"Bronze Mania": A Psychiatric Case Turned Short Story

This short fiction piece was the first thing we wrote in my advanced fiction writing class. We were assigned a psychiatric case study to review and craft a short fiction story. This was my piece.

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A bronze sword thrust violently into the air, glistening in the radiance of four tubes of 60-watt fluorescence. Its wielder was the head track coach of Mississippi Valley State, Coach George Lawler. Invoking the spirits of great leaders before him, George was in the midst of what could be described as mania unleashed.

“Now, men, today is the biggest meet of the year! Today is do or die not only for each of you individually but also for this team. Your school is looking to you to perform well. Your town is looking to you to bring glory to it. Your conference is filled with dread, knowing that today is the day the Delta Devils will leave a lasting memory throughout the South!”

Adrian Parker, a student reporter for the Mississippi Valley State’s college newspaper, Delta Devils Gazette, documented the scene. It was her first athletics assignment, which she had waited on for a year and a half. She had been warned that the track team, Coach Lawler specifically, was an unusually intense unit, but nothing had prepared her for what she was about to witness in the locker room today.

Coach Lawler paced up and down the aisles of the small, compact locker room like a caged tiger searching for a gap between the bars. As his pace quickened, so did his frothy pre-meet speech. His hair darkened from the wetness of the sweat pouring down his face in tiny rivers of silver in the humming glow of the lights overhead. George now channeled the local Pentecostal preacher, matching him in intensity and ferocity of message. George was delivering salvation with his words as he baptized his athletes in sprays of sweat and spit.

Adrian logged in her notepad, and George paused momentarily, his back to his team. In a slow, dramatic turn, she watched as he faced his squad and began naming them one at a time, looking them in the eyes as he forcefully whispered their names and their event. Coach Lawler cycled through his throwers to his jumpers and vaulters. He then highlighted his distance runners and hurdlers, dramatically gesturing with the sword, slashing at imaginary mascots of the competing school. George stabbed Bulldogs and Braves, swatted Hornets, and finally skinned Tigers, Lions, and Panthers. Coach Lawler's passion was frothing again when he got to the sprinters and the relay teams.

“And after this meet, it will be on to Nationals,” George shouted, the sword wildly swinging. “And from there, some of you may join me on the Olympic team!”

At this bold proclamation, George ran and leaped upon the trainer’s table, sticking his landing as skillfully as a gymnast dismounts from the balance beam. He thrust both arms in the arm in victorious celebration, piercing the ceiling tile above him with the sword. Scanning the room, he began to sing Mississippi Valley State’s fight song.

“Fee fie fo fum

We’re looking down the barrel

Of the Devil’s gun

Nowhere to run

We’ve gotta make the stand

Against the Devil’s gun.”

In this glorious moment, Adrian watched with a mixture of awe and horror as the locker room exploded with the force of an atomic bomb. All the members of the track team, as well as the trainers and managers, flew to their feet and joined in singing the rest of the fight song.

“Fee fie fo fum

We’re looking down the barrel

O the Devil’s gun

Nowhere to run

We’ve gotta make the stand

Against the Devil’s gun.”

Led by their coach, the Delta Devils burst from the locker room as the floodgates of adrenaline pour out onto the track. The Delta Devils performed in a manner that the Southwestern Athletic Conference never forgot, just as Coach Lawler prophesized. When the events of that meet were finished, Mississippi Valley State set a new conference record for the margin of victory in the SWAC Men’s Championships. His speech was credited by many in the room that day as the sole reason this memorable domination occurred.

But in the locker room, suddenly devoid of sound left in the vacuum of George Lawler’s departure with his Delta Devils, Adrian finally noticed Cheryl Lawler in the far corner near the coaches’ office. Adrian was surprised that Cheryl, George’s wife, was not enthusiastic about the pre-meet speech. Instead, Adrian detected that Cheryl’s face was as white as a ghost and completely dry from the stifling humidity that now engulfed the locker room. Adrian focused on those two blue eyes, now welling with tears.

When a single tear dropped from Cheryl’s right eye and hit the buffed tile floor with an echoing thud, Adrian Parker of the Delta Devils Gazette realized that something was very wrong in Itta Bena, Mississippi.