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A Powerful Truth

Saeria

1st Level Orange Feather
Joined
Jul 6, 2006
Messages
2,030
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0
Hubert Granice, pacing the length of his pleasant lamp-lit library, paused to compare his watch with the clock on the chimney-piece. 4:05. In a little less than 6 hours he would be well on his way to quitting. Thoughts rumbled through his mind as he muttered under his breath; it wasn't until he met #27848918 that he ever recalled being so uncomfortable in his library. Suits, #27848918 called them, haunted his dreams and turned his blood to ice at the mere consideration of them. He stopped pacing for a moment and sat at his desk. His menagerie of psychology manuals and the newly acquired government conspiracy novels lay scattered, marked in places with brightly colored paperclips.

Hubert pushed a few of the books out of the way and laid his head in his hands. He gave a sullen nod to the photo on his desk and set to change his train of thought. It was a nice photo of his wife, Julie, sitting on an old swing. The photo captured her soft brown curls in mid-flight; illuminated by the evening sun, it gave her a haloed look. It must have been after 5 A.M. when Hubert drifted into a light sleep. It was the kind of sleep that lay between dream and daydream. He could hear a voice on his speaker-phone.

"Dr. Granice, #27848918 is scheduled for a retrial assessment." Presently a guard led a freshly shaven man to a seat then stood in the
corner.

#27848918 was a pale figure with glassy blue eyes magnified by the ever-fashionable state issued black-rimmed glasses. The man's hands shook violently as he scuffed his work shoes on the floor. Hubert gave a friendly"hello" but the man still sat, shoulders hunched, staring at his shoes."I see you're here because you were convicted of murder in the first on Oct 7th, 2002. Would you like to tell me about it?" Hubert folded his hands on the desk and smiled gently. The rapists and murderers always made him a bit nervous but the state took care of them just like any other inmate here at the Walls Unit.

#27848918 kept his head down, his hands trembling furiously, rattling the chain between his cuffs. Dr. Granice nodded a bit and scribbled in his notepad. There was a long silence before Hubert cleared his throat. "Would you feel more like talking if we were alone?"
The man lifted his head with a sudden movement, overtaken by surprise. Hubert wasn't very astounded; he was sure this man hadn't even so much as taken a dump out of a guard's view in over 3 years. There was just something about him that Hubert trusted, a funny little tickle in the back of his mind.

The guard was reluctant to leave but did as he was told, stationing himself outside of Dr. Granice's office like a sentry. Although the absence of the guard did little to change the man's demeanor, he now looked squarely at Hubert, those huge glassy eyes even more dead than before.

"How about now?"

"Okay, I'll talk" the man muttered. "I can't talk about important things when there are Suits around, it hurts." He paled even further,
looking to Hubert as if he were on the verge of fainting, and stopped scuffing his feet.

"The Suits, is that what you call the guards?"

"No" #27848918 replied sharply. "I can't tell you who they are. You wouldn't want to know; it'll change your whole world."

"Listen, #27848918, apparently Dr. Webb doesn't feel like you should be here at all. She insists that you're much better suited for a psychiatric facility. She gave you a GAF of 17; do you know what that means?"

"I'm no dummy, sir; it means she thinks I'm two steps from shitting on myself and singing Yankee Doodle while I cut my wrists open. Maybe she's not so far from the truth, sir."

"Well." Hubert started firmly, wanting to emphasize his point. "I don't believe a word of it. Not only do I NOT believe you're Schizophrenic, I don't believe going to a psychiatric facility would help your retrial."

The man shook his head slowly, taking in what Hubert was saying. That funny little tickle in Hubert's mind increased as he tapped his pen on his notepad.

"There ain't nothing that's going to hurt my retrial. It's almost over and I'll be walking free by this time next year."

"The day you walk out of here a free man, #27848918, I'll escort you through the gates!" Hubert guffawed. He didn't mean to sound rude but he was almost sure that this man was yet another sociopath. He didn't believe sociopaths belonged in psych. Wards, he believed they belonged here within spitting distance of where Ol' Sparky used to sit.

"Then we have a deal, sir." #27848918 smiled.

"Whatever you say. As it stands, I am going to evaluate you over the course of the next 3 months. You will be called in every Thursday to talk. If you ever need someone to talk to, send in a request and I'll arrange it."

Hubert stood. "If you're so sure I'm just another cold murderer, why bother?" #27848918 shrugged his slumped shoulders, waiting to be corralled by the entering guard.

"I don't know; I just have this funny feeling." Hubert spoke honestly, letting his personal side show for a moment.

"Like a tickle in your mind?" the man asked, laughing a little. Wow, Hubert thought, that was weird.
"I'll talk, and I'll talk often, but no guards and no tape recorders, no notes. The information I give is very dangerous in the wrong
hands." The man slumped his shoulders as the guard led #27848918 out of Dr. Granice's office.

Hubert heard the clock on the chimney-piece chime 6 times yet he didn't raise his head.

"I want to tell you about the Suits, sir." The pale man shifted nervously. Hubert allowed #27848918 to sip water from a real glass, as
requested, during the sessions. Hubert was sure this man wouldn't be the type to break the glass and slice anyone up. He was winning #27848918's trust and soon the man would start to talk about the murder.

"Tell me about the Suits."

"You're not one, I'm not one. Most of the men in this unit aren't either. In fact, most of the guards aren't Suits. But the Warden, she scares the living shit out of me."

Hubert nodded, depressing the button on the tape recorder hidden in his jacket.

"She's one of the ugliest Suits I've ever come across. Warden Sims smells like almonds and sulphur. like poison and brimstone. A lot of Suits do to varying degrees but the way she looks at me-"

"When did you start seeing the Suits?"

"Now THAT'S a story!" the man laughed sharply. "I was maybe 8 or 9 when the shit hit the fan. I grew up in the piney woods outside of Houston. I was walking up and down the red dirt road when I saw a moving truck down at the abandoned A-frame house."
Hubert nodded.
"I didn't want to be too nosy, my mama always said nosiness was about the worst trait a person could have, but I decided I would pay the new neighbor a visit that evening. Until that day I'd never seen a black man and at first I was rather startled. He was very nice though."
Hubert bobbed his head more, indicating that he was listening intently.
"I went to visit him every day. He would give me root beer and tell me about baseball and the war. Sometimes I would come over when he was listening to the radio. At those times he'd put a bent finger to his lips and grin. This wasn't the regular kind of radio, this was shortwave. Mr. Goodman would listen to every word until the very end. 'Now THAT'S real news, boy.' He would say. He sounded kinda sad when he'd say it though. "
More nodding.
"It was when I started talking to him about it. I asked him 'Why don't they say who or what the hidden bad guys are.' 'They're called Suits, boy.' 'Suits?' They're two things, really. They're affluent members in the business, social, and political world, your congressmen and CEO'S. All these men and women and even children contain a piece of an ancient bloodline'
'Who's bloodline?' 'Some call him Lucifer, some call him Mephistopheles. I just call him the plain ol' Devil.'"

Hubert nodded, but his posture was a bit more rigid this time.

"Then he wouldn't talk anymore about it. I was really afraid to know, to be honest, but that damnable tickle in my mind ached for it. He
would say 'Boy, I moved out here to get AWAY from the Suits, not dredge up memories.' Finally one day he started talking about it again, but how he started sent a chill right to my bones. 'Now boy, if you start to feel a tickle like someone's trying to feather dust your grey matter you be sure to tell me to stop cause once you 'go off' that's it. Now.' I couldn't hear the first few sentences. I caught something about the descendant army of the Devil appealing to the simple man's greed and lust for power in a capitalist society. He started to talk about how his family had the ability to see the Suits for who they really were."

The tickle in Hubert's mind increased to an almost audible whine. He wanted to laugh at himself for being so engrossed in #27848918's tale as well as his growing belief in it. Hubert nodded.

"He said that some of his family never '"went off"' but still others, his mother, his grandfather, his grandmother and himself, did. His
mother used to say that being able to see them was part of the Lord's work, but I never did figure out what good seeing those monsters did. He started to tell me about the current, scariest Suits when I felt a pressure behind my eyes. The tickling hummed, deafening me for a moment up I heard a great POP. I woke up to Mr. Goodman shoving a magazine photo of Richard Nixon in my face."

#101891 took a sip of his water.

"'What do you see, boy?!?' The man in the picture had Nixon's hair but he had this awful, fanged grin, you know like the kind a starving dog makes before he attacks a bowl of food. It was just a regular old picture but those eyes, those hot, red eyes seemed to glow and light up the room. Poor old Nixon's face was tight and stretched, pale and yellowed like he'd been dead for a while. I must have let out the most bloodcurdling scream and I shut my eyes. I ran out of Mr. Goodman's house and down the dirt road as I heard him call out 'I'm so sorry, boy.' After that he never answered his door when I came. Then his sister came to visit and found him dead in his bathtub."

The whine in Hubert's mind became almost deafening. He could feel a cold chill race up his arms as he shook his head."I'm going to have to stop you there, #27848918." Hubert struggled for words.

"Are you okay, sir?" #27848918 asked, his voice tinged with concern.

This was definantly NOT sociopathic behaviour. "Oh, I'm quite fine. No worries, I just skipped breakfast." Hubert said. After he left, Hubert wrote scraps of information about #27848918 and the Suits down in a spiral notebook that he carried everywhere.

Over the course of the next few months he'd completed #27848918's assessment and found the man not only competent to stand trial but in perfect mental condition.

"You can't do that, Dr. Granice. Just because you feel sorry for the guy doesn't mean you can LIE so he can be out on the streets again, to kill again." Dr. Webb shrieked. Hubert could almost imagine her being a Suit right then. She didn't see what he saw in #27848918. He wanted #27848918 to be out of here, away from "the Suitiest of the Suits" Warden Sims. Warden Sims was the most upset by Hubert's diagnosis (or lack thereof).

The clock chimed 7 times yet Hubert didn't raise his head.

Hubert still visited with #27848918. He was subpoenaed into court to testify that #27848918 was in good mental health and to tell a jury about the murder. It was when #27848918 gave a retelling of the murder that Hubert's life changed forever.

"I'll make it short and sweet, sir."

Hubert nodded.

"I could see the Suits everywhere, in the grocery stores, in their BMW's, on the streets. They haunted me, chased me and all I wanted to do was get away from them. That was until I saw a beautiful woman having dinner with a rather nasty-looking Suit in a bar. I fell in love with her and I had this feeling, a funny little feeling, that she KNEW what he was. I wanted to help. I wandered up to the bar beside them and tried capture her attention, slip her a number, anything but I guess I must have looked her wrong. Before I even had a chance to turn around he hit me, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM. four times, just like that. The bartended threw us all out into an ally and it only escalated from there. He was really kicking my ass but I succeeded in slipping away, pulling the woman behind me. In an instant I heard two shots. One got me in the leg and the other got her in the abdomen. The Suit ran off and I was there with the woman until help arrived. Somehow or another the story turned around that I had shot her in a robbery attempt and then shot myself in the leg to look innocent. This whole time they police had the gun the Suit dropped but they never even printed it. I didn't know about the gun until my lawyer told me about it. That was when we decided to have a retrial."

At the end of #27848918's retelling, Hubert Granice ""went off"".

For a long moment he couldn't see or hear, then that funny little tickle in his mind was replaced with a soothing touch. For a moment #27848918 sat rigid, sweat beading from his brow.

"I'm sorry. I had no idea. You should have told me." The man shed a single tear. "I couldn't wish this on anyone, especially someone who actually took the time to listen as you have."

The weeks that followed horrified Hubert. They truly were everywhere, with their choking scent and terrible eyes, just as #27848918
described. Even walking through his affluent subdivision on his nightly jogs scared him.

Three days before the jury would find #27848918 not guilty for the murder of Mary-Anne Winterfield, Hubert received an anonymous letter. "Your testimony will not deter us."

That was the day that he found his spiral notebook and tape recorder had been taken from his case during his lunch break. He found no evidence other than the mark of a small black heel, like the shoes Warden Sims wore, scuffed into his floor. That was the day Dr. Hubert Granice decided to leave the Walls Unit for good and he knew the perfect time to do it.

The clock chimed 8 times and Hubert bolted awake. He took a final longing look at the picture on the desk, the one of his wife on the swing. Even though she smiled with a mouthful of pernicious fangs, and her skin was shiny and yellowed like old milk, she was still beautiful. Maybe Julie was evidence that not all Suits were bad. Maybe some Suits couldn't help who they were.

Hubert arrived at the Walls Unit at 9:03 A.M., fighting a volley of local press as he struggled to his office. He was busily collecting his things when he heard Warden Sims at his door.

"You can leave but you can never quit, remember that, dear Hubert."

Her voice, that's choking smell, sent chills through him. He knew she was right. He wouldn't be here but he would still see them, see the growing number of Suits thriving on greed.

He walked to the processing room and listened as a guard shouted to #27848918 to 'strip and spread 'em' for the very last time. Hubert waited patiently. When the metal door buzzed, Hubert saw not a pale, hunched figure that he'd known so well, but a tall, lanky figure with a confident stride.

"Well you look different #1-what IS your name, anyways?"

"I'm Job, just plain ol' Job, sir."

"Well, what next, Job?"

"We just keep on going."

The two made their way through the first gate, a throng of local newspaper reporters gathered before the second gate. Hubert dug into his pocket and found the letter that had been mailed to him days previously. The paper the note was scrawled on still stank of poison and brimstone. A reporter jumped in front of him.

"Here -- take this; it makes me sick," he said abruptly, thrusting the paper at the reporter; and the two men turned and walked in silence to the gates.
 
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