THE AFTERHOUR

V. The Exit:

Sitting in the Common room, Pete tried to remember the details of his dream last night. It was strange, for sure, strangest he had had before. It was so vivid, so real, he thought he was going to at least be able to recall a few things, but no such luck. Oh well, dreams are dreams, he would have way more fun out here in the real world anyway, at the Serene Psychiatric Center. Pete laughed sarcastically.

Three years ago, one Pete Cashee, twenty-five years old, was admitted to a local hospital. He was suffering from multiple injuries as a result of a car accident. They said his skull was cracked and he would have been dead if they had rushed him in the ER a second later. Pete spent the next three months in a hospital bed, and then the next seven in physiotherapy. The doctors did their best, but Pete now walked with a limp on his right leg. All he had was his name that they were able to recover from a badly burnt license. Aside from that, he had no memory whatsoever of the previous twenty-seven years of his life. They said with this kind of brain injury, nothing was certain. He could wake up tomorrow with his old memories, or he might never get them back.

Pete was also displaying violent behaviors and a tendency to throw things at the doctors who were trying to help him. It could have been because of his accident, or maybe he had always been an asshole. He was being so much of an inconvenience that they were pumping him full of pills on a daily basis and the hospital assigned him two therapists. He ended up scarring the first and bit the second one. That's when they transferred him to a place where it was a bit more normal to pump someone full of mood- stabilizers: The Serene Psychiatric Center.

And that's where he had been for the last two years, in room number twenty- three, located on the C- wing of this enormous place. Things were relatively bearable here, somehow even quiet except for the occasional manic episodes from one of the residents. "C stands for Crazy" as he would say, but it was a damn sight better than the B-wing, which stood for Batshit Crazy. He often heard distant screaming and wailing from that section. Fortunately, it was completely separated from his more peaceful side of the building.

Amy sat down next to him and put her legs on the table, right next to his breakfast tray. Pete took notice of her red eyes instantly - Must have been one of those sleepless nights, people rarely got a goodnight's sleep in here:

"Have they given you your pills yet?"

He answered her with a quiet nod.

"The red one, the white one, or the blue one?" - she edged.

"All the ones, Amy, as usual" - he replied, slightly annoyed.

Amy Dean, the woman who had previously visited his room, was somehow his best friend in this place. Part of the reason was because she was at least less violent and less crazy than the others, judging by the standards of a psych ward. Also, half the people in here didn't even talk, so he settled for one that talked mostly nonsense.

"I like the red ones, they taste good. You gotta try sprinkling them onto the croissants, it's like powdered sugar."

"I will certainly keep that in mind. How did your session with Doctor Wells go?"

Amy rolled her eyes and jumped on her feet:

"Same old stuff. 'Have you been keeping up with your journaling exercises? How are you feeling these days? They are just dreams, Amy',...Blah blah blah." - She imitated the old therapist in a mocking manner. It stood to reason that a therapist wouldn't have had much of an appeal to anyone in a Psych ward.

"Yep, that's Doctor Wells." - Pete answered half-heartedly. - "You been having weird dreams?"

"Most people here have weird dreams, Pete, hard not to with the colorful diet of drugs they have us on. The Dream Maker just likes me more. He tells me stuff sometimes, you know? In my dreams."