Ink Me Insane (Book One)

Twenty Three

Ink, they had been a constant stain on her skin since that birthday. Every time she looked down at her arms she was reminded of how un-normal she was. It was her identity. She was the girl with the tattoos. Evidence of her insanity and proof of her strength, the ink leaked into her being running through her body. Perhaps at one point she had hated them for their part in bringing her to the asylum, but they were now so much more than that to her. They were a constant presence in a chaotic world that continually fell apart around her. They had helped bring Cassie and her together in the floating darkness. Cassie's fascination with them had led her to sketch the twin dragons and present them to Rene as a gift. The first gift Rene had received since her eleventh birthday. It had been a sign of hope that she didn't have to travel alone in this world and eventually a friendship was established because of it. The ink became her life raft in the storms. Each one was a beautifully mad creation that echoed the canvas of her mind. She couldn't hate them for that. Despite everything, they gave her hope. Hope that something more than just pain could bloom from her insanity. Being crazy was terrible and suffocating. It was a whirlwind of darkness and chaos that tore at the threads of her mind. Self-doubt and anxiety, panic and anger, despair and fear all were swirling internally creating layers upon layers of mental instability. It wasn't pretty, nor should it be, but it wasn't all bad either.

The ink was a psychical token of that. No doubt a part of her would always wander in the darkness; however, that wasn't so bad after all one could only see the beauty and light of stars in the night. Madness offered a different way of looking at the universe. A person could see the ignored and slid over. They could imagine how the world could look and not just what stared them in the face. A flexible mind could wield creativity as a weapon of formation. Perhaps that's where the saying came from that artists must suffer for their art. Rene had never been much of an artist, not a good one anyway, but she had come to disagree with that phrase.

Artists didn't and shouldn't suffer for their art. Their art was life given to the suffering and joy of their soul. It was a release to keep the darkness from suffocating them. It was the poking of holes in the sky to let the stars shine through. She had seen it in the way Cassie smiled softly while sketching. Her slender fingers danced across the page to create something from emptiness. She had heard it in the lament song of a fellow patient as the boy stared out the fence during free period. She had felt it down to her very bones when she read a book poured into by an author, exposing their soul in black and white. A different path, a variation of the firing of neurons, a chemical imbalance: all were nicer ways to explain insanity. Honesty and lies mixed into one. Perhaps that's why all the best people were mad.

When looked at that way maybe she wouldn't just drown in the madness...

A blast of hot air sent Rene flailing backwards onto her butt. Smoke snaked into her lungs and accosted her eyes leaving them watery. She rolled over pressing herself into the ground as she struggled to suck in the cleaner air close to the floor. All around her she could hear the guards coughing and swearing at the sudden onslaught of the gray poison. It thickly blanketed the air making it near impossible to see. With her position on the floor, Rene watched the uniform boots shuffle around trying to make sense of what happened. Rene herself wasn't sure what happened. One second, she was waiting to die by means of an inept firing squad and Kristy, the next...

Kristy, shit. She winced carefully tracing a hand down her middle until she felt warmth. Blood was seeping out onto the floor. Slick as oil it pooled staining the cement. So how would she die first, bleed out or smoke inhalation? Like hell she was going to let that pervert Derek be right. She pressed her hand into the wound trying to slow the leaking of her life. This would not be her end. She refused to die on this floor of all places. Rene reached out her other arm to drag herself over the floor. She abruptly paused. For the second time since she was eleven, her right arm was bare, and considering the other time had been most likely a hallucination, this was not good. She curled down to look at her left arm still clutching her stomach. The white dragon remained in place twisting up her arm. Where was its twin then?