September 2001

No need to mention the day. You all know the one. Hell, most of you probably remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when it happened. How you felt the fear, the anxiety, the worries about your future, and America’s.

You had nothing on me.

Of all places, I was sitting in the break room of a McDonalds in Springfield, Illinois, less than a mile from where Abraham Lincoln lived and practiced law for years. The second impact was already several minutes past by that time. I watched in horror as a tower fell. A symbol of the great impervious U.S. of A. fell right before my eyes.

I didn’t finish my steak, egg, and cheese bagel. I sat like millions of others, glued to the strange and confusing images flashing before me.

And then the scream came. It blasted through me, and I felt as if my very soul was on fire. For a moment, I joined it, screaming out loud as the voices of thousands tore through my skull.

The voices threatened to tear my mind apart. Something snapped in my head. Everything went black. I slumped to the floor, unconscious, but with my sanity intact. At least, mostly.

*****

I came to in a room in Mercy Medical center, although that really wasn’t what I was focused on. The voices in my head all screaming at once served as a bit of a distraction.

My first thought was that I’d gone completely nuts. But I didn’t think even schizophrenics had it this rough. The voices seemed to number in the hundreds.

I tried my best to pretend I was asleep, but I spent the next several hours trying to sort out my own skull. It didn’t take me long to realize exactly where the voices came from.

Somehow, I could hear the dead, all those killed in the plane crashes, the fallen towers, and the Pentagon, even though I hadn’t even known it was attacked. They cried out for hundreds of things. Last wishes, you might say. Vengeance, for some, understanding, for even more. Many just wanted to see their families one last time.

I just wanted silence in my head.

I let loose with a scream, a scream focused by the pain and fury those voices brought to me. I thrashed about in the bed for quite some time, until a doctor and several orderlies wrestled me down. It took only a few seconds after the doctor buried the needle in to my neck for quiet, blissful sleep to set in once again.

*****

I woke up in McFarland Mental Health Center a.k.a. the nut house. Fitting, as I was pretty sure these voices would soon push me over the edge, if I wasn’t already toppling over it.

But the more I listened, the more I knew the voices were far from a figment of my overactive, deluded imagination. The voices knew so much about the towers, the chaos, the plane crashes. They were the voices of the dead, or at least impressions of them. Somehow, I’d gained this link to them.

I wasn’t crazy. Now I just had to convince the shrinks at McFarland that I actually did here voices, and they had plans for me. I didn’t care for my chances that it would work.

So, my first priority: get out of the damn nut house.

It wasn’t particularly hard. I was in a minimum security room, which meant no locks and no straps. I slipped out of the bed and pulled the miniscule robe I wore as tight as possible around my nearly bare ass. I slipped in to the hallway, taking time to check for any guards or orderlies.

I tried my best to avoid the staff. From the digital clock on the otherwise bare hallway wall I could see I’d been out for the entire day and it was well in to the evening. Good. Security was minimal.

I walked towards the main entrance, trying to look as casual as possible despite the crappy robe I wore slipping open above my ass.

I needed clothing, and I needed to get pass the security at the door. I decided to kill two birds with one stone.

I came down the hall, towards the security desk, at full tilt. I jumped the desk, and as I went over it, I extended my right foot. It collided with the guard’s jaw and he crumpled under the force of the blow. The entire movement took no more than four seconds. I was amazed at the ease with which I pulled it off.

It took me only a few seconds to strip the guard to his Hanes, and I threw his clothes on even quicker. The uniform was a little loose on me, but it was much less drafty than that damn robe.

I buzzed the main door open and started out in to the parking lot. As the door clicked shut behind me, locking me out, I realized I was in the middle of nowhere, almost a mile from the outskirts of the city, disheveled in a strange uniform, with no transportation. I should have taken the schmuck’s car keys, too. Why ruin an already great day?

*****

It didn’t take me nearly as long to get back to Springfield proper as I would have thought. Along with the voices, I seemed to have gained strength and speed beyond anything I’d ever imagined. I found myself taking leaps and bounds as I went, and those jumps would make an Olympic athlete jealous.

I had to use the spare key hidden under a rock, not more than a few feet from my girlfriend Leah’s parked car. I could have just knocked, I suppose, but I had no idea whether she would be awake or not, or even if she knew where the heck I’d been all day. Either way I would have a lot of explaining to do; better not to make her more angry by waking her.

I didn’t need to worry. She was awake. And packing.

As I came in, her back was to me. Without even looking at me, she said, “Don’t even say a word.”

“What?” I said. My repertoire wasn’t quite as witty back then.

“I don’t want any damn excuses,” she said. “I don’t want any damn explanations. I just want out.”

This was the last thing I needed at this point. “But, Leah­”

“No fucking buts, Patton. I’m gone. The rents paid through the end of the month; after that it’s all you.”

I tried to protest again, but the stress allowed the voices to begin their rage through my head. I clutched my head and tried not to collapse.

Leah looked down on me with disdain. “God, you’re such a drama queen.” She pushed past me, carrying her suitcase. “I’ll be back for the rest this weekend.”

With that, she stormed through the back door towards her car. I didn’t follow her. I sat on the floor of the apartment, alone with the hundreds of screaming voices in my head.

*****

I tried my best to sleep for the rest of the night, but it wouldn’t come. Try sleeping in the middle of a screaming crowd, and you’ll begin to understand my problem.

After a couple hours of tossing and turning, I finally gave up.

I had to stop the voices, or at least quiet them somehow and I doubted I still had a job at the Mickey D’s. On top of that, the cops were surely on the way to my apartment at some point in the near future, ready to arrest me for assault and robbery.

I threw on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, and ditched the uniform in the dumpster out back. I jogged back towards McDonalds. It was only a few blocks down the street, and I covered it in just over a minute. My ’91 Oldsmobile still sat outside the store. It was old, but a solid ride. I didn’t have a clue how far it would get me, but I knew where I needed to go.

New York or bust.