The Most Influential Cookie Wrapper in The World.

The Most Influential Cookie Wrapper in The World.

Well…welcome to the nut house! Don’t mind me, I’m just getting strapped to a hospital bed in the seclusion sweet. Those dammed white suits. They code whited me. They got me completely surrounded. Holding me down. My legs. My arms. Everything! Even my head. But I’m not even resisting. Like what the fuck? My ridiculous muscles are completely still. Holding back the urge to go nuts and start throwing knock out punches. Hitting women and men without prejudice. The authoritarians would want it that way. Wearing their pants and strap on cocks.

I Imagine pleading self defence in court. Explaining to the judge how it was all over (quite possibly the most influential) cookie wrapper in the world, and for some reason being on my floor thus justified them getting physical with me, and kicking my ass? Your honour? I could have knocked them all out, so you know. I’d never get to say that. But it’s easily done with my level of practice. I’ve had tons. Against the bag. On the street. I’ve done it at least twenty five and a half times at guess. Lovely, and gloriously out numbered. Fighting mad crowds of people all by myself. All over capitol city, and all over my home town.

The best time I knocked seven guys out one after the other. The bouncers started it. Detaching retinas all year. Throwing people down the stairs. Beating the crap out of defenceless (drunks) people for no reason. I blister at that. But at least that fight wasn’t over some bloody influential cookie wrapper. It was some vindictive asshole with a criminal record enforcing the door rules. Ya, My friend might have went out the wrong one,(like I did earlier) but that’s no reason why he got sent into and past me and thrown down onto the floor. Almost like I did earlier. I can tolerate it, some what, if it’s just done to me, but when the bullying is done to someone else who really doesn’t deserve it, well that sends my head right off and leaves me just shaking with expletives.

After my friend went from the door, into me, and to the floor, I saw that goobly eyed bouncer twice my size from earlier again. He couldn’t possibly take me on his own. Not when you’re this jacked from throwing lumber and trees around all summer. One good hook up under the jaw just rubbers the legs right out under everyone. I do it all the time. But what’s the point if i’m not teaching lessons?

“Don’t fuck with Dylan Dawn!” Is always the take home message. It must be written in the cosmos somewhere. I hollered it down over him while he wondered how he wound up on the floor, and so you know, he smelt intoxicatingly bad. Forget the booze and cigarettes. It was more like some old school barbers dirty barely washed comb. Or, maybe like that blue liquid stuff he never put it in. It was just bad, And that’s not good.

After that, a massive fight ensued. I broke two jaws, and a couple noses to mix things up, and then shortly after wound up here in the nut house. Well for that and some other things that don’t really matter anyway.

What mattered?

Getting fucking code whited. Strapped the fuck down la. I was doing nothing but great. In my element. Just laying on the bed, Back pressed, knees up, writing in my black notebook. I was cradling the fucking thing. Writing some good shit too. Hybrid zombie vampires, with eyes that glowed in the dark. Happy. I was happy. Thinking… maybe this’ll be the first story I finish. Maybe this’ll get me published finally. Some kind of attention. A contest maybe. My prose was honest and fresh. I even apologized to the publisher in the foreword for my uncouth tongue, and even said fuck the critiques right in it and told them to go write there own shit and wipe there ass with it. I did that with legal papers one time, but that’s another storey.

Meanwhile, this old asshole decides to bully me. Decides to man handle me. Create a situation with me. Make incident with me.

Maybe it was a group decision. I don’t know. But I didn’t flinch. Did nothing to garner any reaction I got. I remained stoic. Playing it like the honest victim I was. The bloody influential cookie wrapper wasn't even mine. Who cares if it was even. Is that all I need to attack someone calmly writing in bed, your honour?

The real reason? Luke even warned me. So did Mathew. So did Mark. So did John. I was refusing medication. And the kicker, for schizophrenia.

I’m pleading to Richard, the head nurse, as they all surround me in a rush and pin me down to the bed I’m trying to remain motionless on. “I didn’t do anything... I didn’t do anything, Richard… you gotta believe me, you’re all assaulting me over that friggen famous cookie wrapper.”

None of that mattered now. Nope. They had almost forgotten about that wrapper. They’re reaching for the straps.

Luke likes to come in here and just yell at the fucking door for all he’s worth sometimes. It scares the hell out of all us.

“Im telling you I didn’t do anything,” over and over until the hot nurse comes rushing into the room. It's a fucking code white. And Sabrinas back up?

The alarm blaring all over the institution sends everyone running from every single unit to take you down. Code white. It means someone's gone ballistic. Freaking right the fuck out. Started hurting someone or themselves. But, I'm not into self harming and they hadn’t the privilege to be introduced to Dylan Dawn gone ballistic. The one knocking out both genders without prejudice. Taking on cops, and strap on cocks. I could have kept knocking them all out until the police arrived again and would have to taser me again.

Like everyone I have a natural aversion to being electrocuted. It could have, but I doubt it, turned into disarming the cops again, but then being more than they can handle and having to call the military in like that video game I used to play. Luke heard rumours about this place being tied to secret operations for the military. But that's stretching it.

You gotta pick your battles and this one wasn't going to end well for me in any street fighting way. So I stay collected.

“I was assaulted…” More people blast in.

“But they gotta get you on their meds.”

“Fatten you up like me.”

“As long as I don’t make incident I’m good.”

“You’ll see.” They all warned me. Playing poker for snacks.

“I was assaulted.” I say again. I’m starting to get angry and want some attention.

That hot nurse, Sabrina, rubs her hands on my leg. Long black straight hair. Brown eyes and skin toned like an almond. The instant she entered the seclusion room and recognized it was me, and realized the code white was called on good ole Dylan, she gives me this sympathetic head tilt down and eyes lowering look and then back up at me again slowly. Like she was compassionate. Not like these other assholes. Caring. Disappointed too… Sad to see it was me. And that I finally broke and went into in full crisis mode. Blazing with that hermetic rage. Psychotic episodic ensuing-attic.

Schizta-fucking-phrenia. Bzzzzzt.

Not… I'm calm and collected. Her father has it she tells me. So do I, we’re told.

“Richard, i didn’t do nothing. I’m a victim from the beginning.” That’s all I wanted her to hear.

All the way from the dicks at the bar to these dicks now in the psych ward. And that chick and her boyfriend in the emails. One single shot of the truth. Not drugs. Not some fucking needle because I wouldn’t pick up this infamous cookie wrapper.

Clear. Red writing. Chocolate chip I think. Torn half open. The most famous.

Sabrina kept looking at me. Not just my eyes my whole body through the charade. Fidgeting with the straps. Getting the drugs ready. The thought popped in my head how much I want to fuck her. But how pathetic is this image? Held down to a hospital bed. Crying of persecution and innocence. Maybe its best I just shut my mouth. Be as Mark suggests a spectator… to the finding of the only thing that matters to anyone once it’s gone. The mind. It’s as good as the soul. Or where it sits. Or some philosopher said something like that. Mark also thinks he wrote all the good songs, so you know.

But Sabrina. She made it just in time as they pulled the pants down right off me. Leaving me exposed. Wearing my Restigouche issued underwear. Grey briefs with one rusty member likely hanging out from all the fuss. That’s right, I said it, One.

I feel her presence but just keep pleading to Richard. He hears me. But he doesn't care.

Mental illness is a facade. Mathew told me. Make up for cookie sheet cut outs that came out wrong Or bad copy jobs on the photo copier or something like that he said.

Lukes all about conspiracies. Scandals. Real life experiences. Historical events. A long storey where no one believes you and there’s no real beginning or end.

Those are things something writers make up, I guess. But, once they tarnished my name with a label I felt dismissed as defective. The stigma from these whole “Your fucking crazy escapades,” like the one I'm telling you, drives many to take their own lives and they get forced to do this and that to get you back into the “facade” that looks like the cookie cutter. Placebo Behaviour, Mathew calls it.

There’s a plauque directly outside the seclusion room I’m getting strapped down in, that bolsters my rights as a patient;

“Every patient has the right to refuse treatment.”

That is bullshit. Once you’re in the nut house, they wear you down and break you psychologically. This is like what Mathew warned me. Adding time to your incarceration for not complying. Taking away privileges. Killing the strength of your spirit with their sanitized doctor room smelling atmospheres.

Mental illness. No one understands it unless they’ve gone through it, even worse when it's forced treatment and the effect it all has on you. No one is normal. No one is completely sane. There's no magical line people are plotted on. Everyone's a fucked up photo copy that has to come to their own realization…on their own, Mark says. Everyone’s a botched cookie cut out.

“Everyone is pretty much sick mentally to some degree. I’ve seen the world. It’s pretty much fucked.”

We’re all mad down here, Alice. Someone else said that, in a different conversation.

Luke carries on like no ones listening. “Everyones living in their own little worlds they’ve created. Comfortable with the status of the world they were fed to believe since children. The media. The masses. The state. It’s all lies. Everyone's in someone else’s pocket and we’re all brainwashed some way or another. Just think of the gullibility starting with fairies for your teeth. Easter bunnies shitting chocolate wrapped in tinfoil and a fat Santa squeezing into chimneys he can't possibly fit in and stopping one by one at all the children’s houses of the world. Economic. Consumerist. Capitalistic society. Plus all the fear mongering imps of the world. Keep you safe, but leave you with something to fear. Small things like acne and weight. Low self esteem. Non acceptance. War. Terrorism. Viruses. Vaccines. Mental illnesses.”

“I don’t know.”

“I do…”

Synchronicity.

“Man has mental illness” The newspaper headline even read about me. Spelled my name wrong.

Schizophrenia is the best example for this story. Sure we all love those bi polar dick wearing bitches, but us Schitzos have all been given a bad wrap, John says. We’re depicted as the psycho paths in movies. We go on mass murders. We skin and wear people's faces around. We stalk and we kill people. We’re deranged. We’re fucking lunatics.

Maybe he’s right. Some how I’m one of them. Most of us are good at heart and most infractions we commit are minor nuisances. He says.

So what if I punched a bunch of people out for fucking with my friend and can hear peoples thoughts in the cosmos. Smell their intentions.

There’s just rare, extreme cases of those who kill others believing they're doing it with good intent. Riding the world of some demon possessed person or a dragon or some shit. There was, tho, in fact, that one guy who ate another guys head off on a bus…but he’s out now. Doing good I heard.

“Statistically, schizophrenic people kill way less than sane ones.”

“You’re more likely to be killed by a sane loved one.”

“Schizophrenic’s rights are trampled on.” Mark says.

Maybe he was right in retrospect. Look at mine. I was just writing a kick ass to me storey. The main character was starving so I had him eating the infected. He survived off the virus. The same thing that destroyed everything. After the guy hugged me by the throat and ripped me out of bed, I never saw that book again and that strange take on canabalism doesn’t exist out side of here I think.

They probably used it against me.

They’ll use anything they can to drag us through the “crazy” mud and leave us with shock and stigma. One of them says. Like we’re all fucked and no good anymore. Just damaged. Just worthless.

Authorities, they make mountains out of ant hills and use petty crimes to force their drugs and treatment on you. Some need it, but the right to refuse treatment doesn't exist at all in the nut house, and as soon as I got the chance I scratched it out on the plauque. They tried to charge me with it, but I’m a writer, and I used a pencil, and erased the evidence.

Sabrina, who quickly joined in the gang fight, switches positions as they still fidget with the straps and holds down my completely still ankle. She must have a thing for feet. She wants me. My deep blue x ray eyes. Chiseled cheek bones. Burley scruff. Plus I've been deemed dangerous to society and she secretly wants me to reek the same potential havoc on her pussy. They're all in a panic, to get me tied down and inject me with their crap.

The restraints are made of leather or some type of nylon. I can’t tell. One flaps across my forehead, cause I guess they’re worried people will bite them. I can't help but wonder. Wondering how many psychiatric personnel were lavishly bitten in someone's fit of rage. Did anyone lose an ear like some Mike Tyson bout? A chunk of their cheek perhaps? No, right on their face. A finger maybe. There was that one guy, I remember, who ate a whole guys head. It tightens up and my head gets buckled down.

But biting… It’s not really my style. I'm more of the type to under estimate you with my size and knock you out one after the other sending you off into the galactic emptiness of your consciousness, everything turns black and then twinkles in your eyes as reality turns back on leaving you wondering in a daze what the fuck just happened.

You fucked with Dylan Dawn. Don’t do that. Thats what happened. It’s written on rotten wood somewhere.

I never start a fight. It starts me. Or some asshole is picking on someone who isn't tough and I do the Good Samaritan thing and defend them. That's the type of person I am. If you ever cross me or fuck with my sense of social etiquette watch out because I’ll fight you. I’ll get you.

I was nice and completely polite and quite the momma’s boy to them— until they lied during my review board— who proceeded to deem me a threat to the public safety— and to be incarcerated against my will for at least one year, and then we would meet again….they said.

Mathew. Mark. Luke, and John. Fucking apostles in the psych ward. They were right. They were all right.

This over being charged for the assaults and a couple emails, I may or may not have forgotten to mention on purpose. I’m not filling you in on them on purpose. Ok, I called this bitch a self entitled bitch and sent her a picture of my cock. Ok?

After the lies that got me stuck in the psychward, it was no more Mr. Momma’s Boy. I introduced the belligerent asshole adolescent learnt side of me. I was being a dick collectively for roughly two months. Only to staff. Never once though did I threaten anybody or act aggressively. I was just a mouthy pretentious dick who wouldn't take their pills.

So… fuck. How the hell did I get here? Pinned to a bed with even my head buckled down, cause of that one cookie wrapper? God damn. It might not have been that, but it was the catalyst. How much more influential could that cookie wrapper on the floor have been in my life? My room was completely spotless minus that wrapper.

Clothes folded. Bed made. The rest just empty cold hospital space.

One week in they bring in that, he thinks he’s tough guy, Steve. Fifty something with a crew cut.

I pull positives out of negatives. Thats what I do. I was making the best of my time in there by quitting smoking, picking up a nurse, chilling with the guys, and writing a novel.

They took this attempt of perseverance as a symptom of mental illness. “Always writing in that dammed journal.” Plus before my review board I was anxious and pacing up and down the hall and heard through the glass one of the nurses say, “Oh ya, schizo’s pace.” I'm not sure where he got his expertise but more people pace that don't have schizophrenia, then do Mark would tell you.

Anyway that cookie wrapper quickly got famous. Everyone was talking about it. Nurses. Patients. Whose was it? Was it planted? Is this the scheme to get Dylan? They even brought weathered Steve down from the more volatile less comfortable unit called forensics.

One of the older nurses was stationed in a chair outside my room. Going over her rape fantasy till the point she's pressed down, then he comes blaring in my room shrugging his shoulder. “Alright, Dylan,” he stopped, and I could feel him staring at me. “You think you’re so tough, let’s go me and you right now.”

The old man called me on. I laughed into my flesh eating pages like it was the funniest thing I ever heard.

That old man never threw one tree, and would have taken one punch, two if he was as tough as he thought he was when he was younger.

“Piss off, I'm writing.” I say not looking up, raising and waving my pencil, returning to my page.

“No, we’re gonna solve something here. I wanna see how tough you are.” He says.

I look up to him from my notebook, “I got nothing to prove to you,” and look back down to my book. “Plus how do you think it’s going to go down for me if I get up and knock your old ass out?” I clenched my jaw. So mouthy. So, So mouthy.

“Knock me out, hah, your always acting so tough. Come on let's see what you got.” He says pumping his fists.

“Your the one acting all tough and shit. I'm writing.”

“Well your gonna clean up that cookie wrapper,” he says pointing in its direction on the floor.

“I'm not cleaning up shit, Mark. It’s not even mine.”

The conversation proceeded to him threatening me more and me being stubborn and ignoring him. Then he has the gaul to rip the pencil out of my hand, then the fucking notebook and puts me in a headlock and rips me out of bed!

He fucked with Dylan Dawn. I even had to let him get away with it. I could have easily gotten out of his wimpy hold and knocked his lights out, instead I'm all like:

“What the fuck. I’m being assaulted,” to the nurse outside my room. “Are you seeing this shit. What the fuck! He ripped me right out of bed.” I go completely limp and let him drag my dead weight into the hall, my feet dangling past the nurse. They see through the glass. Fucking code white me…

I wasn't about to take on the military so just let him keep Dragging me across the floor. Dylan Dawn hanging limp in a choke hold. Feet dangling along the ground. Suddenly the alarm blares. A voice over the intercom calls, “Attention, code white, section A one. Attention, code white, section A one.”

Another restraint tightens around my waist. And one across my chest. One hooped for each wrist. One across my quads and one hooped around each ankle. Still not resisting. Just pleading to Richard. “I didn’t do anything....” He doesn't give a shit. All I smell is the pungent mixture of ass and aphrodisiac. I mentioned I’m special like that. The nurse to the right of me is humming the lion king song Akunna Matta in her head and the one to the left who was sat outside my door has finally put her rape fantasy on hold.

Richard. He smells like bad intentions. I pick up on that from the cosmos. A symptom. I called him a fag under my breath a few weeks earlier, just to get under his skin, I didn't care if he was, to each their own but I could tell from his body language he heard me. He sort of stopped in the corridor and turned his head slightly towards me before continuing on his way to his office with all his diplomas on the wall.

He held a grudge that day forward and revoked my laser comb from me. When you stop using this device, fall out increases exponentially! The guy was a bald dick looking to take away privileges.” The guys might have been crazy but they’re right.

“The ting” he called it, has a cord, which are banned on the unit for fear someone might use it to kill themselves. The guy obviously was playing a bald dick because why would I want to keep my hair to kill myself?

I was using it under supervision one morning and heard him say, “I don't want him using dat,” in his French accent. I could see them all glancing up at my hair smiling at the fall out. The receding end. Mark called it. Fuck. There was no wiggle room with Richard. I already called him a fag.

He pulls out a needle and injects it into my leg. It barely stings. I feel violated. Raped like the nurse wanted only not fun. Then they all leave the room with me wondering how the fuck did I get here, just being me, now I’m strapped down on a hospital bed. Injected with the drugs I had no right to refuse. But I maneuvered. I fell asleep. I took there drugs. They broke Dylan Dawn. And, I got out and back to throwing trees.

So… how does it end you’re wondering? How is this even a storey? How could that fucking illustrious cookie wrapper be any more influential in my life?

Two years after I'm out a class action lawsuit is filed against the hospital, “Restigouche”… for historical neglect and abuse dating back sixty years! I contacted the lawyers immediately, who later found in my file that Sabrina, and the older nurse, wrote down the whole incident involving that bloody cookie wrapper and my forced treatment! They even lost their jobs (when I got out) once their contracts were up!

And you know what? I saved the damn thing. Imagine now, that cookie wrapper is showing up as evidence in court!

Is this the cookie wrapper Mr. Seasoned Steve?

He looks at it there reluctantly on its pedestal, “Yes sir. Yes sir. That's the one.”

This influential cookie wrapper?

“Yes sir.. Yes sir."

Surely it wouldn’t get that far. The defendants would be stupid asinine fools. They were fucked. Right from the intro.

The head lawyer called me personally and apologized and thanked me too, and told me how most of his plaintiffs are old and dead or bat shit crazy, and my file makes a solid looking case. And the cookie wrapper! He couldn’t get over it. The next thing I know, I’m getting a settlement for twenty thousand dollars, and if that doesn’t make it the most influential cookie wrapper in the world ever, show me the one that is.

It could have been oat meal. But what was inside didn't count.

The lawsuit was worth five hundred thousand dollars. That's what counted. The take home message… Don’t fuck with Dylan Dawn. It’s written somewhere out there in the cosmos.