Alice

A tragic story of a mothers love that has gone horribly wrong

               Diana stood facing the bay window in the living room, her arms folded across her chest and clasping her elbows, and watched the rain come down in sheets.  The trees on the front lawn whip violently from side to side, each stroke of lightning freezing them into grotesque white shapes in the darkness.  She could not remember the wind ever blowing this hard, hard enough to make the rain beating against the side of the house sound as if someone is throwing handfuls of stones.  She feels the familiar sensation of something small, something with horribly sharp teeth, running through her head, waiting for the opportunity to scratch, and bite, and gnaw.  She knows it is only a storm, but cannot shake the uneasiness that keeps trying to creep in.  She watches the water run sideways across the glass, and thinks about Jim.  She prays for him to be ok, prays for him to be careful, but her faith in prayers vanished long ago.  She doesn’t remember exactly when her prayers began to feel useless, to feel so empty, but she thinks that maybe there had been some sort of tragedy.  She fights hard to remember, her brow creasing with the effort, and that is when the panic rat bites.  She just cannot remember.

                She turns away from the window, squeezing her elbows tighter, and looks down at the phone.  She wants to call Jim again, needs to hear his voice so the rat running around in her head will be quiet and stop its incessant biting, but she won’t.  It will only serve to piss Jim off and she doesn’t want to start a fight, especially not today.  Jim does the best he can, and she refuses to ruin his birthday.  When she talked to him earlier, he told her he planned to stop in at Dinkley’s and have a couple of rounds with his friends after work.  She assures herself that he is perfectly fine, and the rat bites down again.  She hears someone laugh and turns away from the phone, squeezing her eyes shut as the cackle echoes in her head.

                The voices are back, have been back for awhile actually, despite the little blue pill that Dr. Mercer prescribed her.  They talk to her, sometimes they talk to themselves, and only just this morning they began to argue with each other.  In the beginning, the voices always went away when she took her medicine.  She even enjoyed a two week period when the voices did not come at all.  After awhile though, coming so gradually that she hardly noticed, she began to hear them again.  They sounded muffled at first, as if she was hearing them through a wall, and she had no trouble ignoring them.  The last week, however, began a long spiral down in which the pill seemed to not affect them at all.  She could actually hear them laughing and taunting her as she swallowed it down.  She never told Jim about the voices, or her visit to Dr. Mercer.  She is afraid that Jim will take Alice and run, leaving her all alone with only the voices for company.  Closing her eyes, she decides she has to tell him today.  She doesn’t want to, to put herself in that position, but the voices are driving her crazy.  -- You’re already crazy my dear, or did you miss the fact that you are hearing voices? --   One of them says, cackling.  She squeezes her eyes shut tighter. She is not crazy.  The rat bites, hard.  It is maddening.

                Diana walks to her chair, an old overstuff that is sprung and comfortable, massaging her temples with her fingertips.  The rat is running blind, biting freely now, and as she sits down she decides to give Jim another half hour before she calls.  She looks up at the clock, and her heart skips.  She watches the seconds tick away, growing more and more confused.  The clock says nine thirty, but that simply cannot be right.

                “Three hours?” she asks herself aloud, feeling the rat bite again.

The clock has to be wrong.  The last time she spoke to Jim had been six thirty, and she had gone to stand at the window afterwards.  The sky, just beginning to darken with the setting sun and the impending storm, had just begun to take on an eerie pinkish color.  She had watched the storm come in, and then watched the sun sweep the horizon with its final rays before it disappeared.  Half an hour, an hour at the most, had passed.  She would have sworn to that. 

                Diana’s head jerks up to the window again and a horrid thought runs through her mind, dwarfing her concern for Jim.  Where is Alice?  The last time Diana could remember seeing Alice, she had been lying on the floor in front of her little bookshelf, looking at one of her picture books.  Diana whirled around, searching the room frantically with her eyes.  The voices, the ever-loving voices, begin to shout at each other in her head.  -- Just a dream -- one says.  --That’s bullshit and you know it -- shouts another.  She tries to ignore them as she searches the room, her hands coming up involuntarily to cover her ears.

                “Alice,” she calls, trying to keep her voice even and pleasant. 

She doesn’t want to upset Alice, and tries her best to keep the panic out of her voice.  Alice is so easy to upset.

                When there is no answer, Diana feels her stomach begin to knot up.  There seems to be a small lump growing in the back of her throat as well, and as she calls again one of voices speaks.  -- She’s gone away -- it says.  The voice titters loudly, and Diana tries her best to ignore it.  -- She’s dead Diana -- another voice echoes.  Diana stops.   This voice is new, one she has never heard before.  The cold and emotionless tone that it uses chills her to the bone, and unlike all the others, there is no accompanying laughter from it.

                “Shut up,” she says under her breath, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears that are forming there.

The voices, all but the last, laugh in unison.

                Diana takes a deep breath and forces her eyes open.  Taking deep breaths, trying to control her emotions, she looks around the room again.  Her nerves calm a little, but she can still feel the panic trying to fight its way out.  Her eyes fall on the only door in the room, and her hand goes instinctively to the right front pocket of her blue jeans.  She can feel the tiny shape of the key inside and relaxes.  Diana always locks the door when she and Alice are in here alone, her history of spacing off, like she has obviously just done, forces her to do so.  She turns her head to the right, forcing down the panic.  Her oversized chair sits about ten feet from the door, and a small table with a single lamp stands next to it.  She keeps turning, the window coming into view now.  The two panes on either side of the big bay window are also locked, and she knows that Alice cannot reach them.  In the corner stands the mostly empty entertainment center with the small Sony television standing sentry in the center, throwing her reflection back at her in its black screen.  The drawers of the entertainment center are too small for Alice to climb into.  She turns, facing the door again.  Her stomach cramps as the knot tightens, and she fights the urge to scream Alice’s name.  Her eyes fall on Alice’s bookshelf, tucked into the corner behind her chair.  The floor is littered with books and Barbie dolls.  Tiny outfits are strewn about the clutter, and looking down at the mess makes Diana’s panic boil.

                “Alice!” she calls again, the panic finally coming through.

There is no answer.

                Diana closes her hands into fists and moves swiftly towards the door, ignoring the cackles of laughter echoing in her head.  Her panic is in full swing now, and she feels as if her head is spinning.  As she passes her chair, she catches something out of the corner of her eye.  Alice, eyes closed and whimpering softly, is curled up behind it.  The panic runs out of her like a flood, and she stares down at her little girl.  Alice’s thumb is jammed to the knuckle in her mouth.  Diana cannot remember her sucking her thumb since she was a baby.  The breath rushes out of her in a sigh of relief.  -- Tricked you -- a voice says gleefully in her head.  She ignores it.

                Diana walks cautiously to her daughter, squats down next to her, and runs her fingers through Alice’s fine auburn hair, brushing it away from her face.  She notices with suddenness that Alice is starting to slim up, all but her cheeks which still hold her baby fat.  She thinks, in that moment, that Alice could easily be the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.  Diana continues to run her fingers through her hair, and after awhile Alice begins to stir.  Alice’s beautiful green eyes slowly open.  She smiles up at Diana, and then a frown spreads across her face.

                “Mommy,” she says, “where’s daddy?”

Diana smiles, but it feels no more convincing than a three dollar bill.

                “He is on his way sweety, he will be here soon,” she says.

Alice’s frown turns down further, and her eyes begin to fill with tears.

                “I want daddy,” she says in a choked sob.

Diana wraps her arms around her and holds her close, not able to stifle the sting of jealousy.  Alice has always asks after him first, even though she is the one who always takes care of her.

                “I want daddy to sweetheart, but I promise he will be here soon,” she coos.

She wants to believe this, but something deep inside of Diana shuns the proclamation.  Alice’s hands suddenly hold a death grip on Diana’s shirt, and she starts to whimper.  Fighting down the panic, Diana begins to hum under her breath.  It is the sesame street theme song, Alice’s favorite.

                After several minutes, Alice’s grip begins to relax and her breathing smoothes.  She has fallen back asleep.  Diana lowers her back to the floor, and notices with a mixture of humor and dismay that Alice’s thumb has found her mouth again.  She stares down at her daughter for a long moment, and then a voice speaks out.  -- This is how she was, and now this is how she will always be -- it says, -- you have to let go Diana -- This is the dark voice, the voice that has no trace of humor in its tone.  Diana closes her eyes and forces the voice away.  After what seems like hours, she makes her way to the window again, crossing her arms across her chest.  She watches as the storm rages on, and wonders where the hell Jim could be.

*  *  *

                Diana’s eyes slowly flutter open.  Her sense of disorientation makes it seem as if she is swimming through jello.  She sits up slowly, looking around the small room.  A maddening sense of déjà vu steals over her, and she cannot shake it off.  As she stares around the room, fighting off her sleepiness, comprehension comes slowly back to her.  She’s had this dream before.  Diana swings her legs over the side of the bed, and lets the blanket fall away.  The dream, she always thinks of it in that way, always “THE DREAM”, never changes.  This time, something is wrong, something is different.   She looks up, and the florescent lights overhead send a wave of pain through her head.  Squinting against the brightness, she looks cautiously around the room.  It seems exactly the same as before.

                She slides silently off the edge of the bed, barely aware of the cold floor under her bare feet.  Turning, she looks at the single door.  It stands tall and ominous, and somewhere in the back of her mind Diana already knows it will be locked.  She knows from experience that the door is solid steel, and the small square window that is set into the top always makes her uneasy.  Small strands of wire ran through that glass, and it unnerves her to think that it is meant to keep her inside this small room, inside this tiny portion of her own mind.  In the past, she has sometimes seen a man or a woman staring in at her through that window.  They only ever watched her, never saying a word, making her feel like an animal in a cage.  This time, to her relief, the glass is devoid of faces. 

                Diana turns and looks down at the bed.  A twin mattress, stained and sheetless, stares back at her.  There is no pillow, and only a single blanket lays crumbled on the floor.  She bends down to pick it up, and frowns when she touches it.  The blanket feels coarse and rough, almost like burlap.  -- So you can’t tear it into strips -- a voice says in her head, -- in case you get any ideas… -- it lets out a cackle that reverberates in her head, and Diana lets out a sigh.  She cannot even escape the voices in her dreams it seems.  As she looks around the room, squinting against the light, something else makes her uneasy.  Everything is white.  The bed, the mattress, the walls, even the blanket is white.  -- So much white, -- she thinks.  It’s enough to drive a person mad.  --Too late! -- A voice cackles.  She wants to tell the voice to shut up, to f**k off, but she knows it will do no good.  She ignores it the best she can, fighting the urge to put her hands over her ears against the shrill laughter.

                Diana knows she must have fallen asleep, or spaced out again.  She cannot remember the last time she’s had this dream, but she knows it has been a long time.  She decided long ago that it is her minds way of dealing with the voices and the stress that they bring on, and it is no surprise to her that she should be having it today.  Today has been extra stressful.  Diana turns and walks to the small window set high into the wall.  This window, like the other, is reinforced with the same steel mesh.  Before she looks, Diana already knows that the view will be the same as before.  It will overlook a small garden with stone benches, a cement terrace, and an ominous looking chain link fence that runs around the corner of the building and out of sight.  The view does not disappoint, although this time she can see people milling around the perfectly manicured lawn.  She stares down at the people, not making a sound.  She is far up, and they look little bigger than ants from her viewpoint.

                After ten minutes or so, Diana turns away from the window and looks around the small room once again.  What she sees does not comfort her.  Besides the bed, the only other furnishing in the room is a small wooden nightstand that sits against the wall at the foot of her bed.  She remembers the night stand from her previous dreams, and wonders why she hasn’t noticed it before now.  The answer is simple enough; the night stand almost blends into the wall.  It is, of course, stark white. Looking at the night stand, she finally notices the difference of this dream.  Sitting on the nightstand, seeming to call out to her, is a glass of ice water.  Beads of condensation ran down the exterior of the glass, starting to puddle around the base.  Her mouth, suddenly feeling as dry as the Sahara desert, calls out.  It’s as if her thirst has taken on a mind of its own.  She uncrosses her arms, letting them fall to her side, and walks cautiously towards the glass.  She runs her tongue over her lips as she walks, and they feel like sandpaper.  She watches the tiny bits of ice floating inside and sighs.  Standing in front of the nightstand now, staring at the glass, a sudden thought comes to her.  She could never remember the dream being this vivid before.  The brightness of the room, the feel and touch of things, and her thirst felt genuinely real.  But, she’d had this dream before right?  The only difference was the glass of water, right?  She couldn’t remember.

                Putting her hand out, reaching for the glass, she stops.  Sunlight streams through the window, and as her arm passes through it she can feel the warmth of the rays.  She reaches down and curls her hand around the glass.  A chill runs through her at the feel of the cold drops of condensation against her palm, and her arms break out in goose bumps.  It feels so real, so amazingly vivid, that for just a short moment a small twang of fear runs through her.  The glass, which is not glass at all but only plastic, feels heavy.  It comes again, that small twang of fear and the sensation of something running through her head, something small, looking for something to bite.  She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing all of these thoughts from her mind.  This WAS a dream, not matter how real it felt.

                Diana heard a noise from behind her, and spun around on her heels.  Water sloshed over the side of the glass and ran down her arm to the crease of her elbow, sending another shiver down her spine.  What she sees freezes her to the spot.  The door is standing open, the sound of the lock snicking open had been the sound that startled her, and in the doorway stands an elderly man dressed in a brown button up sweater vest and kakis.  His hair is the light grey of age, and combed neatly down onto his scalp.  He wears no rim spectacles, and a smile that shows none of his teeth.  It is a smile that Diana instantly distrusts and vaguely recognizes, although she cannot think why.  He stands straight, hands clasped across a clipboard that rests against his stomach.  Diana watches him, trying to decide what she should do.  She can feel the water dripping onto her bare feet from her elbow, and without taking her eyes from the man she reaches back and sits the glass back down on the nightstand.  As she wipes her arm, the man speaks.

                “Hello Diana,” he says, “how are you feeling today?”

                Diana licks her lips, feeling sandpaper once again.  She wants a drink, now more than ever.  This elderly man’s voice sends shivers through her, and she knows why at once.  His voice is THE voice, the voice that speaks inside her head in the flat and humorless tones.  The voice that says her baby is dead.  Her body breaks out in goose flesh again, and without thinking of what she is doing she crouches her body into a defensive position.  Shoulders hunched and hands half raised, she speaks.

                “Who are you,” she whispers.

The smile never leaves the man’s face, but he puts out one of his palms in a stopping gesture.

                “I am not going to hurt you Diana,” he says, “I just want to talk to you.”

The voices in Diana’s erupt into whispers all at once. -- Liar Liar, it’s a trick, bad doctor, it’s him! -- they all seem to say at once. There is more, but they are too jumbled up for Diana to get a sense of them.  The way they talk in hushed voices, scared voices, terrifies Diana.  The rat bites down in her head, and she can almost hear a ripping sound.  As if the rat is no longer satisfied with biting, but now wants to tear.

                Diana looks around the room, the panic starting up inside of her.  The dream has never been like this.  There have been people at the window sure, but the door has never opened, and no one has ever been inside the room with her, especially someone that seems so familiar to her.

                “I want to wake up,” she tries to say, but her voice only comes out in a croak.

The man’s eyebrows go up in a questioning gesture of curiosity that she doesn’t like, and he takes a step into the room, a step towards her.  The shredding sound comes ringing through her head again, and she takes an awkward step backwards.  The man stops, and puts his hand up again.

                “My name is Dr. Mercer, Diana, and I only want to talk,” he says.

Now the familiarity comes to her, rushing in like a flood.  The similarity between this man and her own Dr. Mercer is striking.  He is slimmer and maybe five or ten years older than the man that prescribed her the little blue pill, and her version never wore glasses, but they could almost be twins. 

                “This isn’t real,” she’s finally able to say.

Diana takes another step backwards, bumping into the nightstand.

                The man, the imposter calling himself Dr. Mercer, sighs and his smile falters just a bit.  His eyes show pity, and something else.  Is it fear?  She thinks so, for just the slightest moment she sees fear in those eyes as well.  He looks down at his clipboard, shuffles through some papers, and pulls one free of the stack.  He holds it out to her.

                “I have been in some disagreement about this form of therapy with my associate’s for some time Diana, but I will not lie to you.  Your psychosis is only continuing to grow and I feel that only a true shock to the system, a full confrontation of the reasons in which you are here, may be the only way to bring you out of the spiral you are currently in,” he says.

Diana hears another tear inside her head, this one much bigger than any before, and stares mistrustfully at the paper he holds out to her.  The smile has completely left his face now, and there is no more fear in his eyes, just the overwhelming sense of pity.  Diana takes a hesitant step towards him, reaching her hand towards the paper.  Breathing hard, she snatches the paper from his hand and retreats back into the corner of the room.  She takes another quick glance around the room and then looks down at the sheet in her hand. 

                She tries to scream, but there is no air in her lungs.  What comes out of her mouth is nothing more than a whistle.  The picture on the page is what her eyes are drawn to first, and the picture is enough.  Alice, her lovely little girl, stares back at her.  This is not her Alice though, it can’t be.  The photo that is inset to the page is black and white, but there is no mistaking the fine auburn hair, the chubby cheeks that still hold her baby fat.  How many times has she run her fingers through that hair?  How many times has she wiped dirt from those cheeks?  This cannot be her Alice though.  The picture that stares back at her is a wraith of her daughter, a hollow shell of the little girl that she has lived for.  Alice’s eyes are closed in the picture, and surrounded by deep purple bruises.  Diana can see the gorgeous green eyes that lie beneath those swelled and purple eyelids.  The cheeks, once so pink and full, are now dark and puffy.  The worst is her throat.  There is no mistaking the dark rings of bruises that cover the once perfect flesh.  They are finger marks.  �"no�"she thinks.  �"They are strangling marks --

                Diana flings the paper away from her and covers her eyes, trying to push the image out of her mind.  This is not a dream, this is a nightmare, and she wants to wake up.

                “Diana, look at me,” says Dr. Mercer.

                “No,” she whispers.

--This is not real -- she thinks.  -- Not real, not real--

She can hear his footsteps as he crosses the room, and she makes no effort to back away.  She can feel the world sinking and realizes that it is her who is sinking.  She collapses to the floor with her hands still covering her eyes.  She can feel his hand on her shoulder then, and moves away from it.

                “Look at me Diana,” he says firmly.

She doesn’t, she can’t.  Instead, she whispers the three words that will haunt her nightmares forever.

                “Who did this?”

There is a long pause from the doctor, and then he says the answer that she is dreading.

                “You did my dear,” he says, sighing deeply.

                She can feel the tears rolling down her cheeks now, and stifles a sob deep in her chest.  The dream has never been like this, and for the first time she starts to think that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t a dream at all.  She forces the thought from her mind as quickly as it comes, and she can feel her sorrow turn to rage.  She did not kill her little girl, her little Alice.  She is the most important thing in the world to her.  She could never do anything to hurt her. �"It’s him�"she thinks.  �"he is no doctor, just another voice that wants to hurt me�"

                Diana’s head snaps up suddenly and with all the force she can muster, she strikes out at him.  Mercer flies back, yelling in surprise, and comes down in a sprawl a few feet from Diana.

                “No no no no no no!” she screams.

He blinks up at her, both in astonishment and fear.

                “Diana calm down,” he says, trying to get to his feet.

Diana snatches the glass from the nightstand and throws it with all of her strength at him.  The glass cartwheels once, twice, three times, water fanning out around it, before catching him high on the forehead.  A red flower blooms instantly, and he wails in pain.  She has a moment to be surprised by the amount of blood; it is running down his face in a sheet, before the two men appear in the doorway.  They are big men, both dressed in white scrubs, and they both come to a stop at the sight of Dr. Mercer.  They hesitate only slightly before descending on her.  She backs into the corner again, screaming.

                “I wanna wake up, I wanna wake up, I wanna wake up!”

                She crouches down, putting her hands over her face and digging her nails into the flesh, trying desperately to wake herself up. 

                “Diana!” yells Dr. Mercer.

She puts her hands over her ears, trying to block out his voice.  It does no good.  She can still hear him yelling her name, and the voices inside her head begin to pick up the chant �"Diana! Diana! Diana! DIANA!!�"the last voice amplifies through her head and she screams.  She can feel hands on her shoulders, and tries to fight them off.  The voices scream out again -- Diana! Dian�"

 

*  *  *

                “Diana!”

She thrashes against the hands holding her, trying to shake them off.

                “No,no,no,” she sobs.

                “Diana, wake up!”

She opens her eyes, recognizing the voice now, and stares dumbfounded at what she sees.  Jim is standing over her, holding her by the shoulders.  She looks at him in astonishment, trying to shake off her grogginess.   

                “Jim?” she asks.

She can hear the pleading, hopeful sound of her voice and doesn’t care.

                “Jim is it really you?” she says.

Jim looks at her, his eyes wide and full of fright.  He lets go of her shoulders and takes a deep breath.

                “Of course it’s me sweetheart, who else would I be?  You scared the living hell out of me.  You were moaning and thrashing in your chair when I came in.  Alice was beside herself, I bout never got her calmed down,” he said.

                Diana barely heard him; she was staring around the room.  Everything was just as it had been.  She caught a glimpse of something moving out of the corner of her eye and looked around at it.  Alice was standing slightly behind Jim, and she looked absolutely terrified.  Diana’s heart fell at the sight of her, and she brushed past Jim and took Alice into her arms.

                “I am so sorry sweetheart.  Mommy didn’t mean to scare you, she was just having a bad dream,” she said, holding Alice tightly to her.

Alice’s tiny arms were clasped tightly around her neck, and Diana could feel her heart racing.  She closed her eyes against the tears of relief and saw the picture, the picture of an unspeakable act against her child, an unspeakable act which she had supposedly done herself and hugged Alice tighter.

                 She turned, catching Jim’s eyes with her own and smiled.  He was looking at her with a puzzled expression.  She walked to him with Alice in her arms and hugged him, Alice sandwiched between them.  Alice giggled at this, and Jim smiled down at her.

                “What in the world is going on Diana?” he asked.

                “Nothing sweety, just a bad dream.  I’ll tell you about it later,” she said.

Jim nodded and pulled away from them.

                “Sorry I’m late,” he said.  “That storm got really bad there for awhile.  I tried to call, but the phone was out.”

She smiled up at him, hoisting Alice up higher on her arm.  She was shaking, but neither Jim nor Alice seemed to notice.

                “It’s ok Jim, you deserve to have some fun on your birthday,” she said.

He smiled back, bending down to kiss the tip of her nose.  Alice giggled at this and Jim planted a kiss on her nose as well, sending her giggles into overdrive.

                “Stop it daddy that tickles!” she said.

They all laughed.

                “So,” Jim said.  “What’s for dinner my love?”

                Diana turned and walked towards the door, still smiling, and started to answer him.  She stopped in mid sentence, her heart leaping in her chest.  The door was open.  She looked at it for a second and then reached down to feel her pocket.  She could still feel the shape of the key inside of it.

                “What’s wrong,” said Jim, stopping next to her.

She ran through every possibility in her head, but nothing seemed to fit.  The door had a deadbolt on it, but you could only open it from the inside with a key.  How in the world had Jim gotten in?

                “The door,” she said.  “How did you get in?”

Jim looked at her, the puzzled expression coming back over his face.

                “What do you mean?” he said.  “It was open.”

She thought that she had closed and locked that door behind them when she and Alice had come in this afternoon, would almost swear to it.  She looked down at Alice and Alice smiled up at her.  She decided in that moment that she didn’t care.  Everything was fine and that was all that mattered right now.  She simply must have forgotten.  �"It was locked�"a voice echoed in her head �"before the good doctor came in that is. -- The voice laughed, but Diana had no trouble ignoring it.  She’d had a nightmare, something as common as anything.  She wasn’t going to waste her time worrying about it anymore, and she was through wasting her time with the voices.  She would tell Jim about the voices and her nightmare later, and they would both decide together what should be done.

                “Nothing,” she said.  “Still groggy I guess.   How does pork chops with mashed potatoes and homemade gravy sound my love?”

                Jim perked up and flashed a grin.

                “Sounds like my favorite,” he said.

She smiled back and put her arm around his waist and looked up at him.

                “We have birthday cake for dessert, and something extra special later on that you can unwrap when we’re alone,” she said, winking at him.

                “Ohhh, can’t wait,” he said, returning the wink and smacking her on the bottom.

                “I just want cake mommy,” Alice said, matter-of-factly.

Diana and Jim’s eyes met and they both burst out laughing.  After a few seconds, Alice joined them.  Her tiny giggle echoed through the room as they walked through the door and into the kitchen.

 

*  *  *

 

                John Mercer sat on a stool in the corner of the tiny room; one leg crossed over the other with his clipboard across his lap, and watched Diana.  It had been three weeks since the incident of the glass, and he unconsciously reached up to touch his forehead.  He could feel the scab, but it was considerably smaller now.  It had required six stitches before it was closed up, and the headache which had ensued had been horrible.  He didn’t blame Diana though.  It had been his own confidence which had gotten him into the mess, and his own stubbornness had kept William and Steve, his two white knights in scrubs, perched outside of the doorway and down the hall.  He hadn’t wanted Diana to see them, but in the end it hadn’t made much of a difference.

                Diana’s momentary lapses back into reality had started to come farther apart, and he knew this was a horrible sign.  Time was running short for something to be done.  In the beginning, they’d had to sedate her so heavily that he wasn’t at all surprised that she had resorted to making her own dream world, her own little place where she could be safe.  That world, however, was a double-edged sword for Diana.  It kept her safe at first, but now it was trapping her inside.  Dr. Levinson had been in charge then, he of the heavy prescription hand.  If you had a problem, Dr. Levinson was sure to fix you up.  Just take a pill and forget about it seemed to be his motto.

                John had requested Diana’s case from the start, what with his history with her and all, and they had given it to that sonofabitch anyways.  How many months had he watched her lay in her bed, strapped down tight and drooling with that far away look in her eyes?  He couldn’t remember.  It had taken several though before his plea to the committee finally went through, and many more before they realized that Dr. Levinson’s methods were leading her down a path to nowhere.  By then, however, the damage had already been done.

                He had a private practice outside of his duties at Sunnyside Institution, and this was where he had first met Diana.  That had been eight years ago now, just after Diana had had little Alice.  Jim of course had no idea that she had come to see him, and he had given her his full confidence that not a word of what they spoke of would ever leave his office.  It had seemed a fairly standard case in the beginning, more along the lines of post-partum depression than anything else, except for the damned voices.  He should have caught it then, the casual way in which she talked about them.  She hadn’t been living with them for a month like she had said, oh no, he only realized later, after the incident, that she must have lived with those voices, in one form or another, since childhood.  She was a woman with a horribly troubled past, and had repressed every memory of it.

                Diana’s childhood could be summed up in two words, horrible and tragic.  In May of 1982, when Diana was only five years old, she watched her father, a drunkard who liked to touch and hurt his wife and children, systematically beat her mother to death with a hammer on the floor of their living room following an argument over a burnt meal.  She had then watched as he took the double barrel shotgun from the hall closet, loaded it, walked down the hall, and shot her six month old baby brother Levi as he lay in his crib.  He then proceeded to the kitchen and shot the family dog who was cowering under the kitchen table.  John would never forget the final sentences of the police report.  It was a full recount, in Diana’s own words, of what had happened after her father walked back out of the kitchen.  �" After daddy shooted bubba and cheerio he went back to the closet to get more bullets for the gun, but there was only one left in the box.  He looked at me, holding it up so I could see it, and said “looks like it’s your lucky day babylove” and then put the bullet in the gun, then daddy shooted himself --.  Bartamus Walker had put both barrels of the shotgun in his mouth and used his big toe to pull the trigger.  There was accompanying Polaroids with the report, but John was only able to look at them for a second.  It was a scene of complete carnage, and that was the moment when he began to understand Diana.  A couple had found Diana walking down state highway 15, more than twelve miles from her home, the next morning.  She was covered with her father’s blood, and nearly catatonic.

                If he had only known about her past, he would have done more than prescribe her the tiny blue antidepressant.  Looking back now, he could see all the signs that she was already exhibiting.  Nervousness; panic attacks; paranoia; mood swings; and the ever growing voices of course.  Not that he had known the extent of the presence of the voices in her life, but he felt that it was a poor excuse on his part.  He should have pried deeper into the subject.  Diana had been adopted when she was six, and had been in therapy until she was eight.  Her therapy, although slow going at first, showed all the signs of a healthy and happy little girl, except for the imaginary people.  That was how she put it, and John knew now that it was the voices already taking hold.  Children often need a vessel for voices, even if the voices are only in their heads.  Her doctor had put it down as just another way for her young mind to deal with the immense amount of stress put on her at such an early age, and more often than not, according to him, all children seem to have imaginary friends at one point or another. 

                There had been no follow up on Diana, even after she began to exhibit warning signs, and John knew that had been her late doctor’s downfall.  There had been sprinkles of violence throughout her pre-teen and teenage years, mostly undocumented, but the few that were documented always read the same.  She claimed that someone else had told her to do it.  The someone else was always in her head, but no one ever put two and two together.  She was a lovely girl in between these incidents, an honor student and academic triathlete, and when John had spoken to her adoptive parents they claimed that they thought it was just her way of acting out.  She had, after all, been through a tragedy.  Her only other instance of therapy had been when she came to him, and not knowing of her past he had treated her in the way that he saw fit.  The anti-depressant did help, Diana had claimed that vehemently, but John now thought that the only reason it worked was because Diana believed it would.  She did, after all, have complete control over the voices.  She just did not know it.

                He watched her circle the small room, gesturing and laughing at people who were not there.  She walked to the bed, bent slightly, and mimicked pulling out a chair.  She sat down on the bed, looked directly at him, and smiled.

                “How was your day Jim?” she asked.

She nodded her head, curled her hand into a fist, and poked down at the empty space in front of her.  She brought her fist up and opened her mouth and then closed it, chewing slowly.  She looked to her right, away from John.

                “Eat your peas Alice dear, veggies help you grow big and tall.  You wanna grow big and tall don’t you?” she asked.

She mimicked the act of eating and talking with her family for the next twenty minutes before standing up and clearing her imaginary table.  She carried things only she could see, to a sink that only she could use.  It was heart breaking to watch.

                John sighed deeply and looked down at his clipboard.  Her file lay open across it and the photo of Alice, the original Polaroid, was paper-clipped to the corner.  He looked at it.  It was the evidence of what a truly troubled mind can be capable of.  The bruises, the fearful eyes, eyes which would never see again, were the very culmination of the guilt he felt inside.  He no longer needed to read the report anymore, he knew it by heart.  It was Diana’s own words, and the clarity with which she spoke them was haunting.  It read:

                -- Jim never came home.  I waited for hours for him, but he never came home.--

Q:  When did Jim not come home Diana?

                -- On his birthday.  I called him, but his phone just kept going a busy signal.  So Alice and I went into the living room to wait for him.  We waited all day, but he never called.  I started to panic, and that is when the voices said we weren’t ready.�"

Q:  What voices Diana?

                -- The voices.  The ones that started after daddy did the bad thing.  Dr. Mercer gave me pills for them, but they stopped working.  I could usually ignore them, but they were getting stronger.  They egged me on, told me to do things.�"

Q:  What kinds of things did they tell you to do Diana?

                -- To lock the door.  They said if I didn’t then Alice would run away, that if she ran away then she was never coming back, just like Jim.�"

Q:  And when did Jim die Diana?

There is a long pause from Diana after this question, which is noted in the report.

                -- Jim died when Alice was two.  He was hit head on by a drunk driver coming home from work.�"

Q:  So if Jim was dead then how come you were waiting for him?

                -- Because the voices told me to.  They said Jim was coming home, and that I had to be ready for him.  They said that Alice and I both had to be ready for him.

Q:  What happened to Alice Diana?

Another long pause from Diana, also noted in the report.  Also noted is the fact that Diana is beginning to grow increasingly agitated.

                -- We had to be ready.  The voices told me how, and I refused at first.  They said that it was the only way that we could see Jim again, and that we would be able to go with him and be together forever.  They said it wouldn’t hurt her, that I was helping her.  She missed Jim so much, we both did.�"

Q: What happened?

                -- She was asleep behind my chair.  The storm was starting to come in then, and the voices were saying that it was almost too late.  They said that I had to do it then before it was too late.  I put my hands around her throat and squeezed.  She woke up and started to struggle against me, but the voices said that it was because she was happy and excited to see Jim.  I kept telling her that daddy was coming, and that we had to be ready for him.  She stopped struggling, and the voices said it was done and that it was right.  They said that we were ready and that Jim was almost home.  I sat down and put her head in my lap, and stroked her hair.  She always loved it when I did that.�"

Q:  Do you understand the charges that the state has against you Diana?

                -- Yes, but it doesn’t matter much. I helped Alice, helped her so she could be with me and Jim forever.  Jim will be here soon and we can be with him, the voices say that none of this matters.  Can I have a glass of water?�"

                   The police, acting on a call they received from one of Diana’s neighbors, found her and Alice in her living room.  Diana was sitting cross-legged on the floor and stroking Alice’s hair just as she said.  The smell in the room was almost too much for the men to bear, and the final conclusion that was drawn was that they had been in the room for three to four days.  Alice had been dead for two of those days.  Diana was badly dehydrated and delirious, and it would be another week, six days after the police report, before she was coherent enough to realize what she had done.  By then, she was already in the care of Dr. Levinson and his treatment of her sudden maniacal outburst was sedation, a treatment that went on for far longer than was necessary for even a healthy, normal human being.  It was he that killed any hope of recovery for Diana.  She slipped further and further inside of herself, and by the time that John took control, the wall between reality and her world was as thin and transparent as glass.

                John looked up from his clipboard and looked at Diana.  She was sitting in the middle of the room, legs crossed, stroking the air absently above her lap.  She was singing under her breath and smiling.  She was stroking Alice’s hair in that other world, seeing a little girl that would never turn six, a little girl that would always stay the same.  John had made her confront that final truth, to see what she had done, and instead of cementing her back into reality as he had hoped, she had fallen through the glass that separated her two worlds and landed inside of her own head.  She was with a family that loved her, that needed her, a husband that always came home and a little girl that would never grow up.  It was a world of her own creation, and as much as John pitied her and blamed himself for Alice’s death, he was somewhat glad that she had finally found a little bit of peace.  Alice was a victim in every sense of the word, but if you said that Alice was a victim then you had to see that Diana was a victim to.  She was a victim of brutality and tragedy that never left her, no matter how deep she buried it.  It had fermented inside of her head until it finally burst free.

                John stood up and crossed the room, walking around Diana.  He knocked on the door and Steve opened it.

                “What’s the news Doc?” he said.

John looked at him wearily and shook his head.

                “She’s gone,” he said.

                “For good?” he asked?

John thought about it for a moment and then looked up at him.

                “For her sake, I hope so,” he said.

Steve nodded and locked the door.

                “Anything else Doc?”

John shook his head.

                “No Steve, that’s all.  You can go.”

Steve nodded and turned, walking down the corridor before turning out of John’s sight.  John turned back to the door and looked in through the glass.  Diana was still sitting on the floor and stroking the air.  He watched her, and after a second or two she raised her head and looked at him.  She smiled warmly and then looked back down at her lap.  John turned then and began to walk slowly down the hall.  His shoes clacked against the floor and echoed off the walls.  He thought about that final moment and wondered if Diana had really been seeing him or just another ghost in her dream world when she had smiled.  He didn’t know, but in his heart he thought that maybe it was him.  At least he hoped so. 

 

THE END

Author's Note

I am just looking for some honest feedback on this piece

Reviews

[Aaron]

Great description. Great story.

Thanks for sharing.

[rnuff]

Amazing detail and plot. Loved the imagery. Such amazing story you kept me hanging on all the way through.