Joe Victim: A Thriller

“Joe took a test?” I ask, but of course I remember the test. It’s like he said—it was only half an hour ago. My short-term memory may not be that great these days when every day is the same as the last, but I’m not an idiot.

The psychiatrist leans forward an interlocks his fingers. He must have seen other psychiatrists doing that on TV or maybe they taught it in psych 101 just before they taught him how to sew on the leather patches. Wherever he learned it, he doesn’t look as good doing it as he must think. This whole thing is a big deal for him. It’s a big deal for everybody. He’s interviewing the Christchurch Carver for the people who want to lock me away, and he’s trying to find out just how insane the Carver really is, and he’s learning that I’m a big bowl of retard.

“You took a test,” he says. “It was thirty minutes ago. In this very room.”

This very room is an interview room that is an awful room by anybody’s standards, particularly by Benson Barlow’s, I imagine, yet is nicer than the cell I currently live in. It has cinder block walls and a concrete floor and a concrete ceiling. It’s like a bomb shelter, only one that would collapse in on you if a bomb actually hit it, which, to be honest, would actually be a relief. It has a table and three chairs and nothing else, and right now one of those chairs is empty. My chair is bolted to the floor and I have one hand cuffed to it. I don’t know why. They think I’m a threat, but I’m not. I’m a nice guy. I keep telling everybody. Nobody believes me.

“Here?” I ask, looking around at the different concrete views. “I don’t remember.”

His smile widens, he’s trying to give me the look that suggests he knew what my response would be, and I get the idea that maybe he did. “See, Joe, the problem is this. You want the world to think you’re mentally challenged, but you’re not. You’re a sick, twisted man, nobody will ever question that, but this test?” he says, holding up a five-sheet questionnaire that I filled out earlier, “this test proves you’re not insane.”

I don’t answer him. I get the bad feeling he’s leading somewhere with this. And the smirk on his face tells me it’s not somewhere I want to go.

“This question here,” he says, and his voice rises and makes it sound like a question. He points to one that was pretty easy for me to answer. Some of the questions were multi-choice, some of them I had to fill in. He reads it out. “It says What color is this dog? And what did you tick? You ticked yellow. The dog is red, Joe, yet you ticked yellow.”

“It’s yellowish,” I tell him.

“This one here? If Bob is taller than Greg, and Greg is taller than Alice, who is the tallest? You wrote Steve, and then you said that Steve is a fag,” he says, and the way he says it is enough to make me laugh, but the prospect of where he’s going is enough to keep me worried, so everything balances out and I stare impassively at him.

“Steve is tallish,” I tell him.

“There is no Steve,” he says.

“What have you got against Steve?” I ask.

“This test has sixty questions in it. You got every single one of them wrong. Now that takes some real effort, Joe. Forty of them are multiple choice. Statistically you should have gotten a quarter of those right. At the least, a couple. But you got none. Only way you could get none right would be if you knew the right answers and chose the wrong ones.”

I don’t answer him.

“That actually proves you’re not dumb at all, Joe,” he says, carrying on, and he’s really warming up now, really hitting his stride. He even unlocks his fingers. “Actually proves the opposite. That you’re smart. That’s what this test was designed to do. That’s why it’s full of stupid questions.” His smirk turns into a full-blown smile. “You’re smart, Joe, not brilliant, but smart enough to stand trial.”

He opens his briefcase and puts the questionnaire inside. I wonder what else is in there. It’s a nicer briefcase than the one I used to own.

“Joe is smart,” I say, and I put my big goofy smile on, where all my teeth show and my face lights up. Only these days it doesn’t light up as much. The scar running down the side of it tightens and my eye droops a little.

“You can cut that bullshit now, Joe. The test proves you’re not as smart as you like to think you are.”

My smile drops away. “What?”

The shrink’s smile widens and I think that’s because he thinks I’m not getting his point, and I’m not, and that’s because he’s not making it. “It was a time test. It helps weed out the guys not smart enough to pretend they really are that dumb.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s the only genuine thing you have told me,” he says. He stands up and walks to the door.

I turn in my seat, but don’t stand up. I can’t, because of the cuff.