How To Be Insane

Session 1

Property of Krankzinnig Asylum for the Criminally Insane

Patient 2237- Session 1

Dr Mendoza

Video Transcript.

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The therapy room is plain. It holds only a table and two chairs. The camera is set on the table, so the picture shows only one of the chairs- the one that Patient 2237 is sitting in. Dr Mendoza sits in the one behind the camera, and his voice is the only evidence of his being in the room. 

Dr Mendoza: This is Dr Mendoza with Patient 2237. This is the first session of video therapy.

Patient 2237: Video therapy? Heh. 

Patient 2237 sits like a man. Her legs are splayed and her forearms rest loosely on the metal table. She looks far too relaxed. 

Dr Mendoza's voice is calm and even. It is a practiced voice, the kind used to placate animals and small children. 

It is an irritating voice.

Dr Mendoza: Do you have a question?

Patient 2237 speaks with strange pauses punctuating her sentences, like normal human patterns don't make sense to her. Perhaps they don't. 

Patient 2237: You think I don't know why. . . that camera is there. She tilts her head and stares intently, hungrily at Dr Mendoza. You want to take it away and study it with your little books and notes and long words that all come back to the same thing.

Dr Mendoza: And what's that?

Patient 2237: That I'm crazy.

Dr Mendoza: You think you're crazy?

His voice is so even. His questions are barely questions, more like prompts and nudges. God it is so irritating and we're only transcribing the video to written form. 

Patient 2237: I'm not crazy. Her voice is suddenly very quiet, but very firm. I'm not. She tilts her head again, still staring at the doctor. There is a long pause and she starts again, more like before. The other people in here? They're crazy. They. . . hear things, see things. They can't tell the difference between dreams. . . and reality. I can. I don't have any little whispering voices in my head. I know what's real. She smiles in the manner of a person who knows something you don't. I just see the world- she lifts her hands to her temples- I see the world the way it. . was meant to be seen.

Scratching of pen and paper can be heard from behind the camera. Patient 2237 leans back in her chair. It looks uncomfortable.

Patient 2237: You want to know how many people I've killed? 

Her tone is conversational, as if she's just inquired about how many sandwiches the doctor has eaten that week (hopefully more than the legal requirement of four. Krankzinning council are very fond of sandwiches)

Dr Mendoza does not reply. The scratching of pen and paper stops. 

Patient 2237: I can't tell you. No, I literally can't. See, some people, I kill myself. . . with my own hands, well, not hands, but with a tool held by my hands. Them I. . . remember. But. . there's the ones who die in the explosions I. . set up and. . other projects I've had. So, I really don't know how many. . . flickering- this word is enunciated very clearly- lives I've snuffed (at the word "snuffed" she claps her hands loudly and the doctor jumps).