Alienated

TWO

3:30 p.m.
January 1st

I was put in this shit hole on October second. It's now January first.

The gold and silver streamers for New Years hang from the ceiling, but not too low for us crazies to reach them. Apparently last year someone actually tried hangin' themselves with one. I know right, what a fucking idiot. That's all I'm surrounded by these days. I'm just thankful I get along with the roommate they gave me.

"Aster do you know where I put my socks?" My roommate Toia throws her blankets on the floor and lifts up her bed. I laugh and shake my head, turning the page of the book in front of my face.

"Well I don't think they'd be under your mattress, maybe check in your right hand?" She looks to her hand and let's out her famous cackle, her dimples coming into view.

"Shit, if I had a penny for every time I've did that I'd have a hundred bucks." She let's the mattress fall into place before tossing her comforter back on it. "I'd kill for a doobie right now."

She's so right, but how ironic.

I put my book down and smile before sayin' "is that why you killed your last boyfriend? For a doobie?"

I joke about this all the time as she does me. I didn't kill my boyfriend but I do believe in somethin' that clearly isn't "practical" or "moral."

LaToia turns around, smiling like I knew she would. "Shhh don't tell anyone." Considering her situation, you'd think she'd be a little less jester about it, but that's not her. She turns everything into a joke. Life, death, babies, her own boyfriends murder. You guys probably think I'm crazy, befriending a murderer, but she's got good in her. She did it as self defense, he was constantly raping and beating her so her momma plead insanity to keep her out of prison. Her momma put a mortgage on her house.

No one believes her. I believe her though. And she believes me.

"Isn't you sisters one year missing coming up?" I nod and pull myself up, my back against the headboard of the bed as she dives onto the mattress, something that actually isn't allowed in this place. They say each of us has a bed, no reason to touch anyone else's. Even so we like to live life on the edge. "Tell me more, you haven't really told me much about it." Her pale blue eyes boring into me, something she takes advantage of and knows I can't resist. Something about them makes me almost want to spill my guts.

Where do I even start? My journal, our journal would have helped explain everything.

"Did you know these disappearances have been happening for over 50 years?" That's all I say. I don't know how else to say that I have hundreds of pages of proof that aliens have been around for many years, taking women, girls and doin' whatever they do with them.

"Okay..." she studies my face and motions me to keep going. She always pushes me to speak up about my problems but I try not to.

Sighing loudly I say, "I have proof. A lot of it. Our journal has everything we need to know. Just none of it's here unfortunately. My poppa has it all. He thought it'd cause a larger uprising if it got out." It still can if I could get it in the right hands.

Her eyebrows are narrowed, confused. "Our? As in you and your sister's? I thought it was Rosie's?" I shake my head no. I haven't told her the whole truth yet. I hadn't planned on telling her either. It's no ones business but my own. And apparently my therapist. But that's it.

"I thought maybe just maybe if he saw the journal and thought it was Rosie's he'd believe me for sure. I snuck it into her room before Poppa searched through everything, lookin' for clues. He sure did find a clue, but it drove him crazy that his youngest daughter was hiding somethin' so secret and immoral."

Toia walks towards the door way and looks left then right before closing the large door. She then takes a pack of cigarettes out of the socks she's holding and takes one out, lighting it. I don't personally smoke and technically she's not supposed to be smoking at all, but this was her room first, so it's not my place to tell.

"I should have kept it to myself. I could be out there trying to find my sister. Instead, I'm in this gosh darn place with people who have killed their whole family." I get up and start pacing the room, her eyes still on me.

"You never entirely told me what was in the journal. I get it you have proof but is it intense enough to cause an uprising?" She's been grilling me over what I know since I first arrived here.

She ashes her cigarette into an empty Code Red can on my side table.

I look at her and almost laugh.

"Yeah, it's pretty fucked up stuff."

"Well I don't think you're crazy. We're gonna get out of here and you're gonna find your sister. I promise."

Since I've moved in almost three months ago, she's been all that I've had. No visitors. My sisters would have definitely been down here to see me, but I have come to the conclusion that they don't know I'm here. Poppa probably told them I went to a boarding school in Italy to live with our great Aunt. Such lies from a man who tried so hard to force honesty into our house.

Still sitting, I open up my night stand and pull out a photograph from the top of my stack. I look at it daily, so it's always on top. I miss my sisters.

We were all dressed up that day. All in our favorite dresses at the beach. Our family was whole and our spirits were lifted and happy. Poppa's smile could have lighted the whole world. He looked so happy back then. And my sisters. We all looked so much alike, even now it's sometimes hard for people to tell us four apart.

Zinnia and Amaryllis are 7 years older than me and live a state away in Florida, living their best lives away from our overbearing father. Amaryllis is in med school, learning to become a nurse and Zinnia... Well between you and me, she works at a club in Tampa. Poppa doesn't know and let's hope he never finds out.

Toia scoots up behind me on the bed and lifts my hair to my back, running her long fingers through it. "You'll get them back. If I have to strip naked and run through the halls for you to escape, I will." After skipping to the bathroom to flush her butt down the toilet, she grabs my wrist and drags me out of our room. "We have a new patient coming today, let's go wait for him."

"How the hell do you know this?" We aren't allowed to know when new patients are arriving, yet somehow my sneaky roommate finds out everything.

We walk down the hallway, passing a few opened and closed doors. People hear the name Royce Hospital and think of an actual hospital. Instead, it's a house. A three story Victorian mansion made just for us. There's only six of us "lucky" enough to be admitted here, and I'm one hundred percent not the craziest.

"I overheard Miss Leah and Mrs. Burns talking about it this morning when they handed me my meds. They really need to learn to talk in private. We're crazy, not stupid." We both laugh. Not all of us are brain dead. We walk through the doorway to the main room, or the living room, where we can sit and watch everyone who comes in and out.  "His name is Hero and he's here because..." She pauses briefly before going on, "you're gonna flip. I was gonna tell you earlier but-" I snap my head in her direction.

"What do you mean?" I don't even know this guy, why would I flip? And why is she just now telling me about this if it's so important?

She looks around us, making sure nobody is listening in before she puts her mouth up to my ear. "His sister got abducted by aliens."