by Marie Ellie
A few minutes later, the nurse re-enters the room with cushioned walls. This time she hasn’t come alone. Two people enter. The nurse introduced them as my parents, but I don’t recognize them. He is a tall, white man, with straight brown hair, his eyes are dark, nothing at all like mine. His face is sad, he looks worried, and he looks at me with guilty eyes. As if he wanted to apologize for having locked me in this place.
She has the same hair as me, and her eyes are as blue as mine, although smaller. Her nose is sharp, perfect and her lips are thin but very beautiful. She looks a lot like the image I saw in the mirror. I do not recognize her, but I look a lot like this sad-eyed woman who has just entered the white room with its cushioned walls.
The man approaches and pets my hair while he gives me a sweet kiss on the cheek. The woman brings a plastic bag in her arms. She sits next to me and hugs me. She gives me a kiss like those that mothers give. Her eyes are bright, betraying that she has been crying. She has the plastic bag in her lap, and as she hands it to me, I can tell that it’s the manuscript I had asked for.
“Do you feel okay?” she says in a sweet half-choked voice.
“I don’t know, how could I feel good locked in here?” She didn’t know what to respond to that, so while she was swallowing, the man helped her.
“Helen, daughter, we just want you to be fine. Your mother and I love you, and we will do everything to help you to you recover and return home.”
“I love you, my little girl. You will always be my beautiful girl.”
That woman who I didn’t recognize as my mother spoke to me with such pain in her eyes. It was very sad to see how hard difficult it was for her to be here and seeing me in these conditions, but I really don’t remember her. They’re both talking to me about my childhood. They try to make me remember things, places, pets. They make a real effort, but my mind is blank.
He begins a story about a ski trip in Colorado Springs. She told me that when I was a girl, I used to be very insistent when I wanted something and that trip they did it because it was my dream and they pleased me. The woman who is sitting next to me starts crying when she confesses that it was on that trip that I had my first psychotic event and they did everything to help me. Her medical friends came from all over the country to Colorado Spring to control the impulse to end my life I had at that time, at just nine-years-old. I listen attentively. She doesn’t stop sobbing with every word she pronounces. I don’t remember anything, but everything sounds so tragic. I understand why they look so worried and sad. They have suffered for many years, although I don’t remember anything.
At that moment, the nurse enters and warns them that they have to leave, that the visiting hours have run out. Everyone leaves the room, and I take the opportunity to find the bag containing the manuscript that the man who claims to be my father put on the table next to the bed while talking about the trip skiing we did as a child, where supposedly everything began. Once I have the bag in hand, I go back to bed and get comfortable. I take out the manuscript from that plastic bag. I make a ball with the plastic bag and put it under the white sheet that still covers my legs. I turn the pages until I reach Chapter I and start reading.
“We have been married for 5 years, and this is our first outing together just for us. Things have not gone well in our relationship and William seems to have decided to do something about it, finally. Today he called me at the club in the middle of my first afternoon tennis class. He told me to come home early, that he had a surprise that he was going to tell me after going out to dinner. So, I canceled the class with my last student and rescheduled him for the following week.”
I spent a long time reading that manuscript. That which wasn’t a book but was really my diary. I remembered each of the words, each scene I had experienced. That was my story, not a simple manuscript. The doctor is lying to me; I'm not Helen Taylor, my name is Grace, Grace McLaren. They are trying to erase my identity with electric shock and give me a new one so that I don’t reveal my father's plans. Surely, he has accomplices more powerful than him, and they want to eliminate me. They almost cheated on me with these people who came here saying they are my parents. They are fakes, my mother is dead and my father, I killed my father in Central Park. My name is Grace McLaren.
I stand up from the bed and go to the door with the little glass through which I can’t see anything. I start to beat on it and scream desperately to be let out of there. I don’t intend to continue suffering their deception, them manipulating me. I keep hitting the door, every time my screams are louder. I look up at the ceiling, and I shout at the cameras, I know they can hear me, they can see me. They have me under surveillance, but they aren’t going to make me shut up. I hear them removing the locks on the door, they open it, and it's the doctor. He stands in front of me and grabs me with both hands by the shoulders. He asks me to calm down so we can talk and I stop moving. Still holding me, he asks me if I have read the manuscript and I release a scream from the deepest part of my being.
“Yes!” I screamed so loudly that I almost lost my voice, “All of it!” and I lost my strength, dropping to the ground, I couldn’t handle it anymore.
“Do you remember your job as an editor?” he asks me while he helps me get up and guides me back to bed.
“No. I remember my life, I remember everything.” I'm telling him while the doctor allows me to sit on the bed and he covers my legs with the white sheet.
“My name is Grace McLaren, and you are an accomplice of my father. You’re trying to erase my memory, to give me a new identity. You are not going to get away with it. My name is Grace McLaren, I know it.”
The doctor takes a cable that was next to my bed, and that has a red button on one end. He squeezes it, and someone responds, the voice is heard by a speaker behind the bed. The doctor addresses the voice.
“The patient with record 110320, Helen Taylor, has relapsed, prepare shock therapy. This time make it stronger.”
The doctor grabs the manuscript and leaves the white room. They are preparing another round of torture. I'm not willing to live like this. Locked up, receiving shocks whenever they please, just to erase my memory. I know who I am and my whole life is a tragedy. The people I love are dead and the ones I wanted too. I don’t want to go on like this.
The manuscript did not end this way, in the final scene, Charles suffocated me. He was part of the plot, and I had discovered it. After shooting me in the head in the middle of Central Park, he thought I was dead, but that wasn’t the case. Someone found me there and took me to the hospital, Charles found out, and once he found my whereabouts, he visited me and suffocated me with a pillow. That is the end of Grace McLaren. That is my end. I'm Grace McLaren.
I remember the plastic bag they brought the manuscript in. I take it and put it over my head. I cover myself with the white sheet so that they do not see me through the cameras and I close the bag tightly at my neckline. I begin to feel the lack of air. I need to breathe, and my hands don’t release, they won’t release, they don’t allow air to enter. My end is near, that was my end, the end they gave me in the last chapter of The Vault.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marie Ellie grew up surrounded by books and participating in every reading and writing contest at her school. After high school, she felt in love with all about businesses, so she attained a BBA in Business Administration, with a Major in Accounting and a Minor in Small Business Administration. Years after that, she became a lawyer and today, is a civil law attorney with a nice practice in the Caribbean.
She realized that writing fiction stories helped her to release the stress caused by her job. This young lawyer started with a couple of fiction stories without any intention of publish them, but she finally decide that was time to publish her work to become a self-published writer and not only a voracious reader.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER I
THE ARRANGED DATE
CHAPTER II
A PERFECT DINN
ER
CHAPTER III
A STRANGE KIDNAPPING
CHAPTER IV
BACK HOME
CHAPTER V
SURPRISE AFTER SURPRISE
CHAPTER VI
A PLAN FOR ESCAPING THE HOUSE
CHAPTER VII
THE LONGEST WAY HOME
CHAPTER VIII
A PLAN IN THE BASEMENT
CHAPTER IX
A DANGEROUS MOVE
CHAPTER X
STRAIGHT TO THE VAULT
CHAPTER XI
A PLEASANT VISIT
CHAPTER XII
A FORCED ESCAPE
CHAPTER XIII
REMOVING THE MASKS
CHAPTER XIV
PREPARING FOR TORTURE
CHAPTER XV
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR