Kid from the Asylum

Chapter One

Nico's POV

     "Hey Thalia, want to visit my mom with me today?" I asked.

     "In the Asylum?" She asked. I nodded.

     Before you go 'Oh my word Nico's mom a psycho nutcase!' No. Well, kind of. She's kind of a spy, I guess. She got herself thrown in there on purpose. She tests the care that people are given in prisons, asylums, nursing homes, ecetera. (She pretended to be an old woman. It took a LOT of latex and tons of voice altering practice. And a wig.) Then she reports to the government if they need to shut them down. So today I was visiting her.

     "Sure. Why aren't you taking Hazel? She's your cousin, right? Isn't you mom her Aunt?" Thalia asked.

     "Hazel's with her boyfriend." I told her, leaning back in the couch.

     "Wait, she got a boyfriend?! Is it that Frank guy she's had a crush on since like third grade?!" Thalia asked, sitting upright.

     "Uh, yeah. Frank Zhang. He's like a football playing teddybear." I told her.

     "I know, it's kind of weird." Thalia admitted.

     "Well, we got to get going. You have to drive." I told her.

      She huffed. "Fine. Let's go." She stood up and streched, then headed for the door.

      "Dad! I'm leaving!" I called, throwing on my Aviators jacket.

      "Okay! Tell your mother I miss her!" He called back.

       "Kay!" I shut the door behind me and walked towards the car. I got in the passenger seat, Thalia getting in the drivers seat.

      "We're off to the Asylum, the wonderful asylum of love." Thalia sang in the tune of 'We're off to see the Wizard' as we drove. I rolled my eyes at her as we turned onto a dirt road that you wouldn't even notice if it wasn't your destination.

     We drove along that for about half an hour before we arived at the Asylum. One of the workers knew about what mom did, so she turned off the cameras in the room and let us help out around the Asylum. Mostly I come alone and look through files. It's an extremly large Asylum, and there are over two hundred people in it. Of course, most of the people were sent here instead of jail, so most of the people were just criminals, not actually insane. The files were in alphabetical order, and I had gone through all the files up to 'H'. There were only a few real crazies, and they weren't even that... Well, crazy. Above most, but bellow what interested me. Nothing beyond hallucinations or schizophrenia. Don't get me wrong, schizophrenia is horrifying, but not quite what I'm looking for.

(My Aunt had Schizophrenia, and she has to take a lot of pills to help her. If you don't know what Schizophrenia is, it's kind of a mind-altering mental disease. Try the simulator above with headphones. That's what a schizophrenic person has to deal with. It's like sub-consious voices in your head arguing with eachother and telling you what to do. It often tells you to kill yourself, then quickly changes its mind, then tells you not to do something, such as eat, and you feel obliged to do as they command. It's horrifying. And you also think that the voices are normal, so you don't know you have schizophrenia.)

     We walked up to the building entrance where a guard stood. I stopped in front of him and took a keycard out of my back pocket. I handed it to him and handed it to him. "Questa è Thalia Grace. Viene con me per vedere mia madre." I told him in Italian, my birth tongue.

       He nodded. "Vai avanti. Christy ti aspetta." He responded., handing my cark back. I nodded thanks and headed in.

      "I didn't know your Italian was so good." Thalia muttered as we walked into a lobby, which was designed like a school. The floors were marble, the walls painted white. There was a door behind the counter beside the front desk and two more doors on either side, both guarded with key-code passwords and padlocks.