by Anna Ferrara
A pair of dice hit me square in the middle of my forehead the second I put my glass down. When I looked up, with a grimace on my face, I found Paul staring at me with the board game in front of her knees.
“Play!” she said in a voice that was as screechy as a child’s. “Play now!”
I honestly didn’t want to—my forehead smarted like a motherfucker and the board game looked boring as hell because it was the vintage sort without sound or lights—but I knew I didn’t want to say ‘no’ to her. How often did Dr Clark ‘find someone’ to play it with her? I suspected practically never. I didn’t want to be another one of those people who didn’t give two hoots about her happiness—the world had enough of those as it was—so I said yes.
She squealed when I did, threw her arms around me and squeezed me so tightly, I found it hard to breathe. The fact that my bandages might be injuries that could hurt when jostled that way never occurred to her at all.
She grabbed both my cheeks with her sticky fingers and said, “I likey you. I likey you much.”
Our eyes met in that moment and to my astonishment, a warmth charged up my torso, all the way to my face.
It felt like the kind of rush I sometimes encountered when a woman I was interested in getting to know more intimately felt likewise. The kind of rush I last felt in the presence of Arden Villeneuve.
Except, Paul wasn’t Arden Villeneuve. Not at all. Five seconds after the rush began, Paul peeled her eyes away from mine and began throwing gummy worms towards my face.
“Snakes! Snakes! Snakes!” she shouted as she bounced back to the board game like a hairy kangaroo on a high. She shook her torso the way kids in sing-and-dance shows always did and flapped her arms as if she were trying to lift herself off the ground.
We played Snakes and Ladders nonstop for the rest of our time together and I kept myself entertained by getting to know that sweet, helpful bottle of whisky better.
Chapter 7
? June 2033
I woke in my ward the next day with an awful pain piercing through my head and saw, through scrunched eyes, Dr Clark staring down at me with both hands on my shoulders. He was shaking me.
“Wake up, Miss Thompson…” His voice sounded muffled and far off even though I saw him close to my face. “It’s time for therapy.”
“Hi,” I said and struggled to sit up. The bed seemed way too soft and the room spun ever so slightly every now and then. I felt nauseous and my mouth tasted foul. It must have also smelled bad because Dr Clark let go of my shoulders without a smile.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” I dragged myself to the bathroom because my stomach started to churn and I felt it would be dangerous staying on the bed where there were vulnerable white sheets.
I spotted a pastrami sandwich on the bar table on the way over. Lunch, probably. The bread looked drier and harder than usual, and not in the least appetising. The four pink and blue pills I took with every meal sat in their small plastic cup untouched.
“Were you an alcoholic?”
“No.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.” I closed the bathroom door between us. Had there been a lock, I would have used it too.
“Is something bothering you?”
“No.” A wave of sickness came over me and I leaned over the toilet seat just one second before a bitter-tasting spew of pulp jostled out.
“Clean yourself up and we can talk about it.”
The white toilet bowl was full of a brownish-yellow porridge-like mess by the time I was done. I flushed, grabbed the sides of the sink for support and rinsed my mouth out with tap water. When I stood up properly, I saw a female ghost with tangled black hair past her shoulders in the mirror. There was shock in her black eyes as her greenish caramel face stared back at me.
I looked away at once and cursed under my breath. No woman would ever love me again if I kept this face up. I wouldn’t even want to kiss me. I closed my eyes, drenched my face with revivifying tap water and prayed I would feel less dizzy sooner rather than later.
“What do you think of Miss Rafferty?” Dr Clark asked from outside, oblivious to my turmoil.
Who? Oh, the redhead from yesterday? I had no opinion of her. I could barely even remember her face. She had one of those indistinctive plain faces, I thought. Nothing like Arden Villeneuve’s. “She’s alright,” I said as I scrubbed my mouth out with toothpaste.
“Did you have anything in common?”
Did we? Oh, wait, yes we did. We both slid down a couple of snakes in the game that was life and ended up right at the bottom. Apart from that? “No.”
I gargled and spat and felt my head throb when it tilted downward, as if something inside was trying to pound its way out. The smell of lilies began to get to me. I could tell I had to get out of the bathroom fast or the sweet fragrance of lilies would make me retch again.
When I emerged, I saw Dr Clark looking more concerned than usual. He even frowned. “I think we should leave the bed as it is today,” he said. “You don’t look too good.”
I didn’t feel good at all either.
Dr Clark duplicated himself and doubled in front of my eyes.
I felt as if I had to prop myself against the bathroom door just to remain standing.
“Do you have questions for me?” he asked when he merged back into one.
I shook my head and was surprised by how difficult it was to do so. My head felt way too heavy for small talk. Way to heavy to be held up for long periods of time.
“Anything you want to know about Paul?”
No. All I wanted to do then was sleep and hide my ugly self from the world. And retch. Hot fluid gushed up my throat and seeped into my mouth before I could stop it from doing so. I made it back into the bathroom just in the knick of time.
“You know, Paul’s mother used to be a patient of ours too,” Dr Clark said from the outside, over the sound of me gagging. “A paranoid schizophrenic. For years, we’ve been trying to find out if Paul inherited her disease but we’ve been failing because, as you might have noticed, Paul isn’t exactly the most verbal of patients. So, I would love to hear what you think. Is Paul normal or is she… unusual in any way?”
“Normal,” I said at once. Or maybe she wasn’t? I didn’t care either way, I just wanted him to stop talking to me. My thighs lost their strength and I found myself sinking onto the ground. Had the toilet seat not held my chin up, my head would have ended up where my thighs were.
Lucky for me, therapy hour ended right after that. Dr Clark advised lots of sleep and water, wished me a good weekend then left. Thank motherfucking goodness, I thought when I heard the door shut and lock behind him.
I got on all fours and crawled towards the bed. After throwing myself face down onto its crisp sheets, I groaned like a bear. I knew I sounded hideous and a tad like a porn star but I didn’t care. It felt so darned good doing so and I felt so much more relaxed afterward.
Who would have ever thought that falling from a building and losing my mind would actually be the best thing that ever happened to me? Before the falling incident, when I had to work for a living, I was allowed only one day of rest each week. If I chose not to go out, that day would be spent in a cramped room on months-old sheets with no entertainment other than what I could get for free on my phone. Housework had to be done or I would live in filth. Bills had to be paid or I would have to go without. At the wonderful Wonderdrug Psychiatric Centre however, I no longer had any of those problems. Food was served to my face, always. I never had to wash dishes. The ward made the bed. The ward did all the laundry. On top of all that, I was now living in a space bigger and more luxuriously equipped than any sort of space my sort of paycheck allowed me. And I didn’t even have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t to enjoy it.
I pulled a pillow under my head, nuzzled my face into its antiseptic fragrance and realised Dr Clark had been so right. Taking the time to heal in a psychia
tric facility was not in the least unpleasant at all. Quite the contrary. It was way more pleasant than being fully recovered. For me, at least.
As my body sank into the heavenly-soft mattress and my eyelids closed down over my eyes like heavy curtains, I told myself to never get better. I decided never to take any more of those pink pills right before I felt myself defy gravity and float, in my self-created darkness, into the cosy embrace of an indulgent, worry-free sleep.
Chapter 8
? June 2033
“Hello, Lane,” a voice said.
My eyes shot open and I looked around at once for it sounded as if there was a woman right in front of me.
Only there wasn’t. Not in front nor anywhere near. I was, as I remembered, all alone in my ward at Wonderdrug, on my queen-sized bed, with my cheek on the pillow. My ward was all dark now though. All the lights had been switched off, as they always were shortly after dinner. I checked the bar table.
There was pumpkin soup, potatoes and steamed vegetables on it. No pastrami sandwich. Lunch had been replaced by dinner. The usual plastic cup of four pills sat untouched.
“Hungry?” the same voice said.
I jumped out of bed at once. That voice sounded like it had been right next to me, yet there was nothing under the covers or anywhere else. “Who’s that?” I shouted.
“Shh! Get back to bed and act like you’re asleep! You don’t have to speak with your mouth. Just think the words you want to say and I’ll be able to hear you.”
What in the fuck?! My eyes grew wider yet I never once saw nobody in my ward. I checked, double checked and triple checked and it was always only just me around.
“I’m not in your room. Just do as I say, Lane. The cameras are rolling. Hurry.”
My mouth fell open. Where the hell was that voice coming from? It sounded very familiar too but I couldn’t remember where I first heard it. The Club? Some woman I briefly dated? Something from a movie?
“Get back to bed and close your eyes now!”
The voice sounded angry so I thought it would be best to do as it said. I went back under the blanket and flipped my eyelids shut.
“Thank you,” the voice said, as if it had seen me. “Now we can talk.”
The hairs on my skin tried to dash to the ceiling. “What do you want?” I thought to the voice. I felt very weird doing so but at the same time realised thinking with my mind was actually easier to do than talking with my mouth. I hadn’t had a drop to drink since I woke in the afternoon and my throat was suffering for it.
“I want to set you free,” the voice said. “Get you out of here.”
What in the...? “I’m good here,” I thought quickly. “I want to stay. And heal.”
“You’re not even sick, Lane. Don’t buy into their bullshit, and more importantly, don’t eat the pink pills at dinner. The pink pills are tranquillisers. They keep you knocked out all night. That’s why you’ve never seen all the things they’ve been doing to you while you sleep.”
What?! My eyes shot open once again. I looked all around but saw absolutely nobody anywhere. The voice had been so close though. So close, it could only have been right in front of me or... in my head!
“No, you’re not crazy,” the voice said, to my absolute horror. Nothing in the room moved.
My fingers curled over the blanket on my body and squeezed. Hard.
“They say you are because they want to keep you here. It’s your body they really want—”
“Enough! I don’t want to hear anymore,” I thought. I ducked under my pillow and pushed its cottony-soft filling up against my face. The smell of antiseptic entered my nostrils, reminded me I was already in a hospital and made me feel that little bit better.
“You have to,” the voice continued, to my dismay. “We have a chance to escape—tomorrow night, 3am. There’ll be a system reboot during which the doors on this floor will be unlocked for five minutes. The cameras will be down so—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I thought. Fast.
“—it’s the perfect opportunity. There’s no knowing when you’ll get to escape again if you miss the chance tomorrow.”
“I’m not going!” I thought. I could hear my heart beating in my ears and thought it sounded like a war drum.
“You’d rather be a lab rat for the rest of your life? Have your every move recorded and dissected so that people who don’t give a shit about you get to improve their lives?”
I had no idea what any of those words meant. “Shut up!” I shouted. Out loud. Into the pillow on my face. “Shut up!” I didn’t know what else to do.
I heard only silence after that. Long buzzing silence. When enough silence had passed, I removed the pillow from my face and looked around.
My ward was still empty. Dinner and pills were still on the bar table, uneaten. Nothing had changed at all.
I heaved a sigh of relief and released my grip of the pillow. I thought all was good again, that all was well, until—
“Don’t eat the pink pills at dinner tomorrow. At 3am, head out and meet me at the corridor. Don’t scream now.”
My legs jerked and my hand jumped over my mouth just in time to stop the scream that almost came out of it.
“Do not say a word about this, Lane,” the voice said in my head. “Not even to yourself. Trust me, you don’t want them knowing. Okay?”
I did not answer and the voice did not speak again but the damage had already been done.
I spent the night with my eyes wide open as swirls of theories ran rampant in my mind. Did the voice belong to a ghost? One I inadvertently offended when I mindlessly fucked in a cemetery all those years ago? Or was the voice part of a psychotic episode? Brought on by missing two consecutive doses of pink pills?
When at last I recalled why the voice sounded so darned familiar, I found myself grappling with a whole new level of unease.
That voice hadn’t come from the Club or a fling or a movie. No. That voice belonged to the woman I met only the day before. The Wonderdrug patient named Paul. The one with crazy hair like a cave-dwelling witch’s. The daughter of a paranoid schizophrenic.
By the time the lights in my ward came on again, I was convinced not taking the pink pills was a terrible idea.
I dashed out of bed and swallowed the ones in the tiny plastic cup on the bar table without a second thought.
Chapter 9
? June 2033
“Lane, wake up! It’s 2:45!”
Shit. Where was I? I bolted upright and looked around. Still at Wonderdrug? Check. Still on that super soft queen-sized bed? Check. But the lights were no longer on. Why? I turned my eyes to the bar table.
The pumpkin soup, potatoes and steamed vegetables I last saw were gone. In their place, three flame-roasted chicken drumsticks and two cobs of corn sat on a plate next to that familiar plastic cup of four pills. It was the sort of dish Wonderdrug would only ever serve at dinner, which meant…
…I must have slept through breakfast and lunch. Again? How in the world...? Sleep deprivation from being awake all night? I must have been exhausted.
“Nope, it’s the pink pills. Told you they’re tranquillisers.”
I jumped and swivelled around, but there was no one there.
No one I could see, at least.
No wonder I had been taken to a mental hospital. I shook my head, rubbed my eyes and said the Lord’s Prayer in my head, in case those might help.
“You’re not crazy and no, I am not a ghost. Go wait by the door, it’s almost time.”
Fuck. Why was this happening again? My stomach growled and all at once reminded me of the three doses of pink pills I missed while sleeping through the day. That could be it! Maybe if I ate the pink pills now, the voice would stop?
I thought it was worth a try. I jumped out of bed, tossed the cup of pills into my mouth and washed them all down with a glass of water. To make sure the pills stayed down, I grabbed a drumstick and sent huge
greasy bites of chicken down after it.
“Lane, this is not the time to eat. 2:55!”
Shit. How long did the pills need to work? My stomach growled again so I quickly took in another five bites of chicken. They tasted cold and hurt the sides of my throat as they went down but I persisted because I was beginning to think hunger might have also been a trigger of psychosis. I had skipped two meals the day the voice started up, hadn’t I?
“2:56!”
Fuck. How not hungry must I be to not hear things? I filled my mouth to the brim with more chicken and chewed as fast as I could. This time, the dry meat tickled my throat a tad too much and induced a massive coughing fit. Bits of chicken hurled past my lips and scattered all around the carpet.
“3am! Don’t make me have to come get you!”
“Leave me alone!” I shouted into thin air, as loudly as I could. “I’m staying right here!” Right in the middle of the mess I just made on the carpet.
Nobody replied. I dropped the chicken bone that was between my fingers and looked around. Nothing in the room moved. I counted the seconds that passed. One, two, three, four...
When I hit 10, I heaved a sigh of relief and very slowly relaxed my tight shoulders.
All this, I most definitely had to tell Dr Clark about, I decided. What was it? Schizophrenia? Was I a schizophrenic now? I never paid much attention to that disease before—I never thought it would ever happen to me—but clearly, I should have.
A loud bang startled me out of my thoughts. It came from the direction of the door Dr Clark always entered from but sounded far away. I tried to think of a place to hide myself but before I could even think of something, the handle of the door Dr Clark always entered from tilted downwards and the rest of the door swung open. Paul barged in.
At least, I think it was Paul. Her size and outfit was just as I remembered but her face and manner seemed different. All the awkwardness she possessed before was no longer apparent. Her thick, curly red hair was now completely out of her face, firmly tucked behind her ears. She had on a serious-looking frown that was pretty intense.