Asylum

by Kristen Selleck

  Chloe and Sam continued to nod stoically. Sam’s eyes were glazed over and unfocused in an expression that suggested, at least to Chloe, that she probably hadn’t heard anything since Dr. Willard began talking.

  “So,” Dr Willard said, clapping his hands together again, causing Sam to wince, “You can begin however you want. Remember to use gloves when handling the material. Umm…you can use the copier on the bench for any documents you find relating to topics on the list. The computer, as I mentioned has all the material pre 1840, it’s arranged by year and by facility, and when you start it up it will be the only icon on the desktop. Of course I ask that you attach a note to each piece explaining what it is and what it relates too. We’ll try to meet weekly to discuss your progress and…I think that’s it. Any…any questions…comments…thoughts?”

  Sam and Chloe glanced at each other and then quickly away. It seemed to Chloe that Sam had, for a moment, been about to communicate a silent thought, a faint smirk playing around the corners of her lips seemed to say that she had a slew of comments, mostly about his moustache, but she had immediately remembered her anger at Chloe and looked away before Chloe could smile back. Dr. Willard rubbed his hands together nervously and watched them both.

  “None,” Chloe said quietly.

  “Very well, then you can begin tonight. Here are your keys, come as often as you like at whatever time you like, the library is open generally until midnight. No questions, none? Alright, thank-you ladies, and we’ll see you tomorrow morning!”

  Dr. Willard exited, leaving Chloe and Sam alone. For a moment they both stood still, not looking at one another. Then Sam marched across the room and ripped a top off a box. She snatched a handful of papers and dropped to the floor, sitting cross-legged.

  “Gloves, Sam” Chloe reminded her gently.

  “Oh blow it out your ass, Clo!” Sam snapped.

  Chloe sighed, but instead of arguing, grabbed a pair of gloves off the bench, sat down on the floor, and pulled the nearest box closer to her. She lifted the cardboard top off the box and set it aside carefully. The box was stuffed with folders, each displaying dozens of age-yellowed papers, and leather-bound ledgers. Chloe slid on her gloves and reached for the first folder. It contained a stack of letters, each sent from Traverse City State Hospital.

  My dear brother Ernest, she read, Thank-you for bringing the children to visit. They were a bright light in my mostly dark existence. I continue to ask, almost daily, why I have been confined to this prison, but as of yet, have had not one satisfactory answer. If they cannot tell me why it is that I am here, I have very little hope that I may ever know how to gain back my freedom-

  “This is all your fault!” Sam spat.

  Chloe glanced up from her papers in time to see Sam fling a stack of fragile-looking letters at her. The stack broke into a flutter of crispy, yellowed, flapping sheets that shimmered harmlessly to the ground well before they reached her.

  “Sam!” Chloe shrieked, “They’re old, you’re wrecking them!”

  “I don’t want to be here!” Sam shouted.

  “Then go home!” Chloe yelled back.

  Sam jumped to her feet. Instead of going home, she began pacing in short lengths, which was all the stacks of boxes would allow. Chloe pretended to ignore her, and tried to focus on the letter in front of her, but every one of Sam’s footsteps was a staccato beat, pounding in her head. The more she tried to concentrate, the more the words on the page blurred.

  “I want to talk about it! Why won’t you even talk about it?” Sam demanded.

  “Because it’s stupid. It’s not worth talking about,” Chloe tried to sound calm, sure of herself.

  “I know what I saw! It was initials this time Chloe! Right in front of my face, I was sitting there and-”

  “STOP IT!” Chloe screamed, clapping her hands to her ears. Sam glared at her, hands on hips. Chloe squeezed her eyes shut. Block it out, she counseled herself, block it all out, her words, the way she’s looking at you.

  Do you know how crazy you look right now? laughed the voice.

  “Stop,” Chloe whispered, more to herself than to Sam. She felt Sam’s hand on her shoulder, a light touch, no pressure. She opened her eyes cautiously and seeing Sam crouched down next to her, slowly lowered her hands.

  “Sorry, I forgot about…” Sam trailed off and looked embarrassed, “I forgot how much this scares you, why it scares you. I didn’t mean to- but just…just let me ask you something. Did you ever consider, did you ever think that maybe the voices you were hearing, the things you were seeing were real? That maybe you weren’t crazy, that maybe you could see things that other people couldn’t?”

  Chloe snorted and shrugged Sam’s hand off her shoulder.

  “Of course I did! How do you think I ended up in a mental hospital?” Chloe gave a harsh laugh. Sam’s face was sheepish.

  “Well, did you write any letters? You can add a postscript about patient groups, donate it to Dr. Willard’s collection and then we’d have something to show him.”

  Chloe gave her a weak smile. Sam sat down next to Chloe and wrapped her arms around her knees. She watched quietly as Chloe replaced the file she held in the box and slid her gloves off.

  “Alright,” Chloe spread her hands in a gesture of surrender, “I’ll listen. I can’t tell you I’ll believe you or that I’ll want to talk about it, but I’ll listen.”

  “It was initials this time,” Sam said quickly, as if she were afraid Chloe would change her mind, “and I saw it happen. I came in, dropped my bag on the floor and I noticed that your desk drawer had been pulled all the way out. It was upside down on the floor, and I knew right away. I just knew that it was back, that it was doing things again. I picked the drawer up and there was stuff all over the floor, pens and pencils, paperclips, scissors, and…and push pins. So I turned the drawer right side up and I started putting everything back in it, and then…then I noticed that one of those little thumb tacks, or push pins, whatever you call them, it was stuck in the floor. I went to pull it out, and it moved! It moved, like in a straight line, away from my hand. So I watched it and it scratched the letters A and then M right into the floor and then it fell over and was just lying there, looking normal.”

  “What did you do?” Chloe asked quietly.

  “Nothing. I mean, I just kind of sat there with my mouth hanging open. I was scared for like, a minute, but then I had this thought and my thought was, ‘wait a minute, this thing, whatever it is, has the ability to pick up something sharp and use enough force to carve its initials into the floor.’ Well, okay maybe not carve, scratch would be a better word, but anyway, if it wanted to hurt me, it could have just picked that tack up and like jammed it into my eye or something, right? Or there were scissors laying there, why didn’t it use its force and jam those into my neck?”

  Chloe flinched at the suggestion.

  “It’s because it doesn’t want to hurt me, or us, it wants to tell us something!” Sam insisted.

  “Then why does it just write ‘A.M.’? Why doesn’t it write its name, or, God forbid, just write down what the heck it wants. ‘Hello, I’m the ghost of a former student that wants to know if the Bears made it to semi-finals this year, say Hi to my mom for me!’” Chloe mimicked in mysterious tones.

  “I don’t know,” Sam conceded.

  “I do. Because we’re making it up in our heads, we’re giving ourselves just enough clues to keep us guessing, to make it seem real, and it’s not. It’s…oh what did they call it? I don’t remember the term for it, but it means you’re subconsciously keeping yourself sick!” Chloe said.

  “You think that, really? You think we’re both schitzos, and we just happened to have been stuck together by room assignment? You think it was me that wrote all over the walls?” Sam demanded.

  “Maybe it was me,” Chloe whispered.

  “I don’t believe that and neither do you! Don’t leave me hanging here, Clo. This is going to keep happening until we figure out what it wants
, I believe that! You want to move to a new dorm, get a new roommate, do you just want out? Tell me now!”

  “I DON’T KNOW!” Chloe snapped, “I don’t know, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to get stuck in a hospital again, I don’t want to be crazy anymore!” Her throat swelled and she could feel the heat behind her eyes. Sam wrapped her arms around Chloe’s shoulders, squeezed her in a quick, tight hug, and let go.

  “No one’s going to make you go back there, okay?” Sam assured her, “this will stay between us. You’re my friend, hell you’re my only real friend. Even in high school, I never trusted a single one of those bitches I hung out with. I knew they’d talk about me the minute I left the room. I always felt like they were jealous of me and they really wanted to see me fuck up so they could all talk about me. You’re not like that! I trust you! I tell you things I don’t tell anyone else. You’re my best friend, Clo. So please, trust me. If you start trying to convince people that you’re Napoleon or that you have Hoffa’s bones under your bed, I’ll smack you around until your head’s right, okay?”

  Chloe swiped at her eyes and glanced up to see Sam watching her with a more determined expression then her light voice had implied. Trust her? Real friends? She wanted to think so, she wanted a real friend that she could trust more than just about anything. Why must it be that she would have to sacrifice her hard-earned mental health to get it? It wasn’t fair. You couldn’t dabble in crazy, it was either all in or a continual upstream struggle. Or the drugs, but on that one and only thing Chloe and her mother had agreed…no drugs. Sam was asking her to jump back into the scariest thing she had ever had to deal with, and offering her friendship for it. Chloe took a deep breath.

  “I saw it too,” she confessed. “Today…this afternoon…I spilled some white-out and it wrote A.M. in it, and…help.”

  Sam’s eyes lit up instantly.

  “You did? You did! Oh, my God! That’s…well, not cool, but that’s…well, that’s really something! We both saw the same message at different times. What do you think it is? What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know, maybe the initials of someone’s name or something?” Chloe guessed.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking too. Now how do we find out whose?” Sam asked.

  “Jen gave me a newspaper article she found about the fire that happened here, and a guy did die in it. I can’t remember what his name was, but I know that they weren’t his initials. There was a bunch of people mentioned in it though, firemen and townspeople and stuff…I guess that’d be a good place to start.” Chloe said.

  “She did? Let’s go now!” Sam said, jumping to her feet.

  “What about--”

  “We’ve got all semester, and you heard what Dr. Willard said, we could come anytime. Right now I think figuring out what the hell is in our bedroom is more important.”

  Chloe sighed and slammed the lid back on the box. Sam was already gone.

  “So I never got a chance to ask,” Sam said on the way back to the elevator, “What was up with you and Seth? I saw you guys walking out of the woods on my way to class.” Sam tried to look innocently inquisitive but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

  “We went for a walk,” Chloe shrugged.

  “Aaaaaaand?”

  “He kissed me,” Chloe said matter-of-factly. The elevator bell dinged and she got on and stared upwards, examining the ceiling panel as if it held something of great interest. Sam followed and punched the button for the first floor.

  “And, uhhh…how was that for you?” she asked.

  “It was…geez Sam, I don’t know, it was alright,” Chloe mumbled.

  “Look at you, getting all embarrassed because a guy kissed you!” Sam teased, “So just a kiss?”

  “What do you mean just a kiss? Yes, alright? Yes, just a kiss!” Chloe could feel her ears burning.

  “No touchy-feely? Didn’t even try to slip you the tongue or anything?” Sam grinned wickedly.

  “Oh my God, Sam! No…well, okay, a little tongue, but that was it,” she admitted, hoping Sam would be content.

  “Oh no, Chloe…uh-oh, you’re not a…not…a virgin, are you?” Sam feigned mock horror.

  The elevator doors jerked open to reveal a crowd of students waiting to get on. Chloe glared at Sam with a look that plainly said, ’Shut it!’ before the two struggled against the group of oncoming students and their book bags. Gaining the clearing beyond, she smacked Sam on the arm.

  “That’s none of your business!” she said. Sam laughed out loud and shoved her back.

  “Okay, so you are, but I bet you a hundred dollars he’s not, and he is a guy so he’s obviously thinking about it. Is there some reason you haven’t yet, like you’re waiting for marriage or something?” Sam asked.

  “No…yes…I don’t know. I mean it’s not like the opportunity ever presented itself. In high school I was the crazy girl who talked to herself. I never really thought about it,” Chloe admitted.

  “Well, he is older and like I said, he is a guy, and at some point, probably sooner rather than later, he’s going to expect it. If I could offer some advice?” Sam asked.

  Chloe nodded her assent.

  “Well, my thought is to think about what you’re going to say when it comes up, whether it’s going to be yes or no and make sure you have reasons either way. Too many girls do it because they’re scared to say no, they think that if they don’t do it, the guy won’t be interested in them anymore or they do it because they’re just totally unprepared. The guy is all ready to go and the girl’s not really sure and they just kind of cave to pressure. You know what I mean?” Sam asked.

  “But don’t you think that most of the time the guy really will lose interest if they say “no”?” Chloe asked.

  “Yeah,” Sam admitted without hesitation, “But that’s the reason I did it…the first time. I really liked the guy and I wanted him to keep liking me and be my boyfriend so I slept with him and uhhhh…we broke up a month later because he was sleeping with a friend of mine.”

  “Oh that sucks,” Chloe comforted her. Sam shrugged as they pushed open the main doors of the library and continued towards the bus stop on the other side of the square. It was late. The cement benches were empty and cold even to the eye, and the fountain, at the center of the paved square, had already been turned off.

  “Yeah it sucked,” Sam agreed at last, “and not to sound trite, or like an after school special or anything, but I guess that wasn’t a good reason to do it in the first place. I get the feeling that sex isn’t the key to keeping a guy, I don’t know what the hell is, but I don’t think it’s sex.”

  “So what…now you‘re going to be the sexless party girl until you find the guy who‘ll give you your MRS degree?” Chloe asked.

  “No. I don’t think so. I used to really enjoy sex, it was fun. Then the whole thing happened with Ethan, and well…I don’t know. I think I just want to wait until I’m in a relationship. With someone I trust, someone that really likes me. Someone that would stick around even if I said ‘no’ the first time…and it would help if he was going to be a doctor or lawyer and had a decent-sized trust fund,” she added.

  Chloe smirked and rolled her eyes.

  “So what do you think I should say to him…if it…if it comes up, I mean,” Chloe stammered.

  Sam thought about it a minute. Up ahead the bus was groaning to a stop at the sign. The girls ran the last couple of feet and jumped onto the steps.

  “Say no the first time at least,” Sam advised, swinging her bag into a seat and dropping down next to it, “Say no, and see if he sticks around.”

  Chloe nodded, but Sam screwed up her lips and squinted her eyes, second-guessing herself.

  “You know what, Clo? Scratch that. Say whatever you think the right thing to say is. It’s got to be your call. I’m just telling you what I would do,” she amended. “But just a thought? The first time he tried to kiss you, you almost gave yourself a concussion. The first time he t
ries to…well, knowing you it could be catastrophic.”

  The bus lurched into motion and pulled away from the curb. Around them, other students looked grim and tired in the bus’s yellow light. Some listened to earphones or read from textbooks, others stared at black windows that seemed only to reflect the scene inside.

  “He offered to sleep in our room tonight,” Chloe said.

  “Ha! I bet he did,” Sam grinned.

  “Ha, ha, very funny. I meant he offered to sleep in our room because he knows about us being scared of the ghost. He said he’d come down after ten, because he wouldn’t want other people on the floor to get the wrong idea. He said he’d sleep on the floor,”

  “And you believe that?” Sam taunted.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do to,” Sam admitted. “I kind of get the feeling he may actually be a good guy. I can’t be sure, cause I haven’t met one before, but he just might be.”

  The bus rolled to a stop and the driver popped the door open expelling several students into the night and gaining a few more. Sam and Chloe swayed in their seats as it roared back into action.

  “Do you want him to stay in the room?” Sam asked.

  “Kind of. I’m scared, you know? I just don’t want him to think…” she trailed off.

  “You don’t want him to think you’re crazy,” Sam finished.

  “Exactly.”

  “So we don’t tell him anything from now on, right?” Sam asked.

  “I think that would be best,” Chloe decided, “He said that if we wanted to switch rooms, we could. He said that we could probably even stay together. That lots of freshmen drop out in the first semester and that we could wait a month or two and put in a request to move to another dorm.”

  “Is that what you want to do?” Sam asked.

  “I guess we can wait and see how things go. I want to stay near him, you know?” Chloe said.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “And I like the building, kind of. It’s neat. There’s a lot of…history there, and it’s…well, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Chloe asked.