Banished

2: We're All Mad Here

"Being entirely honest with oneself is a very, very bad idea."

-Sigmund Fraud

2
We're All Mad Here
Dorthea

"And what happens next, Ms. Gayle?" The man placed my tome gently on the table as if it would break. Or infect him.
I flopped back against the beige leather couch in his office and put my arm over my face. "I don't know. That's all I can remember from the vision."
"It's a dream journal."
Turning my head, I glared at my new nemesis-someone this world referred to as a head shrinker. The aging Dr. Baum fidgeted at his gray mustache with the small comb he kept in the brown, tweed jacket he wore every day. He peered at me from behind round bifocals, examining me like I was a bumpkin bug. Either that or he enjoyed taking apart my mind like a puzzle. I hated that. But even worse was when he told me what he thought I needed to do.
Well, what I needed to do was get home. The details of Libraria and my life there as the princess of Emerald were getting fuzzier by the day. My memories of enchantalors were being replaced with this world's elevators. Thoughts of magic mirrors now transformed into TVs that were powered by a lightning called electricity. This world shunned magic for something called science, and sorceresses were replaced by doctors. My mind quickly returned to Verte, the loyal Emerald witch-my teacher and friend-and the last time I'd seen her green warty face.
Maybe there are certain details I am better off forgetting.
"Whatever," I said and stared up at the tiled ceiling.
The doctor sighed heavily. "Why do you insist on lying on that couch?"
"Isn't that what people do in therapy?" Another new term I'd picked up in my time here.
"I wouldn't know. Is this therapy? I merely invited you to join me for my afternoon tea so we could talk about what's on your mind."
The sounds of clanking china were followed by the aroma of jasmine tea wafting my way. I still remembered enough of my royal manners to be horrified at the thought of letting a good cup of tea go cold.
With effort, I hoisted myself off the couch and ambled over to the table, tightening the drawstring of my hospital scrubs so they didn't fall down around my ankles. I was going to have ask for a smaller size. I was literally wasting away in this world. This Kansas.
"There." I pasted a smile on my face, plopped myself into a chair, and grabbed my teacup. "Lovely weather we're having." I pointedly looked out his window at the mini monsoon. If I ever escaped, I might need a getaway boat.
Dr. Baum picked up my notebook and flipped through it again.
"So in your dreams-"
"Visions," I corrected.
His smile dipped a bit, and he took a deep breath. "These lucid images..."
I nodded, indicating I'd let that one pass.
He sighed, probably grateful for that small victory since we'd been having this same argument for a month. "I've noticed that these lucid images can be very violent."
I sipped my hot tea. I knew a trap when I heard one.
"Now you know that whatever you tell me here is confidential. But if I were to have reason to believe that you might be a danger to yourself or others..." He tapped the notebook and let his words-his threat-hang in the air.
I rolled my eyes. "Please. I'm not a threat to anyone. You've taken my shoelaces and given me only plastic silverware. My legs haven't seen a blade in so long I think I'm turning into a chimera."
I regretted the word as soon as I said it. Kato...
"But you must admit there is an underlying theme of death and violence in your more recent entries." The doctor watched the teacup like I might shatter it and take him hostage at any moment.
I set it down to ease some of the tension. "Look, there was this curse that made me 'evil queen' level psycho, but the grail cured me. Not to mention there's a war going on. So of course there's gonna be violence, though it's not like I personally want that." He passed the notebook back, open to the page of the attempted beheading. I sighed. "Oh, that. In my defense, Hydra is a head-swapping witch. So taking her head wouldn't actually kill her. Probably. And her current incarnation, Gwenevere, is a power hungry lunatic who totally deserves what's coming to her."
His raised eyebrows indicated that I wasn't exactly helping my case.
"Let's move on for a minute, Ms. Gayle. I've noticed that in these stories you are always this same girl, this Rexi. So do you find yourself interchangeable with her? Is she a part of you?"
"No," I corrected for the umpteenth time. "I'm not her. I just see things through her eyes. And as I've told you before, I can only do that because I used the Emerald curse to tie our souls together after she died. Blah, blah, blah."
He nodded slowly. "I see."
No, he didn't. "Look, I'm not a nutter. I know who I am, and if I were Rexi, I'd be in the world of Fairy Tales and Myths with control of what was happening there, and I would do things very differently and better than she is. She's been king of Camelot for, like, a blip of a few weeks. She has no idea how to rule. I, on the other hand, have been royal my whole life. I was born to command armies." I crossed my arms, satisfied I'd made my point.
"You said something very interesting that I want to get back to. About control." Dr. Baum tilted his glasses down and jotted something in the folder he kept on me.
"Yeah," I said and repositioned myself in my seat, bracing for his examination. "So what?"
He stood up, taking his preaching stance. "If I may."
"Can I stop you?"
"Not really, no."
I spread my hand wide. "Then by all means."
He tapped his pen on his salt-and-pepper mustache and began to pace. "Have you ever wondered why you only started to experience this other world while you were in the coma after your excision surgery?"
I fingered the scar on my sternum where, as the doctor said, I'd had a bone tumor removed. It was the same place where Excalibur had pierced me.
Dr. Baum's pacing sped up. "And why is it that the only time you reconnect with this other world is in sleep or after a chemotherapy treatment? Perhaps these visions are your unconscious mind's way of expressing how frustrated you are at not having control of your own life. Perhaps the Emerald curse that eats away at you in these stories is simply a metaphor for the cancer inside you that grows without your control. Perhaps your connection to this Rexi is a desire to be someone else."
"Pfft. If that were true, I would invent someone with better fashion sense who didn't try to steal my prince," I snarked, refusing to let his doubts seep in.
Usually, he backed off, but not today. "Then why do your experiences mirror each other? Don't you find it odd that you would both love the same boy? Have you considered that this Rexi is the representation of the person that you really are? That after years of being the perfect child who fulfills your parents' expectations, you are finally letting lose and rebelling? An unconscious manifestation of multiple personalities is very common in a situation such as yours."
"A, Rexi and I are nothing alike. That girl has no sense of style. Or manners. Or tact. She's got all the grace of a hippo trying to do ballet. And...ugh." I got up out of the chair. "I'm done. I want to go back to my room."
He thought for a moment. "If you promise me that you'll stay safe and think about what I said, I'll call the orderly and let you go early today."
Stay safe. What was that supposed to mean? Rexi was the one in trouble, not me. Or maybe he meant I was in danger...from myself. My mind spun.
"Sure," I muttered, anxious to get out of this room, which had suddenly become so stuffy that it was difficult to breathe. My guard showed up promptly and led me out.
"Oh, Dorothy," the doctor called as I reached the hall. "You only shared point A. What's point B?"
I didn't look back. "You don't have to believe me, but I'm not crazy."
He came up beside me, leaning down and speaking so quietly that only I could hear. "I meant no offense. All the best people have bit of madness. It's a sign of brilliance. You just need to learn how to take control of it."
His words looped in my mind as I was walked back to my cell. But I stopped short when I got to my room.
My mother was standing on my bed, pulling taped drawings off the wall.
"Why are you doing that?" I snapped. The walls of my hospital room were a nauseating shade of yellow, and I'd tried to cover them with my illustrations. My attempts to remember the world I needed to get back to. My friends.
My mother didn't reply. She merely continued to pull the remaining papers off the wall.
As she stood on tiptoes to reach the last and highest drawing taped to the ceiling-the one of a boy with tousled amber hair and an ice-blue gaze-anger swelled within me. "Touch that, and I will never forgive you." My voice held enough chill to give a snowman the shivers.
With a sigh, my mother's hand dropped, and she turned to me. Her face was as severe as the bun that kept her long, graying hair restrained. And though she lacked the gowns a royal would normally wear, she was not an ounce less regal in her simple cotton dress. Queen Em had been trapped here long enough to forget who she really was, but some things will never change.
"You need to stop this, Dorothy."
Like her need to tell me what to do.
"Stop what, Mother?" I asked innocently and with a smile.
"You know exactly what I mean, young lady." She swiped at the pile of sketches she'd collected, scattering them across the room. "Your father begs me to be patient with you, says that you'll come around in time. But I have tolerated this nonsense long enough. It is time to put away these childish fantasies and face reality. Focus on what really matters."
My fake smile faded into a hard line on my face. "That," I said, pointing to the drawing of Kato that still remained on the wall, "is the only thing that matters."
My mother's jaw set, her head shaking slightly.
I crossed my arms. "Well, you never understood me in Emerald. I don't know why I thought this world would be any pixing different," I muttered. Ignoring her, I bent down and started collecting my artwork.
Until I heard a sniffle.
Surely, I'd misheard. I looked up at my mother. At her unsteady lips. At the tears in her eyes that were on the brink of spilling over.
I froze. Astonished. In all my life, I had never seen the queen of Emerald cry. Not once. I honestly didn't think she could. A tear trickled down her face as she sat on my bed. Then a second. Then a dam seemed to break as she wept openly.
"Hey, hey," I soothed, dropping drawings and rushing to kneel in front of her.
Her shoulders shook, and her hands trembled as she held my face. The ache in my chest threatened to break me in two. The guilt over all the pain I'd caused. That I kept causing.
It was my selfishness that made the wish on the cursed star. I was the one who broke the magic of Fairy Tale and sent my parents to this mirror world called Kansas. I was the one who made my mother cry.
I laid my head in her lap and pressed my face into the folds of her dress like I used to as a little girl. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll fix it."
"Oh, my baby." She ran her hands through my hair, her sobs growing quieter with each stroke. "All I want is for you to get better so you can come home with me."
Ever since I made that stupid wish-to be free of the rules of magic and story, free of my destiny, free of my parents-I'd wanted the same thing as my mother. I wanted to go home.
My father cleared his throat from the doorway. "I'm sorry to interrupt my girls, but if I stall this doctor any longer, I think he's going to strap us into wheelchairs and drag us out." He came over and took my hand, pulling me up into a hug. "My Punkin. Be whatever you have to. Just come back to us."
I hugged him back fiercely. Now that I'd found my parents, I wouldn't let them go again.