Marjorie tries a different approach. She plasters a fake smile on her round face. Her face isn’t meant for smiling because she looks even more frightening than she did a second ago. “All right, sweetheart.” She’s made her voice light instead of its usual dark. Airy instead of weighed down, it’s almost… it’s almost…maternal. It’s terrifying.
She urges me to go on with her steel eyes. “Down the hatch.”
I stare into my cup at the large pills. They’ve been pumping my body full of pharmaceuticals three times a day since my second day here. I hate it. The pills make me a zombie. They make me walk the halls, trailing my fingers along the smooth texture, forgetting who I am and a lot of other things.
Crazy on the cot across from me has started chanting. Down the hatch. Down the hatch. Down the hatch.
I bring the cup to my lips and toss the pills back just to shut her up. I don’t swallow them, though. I push them under the left side of my tongue and try to keep a straight face as the chalky, bitter taste coats my taste buds.
“Open wide,” Marjorie instructs me.
I do as I’m told. Marjorie seems satisfied. She moves on to Crazy. “Aurora,” she hands the cup to her and she takes the cup.
At that point, I look away I stare at the tiny cracks in the plaster wall. That’s how I feel inside, cracked—no—shattered. It’s like watching a mirror being blown up in front of you. There are so many pieces, but you have no idea how to put them back together again. You have no idea where the pieces go.
“Open wide, Aurora.” I peek over my shoulder as Aurora opens her mouth. I wish she’d stop taking her time. If I have to keep these pills under my tongue any longer I might as well have just swallowed them.
The second Marjorie is out the door, I spit the pills into my palm and shove them into one of the wider cracks in the wall. I will not let them drug me anymore. I will not let them make me one of their mindless robots.
Suddenly the overhead light in my rooms flickers before dimming. I turn my attention to Aurora who scrambles to the edge of her cot, wrapping her pillow around her head.
“Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!” she cries. Her freckled knees begin shaking. Her wails intensify. “Make them stop! Make them stop! Make them stop!”
“I can’t,” I say softly. But she’s still crying out at the top of her lungs so I don’t think she can hear me.
What I want to tell her is I wish I knew how to make them stop. What I don’t tell her is they probably never will.
A volt of electricity climbs through the wires behind the plaster walls and the lighting in our room returns to normal. I know what happens when the lights flicker; it means they took someone else to the basement. It means they took someone else to their sadistic torture chamber to try and electrocute the crazy out of them. I’ve been keeping a close eye on some of the girls in my group who’ve received electroshock therapy, and I’ve made up my mind that the doctors around here aren’t as smart as they think they are. Sending that many volts of electricity through a person’s body doesn’t eliminate the crazy. The only thing it does is fry your brain, dilute your mind, and kill you faster.
Footsteps echo outside the door and carry down the hall, pretty soon they cut out altogether. I walk to the door, then take inventory in the hall. It’s deserted and the only sound is the buzzing from the flickering lights on the ceiling. Closing the door, I turn on my heel to come face-to-face with Crazy, I mean Aurora. She examines me slowly and I choke on a scream, lodged somewhere in my throat.
Backing away from her, my back thuds against the door. Why would they put me in here with her? Do the doctors think it’s normal to put the crazies in with the non-crazies? Aurora tilts her head to the side and takes small, staggering steps toward me. She’s inches away now; her cool stale breath unfurls across my cheeks and wafts up my nostrils. Dropping my gaze, I look to her hands to see if she may have a hidden weapon. She doesn’t, but I can still feel the terror latching onto my spine as she hovers over me.
“Whhaat… What do you want?” I croak.
A look of confusion crosses over her face. She’s got child-like features. Big, wide brown eyes. Soft ivory skin. A dainty, pointed nose. Tiny yet full lips. She continues staring at me and I turn my head and close my eyes. Maybe she’ll get the hint if I’m not looking at her. Maybe she’ll see how frightened I am of her. Maybe she’ll leave me alone.
Somehow I doubt it.
Strands of my midnight hair shield my face and I bravely open an eye and peek through the locks at Aurora. Her fingers are in her mouth and she’s fishing around for something. Oh no. Maybe she hid a weapon in her mouth. I’d heard some of the other girls in the rec room talking about patients hiding razor blades under their tongues. I tell myself to close my eyes again, but I can’t stop watching her.
Aurora’s eyes widen. Her forefinger and thumb appear to be pinched down on something. Shit. “Please!” I beg her. “Don’t kill me!”
I face her and she regards me in an odd way. She regards me like I’m the crazy one and she’s normal . She pulls whatever she was fishing for and balls it up in her fist. Then she holds her hand out to me. “Give me your hand,” her voice quivers.
I remain silent and shake my head.
“I said give me your hand,” she says louder and with a growl. I stick my hand out, palm up and Aurora places two pills in my hand. “Do me a favor and put those where you put yours.” She plops back down on her cot while I stay in my spot gawking at her, baffled. Her eyes flit across my face and she shrugs. “Well.”
I will myself to move and walk over to my cot and shove the two pills in the same crack I hid mine in.
Sitting down on my cot, I tuck my legs underneath my butt and say, “I don’t get it.”
Aurora faces me. “Don’t get what?”
“I thought you were a few cards short of a full deck.”
A soft smile spreads across her lips. “Pretty convincing, wasn’t I?” I nod and she goes on. “Here’s the 411 on mental hospitals. If you act like you’re crazy and pretend to take your pills they pretty much leave you alone.” She sits back, placing her back against the wall and pulls her knees to her chest. “It’s the people like you who try to fight them that they focus on,” she makes quotation marks with her fingers, “trying to fix .”