Be in the Real

by Denise Mathew

  Kaila had however, allowed the soft yellow walls to be repainted every two years. She ignored, and in doing so accepted, the curling posters of the things that mattered very little to her, things that the staff and previous roommates felt added to the ambiance. There were images of cuddly kittens, pictures with words of encouragement emblazoned across the front and also quotes that were supposed to be uplifting, imparting love and the fixings to the patients who felt so unloved.

  Not that Kaila felt unloved, because to feel unloved you needed to know what love meant and so far that had been something that had eluded her. Love was what everyone talked about, flinging the word around like it was a tennis ball that could be tossed wherever they wanted. Somehow she knew that it was much more than that, though nobody really understood her belief. But that was the truth of it, nobody but the people that read her words in her blog understood what it all meant, what she and Trillian meant.

  When Kaila spotted her laptop computer, slim, silver and everything that was real to her, on top of the table next to her bed, she sighed and flopped back onto the bed. She was comforted that everything was in order.

  “I don’t know why you let that twisted perv get you going, you know I’ve heard that he actually gets off on you jumping him,” Pauline said, shifting her body in Kaila’s direction.

  “I know, he likes my body on his, he told me so,” Kaila said.

  She rested the back of her hand against her forehead.

  “Shit, that’s just messed up weird Kaila,” Janelle said, shaking her head.

  “I wonder what it would be like to have sex with him,” Kaila said, once again pushing up onto her elbows.

  Her head still felt floaty and unfocused, a feeling that she knew would be with her for at least another day. For some reason she never seemed to be able to clear the drugs from her system as fast as the other patients seemed to, but that was probably because she had the most injections of any other residents in the place.

  Pauline made a fake retching sound and grimaced.

  “Don’t even say that, it’s disgusting Kaila, I mean I would rather have sex with Mr. Shull than Norm.”

  Kaila stared at Pauline dumbly.

  “Mr. Shull?” she repeated, “he’s like nine-hundred-years old…I don’t even think he can get an erection. Norm always gets an erection when I beat him up, I feel it through his sweatpants.”

  “Fuck Kaila that’s beyond gross. Norm is gross. Don’t you remember why he’s in here?” Pauline said. Now the moving side of her mouth was curved down, matching the paralyzed side.

  “For having sex with dead girls,” Kaila said in a flat tone.

  “Among other things,” Janelle chimed in.

  Although Janelle was relatively new to the facility, she was already well schooled about the patients in the place.

  “Can we just drop the subject,” Pauline cut in.

  A lock of hair had fallen forward and away from the star-shaped scar on her left cheek. She pushed it back into place where it once again hid the remembrance of her self-inflicted wound.

  “But I wonder what it would feel like. I’ve seen those pornos on the Internet and the girls do a lot of moaning and they screw up their faces in weird ways. Do you think that’s what I would look like?” Kaila said, directing her question toward Pauline. Pauline’s expression was locked in repugnance.

  “Kaila, I told you before those pornos aren’t a real representation of sex, it’s all overacting. Whoever taught you how to bypass the Net Nanny so you can watch porno in he first place should be shot, ” she said in a voice one might use to talk to a child.

  In truth as intelligent as Kaila was, she was equally naïve having lived fifteen of her twenty-five years in the confines of the facility.

  “His name was Stefen and you can’t shoot him because he’s already dead.”

  Pauline released an exasperated sigh.

  “Maybe I’ll invite Norm into the storage closet. I know that girl with the Mohawk haircut and the nose ring had sex with that guy David in there…” Kaila started to say.

  “Well shit, I’d have had sex with David too if he’d have asked me,” Janelle piped in. David had been a university football player who had accidentally overdosed on cocaine, but had survived to tell the sordid tale. He hadn’t been in very long but the time he had been in Wildwind, the storage closet had built quite a reputation.

  “I’m not sure if I would have wanted to go in the closet with him,” Kaila said.

  She crossed her arms across her plain white cotton t-shirt that looked exactly the same as every other t-shirt in her drawer. Wearing anything other than white tees and grey fleece sweat pants made Kaila feel nervous. In fact wearing any colors other than white and grey caused her so much anxiety that the staff, and every one of her prior roommates, never bothered to suggest that she change her attire no matter what the occasion. Even shifting the colors by wearing a grey shirt and white pants was cause for an outburst, that resulted in a sedative and a few days of added meds. Kaila was a creature of habit and anything that diverted slightly from the expected was cause for panic, something that usually resulted in a violent act. Most times it had involved an inanimate object like a chair or a television, of late it was all Norm.

  “You’d go in with Norm, but not David?” Pauline asked, placing exaggerated emphasis on the word Norm. She screwed up her face in rancor.

  Kaila nodded. Pauline threw up her hand, halting the conversation. “We seriously need to change this subject because if we don’t I’m not going to be able to get my breakfast down.”

  “Breakfast,” Kaila repeated.

  She suddenly realized how famished she was. She wasn’t sure when she had eaten last only that it had been quite a while ago.

  “Yeah, we should get going,” Janelle said, glancing down at the large-faced black plastic watch, strapped to her left wrist. “The dining room stops serving food in half an hour.”

  “Honestly Janelle, is that all you can think about? Food?” Pauline asked.

  She rolled her eyes in Janelle’s direction.

  “You definitely could stand to lay off a few meals.”

  Janelle puffed up as if she was going to say something nasty. Before she could, Pauline grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a long open-mouthed kiss that left Janelle lost for words.

  “Maybe you need to take Janelle in the closet,” Kaila said, arching an eyebrow in their direction. After a kiss that seemed to go on forever, the two girls finally broke apart.

  “Maybe I already have,” Pauline said, winking at Janelle.

  A blush worked its way up the rolls of Janelle’s neck. Even darker red splotches colored her cheeks seconds later.

  “I’ve seen pornos with women having sex too and…” Kaila started.

  “Don’t even go there,” Pauline said.

  She threw her hand up, signaling for Kaila to stop talking.

  Pauline grabbed Janelle’s hand in hers and they both stood up. Now that the two of them were on their feet, the absolute absurdity of their pairing was more than visible to anyone with eyes. Janelle was short and squat, with buckteeth, rounded cheeks and acne that covered every part of her face in bulbous red pimples, that looked ready to explode at the slightest provocation. Her massive breasts always seemed too big to be accommodated by any of the multitude of tops that she wore. No matter what style, fabric or weave that she donned, the material crossing her bust line was consistently pulled taut, looking more than a little uncomfortable. In absolute contrast, Janelle’s hips were boyishly straight, her legs twig-like, giving her a figure like that of an apple with two toothpicks stuck into its base.

  Pauline was mixed race, her mother was of Swedish descent, her father Japanese. Pauline was the best parts of the mixing of the gene pools. She was statuesque with the figure of a super model. With her hair obscuring the sins of her past, she was nothing short of magazine worthy. Pauline’s full lips, high cheekbones and crystalline blue eyes, made her a presence to behold
. Her skin was flawless, like that of a porcelain doll; it cut a sharp but pleasant contrast with her silky midnight black hair. The fact that she almost always dressed in unrelieved black only accented her near perfect form.

  Pauline released Janelle’s hand just long enough to pretend to tug an invisible rope attached to Kaila. Kaila responded to the untouch that felt like a touch to her. She leapt up from her thin-mattressed bed that was standard for the facility. Though the bedspreads had seen changes over the years, going from floral to geometric designs to the current solid lilac, the metal-framed beds with the curved, railed headboard had remained the same. Kaila didn’t know how old the beds were, only that they had been the same style as they had been fifteen years before when she had first come to live in the facility.

  Now, many years later, everything about the facility was familiar. She knew every board, every brick, every piece of the building that had enclosed her since the day she had killed her parents.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Everything is an illusion,” Kaila said.

  “What?” Norm scratched the sparse stubble patch on his chin. It never seemed to get any thicker no matter how many days he went without shaving. This fact seemed odd to Kaila since he was twenty-two, long past puberty.

  “Everything is an illusion,” she repeated. “I don’t really understand it exactly other than whatever that is not happening right in this moment doesn’t exist because there’s only now.”

  “You’re crazy,” Norm said matter-of-factly.

  “Of course I am, why do you think I’ve been in Wildwind all these years. But just because I’m crazy doesn’t mean I don’t know things. The person that wrote that everything is an illusion, sat on a park bench for years until he got enlightened, and they call him a spiritual guru. So maybe I’m an undiscovered authority too, maybe even a guru.”

  Norm nodded, considering. “Yeah, maybe. I dunno.”

  He ran his slender fingers across the blackish-purple bruise running the length of his jaw. Banana yellow now infiltrated the blue. Kaila stared at his bruise for a long moment before she spoke, marveling once again at the perfection of the human healing process that mended without being told to do so. What was even odder about Norm’s bruise was that it was healing in a way that made it look almost like the number 8 or maybe even the symbol for infinity.

  “Is it true that you had sex with a dead girl?” Kaila said.

  As was her routine she changed subjects with jarring speed. Norm’s mouth worked as he tried to formulate a sensible response.

  “What the fuck Kaila, why are you asking me about that shit?” he said.

  “What’s wrong with asking about that shit?” Kaila asked.

  Her face was as innocent as that of a five-year-old who had just asked why the sky was blue.

  Norm raked a hand through his muddy brown hair, forcing the unwashed locks to stand a little higher on his head. Like many of the patients of Wildwind, Norm wasn’t much for personal hygiene, always waiting for the forced long walk to the showers that would eventually happen when the staff realized that he wasn’t doing his part.

  “Because I want to forget it, it only happened when I was working the night shift and I was on Bath Salts. That stuff makes you see things that aren’t real. I’ll never do that shit again it’s too fucked up.”

  He placed his palm against his heart.

  “I honest to God thought that those girls were alive, you know just a little less responsive than I was used to but…”

  Kaila broke into laughter that was childish and natural. Like most everything else in her life, she didn’t filter any of her emotions, allowing whatever she felt to fill her whole being, consume her in the moment where only she and that emotion existed. It was something that got her into more trouble than she wanted, but also brought her to a perfect place of absolute purity that few people ever felt.

  “And you call me crazy?” she finally managed to say through gasping giggles.

  “You are fucking crazy Kaila, and I have no idea why I even bother talking to you, you don’t get anything about life. You’re a lifer here in Wildwind and unlike me, you’re never going to ever get out of this shit box.”

  He drew in a deep breath, his face going rouge with anger. Kaila stopped laughing and watched him intently, smiling at how once again she had predicted how the future would unfold. Long before it had happened she had seen this event, and how Norm would react so venomously to her question. All humans had a trigger, a button you could press and then things would happen, amazing things that she could incite with just a word, or two.

  “I’m amazing,” she yelled, leaping to her feet. “I know the future, I know you.” She shook her finger in front of Norm’s thin nose. He matched her moves, lurching up. His 5’3” frame meant his head just reached Kaila’s chin, he pushed in closer to her until his chest was pressed against her stomach then tilted his head up, glaring at her. He was more than aware that he had just crossed a boundary that left him in no-mans-land; a smack to the head or some part of his body would surely follow.

  Kaila in an unexpected move placed her huge hands on either side of his gaunt face, she leaned in and took his thin-lipped mouth in hers. For a fraction of a second Norm didn’t know what to do; his mouth remained stiff and unresponsive. But when he realized what she was doing he went on tiptoes, parted his lips, and kissed her deeply. His hands found the swell of her hips, gliding up and down the curves. To Kaila it felt like scrabbling spider legs, this time hoards of dandy long-legs, crawling on her, invading her body, seeking entry into her mind.

  That’s when things went wrong. Kaila lifted him up as if he weighed nothing, which was close to true since he weighed exactly ninety-nine pounds. Not exactly a feather, but not much of an effort for Kaila who was exceptionally strong either. Before he could protest she had him high above her head like a weight lifter in a clean and snatch.

  “Don’t do it Kaila,” Pauline raced toward her.

  Her hair flew away from her face revealing the scar that was usually hidden. Though Kaila had seen the star more times than she could count, right at that very moment she thought she understood with perfect clarity what it meant, why the scar was in the shape of a star. Norm was back down on the floor and released so rapidly that he swayed in the space where she had deposited him.

  She snatched up her computer, racing to the Activity Room. She found the place deserted, most people were still performing their morning rituals, taking their meds, washing their bodies and all the other various things humans did like clockwork every single day of their existence. No animal was as programmed to the norm than the human race.

  In the morning, before anyone stepped into the space, there was a quiet energy that swirled around Kaila. As if an explosion had happened and this was the silence that had followed. The room was the very antithesis of an explosion; everything was in order and in its place, games in boxes, chairs pushed beneath desks, carpets vacuumed, windows polished and dust removed from all surfaces. Still, Kaila could never shake that particular analogy from her mind.

  She sniffed in the scent of familiarity, of lemon furniture polish and cleaning products, but also something few people could detect, the smell of people and life, and the sunshine that filtered in through the half dozen windows. Even the chess pieces had a unique smell of warm plastic. You only had to open your senses completely to notice.

  Kaila locked on the space that was hers. Another place where her life took form and meaning. Though nobody actually mentioned it, there was an unspoken rule that most patients followed. The rule said that the blonde wooden desk and matching chair that sat beneath a large window on the far side of the room belonged to Kaila. And even if there were not enough seats to go around like when they had Bingo night, Kaila’s chair remained where it was, as if fixed in place to the floor that it rested upon.

  She tugged the worn chair from beneath the desk, taking a moment to graze a hand across the wood that was made smooth from years of use. She imag
ined a perfect replica of her very own derriere imprinted on the surface.

  She slipped onto the chair that was hard-backed and to most people uncomfortable, but to Kaila discomfort was a state of mind. Buddhist monks who practiced their meditations acknowledged this to be true, and instead of responding to the unease, they identified it, then let it go. She knew that mentality to be true; because when she sat in this seemingly insufferable chair she felt no aches, no pains, no signs that she was not reclined on a cloud of air. Kaila forgot what it was like to suffer, and was there in that moment completely unburdened by anything unpleasant.

  She took her seat in the chair, prying her laptop computer open so it was ready for her fingers to caress the keys. It waited patiently for her to bring it to life. She took a fraction of a moment to stare at her reflection in the glass window before her. It had always fascinated her that when the lighting was just right as it was right then, she could see two completely different visions like a hologram that changed with every angle.

  In one gaze she saw the winding road that led to Wildwind and the chain link fence that sliced through the road, preventing people from entering or leaving at their will. Instead, entry or exit from Wildwind was controlled by a man or woman who sat day and night, guarding the gates to Hell or Paradise depending on who you spoke too. For those who were locked within the gates, Wildwind might have been considered Hell, because no sentient being appreciated being held prisoner. On the other side of the fence, for the family and loved ones who were partly or wholly responsible for placing their loved ones within the confines of the facility, it was a Paradise where they would get the help they needed. This notion was necessary because if they admitted the truth to themselves, that the patients inside were in truth, caged like animals in a zoo, it would prove to be unbearable.

  When Kaila shifted her eyes slightly, her face came into view. She studied her reflection and her wild hair that was long and unkempt and always looked as if she had just blown in from a windstorm. She loved her hair, because it reminded her of the autumn leaves that fell from the mature maple trees that encircled Wildwind. People, who didn’t know her, often asked her if she achieved that particular color from a bottle because it was so very unique and different. There was no dye in her hair; it was exactly as she had remembered her mother’s hair had been. Kaila’s blue eyes had come from her father. Every time she gazed into her eyes she saw him there, staring at her, questioning her, asking her things that she never had an answer to. She wasn’t sure if her memories were truth or stories she had constructed, only that they were all she knew.