Free Placebo Junkies by J.C. Carleson Page A

stand it,
she tells you. She’ll just be working in the next room over.
Don’t worry,
she says,
I’ll hear you if you scream.
    Normal reaction? Shit-can the stuff, tell the lady to go fuck herself.
    It’s survival instinct. Fight or flight, lizard-brain stuff. Fear is the gift that keeps on giving—an anniversary present from the slithering and slope-skulled creatures we evolved from. The willingness to say
fuck this scene
and run is what kept your Neanderthal ancestors off the sharp end of a woolly mammoth tusk.
    But guinea pigs have to turn it all off, ignore all those millions of years of hard-knock-life lessons.
Hey, Great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma, awesome job outrunning all those saber-toothed tigers, but I got this under control now.
And that’s hard to do at first. You have to figure out ways to psych yourself up, to walk
toward
the tiger. It takes a while, sometimes, to be able to do that.
    And that’s how I met Jameson.
    I was in the hallway, leaning against a wall while I waited for the shaking to stop, and for my stomach to stop heaving and lurching like two sea monsters humping. I was trying, but not succeeding, to talk myself into going back into the room I’d just fled. I was not in a happy place.
    I may have been yelling something about sadistic bastards and torture chambers. It’s kind of a blur.
    To my left was a door. Behind the door were a doctor, a nurse, and a human skid mark of a lab administrator, all waiting for me to override my fear, my disgust, my pride, and my last vestiges of self-preservation, and walk back in to submit to the rest of their program.
    I was trying, I really was. Just maybe not hard enough. “You can tell Dr. Jekyll in there I’m not swallowing any more of his poison!” I may have yelled. “Fucking barbarians!” I wasn’t really in the right state of mind for this kind of thing yet.
    It’s that mind-body connection people are always yapping about. Your body won’t consent until your mind signs off on the plan.
    Anyway, Jameson, who I’d never even seen before, walked over, parked himself next to me, and offered me a stick of gum, which I did not accept. Candy from strangers and all that. “You’re only making it harder on yourself,” he said. “They get paid either way. You, on the other hand, do not.”
    “Yeah? Well, I wouldn’t go back in there for all the money in the world.” I remember spitting on the floor, just missing his feet. “Someone needs to tell Nurse Stalin in there to go back to her gulag.” I raised my voice and turned my head to yell at the closed door. “Go find some puppies to drown!”
    I was going through kind of a rough patch then—not exactly feeling friendly.
    But Jameson grinned. “Well, aren’t you feisty? Let me guess. You’re new around here.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Look,” he said. “Do what you need to do, but I’ve been hanging around this place longer than pretty much anyone here, including the doctors. It may not seem like it, but you can actually make a pretty decent life for yourself here if you figure out how the system works. I can walk you around, show you the ropes a little, if you want.”
    Looking back, now I know that was just Jameson doing his den-mother, right-in-the-middle-of-everything thing. At the time, though, he made me nervous. I couldn’t figure out his game. “Why?” I asked him. “What do you want from me?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know. You seem interesting, I guess—you’ve got that whole feral, waifish thing working for you. And you curse like a champion. I always admire people who swear well.” He unwrapped a piece of gum and stuffed it in his mouth. “Besides, look around. This neighborhood is starting to go downhill. Like I said, I’m an old-timer here, so maybe I just have a vested interest in welcoming the right kind of people.”
    I followed his glance and looked around. He had my attention, if only because it had never even occurred to