I am gweld, mewn ddarluniau hwnnw i gael hynny. ein cyfnodd ddisgwylurol i'w cwlu ar ymgareddau. Mae'n茴wch ar y ddydd. Mae yn ymgyrch yn cyfalu'r gwyroedd, mewn ddarluniau ymgyrch yn cyfalu a gyfalu. Mae'n cyfalu. Mae ymgyrch yn cy lotta. Mae ymgyrch yn cyfalu i'w cyfalu. Mae ddarluniau i'w cyfalu. on NHS Scotland pandemic pressures, so the cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of his statement. Therefore, there should be no interventions or interruptions. This week, the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 has, of course, reached the highest level since the start of the pandemic. It is having a significant impact on our health and social care services, although especially in the A&E, right across the entire system. Our health board colleagues, those working on the front line, all tell us that the last two weeks have been the toughest in the pandemic so far. The latest data shows some of the lowest performance against the four-hour A&E target that we have seen. The level of pressure impacts on patients and staff, and I want to start first by thanking our NHS and social care staff, who we owe huge debt of gratitude to and who are continuing to provide vital treatment and optimal patient care during some of the most challenging times, but also to patients and those who have in any way been either inconvenienced or indeed are suffering because of the current pressures. I have no hesitation in apologising for that suffering and for that inconvenience, and I appreciate the patience that every person is showing at this extremely challenging time. There are, of course, a number of contributing factors impacting on A&E services. They include a record number of people in hospital with Covid, infection prevention and control measures currently in place, workforce pressures that are exacerbated by record levels of community transmission, increased attendances to A&E services, high levels of delayed discharge and longer length of stay in hospital. Today, there are 2,322 Covid patients in our hospitals. That number has more than doubled since February. It has now passed the previous peak of last winter, when we had 2,053 patients in hospital with Covid in January 2021. Using the latest published Covid-19 modelling, we anticipate that this may well continue to increase over the next couple or few weeks. The increase in cases in hospitalisation is largely due to the dominance of the more transmissible Omicron BA2 variant, which accounts for around 90 per cent of all reported cases. The latest O&S survey data shows that 114 over 7 per cent of people in Scotland in the community have tested positive for Covid in the week to 12 March. That is the highest estimate that Scotland has ever had since the beginning of the survey in autumn 2020. Thanks to the excellent progress that has been made on vaccinations, the recent rise in cases and hospitalisation has not, thankfully, translated into increased cases of severe illness requiring intensive care. However, this level of continued pressure is challenging in the context of a health service that has been dealing with sustained and relentless demand and pressure for nearly two years, unlike in way of one of the pandemic when services were stood down. We are, of course, remobilising our NHS. In addition, infection prevention and control guidance remains in place and is important for maintaining safety within our hospitals. However, that undoubtedly creates additional complexities and inefficiencies when it comes to moving people through the system. For example, patients cannot wait in the discharged lounge or sit out to wait for discharged drugs. That means that they must wait in bed space longer than required, which then requires to be deep cleaned prior to any new admission. Also, patients cannot access normal transport and they must travel either on their own or with other patients with Covid. I am able to advise, though, that each of the four UK nations is looking towards developing an exit strategy from the existing UK winter IPC guidance and considering what a return to business as usual looks like going forward. Those next steps include a range of changes that, if implemented, would help to relieve some of the pressure that the system is currently experiencing. Ultimately, if we can control community transmission of Covid, we will help to alleviate the current pressures that we are under. On workforce, the level of NHS staff absences that are attributed to those who are testing positive for Covid has increased by almost 100 per cent. It has doubled over the past four weeks to almost 4,700 people. That increase in staff absences puts an incredible strain on the delivery of health services. Asymptomatic healthcare workers are asked to continue to test twice weekly. That includes all NHS staff and patient-facing primary care independent contractor staff, too. However, we are reviewing that regularly as part of the testing transition plan. In the latest week ending 22 March, an average of 6,000 NHS staff, around 3.4 per cent of the NHS workforce, reported absences each day for a range of reasons related to Covid-19. We have worked hard throughout the pandemic to maintain record staffing levels across our NHS, and those NHS staffing levels are up by more than 28,000 whole-time equivalents under this Government to our record high. We have invested in growing our workforce by just under 10 per cent in the last two years to enhance our services' capacity to deal with the new pressures that they have faced. We recognise the scale of improvements that are required and are working closely with partners to accelerate domestic and international recruitment to Scotland. A record £300 million of new investment to help services deal with system pressures over winter introduced a range of direct workforce investments and new measures to support boards' capacity for both domestic and international recruitment. We are investing £11 million over the next five years in new national and international recruitment campaigns, and we have established the new centre for workforce supply to provide labour market intelligence. We are also recruiting at least 200 registered nurses from overseas with funding of £4.5 million available to health boards to take that forward. We have asked boards to recruit 1,000 agenda for change staff to provide additional capacity across a variety of health and care services with funding of up to £15 million. We are working with boards to develop nationally co-ordinated recruitment campaigns to actively recruit nursing and medical staff in the United Kingdom. A band nurse 5 campaign launched on 18 February. Scotland has, as we know, the best-paid NHS staff in the UK, and we have made available £12 million this year to support the wellbeing of our staff. However, increased demand is clearly putting pressure on our acute sites and right across NHS and social care systems. In the latest week, attendances at A&E departments increased to £26,000, the highest in six months. The last time Covid in patients were above 2000, that was in January 2021, attendances to A&E departments were at £16,000 for the week. That is an increase of nearly 40 per cent, putting even more pressure on stretched services. We are also hearing that people are presenting with higher acuity. They are coming to hospital sicker and as a result having to spend longer in hospital with the average length of stay up around one day, 16 per cent on historic levels, meaning a greater bed requirement. Those issues, of course, are not unique to Scotland, and our A&E departments continue to be the best performing in the UK for over the last six years. Latest comparable data for January shows that Scotland's A&E performance was 11.4 per cent and 14.1 per cent better than England and Wales respectively. Our colleagues in the community are also experiencing challenges. The current spread of Covid in the community is creating significant problems for our workforce. It is felt in social care, but our health and social care partnerships are working incredibly hard to support people both in the community and those who are coming out of hospital. All partnerships are involved in our discharge without delay programme to improve discharge planning arrangements and reduce length of stay in hospital. For planned care, our NHS colleagues are working exceptionally hard to restart elective activity. Covid workforce and bed capacity pressures do, however, continue to create challenges. We are now receiving reports that some restarted electives are having to be postponed again to deal with the increasing pressure that our health boards are facing at this immediate time. Extended weights for elective treatment, of course, increases the risk of deteriorating health and social care outcomes and the additional impact that has on underscheduled care. We are working closely with health boards and partners to support planning and delivery on the high-level commitments in the NHS recovery plan that was published last summer. We are also investing in our hospital at home programme. We have enhanced our hospital at home services across Scotland over the past few weeks, with further capacity expected to come on stream by the end of this month. That work is critical as we move into the recovery phase. We are already beginning to see some of the fruits of that input. During the six-month period of September 2021 to February 2022, four and a half thousand patients received care from a hospital at home service, so that is four and a half thousand people who, without those services, would have had to go to hospital. That resulted in 26,700 occupied bed days for hospital at home services. Again, we have avoided 26,700 acute hospital occupied bed days. The redesign of urgent care programme is incredibly important, too. We have supported it with £23 million this year. It is another example of positive work that we are undertaking through this work for strengthening alternative services, so that those who think that they need to go to A&E but their illness is not a critical emergency or life threatening, they can be seen or treated at home or indeed in the community. We are, of course, increasing funding to NHS 24, so that people can get good advice, but quickly, because I know that some waiting times in NHS 24 have also been too long. I have been upfront and honest about the scale of the challenge in terms of our NHS recovery. It will take time. The recovery will not be a matter of weeks or months. It will take years. We are working closely with boards to look forward together to deliver a package of measures to support sustainable recovery in the potential event of future Covid-19 waves. How can we insulate that recovery from those future waves? That is the work that we are undertaking. We will continue to fund our national treatment centres—the £400 million in that national treatment centre programme—which will again help us in our recovery, particularly around elective care. The funding for the NHS for 2022-23 is at record levels of £18 billion. Just to conclude, our health and social care services continue to face unprecedented pressures. There is simply no denying that. I hope that I have managed to set the context of why they are under such severe pressure. I will work day and night, as I have done since being appointed in this role, to ensure that we are supporting the men and women who are working so hard in our health and social care system. Once again, I end where I started by thanking them for their incredible efforts over the course of the pandemic. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in his statement. I intend to allow 20 minutes or thereby, given the extra time that the cabinet secretary took for his statement, for questions after which we will move on to the next item of business. It would be helpful if those members who wish to ask a question were to press the request-to-speak buttons now. I call on Sandish Gohani. I would like to start by thanking all the heroic NHS staff who have worked throughout the pandemic and are still working hard now. The statement is essentially setting out a list of excuses and patting yourself on the back, cabinet secretary. How can you possibly do this with the problems that we are facing in the Scottish NHS? The cabinet secretary talks of spending more per head than in England, but, with the Barnett formula, funding should be billions more. The cabinet secretary continues the self-congratulations by stating that we have more staff in our NHS. That would be fine if demand was the same as it was even five years ago. Demand is significantly rising. Actually, we have record vacancies in our NHS from nursing to physios. This is not all due to Covid. Your lack of credible workforce planning and a flimsy Covid recovery plan has led us to this. Cabinet secretary, what will you do to tangibly deliver help to us today, not in years? Plus, this was originally meant to be an A and E statement. So, what immediate tangible help will you be giving to A and E departments? I fear that you are making excuses here and there is nothing to actually tackle the problem. I am afraid that it is simply incorrect. It is not a list of excuses. What I am doing is setting up a context of why we are facing the pressures that we are facing. I would have thought that that would have been helpful, given that people are rightly asking why our performance is where it is and why people are having to wait too long. He calls our recovery plan flimsy. If it is so flimsy, why on earth did his colleagues in London copy it? They imitated our plan. Our 10 per cent additional capacity that we will create is a central plank of their recovery plan. It is not a flimsy recovery plan, but what I am trying to say to members across the chamber is that we have to insulate our recoveries best we possibly can against future shocks and future waves of the pandemic. I have already said in great detail—I do not intend to rehearse it because of brevity—all of the funding that we are providing our health boards from the £300 million winter plan to the £20 million additional for our Scottish Ambulance Service. If we had not made that investment, things would have been far worse than they are. I am proud of the fact that we have the higher NHS workforce per head in England, where his party are in charge, our A&E outperforms in England, where his party are in charge. We have the best-paid staff in the UK. We have more GPs per head than they have in England, where his party are in charge, and we have more dentists per head than where his party is in charge. I do not wonder that the people of Scotland continue to trust the SNP to run our health service as opposed to the Conservatives. This is not a list of excuses. What I have demonstrated today is the context of why we have these challenges and how this Government is stepping up to that challenge. I welcome the cabinet secretary's statement, but I look forward to a time when he is not just commenting on the context or how bad the problem is, but that he is actually taking action. The number of patients waiting in A&E is at an all-time high. In fact, it is higher than at any time since records began in 2015. That is assuming, of course, that you can get to A&E if you can get your call answered by NHS 24 and if you can get an ambulance to show up. I also thank the staff who are working tirelessly, but they are being let down by this Government. Everyone is waiting for this cabinet secretary to do something, but all he has are the answers that he gave in October 2021. Those initiatives have not worked. Delayed discharge has, in fact, increased taking up capacity in our hospitals, and that has a direct impact on A&E. As John Thomson of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said, things cannot continue as they are. More patients will come to harm and staff are facing increasing distress. Perhaps the NHS would have been more resilient if the cabinet secretary's predecessors hadn't cut beds, had fixed the workforce crisis and had sorted social care, but those problems are not new and they predated the pandemic. The cabinet secretary is playing fast and loose with the lives of Scots. We need more than sticking plaster solutions and more excuses. When will he come to the chamber with a plan that will actually make a difference? Listening to Jackie Baillie, you would not have realised that we are in the midst of a global pandemic. You just would not have thought that there is a global pandemic. Not only that we are in the midst of that global pandemic, but she is shouting excuse. We have the highest level of number of people in hospital with Covid. We have the highest level of community transmission because of Covid. We have high levels of workforce absence because people are testing positive with Covid. We cannot just magic away the pandemic as much as I would like to and I suspect as much as Jackie Baillie would like to. We are taking action. She asked what action are we taking. I again go through the list of the funding that we have provided. On top of that, some immediate action is that additional funding for hospital at home. For example, I have just given her a detail of how we have just managed to save 26,700 acute hospital-occupied bed days. Delayed discharges—yes, she is absolutely right—have been going in the wrong direction, but, of course, when we have so many outbreaks and so many care homes, it becomes more difficult to discharge people into the community. Actually, in some areas, we are making progress. I met with Edinburgh local—Erinburgh City Council and Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership, and, since the end of January to the present day, they have managed to see a reduction in standard delays. Some local authorities and health and social care partnerships are moving in the right direction. Of course, if we can keep Covid under control, that will be our best tool in order to aid our recovery. As we move from front bench questioners to seek to have more succinct questions and answers, I call David Torrance to be followed by Sue Webber. GP receptionists are trained to guide callers to the best care for the healthcare needs, especially as it is not always a GP that has the best place to help. However, many including those in my constituency have reported experience and increased abuse when they are doing their best to help. With the very start figures announced today, it is likely that GP services will see an increase in those looking for employment. Will the cabinet secretary join me in urgent callers to take guidance from GP's receptionists as they play an important role in getting people to care in the right place? Will he enjoy me in finding those receptionists in my constituency and throughout Scotland for the incredible dedication and commitment that they have shown in the past two years and beyond? At that kind of behaviour, is that acceptable from the public? I agree wholeheartedly with David Torrance, and I want to place on record my thanks to all GP staff, from the GPs themselves to the receptionists, to all the multidisciplinary team that work in a GP's practice. Abuse towards any of our NHS and social care staff is completely unacceptable. I do not buy into that narrative at all that GPs and their staff are not working hard to see patients. They are working extremely hard to see patients. That is probably why, in the blog written by the chair of the BMA's GP committee, he congratulates the Scottish Government for the approach that is taken and in very stark contrasts to the approach that the UK Government has taken. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Yesterday afternoon, the cross-party group on miscarriage heard that midwives are leaving the profession in droves. They cannot cope with the stress placed upon them by workforce pressures. Right across the sector, there are simply not enough of the right skills staff on duty at any one time. Midwives are underfunded and overworked and quite simply burnt out. The statement offers nothing new for them—no additional support and no additional funding. At what point will the health secretary piece the self-congratulatory tone, get out of his echo chamber and bring forward a credible plan to relieve the long-standing pressures on the midwifery profession—pressures that long predate the pandemic? I disagree with whoever's characterisation. There is nothing self-congratulatory. All the Government and I have done is set the context of why we are in the challenging position that we are in. I agree with Sue Webbers that the well-being of our staff is absolutely central. Every single clinician that I speak to, every single member of our NHS and social care that I speak to, is frankly knackered. Therefore, the additional funding that I have brought forward and the Government have brought forward for staff's well-being is to address that very variation. I would say to Sue Webbers what I said to Jackie Baillie and to Sandesh Gohani that if we can control community transmission of Covid, that will significantly help us to alleviate pressure. Let me place on record my thanks for the excellent work that Midwifery's do right across the call. Vaccines are the best line of defence. Unfortunately, while we are seeing very high numbers in hospital, the vaccine is clearly having an impact on the number of lives lost to Covid. Is the cabinet secretary optimistic that the uptake of the spring booster among those eligible is set to be as widespread and positive as the previous booster? Yes, I am confident and I agree with Evelyn Tweed's articulation that vaccines have been a game changer and would encourage anybody who has not had their first, second, third dose, their booster, if they have not had any of the doses that they are eligible for to please come forward, because vaccines are our number one tool in the fight against the virus. Paul O'Kane, Paula Beishola and Brian. This week, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde once again issued a warning not to attend any and lesser situation as life-threatening. This warning has been used repeatedly by the board since August. Instead, people have been advised to use NHS 24, but we know that from September to January, 240,000 calls went unanswered. That leaves people in a very precarious position and not knowing where to turn often in very serious situations. I note in the statement the re-announcement of the opening of the Dundee contact centre, but can the cabinet secretary clarify how many additional staff are required to meet the demands on NHS 24 and how many have been recruited in order to ensure that people are not being put at risk when they are being told not to attend any and they are not having a call answered at NHS 24? I am certain that Paul O'Kane absolutely accepts this. Nobody takes those decisions that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and any other health board has done so lightly. They do not put out messaging like that at a whim. It is a really difficult decision to do so, but it is because of the pressure that they are ultimately under. I visited the NHS 24 site in Dundee and the recruitment is on-going. That recruitment, of course, is to help us to meet that demand. NHS 24 is focused on ensuring that patients receive the correct advice immediately without requiring to be placed in a queue. Having consistently exceeded the 90 per cent target for care delivered at the first point of contact, in fact, the statistics for the 20th of March show that the number was up to 95.4 per cent. We are making progress and the recruitment that we are undertaking at the moment will again help to alleviate some of that pressure. Everybody understands the acute pressure on the NHS at the moment and clearly this pressure is going to have real consequences, not least on the capacity of an ambulance service to quickly get to those in need. I welcome the cabinet secretary's engagement on a case that I raised with him recently. Can the cabinet secretary therefore provide an update on how the Scottish Government is going to improve waiting times for ambulances? I thank Vaughan Brown for raising a case with me recently. Let me reiterate what I said at the beginning of my statement that anybody who has to wait too long for an ambulance is suffering as a result of that, then I make no hesitation in apologising to them for that inconvenience and for any suffering that they have experienced. Vaughan Brown is, of course, right. The NHS and social care system that we have is interconnected and therefore the pressures that we are facing on A&E, of course, are having an effect on our ambulance service. Despite the challenges, including managing staff abstraction due to Covid and serving in some of the most rural areas in the UK, in 2020-21, our ambulance crews responded to over 70 per cent of the highest priority calls in under 10 minutes and 99 per cent in under 30 minutes. Ambulance crews are saving more critically unwell patients than ever before, and figures show that the 30-day survival rate for the sickest patients are at the highest rate for the survival rate of 53.8 per cent. However, I know that the improvements that have been made and the significant efforts of our ambulance service may well be cold comfort for those who have to wait a long time, and that is why I took action in the summer of last year to ensure that there was more additional funding for our Scottish Ambulance Service. In January, I asked the Government when self-referrals for the over 70s to the breast cancer screening programme would resume. There was no mention of the resumption of self-referrals in the statement despite a commitment in January to consider accelerating the timetable. Can the cabinet secretary provide a clear timetable for when the service for the over 70s will resume and assures that those who need or wish to be screened, including those in Orkney, who are reliant on a mobile screening unit visiting once every four years, can be seen without fear of lengthy delays? I can say to Liam McArthur that I have been actively engaging with our screening colleagues on that very question. I have gone back to them to say, well, can we accelerate the over-referral route for those who are 71 and older? I did say to them at the time in January that it is difficult to hear that if we were to do that now, it would probably extend the gap between cycles for those who are between 50 and 70. Now, it may be that the amount of time that that gap has extended may well not be the benefit risk of doing so. It may be beneficial for those who are over 71 in terms of self-referrals. We are looking at this issue. I would hope to have an update, if not in a matter of weeks, in the very short future. I will ensure that Liam McArthur is kept updated in those discussions. I call John Mason to follow up on Julian Mackay. The cabinet secretary mentioned the importance of controlling community transmission of Covid. In one sense, community means the world. It does not just mean Scotland. Can he say anything about what Scotland can do, either directly or through the UK Government, to help other countries through Covid? It is a fundamentally important point. Time and time again throughout this pandemic, we have said that nobody is safe until everybody is safe. That is absolutely true. Although we are not officially a member of COVAX, we have been in touch with the UK Government regularly on how we help the vaccination effort across the world. We have asked how we particularly focus some of our efforts in Malawi and in Zambia, where we have, of course, that really important people-to-people relationship. I want John Mason to know that the Scottish Government is very keen to play its part as a global leader and a member of the global community in relation to vaccinations across the world. In the week ending 13 March, 51.9 per cent of people attending A&E in Forth Valley were seen within four hours. That is the lowest figure of any health board in Scotland. I know that staff at Forth Valley have been working incredibly hard to improve waiting times and that January saw remarkable improvement, so it is concerning to see the figure drop again. Forth Valley has one A&E and demand is simply outstripping capacity. What more support can the Scottish Government provide to Forth Valley and other health boards who are experiencing similar pressures? She is right to say that there have been concerns around Forth Valley and I have spoken, obviously, as you can imagine, to the chief executive and chair of Forth Valley. What I would say is that Forth Valley, when I look at other metrics, actually manages to perform well in terms of, for example, protecting some element of elective capacity. Forth Valley has managed to do that, where other health boards perhaps have not been able to do that. What I have said to every other member that has spoken is that the best thing that we can do on top of the additional investment that I have announced is to ensure that we get Covid transmission under control. We have seen in the period last year between the Delta wave and the Omicron wave between October and November that, when we had that Covid transmission under control, we saw that, for example, there was a significant increase between October and November in scheduled operations. The ability of NHS to recover and recover quickly is there, but we have to control Covid. I thank the minister for his statement, which, like his previous announcements, has lots of words but very few actions. The cabinet secretary claims that the problems that we see in Scotland's health service today are largely down to pressures caused by the unprecedented number of patients in hospital with Covid. Can he say how many of the 2,322 Covid positive patients are in hospital because of Covid and not only with Covid? Does he have data on the number of people who are admitted without Covid but go on to acquire it once in hospital, and if he does not know basic things like that, how on earth will the Government set about implementing its Flimsy NHS recovery plan or set a new clinical route map to get the NHS back to business as usual? Again, he calls it a Flimsy recovery plan. It is a plan that his colleagues and Westminster have copied. They copied our 10 per cent target because they must have thought that it was a very good plan indeed, so I am not sure why he chooses to call it Flimsy. If we had also listened to the Tories who demanded that we lifted protective measures a long time ago, goodness knows how much more difficult the pressure on Covid would have been. I have asked Greater Glasgow and Clyde to do another audit similar to what they had done during the original Omicron wave to determine whether we can get greater detail around those who are in hospital with or because of Covid. However, what I would say is that data undoubtedly is that, regardless of whether you are in hospital with Covid or because of Covid, the IPC controls around you continue and remain, and that is what is putting significant pressure on our NHS. I call Emma Harper, who is joining us remotely. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Due to the success of the vaccination programme, we can move away from legal restrictions and rely on other behaviours. We know the value of appropriate face coverings in preventing the spread of Covid-19 with the possibility of that restriction being lifted soon. As the cabinet secretary, what assessment has been made of the need for people, especially those in clinical vulnerable areas, to wear higher-protecting FFP2-type or equivalent masks when in clinical settings or crowded public places? Cabinet will have a discussion and come to a decision on the future of potentially lifting the legal requirement of wearing face coverings. That decision has not been made and, of course, will be debated in cabinet, as you would imagine, on Tuesday with the best clinical and most up-to-date clinical advice that we receive as a cabinet. In terms of her substantive point on FFP2 masks, I can confirm that we are again looking at this really closely with our clinicians around whether there is more protection that could be afforded to those at the highest risk through the use of FFP2 masks. The weighing of face coverings and what grade of face covering is something that is kept under regular review. Thank you, cabinet secretary. That concludes the statement on NHS Scotland's pandemic pressures. There will be a very short pause before we move on to the next item of business.


Bruh! That's a hot mug, guys! Hey guys, we're back here. It's been a while. It's been a bit. Today's Halloween, and as Mark pointed out earlier when we were watching this, this is the 18th anniversary of the release of the first Saw film. This film is legal in here, no? No, Alberta and Montreal. I know they did the Paramount Activity Movies after too, but this was a tradition for a while. Like, Halloween was Saw. You knew what you're getting, and this is when it started it all off, was 04. Not only did it start off that trope, it started off James Wong's career. It started off the writer's career. Yeah, Lee Winnell, who's also acting this, and fortunately doesn't act a whole lot anymore. Which, who is he? He's Adam. He's the other guy? Yeah, he's Ezra Miller. He looks a lot like Ezra Miller. It was just funny because, like, really, that would be the true horror. He'd be locked in a room of Ezra right now. Did you want to fight? Yeah, no, it started that. This guy also went on to write and direct, upgrade, and The Invisible Man. Truly speaking, while some of the parts of this film have definitely aged, it is 2004.  Certain parts still hold up, and it's still pretty impressive that they put this together with the budget that they had, and they all filmed in one building. One location, they shot it in 18 days. Like, I love one location more. 18 days? Yeah, apparently it was only 18 days. Okay, yeah, the poor man's car stuff doesn't make sense. They definitely knew how to use their budget in this movie. The gore is great. It's fun. I mean, it basically, you know, this and maybe, like, Eli Roth's hospital really started the, like, torture-borne thing. Which is funny because this isn't really that. It doesn't, they called, they used it a lot for that? The other movies would turn into that. But this one is, it's a story that just so happens to have this slightly torture-forming stuff, which appears at the beginning, and then it doesn't appear again until the end. Other than a few staccato flashes. Yes. Oh, god. The ecstatic, like, the... I mean, we're talking about... We're talking about doing this whole franchise, and I really like the first song of the year. I basically don't like any of the others. Like, there's some merit to some of them, and I think I like three and four a little bit. Three has probably one of the best slash awful, most awful deaths in the entire series. And then, for some reason, five comes to mind for having, like, a script that's just above brain dead. I literally can't tell you any differences. Like, I know three is the one where he dies, right? Yes. Where they kill the main killer in their jigsaw franchise. Actually kind of looking forward to rewatching them, because most of them I've only seen once. Exactly, same for me. I think I've seen the third one a couple of times, and then the first one, and then maybe the second one twice, but aside from that, this is kind of going down a very big memory to still have to live on. I like how Juan puts this film together. It's definitely put together by guys who are just budding into this. Like, these guys would go on to hone their skills from this film exceptionally. I mean, James Owen is a true master of horror, and this is like our first introduction to him. Like, this is his first major movie. I mean, I like the reference to the fact that it's a story movie, because there is a story to this. We have several characters, lots of twists and turns. There's all sorts of, like, things going on. We've got like Danny Glover and his partner. We've got, like, what's going on with Dr. Burton's kid and wife. We've got them in the bathroom. We've got all this other kind of backscoring and flashbacks we're getting. Like, there's a lot going on in this movie, and... It's all connected together. It comes together really well. Yeah, especially in the final climax, and it's not just because of the banger track.  Which, admittedly, has to be said. How long did they have? They had three weeks. Yeah, Charlie Closer. Closer, I'm not sure. I've never really known the pronouncing name of Closer, whatever. He had three weeks to put this score together, and, I mean, honestly, it's fine for the most part. I think he just put the theme together. The rest of the score is, I mean, it's a lot of industrial driving, like, ambience. Which, you know, I mean, is very 2004. But like that, I think it's called Hello Zep, is the actual name of the track. But it became, like, the Saw theme. That just like... Yeah, and... You know what I'm saying? It just felt good. The series would eventually go into its own tropes of literally having a major twist reveal with the theme at the end of every film. This one, it works, obviously. The story for that, it's great. I love the way it does. There's, like, before we get kind of the ending. Like, I love everything leading up to it. I think it's great the way they introduced this whole Jigsaw character. They do try to lean in that maybe it's the Doctor, and then maybe it's Zep, and maybe Lee Winnell's character, like Adam, the other guy in the bathroom. Maybe he has trouble going on. They do really well kind of creating these, like, different lines. I mean, watching it now, we all know what's turned out, but I mean, I saw this movie on Halloween in 2004. I think I saw it as a double feature with the grudge. They kept me guessing the whole way through, and everything's really well done. I mean, the scene, although watching it here, it seemed brighter than I remember. But the scene where Lee Winnell's Adam is in his apartment in the dark, and he's using his flash, they're like, oh man, that seems stressful and great. It's creepy. And it's got that, like, pseudo Texas Chainsaw Massacre film click sound. And then, like, the reveal, the flash goes, and the pigmen jumps out. Like, it's so cool. Like, even the laugh of the doll. Billy the doll, we should mention, like, the horror icon. Yeah, it's funny because I always remember the doll.  Yeah, but I mean, that's the thing. It's like, that doll, it was great. I mean, I'm pretty sure it actually makes a cameo in their next movie, Dead Silence as well. I think so.  The movies about dolls. You're bringing that up, like, the production design. Can we watch Dead Silence instead of watching Jigsaw again? Yeah, basically. The last one's just garbage. I think that the production design, like, went into a lot of detail. Like, the room with a guy who has to try and find the combination on the wall. Yeah, that's really well done. The barbed wire's really well done. Even the room that, like, Shawnee Smith's in for her reverse bear trap thing, which I guess is probably the most, like, famous trap in the movie. Yeah, it's the one that people remember. And they bring it back later in the franchise too, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, they did. Oh, god. They also used it as part of their pitch video when they were trying, like, in addition to the short, they shot a scene where Lee Winnell's character wears the reverse bear trap and did that scene.  Oh, yeah, that was the idea with all of these tortures and all of these traps and whatnot. In the first few movies, they actually were kind of coming up with them. They had to create them off the top of their head. But then as this started becoming a franchise spewer, they were just going and looking at obscure medieval torture methods, which just helped propel the series into this complete absurdity that would be known for us. For the most part, it's grounded. There are some of them where it's just like, okay, fuck, no one could do that one, particularly the one with the combinations on the wall.  I hope his hands weren't covered in that flame stuff, because the moment it picks up, the drop. Yeah, exactly. And the fact that the candle is like dying too.  We tend to believe that's the only light in that room, because that scene's also super bright. In general, it's really well done. I mean, there's a little bit of melodrama in some of the acting. The acting gets better as the movie goes on. It does get better. Well, they shot all the bathroom stuff, but they shot it in chronological order. That makes sense, because it all gets better. Harry always seems to care more as the movie goes on. It's a little surprising. You almost think it would go the other way, but he's great by the end. He's like, ah, looking towards the end. And then leading towards the end, the twist at the end is probably still one of the best twists in horror film history. They set up this thing that it's... Yeah, it might be... It's got to be, like, top tier. In like, top 20, top 10. Because, I mean, he's... They sell it, it's Zep. And he's the guy, like, they recognize him.  And then we get it, and they're searching Zep for a key, and they find the tape recorder. And this is the tape recorder, and the song starts kicking in.  I remember watching that with my friend at his house, and I got out of my chair, and I was walking around the room going, No way! I was legitimately mad when it first happened. I was mad. I call movies. I'm a film studies major. I watch movies all the time. I'm usually good at calling these things. I felt cheated because I was like, There's no way that I missed this. This must, blah, blah, blah. And then you go back and watch it again. He's in it. He's on the operating table. And he played it the whole time. He's there. There's little anecdotal references to him being on the floor. There's just some really great foreshadowing bits throughout the movie that really lead to it, and it pays off. I mean, it's one of the greatest twists in horror movies. It's one of the greatest twists in movie history. It is. And it's something that the series would continually try to recapture, but they never could. And other films would sort of try to do this. And at the same time, this film came out in a kind of a crucial time for horror, because 2000, like late 90s horror, was either scream or incredibly bad for runoffs of it, or obscure, strange, pseudo horror, which also wasn't working too well.  And so, this was like the grungy... No, no. You're okay, though. The grungy, the new metal version of horror... There's so much new metal. New is so much new metal. And it revitalized it. James Bond essentially did something that, you know, he can still hold on to. I mean, we're 2022, and the guy's still making bangers. I'm stoked for whatever he's coming out with next. I loved Malignant. Yeah, Malignant. Even though Malignant is like... I didn't even hate Aquaman.  Like Malignant as completely wackadoo as that movie is. I just remember being like, wow, this movie is shot way better than it should be. I loved that movie so much. I loved everything about that movie. He said, all right, that movie's back. Backwards matrix nonsense. I think it's like, okay, we're gonna put zero money into the acting, zero money into the actual story, but we're going to put all of it into the cinematography and the fight choreography, because that's the last thing people are going to expect from the horror movie. And that's when the James Wan comes out. I mean, that twist, I mean, I don't know if that twist is going to go down in history. It's the wackiest scene in the world. But I mean, it definitely should get mentioned shortly after you're talking about the twist in Saw. The James Wan managed to do it again as like, it's a great twist in Malignant. But this twist, everything about the end of Saw, from the get go, from the moment you get told it's Zep and the stressful scene with the mom and daughter, with Danny Glover's character running in and trying to save the day with the... And then he dies, too. With the terrible, terrible poor man's process. Oh, yeah, I was like, were there in the car chase? I mean, it's stylized, and it's like shaking the camera, shaking the car, and like some half-mo with black color on it. Which is funny, because like the editing is not bad either, and sometimes, like some of this is a very sped up, very dork. It's very CSI. I was gonna say, it's somewhere between CSI and like a new metal music video. And modeling, if he hadn't directed music videos before this, it would have been very surprised, especially with the low circling, looking upwards, Michael Bay shot cameras. Kind of going into, there are a few things that have aged a little bit, like we said, the acting has aged a little bit, the pacing and some of the bits is... Yeah, he definitely found more as he kind of moved on and just getting what he wants out of that. And the writing is bad. They've definitely improved as writers over the last 20 years. I mean, some of that's also like Lee Winnell's delivery, but they're also just corny-ass lines.  But still in terms of what this film set up, what it did, and anyone who would watch it a day aside from being like any Gen Zers or anyone else being confused by the cell phones. By cell phones, pagers. The tape recorders. The tape recorders. Yeah, there's definite... Technology of the whole world. What's the antiquated technology in this movie? Aside from that, though, I think that for anyone who have not seen this film, the twist would still be pretty friggin' brutal. It'd be pretty raw. It makes me... My kids like horror movies, like I'm looking forward to being able to show this one to them so I can just watch Serenity's head explode. Oh, yeah. Because it's so good. Yeah, no, watching... I would be actually really cool to see someone who has never seen this and see that twist and just watch their faces. So in terms of my rating system, what would you give? I mean, I'm probably giving it like... I mean, I'd probably say a 5.5 but I know you don't like me doing a half number. So I'll probably go with... I don't think I'm gonna go with a 5. I'm like leaning towards a 6, but... We actually... We agree. Yeah. Like, actually 100% agree. The twist is huge, obviously. Yeah. But some of the road getting there's a little bit bumpy. It's not bad. It's just... No, it's a solid movie. It's just not...  I mean... It's kind of like the usual suspects. If you guys pay attention to my rating system, it's like fun based a lot. I definitely gave some of those Friday the 13th and they never announced your movie's higher ratings than I should have out of love for them. And I do love this movie a lot, but I'm gonna try to be more objective. I mean, it's great. The twist is fantastic. There's a lot of really good stuff in this. But it's also a very evidently super low-budget movie made by some amateurs. Yeah. There's some foibles and some missteps there. It still manages to be great. It tells the story it wants to tell and it tells it well. That's why I'd lean towards a six, but I think I end up giving it a five out of seven. Yeah, no. I agree. The same number. Like I said, it's great. It has a lot of good parts to it. Some parts have not aged as well. And most of the parts that anyone never talks about, of course, is the twist. And it kind of makes me think of, like I said, usual suspects.  Yeah. That you just forget about whole scenes. You forget like, I totally forgot about. I remembered how Seng died. Yeah. I remember that whole thing with the dude with the drills. I totally forgot that whole scene. Which is like that also if you think about it. He's like, why is that set up? Did he know that Constraub is coming? He just had this set up. I wonder if it comes back. I wonder if there's like that game shows up in another movie at all. That'd be interesting. That dude just shows up. Yeah, something. You know, like that'd be cool. We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Because I know this franchise did try really hard to kind of turn back on itself and reference itself in like different ways. And then wait a minute. Did Noah's work? Are we gonna see the leader of Jesus Sarah? Good contributions there. Oh, good. Oh, breeze. Yeah, Chester. Yeah, Chester Bennington's in one of these. He's in one of the Chester Bennington's in this. You can edit out the part where you failed Chester Bennington dies, I think, in the last one that was technically chronological. Yeah. I think he dies in the final cut. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to checking this franchise again. I really had fun watching this movie. Yeah. It was a delight. Same. No, it was like, it was a good memory lane. Yeah. And I'm actually excited to get disappointed. Yeah, he goes through this series.  I hated the second one. I hated the second one. It's kind of grown on me over time. I just remember that one guy. It's the only other one I've seen. It's more than once. It's the guy. I remember this one guy. He's a huge dude.  It's like, I don't want you to live at all. Yeah. I mean, that's the one, you know, Darren Lindbosman kind of takes the reins after this. He wrote two and directed two, three and four. So, and then spiral as well. He directed. Yeah, and then we're going to get in the system. So, we'll see how much of this can actually be seen on YouTube. Anyways guys. Thank you for watching. Glad to be back. Happy Halloween. Yeah. And we're excited because, well, we thought about doing the Halloween series, but I think Halloween ends with... Oh God. Yeah. He mentioned in the review.  A little bit of a sour note in our take. Oh, I hated that movie. We talked about doing the Saw ones for a while. And, you know, we had a real fun time doing the Friday and the Nightmare series, eventually taking far longer than we should have had. We'll be hopefully a lot faster with these ones. But anyways, hope you guys enjoyed. Happy Halloween. And see you guys next time.


Loving a narcissist is a painful experience. It hurts. When you love a narcissist, you're in a constant state of agony for a variety of reasons. Just ask Mini, she could tell you. When the narcissist partner is weak, dysregulated, unbounded, for example, when the narcissist partner has her own mental health issues, anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, smattering of psychopathy. When this happens, the narcissist partner acts out her pain. She misbehaves in a variety of ways. She externalizes, for example, by cheating or behaving recklessly, or she internalizes self-harm, self-mutilation in extreme cases, attempted suicide. No anguish is comparable to spending years with someone who looks so promising, so rich in endowments and being unable to reach the promised land.  The more you pursue the narcissist, the more the illusion or the hallucination evaporates. It's like trying to capture a cloud, or an apparition, or an ectoplasm. The narcissist holds your dreams. The narcissist induces in you a state of fantasy.  And it is this contrast between idealization and discard, or devaluation. This is this contrast that breaks your heart to smithereens, and you can't put it back together, no matter how hard you try. And of course, the narcissist recreates with you the very dynamics that had given rise to his own pathology. His mother did this to him.  And he's doing this to you.  The narcissist is reenacting his early childhood conflicts, dilemmas, crisis, and anguish with you. He wants to share his pain with you by inducing it in you. He wants you to experience his torment, and so he tortures you. None of this is conscious. The narcissist, unlike the psychopath, is not a skimming, cunning, evil, malevolent entity. He's just who he is, and that's even more infuriating. It's easy to deal with someone who is simply bad, someone who is simply evil, because this is human. The psychopath is an exaggerated human being. Psychopath wants money or sex or power, and he would do anything to get it, and he would trample on anyone to get there. And that's a human trait, essentially. We're all psychopathic sometimes. But the narcissist is not like that. The narcissist can't help being himself, and there's no self there. There's nobody there.   It's all ersatz, it's all fake. It's a potemkin village. It's nothing but an appearance, or more precisely, an apparition. It's a very, very harrowing, painful experience which causes you disorientation, disintegration. Many partners of narcissists react with trauma, complex trauma, and they themselves lose their sense of reality. They go through derealization, depersonalization. They dissociate. There's a limit to how much pain one can tolerate, and the narcissist often breaches this limit. And so what are the causes of this constant hurt and constant pain in the relationship with the narcissist? Number one is lack of empathy. No matter how hard you try to communicate to the narcissist, your state of mind, how you keep telling the narcissist, I'm sad. I'm in distress. I'm broken. I'm hurt. Nothing helps. He's unable to understand. He's unable to resonate. He's unable to empathize. He's unable to sympathize even. He just looks at you with this baffled alien gaze as though you were some specimen under the microscope, as though you were a new virus.  You're not going to get compassion or affection from the narcissist. Never mind how downtrodden, never mind how devastated and demolished you are. Never mind how destitute and despondent. Never mind. The narcissist is never going to be there for you. It's simply he can't grasp what you're going through. He has no inner experience. He has no access to positive emotions. He has only negative affectivity, rage, envy, anger. Narcissists are binary devices. I feel good. I feel bad. That's it. There's no depth there. Because there's no depth there, he can't ensconce you. He can't take you in. He can't provide the engulfing, comforting, calming cocoon that is togetherness. There's no togetherness there. And you realize it most acutely when you need him the most. There's nobody there for you. And this is shattering. That's a shattering realization. Perhaps it's worse when you experience the indifference after the love bombing phase. During the love bombing phase, the narcissist idealizes you. And then he demonstrates to you his idealization view. He gives you access to your idealized image of yourself. So you see yourself through the narcissist's eyes. And through his eyes you see yourself as impeccable, immaculate, perfect, brilliant, beautiful, amazing, fascinating and precedented. It's an intoxicating feeling. And it is at the core of the love bombing phase. The love bombing phase makes you fall in love with yourself. It makes you fall in love with the idealized image of yourself in the narcissist's eyes. You like the way he looks at you. You like the way he regards you. And so this is a love bombing phase.  He couldn't care less how you feel. He couldn't care less what you do. He couldn't care less even if you try to triangulate with another man. He couldn't care less sometimes even if you cheat ostentatiously just to get a rise out of him. And some women do, not all of course, but some do. Women go to extremes to get the narcissist, to notice them again. Women do the most unbelievable things, to attract or reattract the attention, the lost attention of the narcissist. And it never works. At some point, the narcissist loses interest in you. And it is the death of a dream. It is the demise of the shared fantasy.  The dream of being together. A dream which has elements of a merger and a fusion becoming one. Soulmate, twin flame, whatever you want to call it. It's a dream of symbiosis. It's a dream of maternal, unconditional love becoming one with a mother again. The shared fantasy is that imaginary space, paracosm, alternative world, alternative reality or universe where you and the narcissist, only you and the narcissist exist. It's that place where you can finally be yourself understood and accepted and loved and cherished and admired as you are. Idealized in other words. And it is this place of shared fantasy where you had felt utterly safe, utterly secure. And then suddenly it's taken away from you. The narcissist couldn't care less about you. You had become a nuisance, an annoyance. And the narcissist is not ashamed, doesn't shy away from demonstrating to you that he's no longer into you. That you should just let him be, live him alone. And this is like a knife in the back. It's like the thrust of a dagger into your heart time and again and again and again. Every single time he looks as cancer to you.  Every single time he's immersed in his own activities.  Some narcissists do that. They encourage you actively to cheat or to find lovers or to go away. Every time they do that, it's a small death. The French call orgasm small death. That's the opposite of orgasm. It's not dying by merging with the loved one. It's dying by being cut off from the loved one. And the withdrawal of the narcissist and the avoidant behaviors of the narcissist are a death sentence. Not only to your common dream and fantasy, but gradually to you as an individual. You feel that you're losing your mind. You feel that you are falling apart, dissolving and disintegrating into molecules. You feel that you're made of air, transparent as it were, in the absence of his gaze. You're not seen. And since you're not seen, you're not. It's a process of annihilation, annihilation by obfuscation. It's a process of disappearing because you are not acknowledged. It's much worse when at the same time your narcissist is scouting for alternatives, looking for new sources of supply and new so-called intimate partners. And it goes at a dizzying speed. From love bombing and grooming to devaluation and discard and to the next partner. And you suddenly realize you had meant nothing to him. It was all a fake. It was all a narrative. It's like watching one movie and then watching another. There's no loyalty or faithfulness to the last movie you had seen. There's just the drive to entertain yourself. The narcissist had used you in order to occupy a fantastic space for a while because it made him feel good. You were a tool. You were an instrument. Every tool, an instrument, you're utterly interchangeable. The narcissist had never bonded with you because of who you are. He had bonded with you because of what you could provide and what you had provided.  He doesn't really miss you. He missed what you had given him. He missed seeing himself through your eyes. He misses the situation. But you're not in it and you've never been in it. You are like a catalyst or an enzyme. Your presence allowed the narcissist to process moods, effects, cognitions, emotions. But anyone would do. There was nothing special about you.  The idealization was a lie. It was fallacious. He had idealized you the same way he had idealized others before you in the same way he would idealize your successes. You're just a statistic, just a number. You're just one in a long chain of being. One link in a long chain of being. Indistinguishable from all the other links as far as the narcissist is concerned. And this shows in some of his behaviors, for example, sexlessness. The relationship devolves into sexlessness in a majority of cases, not in all of them. Sexlessness is denying your femininity, denying your separate existence, denying your allure and attractiveness. Denying your ability to induce in the narcissist psychodynamic processes and to cater to his psychosexuality. In other words, it's a failure. When you're rejected sexually, you're rejected totally. And there is an all-pervading sense of having failed, of defeat. You feel defeated.  It's suddenly, for a moment there, you can experience. You can share the experience of being a narcissist because when you're rejected sexually, you don't exist. And this is the narcissist's permanent state of being. The narcissist never exists. The narcissist had been rejected, of course, by his mother. So he's doing the same to you again. Sexlessness in the relationship is your punishment and your test. But the narcissist is also paranoid. He knows that he's not giving you what you need. He's not catering to your needs within the relationship and he knows that he's pushing you away, potentially to other men. So he becomes paranoid. There's paranoid ideation, possessiveness, a smattering of jealousy, narcissistic rage. And the environment becomes hellish.  You walk on eggshells because of the intermittent reinforcement, the hot and cold.  Come hither, go away. I need you. I'm self-sufficient. Don't bother me. You're not catering to my needs. This mixed messaging is mind-boggling. Mind-boggling, it warps your mind. And every time you try to somehow reason with the narcissist or with your narcissist or somehow reach a modicum of understanding or settle on some agreement or to contract with him, it doesn't work because the narcissist is incapable of proper communication. Your narcissist doesn't communicate. He doesn't talk to you ever. He talks at you. He lectures to you. The narcissist uses words to impress and to manipulate, never to communicate. And he doesn't see the need to reach any accommodation with you. To have a common life. It is this lack of commonness. This elimination of the common denominator that makes you feel existentially lonely as though you were the only person in the entire universe. You have no one to talk to. You can't communicate this experience to anyone. No one can understand you. Even other victims of other narcissists. The subtleties and the intricacies of your specific relationship can never be communicated because they're outside the range of human experience. That's why I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse in 1995 because it's not like any other type of. And sometimes you see your narcissist depressed, dysphoric, sad, broken. And you want to reach out to him and you want to hug him because you see the child in him. You see this sweet nothingness, this emanation. You see his core and you want to reach out to him and you want to hug him.  And you want to provide him with the support and the love that he had never received from what should have been or who should have been his caretakers and caregivers. And you want to compensate him somehow. You want to make up for his lost period of being loved as a child. But when you reach out to him, he rejects you sometimes violently and aggressively because it implies that he needs you. It implies that he is less than perfect. It implies that he is inferior to you somehow. And he wouldn't accept your love. That's possibly the most painful and hurtful thing. He wouldn't let you love him. And his love is conditioned on your performance, but your performance not as an intimate partner.  Your performance is a service provider.  You can never get it right. You can never get it right and he's never happy or gratified or satisfied with your performance. So you never get love, the love you need. And when you try to give love, you're rejected. And this is by far the most agonizing thing. The inability to give the love that you feel inside you, the inability to share it, the inability to see its effects on your loved one is absolutely, absolutely insupportable and insufferable. And as this goes on to devalue you and this devaluation feels like an execution. Because just not so long ago, you were the center of his world. You were the pivot and the axis of his existence. You were so perfect and ideal for him. You were the one he had been waiting for all his life. He had never had such an experience before.   You're devalued because there's an accumulation of a thousand little cuts. A thousand little disagreements and criticisms and you want to stop this train, this runaway train. You want to stop it. You want to say, please, we love each other. Let's reset. Let's reboot. Let's try again, but it's too late.   He doesn't have a core identity. He's highly dissociative, so there are numerous memory lapses. He doesn't remember you. He doesn't remember common experiences. He doesn't remember traveling with you all over the world. He doesn't remember making love to you. He doesn't remember your smell. He doesn't remember your taste. He doesn't remember cooking together. He doesn't remember the funny things that happened. He doesn't remember the clothing that you had bought. He doesn't remember anything about you. The narcissist remembers 5%, 10% of his existence and you're not in it. You're not in this percentage because you don't matter.  And so these memory lapses, which are enormous, allow him, permit him to devalue you. He doesn't remember having idealized you. The devaluation is a new experience to him. He doesn't compare it to anything that came before because he has no recollection of what had come before. And all his life is a huge pastiche or quilt or kaleidoscope of confabulations. Stories, narratives about what could have been, what should have been, what might have plausibly happened. And in these confabulations you don't feature. You have no role in these confabulations. You're not an actress in the movie that is a narcissist's life. You enter and exit like a stagehand or a prop. And so it's easy for him to devalue you because he has an impaired reality testing.  His grandiosity is a cognitive distortion. It filters out the world. His grandiosity lies to him about himself and about people in his life. And so he is able to erase you as so much ink or paint. He's able to delete you as though you had never existed before. He has no emotional reaction to your disappearance. And that is absolutely devastating to realize that you had meant so little to him.  He has zero emotional reaction to your absence in his life, to the void, to the whole that you should have left behind. There's nobody there to appreciate your absence and there was nobody there to have appreciated your presence. You were not the narcissist that converted you into an absence in his mind. And so he just moves on. He writes you off like a bad investment or a curiosity or an anecdote or a learning experience. And he just moves on. And he moves on with the same intensity and the same process of idealization and love bombing and grooming as though nothing had happened. As though your entry and exit were just these random events with little significance. It's shattering. There's no experience that's so pulverizing as this. The narcissist's intransigence is inability to communicate with you or unwillingness at some times. His stubbornness, his firm belief that he knows best and that he knows everything. That he needs nothing from you or from anyone else, no advice, no help. Render him outside your reach, make him inaccessible to you in the most profound way. And it is this inaccessibility, this, as I said, receding mirage, the fact that he is unattainable, your narcissist, that he is untouchable, that you can't divulge your love, that you can't share it with him, that you can't ever mean anything because you can't induce in him any long-term substantial fundamental psychological process. This realization of the limit of your presence in his life, the limitation to whatever it is that you may have had. This is his legacy.  The narcissist has taken away a big part of who you are and he had definitely impacted sometimes irreversibly your ability not only to trust others but to trust yourself.  Because we all have this delusion that love is omnipotent, love can fix, love can save, love can heal. The narcissist puts pain to this fallacy. The narcissist shows you that your love is as meaningless as you are and is no greater slap to the face than this. He might as well have shot you outright and when you depart the narcissist, you carry these self-negating messages, these automatic negative thoughts with you. They're new but they're there permanently and they affect who you are, they change you. You are transformed by the common time you've had with the narcissist and perhaps this is the greatest pain of all. Because ultimately you are grieving and mourning, not the narcissist. You are grieving and mourning who you used to be, who you could have been, what could have been and above all what you had become.


Good evening, friends. This is your host to welcome you through the creaking door into the inner sanctum. Tell me, weren't fishing the other day in troubled waters dropped anchor five miles out of mine? We use the heaviest man in our party as an anchor. A really solid chap, will he, tips the attic beams at two seventy-five in his toeless feet. We all had quite a rugged time of it with the monsters of the sea. Live bait wouldn't do so we tried dead bait. But cut our little fishing party in about half. Tonight's inner sanctum mystery, Wind Over Murder, was written by John Robert and stars Edward Sloan in the role of Sam with Elspeth Eric as Hilda. And now for tonight's uneasiness. Have you ever watched an act of violence happening to somebody else? Someone robbed at gunpoint a brutal assault in a dark and lonely street? A screaming woman dragged into a waiting home of you?  No, Sam, no. Mind your own business, don't eat the fear. You're not your brother's keeper, John. I obeyed the voice in my head, the voice of caution. I didn't eat the fear. I just stood there frozen, watching the car run away into the night. A heavy man in a loud plaid suit and a woman in summer cottons. A woman beaten unconscious and taken away in a car. Taken away to what fate, I wonder. I told myself I was an innocent bystand.   A blind man doesn't see and remember details or let the numbers of the license plates of the kidnappers' car 4-8-2-6 burn into his brain. 4-8-2-6, 4-8-2-6. It was none of my business. But I had to tell someone about it, someone, a policeman. I ran through the dark streets. It was a town in the suburbs, everybody had gone to sleep. On Kensington Road, a cavern was still open, Gallagher's. I could hear cheap jukebox music scratching at the night. A man stopped me outside the door. What's the rush, Mr. Mayer? Please, I must pass. You know me? Sure. Everybody knows you, Sam Morrison. You run the dry goods store on South Main Street. Why the mad nation to Gallagher's at this hour? You're that thirsty? No, just mailed down by the bus station. Another foot, Morrison, and your jaw is going to reach clear to the side now. That suit? What about my suit? Loud plans, a suit like... A suit like what? Nothing, like absolutely nothing, I assure you. I'm confused, tired from a long day in the store for money. I must go home. Wait a minute, I'll buy you that drink. I didn't wait. I ran 10 blocks to a policeman closing his cold box. Officer. Yes? Mayer, what brings you to this hour? Wait, please, my heart. Yeah, it's going like a trip hammer. I can hear it all over here. What's up? Another minute, please. First, light down the number 4-8-2-6. 4-8-2-6? Are you pulling some kind of practical joke at this hour of night? Joke? What joke? Write down 4-8-2-6. Write down my own shield number. 4-8-2-6 is your shield number. Are you feeling okay, Myerson? I'm tired. I feel tired. Well, I suppose you pull yourself together and take a cab home, huh? Yeah. Yes, pull myself together. I went home. What happened was none of my business. Numbers on cars and on policemen were none of my business. I was a simple man and my life was a quiet one. A dry good shop, a wife, a garden behind the house, no clubs, no excitement. The balloon that ticks everywhere and there were crazy people after each other and it was none of my business. I must not get involved. Yet, there was a number repeating itself in my head.  At home I didn't go to bed. I sat up all night in my clothes wondering about the woman. Wondering and worrying. In the morning I sat down to breakfast with my wife, Hilda. Well, what's in the newspaper? News. No, I mean anything important. News to a bus, the Board of Education... No, no, not such news. I mean, had something maybe happened last night? Two robberies at Cumberland Garage and the Davis Lumber Company. Is that all? All. Nothing worse than robbery? Sam, I don't understand. Yes, there's something worse. In Meridow Creek the police found a dead body. Who was she? Well, who was she? Was she? He was a man, a stranger. The police could not identify him. Why did you think it was a she, Sam? Sam, what's the matter with you? Nothing. Nothing is the matter and stop nagging me. Sam, what's come over you? The telephone. Let it ring. Don't want to be bothered with telephone calls this morning. Sam. Yes, Hilda. What are you afraid of? I'm tired. I had a bad night. You see, it stopped ringing. I'm going to take a rest. What about the store? Closed. Today my store will be closed. All day and into the evening I couldn't rest. I couldn't empty my mind and rest. She, where would the police find her body? I wondered and who was she? Her mother, her sister, her sweetheart. And to whom? And when the people who loved her came to look on her face for the last time, was it for me, the innocent bystander to pass under them her last words, help, help and to scream? No. I couldn't hide, afraid like a murderer with a secret, like the murderer must be hiding himself. Where are you going, Sam? Out to report something. The streets it was raining, big splashing tears for the dead. The police station was a mile away. I started to cross the street, but slow, so slow, my legs, I was sitting so long, my legs were like strangers to me. With the car running at me, my legs were stiff and slow. I stared at the car, chained to the street, pushing my eyes out at the license plate number 4826. Behind me I could hear my wife. She had followed me out. I came out of what felt like a thing, with Hilda's white face looking down on me. How bad is it, darling? I don't know, my, my side is dead.  The car. You didn't stop, you kept on going. You stood there like you were inviting the acid. It wasn't an accident. The driver of that car meant to kill me. Sam, Sam, you're delirious. Come inside, I'll call Dr. Cooper. No, call nobody. Just... Inside the house. What time are you? Do as I say. I was lucky. Just my side, black and blue, was the whole injury. I soaked in a hot tub. And later I told Hilda the story. You see, I, I did nothing to save her, Hilda.  Blind, yet I saw the license plate and my eyes wrote it on my mind 4826. The number was 4826. Yield, Hilda, is a funny thing. The more you try to forget, the more you remember. A number like 4826 will come back to you in crazy ways in crazy coincidences, one after another. You said the license number of the car was 4826. Yes, the car in which the woman was thrown unconscious. 48... Sam. Yes, Hilda. Hilda, what is it? 4826 is the license number of your car. Your car, Sam. Coincidences in numbers like a crazy witchcraft. It was as if I had been picked to learn that there were no innocent bystanders, just cowardly bystanders, just guilty bystanders. Like the murderer, I too was guilty. But who had I killed? I had to find out, I had to know. In the morning I made an inquiry at the Motor Vehicle Bureau. Yes, Mr. Martin? Numbers on license plates, Jimmy, can two cars have the same numbers, two different cars? It happens sometimes. The same numbers, but different letters. The letters designate the township the automobile has been registered in. Numbers may sometimes be the same, but the letters change. For example, the letter C means sooner than a township. D means warm-blade township. My license plates have a Y in front of the number Y4826. Well, Y means this township. Do I clear something up for you, Mr. Martin? Yes, yes. Now, there's a favor I want to ask. All right. Y4826 is my car, but I have seen another car with 4826 on its plates. The letter I don't know. I must identify that other car in its owner. Can you find that out for me? Well, I could, maybe. If what? Say, this car you're tracing broke a law. Like, damaged your car and spread away, hit and run driver. Yes, yes. That's my reason. He did damage and didn't stop. Please, Jimmy, have a seat for a while, Mr. Martin. There's one other 4826 in the county. X4826 registered in the next town, Salter. And the name of the owner? Well, I've written it on this slip of paper for you. The slip, red, Walter Demarest, Glendale Walk, Salter. Salter was a residential town just next door to mine. I started to drive to Salter. Now I was closer to finding out about the murder I had done by letting a woman go to her death. A few blocks along on Everest Street, a light changed and I stopped. I waited, and suddenly my door opened. Don't mind if I hit you right, Mr. Martin. No, not at all. My plaid suit still got your papa on it. It is an unusual suit. A custom tailored. I picked the fabric out myself. Now the light's changing. Who are you? You know me, but we were never introduced. Call me Richie. Richie Summers.  Yeah, kind of. His business here? Kind of. Do you own a car? No, you don't. Well, if I did, would I be hitching rides?  Any more questions? Before, when you hitched a ride, how did you pick my car, my car of all cars? I saw you're coming out of the Motor Vehicle Bureau. I knew you were going my way.  What is your way? South Main Street? Right to your dry good still. It's been closed a day and a half now, I notice. You're not sticking to business, Martin. Your own business. I dropped him on South Main Street, and then when it was safe, I turned the car back toward Walter Demarest, Glendale Walk, Salt Air, a brass plate-red Walter Demarest, floral designs for all occasions. In the real acreage, there was a greenhouse. Walter Demarest grew flowers for all occasions, birds, anniversaries, and funerals. The car was there, too. X4826, a black car, a make like mine, and a driveway under a maple tree. I watched into the twilight, into the first shadows of night, and I hid so that I wouldn't be detected like a criminal hides.   Demarest drove for miles, with me not far behind. Two black cars, twins, both numbered 4826 and a great funeral procession.  He drove away, and I stayed. Here, deep instinct told me was where I would find my victim. The criminal always returns, and he had guided me to her. Somewhere here, where a bag had been thrown into a stream, was a steel figure in a cotton dress. All I had to do was find her. I found her. I combed the hard-furned dirt inch by inch, and then, where the earth was loose and freshly turned, I found her, broken and dead. With the last outcry, she had shouted into my brain, still rigid on her lip. Home, I stayed locked in my room for hours, unable to face Hilda, my wife, or myself.  Look, see this, Hilda. What is it, then? A tear from a cotton dress, a swatch of brown cotton. But the dress wasn't brown, Hilda. When blood dries, it dries brown. Say no. And this pin... it was pinned to her dress near the throat. You should have seen the throat, Hilda. It was twice, five times the size, swollen from strangulation. Don't stop. I took these things from her grave, the swatch of cotton, the pin, even a handful of earth to carry in my pocket. Do you know why, Hilda? Do you? Why, Sam? Why? For trophies. Like a hunter collects trophies, so many as of his victims' little remembrances so that I shall never forget the first thing I killed. Sam! Yes, Hilda. You've told me things. Strange, frightening things these two days. About a heavy man in box-clad, about a woman, about a car, about crazy coincidences in numbers. I've listened and I've said nothing. My mind said a lot, but I said nothing. What did your mind say, Hilda?  My mind told me that. But tonight, coming from the garage just now, looking at your souvenirs, my mind tells me something else. What? That there was a woman in a cotton dress and that you, Sam Morrison, a quiet businessman and a good husband, murdered her. Coming from the garage just now, you said, Hilda, what did you mean? Your car, Sam. Y-4-8-2-6, I examine the back. On the floor and on the seat there are stains, big brown stains. When blood dries, it dries, dries. Somebody's at the door, Hilda. No, Sam. You'd better go see. Leave my door open, Hilda, like this, so I can see it here. I don't want to hide anymore. Go! See who's at the front door. Yes. I'm Officer McBride from headquarters. Mrs. Morrison, may I come in? Yes, come in. I'll tell you why I came, briefly. Young widow in town, Mrs. Harriet Apley, was reported missing a day or so ago. We found her a few hours ago in the woods near Chiquester River, murdered. And you came straight here to the Myerson's? Well, when Mrs. Apley disappeared, your husband was on the streets late, acting peculiarly. He ran up to me and he said a lot of things that didn't make any sense then. Is Mr. Myerson home? Myerson is not well. I asked, is he home? He's sick. He needs a doctor and not a policeman. My husband is sick. Sick, yes? My wife is telling you the truth, Officer McBride. I'm sick, yes. Sick like a murderer is sick. Sick with guilt. Oh, if you'll calm down a minute, my lady. Calm down! Can I, with her scream, eating into my brain, can a murderer ever know calm? Murdered your young widow on the street, Mr. Myerson. I, Sam Myerson, confess to murder. Arrest me. Arrest me! A stroke. Myerson, the doc says your husband will get back to normal, all right? But it'll take some time. From his time, and I have time. Ah, sure. Still, I should have told him right off that he was being framed by guys out to shut him up. That made it clear to his mind and studied him. My husband. A quiet proprietor of a dry good store. A man who never bothered anybody. Should be the victim of a frame-up. Well, they never intended for Sam to face charges, Mrs. Myerson, or anything like that. They were just out to scare him enough so he'd forget what he happened to see that murder night. You see, it was a jealousy murder. This florist, a demarist, he imported a New York killer to help murder and dispose of his two-timing sweetheart. And still, in a way, it was a lucky thing for your husband. The florist broke under the strain and phoned a confession at headquarters. Or Sam would face murder charges. And conviction. Well, the way he planted clues, like a blood-soaked car seat kept pointing toward him. And the way even coincidence was building its own trap around. And the way Sam had already convicted himself? Coincidence, you said, opposite. Those numbers, the way they matched. Was that only coincidence? Maybe not. Maybe, like I heard Sam telling the doctor in there, it all happened the way it happened to prove the whole point of Sam's experience. That everyone in the world is his brother's keeper. Yeah. That there are no innocent bystanders to murder, only guilty bystanders. Poor Sam finally went all numb, making with the numbers. A homicidal florist threw Sam a bouquet of forget-me-nots. Others said almost killed him. Some joker once remarked, murder is where you find it. Sam went right out of his mind looking for it. Imagine confessing to another guy's crime. It's getting so everybody wants to get into the act, even if it means cutting. For another inner sanctum mystery. This program was heard in the United States over CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System, and has been rebroadcast for service men and women overseas. This is the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, the voice of information and education.