Passengers Seat

Chapter 1. Arrival ~

KIT -

The doors swing open, with perfect timing, precisely timed so you don’t have enough time to think. Just go right in without any questions asked. I doubt it’s quite as easy to turn around and walk back into the world, return to the unstable grounds of reality. What most of us call home turf. An employee escorts me down the corridors, past tinted windows and closed, doors. Mysteries, only for certain eyes to see. One foot in front of the other, counting the tiles on the speckled floor so you don’t have to focus on the plur of fake faces, smiles. A woman in a tight black suit, with a long skirt, in a Minnie Mouse voice halts us. “I’m Dr. Landon. Welcome to Mckenzie Springs. I’ll give you the tour. Rick, please take his things to the Pacific Room.” Mckenzie Springs, Pacific Room. As if this were a five-star rated resort, instead of a lockdown where crazies stay, roaming, waiting.

At least it doesn’t have that hospital smell. Oh yeah, it’s very clean, from cafeteria chairs to the bathroom sinks. Everything so flawless. But the clean comes the gag-me smell, that haunting smell of antiseptic hell. I wondered what Dad said when he heard I tried to end myself - and failed. I should had placed the gun to my head, worry less about brain damage, more getting dead. Instead, I decided a shot through the heart would make it stop beating forever, rip it into shreds, bleed out. I couldn’t even do that correctly. The bullet hit bone, leaving my beating heart in one piece. Luck was absent that day. Mom found me too soon, not long enough to let the blood drain. I thought she’d die too, at the sight of so much blood and the thought of it staining her new dress. “Kit, what have you done?” She said. “Tell me this was just on accident.” She never heard my reply, she never even shed a tear. Not for me, not for the son that was begging for her attention.  

I don’t remember much after that, except for the memory of speeding by. Ghostly. Everything spinning faster and faster, I began to drown from consciousness. Floating through the ER doors, motion. But I do remember, just before the black took over, seeing Mom’s face. Her furious piercing eyes followed me down into the dark dark sleep. It’s a wonderful place, the Land of Blood loss and Anesthesia. Floating, swimming through sand. After awhile, you think you should reach to touch the grainy surface. You can’t hold it in, even if you could, it’s dark and deep, bitter cold. Where nightmares and reality collide, and you wonder if death is near. You try and get your way up into the light, to find you can no longer move, your arms strapped tight with overflowing tubes extending from your arm. And everything hits you like a mac truck. Voices and strange faces. Pain. Most of all pain.

GABRIEL -

Just saw a new guy check in. Tall, built, a way too fine face, and acting to touch to be humble. He’s a nutshell asking to crack at any moment. Wonder if he’s ever let a guy touch that pumped up bod. Doubtful. They have him the Pacific Room. It’s right across from him - the Purple Room. Peaceful in here half the time, as long as meds are on time. Get it? Half the time, if meds are on time. If you don’t understand, you’ve never stepped foot into a place like this one. Never hung along enough to understand how terrible it can get. To have to survive from one med call till the next. Survival of the fittest. There’s only one way to get by in this “treatment center.” Wasted. Everyone in here is messed up one way or another. Even if they refused to admit the fact. Most here are druggies. Loser meth freaks. If you’re going to purposely lose your mind, you want to get it back someday, right? Okay, lets be honest. Maybe not.

I had lost my mind a long time ago, but wasn’t my own idea. Things happen, as most say, and mine literally hit the fan. But enough sappy crap. We were talking drugs? I can’t tell you I never tried crystal, but it wasn’t ever my thing. I witnessed people, all wound up, drop far over the abyss. I couldn’t take that leap. I always seemed to prefer going into the deep, darkest place possibly. Where no bad feelings could follow. At least till you had to come back up for air. Pills were what took me there. Borrowed from medicine cabinets and nightstands. Where I could possibly find them. And once in a good while - not often enough. Zolpidem. A shot right into sleep. I wasn’t too worried about never waking, though I knew plenty enough about the drug. I didn’t do it enough, for a thing. Anyway, I figured I should be graveyard rot before I turned eighteen. It hasn’t worked out, though I’ve got a few more months. Once I get out of here, I’ll have a better shot at it. Maybe next time pills won’t be the cause. You’d think half a bottle of Ambien would do the job. Maybe it would have, but tossing in a fifth of Jack. Passed out. Expected. I never expected to wake up, face against the sidewalk, surrounded by my own vomit. Heaved the whole load. Guess who came to my rescue? You know it. One of the finest. Poor officer didn’t know what to do - Clean me up? Take me in? or Puke himself. So he decided to do all three. Hospital first. Looney bin later.

JESSICA-

I can’t remember when it had rained this much. Flooding, puddles. Wrapping the world up. Memory is a tenuous thing. Like a rainbow that has no end or a camera with a failing lense. Sometimes my focus is so clean, see every detail that lay in front of me. Then it gets blurry and simply disappears. I peer out. Is it even a window I’m lookg through? Or only cloudy panes of blurred vision? I hate this wonderful feeling. Like I’m here in my right mind, but I’m lost. Like someone cares but theres no-one there. Like I belong somewhere, but in this horrid place.

I consider the streets bleak as the bleached bones of the wilderness, suffocating my heart. Just a stones toss away. But she’s out there, stalking along the streets, haunting me like a sin. I know she can’t get to me, not in this building. Where I’m surrounded by these people that can’t think straight, not even for a moment. I’m too tired to pick myself up and make a break for it, escape. So I sit here, tripping on Prozac. I wonder if they give everyone a dose on their twice daily meds. Do they actually try to diagnose or do they just simply assume? Do they think everyone is depressed? My arm throbs and I look at the badage that’s tightly wrapped there. A small red stain revealing itself through the white packaging.

The first cut wasn’t the deepest, no not at all. It was like the other, nothing but a anxious piece of skin, a gently glow of crimson, but enough to shush the demons that hid themselves within the first layer of my body. But this time they wouldn’t, they kept on howling. Like Mom when she was in her bad way. Worst thing was, the older I grew, the more I found myself respembling her. Falling in and out of reality, then lifting into the white where everything was beautiful. That day I actually thought about howling, so I gave myself to the razor, asked it to bite a little harder, chew a little deeper. The scarlet rush felt so delicious, it was impossible for me to stop there. The blade must had reached bone, but my little brother. Jason barged into the bathroom without knocking, found me leaning against Grandma’s new white tub, turning its unstained surface a light pink. You should had heard him scream. It was the worst sound that had ever escaped his mouth.