Galen
At 10.00am, we pulled up outside the modern, red-brick reception area of the secure unit and walked to the electronically controlled doors. The main body of the hospital was dark and depressingly Victorian, but the Russell Tate wing was new and sparklingly bright. The aim was to create a relaxed environment for the patients, but security was necessarily tight. The guard scrutinised our warrant cards and papers, before pressing the buzzer to release the first of the security doors. We entered the secure foyer area and waited for the heavy door to close behind us. This area was like an airlock; the second interior door to the nurses’ station, interview rooms and accommodation areas beyond couldn’t be opened until the first door was locked again. In the waiting room there were the usual warnings to visitors about not bringing contraband into the unit, but I snorted aloud at the advisory notices about respecting the residents’ rights under the Mental Health act. The murders had shaken all the squad badly. This evil bastard was going to pay. We’d see to that.
A windowless interview room about ten by twelve feet and painted a somber battleship gray. No overhead lighting. Silence throughout the clinic. A comic greetings card on the small desk that separates them, “Doctor, are you going to cut me up again?”
Galen is wearing a white button-up shirt with a pen in the breast pocket. He’s a hard-liner. Theorist. Keen blue eyes. In his army days he’d injected a man with shigella dysentery. Three days later the man got diarrhoea, and on the fourth day he hanged himself. Harvard Class of ’87.
“Think of me as an anthropologist. I study the human animal. I approve of its every atrocity. Who could not?”
Her neck was so frail; he could feel little bones inside crushing under his hands.
He didn’t like her hair. It was short — so short that she almost looked like a little boy.
Hair like dirty honey.
Philip Best is the author of American Campgrounds (2010), Alien Existence (2016) and Captagon (2017). He edited the anthology Human Rights (2022)
DISCLAIMER: All extracts are works of fiction
©Amphetamine Sulphate ©Philip Best 2023
The glossary section on the Cocteaus website is wonderful:
"Don’t expect to gain too much insight into what the songs are about, though, as they often aren’t related".
Loving the use of the sub-headings on these recent posts.