I want to be angry angry angry.
I want to be the bird that flies away.
“What are you writing?” Cellmate speaks again.
These words are vomit.
This shaky pen is my esophagus.
This sheet of paper is my porcelain bowl.
“Why won’t you answer me?” He’s too close too close too close.
No one is ever close enough.
I suck in my breath and wait for him to walk away like everyone else in my life. My eyes are focused on the window and the promise of what could be. The promise of something grander, something greater, some reason for the madness building in my bones, some explanation for my inability to do anything without ruining everything. There will be a bird. It will be white with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. It will fly. There will be a bird. It will be—
“Hey—”
“You can’t touch me,” I whisper. I’m lying, is what I don’t tell him. He can touch me, is what I’ll never tell him. Please touch me, is what I want to tell him.
But things happen when people touch me. Strange things. Bad things.
Dead things.
I can’t remember the warmth of any kind of embrace. My arms ache from the inescapable ice of isolation. My own mother couldn’t hold me in her arms. My father couldn’t warm my frozen hands. I live in a world of nothing.
Hello.
World.
You will forget me.
Knock knock.
Cellmate jumps to his feet.
It’s time to shower.
Chapter Three
The door opens to an abyss.
There’s no color, no light, no promise of anything but horror on the other side. No words. No direction. Just an open door that means the same thing every time.
Cellmate has questions.
“What the hell?” He looks from me to the illusion of escape. “They’re letting us out?”
They’ll never let us out. “It’s time to shower.”
“Shower?” His voice loses inflection but it’s still threaded with curiosity.
“We don’t have much time,” I tell him. “We have to hurry.”
“Wait, what?” He reaches for my arm but I pull away. “But there’s no light—we can’t even see where we’re going—”
“Quickly.” I focus my eyes on the floor. “Take the hem of my shirt.”
“What are you talking about—”
An alarm sounds in the distance. A buzzing hums closer by the second. Soon the entire cell is vibrating with the warning and the door is slipping back into place. I grab his shirt and pull him into the blackness beside me. “Don’t. Say. Anything.”
“Bu—”
“Nothing,” I hiss. I tug on his shirt and command him to follow me as I feel my way through the maze of the mental institution. It’s a home, a center for troubled youth, for neglected children from broken families, a safe house for the psychologically disturbed. It’s a prison. They feed us nothing and our eyes never see each other except in the rare bursts of light that steal their way through cracks of glass they pretend are windows. Nights are punctured by screams and heaving sobs, wails and tortured cries, the sounds of flesh and bone breaking by force or choice I’ll never know. I spent the first 3 months in the company of my own stench. No one ever told me where the bathrooms and showers were located. No one ever told me how the system worked. No one speaks to you unless they’re delivering bad news. No one touches you ever at all. Boys and girls never find each other.
Never but yesterday.
It can’t be coincidence.
My eyes begin to readjust in the artificial cloak of night. My fingers feel their way through the rough corridors, and Cellmate doesn’t say a word. I’m almost proud of him. He’s nearly a foot taller than me, his body hard and solid with the muscle and strength of someone close to my age. The world has not yet broken him. Such freedom in ignorance.
“Wha—”
I tug on his shirt a little harder to keep him from speaking. We’ve not yet cleared the corridors. I feel oddly protective of him, this person who could probably break me with 2 fingers. He doesn’t realize how his ignorance makes him vulnerable. He doesn’t realize that they might kill him for no reason at all.
I’ve decided not to be afraid of him. I’ve decided his actions are more immature than genuinely threatening. He looks so familiar so familiar so familiar to me. I once knew a boy with the same blue eyes and my memories won’t let me hate him.
Perhaps I’d like a friend.
6 more feet until the wall goes from rough to smooth and then we make a right. 2 feet of empty space before we reach a wooden door with a broken handle and a handful of splinters. 3 heartbeats to make certain we’re alone. 1 foot forward to edge the door inward. 1 soft creak and the crack widens to reveal nothing but what I imagine this space to look like. “This way,” I whisper.
I tug him toward the row of showers and scavenge the floor for any bits of soap lodged in the drain. I find 2 pieces, one twice as big as the other. “Open your hand,” I tell the darkness. “It’s slimy. But don’t drop it. There isn’t much soap and we got lucky today.”
He says nothing for a few seconds and I begin to worry.
“Are you still there?” I wonder if this was the trap. If this was the plan. If perhaps he was sent to kill me under the cover of darkness in this small space. I never really knew what they were going to do to me in the asylum, I never knew if they thought locking me up would be good enough but I always thought they might kill me. It always seemed like a viable option.
I can’t say I wouldn’t deserve it.
But I’m in here for something I never meant to do and no one seems to care that it was an accident.
My parents never tried to help me.
I hear no showers running and my heart stops in place. This particular room is rarely full, but there are usually others, if only 1 or 2. I’ve come to realize that the asylum’s residents are either legitimately insane and can’t find their way to the showers, or they simply don’t care.
I swallow hard.
“What’s your name?” His voice splits the air and my stream of consciousness in one movement. I can feel him breathing much closer than he was before. My heart is racing and I don’t know why but I can’t control it. “Why won’t you tell me your name?”