Madness

“Make it stop! Make it stop!”

            There was darkness all around and hands wrapped around her throat. Plaintive moans of fear and fury fell on her ears… terror.

            Sobbing from the next room and a maniacal chuckle. The lights were frantically flipped on…

            “What? What’s the matter, Kathy?”

            “They’re after me! I hear them! They’re out to get me! ­You are evil! ­You were the one screaming!” And the hands were choking her again…

            And the rules said that there was no physical contact allowed…

            The room was small and white, with a little table like those in a pediatric ward’s waiting room, brightly colored and made of plastic. Oddly cheerful compared to the solemnity, the gravity of the place.

            This was not a happy room.

            “Do you have any sharp objects on you? Any chemicals or drugs?” A craggy-faced old nurse, a clipboard on the cheerful yellow plastic table, looked at Renee, one of her fat hands already reaching for Renee’s purse.

            Renee shook her head.

            “Shampoo… hmm, I’ll be taking that. Has alcohol, after all… And unlace your shoes, dear.”

            ­I’m not your dear.

            There was a phone in the corner, a black rotary phone with yellowish stains on the numbers. No one called in, or called out… there was no need.

            Conversation was not supposed to happen, or to make any sense.

            There was a piano, a sleek black instrument with stark white keys, in the next room, and Renee sat down on the bench, surrounded by bleary, not-quite-coherent eyes and random mutterings. And there was a concert of disjointed melodies… ironically, desolately beautiful Chopin nocturnes and all-drowning, turbulent Beethoven sonatas flowing from her hands as the insane audience clapped and cackled and spoke to people not there… and she kept on playing…

            And then there was a call for an outing. The courtyard was full of small trees too small and feeble… feeble as the minds of men and women, and there were more cheerful plastic chairs.

            Cigarettes were passed out and shared, and eyes glowed behind glowing butts and clouds of smoke and obscurity.

            Social hour.

            “You’re so pretty, gimme your number, girl.”

            But there was no phone and there were no relationships. Friendships were shared cigarettes and drinking water together when pills were downed, before sleep set in.

            There were colorful chairs and cheerful pictures of flowers and little children with smiles on their pink and white faces, and there were white walls.

            And there were invisible bars surrounding them all.

            Although some of them probably actually saw the bars…