Songs of the Maniacs

By Mickey J. Corrigan

From her office at a mental health institute on the outskirts of modern day Miami, a troubled young woman counsels deeply disturbed clients while coping with her own heightening concerns. These include frightening consciousness lapses, violent memories of a high school sexual relationship, a menacing stalker, and an annoyingly arousing visitor who may or may not be insane. All this on a single stormy day as SIPD, today's flavor of mental health disorder, threatens to distort memory and identity, unmooring the validity of reality itself.
After a morning spent with clients suffering from illusions, nightmares, and lack of self-definition, the protagonist finds herself trapped in a tropical storm. She is rescued by the mysterious and attractive older man from her office building who has been offering her a chance for a romantic interlude. If he doesn't turn out to be an inpatient, that is.
An evening spent with the inarticulate and troubled Malaise Group takes an unusual turn when a visiting student from the local university invites her into the city. The protagonist begins to enjoy herself while fighting off the feeling she's being followed. The creepy stalker and other strange coincidences lead her to believe she has lost touch with who she is. Could it be that she, too, is a sufferer of Stand-In Personality Disorder, the strange and life-changing disease that is afflicting so many young people and ruining their lives? Does this mean that she, too, will begin to dissociate and, eventually, become someone else entirely? Or is everything in her world—the lurid institution, her professional career, confusion about love and sex, the truth behind her own identity—all in her own head?
In stark, lyrical prose, Songs of the Maniacs shares a young woman's search for illumination as
she attempts to understand her past, present, and true self. When she allows herself to take a deeper look at the people and events that make up her life as a counselor for the insane, she is drawn into the hallucinogenic reality her clients are struggling to control. The hypnotic pull of the story lies in the mystery of the storyteller herself and her murky, uneasy sense of doom. Her world is a wounded one, but familiar and uncomfortably close to our own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Salt
• Release date: Oct 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784630157

Mickey J. Corrigan

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan hides out in the lush ruins of South Florida to write pulp fiction, literary crime, and psychological thrillers. Her stories have been called “delightful pulp,” “oh so compulsive,” “dark and gritty,” and “bizarre but believable.” Songs of the Maniacs was published by Salt in 2014.

Book preview

9781784630157.jpg

SONGS OF THE MANIACS

From her office at a mental health institute on the outskirts of modern day Miami, a troubled young woman counsels deeply disturbed clients while coping with her own heightening concerns. These include frightening consciousness lapses, violent memories of a high school sexual relationship, a menacing stalker, and an annoyingly arousing visitor who may or may not be insane. All this on a single stormy day as SIPD, today’s flavor of mental health disorder, threatens to distort memory and identity, unmooring the validity of reality itself.

After a morning spent with clients suffering from illusions, nightmares, and lack of self-definition, the protagonist finds herself trapped in a tropical storm. She is rescued by the mysterious and attractive older man from her office building who has been offering her a chance for a romantic interlude. If he doesn’t turn out to be an inpatient, that is.

An evening spent with the inarticulate and troubled Malaise Group takes an unusual turn when a visiting student from the local university invites her into the city. The protagonist begins to enjoy herself while fighting off the feeling she’s being followed. The creepy stalker and other strange coincidences lead her to believe she has lost touch with who she is. Could it be that she, too, is a sufferer of Stand-In Personality Disorder, the strange and life-changing disease that is afflicting so many young people and ruining their lives? Does this mean that she, too, will begin to dissociate and, eventually, become someone else entirely? Or is everything in her world—the lurid institution, her professional career, confusion about love and sex, the truth behind her own identity—all in her own head?

In stark, lyrical prose, Songs of the Maniacs shares a young woman’s search for illumination as she attempts to understand her past, present, and true self. When she allows herself to take a deeper look at the people and events that make up her life as a counselor for the insane, she is drawn into the hallucinogenic reality her clients are struggling to control. The hypnotic pull of the story lies in the mystery of the storyteller herself and her murky, uneasy sense of doom. Her world is a wounded one, but familiar and uncomfortably close to our own.

Originally from Boston, MICKEY J. CORRIGAN lives and writes in the lush ruins of South Florida. She publishes with pulpy presses with names like Breathless, Champagne and Bottom Drawer. Recent books include the edgy novellas in The Hard Stuff series (Whiskey Sour Noir, Vodka Warrior, and Tequila Dirty); the spoofy Geekus Interruptus and F*ck Normal; and the thriller Sugar Babies. Her new novel, The Ghostwriters, features the ghost of J.D. Salinger.

Also available from Modern Dreams

Devil On Your Back by Denny Brown

Sky Hooks by Neil Campbell

Songs of the Maniacs by Mickey J Corrigan

The Pharmacist by Justin David

Precious Metal by Michelle Flatley

Albion by Jon Gale

The Organised Criminal by Jarlath Gregory

Riot by Jones Jones

Marg by Jones Jones

Desh by Kim Kellas

Carrion Men by V.C. Linde

Choice! by Rachel Medhurst

Stuff by Stefan Mohamed

The Blame by Michael Nolan

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Copyright © Mickey J Corrigan, 2014

The right of Mickey J Corrigan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2014

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-78463-015-7 electronic

1. A Moment

Victor and I are sort of friends, then we are sort of lovers, and later he has his hands around my throat. It is that kind of relationship.

He is choking me and I am coughing and he is saying, If you want to escape from all of this, you have to work with me here. I start to see a blackness like an ink spot seeping into my vision from the corners of my eyes. I know we can do this. Together, he is saying.

His voice is faint. And getting fainter. I gurgle and cough. Even this seems distant.

Something is lodged in my throat, something cold and hard. Victor’s tight clasp on my neck is forcing the thing in my throat to edge up my windpipe or my esophagus or whatever.

I am choking and, at the same time, the blockage in my throat is coming loose.

Far away, a woman coughs. I guess this is me.

Victor continues to squeeze my neck. Drool from his contorted mouth drips and splashes on my cheeks. The spittle is cool. This turn in our relationship is an unexpected one. But so was sleeping together.

I could get fired for this. If I live.

I am staring up at the ceiling out of the middle of my eyes. Around the edges, the ink spot is spreading. Are those real stars I am seeing? Of course not. Those are stains, a splatter of stains on the ceiling that have seeped down from the floor above. Where have I seen that pattern before?

My memory is not what it once was.

But I can remember everything that happened today. Every detail. The way the day began with a morning in my office like any other, Miami warm and well lit and lightly salted. Celia and her dreams. Justin and his photo. How the breeze turned cold and raw, ripping the palm fronds from their trunks and pitching rain against the window glass. The storm, Victor’s cotton bathrobe, the quiet. The brown pelicans above the hard-packed beach sand. The toss of blue-green waves. Sasha. Ben. The noise and the smoke of the bar. Francis and the gun and the lawn man. The stink of cheese fries and that suffocating smell of gasoline.

The thing in my throat.

When your dreams are more real than your reality? Victor is speaking in a distant whisper. The air feels suddenly ice cold and the black folds in on itself and becomes even blacker. Then which one is your real consciousness?

Victor is talking in riddles, but I know what he’s getting at.

The snake patch on a leather jacket.

The number one hundred and eleven.

A mirror with someone else’s reflection.

A certain kind of personality. Smart, not slick.

When you really don’t care about anything.

Interchangeable living beings.

SIPD, that is, Stand-in Personality Disorder, the epidemic transforming our world.

I am limp in Victor’s hard grasp. My head sags forward. His hands have loosened their steely grip, but it is too late. It looks like this is it.

But wait. Are these the kinds of thoughts you have when you are dying? Most of these thoughts are fragmented. Random. And heavy with undisclosed meaning. Someone else’s meaning.

How disappointing.

Here I am, limp and blue, dead in the arms of a violent lover, and all that flashes before my eyes are little pieces from other people’s lives?

This is just so me.

The self you believe is yourself is not the real you, Victor is saying. His voice comes to me in its smallest version, the one you hear from the far end of a long dark tunnel. I am thinking about the words floating on his gentle tongue and easing past his fleshy lips. Too bad he stopped kissing me and put his hands around my throat instead. Too bad he had to ruin the moment like this.

It always ends up badly with me and men.

If we can destroy the false self, that will be our salvation. Yours and mine, comes Victor’s voice from a pinpoint of light in an infinite black void.

From the vanishing point.

From the God upstairs.

I guess I made a sort of final decision today. Not entirely by choice, though. Decisions can be made through lack of choice. And some days can decide everything for you. Some days can choose you.

Today was that kind of day.

Or maybe I just fucked up.

2.

Let’s rewind the memory reel and start from the beginning.

This is how the day begins. How it always begins for me.

The breeze is sweet and mild with only a pinch of salt. I can’t smell the ocean, but I don’t feel the tension of The City, either. My office window overlooks the quad and I am casually scanning the sidewalk for my ten o’clock. Celia may or may not show