Space Age : Events

Alohi Tanaka| What Was Feared

The city of Metropolis wasn't as it's best on this November night. The streets were slippy and it smelt of fresh rain, car smoke and grease. Icy air tormented the city cars, breathing a glaze of frost across the windows. The buildings stuck out like broken teeth and loomed over every individual alley way. The lights were dim. It was the type of night that you should have stayed home.

In the midst of the freezing night, Alohi walked the streets, very much alone. Lee, as they called her, found freedom in the solitude. There was nobody to give her tests. To call her crazy. To discard her in her claustrophobic, grey, hospital room and to abandon her there. And not tell her when she could leave. But no matter how many times she was assessed, labelled mental and lock away, things never changed for her. She could be taking five different pills every morning and night (a ritual she had to stick to for many months), the voices never stopped. The visions never stopped. The bad dreams, the hallucinations. They never stopped. Her life was an endless cycle.

Alohi Tanaka had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was merely nine. It was when she had started to hear people who weren't there. Her parents started getting very concerned was when she started having vivid dreams and even more vivid hallucinations. She cursed her own brain.

"Why... Did you make me this way?" Lee spoke to herself in a broken voice. A couple walked by, pushing a pram.

'Crazy girl'

A sudden audible hallucination echoed in Alohi's brain, enough to make her tear up. She knew she should go back, go home, take her medication, go back to hospital. The comforting nurses and the patient doctors would soothe her, and tell her it was all going to be okay. Like they always did. Just repeating the cycle.

She shivered as she walked. Whilst others girls her age were having their first kisses and going to parties, she remained in a mental ward. She stared into the damp mist, wondering if all hope for ever getting better would ever happen. Maybe she should just give up. Just let it happen. Just live with consistent and vivid hallucinations. At least she'd be free to do what she liked.