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Prologue 3: Camille

Journal entry #1

10/11/14

To be or not to be, that is the question. Me? I'll always be.

Like that? I'm a right poet, aren't I? Take notes on that, dear reader. And by reader, I mean me in the future, of course. No one else's eyes are allowed on my watch. This is my dumb journal, for my dumb thoughts, to be read by me and me alone. Thank you very much!

Anyway, hi. My name's Camille Lee Walker. Middle name stolen from my late father, I suppose. Well--late since last year. Yeah. My dad's dead. I hope I don't sound insensitive for wording it so casually, but I'm a big believer in moving forward and not dwelling on the past. Yes, of course I miss him lots, but me digging myself into the ground every day because of it won't bring him back. I consider myself a realist. View it how you wish.

I'm fifteen years old, and a freshman in high school. But don't let that fool you; I'm more mature than most of these juniors and seniors trodding around. Don't believe me? Just listen around at some of their tables during lunch, and I promise you'll sway my way.

I consider myself a laid-back, easy-going person. Not much bothers me, and like I said before, I pretty much go with the flow. I look forward to little things, and I don't like to dwell on the negatives. Oh--speaking of looking forward to things, there's actually a dance coming up at the neighboring school to mine, West Aspen, that my school's invited to. Apparently it's an annual tradition, this crossover dance with our school (Mount Massive High) and West Aspen, so I'm a bit psyched. Supposedly it's a pretty big deal, and hundreds of kids from both schools go every year.

Yeah, another thing--our school actually shares the same name as that loony house up the mountain, Mount Massive Asylum. They're both right near the Rockies, so I guess the name-givers just had similar ideas. However, I probably shouldn't be so rude when talking about it, as I was actually really close with someone who was a patient there not too long ago. Only a year ago, as a matter of fact.

That someone, of course, was my father. His name was Chris Lee Walker, and before you get the wrong idea, he wasn't always a hell-crazy psychopath. A hell-crazy psychopath as Murkoff classifies it, anyway. Before he was committed in 2011, he was actually one of the most respectable types of men in America: a soldier. He served in the army as a lieutenant a few years after I was born, and after that he went to Afghanistan for a couple more years before leaving the service in 2009. Honestly, I was elated to have such an awesome, badass dad to call mine, even though I hardly got to see him while he was away. He was just...hella awesome.

Then, in 2010, after he had spent some time in counseling for PTSD from the wars, he came back home, and later he was hired as head security officer of Mount Massive Asylum. He had told us he wanted to get back in the work force, and hell, head security guard at a tough-as-bones place like that is still pretty badass, if you ask me. I was happy for him, and besides, we live less than ten minutes away from the place; we were still able to see him every night after he came home from work. Everything, overall, was pretty good that year. For all of us.

Then 2011 hit. It was right at the start, too; in January, and I was only eleven. Dad hadn't come home for a few nights, but we didn't think much of it. We figured, he's a guard and all; they ask a lot of those guys and their time. But then, a day or so later, my mom received a letter in the mail from the Murkoff Corporation stating that '32-year-old Christopher L. Walker had unfortunately just been committed as one of the asylum's own patients'. I think both me and her read that letter five times each before we even began to process what it really meant, and she had to explain the word 'committed' to my little self, but I got it soon enough. To me it meant, 'Oh no, my dad is one of those crazy psycho guys now.'