The Name, Ivy

Quick journal entry by Ivy Fortress reflecting briefly on her past, and her nickname. #1 of my 100 Things - Introduction.

 

I never gave myself the nickname Ivy, it was actually the guards at the ‘hospital’ who started calling me it after the first incident. Actually, they started calling me Poison Ivy but that was so many years ago. My first near-escape, back when there were a few abandoned buildings around the hospital, before my father bought them all and flattened them, ensuring my capture in my following escape attempts. Rats used to try and get in all the time through the kitchen door. Father didn’t see the point in wasting money on traps so he just had poison set down around the walls and under cupboards - he had the janitor check for corpses everyday… let him keep what he collected too. Efficient, effective, and cost-productive - it pretty much sums up my father. Even when I was really young, still living at the house, that time I ‘accidentally’ swallowed rat poison. ‘Accidentally’, in the “do it or I’ll make your sister scream” kind of way. James was disappointed when I didn’t even have a stomach-ache, or feel sick. He thought maybe it wasn’t poisonous and popped a piece in his mouth, trying to give himself a reason to make my sister cry and have it be my fault. Fortunately, he was a little more sensitive than me to it, it almost killed him. Only almost. I didn’t give the guard as high a dose so he wasn’t too bad - really, they should be required to be smarter to be my guards. All I had to do was crush a little and dust it onto my lip gloss and kiss them. Them, not just him. Four of them to be exact. They’d been wanting that kiss for years, the poison was just a little bonus.

 

I tasted fresh air for the first time in eight years that day, for all of two minutes before I was dragged back in, drugged, and dumped. I’ve been Ivy since then, since I was fourteen. Still dusted my lips with the poison to build it up in their systems until the day I left. Maybe, on that last day, I used too much. I heard the guards died. Curious, unless they started concentrating the stuff more over the years. I guess its possible…

 

Or maybe I just finally beat them, and him.. Maybe I finally beat that whole damn place.

 

“Institute for children and adults with mental disorders” my a*s. The craziest people are always giving out the medication anyway.

 

Valentine “Ivy” Fortress