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Running with Hatchets

by Mark Tulin

          It was chaotic as usual when I entered the Ransom home. Young Peter had pinned his father, Raymond, to the couch, hands clutched around his throat, and the TV blaring The Jerry Springer Show. Raymond turned various shades of blue, barely able to breathe as two transgender women fought inside of their 62-inch TV that they just bought at Costco. I eventually learned that Peter wouldn’t kill his dad; it was just how he connected with his father — in a lovingly sadistic way.
          ‘Choking your dad is not a good way to handle anger, Peter,’ I said.
          ‘Why? My dad used to choke me all the time when I was smaller. Now it’s my turn.’
          I was their mental health therapist, specializing in dysfunctional families, trying to help the Ransoms find a semblance of order. Unfortunately, the Ransom family was the worst of the lot. All of them had DSM diagnoses. Gladys Ransom had a Borderline Personality, Raymond Ransom was a Sociopath, and Peter Ransom had ODD, ADHD, OCD, and he recently OD’d on gas station potpourri.
          Raymond, the father, claimed he was in the Marines but actually served in the Army, and the Army dishonorably discharged him for assaulting a Quartermaster. He also punched a cop in a WaWa Market who reminded him of his father. He told the judge, ‘All I wanted was a cherry Slurpee, and the cop gave me a hard time.’
          Mr. Ransom got nine months in prison.
          Gladys, his wife, was horribly unattractive but enjoyed sex like no other human being on the planet. However, her affinity for multiple sex partners resulted in numerous sexual infections throughout her marriage. This created much marital tension, trips to the gyn, painful urination, and a medicine cabinet full of Penicillium.
          I came into the Ransom home with high expectations, thinking I could transform the family into a reasonably happy one, much like the Simpsons or the Bundys. But after a few months of ineffective treatment, I realized they were more like the Lannisters.
          Despite their psychopathology, I liked working with them. They were helplessly dysfunctional and didn’t listen to a thing I said, but they viewed me as one of a family, and when I stepped into their home, I didn’t feel like a stranger. They shared their food, family photos, took me to ball games, and invited me to their Christmas parties. Of course, I had to draw a line of when they offered me Quaaludes.
          I soon learned they operated out of chaos, and their dysfunction was incurable. No matter what intervention I tried—behavioral, psychological, blood-letting, or exorcism—it was useless. Sometimes I felt I was working with Neanderthals from the Stone Age. And instead of reading ‘Running with Scissors,’ it was ‘Running with Hatchets’.
          ‘It might be a good idea to keep the silverware in a lockbox after Peter beheaded the neighbor’s chihuahua.’
          ‘That dog yapped too much, anyway,’ said the mother.
          The family only had one child in the home, Peter, who was twelve but over six-feet. The State removed the other four and placed them in an anonymous foster home. Peter was the youngest of the Ransom family and perhaps the most deadly. He attempted to kill his gym teacher, Mr. Bartlett, with his father’s switchblade after he made him do ten pushups for talking in class. He also dismembered the school mascot, a goat, for a biology class project, which was the principal’s beloved pet.
          ‘Killing an animal is not something to laugh about,’ I told Peter.
          ‘I wanted to impress my biology teacher by dissecting something other than a frog.’
          ‘But you killed the school mascot?’
          ‘I didn’t think he’d die.’
          Murder was in the Ransom history. The mother was a descendant of Ma Barker, and the father came from a long line of Nazi sympathizers. Their grandfather killed a Mister Softee driver, and their great aunt blew a poisonous dark into an unsuspecting meter maid. And if I had grown up in this insane family, I would have probably been a killer, too.
          They lived in the worst part of the city, a shithole in a drug-infested area of Southwest Philly. The family ate uncooked hotdogs for breakfast, SPAM for lunch, but feasted on T-bone and fillet mignon steaks at night. They had two large pit bulls, both mangy, untrained, and had open sores. The family let their dogs defecate inside their house, and no amount of air freshener could deaden the odor. They were the family from hell, and I suspect they would return there someday, hopefully not with me tagging along.
          To their credit, they knew they were crazy, and they went from doctor to doctor seeking help. Each psychiatrist gave them medication until there were no more medications to try, and they exhausted every in-home therapeutic intervention. Despite being on heavy dosages of neuroleptics, nothing changed. They remained wired and maniacal. They acted impulsively, often injuring each other to the point where they were regulars in the Emergency Room. They tried to get on The Jerry Springer Show, believing they were insane enough, but were deemed too off-the-wall.
          It was a miracle they didn’t kill me. But they never harm therapists or doctors for fear of not getting their Adderall. Also, they genuinely like me because I always brought them Happy Meals from McDonald’s. Food was a double-edge sword. When they were hungry, they became aggressive and calmed down when they ate. But it only lasted an hour or two, and then the cycle would start again. Therefore, they would have to eat 24/7 in order to numb themselves with food.
          As for Peter choking Raymond, it never stopped. There would be periods of no violence, but once Dad triggered Peter with an insult, the choking began.
          ‘I told you not to call me a moron,’ he told Raymond.
          I tried to intervene, but when Peter told me to fuck off, I realized that’s how father and son connected. And there was no valid reason to change it, except if Peter went too far, which happened twice on my watch. Raymond stopped breathing on two occasions, and I needed to give him CPR. I had no choice. I was certified and mandated to use it should there be an emergency.
          For much of the time, I sat on their pee-scented sofa and observed Raymond being choked. When this happened, Gladys speed-dialed the cops. The police came in a flash and reprimanded Peter, who reluctantly released his grip from Dad’s neck. When an officer asked if Raymond wanted to press charges or commit Peter to an institution, he replied, ‘Of course not—he’s my son.’ Raymond didn’t want to see Peter in jail. Peter could have been Gary Heidnik or Son of Sam, and Raymond wouldn’t have turned him in.
          Eventually, Raymond got fed up with Gladys being a whore and his son choking him. In the middle of the night, he and his neighbor’s wife, a checker at Costco, ran off to the Everglades. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going. Gladys and Peter woke the following day to find him gone. Not even a note or text, although he sent postcards every Christmas with no return address. Gladys was angry because he never sent money for dog food, and Peter had no one to strangle except for the pit bulls.
          One postcard read: ‘I’m in heaven now. I got a job training the alligators, and it’s what I always wanted to do. I wish you all the happiness in the world.’
          Gladys hid the postcards from Peter, and she told the letter-carriers she wasn’t accepting mail from her husband.
          Gladys got a job as a dispatcher in a cab company to make ends meet. Two months into the job, she developed a relationship with a cabbie from Iran. He wanted to marry Gladys and bring her back to his homeland, but Gladys didn’t want to live in the desert where everyone talked in a foreign language. Instead, the cabbie moved in with the Ransoms and immediately bonded with Peter. It didn’t take long for Petter to strangle the cabbie in the same way he choked his father.
            ‘You’re the best step-dad anyone could ever ask for,’ said Peter, cutting off the cabbie’s air supply.
          Gladys went through the same routine of calling the cops, who had become good friends her, bringing coffee and donuts, and screwing her on several occasions when the officers were off duty.
          Dysfunction reared its ugly head again. The cabbie was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and also suffered from delusional thinking. For example, he gravitated toward right-wing politics and bizarre conspiracy theories. He believed Democratic politicians were chimpanzees who wanted to take over the world and eat everyone’s bananas.
          When the mother’s fiancé broke into the zoo to blow up the monkey cage, the police put him in cuffs and locked him up in a forensic psychiatric unit where he now lives. Ironically, he believes he’s a chimp and only eats bananas.
          ‘Thank god he didn’t kill us,’ Gladys said. ‘That was a mistake hooking up with him.
          ‘Now, who am I going to strangle?’ asked Peter.
          ‘You can blame your father for that,’ answered Mom.
          It was only a short time until the mother brought home another boyfriend. He was a rapper/gangbanger with a long list of criminal offenses that included weapons charges, breaking an entering, and fire setting. But he was the best of Mom’s boyfriends. He was good with Peter, gave him sleeve tattoos, and taught him how to use a firearm instead of choking people. He also encouraged Peter to take out his anger the right way, on white people in suits, the powerbrokers, and the oppressors of black men.
          ‘One day, I’m going to be like Eminem,’ said Peter. ‘I’m short, and I already have blond hair.’
          Once I deemed the family stabilized in their new configuration, I moved on to another set of clients. Years later, I learned that Peter had become a neurosurgeon and was making seven figures. His Mom still lived with the gangbanger and had three kids of their own. The rapper’s career skyrocketed, and everyone moved to the Brentwood section of Los Angeles in honor of their idol, O. J. Simpson.
          Dad’s fate was not so good, however. His girlfriend left him for a dermatologist. Not long after that, an alligator that Raymond was training to roll over and play dead chewed off his legs. The alligator escaped unharmed and hasn’t been heard from since.

END

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Mark Tulin is a retired headshrinker from California. Mark authored Magical Yogis, Awkward Grace, The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories, Junkyard Souls, Uncommon Love Poems, and Rain on Cabrillo. His stuff has appeared in Oddball Magazine, Daily Drunk Magazine, MuddyUm, Sex and Satire, Fleas on the Dog, Defenestration, R U Joking, and WryTimes. He is a Pushcart nominee and a Best of Drabble. Visit Mark at www.crowonthewire.com.