The stolen pigeon

Cook Barbaree was still pacing restlessly in the corridor of the Delirium Ward, trying to read the nervous twitching of their muscles in the expressions

on the patients' faces, which undoubtedly betrayed the guilt of the gluttonous thug. But no, none of them looked like the perpetrator of this cruel joke, which had temporarily deprived Snoring Gronde of food. On the contrary, everyone seemed shaken by the entire event. Barbaree still stood bravely at the head of the astonished residents in hospital pajamas, squeaking her outrage.

"No, I can't fucking deal with them anymore! They're even stealing food."

Robbed of his meal, Snoring Gronde is even less interested in the situation than in the color of the therapist leading the motivational program's underwear. He finds the juxtaposition of the lower half of the green wall with the white ceiling far more interesting. Someone must have thought carefully about this; someone must have wanted to calm the patients down, and spent long, sleepless nights devising the color scheme for the Delirium Ward's set. Although, unless they were dosing him with massive amounts of Relanium and Hydroxyzine, the sure-fire killers of post-alcohol psychosis, he could have figured it out in a matter of seconds. The solution seems quite simple.

Barbaree sees perfectly well Snoring Gronde's indifference to the act of eating, yet refuses to admit defeat, which would mean losing control of the corridor. Keeping her hands on her hips in a telling gesture, she continues to scan the surroundings, searching for any small detail that will allow her to determine who just ate the extra cabbage roll and its accompanying potato fragments.

"What, no one's going to confess now?" the tireless cook continued her wail. "Eating it is easy, but maybe you'll at least confess?

" "I don't think I did it," Polar Bear replied, provoking a burst of laughter from the entire Delirium Ward, even the stunned Lizaforch, who barely remembers his nagging wife.

Indeed, accusing Polar Bear of this crime would be the most absurd thought, on par with the psychotic drivel spouted by patients who have been in a drunken coma for more than two days.

For Polar Bear, throughout his entire journey—through oceans of apricot vodka, seas of wine-like beverages priced at a few boxes of matches, and rivers of urine pouring unconsciously from his pant legs—ate absolutely nothing.

Yes, this was a man who had no need for food in the general sense of the word, consuming all his calories in the form of alcohol. The last proper meal that passed through his entrails was a Christmas Eve herring, consumed as an appetizer to his third shot of vodka with his father-in-law, who didn't even live to see the New Year's Eve party.

From then until that terrible September night when an ambulance, led by the perverse Martha, brought him to the intensive care unit, Polar Bear refused to acknowledge food as a necessary part of mammalian life, focusing all his vitality on keeping his blood alcohol level below three per mille.

The nurses quickly realized that his stomach had completely lost its habit of fulfilling its role, rebelling at every opportunity to exploit it. He even threw out life-giving magnesium and vitamin B tablets, and refused even the pain-relieving hydroxyzine, surrendering everything to external reality along with the liquid substance derived from his liver. One solution, therefore, was to put Polar Bear on an IV drip, which would supply him with the essential nutrients for life, both physically and mentally, preventing him from committing suicide as every cell screamed in pain, begging for more alcohol.

Only a month ago, the Long-Legged Psychologist, whose name no one could remember, decided that Polar Bear's stomach had regenerated enough to conduct an experiment, serving him normal meals in the form of gruel.

It was difficult at first, especially since the Long-Legged Psychologist had ordered Aunt Wanda, the one who likes to stay up at night, to prepare these meals. All the other meals were prepared by Barbaree, the cook, of course, but since Aunt Wanda had been admitted to the Alcohol Ward for the seventh time, they decided to make an example of her.

However, since Aunt Wanda, who always paraded around in a pink dressing gown, was no gourmet either, her gruels resembled exactly what had previously emerged from the Polar Bear's entrails, it was no wonder that the process of acclimating the stomach to its new function was incredibly slow, ending in numerous disasters and numerous changes of sheets soiled during bouts of post-gruel vomiting.

However, the long-legged psychologist knew better than the Polar Bear what his stomach was capable of. After writing an excellent thesis in which she thoroughly described the effects of amphetamine on the human psyche, she was convinced she possessed all the knowledge about all plants, drugs, illegal substances, and alcoholic beverages laden with national tradition that in any way influenced human thought.

Apparently, she wasn't far off, because, true to her suspicions, after two weeks, Polar Bear was able to eat the entire gruel and then digest it according to the prevailing organic pattern. Although gruel was all she could get for now, after the first meal, after which there was no need to change the sheets, she walked around beaming for several days, even engaging in therapy with greater dedication.

Still, it was unclear who had stolen the unlucky pigeon. Never mind the potatoes, the pigeon was a real treasure in the Alcohol Ward; the pigeons were counted down to the last one, so the theft meant that Snoring Gronde wouldn't get his portion of energy, essential for fighting his addiction, or at least for attempting to do so.

Aunt Wanda was also out of the question; in fact, one could make a list of reasons why Aunt Wanda's involvement in the theft was impossible. Although her stomach was in slightly better shape than Polar Bear's, she wasn't exactly the type of person with any culinary needs. Besides, like any true alcoholic, like any alcoholic who had once been a lady, she probably had her own principles, which clearly stated that theft was an act of unladylikeness, especially when it came to something as valuable as a cabbage roll. There were other reasons, but Cook didn't want to dwell on them, searching for the culprits among the other faces looking at her curiously.

"So, why are you laughing so much, Lizaforche?" she asked, irritated by the stupid expression on the face of the strangest of the patients.

"If you drink a bottle in the toilet, laughter comes naturally."

At the sound of these words, a wave of memories spread through the minds of those present in the corridor; everyone, at the sound of the word "flask," imagined the burning taste of the drink, its pungent smell, and the relief it brought to their troubled psyche.

"What are you talking about, Lizaforch?" the cook tried to restore order to everyone's minds, outraged by the broaching of a topic that shouldn't be discussed in this ward.

"I'm telling you the truth, why don't you believe me?"

If another patient had said it, they would have been immediately dragged to the last room on the floor, where the ominous breathalyzer was located. However, when it came to Lizaforch, Cook Barbaree had already formed her mind on the matter of Lizaforch from the very first night, when, as she had predicted and bolstered by years of experience, he had begun confiding in her the reasons for his drinking.

Every patient sooner or later confided in the cook the reasons for his drinking; she could have written a lexicon of the causes of compulsive drinking, but Lizaforch's story was the most surprising she had ever heard.

"The librarian's sagging breasts were significantly hampering my search for medieval religious sonnets praising our Lord. Did it always have to end this way when I came here? Unfortunately for me, there was never anyone in the entire library at this hour, and that crazy nymphomaniac could do whatever she wanted to me."

Those three sentences made Cook Barbaree stop washing dishes. Although she could have bet anything that even the most desperate nymphomaniac wouldn't be interested in such a hideous man, something compelled her to listen to his adventures.

"Where did it all start?" she asked in a trembling voice, not wanting to scare him off just as he was opening up.

"It started with children's coloring books, which she used to perform a painful enema over a year ago. Not to mention tying my fingers to the desk with dead rat tails." Truly, this short, red-haired girl, with wide hips and a complexion like tracing paper, had a flair for imagination.

I wonder who really has it here. A quick thought flashed through the cook's mind, but it didn't stop her from listening. She returned to wiping dirty plates, pretending Lizaforch's story didn't arouse her above-average interest.

"Her influence on my thoughts was so great that I stopped putting in the effort at parish work, which the parish priest of Malfredowia didn't like." To clarify: Malfred himself was once an altar boy and my cousin, at least until the previous parish priest locked himself in the confessional with him. Now he's nothing but a whore to me, but he has a significant influence on my mother. My mother values ​​his kisses between the breasts too highly; you can't change old people, after all. They're used to their favorite candies and don't look for coconuts on a stick.

However, then I was jolted out of these lofty thoughts about my family (which reminds me of a slimy snail without a shell) by my fearsome partner, who, in a fit of springtime excitement, inserted, or rather, jammed, her finger into my anus. I let go.

This had never happened to me before. Partly because, not only was I unprepared for such an act of perversion, but also because, in my entire long life, no woman had ever committed such a vile act.

The cook stopped paying attention to the lack of logic in Lizaforch's statements, and to the content, which, given the religious and erotic context, would be unbearable for a normal woman, and began to wonder what else this mind, battered by tons of alcohol, whose imagination surpasses even that of the Long-Legged Psychologist, could come up with on the spot.

"Even Sister Magda, who abused confirmation candidates, considered the cocoa hole a gateway to hell, shameful even during prayers," Lizaforche continued gravely. "In any case, a stream of warm feces spattered the plump, white hands of this woman condemned in life." And then another customer entered, asking excitedly for a Bible. "Jesus!" he shouted, and, letting go, ran out screaming, still in the doorway, seeking solace in his rosary. His stinking slippers remained beside the counter, frightening the rats with their vile posture.

However, looking at them, I concluded that they were certainly less terrifying and disgusting (even if they were home to an infinite number of microbes and fungi) than my partner, spattered with feces and rolling in her own vomit like a lustful piglet.

" "And that's why you started drinking?" – Cook Barbaree concluded this shocking story with her standard punchline, a rhetorical question that always received the same answer.

This time, however, she didn't get a confession, as a terrified nurse ran into the room, screaming that Alex was most likely dying.

Alex, dear Alex, who never cried as a child, had been to the Delirium Ward a dozen times, and had even befriended the Long-Legged Psychologist, was bidding farewell to life in the worst possible way after an eight-day delirium, howling at the top of his lungs at the sight created in his own head, where four Aztec priests were murdering his unborn daughter. And even the presence of Devil Vistalasta in the room didn't calm him enough to keep his heart, worn out by years of alcoholic torture and the existential contemplations that accompany all those who, even in kindergarten, look out the window, from suddenly pounding with a bang, and his hands from convulsing on the bedclothes.

For this reason, Devil Vistalasta could no longer read her once-beloved Aztec mythology for the rest of her life; for this reason, Barbaree, the cook, never learned whether the librarian was the cause of Lizaforcha's alcoholism; and for this reason, she resolved never again to become attached to the patients for whom she prepared meals, out of revenge for the tears that her beloved Alex's terrible agony had drained from her.

The fate of Snoring Gronde held no interest for her; she cared more about punishing the perpetrator of the brazen theft than about helping the robbed man. Like others, Snoring Gronde's nocturnal apnea, caused by years of swimming in the Beer Road, greatly irritated her. She could tell herself it was a disease, that he was not to blame, that he suffered the most because he could suddenly suffocate any night. She could repeat this to herself for hours, and still the image of the bothersome, snoring drunk remained in her subconscious. It wasn't the kind of snoring you'd hear in any bedroom in the world. It was the loudest sound a sleeping person could make, and despite all her efforts, the first nights spent in his room were usually sleepless. Some got used to it after a while, others asked for a shot of hydroxyzine, which puts you to sleep almost instantly, but all of them would gladly have thrown him out of the Delirium Ward and onto the street, despite the fact that during the day he was an incredibly pleasant joker, though like everyone else in the hallway, possessed by a drunken demon and stupefied by massive doses of sedatives.

The whole situation was so unnerving that Barbaree screamed at the top of her lungs.

"Who stole that fucking pigeon?!" The words echoed throughout the hallway when the door to the Long-Legged Psychologist's office opened, and a moment later, the dark-haired rationalist emerged calmly from behind a pile of dirty plates.

"Easy, Mrs. Barbaree." "No one has ever died of hunger," she said in a completely serious tone. She then turned her head, dismissing the issue of the cabbage roll theft as closed, and gestured for all the patients to follow her to the auditorium to hear another lecture from the motivational program.

They all dutifully followed her, took their seats, and listened for the hundredth time about the effects of excessive alcohol consumption. Once again, they were informed that this substance impairs not only the internal organs but also the drinker's social life. Once again, they yawned as they learned that justifying drinking on numerous occasions is inevitably followed by irregular eating, neglect of appearance, and the alarm bells of sexual dysfunction. Subsequent binge drinking alone, a decreased tolerance for alcohol, the consumption of non-consumable beverages, and the breakdown of family bonds were unstoppable.

The leggy psychologist read these messages in a gentle but firm voice, not trying to convince herself that anyone was listening with even a shred of interest. She found it more engaging to compare the reactions of her patients, whose boredom emerged in a variety of ways, providing an excellent subject for observation.

One glance around the room was enough for her to realize that the most important pigeon in the world had been eaten by Aunt Wanda, whose body had suddenly remembered its needs, while at the same time taking revenge on Snoring Gronde on behalf of the entire ward for all the sleepless nights spent chasing away the drunken demon.