The Asylum Chapter 2

A Chapter by Alexandra W

After the crash, Gabriel finds himself stranded in the middle of the desert. Injured, tired, and fatigued, he comes across an abandoned house. However, he feels things are not as they seem.

That image would stay with me for a long time, burned into the backs of my eyelids, down to the last detail. His third brass button was hanging by a thread, his khaki hat dirty and askew. It was the old-fashioned kind- sort of puffy, with a short brim. But what stays with me the most is his face. When I hit him I thought he was screaming, but looking back on it I realize he didn’t look afraid, nor was he making any noise. He had his head tilted back, looking at me with wide, seething eyes and stretching his mouth open like a snake. The light filled his gaping maw, illuminating pallid gums.

When I come out of the frothy haze, the first thing I feel is pain, followed immediately by confusion. I don’t know where I am, or why, or how I got here, but the last time my head hurt this much was when I was hit full-force with a hardcover copy of The Divine Comedy. That was the last time I argued with a drunk intellectual.

I go about recognizing my surroundings in a slow, sluggish manner. I’m in my car, slumped over like a broken marionette. I’m somewhere in the desert. The car is tilted to the right, wedged in place by sandy rocks. All at once, memories of the crash begin pouring back into my head, as if they were scattered upon impact.

The boy. I hit the boy.

The realization is like a stone splashing into still water. Cursing under my breath, I struggle out of the car and start up the hill, avoiding yucca plants and bulbous little cacti. It’s clear that time has passed. Before, there was only a trace of pinkish dawn in the distant horizon. Now the sky is lined with yellow. One of my headlights is smashed and broken, but the other one is still on, casting the sharp outline of my shadow before me as I climb, like it’s binding me to the earth, to the dust.

My eye is throbbing like my head is about to crack, but I do my best to focus. If he isn’t dead- which I pray to God he isn’t- he’s going to need a hospital at least. I’ll think of something. When I reach the top of the hill, I realize this isn’t where I came from. There’s no road here. But there has to be. This is the hill that my car went down, at least I think it is. I try to remember all the details of the crash, but it’s all murky and uncertain, like a dream or a distant memory. I shout for him a few times. There’s no reply. At that moment, I’m struck by a strange complete certainty that there never will be. He’s dead.

We know next to nothing about consciousness. Is it only experienced through our minds and senses? Through thought? Is it just a combination of chemicals that dies with our minds, or does it linger even after our brains decay inside our skulls? Does our existence end completely, or do we just sink into a mindless, senseless oblivion, remaining aware? Realistically, it makes perfect sense that awareness is a byproduct of evolution, and thus, that it will die with our bodies. The idea of consciousness transcending the physical realm is one of fear; we’re terrified of being bound to hunks of meat for a short while and then disappearing like we never happened. So we latch on to ideas of afterlife and eternity. But if that were true, if we're not just clumps of matter evolved to be slaves to monstrosity and limited understanding, if we are indeed spiritual beings, then why would we have ended up like this? Why would we be unsure of what we are? If we are spiritual beings, is every last soul just as unsure as the next, or could there be a divine power, or powers, with true understanding? Why can’t we just… know?

I call for the boy again, even though it’s useless to try. Then I turn and go back down, my hands sliding against the cool rough stones. What was he even doing out here? How did he get that far out without a car?

Now that I think about it, he was probably standing there waiting for someone to come help him. He was probably stranded, alone, desperate, and of course, I had to go and hit him with my car. I kick a rock, then clench my teeth against the pain. That was stupid. All this is stupid. I should have been paying attention to the road, seen him, and avoided this whole mess altogether.

I make it back down to my winking car. It’s totaled. Most of the right side is smashed and crumpled in a way that reminds me of a mangled animal, lying out in the wilderness half-ravaged and bloody. Dust covers its black surface. The windshield used to be cracked. Now it’s completely shattered. I would say I’m lucky I survived, but I wouldn’t mean it. I’m lucky I didn’t sprain my ankle or break my neck, or anything that would cause a slow and agonizing death. But looking around, that’s where I’m headed anyway. I don’t understand - how is it that I managed to lose an entire road? I press my hand over my eye, which is now throbbing like a second heartbeat. The lucky cat is still hanging there, slowly spinning in the midst of all the wreckage.

“I knew I should never have put you up.” I mumble to it “It’s bad luck to be superstitious.”

I sit down heavily on the hood of the car, unable to appreciate my irony. At this point there are three ways this could go, none of which are very optimistic. The first is that I go out and try to find the road, and maybe I’ll find someone who will help me and I’ll live. The second is that I’ll try to find it, get lost, maybe wander around a few days, and eventually starve to death. The third is that I skip this whole mess and just die now. That one’s the easiest. There’s a myriad of ways I can do that, and by the time they find my body, it’ll be impossible to tell. Unless I bashed my skull open on a rock. For some reason, that form of expiry seems the most final, the most freeing. Maybe it’s the idea of killing what kills me, which, when I think about it, is almost comical. I size up the rocks, imagining my brain splattered on each of them, although not very seriously. I wouldn’t do it. I might not hit it hard enough, and end up damaging my brain just enough that I can’t do anything but stare blankly off into space until I waste away. It’s still death, but I’d rather it happen in an instant. No matter, it’s useless to think about. I might not even be capable of it. It’s like how humans are easily able to bite their tongues clean off, but something in our neurology stops us from doing it, even if we wanted to. I have enough force to smash my head against a stone. But I guess I’d better not try. My head’s already gotten a good bashing anyway.

Then it hits me. Metaphorically, that is. The boy I saw didn’t look at all like he’d been wandering in the desert. His clothes were old and shoddy, of course, but his face and hands were clean, his hair neatly combed, and he hadn’t a grain of sand on him. I may be grasping at straws, but he must have come from somewhere, and that somewhere couldn’t be very far from here. I’m not sure what he was doing in the middle of the road, but he didn’t seem mentally stable, judging by his expression. Right now, I’m not even thinking about the fact that he’s dead. That I killed him. I know, no matter what excuses I make, that it was him I hit, and him I killed, right there on the road. I felt the impact of his body on my car. But for some reason, I don’t feel much. I just turn my focus to finding the road, then possibly finding wherever he came from from there. That’s just my human disposition. Most of us will come crawling back to survival whenever the opportunity presents itself. Some will even resort to the worst kinds of depravity, lowering themselves to animals for another day to live. Violence, murder, even cannibalism… every corruption under the sun would be committed for survival. I guess when they reach the edge, they realize such human constructs as morality have no substance. I still wouldn’t go that far. Not because I place much value on morality, no, just for the sake of gratifying my self-opinion. Morality exists to soothe the conscious of the individual, and virtue to satisfy his pride. If I can rid myself of them, I’d rid myself of my desire to survive, too, so I still wouldn’t need to stoop to animalistic acts to live. Hopping off the hood, I throw one last glance at my crashed car. It’s worthless to me now. In front of me, the horizon is almost all yellow, bringing on the day.

* * *

I don’t find the road. The more I search, the more convinced I become that it slithered away, like a huge black python in the sand. I don’t stop looking, though. My mind is constantly tricking me into thinking it’s a little bit this way or that, or anywhere just out of sight. I look like an idiot, meandering around like this, and I’m growing increasingly agitated. Most of my anger is self-directed, but the rest is out and lashing. He could have waved his arms or something, anything to let me know he was there. He saw me coming before I saw him. He could have jumped back when I swerved. I could have stopped sooner. But he didn’t, and I didn’t, and now we’re both dead. My death is just taking longer. I have three days at most before I die of thirst, less if I’m lucky. I wonder when the vultures will start to circle, like they do in movies. Right now I still look civilized and healthy, but I’m sure they’ll come around when I’m dragging myself with one arm and coughing up sand. I laugh at the mental image. I probably shouldn’t. Are there even vultures around here? I haven’t seen any animals yet, save a few black birds here and there, but there’s no doubt those will peck my eyes out when they get the chance.

My aimlessness ends when I come across a particularly large hill. If anything’s going to help me find the road, it’s that. It’s the highest point in sight. I’ll be able to see for miles.

Climbing it is harder than I anticipated, mostly due to the exhaustion that’s setting in, and the ordeal is made worse by the sweltering heat. It was cool when I first left my car. Now It’s two degrees short of hell. By the time I reach the top of the hill, I’m sweaty, my hands are scratched and dirty, and I remember exactly why I’m not an outdoors person. I miss civilization, even if it’s infested with people. This is a nice view, but it’s not worth it, I’m not dressed for it, and there’s a rock in my shoe. Worse, there’s not a road in sight. I guess I’ve been walking to long in the wrong direction…. But how could I have ended up so far from the road? Even if my car rolled a long way out… even if I do have a miserable sense of direction… it’s just odd, that’s all. I kick another rock. Just as I’m about to head back down, wondering if I could find some poisonous snake to bite me, something catches my eye from afar. It’s a building. A house, to be exact. The sight of it floods me with an irrational sense of relief, of hope. Maybe there are people there. Maybe they’ll help me. It must at least be near the road. I descend with the lightness and ease of newfound determination. Determination to survive. I’m a fool. And Instinct is a b*****d.

I head towards the house following a pattern of desert marigolds I mapped out. I don’t need it for long. Soon, I can see the house clearly, as if it were rising from the dry grips of the earth. I also realize it’s certainly abandoned. Its white paint is chipping and peeling away from rotting wood, it’s porch sags, it’s windows are filmy with dirt. From the design alone, I can tell it’s at least a hundred. There's a handful of fence picks still jutting from the dirt in front of it, like teeth, the rest of them broken or blown down. Time did not bury it gently. With each step I take, I begin to feel increasingly apprehensive, like the seething, sticky air is pressing on me, closing around my throat. A tight shiver runs through my chest. The house isn’t creepy, like a haunted house from a movie. There are no dark shadows, no rattling shudders, no cobwebs and thistles. It’s just old. Plain, even. But it’s plainness only serves as a contrast to my dread. The sun doesn’t dim, but it feels darker- a thrumming pulse, heavier, thicker, as though sick shivering fingers were worming their way through my lungs, into my head, reaching, gripping, rooting into my flesh.

I shudder, possessed by a sudden dread. I can’t turn back. I need to go in. I tell myself it’s to save my life, but survival instinct isn’t what’s drawing me in. Not anymore. Instinct would have me running off to die somewhere else. Instinct is what’s burning and twitching inside me to leave, but instinct is also what formed in me the desire to defy it. To swallow poison. To stick my hand into a flame. To sever my tongue with my teeth. I want to, I want to in a way that defies any logical explanation, any rationality, any sanity. Nothing but a symptom of human disease. Mankind was set apart from animal when instinct created a distorted duplicate of itself, reason, so the two could cannibalize each other for sustenance. Reason is what makes humanity different. Reason is thought. Reason is consciousness. But as long as instinct taints our minds, reason is only corruption. In the creation of it, instinct did not create humans, it created monsters, fools, and slaves. I know I have no reason to fear the house, and I have no reason to feel nauseated, like a man condemned to death. And whatever reason allows, I will not chain with instinct. But if instinct is what stopped me from bashing my head on a rock, could reason permit it? Could reason, in its purest form, allow such self-mutilation? Heart pounding, I stop before the dry steps on the porch, where a few overgrown desert marigolds poke through the crevices, and stare at the door. The mounting silence has built to a dizzying roar, clamoring in my skull. Even if I wanted to move, I couldn’t. It’s like the strings are severed between my mind and my body. Am I being reasonable? Certainly, the act of going against instinct gives me no justified claim to rationality.

A bitter taste rises in my throat as the grooves and cracks on the door begin to writhe. The wood is swelling., the pain behind my eye growing more intense with every passing second. Everything else melts into the churning swarm that floods me in a dizzying fixation. Even my thoughts dissolve. I can’t make sense of anything. I can’t hold on to any thought. Only the door feels real. The wood twists into knots, bulging and warping with creaks and groans as if it were alive. I can do nothing but look on in horror as it takes the shape of a face.

First, it twists into two eyes, a nose, a forehead, then it parts and caves into itself like sand, stretching wider and wider into a mouth. Even with the pain whirling in my head, I see it. I see it clearly. The eyes- they’re absolutely mad, bulging and burning as if they were devouring me in anguish. The mouth is wide open, like the boy’s. Screaming. There’s no sound. But somewhere inside me, it begins to scream within the silence.

I try to draw back, overcome at once with such violent repulsion it could rip my mind in two. But it grips me there, shaking. It’s gaze pulses and heaves. It’s dragging me deeper. Clutching me. Consuming me.

Who could look into the depths of himself without averting his eyes

The pressure finally gives, and I stagger back, relief flooding me as the world slips through my fingers.

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