The Mars Jacket by Jacob Malewitz

The Mars Jacket

by Jacob Malewitz

Final Draft

You can call it what you want—just don’t call it a psych ward.

In this ward was a girl whom I hated more than anything. She sat like the devil on her throne. Hell had a place for her, though I was sure she thought she fought on the side of good. This is my story of finding peace in the land of the insane. She will play a part. Evil always does.

She will go unnamed, though I can give some details on the devil of my world. She chain-smoked cigarettes, even bummed a few from me before I ran out of money for the bad habit. I knew from watching her that she worked twice as hard as I did on everything. She would never quit. I hated that in other people; I hated her more than anyone else because of it.

I liked watching TV, and found a show about the Solar System and religiously watched it with dreams of making it to the colonized planets. The Jupiter magnet stations had revolutionized space travel. Anything to do with science confused me, and reminded me of skipping classes at high school whenever I could. But this was different: the television shows opened up a world to me—and I wanted more.

A holovid came on about terraforming on Mars—the discovery of water and oxygen. One day, I knew I would be there. I just didn’t expect it to come as soon as it did.

I walked out of the TV room bored, made my way down the hallway, and then I saw her. An Irish girl with fiery red hair who seemed cute at first, but hid an ugly side which few people knew about.  

I hated her. She was my definition of what a person should strive to be. Her eyes could cut through you as though she were looking right into you, looking for something she could grasp, anything to give you an advantage over perfection.

So I decided to attack her. She had that surprised look, like she was an innocent. It just seemed the right thing to do. She ran away; the nurses came; I smiled that weak smile which seemed to echo my madness. “I belong in a hospital,” I yelled. “Not here!” I was tackled and when my head hit the carpeted floor it bounced and I saw a sea of men in white all around me.

I began to pray out loud.

I lost track of time as the leaves changed color. The people outside were living real lives, but no one in here was. She was a prime example. I wanted to end her. I recall the first time we met, she had decided upon the first meeting I needed no therapy—just drugs injected every few hours. I was lethargic for some time.

After my last attack, I expected new drugs, filled this time with more of that mysterious liquid. I caught her eye occasionally; even tried to mess with her mind by opening doors for her and offering to shake hands and give hugs.

I watched a lot of TV.

Surprisingly, no changes were made after my attack. She came in the room, pointed to me, and said something under her breath. I stood up and offered to shake her hand, then took it away when hers was extended. “Madame President, I implore you to send me in. I know I can do it.”

“Guy,” she said my name for the first time ever, “I want you to help Judy here fit in.” I looked, and there was a girl with a stack of books in her hands, her mascara running down her face as the tears came streaming down. She dropped the books, ran over to me, and gave me a big hug.

“Madame President, I have decided to take this mission. But it will cost you one pack of gum. When I’m done chewing it, I require a second pack of gum, this time to clean my teeth. You know me, I hate brushing.”

She just looked at me, and I saw her face holding back a smile. This, the same woman I hated and attacked, was holding off a grin. “How about a pack of smokes, Guy.”

“One cigarette is a deal.”

“I said a pack.”

“You said one and you can’t take that back.”

She shook her head, looked to one of the nurses, handed me one cigarette, and left Judy and I to converse.

“Do you like Mars?” she said.

“Absolutely. But I don’t like the French.”

“You can stop going now. You trying to impress me?”

I sat down and pointed to the chair next to me. “Tell me all about Mars.”

She sat, opened a book, and began to show me pictures. She explained that the water created on Mars had curative effects on mental patients. I wasn’t a mental patient so I didn’t think it applied, then I remembered I was a mental patient and it did apply.

“So with this water, I can get better?”

“That’s just the beginning. It has an effect like a drug, but is much healthier for mind and body.”

            I could already see the job and the house and the pretty white flowers, and maybe even a fence – a black fence. The vision came to me like a storm. I shook my head, and tried to focus, looking at the pictures of Mars. Could I move there? Live again?

“And it can take you off any addiction you have.  Alcohol, cigarettes, whatever.”

That reminded me of the cigarette, I walked out of the room and went to smoke mine outside. She made a noise, disturbed by me just walking out, but that was the way a person had to act in those days.

Outside was Chang, an Asian man who loved the Pall Malls which I bummed from him on occasion. He really didn’t like me or anyone else, just sat outside smoking cigarettes. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with him, except he didn’t shower enough. I wished at that moment that I had his life—one of sanity where you could pretend to be crazy but in truth be sane.

I lit the cigarette, we exchanged nods, and as I smoked it I began to think of Mars. It wouldn’t take long for them to figure out it could help me, the most violent patient at the ward, to get better fast. “Say, Guy,” Chang said, the smoke dancing in the air between us. “I thought you quit.”

“You know, once you quit you can always start again and then quit.” He looked at me perplexed. “I mean, I just like the calming effects of drugs.”

“Like coke?”

“No. Not like coke.”

I left before the conversation went any further. I had a feeling there was more to him being here than faking an illness. Mental patients bought more drugs than anyone in my experience. I looked back once, on my way to the door, and saw he had a big grin on his face. When I went to Mars I wouldn’t miss him. I wouldn’t miss her, either.

I went back to the TV room, saw Judy was sleeping, and carefully took the book on Mars from her hands. I read it, noting everything, and decided to draft a letter on why I would go to Mars.

I had been keeping a journal for some time, but writing the letter was harder. It took patience. I wrote it ten times, went outside, burned the last one, and bummed a smoke of Chang. “How would you write a letter to her, Chang?”

 “Me no write. Just cook.”

I let the smoke fill my lungs, coughed, then tossed it away. “You waste good cig.” He walked over to it, put it out, then placed it back in his pack.

When I walked in, I saw her standing by my door. “Have you ever been to Mars, Guy?”

I wasn’t sure how it happened. I knew I was the craziest of the patients at the ward. Politics kept me there: I would be her biggest success. She offered me a pack of smokes and, much to my chagrin, said she was going to Mars too.

            The Jupiter rod wasn’t much to look at. I didn’t understand it completely, but when the magnet turned at an angle it would shoot a ship at a rapid pace through the solar system.

            We went on board a vessel that lifted us to the space station. Then, we entered into a different ship—a GM model Aerocruiser—and after a few moments of sitting we followed the path of another ship. The shock of gravity pushing against your body felt like trying to drive through a tree in a car; it didn’t budge. The Mars station came into sight within seconds, and I got a glimpse at the massive structures on the ground and the spreading greenness and the spots of water covering the planet. It wasn’t the Mars I had known growing up, this was a new planet built by man. 

            I gathered myself, took off the straps, and began to walk around the ship. I was restless. The gravity was different on the ship, and I began to bounce up and down utilizing it. I went higher and higher with each push, as I rose my hands came close to the top of the ship. I continued, rising and rising, gaping out the window at the solar system, enjoying playing with gravity.

            She came over to me, eyes like steel, and with that I felt her presence immediately—that evil side of her coming out.

“Stop.”

I caught her gaze. “But I’m having fun.”

            She looked to the other nurses and gave a signal with her hand, holding two fingers down. They wrestled me to the ground. I nailed one with a leg, then the other tagged me with a stun gun and my body stopped responding. She walked over to me, put a needle in my arm, and said something to them. They put me in a straitjacket. My tongue was slipping out of my mouth and saliva running down my face.

            They kept me in the straitjacket the rest of the trip. I was in and out of consciousness. Every time I woke, they injected me with more numbing drugs. I asked what they were, and I received no answer. I tried to think of something clever to say, just couldn’t spit the words out.

            We hit Mars. I woke as the ship bounced off the ground once and landed. We went into a gravity room—to adjust our bodies to Mars—and the place smelled like it had been washed over and over again to get some sick smell out.  I walked out of the room, wishing I had never entered, with the jacket still on. I play jumped once, just to catch her gaze, but she ignored me.

            As we walked out I felt hands touching my back, the straps of the jacket loosening, and a rush of air touch my back. “We expect no more problems,” she said, “but if you force us we will do what we must.”

            “Kinda’ like telling the dog not to eat his own food, right?”

            “You’re not stupid. Don’t do stupid things.”

            When they finally took the jacket off, it was like listening to an old ballad on a rainy night. I didn’t want to smile, didn’t want her to see it, but I did.

            I looked to the red skies of Mars through the glass panels, finding solace and peace in the view. We reached the domed city of Avalon, a place that looked like a small New York built only of skyscrapers. I walked with them at first, though they seemed as lost in the images as I was. So I began to trail behind, catching glances, but they were intrigued by the city. I found that life was about surprises—big ones—so I wandered off, looking for something to peak my curiosity.

            I found it in a young girl pushing twenty, with curly hair sticking out of a baseball cap, sketching a building. Her eyes intense, the way she held the pencil made her look like some medieval scribe pushing the pencil against the thoughts of stopping.  I just stood there staring, hoping she wouldn’t see me.

I noticed when they tackled me, pushed me to the ground, and took me away, that she had not been fazed in her drawing.

We went to a clinic, a white building offset by the smiley faces that covered the interior. I walked down a hallway, looking at the pictures patients had drawn, and thinking of the girl in the baseball cap who seemed content doing things that offered no material award. I envied that; money ruled me when I was sane. I intended to make a lot when I was released. When is a big word for a man in and out of a straitjacket.

            She came up to me, smiling, and I knew I was screwed the second she gave me a hug as though we were friends. Her eyes met mine; the resounding evil made me contemplate too many things to divulge. It gave me goose bumps. She had something in mind. “We’re going to do water treatments now. It may hurt. It will be very hot, and very cold. It should make you feel better.”

            She was throwing me a curveball by trying to speak to my good side. “As long as I don’t have to see you anymore, I’ll be happy.”

            She showed no signs of anger, of being human.

            A blue light that reflected off all the metal lit the room. It touched down over my head, making it look like I had a halo. I thought of angels and saints, and this was weird for me. I never was religious except when questioning my own existence or in moments of madness.

They strapped me to a chair, put goggles over my eyes, moved a device which looked like it shot missiles over my head, and waited for her signal to go. She just stood there. The devil made no move, making me curious as to what she was thinking. “Care to strike a deal for me soul, too?”

            She nodded. The water came shooting out at me. It struck directly in my face, pummeling me like some old boxer, back and forth in spurts; it enveloped me and covered my clothes. Some got around the goggles into my eyes. I started to moa.  They slowed the water, and I told them to turn it back on. I had to have my cure. The water came at me again, blanketing my face. I could feel my hands shaking and the welts beginning to form. The water stopped.

            “That’s enough for today, Guy,” she said.  “How do you feel?”

            I didn’t want to tell her, but I felt rejuvenated. I could still feel the shockwaves in my body and hot water was in my eyes. “I feel bitchin’.”

They fed me. At those times I felt like a child. They cut up everything so I wouldn’t choke, mentioning an incident with another patient, and gave me a muscle-numbing drug. Yet I couldn’t fall asleep. No matter what I did—drinking water, pacing the room—I seemed to have no more energy than before, and my eyes refused to shut.

            The water had changed me.

            The rush of energy reminded me of doing cocaine; you feel you can do anything. I paced the room again and again, until I grew desperate. Scared. I wasn’t sure how I was feeling, but for the first time I asked for another shot.

            The nurse, a man too old to be a nurse, replied, “We can’t. You risk damaging your heart if we give you another shot.”

            “Something is wrong. I can feel it in my mind. I’m not supposed to feel like this.” I heard footsteps and the heels. It was her.

How loud was I speaking? I wondered.

She went behind the desk and smiled. Just that was enough to make me pretend to be tired. I told them I needed some shut eye before she could open her mouth. I noted what had happened to me in my journal, which I had named The Mars Jacket for my own reasons. One day, I decided to use this journal. It would be my greatest creation; something money could never buy. I crossed a few T’s and dotted some I’s, but did little real writing. The point of The Mars Jacket was to detail a life—but I had no idea how to do that quite yet.

            Done writing, I just closed my eyes, pretended sleep for the rest of the night. They came in, occasionally, to check on me, making sure I hadn’t hanged myself or escaped. Where could I escape on Mars? I had one idea at that time, one that came to me after hours of thinking.

            The next day, I made sure I asked what was in the water; I had to know. “Its filled with minerals,” a nurse told me. “You’ll likely get more energy. Test subjects have showed tremendous strength after using the drug. But the side effects make it hard to market. We believe what it does best is make mental patients hopeful.”

            Test subjects? Tremendous strength? “You’re hooking me on this drug. You know that, right?”

            “It’s not a drug. It’s just water.”

            For days they kept me off of it. Somehow she knew it would torture me. I needed the water now more than anything else, and it was all I thought about. Cocaine was a weak eye ointment compared to this stuff.

            Finally, the treatments began again. They knocked me with just cold water the second time that smelled like it had been boiled then cooled to freezing levels. My lips were practically falling off when they were done; my hands in a death embrace. I was just trying to hold on. And I knew she was having a ball.

I had to find a way out.

She approached me after, started asking me some questions. “And we think your success will transmit into the next patient.”

“Why don’t you just give him speed? At least you won’t lie about the nature of it.”

“This is helping you. Can’t you see that? The water has done more than any shock therapy ever has. You’re not attacking people—attacking me—you’ve made no attempts to wander off. You’re doing relatively well.”

“Because I might as well smoke crack. What will I do when you release me?”

“You will be put on medication, Guy. Does that sound so bad? Leaving?”

It didn’t. But I didn’t intend to wait or let her win.

I threw food at her the next day in the lobby. They all just stared at me as I yelled every curse I could think of at her. She was fazed.

They didn’t throw me to the ground; instead they approached slowly and tried to calm me done, giving me an option.

Why were they treating me different? I wondered. Then it came to me: they wanted a success, so they could continue the tests on more patients.

I wasn’t going to let her win. The next morning I started a fight with the new patient, who I assumed was the one they were going to test the Mars water on. I hated myself for doing it. As my fist pounded against his head and he started to squirm on the ground, I had to let up. If it did anything it proved I was still a man, had a voice.

My next water treatment they had to stop because I started screaming when some of the water went into my mouth. It was oozing liquid already, and they had to roll me over on my gut as I emptied my stomach. I got up, looked at her, and smiled that smile which I knew would cause me grief..

They brought me a new doctor—one from Mars—and he changed the water treatments to twice a day. This created a rift for me: Who would I hate and despise now? Would they finally take the devil away from me? I had created a world here—begun to like the music, the pain—though I questioned whether I was losing my mind. 

            I heard an argument in the lobby while I sat outside my room and it was about me.

            “This is my experiment. Mine! I worked too hard to have some government lackey take over for me.”

            “That’s the problem. It’s not about you—“

            “And the last thing I am going to do is give up.”

            “I’m not asking you to give up.” They stopped for a moment. “Perhaps we could continue this in my office.”

            “There is nothing left to discuss.”

            “I think there is.”

            I waited, patiently, and heard what I expected, a door slamming. One man had broken her, finally, and it hadn’t been me. She was evil, that I knew, but how persuasive could she be? The odds were against her now. The devil would leave me be.

            I thought it would be easy after that, but I was still hooked on the treatments. They gave me a rush that few things could compare to. It was like flying down a mountain on the way to your death. You felt that rush, the air breezing by, but knew you were doomed.

            I sat there, next to my room door, playing with my fingers, checking the skin on my face for marks, and there were some mild ones. Another man would have been upset over the marks, but not a man locked in a ward absent of a sex life anyways.

What mattered was how this next doctor would handle me. At least I knew the devil—knew her motivation—but this man was a mystery.  I would have to play my cards right.

            The next day, they gave me my first ever magnetic shock therapy. Magnets. I figured out what they had been arguing about: They were going to stop the water treatments. How would I survive?

            They put the magnets on either side of my head and the force, much like gravity, changed everything in my mind. It was a jolting experience, and they watched as I grimaced in pain. They took notes on it. I forgot my name. I forgot the hate that I had lived on. I could feel myself slowing being taken apart. I started saying my random thoughts out loud, and this seemed to interest them. I was losing my mind and they were taking notes. The hate returned to me then.

For a time, I walked in circles around the lobby. I figured out who I was, remembered my weathered face by looking in the mirror; remembered I couldn’t live without the water. I wasn’t going to play into them. They knew I would try to escape. I needed a plan.

I remembered everything. I wrote as much in The Mars Jacket as I could, noting every nuance of my life—like the treatments, or the attacks—and put them on the page.

Every time I walked around, the doctors all stared at me. I would look inside the doors, at the people who would soon share my fate. What were they doing to us?

I looked to her, standing at the edge of the hallway, obviously thinking of ways to get more treatments, while I contemplated escaping the institution. I refused to give up all the joy and pain that came with memory.

I went up to the new doctor, who wore odd leather clothing underneath his white jacket, and asked for more water treatments. “Why would you want to do that?” he asked.

He might have already known it was addictive. I had to play this right. “Because it was helping me.”

“And the magnetic treatments aren’t?”

“No, they hurt me. I couldn’t remember who I was.”

“The side effects may hurt you, but the process has a scientific basis for working. I will give you one more water treatment, see if your symptoms subside, but I can’t keep giving it to you if it does nothing.” He pointed to her. “Your previous doctor will supervise it.”

I had let the devil back into my life. She caught my gaze as he talked to her about me, nodding, and there was that wicked smile. She knew I was hooked; that evil look subsided, contrasting her nature. She approached me.

“Guy, how are you feeling?”

“Bitchin’, Madame President.”

I leaned in, said the next words quietly. “I just think they gave up to fast on the water treatments.”

She nodded. “Well, if I have it my way you’ll keep getting them.”

“Do you think they have addictive aspects?”

She just stood there, letting an uncomfortable silence consume us for a minute. “No, I don’t. Water isn’t inherently addictive.”

“But the minerals of Mars. Don’t you think they have odd qualities?”

“I think that they clear your mind of excess thoughts. The effects, technically, could be addictive, Guy. But so what if they are?”

Not caring made her who she was; every other man or woman was born with it. Some hid it away in the closet, only showing it at the most human of moments. Some forgot it—like her—and never could find it again. I gave her my best fake smile and walked away.

They strapped me to the chair, my thoughts beginning to jump, still healing from the magnetic treatments, and I watched her position herself where she would see the water come down at me.

            It was odd that the new doctor was in the room. She noted him with eyes of disdain, and as the cold water slammed into my head with amazing force, it became apparent that he intended to see what the water did to me.

            The water released me from all the worries and pain. They slowed the water when my lip began to bleed. “No! Continue!” I yelled. And they did. It was absolving me of everything and I had to have more. Then, something went wrong with my mind: I lost my sense of place, my hate, my inborn love of living; it all turned into a storm of thoughts.

            When the water stopped, I somehow found the ability to make it look like I wasn’t there. It was a magician’s trick. I realized they could see me, but I thought they couldn’t. I started laughing out loud, which drew some curious looks so I bit my lip. The blood went into my mouth. I forgot where I was, who I was, what I feared, who I hated.

The new doctor nodded to her. They wheeled out the magnetic instruments. The pieces of metal would destroy me. I thought perhaps I could buy some time, by becoming invisible. It didn’t work. I tried again. They were all addressing each other in a conversational tone—and there I was, scared to death, and they were chatting.                 

“No!”

 I threw off the restraints with everything I had left. I looked up and saw the metal pieces flying in the air. Where had that strength come from? She stepped back. Two nurses came at me. The doctor had a needle ready, and they converged on me. I grabbed one of the magnets and slammed it into the head of one nurse. He hit the ground, holding his hand against the blood coming out. “Holy mother!” He yelled.  I surveyed the room. There was the new doctor, her, and two more nurses..

The first one had a stun gun. And not used to fighting, I got shocked and hit the ground, my muscles convulsing. But it didn’t immobilize me; I could still move. I jumped up and connected with a punch. He hit the ground, eyes closed. The new doctor tossed his clipboard to the ground and ran out the door. There was one nurse left. I heard footsteps behind me, dodged, and heard the curses of the man I thought was out. He threw his fists at me in a rage. I took a few blows; it didn’t faze me. I kicked him in the gut and his momentum went against the door. Before I had time to think, the last nurse jumped on my back and tried to choke me. I moved around for a few seconds, my eyes glazing over, then used my legs to throw him against the wall as hard as I could.

It was just she and I. The devil and me. “You know,” she said, “that strength of yours is liable to get someone hurt.”

“I think three nurses would attest to that, Madame President.” I walked to her, stared into those eyes that should have reflected light but didn’t, and smiled. “You know, I’ve been waiting for this for a year … and now that I have it I don’t really care.”

“You hate me?”

“Yes, but in my experience, God repays all debts in his way.”

I walked to the door quickly, making sure there were no more nurses or the new guy who probably wet himself. There was a group of them running to the room. Even with the strength, I wouldn’t be able to stop them from getting the needle into my arm, and once that happened it was lights out, game over. My only chance was to turn invisible, to walk through them untouched; to do the one right thing at the right time in my life. I focused, opened the door, looked back to her. She was just staring at the stun gun. I decided I should save my invisibility for another time. I grabbed the stun gun and walked out the door.

I really surprised the first nurse I stunned; he fell to the ground immediately. The second nurse had a needle, so I rushed him and the shock sent him down too. There was only one nurse left and the new doctor, so I ran towards him but he had a stun gun, too, and it touched my arm. I rolled and quickly got up. I didn’t have a lot of time. The new doctor tried a pathetic punch, and when I shoved his arm up I heard a pop from his shoulder.

“Shit, Guy!” he said but I was already running down the hallways to my room before security could find me. I grabbed the only object I cared about anymore—The Mars Jacket—and continued my descent down the hallway.

“Guy, you can’t.” It was her voice, the voice I so wanted to forget, and she was running towards me. What she had in mind I didn’t know. I kept going. “Guy, you won’t be able to get the water anywhere else! You will die out there.”

I hoped she was wrong and I ran out the door, down the stairs, past a security guard who said something I couldn’t make out, and I was in Avalon city. I went as far away from the clinic as I could.

Once I reached that point, I waited for the police sirens, anything, yet no sounds ever came. I had no money, clothes that I had been in and out of for weeks, and I was in a foreign city. I decided to go the government reservoir on Mars.  From what I had heard it was outside the city limits. I would go there, and I would get my fix of the Mars water. It was hard being addicted to anything, but this was a sublime addiction—as simple as smoking, as dangerous as crack, yet it was all I thought about.

I went outside the city through a series of doors that kept pressure in, and made my way to the rock reservoir which held the water. It wouldn’t be the same as having it shot through a tube, but it would be enough.

It was just a series of rocks surrounding a manmade hole filled with water with a tube connecting to it. The rocks had a redness to them, which on any other day would have reminded me of blood, but this time reminded me of a nice brick home where one could live.

I laid my journal on the ground and dove in.

It was as calming like a warm bath on the coldest of nights. In the water, I went as deep down as I could, not even thinking of oxygen. The Mars water rejuvenated my body—I needed no oxygen. In that moment, I could do anything: Climb a shaky cliff, kiss a girl too pretty to even look at me, anything.

I hit a rock as I fell downward, letting blood out and filling my wake with redness. I found myself being pulled by a current. It took me to a small air pocket.  When my lungs filled with oxygen, I felt the real rush of the water in my veins. I was covered in the elixir, the effects of which made me feel like a king. Suddenly, going downward, I had the urge to make love; important because in all my times at the clinics I had never sought a girl. Now I desperately wanted to share my bliss.

I calmed myself. I wasn’t thinking straight. The lack of oxygen was having an effect, and without getting back to the real world I would be just another dot on the map of history.

I surged upward. It took almost a minute, but the time flew by. I saw myself as an invisible king—no lands to my name, no wives, just a man with the odds against him.

I thought of the magnets shocking my brain, the addiction to the water, and her.  I wanted to forget. I made a few decisions in those final seconds before I reached the top.

When I got there, breathed in the oxygen, my clothes were wet and my eyes were open for the first time. It was an insane thing to do, but when I saw two men I approached them. I discussed who I was with them—who I wasn’t, too—and they drove me to a new city named New Lyons.

I went to a newspaper. A man with a balding head and a cigarette in his hand met me. First, I showed him picture I had kept in my journal. It was a boy I couldn’t recognize anymore, who didn’t deserve all the pain inflicted upon him.  And I showed him The Mars Jacket. Thought he could maybe find justice. 

He looked like the artist I had once desired to be. He had the job. I bet the girl too. I wondered exactly what he would do with my journal of pain, madness, and redemption. I let the mystery stand. It would be an enlightening experience for the world to see how they treated us, the insane.

“I just want one thing.”

“Money? I think we can manage it.”

“No, I want a cigarette.”

“Hell, I’ll give you one. But how ‘bout the whole pack?”

“You said one and you can’t take that back.”

End