovered some bizarre and disgusting disease of the mind.
“Schizophrenia?” he would ask hopefully, laying down on a soft couch. It was not always schizophrenia; some days it was quadrophenia, other days manic depression. Every Thursday his psychiatrist would look up and shake his head.
“Damn you,” he would say to his psychiatrist. “Just diagnose me with a bloody disease. Now. Alright?”
Every Thursday his psychiatrist would look up and shake his head.
“You’re sane,” he said. “You have personality disorders, and there are many ways I can help you, but you are not certifiably insane, nothing that we can’t fix with some therapy...”
“:wub:.”
“Tourette’s,” his psychiatrist would say, and make a note.
“No, no, that’s not insanity,” he would say. “That’s a lame-ass disorder. Come on, what am I paying you for?”
“Well,” the psychiatrist always said, folding his hands and watching his client over the rims of his glasses. “Usually, I aid my patients overcome personality defects and disorders, and allow them to live functionally, just like you. There are some issues we can address with therapy, such as psychneuro...”
“Well, what about unusually?”
“You are very unusual,” the psychiatrist generally conceded.
“Insane?”
“Well, you are not certifiable ...”
“Go to hell.” That was what he always said before he left.
In July he saw that everyone else was completely sane.
Every day after that he went to a psychiatric ward, promising to give cookies to the insane patients. He ogled them jealously as he handed them cookies, until one day he realized they weren’t insane after all.
“Shh,” he said, arching a finger. “Come here.”
A patient approached carefully and ate a cookie.
He drew his face close to the patient, winked, and whispered in his ear: “You
aren’t really insane, are you?”
The patient looked at him carefully and took another cookie. “My psychiatrist says so,” he said through his cookie, and took another.
“Stop eating the cookies,” he snapped to the patient, then smiled and winked again. “Well, how did you get him to say you were insane? Did you bribe him?”
“I said I was Jesus Christ,” the patient said. “And that he was going straight to hell. He got :wub: and said I was insane.”
“How’s life in the psychiatric ward?”
“Not bad, not bad,” the patient said. “I get to watch TV all the time, and sit on my ass. And saps like you bring cookies and speak very gently to me, but I usually ignore them and watch TV instead of listening, because they’re saps.”
“Well,” he said, jealousy burning in his heart. “How many channels do you get?”
“Fifty,” the patient said. “These cookies suck.”
“Stop eating them.”
“Anyway, like I said, I get a lot of channels. But most of them are like ESPN, ESPN 2, C-SPAN, boring crap like that. That stuff almost drives me insane,” he said, giggling, and took another cookie.
“If they suck, why do you keep eating them?”
The patient looked up. “Because I’m insane.”
In December he accepted that he would always be completely sane.
He stumbled to his desk, easing himself down into his chair and looking over the familiar things he never touched. The cigarette he never smoked lay calmly in his ashtray; the papers he never read swept off his desk in a cold wind from the window. His searching hand fumbled along the side of the drawers he had never opened, finding a handle and pulling on it. They opened with a screech, and he stared at the dust within.
The cold pistol he never fired lurked beneath the dust, shining dully in the alien sun. Trembling, he shoved his hand into the drawer and took out the cold pistol he never fired, quickly dropping it on his desk because it burned him.
The cold pistol he never fired was a safeguard against strangers who never came, whose purpose was to mug him and hurt him and take his lunch money. He had loaded a clip into the cold pistol he never fired, and then left it. He had never told his psychiatrist of the existence of the cold pistol he never fired.
Slowly, he picked it up again and looked at it, then slid it into his pocket and stood up, and came out from behind his desk.
That morning he pulled out the pistol he never fired and fired it, sending two cold heavy rounds into the turgid eggs he never ate. They died and maliciously splattered all over his sane wife’s face, and he laughed. “How do you like them now?” he asked, for his wife was the maker of the turgid eggs, but he had sped out of the room before his wife would respond.
She never would, because she had a turgid egg stuck in her throat and couldn’t get it out.
He ran down cold streets, the pistol he had just fired held under his coat. He sped into an alley and ran past a poor family, jumping over garbage cans. The poor family were perfectly sane, and so were their garbage cans.
He ran to his psychiatrist, even though it wasn’t Thursday, and stormed in. He held his pistol high and fired a round into the ceiling.
“Put the gun down,” his psychiatrist suggested.
“No,” he said, and considered firing a round into his psychiatrist. But he remembered he was sane; he wasn’t crazy enough to shoot his psychiatrist, no matter how hard he tried. “No, I’m not crazy enough to shoot you. Why didn’t you say I was crazy? Why, damn you,” he moaned, sweeping out.
“Maybe because you would shoot me,” the psychiatrist said, and called the police.
He went back to his desk and put the gun he had just fired back in the drawers he had just opened. He slammed them shut. He looked at the mirror he had just looked at, cradling his face in his cold hands. Dimly he could see sirens flashing through the windows and reflecting off the mirror.
“They’ll say I’m criminally sane, criminally sane, completely balanced,” he said to himself, and took the gun he had just fired out again. He silently contemplated it and its promise, then shook his head. “I’m too sane to kill myself,” he said bitterly. “Too sane, like everybody else.”
Criminally Sane
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Great stuff.
Keep up the good work. I'm looking forward to new stories from both you and Grim.
:wink: 
Originally Posted by CrackerMonkey
