Asylum Bound

by Analeigh Ford

  I do my best to sit up in my chair and look as sane as possible—which means brushing some of my long dark hair away from my face. There isn’t much I can do to tame the usually soft waves into something a little less like witch’s frizz.

  “Okay.” I nod and lean forward in my seat again. “Let’s start the psychological evaluation.”

  “We already have.” Dr. Silver takes out a fresh sheet of paper, clicks on his pen, and begins taking notes.

  “One of the most important aspects we need to visit is how you’ll interact with other guests here,” he says. “Because as far as your brother’s notes go, it seems you tend to have issues arise when you feel out of control of a situation.”

  “Who doesn’t?” I ask, immediately thinking how much easier this conversation would be after a couple shots of tequila. “I mean . . . okay, fine. I’ve never been super . . . great . . . at making friends.”

  “And why do you think that is?”

  “I don’t know. I like to be alone.” I say.

  He nods and jots something down that takes too many words to possibly be a positive thing.

  “What about Adelaide? You seemed to be getting alone fine with her this morning.”

  I bark out a laugh. “Yes, right up until she started drinking her own blood in front of everyone in the cafeteria.”

  “And that made you uncomfortable, did it?”

  His questions are starting to get on my nerves. “Why wouldn’t it? I think it’s a basic human reaction to self-mutilation.”

  Dr. Silver stops and crosses his arms across his board.

  “Adelaide has a terminal condition that is going to kill her any day now. I’m only telling you this because it’s common knowledge, and Adelaide makes no secret of it.”

  “Oh.” I sit back again, unsure of how I’m supposed to react.

  “Yet Adelaide believes that if she drinks her own blood . . . she’ll somehow heal herself,” Dr. Silver says. “In a way . . . most of our guests are here because they suffer similar delusions.”

  “And me . . . that’s what I was hoping I’d get to ask you about,” I say. “What exactly is it I’m in here for?”

  Dr. Silver finds one page on his board and pulls it out to give it a better look.

  ‘Well, when your brother first contacted us six months ago . . .”

  “Wait, stop.” I hold up both my arms and slam them down on either armrest in front of me. “He contacted you six months ago?”

  Six months ago. That had to have been before my parent’s plane even went missing. I knew he’d been up to something for some time, but didn’t think he’d planned this for so long. I should have known better.

  I shake my head, half to clear it and half out of total disbelief at my own stupidity. “I thought this was about the funeral.”

  “You mean when you claimed to hear your parents speaking to you and climbed into their graves to try and break them out of their coffins?”

  I shrink back into my chair. “Right.”

  I mean, I know I overreacted, but that was just grief. Right?

  Now that I’m successfully shut up, Dr. Silver continues. “Your brother reached out to us because he was concerned that you had ongoing mental health concerns that were being overlooked,” he says, taking out several papers and thumbing through the first couple. His eyes move so fast it’s like they’re a blur. “He said you had a history of violence and failed attempts for correction in the past.”

  It takes everything in me not to scoff out loud. I know it won’t help my case, but the fact that it’s Kemper saying those things…it’s almost too much. Instead, I try to keep my voice and hands steady.

  “Even if that’s true,” I say, “Those aren’t reasons for full time commitment.”

  “Maybe not to you, they’re not.” Dr. Silver just keeps reading off the chart without looking up. “But then there’s the funeral, which even you can’t deny is a bit of a red flag. When did the delusions first start? Was it before or after the drug and alcohol abuse?”

  It takes a second for what he just said to register. “Wait…drugs and alcohol?” I raise an eyebrow. “I…I’m not an addict.”

  Dr. Silver glances up at me. “So, you’re telling me you didn’t get expelled your junior year for carrying methamphetamines?”

  I gawk at him like a fish out of water, jaw working wordlessly for a moment. “I…of course I did. It was private school. Everyone was on that shit.”

  “And then caught with a handle of vodka on prom night?”

  Again, I stare at him. “It was prom night.”

  He isn’t satisfied with my answer, but he doesn’t push against me. He just lifts his papers up a bit higher and jots down another line of notes.

  I’m still reeling from what he said earlier. Sure, I had a little breakdown at the funeral . . . but I thought that was what made Kemper come up with the idea to finally commit me. If he reached out to the asylum six months ago, he must have been planning this whole thing for much, much longer.

  I just keep staring, unseeing, at the way my hands clutch the end of the armrests on my chair, and Dr. Silver keeps pulling papers from his file.

  “You have a history of violence too, or at least threatening it.”

  “What?”

  My eyes finally lift to focus on him. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.

  He starts reading off a list of things I’ve said to my brother over the years. Things shot across the dinner table and overheard by family and staff alike. Staff that, as it turns out, wasn’t nearly as loyal to me as I once thought.

  “Those were jokes,” I say, emphasizing the word as much as possible. I lean across the table, my hands still glued to my chair. “You know how siblings are. Then there’s Kemper and I. We have a particularly . . . complicated . . . relationship.”

  “Which I think is part of the reason you ended up in here,” Dr. Silver says, making a little tent with his fingers on the top of the desk. “Your parent’s untimely deaths have unhinged you, as they would anybody. I’m here to help find out if this change is just temporary, or if it’s a little more . . . complicated . . . than that.”

  I sit back in my chair again and purse my lips, not appreciating the way he used my own words against me.

  “There’s no proof I said any of those things,” I just say, finally . . . and immediately realize how stupid I’ve been all these years.

  No sooner have I said it than he produces written signatures from nearly every member of the household staff over the years, verifying that I did, indeed, say those things. My eyes scan the paper, growing ever more frantic.

  “Half those people weren’t even with us at these times,” I say, struggling to keep my voice below a screech. “And even then, I never actually acted on any of it. All I did was, erm, react a little differently at the funeral. Everyone grieves differently. Maybe eating dirt and crying really loud is just the way I deal with my parents dying.”

  Dr. Silver half gets up from his desk and holds out his arms in what’s meant to be a calming gesture, but it only makes me angrier.

  “I’m not crazy!” I say, too loud, and then immediately glance over my shoulder, remembering the reaction it got me last time. I force myself to take a deep breath and lower my voice. “I mean . . . I’m not insane. I don’t have delusions. I . . . I don’t know how I’m supposed to prove this all to you in less than, what, two months?”

  “Ah yes,” Dr. Silver says, sitting back down again. “Your impending review.”

  He shuffles some papers around on his desk.

  I lean forward. “There has to be someone I’m allowed to talk to. Someone I can call. I must have…visitation rights or something.”

  A sound outside the door makes me pause what I was about to ask and cock my ear towards the hall.

  Dr. Silver stops what he’s doing and watches me acutely.

  “Do you hear that?” I mouth, thumbing towards the crack in the door. It’s faint, the sound lik
e breath on the other side of glass . . . but the more I try to focus on it, the harder it is to hear.

  Then there’s a sudden scuffle and we hear voices—a nurse trying to ask a man to stop urinating on the wall when the bathroom is literally right next door—and Dr. Silver gets up to shut the door this time.

  “Sorry about that,” he mutters, settling back into his chair. “Some of the other inmates don’t quite know how to respect privacy.”

  “Odd thing for you to say,” I mutter.

  He arches an eyebrow at me, but neither of us presses further. “As to the question before. Right now the only person on your approved contact list is your brother, Kemper.”

  “Great,” I say, not even bothering to conceal how I feel about that. “And I’m guessing there’s nothing I can do about it?”

  Dr. Silver shakes his head. “Not at the moment, unfortunately. Maybe the next time your brother visits you can get him to alter the list.”

  I could laugh, but I really want to cry. I’m resigned.

  “But so then . . . if I am stuck here, what do I need to do to prove I’m not cr—insane?”

  Dr. Silver sighs and shuffles the papers together on his desk, but I can tell he’s secretly excited about what he says next. “To be quite honest, this sort of evaluation isn’t typical for this asylum. By the time patients get to us, they’ve usually already been diagnosed and monitored for years.”

  “Yay for me,” I say, dryly. “I get the special fast-track to looney town.”

  He looks at me again, and I clamp my mouth shut.

  “This isn’t going to work until you’re ready to participate, Thalia.” For the first time he leans across the desk, those fingers clasped together in front of him as he looks at me. Really looks at me in this uncanny, see-through-the-bullshit way.

  It makes me uncomfortable.

  “I didn’t realize there was a choice,” I say.

  He just keeps looking on. “There’s always a choice. We can’t force you to go to therapy. We can’t force you to get better. I know I’m certainly not going to try to treat you for something if I don’t even know what the problem is yet. And until you let me diagnose you…”

  I feel a slight flutter in the pit of my stomach, but I immediately squash it back down. Choice. As if I had a choice being here. This has to be a game, something to try to make me get along. To play nice.

  Well, I’ve some experience with games, so if he wants to play…well then, let’s play.

  I cross my arms across my chest. “Fine then,” I say. “If I really have a choice, then no, I don’t want to participate.”

  One of Dr. Silver’s eyebrows shoots up, but he doesn’t shrink back. “Are you quite certain? We can’t allow you to mingle freely with the other guests here until we’ve determined you’re safe, and we don’t have any extra hands lying around to keep an eye on you. Even Craven can’t spare enough time to watch you more than absolutely necessary . . . and to be honest, I’m not sure I’d want him to, anyway.”

  I scoff, and then immediately try to cover it up as a cough when an offended look comes over his face. “I mean, that’s fine. I didn’t think I was suddenly going to make bosom buddies or something.”

  Dr. Silver’s other eyebrow joins the first higher up on his forehead and he finally sits back, looking away long enough to let out a short sigh as he starts shuffling the stack of papers back in order again. It’s a nervous sort of tick. Nervous for me, even.

  “Thalia, it would do you well to remember I’m not the enemy here.”

  “No,” I say, “just my jailer.”

  For the first time, Dr. Silver loses his cool. It’s brief, just a shaking hand that has to be stilled, but he can’t hide the flash of anger cross his features. Or is it frustration?

  His hands clench. His eyes glaze over. He takes on a far-off look, as if he’s seeing through me. Looking beyond me, beyond what can even be seen, into something more.

  His look is so intense, I swear I can hear his thoughts inside my own mind.

  Again. This again. Why won’t they learn? Why won’t they listen?

  But I’m imagining that. Of course I can’t hear his thoughts.

  And just as quickly as he nearly loses his calm, it passes. He shuffles the papers again, and then lets out a careful, controlled breath.

  “Jailers then. If you want to think of this as prison, then I’m not going to stop you. But you’re the one trapped here, Thalia, not me. It’s you who must live with your own mind.”

  “We all have to live with our own minds,” I say, and once again I see a flash of something in the look he gives me. Not anger this time, not frustration. Interest.

  “At least,” he says, standing up and motioning towards the doorway with an almost smug half-smile spreading across his face, “mine gets to leave this place at the end of the day.”

  I let him herd me to the door where Craven now waits outside. I follow him out, only pausing long enough to call back over my shoulder one more time.

  “For now, maybe,” I say. “But you never know. Maybe one day you’ll find yourself on this side of things. Maybe, one day, all the madness around you will finally seep inside.”

  I catch one short glimpse of his face in the polished reflection of a vase in the hall.

  I might be imagining it, but I see a new emotion there…and I swear it’s fear.

  9

  Thalia

  It seems there are more rules to this seemingly lawless place than I thought.

  Refusing therapy lands me locked in my new bedroom for the remainder of the day. It’s one step above solitary confinement, because at the very least, I can tell the passage of time by the way the streaks of light shift across the walls as the sun makes its passage across the pale fall sky.

  Craven escorts me up to my room and turns a key in the lock from outside as if I’m expected to make a mad dash for freedom at the first possible opportunity.

  I can’t really blame them since it’s true.

  At first, I thought I’d go mad here. I’m left alone in the empty room devoid of anything to occupy my mind, but I soon find that compared to solitary…it really isn’t all that bad.

  At least here, in this empty room, there are bricks to count and cracks to trace with numb fingertips. The web of broken lines are the true heroes here, the only occupants of this godforsaken place that have somehow managed to change it more than this place has been able to keep up.

  I know that as much as I want to get out of this place unscathed, it’s not going to happen.

  Even if I keep at this for days, weeks…for the whole two months. I knew it the moment I realized where Kemper was taking me. No matter what happened, I was going to change.

  And probably not for the better.

  I consider sitting on Adelaide’s bed since she actually has a mattress, but as soon as I sit down I keep conjuring images of the blood-stained breakfast room. Something tells me that isn’t the first time that’s happened, and I have to move over to the metal frame of my own.

  It isn’t as comfortable, but somehow it’s still better than solitary.

  A tree on the front lawn casts its shadowed branches through the window, so I make a game of counting the number of bricks as the sun shifts across the sky. Every two bricks, I get up and pace to the window. I watch as the inmates stream out across the lawn, lounge out on the grass, and pace along the outer walls. They don’t get too close, however, even though there don’t seem to be too many orderlies patrolling the outer edges of the grounds.

  In fact, the few that are there move restlessly. They shift where they’re posted, never standing still, but at the same time never looking like they’re ever quite certain of where they’re supposed to be.

  By the third time I’ve crossed over to the window, my toes already pinching in the not-yet-broken-into shoes, there aren’t any more inmates—or guests as we’re supposed to call them—roaming down below. And neither are there guards.

  Only one or two can b
e spotted if I look closely, and even then, they move between the trees at the edges of the grounds so slowly that I can count the seconds before they reappear between their branches.

  Dr. Silver mentioned they were drawn thin at the moment…but I wonder why? Not that I mind. This sort of thing could be used to my advantage.

  If I ever manage to even get out of this room. And if I get this stupid metal bracelet off my foot.

  As if on cue, I hear a shuffle outside the door. I ignore it at first, thinking it’s the orderly trying to get another peek at me through the keyhole, doubtless hoping to catch me in a moment of indecency.

  But then there’s another shuffle, and I think I hear a scraping sound outside on the floor. I’m fully prepared to ignore this too, until I hear the soft retreat of footsteps.

  I freeze, tuning into the sound. The footsteps are too light to belong to the orderly. Could it be Adelaide, come to check on me? She seems the type to do just that.

  But I inwardly know it isn’t her. The stride is all wrong. Whoever those steps belong to, it’s someone much taller. I close my eyes, imagining the sound again. I’ve always been good with sound. I hear things I shouldn’t. Recognize things I shouldn’t.

  Those footsteps belong to a man, and since it wasn’t the orderly and I can’t imagine Dr. Silver sneaking around the hallways like that…I have a good idea who they might belong to.

  Or belonged to at this point. All my thinking has let the culprit get away. But they might have left something behind.

  It’s with this knowledge that I carefully, ever-so-carefully, try the door.

  I find it unlocked.

  I didn’t bother trying it earlier. Even if it was unlocked, I knew the orderly waited just outside for much of the day. I could hear him breathing. Hear his knees creaking and his lungs wheezing as he knelt to catch a peek. And then, each time, heard the slight catch in his breath as he’s disappointed.

  But now nothing other than my own breath fills the space between the door and the frame. I pause for just a second, to be sure.