Asylum Bound

by Analeigh Ford

  I feel bile rising in the back of my throat, but I’m not able to say anything. I can barely breathe I’m being squeezed so tight.

  Kemper reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulls out a handkerchief—one of those douche moves that the ladies, or at least the impressionable kind, fall head-over-heels for. From the grateful look on the director’s face when he takes it from him, he’s also easily impressed.

  He uses the handkerchief to wrap around the bloodied cut on his hand.

  “Thank you, Mr. Novak. To be quite honest, I wasn’t convinced that Thalia needed our care simply from the information you sent us earlier. But given this new evidence, and this little…incident,” here he looks down at the dark red spreading across his silk-wrapped palm, “it’s my opinion that Thalia should be committed right away.”

  As if he’s not already done enough to offend me beyond repair, the director clears his throat and looks away before adding, “For a small extra fee, I think she’ll do very well here at Ashford.” He glances up and offers an insincere look of apology. “Since she’ll require a little extra care, given the unusual circumstances.”

  My brother has never looked so triumphant in his life, gleeful, even. Not even Hedgewood’s transparent attempt to get his grubby hands on more of my dead parent’s money can tamper the glow spreading across his face.

  “Thank you, director. I can’t tell you enough how this eases my mind.”

  The director nods and smiles at Kemper understandingly, as if he too knows the true burden of having a sibling he has to share his recently deceased parent’s massive fortune with.

  “We’ll prepare for a proper evaluation right away,” Hedgewood says, reaching into a filing cabinet and pulling out a packet of admissions paperwork for Kemper to sign. “We’ll make sure to keep you up to date on her progress as soon as she’s settled in.”

  Somehow this is the thing that does it. It’s the one thing that clears away the ringing in my ears and stills the flashing images of my own breakdown from the backs of my eyelids. The pretense that either of them believes my brother gives one single fuck about my actual well-being, it’s just too much.

  I finally find my voice.

  I don’t know where I get the strength, if the orderly relaxed his grip enough to let me breathe or if it’s some deep-rooted animal instinct meant to protect me from what I know is about to happen, but it doesn’t matter. Amongst all the others, those swirling inside me and plotting in front of me, I find my voice.

  “Stop!” I shout, my voice rising up above theirs as they begin to discuss more logistics of my literal imprisonment right here, in front of me. “Stop, this is all wrong! I’m not crazy. Kemper, you bastard, you just want all the money for yourself. Well, you can have it!”

  Tears have begun to well up in my eyes, and it takes everything inside me to keep them back. Once I start crying I’ll be reduced to a blubbering, incoherent mess.

  As it is, I’ve already gone mostly incoherent.

  Kemper barely glances back at me, but when he does, there’s nothing there but disgust. He picks the pen back up, and despite my renewed cries—now completely incomprehensible—hovers his hand above the legally binding document on the table before him.

  “Just another one of her many delusions, Director. I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head before turning to me. “It’s for your own good, Thalia,” he says, still not looking at me. “It’s been a long time coming, we both know that.”

  “Stop it,” I say again, struggling against the arms that bind me. “You can’t commit me. I didn’t do anything wrong.” When that gets me no reply, I try again. I have to. If I’m being forced into this, I’ll not go silently. “Take the dirty, filthy money, Kemper. All of it. I don’t want it.”

  He keeps his cold, emotionless stare on me. “It’s not about the money, dear sister,” he says. His eyes bore into mine, watching the look on my face as his fingers begin to form the looping shapes of his name at the bottom of the paper in front of him. “That’s where you’re wrong. It was never about the money. It’s always just been about you.”

  His hand makes a final flourish, and only then does he look away to admire his handiwork. I know what he’s thinking like I can hear it inside my own head. A little sloppy, but it gets the job done.

  The transaction complete, my brother and Director Hedgewood shake hands.

  And just like that, I’m the newest patient of Ashford Asylum.

  Hedgewood swipes the papers back and grins at my brother like he’s just sold him a prize-winning pig, not taken blood money to hide away another undesirable from society’s prying eyes.

  Even though the deed is done, and there’s no more need for his little charade, Kemper has to fit in one last little jab.

  “She tried to jump into the grave with them, you know,” Kemper says, speaking to the director again, and not me. “And then the rest of it . . . it just got worse. I can’t bear the thought of losing her too.”

  He hangs his head in a theatrical gesture of despair. He doesn’t even try to be subtle. He doesn’t have to. He’s won.

  Or so he thinks.

  Hearing the fake quiver in his voice makes something inside me break. Kemper isn’t sorry. Kemper isn’t even sad my parents are dead. The director might claim I have a chance of getting out in sixty days, but if my brother has any say in the matter, I’m never getting out.

  It’s not just my voice I find this time, but rather a deep, overwhelming rage.

  I stop struggling with my arms and instead, I pick up my foot, lift it up as high as I can, and I drive the spiked heel of my pump into the top of the orderly’s foot. It sticks.

  He cries out in pain so loud it makes my ears ring.

  His grip loosens just enough for me to slip out of his grasp and dart towards the door. To my surprise, the door is neither locked, nor is anyone waiting to jump me on the other side.

  I don’t stop to look where I’m going. I careen out of the director’s office before any of them can catch me and go teetering down the hall with my one remaining shoe until I manage to shake it off my stockinged foot.

  My feet skid around the next corner so fast I have to grab onto a wall sconce with one flailing arm just to keep them from completely flying out from under me. It tears from the wall in a tangle of wires, but I ignore the gaping hole left in its wake.

  There it is, in front of me. The great double doors are open onto the sunlit lawn. The car is still parked outside, engine running, while the driver stands off to the side smoking a cigarette.

  The idiot. He’s practically handed me my escape.

  But something makes me pause.

  Standing between me and my freedom is a boy.

  He stands with his back to me at first, his face turned towards the open doors. I can hear laughter and see the flicker of movement as someone passes by outside. The sun streams in, catching on the white corners of his uniform and the soft brown layers of his hair, lining his silhouette in gold.

  Even before he looks back at me, I know I’m lost. I’ve seen faces like his before, but never one that looked at me the way he does now. It’s that look, that secretly mournful sadness behind his hauntingly beautiful features, that freezes me in my spot.

  The outer corner of his lip turns up as he spots me. I’ve seen it before in boys at one of the many academies I’ve frequented over my apparently very troubled childhood. His eyes, sad only for a moment, harden into daggers that stare me down—challenging me to keep staring.

  It’s that look that stirs something inside me. That thing. The reason I’m even here in the first place.

  I feel it growing, as I have before. A pressure forms at the front of my brain, pushing against logic and reason until I feel a word begin to form inside my mind. I clap one hand over each ear, trying to drown it out, squeeze it out…something.

  One look, and he’s inside my head. A voice that won’t be kept out.

  Mine.

  A single word that cannot b
e drowned out.

  Mine.

  That’s all it is. He stares at me and I stare back. The pressure wanes, leaving in its wake a gnawing hunger for more.

  It doesn’t matter that he’s an inmate here, or that I’m in the middle of a desperate attempt to escape—because it doesn’t stop chills from racing down my body. That involuntary shudder, an inescapable attraction, is my undoing.

  It’s not my proudest moment.

  The last thing I see before an orderly sticks me in the neck with the longest needle I’ve ever seen is this handsome stranger look away, nothing but utter boredom on his face. As soon as our line of sight is broken, I realize what I just did.

  My hands fall limp to either side, no pressure left to banish inside my brain.

  Stupid, stupid Thalia.

  I’ve never let a boy get in my way before, so why now? Why him?

  And why, in all the seven layers of hell, in a goddamned asylum?

  2

  Price

  It isn’t every day that temptation enters the asylum with long legs and hair the color of a starless sky . . . but today, it did.

  Ives knows something’s up the moment he spots me enter the room. He might not look like it, but he’s surprisingly clever. Too clever, sometimes.

  Ever since the new director took over and insisted that the old billiards room be opened up to all the guests of the asylum, the study is the only room we really have left to ourselves. If the director even knew about it, we’re sure he’d try to take it from us too. But it’s really no matter. The directors never last long, not when we have anything to do with it. And certainly not when they try and take things from me.

  I grab the decanter of good scotch whiskey smuggled in during the last supply run and pour a glass, neat. Ives is watching me, waiting, but I take my time answering. The scent of cedar and nutmeg sends a slight shiver down my spine. I have to take a moment to close my eyes and savor it.

  “Scotch really is the greatest pleasure in life.”

  Ives is quiet for a moment. He’s no quick-witted Kingsley, but it still doesn’t take him long to catch on.

  “Amongst other things.”

  He grunts as he gets up from his chair, his massive shoulders rolling to release some of the pressure that’s built up there over a day of heavy treatment. Ives is never much of a drinker, but tonight he must be able to sense something’s off, because he takes a nine-hundred-dollar glass without a second thought.

  There are no windows in the study, but rather a collection of very rare and valuable paintings—some of which even I wouldn’t be embarrassed to hang in my own house. A long-lost Degas hangs over the barren fireplace, the mournful dancer a surprisingly fitting backdrop.

  “I heard there was a new addition today,” Ives says. “A girl.”

  “Is that so?” I keep staring straight ahead. I try to focus on the dancer, but somehow, everything about her makes my mind keep returning to the wild girl I saw in the hall: the long legs, the dark hair falling into her eyes, a certain sadness, a madness even, behind them.

  Ives sees me watching. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  “Hmm?” I glance to the side, absentmindedly.

  Ives furrows his brow. Before I’m expected to answer, the door flies open and Kingsley barrels in. He’s practically foaming at the mouth in his frenzy. He snatches the glass from my hand and throws back the scotch like it’s cheap tequila, and then tries to reach for the decanter for a second dram.

  A single, cool hand on the bottle stops him.

  “You saw her too,” Kingsley says, his voice cracking from the coating of alcohol on his throat. “I know you did.” He wrings his hands anxiously. “It’s been a minute since we got to play the game.”

  My voice snaps. “It’s not a game Kingsley. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  He just keeps going on while Ives shrinks back to his armchair to think, as he does.

  “Maybe to you it isn’t,” Kingsley says. “But to me . . .”

  Denied a second drink, he throws himself down into the chair opposite Ives and starts chewing on his nails.

  “Games are for little boys,” I say. I consider pouring myself another drink, but reconsider when I see Kingsley stealing Ives’ too.

  Once Kingsley has downed it, he wipes one arm across his mouth and lets out a loud belch. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft, Price.”

  I scoff, the closest sound to a laugh that I can remember how to make. I take one last glance at the girl in the painting. She’s been here with me at the asylum since before Kingsley, or even Ives. The fact that this new girl looks just like her just makes something stir inside me that I’ve kept pushed down for a long time. Too long.

  Maybe I have started growing soft. I let the new director take the billiards room from us, and that was just the beginning. The three of us, Ives, Kingsley, and me . . . we used to run this place like gods. Nothing happened here unless we wanted it to. No one came here without going through us first.

  But lately I’ve been distracted by…other things.

  Kingsley is thinking the same. “Remember how much fun we used to have before . . .”

  “Before Price decided to try and better himself?”

  It’s Ives who speaks.

  I knew from the way he’s been looking at me ever since I came in that he was thinking exactly that.

  Kingsley’s face screws up. “Of all the things to try and do. You know Price, you’ve always been the lucky one.” He throws himself back into his chair. “You actually know how to control it.”

  There’s no point in asking what he means by “it”. We’re all here for a reason. Beyond the fact that this place is really for the people society wants to forget, it’s also a place for people who actually need to be here. People like Ives, like Kingsley, like me.

  Like the girl.

  Once again, her face surfaces in my mind. There’s something more to her. Something . . . different . . . than all the rest. Even from before . . . here. Again, it stirs the gnawing ache inside me. No matter how long I fight it, no matter how long I keep it down, it’s always there. It’s always waiting. Always hungry.

  I’ve always had a soft spot for dark-haired girls with harrowed pasts. They were a dime a dozen when I first got committed. Now…now I just shake my head, my hand gripping the now empty glass in my hand hard enough that the glass feels almost fragile in my palm.

  Now maybe Ives is right. Maybe I have gone soft. Maybe I’ve let the doctors and the directors poke and prod me into a little box I didn’t even realize was there to begin with.

  My grip tightens, and I set down the glass before I really do break it.

  “You know what Kingsley?” I say. “You’re right. I think it’s time we gave everyone a little reminder of who’s in charge here.”

  Kingsley’s eyes light up. “Does that mean I get to prepare…the room?”

  A slight thrill races up my spine at the words. Has it really been that long?

  “Damn straight it does.” I do pour myself a little glass after all, and then say fuck it and pour both Kingsley and Ives a glass as well. Even after this much scotch, Kingsley will barely feel a thing. After all, he’s drinking for two. I lift my glass so that amber red liquid catches one of the last oil lamps left in the building. “To the gods of this otherwise god-forsaken place,” I say.

  Kingsley clinks his glass against Ives’ drink first, and then mine.

  “No,” he says, “to us.”

  We drink.

  The alcohol whispers in my ear, telling me I won’t cross the line this time . . . but I know it’s a lie. Not right out, not the part of me that cracks a wide, cruel grin as we plan what we’re going to do with the newest member of our flock.

  3

  Thalia

  When I was nine, my brother locked me in the old icehouse overnight. I was stuck in there for over twelve hours before I was found. I nearly froze. He’d lured me back there with the promise that he’d see
n rabbits nesting in the old part of the house. What I found instead has haunted my nightmares ever since.

  But even then, even that—discovering the flayed and eviscerated bodies of the tiny pink rabbits arranged across the floor of the icehouse before I was locked inside and my screams and sobs ignored—is nothing compared to how I feel now.

  Back then I had two loving parents who coddled me when I was found, who warmed me back up beside the fire and cried with me for the trauma of it all. Even though they never believed me when I told them it was Kemper, I’d give anything to have them here again. Now, I don’t have them at all. I don’t have anyone.

  It’s been weeks, months since my brother left me here at the asylum . . . or at least, that’s how it feels.

  At first, I screamed and screamed and tried to pull the padding from the walls, but no one answered. Eventually the screaming turned to rasping, senseless sounds as my voice gave way and my nail beds cracked and turned bloody from scratching at the walls.

  And still, with blood streaks across the perfect white padded walls, no one came. I slept. I ate the food that was pushed through a tiny slit in the wall. I shit in a pillow-padded bucket.

  Now, in silence with no telling how long I’ve been here, I slump down, letting my head fall back so my hair falls down around my shoulders in long, stringy waves. If I’d had any idea Kemper would try and pull this . . . I was about to say I’d have taken a shower, but I’d have done so much more than that. I’d have killed Kemper if I knew.

  I would have shoved my long, un-manicured nails into his eye sockets and . . . again, I stop myself.