Not Crazy

There’s a light piercing through my eyelids when I wake up. I watch the crimson spread over my skin as the light tries to break through to my eyes. It doesn’t take too long for me to adjust.1

My pupils are huge, I can sense it. It’s the kind of feeling you get when you haven’t brushed your hair in the morning, and you just feel it hanging there like it doesn’t belong. Or when you don’t brush your teeth. You can feel the bad breath circling round the walls of your mouth like ghosts in an abandoned home. 2

I’m ready. 3

I gasp as I open my eyes. All I see is mirrors, screaming at each other, beating against my eyes and face and ears. My pupils grow larger until they envelope my eyes completely and I look like a trembling alien. Where am I? I can’t move my limbs. Something is tied tight around my skin, burning it as I push and pull against it. My neck doesn’t let me see much but I can see my bandaged wrists, the cloud colored cloth wrapped around my arms. Small even streaks of red stain the inside of the cloth. I wonder vaguely why they’re there. 4

Metal screeches against polished floor as I lurch forward. There’s something around my waist too, cutting into my stomach and sending a vivid pain that vibrates my bones. I gasp again. The mirrors turn to blazing white walls. I’m burning alive. “Burning alive.” My voice can only whisper. The walls take it and circle it round the room, echoing my voice until it screams like the walls. “Burningalive burning alive burning alive BURNING ALIVE.” I flinch. Suddenly. As someone beside me moves. I turn my head; a figure blurs and turns too. Another alien with black diamonds for eyes. 5

“We’re not burning alive.” It speaks. She. She speaks. “We’re technically dead.”
She sighs.
“We’re in the mirror room.”
“The mirror room?”
“Say thanks that you aren’t in the Disturbed Ward. Yet.”
“The mirror room?”
“I’m Dahlia.”
“The mirror room.”
“There are many names. Too many. This is where they put you when they want you to think.”
“They?”
“The doctors. The assistants. What did you do? Skip a meeting?”
“I did. Yes. I skipped a meeting. Yes. I should go.”
“Ha!”
Dahlia’s nasal voice smirks.
“You ain’t going anywhere. See, I skipped a meeting. They’re pointless. They already know why I’m in this shithole.”
“I don’t.”
I can tell she’s glaring at me.6

“You’re new here.”
“Where here?”
“Ha. You’re new.”
“Is that bad?”
“For you, yeah. But wait’ll the girls hear that I bunked in the mirror room with a freshie.”
“Where am I?”
“You, baby. You’re in a psychiatric ward.”
“Psychiatric ward.”
“You said it.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why? Well I dunno. They think you have a problem and so they busted you and sent you here. Welcome. Welcome to the Kingdom of Hell and the mindless people who live in it.”
“I already was in Hell.”
“Well this definitely beats it. Why you here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Well I’m here because.”
She coughs. The bed creaks as Dahlia moves her face away.
“My brother beat me to a pulp and used me. And his friends used me too.”
Used.
“Used?”
“They said it made me clinically depressed. My parents just shipped me off and forgot about me. I didn’t... I didn’t even get a letter. And they expect- me to get better.”
“Used.”
“Used. Raped.”
“Your brother?”
“One and only.”
“I never had a brother.”
“Pray thanks.”
“My parents don’t know I’m here. I think they’re dead.”
“So you’re not getting letters either?”
“No.”
We think. My pupils get smaller. There’s a dull pain in my stomach and I try to curl up to stop it but the bands around my body cut into me again. The pain turns deeper deeper. Flashes erupt into my memory. A thin stream of red paint curling like string in a pink tub filled with water. A shredded mirror sparkling on a tiled floor. A darkened room. Pills. Powder. Powder. Perfect blue tablets. Blue like a robin’s egg. Perfect like the sun. The flashes make me tremble; make me smile as I turn to the gleaming mirrors...
“Listen.”
Listening.
“There’s something you can’t do. Something that’s against all the rules here.”
My ear curls to listen.
“You have to like this place. See, their main goal is for you to admit you’re crazy.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“That’s what you say.”
“I’m not crazy.”
Dahlia’s bed screams as she hits it with a clenched fist.
“Listen to me. Don’t. Ever. Scream.”
“Scream?”
“Exactly. Never. I was sent to the meetings because I was writing numbers on my walls. I was counting. You can’t count your stay here. You have to embrace it. You have to dance around and whisper, “I’m crazy!” because you can’t scream.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“Do not scream. Never scream. Okay? Never ever scream.”
“Okay.”
“.. I was counting… and I wasn’t supposed to. I reached almost the same number of guys who used me…”
“Counting.”
“They marked me as depressed because I was always researching rape. Because I cut myself.”
“Don’t scream.”
“I wanted that blood out of me! See? I have scars too. We all have scars here. You aren’t special.”
“I never was.”
“Don’t scream. And then you might be like Emily Sims. They might let you out before you die.”
Emily Sims. Before I die… It hurts my head. I turn stiffly again, my skin peeling a hundred layers. My hair isn’t brushed. My fingers close around a handful of pills. Soft blue pills that sing to me softly. Ease the thick pain in my stomach and the confusion in my head. I’m not crazy. This girl is. What is her name? Some sort of flower. Dahlia, I think. Yes. Dahlia. She’s still muttering something about Emily Sims and twelve boys. She has blonde hair, I can see it now. Soft blonde hair that curls round her invisible cheeks and black eyes. They probably don’t give brushes around here. I don’t think her hair is supposed to be curly. It’s matted and stiff, greasy and shiny at the top. 7

“Drugs... They’ll give the drugs soon.”
Drugs. Drugs. Powder. I jump in my bed.
“Powder.”
“Shut up. Shut up I’m... I’m counting.”
Powder.
Crystal.
Rock.
The M word… Blade.
I can feel the pills in my hand more vividly now. I roll them between my fingers; hear them clink as they fall onto each other softly like bingo cubes in a spinner. My mouth begins to water and I reach for them-8

To fall back.9

I reach again And fall back The bonds dig into my wrist I feel the crisp shredding of dried blood as it is torn from the cuts on my wrist and new blood spreads on the cloth forming crimson pictures on the sticky bandage I want it so much I whimper and I scream10

“Don’t scream!”
I scream louder people the door opens light reflects the mirror and Dahlia gasps as the light strikes her eyes and I scream scream scream as the pills drop from my hand the precious thin pills fall to the floor and tumble break roll under the bed shatter under the heavy feet of cumbersome men as they prance into the room I shake in my bed scream louder smell the air of the thin powder soft as dust light as sunshine flakes scream until ashes pour from my mouth and my filthy hair until I erupt into streams of blue ashes shake the bed a heavy hand grabs the metal his anxious sweat slips on the bar and the bed tumbles to the ground people curse I scream louder my hair in my mouth I search for the pills with my tongue and breathe long gasps of polluted hair as the bed is heaved up my straps are pulled away my stomach breathes my rashes swell my wrist floods the room with crimson paint and suddenly11

a sharp pain12

my arm numbs. the world turns 13

black.