Free The Shibboleth by John Hornor Jacobs Page B

says.
    â€œI don’t fancy the stares, Miss Rollie,” says the chinless wonder.
    â€œWhat was that you were saying?” I ask.
    He points a long, gnarly fingernail at my face and says, “Miss Rollie, I do not like this one. This one has no respect for the masters.”
    That sounds too suspiciously close to Riders for my taste. I pop up, standing as if some elephantine invisible hand has marionetted me erect on wobbly feet. I’d not care for the company of the Rider.
    I snatch up my tray and turn, but my brain jerks the old meatsuit clumsily, doped and sluggish and muddied like river water, and I nearly lose my balance reaching for the tray and then overcorrect my movements, clutching it slowly and straightening my back.
    â€œSeriously, Shreve. They’re just cocoa puffs; they’re not real zombies. Don’t get all feelings.”
    Feelings is definitely what I am. But I force myself to sit, replacing my tray.
    The rectangular pizza isn’t too bad.

SEVEN
    I don’t know what textbook or medical journal he’s read it in, but Dr. Sinequa seems dead set on using my name every single time he speaks to me.
    â€œSo, Shreve, can you tell me about the events leading up to the incident with—” He flips open the manila folder and adjusts the bifocals on his long, very white and very thin patrician nose. “Nurse Cheeves?”
    It’s a large office, one with a big bay window framing the nicely manicured grounds of the Tulaville mental hospital. I can hear lawn mowers buzzing out beyond the glass, the high-pitched whine of a blower, the angry growl of a WeedWhacker, and I imagine a team of soiled khaki-clad groundskeepers swarming over the morning-dewed lawns and clacking away with clippers at dense privet hedges, scrabbling and resistant, and scratching at their sweat-cooled brown skin. In my mind, one is trimming a hedge into topiary. A trumpeting elephant.
    There are big, dark, heavy bookcases lining the room and the faint whiff of tobacco, though the smell might be hallucinatory—shit, I don’t know. A wood-paneled wall is dedicated to diplomas, and I can’t help but wonder if any of them are from Bethesda Medical Center or Johns Hopkins or the University of Maryland. But they’re too far from my seat to read, and it’s hard to focus my eyes for long, anyway.
    Even if you are paranoid, that doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
    â€œCouple of bully boys in the general pop jumped me. Cracked my head on the ground.”
    His head bobs in acknowledgment, and he purses his lips. The little hair he’s got ringing his speckled cranium he lets run wild like a withered clown in a doctor’s smock. A humorless clown, for certain.
    â€œShreve, have you been having trouble sleeping?”
    â€œNo.”
    He raises his eyebrows. “Really?”
    â€œYes. Sleeping fine.”
    He scratches at the paper with a tooth-worn pencil. “Appetite? You look underfed.”
    â€œUsed to be a slave to the sweet stuff. Then a woman stuck a knife into my guts and ever since then …
meh.
” I try to sneer, and I can’t be sure if my face is really doing what I’m asking of it. “I eat enough. Just don’t get into it like a lot of the other boys in lockup.
Dans la chair, mais pas du corps.
”
    Dr. Sinequa raises his eyebrows and adjusts himself in his seat in a way that lets me think his balls are pinched or he’s got a terribly itchy hemorrhoid. I would take a run at him to get inside and see what he was writing but … yeah, the drugs. The doped sluggish tides of my blood.
    â€œSo, you speak French, do you?”
    Honestly, that just slipped out there. I know it and I don’t know it. “A little. I knew a guy.”
    He notates that.
    â€œWhen you assaulted Nurse Cheeves, what were you feeling?”
    I don’t like the way these questions are going. So I remain silent and look at the spots