The Venantium Auallonia Trilogy: Midsummer Sky

Chapter 5: Mad Or Sane

"Oh, my dear, if only you knew how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of anyone's beliefs, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane."

—Bram Stoker, Dracula

A day later...

Memories act like shadows; they follow you without reason or awareness. They hide when we wish for a moment's peace, but they enjoy reveling in themselves when we are at our most vulnerable. They pull us in with their greedy, impalpable hands; claiming they know you and all the darkest secrets hidden in the subconscious; they love and adore you. A memory is the demon of the mind that reaches in with those hands, embeds is claws with a sharp understanding: we can never let them go; they are all that we are and all that shapes us. I had heard once the words: I am shadow as my shadow is me. It is almost like saying I am me as you are we, and we are all together. What it meant to me before was absolutely nothing, but I now understood it like a blinking vacancy sign; my memories? Either they be in happiness or pain, my shelved memories were something that would never die.

This isn't what made me overtly curious. It was the feeling that I will never forget, they will echo forever no matter what it may contain. Like being trapped inside your own head. What made all of this worse, similar to the déjà vu of a living nightmare, was the knowledge that I been wrestled into a straight-jacket to keep me from harming the people who worked here, I was placed into a slightly mangled, padded cell with a single barred window that had been left open with rays of moonlight showing through. I had been given a pretty decent amount of narcotics to keep me calm as well. Thanks to them, I had no idea how long I've been here or what time it was. My guess is that it's nighttime, but that's the most I could determine without giving myself a headache.

Another scream pierced the silence. Leaving me to cringe and wish I had hands to cover my ears. Whatever day this was, I was able to count the number of screams I heard at least; this was the tenth agonizing scream. I think I just got here, or have I been here longer? I wondered to myself. I don't care; the meds are numbing my anxiety. That's enough for me to want to forget why I'm here. Occasionally, someone would laugh as if possessed, some cried inconsolably; the rest were stoic; catatonic was the word for it. One thing was for sure, they all had smiled knowingly when I first arrived here, chuckling as I walked by others in the main hallway of the hospital's psychiatric ward. They sang and chanted the same words over and over; making me feel like I would probably never leave this place once I came inside: 'Along comes a fellow friend, another lost, another's end.'

They did what everyone associates insanity with; banging heads against walls on concrete, pacing, rambling. I hoped I wasn't going to end up like that; mentally considering the fact that I had already received two different medications diligently shot up into my arm by a nurse who didn't seem to care either way about my pleas or my physical condition. I scream at her; I have no idea where she came from, but I tell her to leave. I tell her I don't kill people; I never have. She doesn't listen. She just continues to write one some clipboard.

"I didn't do it," I cry to her. Her name tag says Mallory, "I didn't do it. I wasn't me. I mean it—it wasn't me—I'm innocent. It was him. That—that shadow! He followed me everywhere! He's trying to kill me. I don't wanna die, I'm—I'm not ready to die, do you understand me? He knows where I am. I need to hide from him. I can't be here. He wants me to go insane. I can't let him beat me."

Again she ignores me, but I just continue to beg and cry in hysterics, "Please. Mallory. Nurse Mallory, please let me go. I don't belong here! They were my friends, I didn't kill them. I'm not crazy."