Asylum

Being driven up the long driveway, it was dark, always in the shadows, even in the middle of the day because of all the overgrown trees that lined the road that blocked out most of the light. The unnerving and unwelcoming view of the asylum appeared before her. The place permeated sadness, sorrow, and death from every crack and opening.

When she entered this place of misery, she could see all the other people in their own personal hell. Some of them sat motionless either because of the treatment they had received or because of all the medicines they had been pumped with, others were whispering and laughing to themselves or something their imaginations created. Some were shouting and screaming hysterically. Sanity it seemed would never prevail here.

Those that were undoubtedly to far gone to be saved were locked in what can only be described as cells. Cramped rooms with iron bars over the windows, a bed, some had a desk and chair, and a stout metal door. The door was solid with only a narrow opening, where every now and again you would see some wild eyes peering through at you or a hand would appear beckoning you towards them.

She was captured in bedlam, or that's what it felt like to her. Her own personal hell. Slowing walking past one of the treatment rooms one of the more troubled guests was strapped to an old gurney. The male patient howling. The screaming echoed, with electrodes strapped to his head, his screams only silenced by the deep hum of electricity surging through him as his body becomes rigid and starts to shake uncontrollably. She stood and watched attentively as this happened and discovered it strangely amusing.

She was unable to take her eyes off him.Its as though some deluded puppeteer is controlling him; making him dance for their own morbid twisted amusement.  Carried and placed in a wheelchair where he is taken back and dumped on his bed where he is abandoned to lay in his exhausted state.

The days pass. She finds it hard to keep her own thoughts safe, her sanity in tact, this place of madness is true torture. No feeling of sincere love, of forgiveness, of happiness or sympathy. She thinks all hope is lost. This place has a cold dark dispiriting feeling with a sense that death would be a welcome pleasure, and patients only real escape.

She spends most of her days in the social area. A not very accurate name, since most of the people are void of any expressions and seemingly oblivious as to what is going on around them. They merely sit staring into the abyss of their minds. Most of them look like hollow shells, completely dead on the inside.

This particular day, she notices someone sitting in the corner, wearing a soiled straight jacket, repeatedly head butting the wall and laughing like a mechanical clown. It seemed to her it was almost as though he knows that death is waiting for him, to ferry him away from his own insanity.

A frenzied sound suddenly erupts, in the hallway. She can hear a grunting laugh that doesn't quite sound human. She follows the sound and finds a patient sitting on the floor. He somehow had managed to get hold of a sharp instrument of some kind and had slashed his wrists and throat. He merely sits there in a pool of his own blood with an almost serene look on his face.

For the first time in what feels like an eternity, in all this madness, some of these people show a spark of life and almost seem excited at what's happened. Some jumped, others clapped, it was like a watching an enthusiastic crowd at a sporting event cheering their teams on to victory. Precise moments later staff hurry around trying to disperse the ecstatic crowd that has gathered and load what now seems to be a lifeless body on to a stretcher and wheel it off down the corridor somewhere.

As the weeks turn into months, she starts finding it hard to properly distinguish whether she represents a patient at this house of unspeakable misery and despair or has become just another cold-hearted, unfeeling, uncaring mental health care worker administering daily torture rather than the possible help that these people need.