The Seventh Floor Read online

  The Seventh Floor

  By

  James Murphy

  Cover Art by Koa Beam

  “God taught me how to forgive, and for that I am forever grateful”

  -James Murphy

  “We do not inherit the Earth from are ancestors. We borrow it from our children.”

  -Native American Proverb

  CHAPTER 1

  It was Friday, May 13th when James heard the sirens headed for his house. He knew who they were coming for, but James couldn’t bring himself to evade the authorities and disappear into the woods. It was evil that brought him to this point. Every time he got close to that big red Dodge with the ‘Hell Raiser’ license plate his skin crawled, his stomach turned, and his brain boiled over with hatred so profane he could think of nothing but murdering the bastard who owned it. It was his father’s truck.

  James’ father was a man’s man. His name was Wade, and he had a cast-iron jaw, and brawny shoulders. He stood 6’4” tall and weighed somewhere between 225 and 240 pounds, depending on how much steak he ate, and how much beer he drank the night before. He wore a short black pony-tail, and rarely a shirt, and was always seen with a 16-ounce can of Genesee beer in hand. Wade knew what sacrifice meant. He made plenty of them to give James the life he had, but on James’ 18th birthday, Wade sent him off to work in a slaughter house in Montana. It was James’ turn to make sacrifices. Working in that butcher shop he spent long days covered in blood stabbing beef with his butcher knife. The hours of labor didn’t bother him. The blood and smell of raw meat, though, he never got used to. Butchering his kill back home in the mountains of Appalachia was one thing. 11 hours of blood, and meat, and knife was something completely different. James kept up without complaining or showing remorse, but every man has his breaking point. And, young malleable minds snap louder than the patient, wise ones of old men. 5 years after arriving in Montana, he returned home. Home never seemed too antagonizing when James was a kid. Wade took him hunting and fishing, and his mother, Leah, always cooked and cleaned, taught him manners and made sure he did his homework. But, after spending those five years covered in blood something called to him, and demons chased him in his sleep. Every night he would wake up to adrenaline surging through his arms and hands with visions of blood soaked clothes and blood covered faces chasing him, crying “More, more, more.” One day in early May, James couldn’t take it any more, and he headed home

  When he got home, his parents could tell he wasn’t the same man that left five long years ago. His mother was worried from the look in his eyes. He spent his many waking hours wide-eyed with an expression of detachment. He looked bothered and unsettled. He had something on his mind, but Leah couldn’t empathize. She just worried and accused. Wade was too blunt and callous to see the trauma and delusions in James’ mind. James was the work horse for a gluttonous demand. He metabolized in the underbelly of consumption, and after five long years of being covered in blood, his concept of reality was disgusted. After that much time, in those conditions, every waking hour was uncomfortable and disheveled. His emotions were a ball of hate and anger. His spirit yearned for purification, and cleansing, but all that his id could produce was revenge. He woke up one Friday morning, and as he walked past Wade’s big red Dodge for the tenth time, he couldn’t hold back his hatred anymore. Everything that haunted James in Montana blew back to him like a breeze blowing the pungent stench of hate in his face. He walked in the house, and grabbed the heaviest thing he could get out the door. Adrenaline exploded in his veins, and he furiously hurled it towards the the windshield of his father’s pickup. As the 80 pound ceramic vat flew through the air, James felt emancipated, and time slowed down until it collided with the glass. The sound of the windshield shattering left James feeling hollow. As the 80 pound ceramic vat laid in the driver’s seat, James couldn’t believe what he had just done. He knew this wasn’t the answer, and he wasn’t even sure if destroying the truck’s windshield would make him feel better, but he just wanted one person to feel the torment and destruction he had felt after those five years in the slaughter house.

  James ran over the consequences in his head a couple of times, and as he played out the confrontation between himself and his father, it kept ending as one more bloody night with a knife in his hand. In fear of himself and in care of his father, James punched the numbers 9-1-1 into the touchtone phone. When the operator picked up all he could say was “Send the police.”

  James didn’t know this, but that big red Dodge was an object of evil from the grill to the tailgate. When James walked past it, shivers ran up his spine as though the truck was trying to intimidate him. There was a subliminal animosity between James, and all the smooth transitions and brilliant colors of that big red Dodge. Volumes of evil were hidden in its clearcoat. Wade bought it used after James left for Montana, bought it cheap. The thing came from a police auction after some moonshiners in Appalachia were caught by the state troopers, but what no one knew was that that truck had been connected with kidnap, rape, and murder for near ten years. It hissed of evil, and stunk of evil, but James was the only one who could feel the devil’s crippling wrath when they got near it. It was like a parasite festering with negative energy, and as James sat in the driveway looking at what he had done, the truck seemed to moan in pain. It seemed to resent James, and continued at its best to intimidate him with an icy embrace, and harsh frequencies. As it sat there with broken glass on the driver seat, the truck seemed to convulse in pain. It was as though the truck believed its saucy shell and brute strength was enough to seduce any man. But, before that Friday in early May, that truck never came face to face with James.

  The police arrived at James’ little mountain home. He never felt the urge to run until they began asking him questions. The fruition of his actions struck something in his consciousness. He knew he destroyed something beautiful, and now the consequences seemed real. James got up and began walking away. After ignoring the cop’s commands to stop they took him down with a taser. They radioed for an ambulance, and when it arrived, the paramedics put James in a straight jacket, and bound him in the back of the meat wagon. He screamed and raged. They slammed the doors, turned on the sirens, and bolted for the hospital. Inside, James was a ball of fire. So much hate and fury was burning within, and no sensual stimulation could calm what he was feeling. An icy grip of evil had set him ablaze, and James wanted it all to burn down to the ground. He threw down the gauntlet. He finally hit his breaking point and couldn’t take it anymore. He threw his punches, and was about to receive the blows of retaliation. He had no problem going to prison. He could handle the thugs and savagery of a penitentiary. But the hospital… he had no clue what he was in for.

  When he arrived at the hospital, the paramedics wheeled James in, and they strapped him to a bed. He couldn’t think of anything but how much he hated what his life had become. Nearly everyday for the past five years was spent with blood on his face and a knife in his hand. He’d walk the streets of Cut Bank, MT and see nothing but fat wallets and fat bellies. He was thrown face to face to the gripping reality that no matter how thick a person’s wallet may be, there is no free lunch. He made the sacrifices to keep the masses fat and happy. Day in and day out he bathed in the liquid of life, and it gripped him in death. The stench of it all aroused senses he never knew he had, senses that pushed reason beyond nature down into the supernatural. Obscure energies jolted his subconscious. The stench was ingested, and the soul regurgitated an empty, hopeless anger. Blood coated the synapses in the body and mind until the nerves were dull and numb. As James worked the bodies down with his knife, an evil finesse crawled about his skin. Now all this spiritual antagonism had left him with nowhere to go. The straight jacket made him think about Montana a
nd how he wished he would have just stayed out there. He left blood for hate. He didn’t find hate; hate found him. It was brewing. James just laid in the bed and tried to recollect everything that brought him here; the blood covered days in Montana, and the big red Dodge in the driveway of his parents’ house. What he couldn’t fathom was what snapped inside of him when he decided to launch that 80 pound ceramic vat through the windshield of his father’s truck. He was in somewhat of a destitute position. He had sunk into a sanguinary quicksand. He couldn’t even bring himself to run and hide when he decided to call the cops on himself. No, instead he took a long ride in a straight jacket, in the back of a meat wagon, all the way to the hospital where doctors had to figure out what to do with him. He waited patiently just happy to be out of that straight jacket. He listened to the seconds tick by on the clock and bathed in the somber peace of each breath he took. Then his mother showed up.

  “James, what the hell happened?” Leah asked. “You talked so badly of the past five years in Montana. I thought you were happy to be home, happy to see your father and I every morning when you wake up, and every night when you go to bed.”

  “I’m not the same man.” James replied. “All I know is blood. There is something crawling inside of me that yearns for destruction. Everytime I walked past that truck my brain boiled. There’s something evil about that truck, something disgusting, and it poked and prodded my soul until today , and I just couldn’t take it anymore.” He lost all rationale in an instant. His mother’s eyes began to fill with tears as she sat beside her son. She was speechless and filled with the fear that some unspeakable transformation took place within James during those years he spent in Montana. He wasn’t making sense to her. There was no physical representation of the things he was trying to explain to her. James was fighting phantoms, and to Leah those phantoms were nothing more than bits of his imagination. Still, she could see trouble and contempt in James’ eyes. It pained and worried Leah to see her son in such a state. To her, James was letting his imagination get the best of him. To James, the goodness of his soul was being preyed upon by evil. It was something he couldn’t explain. It was something bigger than him, but now he had no choice but address that something.

  Chapter 2

  James spent a few hours on the first floor of the hospital. Then after some of the doctors heard the conversation between him and his mother, they decided he was unfit to function in society. The doctors thought the only place for this nut was on the Seventh Floor, the psych-ward. They loosened the straps on the bed, put him in a wheel chair, and headed for an elevator. Along the way, James contemplated escaping. He knew he had it in him, but he felt so disheveled he didn’t even bother to budge. He had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. His mother had no clue what was going on inside of him, and she would never harbor James in the state he was in. He didn’t have any close friends in town. Anyone who took one look at his face could tell he wasn’t there. His mind was off in some far gory corner.

  “Blood and a knife,” James thought, “no man is meant to spend 70 hours a week covered in blood with a knife in his hand. Those bastards are sick. They’re one bad day from spending a lifetime in prison. Even worse, they’re one bad day away from killing someone. Blood is one fucking disgusting thing to get familiar with, to find comfort in. Maybe I should have gotten comfortable with it, then I wouldn’t have high-tailed it home.”

  James was right. Blood is a disgusting thing the get comfortable with; the way it’s warm and thin when the meat has been freshly killed, and turns cold and thick by the time you saw off the animal’s head and legs. Though, it was the smell of the blood and raw flesh that made James so uncomfortable. Maybe he would have fared better if he just became comfortable with its familiarity, but what James didn’t realize was how deep he saw into things. Blood was a mere symbol of pain being expelled from the body. Blood was a relationship of comfort within itself when a creature is living. Then, things are right, well, and good. After a quick laceration, comfort is broken as it pours from within. It oozed out with its red hue screaming at James “Feel me!” James felt it. Maybe he felt it more than any man should. The weight of its tyranny was bound to strike him sooner or later.

  When James first arrived in Montana he had two weeks before he had to start working in the slaughter house. He was young, and eager to live, fresh out of the isolation of Appalachia. He moseyed around the streets of Cut Bank looking for anything to strike his fancy. He couldn’t find it. There were women, and there was booze, but he was looking for something more transcending, more ideal, more intangible.

  The culmination of everything symbolically significant to a people is their culture. Their art, their food, their religion is all an impression of who they are, and where and what they come from. Native Americans weren’t completely driven off the land out west in the same way they were back east. James did a little investigating and learned the Blackfoot tribe was the original inhabitants of Cut Bank, MT. He came to find the Blackfoot natives captivating. Their religion and mysticism depicted such a way of life and a connection to the land that he could not turn his head and ignore them. Around camp fires along the edge of town, James met some Blackfoot Natives. They told stories of their people, and talked of a special place, Sweet Grass Hill. James was eager to learn about their culture. He asked to go to Sweet Grass Hill. He wanted to know what the Blackfoot knew. He asked to meet their chief, their medicine man, anyone who could enlighten him. James asked and the men turned him away. After a bit of drifting in the plains of north central Montana, James met a man who claimed to be half Crow, and half Blackfoot. His name was Paahsaakii, or Firefly. He was born the son of a Blackfoot woman, and a Crow father. Paahsaakii’s mother brought him to Sweet Grass Hill when he was a child, but before long, the Blackfoot Chief learned of the woman’s half-breed son, and banished them from the place. As Paahsaakii grew older, his father taught him the practice of the Peyote Medicine Rituals. Paahsaakii grew old and along the way, he served spiritual guidance for many souls turned away by their people. James was one of these people, a vagrant, a transient in search of his soul. James stood around a campfire in Ferdig, and a man with long grey hair and an elk skin robe stood across from him. This man knew many beliefs and practices of the Plains People. This man knew the power of Sweet Grass Hill. This man was Paahssaakii. Paahssaakii spoke slowly, and when James looked into his eyes James could see a man with great respect for the knowledge that he shared with James. Paahssaakii knew a great deal about the spirit of the Earth. He knew the culmination of energy and consciousness, and the power the two had when coupled together. The obscurities could be frightening, crippling even. It was out of sheer protection that these secrets were not shared with everyone, even to those who appear to respect what the spirit of the Earth may hold. There was a somber reverence in Paahssaakii’s eyes and in his voice. The enlightenment James was searching for was a journey. Paahssaakii had taken that journey, but wanted to make sure that James understood that the path of enlightenment was not quick nor easy. After a couple hours together, James learned of a rite of passage by many tribes, a Vision Quest. It was said to be a connection of time and place, person and spirit. The Vision Quest was a feat to find direction in a young man’s life. James wanted a vision to help direct his road. After their conversation they ventured to Sweet Grass Hill despite Paahsaakii’s exile from the Blackfoot territory. Paahsaakii could see something in James, and he knew James would benefit greatly from such an experience. They spoke reservedly along the way.

  “This is our place, and their place. This is where people meet the spirits that will guide them. You must be pure, and the spirits will come to you and guide you.” Said Paahsaakii.

  James wanted a vision quest and Paahsaakii gave James two options. The first was fasting for ten days. James didn’t have that kind of self-control. He asked Paahsaakii what the second option was, and Paahsaakii held out his hand. In his palm was a little green cactus button of peyote. Paahsaakii explained the peyote wo
uld be more intense than fasting and the visions might be too confusing to understand. This option would open a world of feelings and ideas that would be hard to control and comprehend, but they would reveal the essence of everything that this world IS. Tastes, sights, sounds, and smells, would excite the feelings so powerfully that they would be capable of destroying a man’s concept of reality in an effort to build a new one, one that is pure and righteous. It was a gamble, and James was about to roll the dice.

  “Don’t eat in the morning,” Paahsaakii explained, “then we will walk to Sweet Grass Hill. Here, you will eat the button. Most of the day, you will feel normal. Then, when the sun gets low in the sky you will feel different. Do not be afraid when the dark spirits of the night come to you. They cannot harm you. They simply fear the light of day. The dark spirits wish to hide in the night. Their spirit is in the stars. When the stars shine down through the night sky, their spirit walks the Earth looking for the eyes and ears of the one who is looking and listening. They will help you if your road decides they are meant to guide you. After night, the sun will rise in the morning, and you may have a vision. Your vision may be in the spirit of the day. These are the spirits of great wisdom. In the day, the sun shines and gives life to the world we know best. Day spirits ask the most of you, just as the sun provides to the most of life. I will walk home at the setting of the first sun, but you must remain on Sweet Grass Hill until the second sunrise. Your spirit may not come until the second night and you must not desert him on his journey to see you. On the second sunrise, come home to me and I will make you breakfast.”

  James took the second option. The very next day, James and Paahsaakii walked out to Sweet Grass Hill, and James ate the peyote. His stata was much like Paahsaakii predicted. James felt pretty normal most of the day. Then as the sun was setting, he began to feel different. The little clouds in the evening sky seemed to glow orange and the wind sang the lofty tune of a flute. The sun went down and the glowing clouds walked out of the night sky. It was clear. James could only see the moon and stars and hear the flute. The first night the only spirit that came to him was the voice of God. He said to James