Outside the Lines: A Novel

Sitting on a bench in downtown Portland, David knew they were after him again. The men who would try to steal his art supplies, the only way David had to make money to live. They’d kicked his ass in Seattle a few months back so he hitched a ride to Portland, thinking they’d never find him there. But they had. He knew they had. He was their prey. He could feel them breathing down his neck. He felt the demons gearing up, spitting fire into his blood, tensing his muscles into angry steel bands. No, no, no, David thought. I can’t do this again. I can’t fight. I want to run. There isn’t anywhere I can hide. I’ve been to California and back to Seattle and they always find me. They find me in the hospital and on the street. I have to get away.

David leapt up from the bench and began to pace up and down the street, muttering beneath his breath. “Leave me alone,” he begged. He hit himself in the head with the meat of his right palm, trying to knock his whirling thoughts on their asses. If he could dizzy them, maybe they’d leave him alone, too. Booze kept them sleepy, but he was out. No money, no booze. He had to find another way to silence them. He bumped into a woman pushing a stroller, causing her to stumble.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, and David kept walking, throwing an arm out toward her. He only meant to caution her to stay away, but instead he hit her across the face. The woman began to scream. The baby in the stroller screamed, too. David dropped to his knees, clutching the sides of his head.

“No, no, no!” he moaned. He rocked back and forth, banging his head onto the hot cement. He barely felt it. “I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t. Eden, please, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

People began to gather around him, murmuring. Their low tones screeched like sirens in David’s ears. “Leave me alone,” he cried. “Please. I just want to die. I need to die.” He continued to rock with his forehead pressed into the sidewalk, anchoring him in place. Maybe he could push his way through to hell. Maybe he was already there.

A policeman approached. “Sir, I’m going to ask you to come with me now,” he said. David shook his head, grinding it into the pavement. The policeman grabbed David’s right arm and twisted it behind his back, slapping handcuffs onto his wrist quicker than David could pull away. He stopped struggling and let the officer lead him to the back of the patrol car. The whispers from the people on the street jabbed at him like knives.

He knew what came next. He knew the mental ward at the jail would lead to the mental ward at the hospital. He’d ended up there again after admitting himself to the state hospital in Washington a few months before. Or was it a few years? David wasn’t sure. Doctors were a bunch of lying bastards, no matter what year it was. “Here, we want to help,” they said. And then, out come the needles and pills and looking at him like he’s a piece of shit.

“I am an artist!” David told them. “You have the wrong man!”

“You are an artist who suffers from mental illness,” they said.

“No!” he roared. David upended the table in front of him and then came the straps around his wrists and ankles again. The doctors had promised him they wouldn’t use these if David cooperated. So he cooperated, and they strapped him down anyway. Liars, the lot of them. It wasn’t him they needed to strap down—it was his wild, malevolent thoughts. Find a way to suck them from his head and lock them away.

The only man who wasn’t like the doctors was a man named Matt who kept coming back to see David in the Portland jail ward. Matt had seen some of David’s sketches on the street and asked the officers to call him the next time David was brought in. But Matt was a part of the system David didn’t trust.

“I have a house you can live in and get well,” Matt had said. “You can paint and get stabilized on your meds. It’s a special program for artists who have the same kind of problems as you.”

“The only problems I have are the fiends in my head,” David spat back.

Matt, a huge man with tiny, kind eyes, gave David a warm smile. “Your art can help make those go away. But first, we need to get them under control.”

The first time he went to Common Ground, David only stayed two days before he was back on the street. The walls around him felt like they were closing in; he needed to see the sky. He couldn’t breathe anywhere but outside. The next, he stayed a few weeks and was able to paint. This time, the time he accidentally hit the woman with the stroller, he wasn’t sure Matt would let him back in. He slammed his forehead against the patrol car’s backseat window.

“Don’t,” the officer said in a stern voice. The officer didn’t understand. David was only doing what he knew would keep the demons dazed long enough to get him to Common Ground.