Going Berserk

Rule Persful lay for hours in his hospital cot reading a small Bible and muttering to himself. He was transferred here after mutilating his hand.

"See doc," he said, pointing to cracks in the wall,'those are roads. At night people come down these roads. They flock around a big oasis, beneath palm trees and listen to me preach."

One night he put down his Bible and crept out of bed. He tiptoed to an adjoining bed where another prisoner lay in a restarining jacket. Persful stared at him intently. Then he ripped off the wire from the electric pad on the stump of his hand and fashioned a noose in front of the other prisoner, Persful whispered zealously,

"Brother wilt thou be converted and saved from hell fire and brimstone? Yea, verily, thou shalt sizzle in Hades, unless thou recognise the error of thy ways. Come I shall forgive thee thy tresspasses."

The other prisoner was sleeping and mumbled something incoherently.

"Verily, I shall proceed with my ritual of conversion-I shall purify thy soul," Persful grunted.

He placed the noose about the other prisoner's neck, holding the cord in his right hand. He reached for the Bible, opened it and began intoning,

"Brothers and sisters, here lies Judas who snitched on Jesus Christ for thirty cents in silver."

And with a jerk that jolted the prisoner completely awake, Persful yanked on the wire, tightening the improvised noose. Persful repeated his words.

"Brothers and sisters, here lies Judas who snitched on Jesus Christ for thirty cents in silver."

And again he jerked the wire, tightening the noose. The other prisoner's eyes bulged. He screamed. Guards ran in and separated them. Persful stomped away, angry.

"Aw, I was making a sacrifice and converting him," he scowled. Then you guys had to come in."

Persful was moved to a separate cell. Several days later he called me aside and held up another noose, made from an old electric extension chord.

"see doc, this is a hanging knot," he beamed. "It's a legal knot too. It's got 13 turns in it." I took it away from him.

At intervals he was allowed to mingle with other patients in the hospital. He used the time to convert them. They ignored him. Then Persful would triudge back to his cell and mope.

"They don't believe me doc," he sighed. "None of the goddamned people around here believe. They say I'm not a preacher and a prophet. Those damn bastards in the cages next to me don't believe anything. The world is round, isn't it? That's what I've been telling them, but they don't believe me. They tell me it's flat and has foursquare corners to it. And there ain't no such goddamn thing."

Persful was doing twenty years for a minor kidnapping, in his early thirties. He loathed psychiatric examinations.

"Did you ever hobo?" he was asked.

"Sure."

"Do you know what a hobo is?"

"Sure, a tramp."

"Whom did you hobo with?"

"Nobody. Always by myself."

"Why did you want to stay by yourself all the time?"

"If I go with somebody, trouble starts and you end up in jail."

"Do you want to go to jail?"

"No SIR! Man, ypou must think I'm crazy."

"What year is this Persful?"

"Thirteen hundred and thirteen."

"Isn't it 1938?"

"Yes"

"Why is it 1313 on your mind?"

"I don't know. But my bithday is May 13. And I was hanged in 1313. And I'm going to be born again."

from 'Alcatraz Island, Memoirs of a Rock Doc' by Milton Daniel Beacher, MD Zygurmty 2003

WITM8

Thanks, maybe we shall at a future BYOP or a Vis spoken word (never know..)