Chapter 5 .:Asylum:.

.:Asylum:.
Identity: Troy Royall
Date: January 2nd, 2012

She is sitting straight-backed on a couch when I enter. The building smells of stale antiseptics. The walls are all white. She doesn't make any reaction to me. Her eyes are staring ahead at nothing. Deep green. Blank. I lean in close to her, looking into those eyes.
"It's me."
She stays silent. She blinks. Still nothing in her eyes. They are deep, glassy, dead. I sit on the couch next to her. We are not touching. The few other people in the room are not looking at us. There is a nurse in the corner, checking off things on a clipboard. There is a white-haired man with silver eyes sitting in a wheelchair.
We are perfectly aligned, sitting side-by-side in this place, not looking at each other. My voice is the only voice. Almost a whisper. "Are you ready to come home yet?" The sound is too quiet to echo, yet it seems to. Even with the people, the building seems empty. It is entirely filled with ghosts. Dead-eyed people like her.
And still, she has no answer. Her eyes blink again. I think about her, how it is here, if she is just like this all the time. I know she is. I imagine it. Dead-eyed, sitting positively still in the middle of a padded room, all alone.
"When will this be over?" This is what I whisper to her. I want to say so much more. And how could she even answer my question? I should give her one that she can respond to. One that has been tearing at me.
"You have to tell me one thing. Tell me so that I understand." Still she makes no reaction. I take a long breath. It's hard to say it. I've been thinking about this for the long months she's been away. It keeps coming back to me. "Why did you kill him?"
She blinks at the white wall again. Slowly. "Because I knew that you wouldn't." Her voice sounds dead too, empty, cold, still.
I think this over before I decide, "That's not a viable answer." And really I couldn't think of a better way to put it?
"Why shouldn't it be?" Her voice is as empty and dead as her eyes. "It's the truth."
I look down, staring at the linoleum. Breathing slowly. Talking to her has always been hard. Now nearly impossible. "Of course I wouldn't."
"Exactly. Because you don't care about the truth."
I sit up and fold my hands together over one knee. I turn to look at her, at her eyes that don't look back. "Then answer this question. Why didn't you bury him? You could have done that, at least." My voice is shaking. God, I want her to look at me.
Slowly, the slightest smile rises on her blank face. "Why would a monster need a grave?"
I look away from her again, down at the floor, my hands clenching together. Why is she like this? Stubborn. How can I sit here, loving and hating her so much? I want her to come home, I want to kiss her, I want her to bleed, I want to never see her again. I breathe out, closing my eyes. "He was your son, Nikolai." My voice is quiet but deep, low.
"But he wasn't your son."
"We could have done something else."
"There was nothing else to do."
"Anything. Why--"
"He was a monster."
"He was your son." I sat up.
For the first time, she turns and looks at me, right into me, her green eyes so deep and sharp. "I did the right thing. I did what was necessary."
And then she turns back. Still again. Her eyes as blank and dead as his were.
"Then why are you here?" I ask her, knowing the answer will be of the same vague certainty.
"No one understands the truth." She whispers, and closes her eyes.