Vincent Gallo - Tasya

The light in the room was bright, and the sound around was silent.

“I have never spoken to anyone about this and have kept this secret locked inside my mind. I have not withheld my words out of fear, but because I doubt that others are able to understand me and my particular psychological predicament. They may be sympathetic and supportive, but I'm certain they would lack understanding.”

Hugh stood up straighter, his gaze cutting a path directly in front of him.

“I hope that you can help me, that you can give me your professional assessment and advise me on what to do.” Hugh closed his eyes and took a slow and deliberate deep breath. Upon opening his eyes, he continued speaking, determined to unveil that which he has kept a secret for so long.

“I have… I have hallucinations. When they come unto me, sometimes with the speed of a creeping fog or other times like a bolt of lightning, I see bizarre sights. People morph into mythical creatures; their faces and bodies change as if they were wet clay and shaped by ethereal hands. Animals begin to talk and debate about topics foreign to their understanding. Skeletons reanimate and live as if their fleshy bodies had never died.” Hugh rubbed the two-week-old stubble growing on his chin and continued on with his monologue.

“For a reason that I am unable to comprehend, these theaters of my mind are triggered when I encounter the news. If I read a newspaper, scroll through headlines in my phone, hear someone speaking about a hot button topic, or anything else overlapping with the news, then my mind crafts these hallucinations for me. I don't have an exact answer as to why the news floods my conscious reality with unreal images. That is why I am here, to tell you about my curious condition and accept your professional recommendations.”

Anxiety bubbled and Hugh felt simultaneously hot and cold from the tension of speaking about himself. He found this nervous energy to be both annoying and thrilling. Annoying, in how it reminded him of his lack of courage. Thrilling, in how this was a bodily sensation that he did not get to experience every day.

Hugh peered at the face looking back at him from the bathroom mirror and ran his fingers along the nicks and cuts from that morning's shave. The razor had spared his neck, but his cheeks were peppered with scratches. He had rehearsed his speech dozens and dozens of times over, even as blade met stubble, and the sharp pinches from each minor wound made him wish that he had left himself looking scruffy and unkempt.

Stepping closer to the bathroom sink, Hugh turned on the faucet and choose the tap with cold water. He let the water run and after some time splashed a handful of cold water onto his face, thinking that is what all the heroes do in the movies when they are on the precipice of a challenge. Hugh ran his hands from forehead, tucked his hairs behind his ears, and flicked away the excess water on his fingertips into the sink.

With a quick twist, Hugh switched off the running water and looked down at his watch. It read 2:27 and Hugh knew that it was high time to get back to the waiting room. If the receptionist didn't come knocking on the door to see if he had fallen asleep, then she would certainly be calling Hugh's name any minute now. Furthermore, he was certain that he had been in the bathroom longer than most would deem socially acceptable for a public space.

Hugh flung the bathroom door open and was greeted by a man a wearing a face that looked like it had been carved out of a gnarled tree. This living piece of bark didn’t try to slip past Hugh and enter the bathroom, but instead blocked Hugh’s passage to the waiting room and blasted him with eyes ripe with irritation and contempt.

“I've been waiting to use the toilet for about twenty minutes!” The man growled and puffed his chest out, which made him look even more like an ominous tree. “I was of the mind to start hammering on the door, but I heard you talking and mumbling to yourself, like some crazy person.”

Hugh's face flushed red, and a searing pain of embarrassment swelled in his chest. He didn't want the first person to know about his hallucinations to be someone who had overheard him while in the bathroom.

“Did you hear anything I was talking about?” Hugh's question was a faint whisper but sounded like thunder in his own ears.

“The sound was too muffled to make out anything, but I highly doubt you would have had anything interesting to say anyway. Probably just some insane nonsense.” The tree raised his voice, ignoring Hugh's whisper as a plead for privacy in this matter. “Never mind! Get out of my way. I've waited long enough already, and I need to go!”

The man shouldered his way past Hugh, sending Hugh stumbling sideways off to the side. As Hugh was recovering and righting himself, the bathroom door made a thunderous slam and the lock bolted into place.

Hugh turned to make his way back to the waiting room, but unintelligible grumbles and muffled shouts stalled his steps. Hugh returned to the source of the noise, the bathroom the man had just entered, and brought his ear closer to the door. He couldn't make out a single phrase or word from the man within.

With a sense of relief that the tree had spoken truly, Hugh pivoted and jogged back to the waiting room. He had no desire to invade anyone's privacy nor still be standing there when the tree would exit.

Plus, it was almost time for his appointment, and he didn't want to be late.

Hugh returned to the waiting room just as his watch struck 2:30.

He came to the right place at the right time, but the receptionist seemed to possess a different notion of what constituted the ‘right’ time. She was sitting behind her desk, utilizing her time to shuffle and reshuffle a tall stack of papers that reminded Hugh of a massive deck of cards. He wasn't sure if she was merely trying to make herself look busy in an attempt to ward off patients who wanted to pester her about the start time of their appointment or if this was her last day at work and she wanted to sabotage everyone's medical records.

Whatever the case, minute after minute trickled by and Hugh remained sitting at the right place, but now at the wrong time.

Hugh's watch read 2:47 and the receptionist was now in the process of shredding her finely shuffled stack of documents. Knowing that this would take some time, Hugh resigned himself to study the waiting room.

After a brief inspection of his surroundings Hugh figured that if you've seen one waiting room then you have more or less seen them all. Waiting rooms have their own characteristics that allow them to fall into the taxonomic category of being a waiting room. They are smaller than football stadiums but bigger than prison cells. They have chairs, walls, a water cooler, and a TV which plays movies on mute—making one wonder what sort of comfort a muted TV could provide to someone visiting the doctor.

This particular muted TV was playing an old Western film. Lips moved without sound. Guns fired without any high-pitched twinge, as customary of some Westerns made at that time. All Hugh saw was a soundless scene of a man in black trying to pick up his hat, and nameless gunslinger shooting the hat away from him.

Not being able to understand what the man in black and the gunslinger were saying annoyed Hugh, but it wasn’t as annoying as his seat. The chairs in the waiting room had seat cushions barely more padded than an economy class flight seat, no arm rests, and black metallic frames that not only cradled the cushion, but also rubbed and scraped the outmost parts of the hips. No matter which way Hugh positioned himself in the chair, there seemed to be no way to become comfortable. Even if he had a PhD in advanced Engineering and Physics, Hugh still wouldn’t be able to calculate the optimal sitting position to alleviate his discomfort.

Hugh had a sneaking suspicion that the designer of these chairs secretly visited waiting rooms like this one in order to observe people sitting in his creations. This architect of discomfort and annoyance would sit silently, his thoughts unknowable to others, and get pleasure from patients’ attempts to solve the unsolvable conundrum of how to become comfortable in these chairs.

Hugh squirmed a bit more in his torture device of a chair and looked around. There weren’t too many people alongside him in this indefinite state of waiting. There was a couple, quietly arguing about where to eat after their appointment. A young girl was sitting and reading a book, whose cover depicted a black spaniel wearing a detective hat and coat. Behind the spaniel stood an extraordinarily large red chalice surrounded by menacing and clocked figures brandishing jewel encrusted daggers.

Something more curious than the cover of the girl’s book was that Hugh could not locate the grumpy man from the earlier bathroom encounter. If he had left the doctor’s office then Hugh would have seen him cut through the waiting room. Since Hugh hadn’t seen him, Hugh estimated that the grumpy man had been in the bathroom for well over twenty minutes.

Hugh thought about marching back to the bathroom and giving the grumpy man a taste of his own medicine when he finally opened up the bathroom door. Hugh’s revenge fantasy was cut short when the anticipated and fated moment came to pass.

The receptionist was calling his name.

“Mr. Mekta! Mr. Mekta! Please come to reception desk,” the receptionist was yelling and Hugh could hear a grating frustration in her voice saying that she had been the one waiting for the last twenty plus minutes for Hugh to make his presence at the desk.

Hugh approached the desk, glad to be out of the indefinite state of waiting and out of that horrendous chair.

“I’m Hugh. But, pardon me, my name is not Mekta, it’s Mechta.” Hugh tried to sound polite, not wanting to offend the reception and be sent back to the waiting area as vengeance for said offense. “The 'ch’ in my last name is pronounced like the 'ch’ in 'cheese,' 'cheap,' and 'chicken’.”

The receptionist placed a meticulously manicured nail on his name in the file. She read it over and rolled her eyes at what was written there.

“I’ll make a note of the spelling and pronunciation in your file.” The receptionist said but didn’t make any notes in any file.

“The doctor is waiting for you in room 27.” The receptionist continued. “Please go over there,” she lethargically pointed a nail at an indeterminate position behind her, “and then turn there.”

Hugh peered around the receptionist to see where 'over there’ was. He could see a hallway with four branching corridors.

“Pardon me,” Hugh said, “but what do you mean by ‘over there?’

“What do you mean?” She replied curtly, her lazy demeanor had changed to one that had just been offended. “I’ve just told you where to go.”

She spun around on her chair, extended her arm out at full length, and made various quick movements with the tip of her long nail.

“Go over there, and then turn there.” The receptionist said.

Hugh responded to her attempt at precise directions with a dumfounded expression. Behind this dumbstruck look, Hugh was making the mental calculations of whether it would be advantageous to ask her to elaborate on her directions. After triple checking the results of his mental computations, Hugh decided to hold his tongue.

He simply thanked the receptionist and headed ‘over there.’

Hugh walked down the hallway and past the first two adjourning corridors. He felt relief that the room numbers were descending from one hundred and that all that he needed to do was to go to the end of the hallway and see which adorning corridor led to the twenties.