didn’t say anything to Hatchjaw, because I couldn’t be bothered, so we just stood there looking at each other. That’s why I had time to notice so many details about him. I’m not normally very observant, or so I’ve been told. Mostly by a person who made it her mission in life to puncture my self-esteem, so perhaps I’m as observant as the next man. Hatchjaw finally spoke, in a surprisingly deep voice, and asked me if I had any questions. I shook my head. He nodded a few times then stepped aside. He didn’t exactly usher me back into my room, he just made it clear that I could go back in there if I wanted to, so I did. When I tried to close the door Hatchjaw was still standing there. He seemed anxious to say something, so I raised a polite eyebrow. That was when he told me about the Recovery Diary and being forbidden to rewrite anything. He didn’t actually say it was forbidden, but when I wake up in a strange place with an institutional atmosphere, and I meet a man in a white coat who stares at me with a sinister smile, and I notice the outline of a large syringe in his top pocket, and he says that I’m ‘discouraged’ from doing something, I’m inclined not to do it. Not only that, but Hatchjaw got decidedly testy when I asked a few innocent questions about his edicts.
‘So,’ I said, ‘if I’m not allowed to do any revisions, then what I’m writing is supposed to be some kind of stream of consciousness, is that it?’
‘If you like.’
‘I don’t exactly like it, no. I find that kind of thing a bit self-indulgent and silly, to be honest with you.’
‘I expect you’re right,’ Hatchjaw said, ‘from a literary perspective. But as I’ve said, this isn’t intended to be a literary work. It’s simply a way for you to examine and express your feelings, and to write an honest account of the behaviours that have brought you to your current situation. A kind of reckoning, let’s say.’
‘I see. But I’m still a bit confused. You’re asking me to express my current feelings, but also to write about the past. So, is it meant to be a journal or a memoir?’
Hatchjaw sighed. ‘It’s up to you. It can be either, or both, or neither. I’m simply asking you to write whatever comes into your mind about your feelings, and any relevant reflections on your past that doing so may evoke.’
‘Reflections or recollections?’
‘Whichever you think is the more appropriate term.’
‘But there’s a difference, isn’t there? Recollections are an attempt to recall past events that actually happened, while reflections could be more speculative.’
Hatchjaw’s expression didn’t change but I noticed a slight tremor in his cheek, which he seemed to be trying to control. Finally he spoke. ‘If you wish to speculate about your past, and you find that process fruitful, then please do so.’
‘Perhaps you’re asking me to write fiction, essentially.’
‘Please don’t put words into my mouth.’
‘No, of course not. Sorry. It’s just that there’s a bit of a paradox in what you’re suggesting. You see, many of the behaviours, as you call them, that have contributed to my current predicament – whatever that is – are beyond the reach of my memory by their very nature, in that they invariably resulted in me getting totally shitfaced, and waking up without being able to remember a single thing I’d done.’
Hatchjaw spent a couple of moments considering this, while breathing heavily through his nose. Then he swallowed, and spoke through a thin smile that may have cost him some effort to maintain. ‘I’m sure you’ll resolve the paradox, Mr James. You’re a very intelligent man. Shall we leave it at that?’
‘Are you saying I can make it all up if I want?’
‘Just write!’ he snapped. ‘That’s what I’m saying!’
I treated him to my most boyish grin. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I will.’
‘Thank you.’ Hatchjaw turned on his heel and strode away.
I was right about being in the country. I opened the curtains in my room and discovered it was a summer evening and I was looking out across a lawn that sloped gently down to some woods, with fields and hills visible beyond the woods, rolling gently up to the horizon in the far distance, all bathed in a clear, rosy sunset glow. All very nice. I hope I’m not paying for it, but I expect I am.
As I turned away from the window I thought I caught a glimpse of a figure at the edge of the woods. But when I turned back and scanned the treeline there was no sign of anyone. The low sunlight made it difficult to see anything, and after a minute I gave up reluctantly and turned away again.
I stopped in my tracks. I felt a sudden sense of danger. I have a pretty reliable instinct for the presence of any threat to my welfare, and it’s enabled me to emerge relatively unscathed from a number of situations which I probably didn’t deserve to survive at all. But right now I couldn’t tell whether the danger I sensed was imminent, or if I was having a flashback to an ordeal I’d been through in the recent past. After a while the sensation faded, leaving me feeling merely unsettled and apprehensive.
Patient EH
Recovery Diary 17
In the night the pain returned and kept me awake for an hour or a little more. It passed and then I slept well and woke when I was ready. There was a chill at first light but it burned away and the day was long. These days at the end of summer linger and it is the lingering of one who should leave when love is over. It is best to finish things quickly. I get these goddamned cramps in the night and my legs are an old man’s legs. You get the clarity back and it’s good to see straight and feel things real and true again but part of what is true is that your legs feel like hell and your hands ache.
A new man joins us. His body is whole but he bears scars of that other battle known to each man here. And to those women who have gone to pieces in the same way, and they are made men by their scars. And some here have also wounds that are visible, caused by the ways that men fall in that battle.
This man staggers a little in his walking but he rolls with it like a sailor on the deck and he is not new to his pain.
There is a woman here who is one of the good ones and she sees it all cold and clear and has no illusions about these things. She is a hell of a fine woman with a pleasant body and I hope I am getting to know her at least a little. Her duties may take her to attend to the new man and something rotten stirs in me at the thought, but the hell with it.
He sensed me watching him and then he was gone. The buck knows in his blood that the cross hairs are on him, and your finger on the trigger in that moment. I left him to find his own path. And screw him anyway if he’s another British prick who thinks he’s better than everyone else.
Patient HST
Recovery Diary 13
I don’t buy that devious horseshit about nobody else reading this, and you know it.
You people are depraved psychic vampires. Describe my feelings? Do you seriously still think that’s going to happen? I know what’s behind the feeble-minded psychobabble. The lost souls howling and drivelling as they back you up against a wall, crazed by the need to explain themselves,
