by Max Andren
It was my turn and one of the hateful staff brought me to the admissions room.
To occupy my mind and my trembling hands while I waited for the new administrator, I picked at the frayed hem of my thin, threadbare gown. It did nothing to keep me warm, but I hadn’t been given time to change.
A countless succession of nameless and faceless white coats had come and gone through the years. I’d purposely blurred the previous administrators and doctors from my memory. I shoved them into a little box in the back of my mind. I did not want or need to revisit my time with them.
I tried not to borrow trouble thinking about all the what if’s that would accompany this new admin.
When I heard a familiar, yet unexpected voice call out my name, I looked up and froze. Visceral fear slithered through me causing my heart to race and my limbs twitch with the need to jump up and run away.
But it was futile, I was trapped and he knew it.
“Won’t you even say hello to your new administrator and doctor, my dear? How long has it been now? Hmm? At least fifteen years I’d guess. You’ve moved around a lot, but then so have I. The law of averages was in my favor, I knew just knew you’d be in my care once again,” Dr. Hanley told me from the doorway.
My time with Dr. Hanley at that first asylum had been relatively short, but that time had weighed heavily on my psyche. So much had happened there. All the initial tests and observations had been under his direction—so the pain and the trauma from that time was associated with him.
Fair or not, I hated the man with a passion!
My dreams were plagued by incomprehensible memories from my time with Dr. Hanley. A vague sense of pain and injury that wouldn’t be allowed, or so I thought. I have since been disabused of that notion—anything and everything could and would be done.
No one would stop the abuse. There were no rules and no regulations, not for me.
I remember a dark room.
The smell of incense hung heavily in the air. Dr. Hanley hovered over me as I sat motionless in a chair. He muttered to himself in a chant-like fashion in a language I didn’t understand.
I tried to move away, but couldn’t.
“You can’t move, so stop trying!” He barked at me suddenly, causing my eyes to widen in fear—the only movement I could make.
I felt blood run down my spine from between my small shoulders where he had been carving deep into my flesh. I wanted to scream, but couldn’t. Whatever he had given me, had stolen my voice and prevented me from doing so.
Except within my mind, where I screamed for mercy.
“It’s strong in you! I knew it when you were a baby.”
What was he talking about?
“I just knew you’d be the ultimate sacrifice and I told Hulbetto. He needs you and quickly, the others are fading—they’re always fading too quickly,” he told me, though I didn’t understand what he meant or the disgust in his voice.
He stopped carving to gather something behind me. The burning pain on my back intensified to the point that I wanted to pass out to escape it, but couldn’t.
Why—I screamed in my mind—why would my mother and father allow this?
“I knew when I touched you on your way to the piano.”
I didn’t mean to hear his thoughts when he touched me—I thought to myself.
“But your outburst by the piano solidified it,” he told me, before he began to carve into my flesh once again.
I didn’t mean to hear that little boy either—or feel his pain!
“Just a bit more on this glyph…”
“You remember the reaping,” Dr. Hanley said, anger evident in his voice.
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what that had been just now—memory, hallucination, fabrication? But whatever it was, the residual terror still echoed through me.
“Your parents ruined my apprenticeship!” he said, the anger escalating in his voice, “They didn’t care about you and were ashamed to call you daughter. But not that day. No, they had an attack of conscience and withdrew you from the asylum. My asylum!”
Spit sprayed from his mouth and rained upon my face. I refused to wipe it off, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how much it bothered me.
I stared at him in mute silence. The only control I had in my world was my voice—and I refused to give it to these heinous people. I hadn’t spoken aloud since my last time home when I was eight.
“Still too proud and strong I see, but you’ll break this time. I’ll make sure of it. The reaping will be completed and my apprenticeship to Hulbetto will be finalized,” he told me, a vengeful promise evident in his voice.
“Guard!” He yelled out, “Take her to the basement and solitary confinement.”
The guard yanked me off the exam table. Agonizing pain flashed through my shoulder.
As the guard pulled me down the hallway, I heard Dr. Hanley say, “Let’s see how you do in sensory deprivation.”
3
My heart raced and I gagged as bile rushed up the back of my throat. I knew I wouldn’t survive solitary confinement this time. I couldn’t say that I cared. My parents would surely be relieved that I had finally cooperated and died.
No, I decided, they wouldn’t care whatsoever. They had stopped visiting me years ago, I was nothing to them.
It was surprising that I hadn’t died before now. I’d shamefully begged for death on more the one occasion, though only within the confines of my mind. I wouldn’t allow the cries to pass over my lips.
Through the years, my various doctors had subjected me to hundreds of ridiculous therapies—including electroconvulsive therapy, periods of starvation, cryotherapy, exorcism and so many more. I was lucky that my brain hadn’t been fried by their treatments or the drugs they fed me over the years.
Hanley’s regimen of sensory deprivation—no light, no food and water, and no human contact, was an all-new level of hell on earth!
He was an evil, hateful man.
It was freezing in the small room where I had been housed and forgotten. I think that was part of Hanley’s planned torture—make me wait endlessly for him to finish this reaping he mentioned. Whatever that was. Or maybe he was waiting for this Hulbetto person to show up and join the, let’s have a torture party.
He said he was an apprentice—but an apprentice to whom and for what purpose? He was already a doctor, what more could he want? Whatever the reason for the wait, I knew I could expect more pain in my future.
My current accommodations were in the dank asylum basement, where a thick layer of mold coated the brick walls. There were no creature comforts—only creatures.
I could hear rodents circling around me, mice or rats, I couldn’t say because I was blind in the lightless cell. I imagined they were waiting for me to sleep, or to die, at this point.
The disgusting creatures had no fear of me and yet, I abhorred them! They loved to creep up on me and chew on my fingers and toes, whenever I fell asleep, which wasn’t often anymore.
With the first bite, I’d wake in a flash and screaming silently. In the beginning, I would lash out with my fists and legs, but I no longer had the energy to do that. Now, I just weakly shoo’d them away and hoped they would leave me alone—and my digits intact.
Hanley abruptly stopped all my medications and now, I had no way to protect myself from the waves of emotions pouring in unhindered. I hated the drugs, but they did muffle the noise and make it somewhat manageable so that I could concentrate on other things.
As I withdrew, I had no reference for up or down; right or wrong. I was lost and drowning in a sea of pain. I shivered and writhed, then vomited and choked, as I tried to breathe and relieve my stomach at the same time.
I laid on the sweat-soaked grey and white ticking mattress trying to suppress the need to vomit again. I managed to crawl to the opposite corner, where I vomited multiple times. I could still smell the acidic bile.
The pervasive stench of mold might be the death of me—asphyxiation
by mold spores, not a pleasant thought.
Every negative emotion imaginable, filled my mind in a swirling black mass of hate, loathing, and disgust. But shame was the most painful of all the emotions. It was the one I felt the most often from my parents, especially at the end.
Hopelessness and despair eroded my my soul, and without the medications to subdue the voices of the lost, the cacophony of emotions were incapacitating.
My heart stuttered under the onslaught.
As my time in solitary confinement accumulated, I created music within my mind as a diversion from the constant pain. The compilations I orchestrated gave me something to focus on instead of the screaming voices.
When I started thinking about my music this time, golden notes sparkled in the air around me. Fascinated, I watched them dance to the weeping melody of my soul—winking in-and-out of focus.
Hallucinations or a prelude to the end?
The end I thought with acceptance, but I was more than ready. I had reached that time of knowing and decided to go quietly.
There was no sense in crying out against the inevitable. Who would hear me? But more importantly—who would care?
I floated buoyant on a dark sea of unrelieved nothingness—numbed with cold and sensory deprivation. The only thing that kept me anchored to this side of forever was my connection to my secret friend, Mia. Her presence pulled me through the darkness of my hell, just as I tried to help her.
After my last disastrous visit home, Mia and I had connected and became inseparable, if only in my mind.
She was always with me, like now, when I’d lost the will to live. The other voices, they would come and go, but she remained constant.
We kept the horrendous details of our daily subsistence to ourselves, or as much as we could. She wanted to protect me, just as I wanted to protect her from the truth of our harsh realities.
Occasionally, when our emotions would spill through our connection, I would sense Mia’s desolation. She felt encased in pain, yet surrounded by something ancient and powerful.
We were trapped in situations that neither of us could change. We were prisoners to the machinations of those with all the power.
My parents kept me incarcerated in private institutions, ashamed of who I was. I didn’t know what Mia’s situation was. She never explained. I knew she suffered painfully because I heard the anguish in her whispered words.
Concentrating was becoming more difficult, but I tried to focus on Mia and the distinct, emotion-free voice of my new companion. He was such a comfort to me.
The musical quality of his brogue was soothing, unlike the voices of the lost. They caused me endless amounts of pain.
“Hold on,” he would tell me. “We’ll be there soon to free you.”
No one wanted me free. I had been put here on purpose—to stop the voices, yet here he was, a new voice to add to all the others.
He saved what was left of my sanity by visiting with me in my sensory-deprivation hellhole. I was beyond questioning how he spoke to my delusional mind, at this point.
He was here. I wasn’t alone and that was all that mattered.
Mia was with me too, though I barely felt her now.
I allowed myself the comfort in believing that they were both real, though I knew it was a lie. He was a figment of my deranged mind, just as Mia was.
Despite their presence and the comfort they freely offered, I decided to quietly fade away. I would retain what small measure of dignity I had left, however fleeting it may be.
I didn’t realize that my eyes were open until a ribbon of blue iridescence shimmered past and captured my fixed gaze. I wanted to touch that comforting glow. I longed to hold its warmth against my freezing soul.
I reached out a trembling hand, but it vanished and I wept silently within my mind.
Again, I knew nothing but darkness,
4
Time was irrelevant when there was no benchmark to gauge it by, so I had no idea of its passage. Moments or perhaps days later, the blue iridescence was back.
It felt both sentient and masculine and a protective warmth enveloped me. The ribbon of light shimmered through the darkness, but I closed my eyes, preferring blindness to the reality of my dungeon hell.
My companion’s distinct voice whispered through my mind again, feeling closer.
Had he returned to escort me on my final journey? I would have cried, if I could have.
I wouldn’t be alone.
“You have been very difficult to find,” he said within my mind.
“Who are you?” I asked in kind.
“My name is Cipriano.”
“How do I hear you and above all the others?”
“I’ve lived a long time and can shield you from the other voices, diminishing their volume.”
“If I begged, would you stay with me for a while? Could you keep the voices of the lost subdued so that I can fade away—in peace and quiet?”
“There will be no fading,” he demanded of me, his brogue thickening when he added, “you will fight!”
I closed my eyes in shame at the vehemence of his emotions. I had no will to live. I had nothing left to fight for, especially now that Mia was fading away too.
“I hear all that you wish to hide. But you mustn’t give up. Have faith. I’m on my way there, Pena. ”
Cipriano began telling me stories of his homeland. He described them so perfectly that when he projected the scenery directly into my mind, it was exactly as I had envisioned.
I knew he was a hallucination, as were the stories and the pictures he shared with me. But at the same time, they had helped to alleviate the pain caused by the sensory deprivation of my dungeon hell.
The combination of the voices of the lost, the cold, the hunger and the horrible drug withdrawal, were warping my reality, but at this point I didn’t care. My heart was beating erratically and took my breath away.
“Won’t you tell me your name?” He asked me at one point.
“I can’t. All I know…all that I feel…is pain,” I said breathlessly.
And so began his fairytale stories of mythical dragons. The majestic and beautifully scaled creatures came to life within my delusional mind. Mia and I had always loved dragons. It was strange that my companion, Cipriano, would speak so eloquently of them too, but I didn’t question it. I chose to enjoy every moment of escape, envisioning his descriptions, versus dwelling on the here-and-now.
Through him, I experienced what it was like to fly high above the snowcapped Highland mountains of Scotland. Where the crisp air flowed over his scales and under his wings.
He glided effortlessly—scaling up one side of the mountain and down to the deep glen on the other, where purple heather waved in the wake of his passage. His projections into my mind were crystal clear, as if I were watching a movie.
We flew over blue lochs that perfectly mirrored the sky above and the colorful dragons within. Cipriano surprised me by skimming the surface of Loch Ness with his dragon claws. I looked below the surface for Nessy, but I didn’t see her.
Perhaps my Cipriano was the cause of such rumors and legend. When I asked him, he would neither confirm, nor deny the possibility, that he and his brothers purposely perpetuated the legend of Loch Ness.
One night, Cipriano took me to the Isle of Skye with his stories and I fell in love with the Fairy Pools. They became one of my favorite destinations to escape to within my mind. They were mystical and sensed their magic through his memories.
The Fairy Pools were a natural waterfall and collection of vivid blue and green pools, surrounded by rocks, heather, and boggy areas. At the head of the pools, looming over them like an overprotective parent, stood the serrated ridge of the Black Cuillin mountains.
I wish I could have truly visited the Fairy Pools before I died. They called to me, the whole country felt like home. But Cipriano gave me the next best thing with his visions—he gave me a taste of freedom. It helped to beat back the claustrophobic feeling of suf
focation that slowly consumed me as I lay dying in my lightless dungeon grave.
He shared the love he had for his brothers and briefly, I was able to experience what it felt like to have a family bond that went bone deep. They were connected beyond mere brotherhood.
I had always longed for that feeling, that sense of family. I had it briefly as a child, but even then it felt weighted by condition. If I behaved in a certain manner, then it flowed freely and without reserve. When I was their little Snow White, all was well within my parents’ world. But when I didn’t conform to their reality, I felt their disappointment and their shame.
Unlike normal children, I really could feel what they felt, even though they had no idea that I could. Or rather never believed that I could.
The wonderful vignettes Cipriano shared with me about his brothers were treasured moments that I brought out to review when I was cold and alone and waiting to die. I’m sure he had no idea what he had given me—a gift beyond measure and without compare.
He had given me solace.
Through the years, I had refused to beg my tormentors for anything, and therefore denying them the satisfaction of my voice. But, I would willingly beg Cipriano for more stories, more scenery, just more of his interesting dragon life.
I shared his stories and visions with Mia. She and I had loved to make up stories about fantastical creatures and far away lands where mythical dragons flew through the night sky, as fierce warriors to the rescue.
Ours stories, or rather mine, were nothing compared to what Cipriano shared. His insight and detail went far beyond anything that I could’ve imagined.
Cipriano always shielded his emotions from me, which was why he was such a comfort. But occasionally, when he spoke of his brothers, I could feel his sadness and grief.
“Will you tell me about your brothers?” I asked the voice of the companion of my mind.