Insanity (Asylum 1)

I’m speechless and I regret snapping at her. I can see the pain in her eyes mixed in with anger. I shouldn’t have gone there. I shouldn’t have pushed her to bring up this painful part of her past. “Aurora, I—,”

“Just shut up,” she growls. “The day you make it to the basement is the day you can comment on the way I act here.” She backs away from me shaking her head. “It’s your fucking fault I got sent there in the first place.”

“What?” I scoff. “I wasn’t even here then!”

“You weren’t?” She slants her eyes. “How do you know? You don’t remember anything before you arrived here a few months ago.”

“No,” I say in a low voice, shaking my head in disbelief. “No. That’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible,” she retorts. “It’s like what Dr. Morrow said to me right before he shoved the cotton in my mouth and fried the shit out of me; The mind can be a very powerful weapon. ”

She’s screwing with my head. She has to be. We’re all fucked up here and fucked people have a way of making people believe things they wouldn’t normally believe. “You’re a liar.” I creep closer to her. “If I’m the reason you got sent to the basement, why didn’t I get sent there too?” Even if I did, I know I won’t be able to remember it. “And why didn’t you tell me what happened to me?”

“I did mention what happened to you.”

“You did not?”

“I. Did.” A smug look appears on her childlike face. “But let me guess…” Her eyes widen and she places a finger on her cheek, mocking me. “You don’t remember.”

I open my mouth to snap at her, but she cuts me off.

“I did mention it. One of the first nights we shared a room together.” The hard look on her face is replaced with a soft one and she lowers her voice. “You know, you’d think I’d hate you after everything, but I never did. Even after they took me to the basement, I knew I should hate you, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was happy for you and I thought if it can’t be me at least it’s someone.”

I’m still lost. Folding my arms across my chest, I frown. “I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Aurora rolls her head back and blows air out of her cheeks. “You’re her,” she says softly. “The girl I mentioned. The one who got out. The one who got away.”

I recall that conversation and a part of me wants to believe her and another part of me is still in denial. “You said I didn’t know that girl.”

“That’s because you don’t, do you?”

I shake my head, drop my arms and start playing with my fingers.

“I wish you could remember.” A mixture of happiness and sadness tugs at Aurora’s vocal cords. “You would have liked that Adelaide.”

I don’t know what to say. How to feel. What to think. I lift my head, still confused and look deep into her eyes. “I—I,”

She knows exactly what I’m thinking. “Don’t apologize.” She swallows hard and sighs. “You saying you’re sorry a million times isn’t going to change anything.”

I open my mouth to respond again, but she cuts me off for what feels like this fiftieth time in our short conversation. “Forget it.” She raises her hands, walking backwards. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No.” I charge toward her. “I’m glad you did.”

“It’s not going to change anything.”

“It might eventually.”

Aurora stops on the set of cement steps leading up to the building. Her eyes flit to the metal fence. She mouths the word I’d just said, “Eventually.” The she snaps out of her trance-like state and looks me square in the eye. “I don’t understand why you keep looking over at that fence. There’s nothing but an abandoned field there. I mean if you like staring at dead grass and garbage that’s cool, but—,”

“The men’s ward is there,” I interrupt. “They’re always outside doing stuff. Watching them distracts me.”

Aurora stares at me for a moment, puzzled, then her lips form a straight line. “Adelaide, the men’s ward burned down five years ago.”

“No,” I shake my head. “I see them all the time.”

“The new men’s ward was finished a year and a half ago. It’s a mile up the road.”

My mind keeps going back to the word liar . I keep telling myself that she has to be lying. But then I have to ask myself why? Why would she make all of this up? Why would she deliberately try to screw with me? “This isn’t real,” I mumble. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’m actually sitting in Dr. Watson’s office listening to the gentle ticking of the metronome and at any second I’ll wake up and realize this whole conversation was just a fucked up nightmare.