Sin (Wattys Winner)

Chapter 02

I was shocked to say the least.

The strait jacket had been a parting gift from the hospital. Because of my supposedly unwarranted tension that morning, they decided I needed some help in calming down. Being trussed up tighter than a turkey eagerly awaiting Christmas lunch isn't as attractive a proposition as it might at first sound. Saying that, I'm sure there are those who would, and do, pay very good money for such a 'pleasure'. I, for one, am not amongst them, I have to say. Naturally, Dr. Connors didn't realise I'd be vacating my cell that lunch time. I somehow neglected to inform his good self of my intentions. I doubted he would be too happy.

But then again.

If he had, then maybe he'd have plumped for something a little more fashionable. Straps and belts are something of a fashion necessity nowadays, but there is a little thing called overkill. I didn't think the flames that would be dining on me would mind though, so I didn't mention it. I was pleased the good doctor had decided against medication and had restricted his treatment to just the jacket. Being pleased about one of his decisions didn't sit particularly comfortably at my table, but I needed to be at the very least lucid. I worried that any amount of drugs, even though I'd often requested their administration in the past, would prevent me from doing the diddly-doo. So, yes, I was pleased, relieved and not at all peeved that I hadn't had a breakfast of needle on toast, washed down with a cold glass of Risperdal.

As far as I was concerned, I was interred at Insanity Central purely of my own accord. It was for the safety of everyone else, not for myself. The medication was there to numb me. It was meant to blot out that damned coin, erasing the possibility of me taking another bite out of population's pie. I didn't need it because I was psychotic. I wasn't. Nor was I half a dozen different people all squashed into this one body, each vying for control of the only mouth. I was normal, in a completely abnormal kind of way, of course. But Dr. Connors didn't know that. Even if he knew it on some level, he couldn't believe it. I was talking crazy dude! Rambling-a-ho worse than Bender Benny down in Room 101.

There wasn't actually a Room 101. That was just a cell a little smaller than the rest, with a little extra padding, where they put you if they wanted to forget you. 'In need of extra support' was how they'd put it, but it essentially meant the same thing. Bender Benny was crazy. He really was. Nuttier than Dr. Connors thought I was. Bender Benny's mind was bent so far round on itself, it could tickle his tonsils if it so wished. Don't ask me to tell you just what was wrong with him. Dr. Connors is the expert in matters of the mind.

Hah, I made a funny! Dr. Connors was an ex-spurt. That's about as far as I'd go. Trust me to voluntarily put myself in the care of someone who needed treatment more than his own patients! To be honest, I should have known, really. That kind of thing just seemed to happen to me. Fate's fickle finger always ended up picking me out of its nose and flicking me flat splat on the dirty pavement. When Life played Spin the Bottle, that old empty beer bottle always ended up settling on me.

Bender Benny was a danger to himself, apparently. He mumbled constantly in fractured sentences that only ever made a weird kind of sense when you half heard them. I'd never seen him become violent. He'd never so much as raised his voice or his fist. He simply sat there in the so-called common room, chained to the tubular steel chairs which were in turn bolted to the floor. After five minutes of his nonsensical mutterings he was returned to 101 before he made the other residents nervous. Every three or four hours, sometimes it was as much as six or seven, he'd appear again, head slumped, shoulders hunched, mouth twitching an ever constant stream of nothing. But he was a danger. Apparently.

As I was nice and sane and crispy, Risperdal, Valium, paracetomol and vitamin C were far more than I needed, but Dr. Connors, as he would, disagreed. Maybe he had shares in a pharmaceutical company. Perhaps he was on commission. A couple of quid for every pill popped and every tonic taken. Nice little earner. He certainly believed that preventing, or downright suffocating, a problem was better than a cure. So a daily dose was an essential part of everyone's diet. What doesn't kill you, it seemed, makes you number. Not a number, like 3487, just more numb. Something like that anyway.