Prelude

"Why am I here?" I asked him. I continued, "It’s not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just wrote stories. I have written stories before and nobody had a problem with them."

"Your mother and I decided that in-patient therapy was the best solution for you. We just want to help," he answered, while pulling his metal drawer out of his desk and removing a yellow notepad and pencil. "I’m sorry, what’s your name again?" He was so ignorant. He asked that question every time I came in. You’d figure after coming here for a while he’d remember it.

I sighed. "Jaime Clyde," I answered. It wasn’t my fault he was old and senile. He wrote something down on his stupid pad of paper. Did I get the wrong answer? I hated him.

"So, I guess it’s story time again," I said, reaching for my composition notebook that I wrote my stories in. Every time I visited him he had me read out of it.

"No, not just yet, Jaime. We’re going to do something different today."

"Something different?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"What do you think about your name?" he asked. What type of question was that?

"I don’t know," I answered. "It’s my name."

"Do you know anyone with a similar name?"

"No. Do you?"

"I don’t think I do," he told me as he scribbled on his yellow pad again. I hoped his pencil would break. "Alright, that’s all I have planned for today," he said, leaning back in his chair.

"That’s it?" I asked, giving no effort to hide my surprise. We’d only been in here for ten minutes. I was scheduled for an hour.

"That’s it," he repeated. "You’re welcome to stay and talk for a while if you’d like. I just figured we would start off slow, because you’re in a new place. Think of it as our ‘getting-to-know-you’ session."

"I think I’ll go back to my room now." I told him. I left him and he scribbled something on his notepad.

I had to be guided back to my room. It’s not like I would have know the way anyhow. I was new here, so they didn’t have my nameplate outside of the door. The only way I could distinguish it was the number printed in cheap black paint on the doorframe.

My room was practically empty. There was a bed, a chair in the corner, and a desk with an additional chair. I laid my composition notebook gently on the desk and walked towards the lone window in my room. There was not frame around it, jut an indent in the wall filled with thick glass. It was one-way; they couldn’t see me watching them. I put my fingertips to the glass. It was December so the glass was cold and it sent a chill up my hands. The heat of my body caused and oval shaped fog around the area that my fingertips pressed. I removed them and watched the fog fade away.

My window overlooked the town’s Main St.. It was nearing dinnertime so there were a lot of cars driving home from work. Some people chose to walk on the sidewalks with thick, mismatched scarves around their faces and their hands in their oversized pockets. The breath of the ones without a scarf was visible in the cold weather air. I sighed. My breath was clear.

I felt tired, so I rested on my bed. I couldn’t sleep and I ended up staring at the ceiling. It wasn’t fifteen minutes before a woman on the staff came and asked me if she could bring my dinner into my room. I asked her if I could leave my room and eat in the common area and she told me I’d have to wait a while before I could socialize with the other patients. When I told her I wouldn’t talk to any of them she just shook her head and brought in my food. My consent had not been given. I hated her now too.

Author's Note

It's rather short, but that's why it's only the prelude.

Reviews

[Bhavya Kaushik]

Very well written, the story started so perfectly well!
Flowed so flawlessly!
Great work :)