Spero Institutions

Chapter 2: My Name Is Melody

My name is Melody Cerulean. My name is Melody Cerulean. My name is Melody Cerulean.

She repeated the mantra in her head that she was so used to by now. She rocked back and forth, cradling her legs into her chest with her head buried into them.

My name is Melody Cerulean. I am sixteen years old. I have short blonde hair. I am five foot six. I am underweight. I love books.

She reminded herself of who she was, as she had done so many times before. As she taught herself to. She didn't know how long she stayed like that but she forced herself out of it when she heard a voice.

"Are you okay Melody?" the familiar calm and soothing voice whispered, right next to her.

Mel looked up to see the face of Dr. Simeus Jupiter, her therapist. Her eyes darted around and she realized she was in his office, on the chaise longue. It was one of their sessions. Oh god it happened during one of their sessions.

He leaned forward from his position in his usual chair. "It's okay, you're okay, you're safe. It happened again didn't it?"

She nodded.

"You've never reacted so negatively before?" he asked.

She shook her head. Even though it was less of a question and more of a statement.

He sat back and jotted down some notes on his clipboard. As nice as the doctor was it unnerved her when he would do that. He was writing about her. What he thought. She worried about what he wrote. The doctor was one of the only adults she could communicate with in the institute. He reminded her of her grandfather. Dr. Jupiter was middle-aged and had a bright, friendly personality that contradicted his broad, muscly appearance. He wore glasses with thick marble-patterned rims, he was black, a few shades lighter than Melody, and she trusted him more than any other adult she had met there. He only asked yes or no questions which made their sessions all the easier.

The institute was useless when training their staff. Mel only knew one adult in the facility that could speak sign language which was so very useful for people who were deaf or people like Mel who were mute. Speaking in sign came as naturally to Mel as speaking with voice was for others, she always forgot that some couldn't read what she was saying and she would make a quick getaway before things got too awkward.

The doctor said that her muteness was caused by severe anxiety. He was the one who diagnosed her and recommended her to the institute. When she arrived they made an effort to hire a temporary therapist that spoke sign but she was improperly trained and made Mel feel incredibly uncomfortable and anxious, so she cancelled after three meetings. Mel felt awful for wasting the time and resources of the institute but they just referred her to the doctor and allowed her to have sessions with him.

When the doctor finished taking notes he passed her a sheet of paper with a table on it. He made the table for her in their first meeting to help others identify her 'daydreams'. In each slot she wrote her name for one of the worlds she dreamed about. Each was vastly different from the others and most were from literature or film. She pointed to the first slot. The first world that she ever visited, in her head she called it Hell but in paper it was Tsillah, the Shadow World. Just reading the name brought on feelings of panic that she fought down. She couldn't have a second anxiety attack in a session. Not after they had gotten so far. Tsillah was the most frequent world she dreamed about.

The doctor nodded. "I see..." He made a couple more notes and she fidgeted, trying to distract herself from the events of the daydream. But she knew she couldn't forever. He picked up a paperback notebook from the desk behind him and handed it to her. "Unfortunately our time is up, write it down and we'll look at it next week I promise."

She nodded and stood up, heading for the door. There was no way she was going to write about the daydream today even though she should before the details became hazy. She opened the door and faced Dr. Jupiter as she had become used to doing. Awaiting his farewell.

"Remember Mel, you can always come to me for help."

She nodded again, bowed her head to say thank you and left. She walked down the empty corridor and took the stairs on the left down to the corridor where the kids rooms were. These grey walls seemed to go on forever and they were all she had known for just over two months. She looked at the clock. It was nearly dinner time, as much as she really didn't want to socialize right now dinner was a compulsory meal.

She walked up to the middle door on the right, her room, hesitated and entered. To her this still wasn't her room. It was just a place she was sleeping. At least it also acted as a sanctuary when things got bad. The rooms were small and grey and bland but at least they felt cozy rather than suffocating. All they were allowed was a small set of drawers for clothes and a bed with a white pillow and duvet. It drove her crazy how colorless it all was.

Mel was pretty sure no one was in the corridor but she hadn't really been paying attention. She decided to risk it and went to the corner of the room that was a blind spot directly under the camera. There were camera's everywhere. Some kids were desperate. Better safe than sorry. Sat there she could reach a hiding spot under her bed where she pulled out the fist book she touched. She was a bit of a bookoholic. Learning aside it was the way she coped with life, distracting herself in the worlds of fantasy and scifi so she didn't have to think about everything else.

It came with an odd side effect. One the doctor had very little knowledge of. The reading and thinking about the worlds of fiction triggered something inside her mind. Her awareness of the outside world faded away and she lived those characters lives, as if in a lucid dream. Sometimes it got to the point that once she finished or was disturbed out of a reading session she was so disorientated that she had to remind herself of who and where she was. She wasn't a dragon-fighting knight or a space witch or a talking cat, but at least for a few hours a day she could believe she was. It was relaxing.

The Spero Institute was a home for kids who needed 'help'. Who decided if they needed help? Well that were the various therapists all over the area. Spero was the only mental institute in Mel's area, which to be fair wasn't very big hence the small number of kids there and the terrible budget. Two months had passed... three since the incident. Each day felt like a week. She had made a few friends and a couple of enemies but most people ignored her. After all she couldn't speak, so what was the point in trying? She didn't blame them. It was better that way. They could spend time socializing with better people.

The book she had pulled out was The Strange Case of Prof. Zero and The Swarm. She had read this one twice before. A scifi novel inspired by an older book. She tried not to read the same book more than once as it really messed with the daydreams. But this one was pretty good. Her sister smuggled in new books for her during visitation day and somehow the nurses hadn't noticed yet. She doubted her parents realized. They never came with her sister anyway.

The doctor was right. She didn't usually come out of daydreams in an anxiety attack like she did earlier, it had only happened twice before. And she preferred not to remember those times. Normally she welcomed the daydreams. They helped her.

Melody opened to a random page near the end and began to read. Read until she woke up.