Madhouse

“I got you now, you little fruitcake!” said Joe Fields with an arrogant smirk and a cigar pressed between his teeth. He could smell the “vermin” from miles away, even with puffs of tobacco smoke sailing across his face. Both of his index fingers were itchy and twitchy as they rested on the triggers of his dual machineguns. His bulky metal armor was easier to move around in than he thought. The metal boots made loud clomping sounds as Joe walked through the bamboo forest, but even this mercenary was confident that his target had nowhere to hide. Hell, if Joe wanted to, he could blow this whole forest down like the Big Bad Wolf, except with his machineguns instead of cigar breath.

The target’s tiny footprints led the grinning mercenary to a Japanese-style temple with a wooden balcony, white paper walls, a bamboo roof, and flowery decorations all around. “You’re making this too easy for me, you little twit!” said Joe as he cocked both of his machineguns. The psychotic smile on his face suggested that he didn’t care if his target lived a torturous existence or died a brutal death. “You’re mine, you little bitch! Your ass is mine!” he said in his gruff voice.

With his metal feet creating tiny tremors, the soldier of fortune marched toward the seemingly abandoned temple before kicking down the wooden door with shattering ease. Joe poked his head inside and sniffed around for his target like a hungry wolf. With the exception of a few potted plants, paintings, and samurai swords, the place was empty. But instead of waiting for a pin to drop, Joe clomped and crashed his way inside, not giving two shits if the wooden floor was cracking and splintering.

“I can smell that stank on you, you little weasel! Drop the bowl of rice and come out here with your hands up!” A few more animalistic snorts and Joe let out such a forceful sneeze that he yelled like a grizzly bear and dropped his cigar. As snot flew from his nose and extinguished the cherry, Joe began to notice the light coating of dust all around the walls and the floor. “Really? Dust? Is that all you got? Holy shit, you’re in for a wild ride, motherfucker! You only have nine holes in your body right now. I’ll put about a hundred more in you, you slick son of a bitch!”

A monstrous growl caught Joe’s attention to where he reluctantly turned around with his guns drawn. Standing in the kicked in doorway was a seven-foot lizard demon with its blade-like tongue hanging down to its knees. Its claws were extended and its screech was deafening. The beast looked poised to strike, but quick as it may be, Joe’s trigger fingers were that much faster. A hailstorm of bullets descended upon the “big ugly fucker” and shredded skin and bones to a fine powder. The blood stayed floating in the air in the shape of a sphere.

“What the fuck is this shit? Is this some kind of voodoo bitch negro spell or what?” shouted Joe. Skull shaped blood spheres began emitting from the liquid mass and staring down the mercenary with misty black eyes. Their tongues flailed around like whips while their jaws were wide open and leaking with green fluids.

Joe once again showered his opponents with bullets, but all the shots did was splatter a modicum of blood stains all over the paper walls. The floating blood skulls still remained and even let out an eardrum-shattering yell. Joe squinted his eyes in confusion and terror as a brown bubbling substance was rising from the back of their mouths.

The formerly arrogant mercenary turned around and ran screaming like a child, mustering up every curse word on the top of his whacked out head. The more he ran, the steeper the incline in the wooden floor, which was like walking up a wall. Joe huffed and wheezed in exhaustion after draining his legs in such heavy armor. The armor felt hot and muggy to where he struggled to take it off. After a while of struggling, he dropped his guns and used the power in his metal gloves to just rip the armor off a few chunks at a time.

The incline in the floor lessened to a normal base and Joe was feeling the sweaty chill in his confederate flag T-shirt and baggy camouflage pants. He got so cold that he wrapped his arms around himself and huddled on the floor. And then he felt a tidal wave of vomit wash over him as well as dissolved blood and banshee cries. The bloody skulls left him so drenched afterwards that he struggled to breathe underneath the weight of such liquid. After coughing up retched fluids and vomiting himself, Joe looked around the temple with glassy red eyes and said, “Where the hell am I? What the fuck is this place?!”

“This is what you wanted all along, right?” said a mysterious voice. Joe looked around for the source, but the temple was still the same vomit and blood covered mess it was before, minus humans. “I’m the voice inside of you, Joe. I’m the one who’s going to tell you to get the hell out of this temple before it’s too late. You don’t need to catch anybody. This isn’t your job.”

Joe tightly gripped both sides of his head as the inner voice felt like he was being attacked with an ice pick. The mercenary even banged his head against the soaked floor and shouted, “Stop it! Leave me alone! You’re not real!” The inner voice chanted a Japanese-sounding magic spell and that only made Joe slam his head harder, which opened up a huge gash on his forehead.

Instead of blood pouring from the wound, a hooded cobra slithered out and danced around on the floor. Joe fearfully crab-walked backwards as the cobra hissed and spit venom in his mouth. The mercenary coughed, hacked, and puked until a mouthful of tarantulas poured out and joined the cobra in its dance.

Joe’s bloodshot eyes widened in horror as the cobra and the spiders swirled together in a purple tornado, taking the form of a ghostly samurai in blue robes. The spiritual warrior pulled out his katana and pointed it sternly at the blubbering gun-for-hire.

“Please, don’t kill me!” begged Joe with his hands together prayer-style. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here. I just came here for a job and I ended up in....whatever the hell this place is!”

“In other words, you’re not sorry that you were chasing an innocent human being. You’re sorry because you got caught doing it,” said the “inner voice”, which now belonged to the samurai. “You knew all along that your target did nothing wrong. He was defending himself from local police after they tried to unlawfully arrest him. And now here you are trying to find someone who is no longer here. All for what? An ill-gotten paycheck? You disgust me!”

“Disgust?” whimpered Joe. “You thought that was disgusting? What about what this place is doing to me? What about all the lizards and blood and skulls and shit? You mean there’s nothing disgusting about any of that? You’re a bigger scumbag than me and that’s saying something! You’d better let me the fuck out of here or I’m going to pick my guns back up and blow this whole place down!”

“You want to leave?” asked the samurai. “You really want to give up on your mission because you can’t handle your opponent? Is this what you want?”

“Yes! Yes, you idiot! I just want to get the fuck out of here! I’ve had it with this shit!” sobbed Joe.

The samurai stared him down with sternness and poison in his eyes, but ultimately decided to put his sword away. “There’s nothing to stop you, Mr. Fields. You can walk out of here anytime you want. The exit has been there all along.” The samurai pointed to the smashed in front door, which now had a brightly lit portal in its way. “Go. Leave here immediately and never come back again.”

Joe’s teary eyes felt relaxed and hypnotized as he slowly made his way to the portal. “Leave…here…immediately…never…come back…again…” he said in a zombie-like voice. He reached his arm out to touch the light and the magnetic force pulled him through. He swam and swirled through the heavenly aura, finally able to rest after all of the nightmare fuel he took in that day.

When he crossed through to the other side, Joe found his arms trapped in a straightjacket and that he was in a white padded cell with only a small hole in the door to look out of. He struggled and fought in his bonds, but the jacket was too tight and he was too exhausted from the sedatives he received.

A doctor and a nurse could be heard having a conversation outside the cell. “Read me the summary on this one,” said the doctor.

The nurse flipped through the papers on a clipboard and read off, “Joseph Robert Fields, age thirty-five. Was admitted to psychiatric care after inhaling a large amount of PCP dust. He has shown signs of aggression and had to be given fifteen milliliters of sedatives. Previous criminal history includes aggravated mayhem, property damage, assault and battery, and aggravated kidnapping.”

Did Joe hear them right? PCP dust? Was the whole temple scattered with it? Knowing that he had been had caused the newest patient to thrash around in his cell and scream infinite curse words, to which the doctor and nurse backed away from the door and allowed him to work out his pent up violence. It may have been a while before he did, but anything was better than dealing with this sick son of a bitch in any capacity.