THE EXTREME PSYCHOLOGICAL

IDIOSYNCRASIES OF HYMAN R. EPSTEIN

An Interesting Supernatural Speculation
from the Vaults of Cosmos Compository

by

Peter "Lou" D'Alessio

Copyright © 2013

The summer sun had just dropped below the horizon.  As evening gloom transformed to the dark of a moonless night, a gentle knock on Doctor Martin Kiely’s door told him his last patient of the day had arrived.  Kiely hadn’t been certain the lad would return.  He had some serious problems, great difficulty in expressing himself, and there was always the uncertainty of whether or not the Swiss cheese insurance plan he’d been forced into purchasing would even cover these badly-needed sessions.  Dr. Kiely had learned through many years of doctoring that medicine for the mind was often more important than medicine for the body.

His wife opened the office door and showed the boy in.  The Doctor could tell that the frail young lad unnerved her.  That didn’t matter to Kiely; the love had gone out of their relationship years ago.  She was little more than a secretary he slept with now.  She nodded at them and left.

“Good evening, Hy.  Are you well?”

The emaciated youth pushed his heavy horn-rimmed glasses back up his nose and looked at the psychiatrist.  “Eh.  Some nights better than others.  Tonight’s okay.”  He slid down in the chair.  “We got eight sessions left after tonight, Doc, that’s all ’bamacare pays for.  Is that enough for you to help me?  I’m desperate, Doc.  I need help… bad!  I’m starving.”

Dr. Kiely pushed into his high-backed leather seat, which squeaked like the rusted hinges on an old door.  He had nothing but sympathy for this pitiable young man who was struggling so hard to find himself after his horrendous, traumatic experience.

“Hymie, it’s not like me putting a stitch on a cut.  Your cure may take months, years even…or we can get lucky and cure you today.  Your case is very unusual.”  The doctor leaned forward to bring his face closer to his patient.  “Young man, when did you eat last?”

“I tried two nights ago, and it was a friggin’ disaster!”

“What happened?”

“I… I ordered a pizza with mushroom and onion!”  The young man lowered his head, sheepishly.  “I told them, ‘NO GARLIC.’  Sure enough, there was none on the pizza.  But the sauce was loaded with it.  The first bite got here.”  He put his finger on his Adam’s apple.  “It got here and wouldn’t go up or down.  Bang!  Out like a light.  I eventually spit it up, but wow, I was a gigantic hive for the rest of the night!  Bella and Ollie were laughing all night.  Some friends!  You think they would have…”

“Hy, you know better than that.  Why even take the chance?”

The young man rolled his eyes.  “All my life I loved pizza.  Now?  Can’t even be in the same room with it!  All my new friends, they’re devouring everything, no problems.  You know what that feels like, Doc?”

“How about your girlfriend?”

“Nada.  I try and try.  Not a thing.  I would have thought if I could do it with anyone, I could do it with her!  Nope.”  Dr. Kiely shook his head sympathetically and motioned for Hy to continue.  “Some of the guys said the same thing you did last session, Doc.”

“And?”

“And… I did!  Didn’t want to, but I did.  I went out and got a hooker.  At least I think she was a hooker.  I was pretty close to NYU.”

“And?”

“And I’m out fifty bucks and still nothing.  And now I’ve got another problem.  I’m running out of cash.”

“You still haven’t found a job?”

“Hey, there just ain’t that many jobs for night workers.  Do you know how hard it is to talk people into inviting you into their homes at three in the morning because you’re collecting for Goodwill?”

The Doctor leaned back in the leather chair, looking very pensive.  He raised his first finger in the air, indicating he had an idea.  He picked up a phone, hit a number on the speed dial, and looked at his patient with pressed lips.  Hy could faintly hear the phone ring on the other end.

“Hello, Sam?” the Doctor asked, then paused.  “Yeah, ha ha.  Hey, I’m in a session, but I need some help here.  Didn’t you tell me your night guy in the morgue just quit?  I have a very nice young man here, Hyman Epstein, who is looking for solid night work and actually prefers the night shift…”  Kiely pulled the phone away from his face and rested the mouth piece against his chest.  “It’s a Catholic Hospital!  Will that be a problem for you?”

The young man shook his head.  “A Nun with a Star of David, maybe.  But…”

The Doctor put the phone back to his face.  “So Sam, how about… sure!”  He looked at his patient.  “Can you stop by after our session?  Oh, great.  ’Bout ten.  Good!  Love to the wife.  I owe you.”  He hung up the phone, scribbled an address and the name “Sam Watson” on the back of one of his cards, and handed it to the young man.  “Will it bother you to work with dead people, Hy?”

“Hey, some of my best friends are dead.  Thanks, Doc.”

“I think you’ll like Mr. Watson.  Once he gets you trained, you’ll be on your own down there.”  The Doctor took his eyes off the young man and looked down at the desktop.  “Hy, this is a bit unethical—immoral, perhaps—but I think necessary in your case.  After a day or two of training, you’ll be alone down there all night long.  Nobody ever comes down at night to check on the dead.”

“I think I know where this is heading, Doc.  And I don’t…”

The Doctor looked up, nodding.  “Okay, okay, Hymie, I know.  It’ll seem weird at first, but… I want you to practice on the corpses.”

The words were met with stunned silence.  “Doc…  That’s…”

“I know, but… I can’t see another way!  You won’t talk to me about your real problem… and you know that’s true.  The basis of your psychosis is something you won’t talk about because it’s so embarrassing.  The only option you’ve left me is to treat the symptoms.  What else can I do, Hyman?  If you’ve got any other suggestions, I’ll happily listen.”

The lad looked down.  “I know, I know…  Look, if any of the guys find out, they’ll bust on me even more!”

Kiely nodded in understanding.  “Do you want to spend eternity passing out every time you try to eat, and fail with every woman you try to get into?”

The young man shook his head and rose.  “Time’s up, Doc.  I’ll think about what we talked about.  I’ll tell Mister Watson that you said hello.”

He exited, leaving the door open.  Kiely’s wife pushed her face in and shook her head as she pulled the door closed.

“God,” Kiely said to himself, “I really wish she’d hurry up and die.”

* * * * *

Epstein’s next two visits were stressful for both Doctor Kiely and his patient.  The lad stammered and stuttered, made excuses, even broke down and cried, but never spoke of what they both suspected was the root of Hymie’s evil.  Meanwhile, he was losing more and more weight and looking more and more insipid.  Hyman had taken the job at the morgue, and Mr. Watson had called Kiely to sing the night worker’s praises… and to tell the Doctor to please cure the kid; Hyman was a soul worth saving.

But by the lad’s seventh visit, when Kiely’s annoying wife let Hy into the office with her usual disdain and contempt for young Epstein, the Doctor immediately saw a change in his patient.  For the first time, Epstein showed disdain instead of indifference for the woman’s attitude by mumbling some obscenity under his breath.  He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t frowning either.  He seemed a little less pale, a little less hungry perhaps.

“Well?”  Kiely peered over the glasses low on his nose.

“Well, what?” replied Hymie, pushing his horn-rimmed glasses up his nose.

“Well, what happened?  It’s all over your face, Hymie.  Something has changed.”

The slender young fellow crossed his hands on his laps and a sly smile crossed his lips.  Kiely’s wife had nagged him once into vacationing in Paris.  While she was terrorizing the shops of Paris, he had gone to the Louvre and observed DaVinci’s Mona Lisa.  Epstein was looking like an exact copy.

“I did it, Doc!” he said softly but firmly.  “A beautiful young blonde about eighteen years old.  She came in around two with a couple of .45 bullet holes in her head.”

The Doctor leaned across his broad, glass-protected maple desktop.  “And the blood?”

“Never even got lightheaded.  I guess working in the cooler area of the morgue got me by it.  I could struggle with my fears with no one watching how pathetic I was, I guess.  I stared at her and her blood for a while, and I remembered being in a Doctor’s office as my pop had blood drawn.  Bam!  I went out like a candle caught in the wind at the first sight of his blood, and every time since.  But not this time.  I stared and stared at her… and then bam!”

“Fear of blood!  I remember you hinting at that in our first session.”

“Yeah, well.  Passing out in front of all those macho guys at a tiny trickle of blood—boy, talk about embarrassing!  They’d hammer me about that for months, and they’d never let me forget it.  ‘Pussy Epstein’ they’d call me.  My stomach turned every time I tried to feed just thinking about it.  And being with my girlfriend?  Forget it!  But I think I’m past all that now.”

Kiely threw his hands in the air as if Epstein had scored a winning touchdown.  The basis for Hyman’s psychosis had been an unusually strong fear of the sight of blood.  It had overwhelmed the lad and filtered into every aspect of his existence.  But like so many things floating loose in the human mind, this young fellow could not bring himself to speak about it, no matter what price he had to pay.  How sad, to see the human being trapped within itself.  Kiely had helped a being transcend and become whole.

“Doc, I stared at her for some time, her soft blonde hair all matted with blood, and it didn’t repulse me, ya know?  Before I knew it, I was on top and bing, bam, boom!  It was a done deal.  A little cold, but a done deal.  Then I went from body to body and did it with every one of them!  A little cold too, but acceptable.  I did it!  Tonight, I’m stopping by Rachael’s house—”

“Your girlfriend?”

“My girlfriend’s house for a quick hot one before work!”

“Hyman Epstein, I hereby pronounce you whole!” Kiely declared with a broad smile.  “You did a great job, Hymie!”

“Gee, Doc.  I… I never really did it with a living...   I…”

“You will, son, you will.”  The doctor extended his hand, but before Epstein could take it, his wife threw the office door open and shouted “time’s up!”  Hymie looked at the Doctor.

“Don’t let me see you here again, Hymie.  And don’t worry, just follow your instincts.”

The frail youth rose from his seat, mumbled “instincts” under his breath, and walked off into the night, pulling the office door gently closed behind him.  Kiely sat for about half a minute staring at the closed door, wondering if what he’d done was morally correct and if Epstein had indeed been cured.

He was awakened from his reverie by a strange gurgling noise.  It was followed by a few seconds of silence, then a heavy thump, like a body falling to the floor.

Kiely rose slowly and proceeded to the office door.  With some fear, he slowly opened it and peered out.  He could see the top of his wife’s desk.  It was clear of its blotter and the papers usually strewn about it.  The doctor stepped carefully to the edge of the desk.  He leaned over it—and there, with the horror of death on her face, lay his wife.  There were two teeth puncture marks on her neck a few inches below her ear, with thin trickles running down of what little blood was left in her body.

“I’ll be damned,” Kiely thought.  “He is cured!”

THE END

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