They think you’re crazy! Well, you’re not crazy as far as you know... You’ve been brought here for a reason though, what was it? The walls were a dull metal gray; the floor was hard and cold. I shivered in the corner. Well at least I think that’s me. Everything is so vague at the moment, I don’t even know if this was a prison or a hospital. They sure did pump me full of enough damned drugs for it to be an asylum. The only light in this room came from a little sliver of a peephole in the door. I was scared, and I felt a sense of urgency. I didn’t have time to be dealing with these people, I had to get home; I had to warn people about something. But what?
You’re definitely not right in the head that’s for sure. But who can blame you? You’re all fucked up from those shots they kept giving you. God, try to remember what came before all this! I remember yelling, and florescent lights, a guy with a stupid mustache and his framed glasses in my face. Musky odor. never tell a girl she’s fat, people whispering in the corner, white coats, smart talk. But that was all since I’d been brought here. So what happened before that?
***
"Hi," she says from the dark corner. She is silhouetted in moonlight, and her hair is long and flowing down her back. There I stand with as little presence as I can manage; I don’t want to taint her air.
"Hi," comes the word with a bit of a fight from my throat. I feel warm.
"Sit next to me." I can’t do that; I don’t want to ruin this image. I walk to her and see her eyes through the dark. "What’s wrong?" she asks.
"It’s not so much fear as..." I take a small step forward. "I respect beauty."
"I still don’t know what that means," she turns her head and stares out the window. "Your timing is horrible."
"I’ve never been good with timing, I’ve never been good at anything." I take my seat in the windowsill. I sigh. How can I miss something I never had?
***
"Look, we’re just trying to help you, but we need you to help us. Where are the other bodies?" this lady had a nasally voice, probably because her pointed nose was so tiny.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you mean ‘other’ bodies?"
Her hand smacking the table makes me jump. "Listen here you little shit. Your games are costing people their lives." What the hell is she talking about?
"Look, he obviously isn’t aware of what he’s done," the man with the mustache and glasses interjects with his grainy voice. He has a pen in his left shirt pocket. "We need to try a different tactic." The pen was a shiny silver metal. "Let the psychologists examine him." It looked cold.
"God, I don’t have fucking time for this!" The lady scooped her file off the table between us and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
"She’s right son, we don’t really have time for this. Can you at least try to think about what we’re asking you?" His pen wasn’t that far out of reach...
"I really don’t understand sir, I really think you have the wrong guy for...whatever it is you have me here for." I was sweating a little, twiddling my fingers around and around.
"You know what I think?" the man’s demeanor began to change. Around and around and around. "I think you’re faking this whole thing." He stood up quickly, his chair slid back and crashed into the wall with a loud sound. Shiny metal pen; around and around and around and-
The man threw the table from between us and closed the gap instantly grabbing onto my shirt as he did so. I’m a light person, easy to lift off the ground, but you can’t intimidate me with these tactics. "Do you think this is a fucking game?!" he was glaring at me so intently, but I wasn’t looking at him. I lifted the pen from his left shirt pocket and before he could react I felt it sliding into his eye.
Now why would you go and do a thing like that? You’re not a murderer. I don’t know why I did that, I just felt like I had to. The man lay twitching on the floor as a pool of blood grew underneath him. I stumbled away from him as if afraid of his soon to be corpse. I felt the doorknob behind me, twisted it. It was unlocked.
In the hallway now I passed by people who seemed to be too busy to notice me, a disheveled stumbling person in a green hatched gown. But then alarms were sounding and I found myself hiding in a room not unlike the one I was just in but there were monitors and electrical equipment against the far wall. And that pointy nosed lady was standing there glaring at me.
"What the hell-" I fell back into cold darkness; everything became animated and surreal. When I shook myself out of my stupor the woman was strung upside-down to a hook in the ceiling. Someone had taken the chords from all the electrical equipment and wrapped it around her so tight that it was cutting through her skin. As blood trailed down her forehead she screamed obscenities at me. There was another shiny pen on the desk, so I put it into her head to stop the noise. Oh you’ve really done it now.
***
"Do you ever get the feeling that there is no such thing as right or wrong?" she asked as she leaned against me. Moments like these only happen in the starlight.
"No, I know there is right and wrong. I just think our perceptions of it are all off." My hand lay on her stomach, her hand slid over mine putting the slightest pressure on it. I could feel her life consume my senses. I whispered into her ear, and she turned to look me in the eyes once more. I think this is our way of giving each other permission. I think this is all we needed. And that look was all it took.
As I touch my lips to hers softly, warmth surrounds me and I am ever so gently enveloped in a sense of latent harmony. My mind is teaming with excitement, my heart is wrenching with agony that: this should be sung.
***
I was running through the storm drains beneath the compound. The large rounded redbrick structure was covered in a green slime of algae; the muck clung to my bare feet and swirled between my toes as I ran through the shallow water below me. I could hear shouts and footsteps echoing behind me. Long shadows of running figures danced from left to right as flashlights shone from around the turn. I could see a glowing orange light ahead of me, it was the light of day, or of sunset at least. It was the outside nevertheless.
They’re going to catch you, they’re going to catch you and dice you up into little pieces! They aren’t going to catch me; I’m almost out of here. The opening was gaping before me, but all I could see was the sky and a metal frame extending from the mouth of the tunnel. "What is that?" I thought as I approached it.
I came to a halt suddenly. I was at the mouth, and I could see that the compound had been built high off the ground, a large body of water lay below, and this metal structure was obviously an unfinished construction job. The water flowing around my ankles was cold, the sound of running footsteps was pressing, and the strong wind slapping at my face was deafening.
"There’s nowhere to run kid! You’re at the end of the line!" I looked over my shoulder at them. They had more drugs in their hands. You can’t go back to them, they don’t have anything pleasant in store for you. I know. So I dashed out across the metal frame hopping over the gaps between, and leapt off the end.
There was a timeless moment as I fell towards the water. This was going to hurt. Do I go head first or feet first? Feet first. The air roared around me, the water rushed towards me. And the smack into the water was not at all bearable. I think I might have lost consciousness for a moment as a strong current grabbed hold of me and carried me off.
***
I am not worthy to have had this experience. It is even worse to have been part of moments like this more than once. These things are meant for people of much greater confidence than I. I feel her chest rise and fall with her breath, and her heartbeat is so soft. Her eyes aren’t closed, but they are not looking at anything in particular.
"What keeps us so far apart?" she asks me.
"Time and space," I say. "A lack of the right circumstances." I grasp for what she is really asking.
"What purpose is there behind this moment? What is it’s meaning?"
"I don’t believe there is a true meaning to anything in life. I am given dreams in which my actions have no long-term consequences. I am given a choice in life as to which dreams I allow to become reality." She shifts her weight slightly, I press my cheek against hers. "Is it my right to chose which dreams become my life? Or is it simply enough for me to live my life and allow whatever comes my way to be that choice?"
"This is your dream?" she asks, still staring at nothing. "And what of your reality?"
"I dream in tandem with the beautiful and the lurid." I let her go with sadness. "But what I want and what I have are never so aligned."
***
The next thing I remember is holding onto a dead tree branch on the bank of the river. The water was icy cold and I was completely numb. It took all of my strength just to get out of the water. There will be dogs soon, and men with guns. They can smell your stench from miles away. I have to ditch my gown that’s for sure. I crawled up the muddy bank until I came across a gravel road with a house on the other side. As I stumbled onto the road a golden retriever came bounding my way. I let it lick my hands and face as I pet it, dog’s probably can’t smell their own kind too well. I removed my gown and placed it on the retriever patting it on its way.
This place looked familiar to me, I must be near my parent’s home. It was growing dark and the sky was overcast. I needed a place to hide, but my parents must have been informed on my situation, what if they turned me in? No choice, I can hear the dogs barking now.
The lights were on in their living room, I could see the flicker of the TV from the den. I couldn’t see any of them from the windows. I snuck over the fence to the backyard and made my way around the tool shed. Quickly and silently I slid through the door and closed it behind me with the slightest creak. Near the back, by the rakes, I huddled my naked form. It was only a matter of time, I thought.
And just as I began to find comfort in my solitude the door opened to reveal my father. "Son, my God son, what have you done?" I must have looked awful...