"Mercy Man": A Few Scenes, Theme Song (Audio), & Conclusion

I discuss my history of working as a substitute instructional assistant 30 years ago, but if you prefer to skip directly to the theme song, it begins a few seconds after 10:15. Those stories about Lou, though, are gold in my opinion. Some kids with cognitive and / or emotional deficits are "accidentally" funny (Fish out of water / square peg), but Lou was intending to be funny and genuinely was.

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Mercy Man is a chronic dissociate / autistic who chooses to focus upon others allegedly being treated poorly rather than his own messy life. Think "Amelie" and "Rain Man" meet "Batman".

The opening sequence is Mercy Man about to sit down for dinner when he receives a signal that a boy is being sent to bed without dessert as a punishment for spoon-flinging mashed potatoes at his kid sister. Mercy Man catches a few buses to the house since he's not legally allowed to drive or ride a bicycle anymore. He conveniently ignores the cacophony of cruelty on the buses and at the stops, far exceeding the severity of the situation to which he believes himself to have been called.

Mercy Man knocks at the door and tells the father who answers that a boy has been sent to bed without dessert.

"How in the hell do you know that?!" demands the father.

Mercy Man turns to the camera and says, with eyes pointed at the ground and head bobbing side to side, "Yeah... I'm Mercy Man."

[Title sequence begins. It wouldn't be the greatest idea to associate a genuinely happy song already popularized. I may write lyrics for a theme song to suit the character.]

"Well, freak?!" asks the father.

"I saw your son being sent to bed." replies Mercy Man.

"We've got curtains! You one o' them psychos who sees what he shouldn't?!"

"I see what I'm supposed to," says Mercy Man, without much discernable emotion.

As the father is bringing his right arm back to sock Mercy Man in the nose, his left hand inexplicably grabs the right and fashions a swan shape with fingers as wings flapping ever so gracefully.

"Wha..?! How you doin' that?!" cries the father, still flapping his fingers like a lunatic.

Mercy Man advises, "Have your wife give the boy his dessert and your hands can do other things again."

The father is now far more inclined toward politeness, but only out of fear.

"Should I do anything about my son flinging his mashed taters at his sister?" the father asks, worriedly.

"I didn't see that," replies Mercy Man.

"Aren't you playing God, though?" asks the father.

"I'm Mercy Man," says Mercy Man, again, nervously, eyes downward and head bobbing side to side, but facing the father and not the camera.

The boy is invited out of his bedroom unconditionally for ice cream, which he also flings at his kid sister until she runs to grab the chocolate syrup squirt bottle to saturate his face. The parents don't bother with any punishment since they don't enjoy having control of their bodies surrendered to uninvited psychokinetic houseguests with the power of misplaced and exaggerated empathy.

Later that evening, back at home, Mercy Man has a vision of a cat being petted while fed. The buses have gone out of service for the night so he finds the phone number in the directory.

"Hello?" asks the woman in a groggy voice who lives with the cat.

"Don't pet your cat while it's eating," Mercy Man suggests.

"Who is this?! Do you have any idea what time it is?!" screams the woman.

"I'm Mercy Man. It's 1:47 AM."

"Do you want me to call the police?!"

"No, thank you," says Mercy Man, happy that the threat was subdued.

"I'm not asking your permission, buster! I'm telling you my plans!"

After the woman hangs up and dials 9-1-1, she reaches a strange recording from a veterinary clinic directing her to an on-line video about the do's and don'ts of cat ownership. She doesn't find anything in the content about petting during feeding, and as far as she's concerned, it's fine. She tries 3-1-1 for non-emergency police business and is told:

If this is a life threatening emergency, please hang up and dial 9-1-1.
To speak with a representative, please remain on the line.
If you're calling about a recent interaction with Mercy Man, please hang up and follow his instructions precisely.

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In the wee hours of the morning, following the phone call, Mercy Man has a vision of a woman in Italy shouting "Bastardo!" at a man, but he can't contact her by phone to remind her that it isn't nice. His parents, who live next door to tend to any emergencies, are affluent, and enable his agendas. Forbidding and / or refusing to fund them results in temper tantrums that have caused priceless family heirlooms to mysteriously shatter or explode.

Mercy Man gets booked on the next flight to Rome. Upon arriving at the home by bus the following day, he recognizes the woman who answers the door as the one from his vision.

"Don't call that man a bastardo," insists Mercy Man.

"Non ti capisco, eccetto per bastardo!" exclaims the woman.

Mercy Man pulls out his pocket translator to show the woman what he said, so they continue their discussion in that manner. He learns in the process that her identical twin sister is the one who called the man a bastardo, and that she'd been hospitalized from the attack with moderate injuries inflicted by the aggressive pickpocket. The sister is housesitting during her recovery.

"I need to know the hospital and the room number," types Mercy Man into the translator.

The sister starts to slap him, but slaps herself instead. She tries again with the other hand and once again slaps herself. Both hands are miraculously stuck to her cheeks, and she's aghast.

"Vieni dall'inferno!" shouts the woman, which Mercy Man doesn't know how to spell, so he switches to voice command mode. As it happens, Mercy Man's family is from the village of Hell in Norway, so he smiles at her intuition.

The woman has become speechless from emotional shock, so Mercy Man tells her that her hands will be able to release once he has the hosptial name and room number. She abides by his request, seeing little if any choice on her part.

Mercy Man has trouble getting past security at the hospital since he isn't family, and it's not in his nature to lie. He asks the front desk receptionist to remind the patient not to call her attacker a bastardo ever again.

The receptionist, who speaks English, pulls up the patient information and notices that the attacker was shot and killed hours later by police. Unmoved by the circumstances, Mercy Man becomes fidgety and demands that the patient be reminded not to refer to him that way even if attending the funeral, desecrating the grave, or retelling the story.

The receptionist refuses to pass on the information, resulting in a tantrum. None of the patients in wheelchairs sent speeding down the hallway beyond the lobby were harmed, nor were the therapy fish whose aquarium began bubbling temporarily from a flash of heat. The beads on the wire toy in the lobby weren't returned to one end for the convenience of the next toddler to play, but that's only because parents were screaming, grabbing their kids, and running from the hospital in terror at the poltergeist activity.

A court hold extends Mercy Man's stay in Italy by at least 72 hours, with release from psychiatric custody on the condition of a legal guardian retrieving him. He easily escapes past the security doors, though: not because he wants his parents to avoid an international flight, but because he knows he's not crazy. The rich are eccentric.

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For anyone who might want to develop this story further, below is the nature of what I consider to be the most reasonable conclusion.

Mercy Man is formerly a sufferer of catatonic schizophrenia, but, as far as the psychiatrist is concerned, that empty vessel away from which Mercy Man vibrated is something in need of healing. It's left up to the viewer to decide whether the Mercy Man perspective is a pathological fantasy world or an equally valid experience of reality. The psychiatrist could make an appearance in the climax as some form of anti-villain, impervious to Mercy Man's subtle expression of will, but that could be left open for interpretation as the psychiatrist's delusion as well in being shown waking up from a dream following the final encounter.