The Lunatic Asylum

Friends do things for each other, right?

The Lunatic Asylum

     I feel the gray turn to blackness, and the blackness to gray. The walls become veins, and my breathing heightens, as the weight on my heart becomes heavier. The walls begin to close, inch by inch,  and what was once light becomes shadow. There is no one; no one but death himself. Death and shadow. The floor begins to move, and I am suspended in the air, motionless, yet I have no strings. I feel my heart stop; I know it’s stopping. Panic and death. Purple hazed windows and yellow frosted snow. I know it; only panic and death.

   

    My friends are always on time; not like they were six months ago---the day of abandonment. On judgment day, I sat before a judge and at  10 a.m. a lawyer,  on the opposite side of the aisle, rose to his feet: “Your honor, with the court’s indulgence we’d like to  begin,” he said.

   

     “Go ahead, counselor,” replied the judge.

    

    The lawyer began to recite the facts of the case:

   

      “Your honor, on the afternoon of October 3^rd, 2003, Mr. Curl was picked by the Greenwich Police for indecent exposure. He stands before you today, on an involuntary commitment action filed by the prosecutor’s office. On said afternoon, Mr. Curl was found near the Greenwich Country Club Dining Hall with his pants down. He proceeded to enter the building and expose himself. Then he was arrested, and this action followed a 10-34.”

   

     “So Mr. Curl has seen a psychologist?” the Judge said.

    

    “Yes, Sir approximately ten hours after the arrest, he met with Dr. Riley-Sanchez. She diagnosed Mr. Curl with Acute Schizophrenia.”

    

     My friends were nowhere; I was hoping they would tell this judge the truth. My friends could tell this elderly, bald  man  the entire sick plot; just like they told me. Martians only greet you when nude.  Yet, in the hour of truth, they chose denial. Cowards, I thought to myself, and then looked at the all but empty courtroom, but for the judge, the bailiff, a lawyer, and my mother; who sat in the far right corner of the room crying.

   

     The judge and the lawyer continued talking, but I zoned out; the psychologist lady had told me it all before. Just then, I glanced to my left, and Kurt was sitting next to me, wearing a suit and tie; his beard was shaven, and  his feet were placed on the table in a relaxed pose.

  

      “What are you doing here? I told you never to come back,” I whispered to him. Kurt was my imaginary friend, as my mother called him. He was always critical of my friends and never took no for an answer.

   

      “I told you they weren’t your friends. I told you they were liars, didn’t I? Kurt said. I sat in my chair and began to shake with anger: the more I ignored him, the louder he got.

    

    “Listen, you don’t know anything about my friends,” I snapped back.

  

     “I told you they were liars. I told you they were liars,” he yelled at me, “I am your friend.”

   

      Kurt’s insults were more than I could take, and his audacity to call himself my friend fueled me to anger. I stood up in the middle of the court proceedings while the judge and lawyer were discussing my condition, and screamed:

    

    “You are not my friend! You are not my friend! You did everything to me! I have no friends because of you! I am alone because of you!”

   

    After my sudden outburst, the judge, the lawyer, and the bailiff all looked in my direction.  They stared for a moment, at first at me, and then at the air I was talking too. After the moment was over, the judge picked up his gavel and began slamming it: “Young man! Young man! Settle down! Young man!” After he received no response the judge looked in the direction of the bailiff and ordered him to restrain me; all the while, Kurt taunted  me mercilessly: “Where are you friends now! Why didn’t you listen to me! Huh? Next time, listen to me!”

  

     The bailiff slammed me against the table and began to twist my arm backward.  Just then, a voice was heard amongst the commotion, “Please, stop it! You’re hurting him” it said. I was too preoccupied with Kurt to care:

    

    “No, Go Away! Please God, Go Away!”

   

    Just then a gentle hand, slid across my face, and I looked up; it was Kristin. “Please, stop it. Go with the man,” she said to me, looking into my eyes. I silenced myself, and the bailiff bounced me out of the courtroom, and into a holding cell. The door locked with a vengeance. I took a look to my right, and sure, enough Kurt followed me. He had a grin on his face and a cigarette in his mouth.

   

     “I bet you think that nice piece of a*s, is your friend too, don’t you?” he said, “I bet you do.”

  

     “Please, Go away,” I said and began crying.

   

     “If she is your friend, why isn’t she telling the judge the truth? Why didn’t she defend you? Why did she leave the two of us, to get locked in here?”  Kurt said, as he took a seat on the cell floor and extinguished his cigarette with his tongue.

  

      I took a seat on the cell bed and began crying; when I looked up Kurt was standing in front of me. “Now let’s get down to business. Remember the time as children; I bet you do remember that, don’t you?” he said. The insult jogged pain. As if on cue, I remembered Kristin and I walking home together after school and playing tea party with stuffed animals. That all changed  after my father shot himself because he saw imaginary friends, like me. After that, I was alone. Before, Kristin’s  mother, Loraine,  usually met me with a smile and  homemade candy; she had short, brown, curly hair and always dressed the fashion. But after  my father’s death,  Kristin and her mother became increasingly distant. Then one day, Loraine pulled Kristin away after we stopped in front of their house to talk,  and shoved her in the door of their house like I was shoved in this prison cell. After she had finished, she looked at me and with a smile and a wave, shut the front door. That was how our friendship died. That was in third grade; that was.  And before I met Kurt.  

   When I looked back at Kurt, he stared at me with fire in his eyes. Then he said, “You do remember, good boy. Do you remember that after your father died, Kristin never spoke to you again? Do you remember that she used to walk home on the opposite side of the street?”

   

     “That was because her mother said it was safer,” I said in a whimper.

   

     “Safer. Hah! No Daniel, she thinks you’re a freak. They both do!” Kurt said, “That’s why she let you get thrown in this cell. She’s thinks you’re a freak.”

  

      I felt a sudden rage take ahold of me, as I began to stare into Kurt's eyes with a hatred all my own. “Take it back,” I said in a somewhat controlled manner.

   

     Kurt looked at me with his giant blue eyes and bent down to my level from a standing position and whispered in my face, “Freak!”

  

     “Take it back,” I said slightly louder.

   

    “F-R-E-A-K, Freak,” Kurt said.

   

    “Take it back,” I yelled and flung a pillow at him. Just then, Kurt vanished and the nightmare was over, for a time.

     

     My father made the cover of Business Weekly when his engineering firm went public. When he began his slow crawl into the demented, he was forsaken, just like me. Sometimes, history repeats itself.

  

      I paced in my cell for awhile, and then laid down on the small, cell-room bed. The walls were a sickening color gray, and the wooden bunk bed felt like I was laying on a rock. Uncomfortable, I sat back up and leaned against the wall. It must have been two hours by now., and I knew  the time was coming. Sure enough, two guards in brown uniforms walked in front of my door. The larger of the two, who had a healthy beer gut, placed his hands on the bars and spoke to me:

   

    “Alright son, we need to go now,” he said.

  

     I stood up, and the guard  handcuffed me again. This time the guards led me to an elevator and took me to the basement, so they could load me in an unmarked van. I went without resistance but then again, what could I have done? The guards helped me into the back of the van, and before the larger one shut the door,  he looked at me, while holding the door ajar and said, “Now we’re goin’ to the hospital, alright kid?” The door was then shut, and the two guards went their respective ways towards the cab of the van. .

    

    The van had no windows, and the only light I saw came from a small barred window that led to the cab. I twisted my arm to the right and slid out a pack of gum from  my pocket. Luckily the guards cuffed  my hands in the front. “Hey boss, “ I said, grabbing the guard in the passenger seat’s attention. He turned around and noticed I was holding two pieces of gum by the make-shift bars.

   

    “No, thanks, Bud,” he said and turned away. That was good for me because I only had two pieces of gum anyway. The passenger turned around again, after a few minutes, and began speaking to me:

   

     “You need to learn your lesson from this kid. You’re lucky the judge only gave you forty-five days confinement. Trust me, we see all kinds of things from this seat. There're certain boundaries that you can’t cross. Don’t worry they're going to teach you, where you’re going. You’re lucky you got this; trust me. Make the best use of it. You got better things to do on a Friday.”

   

     I told the guard I helped out in the nursing home on Fridays, and he laughed which ended the conversation. The old people were always,so glad to see me; I loved it there"making friends was easy. It’s also where I met Kurt. When I was in the laundry room,  a slick, black-haired man appeared on top of the washer. I asked him to move, and he called me pathetic.  

    

    The van stopped in another basement, and I was taken  to another elevator, and rushed to yet another holding cell. After another hour or so, I heard a man’s voice by the door:

    

    “Above average I.Q. and a resident of downtown Greenwich. This is his first arrest, but it won’t be his last unless he receives help. Mental illness and criminal disposition are a recipe for disaster. According to the report, this young man believes he was attempting to communicate with Martians who were plotting the genocide of a third of the human race.  According to him he was told this by a group of young men that he knew from the area---apparently through secret code or something.  Clearly delusional.“

    

    “Lucky for this boy, that he has the best doctor on the east coast,” a feminine voice said.

   

    “Just listen to them,” a voice  said behind me, “plotting your fate.” I turned  around  and saw  Kurt dressed in surgical scrubs. “Remember, they’re not your friends.”

    

     Just then, the steel door opened, and in walked a small, skinny man with white hair and a white mustache who sported a white coat and small glasses around his tiny blue eyes. “Hello,” he said, “I’m  Dr. Hector, and I’m your friend.” He was followed by a petite, Hispanic nurse who carried a large tray of hypodermic needles, each one larger than the first. I shot a look at Kurt, who leaned against the wall to the right of the doctor, and mouthed “No,” in silence as if the doctor could hear him and retort.

   

     The doctor shot a glance where I was looking, and  then focused back at me. “And friends help each other out, right?” he asked.

   

     Six months ago three of my friends found me scared and alone under a stone bridge. They told me about the secret Martian plot, and how they planned to save themselves. I thanked them for their gracious show of kindness, and we made the pilgrimage to the land of the most influential Martians on Earth, posing as humans. Only the worthy would be saved, and I asked how I could repay them. “Don’t worry, friends do things for each other,” they replied. At the last minute, my friends turned yellow, and a month after my incarceration, one of them fell from a boat while drunk and drowned. It was a sore day. It was a tragic day, and the human race was dealt a great blow. The entire town turned out to bury this hero of the Homo  sapiens.

   

   

   

   

    

   

   

 

Reviews

[roarke]

hmmm, I like it... dunno why, I just like it....

[Rob Jay]

Lol, thank you for reading. I'm glad you enjoyed it.