Author’s Revised Ramble:

This chapter is being redone, because the author was lazy and didn’t research something properly. I looked up schizophrenia, and found out more and it’ll help me with understanding what I’m trying to say about Jennifer’s mind. Thanks to Laura Barton, best reviewer ever!

In this story, especially this chapter, I tend to make light of therapists. But no one should take my word for it. A while back my mom took me to a therapist about five or six times, and I didn’t really get anything from it. But that’s my experience, and considering my only problem seems to be extreme ADHD and inexcusable moodiness, it shouldn‘t be taken seriously if someone is really having difficulty with themselves. Therapists can really help people who need it. It all depends on the person’s circumstances and the compatibility one has with the therapist. Again, this is just one person’s IMAGINED (hence this being in the FANTASY category) experience and it shouldn’t be a rule of thumb for anyone considering therapy.

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She has Fallen

By Niki Lemonade

Chapter Two, The Schizophrenic is Free

Sighing, Jennifer closed her mother’s bedroom door. Tucking her long black hair behind an ear, she closed her icy blue eyes and wondered if her mom really believed her or just wanted to believe that it was over. She felt guilty for having just lied, but it was the only way she could see herself remaining sane.

Well, as sane as someone who heard voices inside their mind that constantly told them to die could be.

Jennifer was considered schizophrenic. She heard only one voice, and sometimes it became so insistent that she didn’t deserve to live that Jennifer tried to kill herself to be rid of the voice. She had tried to drown herself. She had swallowed a bottle of aspirin. She had cut her wrists one day in a hospital, where she had stolen a scalpel and had split her left vein open. Luckily, she had been inside the emergency room when she’d done it, and so was quickly repaired. That was the closest she’d ever been to actually escaping the voice.

After that, her mother, her poor, single mother had put her through every therapy imaginable. Jennifer was on every antipsychotic drug that the FDA had approved. They had even gone a disappointingly fruitless excursion to a German therapist who had guaranteed results, having reformed several people who were schizophrenic as well. The only result they got was Jennifer’s attempt to drink herself to death at a local bar.

But that was a year ago. And for some reason, the voice was easier to ignore nowadays. Jennifer hadn’t come close to killing herself in a little over six months. She realized that if she just focused on the physical world whenever she felt her body moving on its own as it always did when she tried to kill herself, she would regain control. The voice would scream its protest, demanding Jennifer be a good little girl and let the voice have control; Jennifer would chuckle at it, and continue her day.

Jennifer hated the drugs. They made her hazy, made the world seem out of focus and distorted. She hated the therapists. They were always asking her why she thought she was depressed. She would laugh at them and tell them that they were getting paid to figure that out, not her. They usually sat back, displeased, or laugh uneasily and look to her mother for clues.

Some were horrible, touchy feely types that insisted her mother loved her, and would be so terribly sad if Jennifer died. Jennifer would say, emotionlessly, that she knew that and if she could stop trying to die, she would. She would say it was out of her hands. The good doctor would then assure her that her body was under her own control, that the voice she heard was part of her, something she could control as well. Jennifer would chuckle at their misunderstanding, and would be consequently put on some drug she’d already been on.

But one in particular was very dangerous. He didn’t talk very much at first, simply sat staring at Jennifer, as if thinking very deeply about something. Then he spoke.

“How are you feeling right now Jennifer?”

“Like a television,” she answered. “The way you keep staring at me.”

“Jennifer, please don’t be rude,” her mother said wearily.

“Ms. Morgan, if I may,” the doctor said, standing up, “I would like to speak with your daughter alone.” Her mother left after saying it was quite alright, and the click of the door shutting sent a shiver down her spine. The doctor, a tall, sandy haired man with hard grey eyes then sat on the couch in her mother’s place. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you want to know why I keep looking at you, Jennifer?”

She gave him a cold look that demanded he remove his hand at once. He either ignored the message she sent, or didn’t see it. “Because you are a beautiful girl. A smart one. You truly do seem to be at the mercy of your disease.” He moved closer. “When you try to hurt yourself, you must feel,” he paused and his hand moved down to her back, “helpless,” he finished with a gleam in his stony eyes that made Jennifer feel like a rabbit in the claws of a bird of prey.

“No,” she said quietly. “I don’t feel helpless at all.”

“Oh,” the doctor said interestedly, laying his other hand over hers, which was laying on her thigh. “What do you feel?”

“I feel angry,” she said icily, standing and going for the door. The doctor watched her go, surprised and worried for his reputation. “You shouldn’t try to take advantage of mentally unstable girls. One might try to kill you one day. I hope she does, really. You’re a despicable man.” She left, and told her mom that the doctor had nothing more to offer than the others. Her mother nodded tiredly.

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That was one of the last doctors she went to see. She was tired of hearing the same thing over and over again, taking the same medicines that left her groggy and unconnected to the world. She stopped taking them, and the voice didn’t change in strength. She ignored the therapists, ignored the voice and focused on her studies. And now that she had assured her mom that she wouldn’t try to kill herself again, she would be free from the medicines and therapists.

That night, she went for a walk. The winter winds whipped her loose sweatshirt around, the chilly air penetrating its thin, worn out fibers and then her tee shirt. Her jeans were thin as well; she didn’t enjoy shopping very much, and only asked her mother for clothes when hers didn’t fit or were too worn out to wear anymore. Tonight, she walked out under dimmed stars into the bustling city that she and her mother lived in. She despised it, she wished they could live in the countryside where she had grown up. But when her parents had separated when she was seven, her father had kept the house and her mom moved to another state where she could live with family until she was up on her feet again. She decided she liked the city, found a job and a good apartment, and raised the daughter that her ex-husband hadn’t even tried to gain custody of.

Jennifer wasn’t angry at her father. She only wished that her mother had moved somewhere less populated. But Marian Morgan had been good to her, buying her all the prettiest dolls, until she realized that Jennifer was more interested in books, then focusing on Jennifer’s education with a renewed intensity. She wanted Jennifer to grow intellectually and become a self sufficient woman, so she wouldn’t have to marry the first man who would ask as Marian had. Marian wanted more than anything for her daughter to be independent, strong, and smart. Jennifer had filled all of her mother’s expectations, and Marian felt she had a daughter that would make her proud.

That is, until she started trying to harm herself.

Jennifer let her feet lead her, and found herself in the park, looking down from the brightly painted bridge to the man-made creek below. She looked around and saw several people in pairs sitting on park benches conversing in low, happy tones. She felt a twinge of jealousy, but it passed when she remembered the boys at her school. Loud, annoying, proud men out for a good time to prove their prowess to their friends by having the hottest girl. They all picked on Jennifer and called her a freak. She had no friends, she didn’t speak to many people. She once had someone she could call a friend, but they betrayed her secret, that she heard voices in her head, to every one they knew.

After that, she had become a recluse, focusing on her studies and gaining control of the voice. She thought back on that day, when people called her crazy for the first time, and her so-called friend was laughing at her. She pushed the memory away, and looked down at the unnaturally clear water again. She didn’t see any fish, mud, rocks, anything that a natural stream would have.

“Pretty isn’t it?” came a voice from the bank. “Though, it’s so fake, sometimes I just want to take a bucket of mud and dirty it up a bit.” The boy smiled cheekily up at her, she felt herself take in a breath. He was of average height, with a round, happy face that one felt compelled to trust. He had shoulder length, choppy, brown hair that set off his gentle green eyes. She nodded at him, assenting to his statement. “Needs some fish too, right? ‘S so lifeless,” he mumbled, crouching and dipping his fingers in the cool water.

Jennifer realized that his clothes were torn, tattered, and dirty, all signs of a runaway, or a homeless person. She wondered about his sanity, considering his happy attitude. She felt a twinge of pity for him, as she felt another cold breeze roll through the large park. The boy’s hair was stirred by the wind, and he stood up suddenly, hugging himself. He was obviously much more affected by the cold than she was. But Jennifer was a winter person, and had always loved cold weather even as a child.

Whether it was pity for the boy, of if it was guilt for lying to her mother, Jennifer would never figure out. For whatever the reason, Jennifer walked down the bridge to the shivering boy and took off her sweater. She offered it to him, and he looked up questioningly at her. “I couldn’t take it, you’d be left in just a shirt. It’s not right.”

“I’m fine. I prefer the cold. Take it. I don’t need it,” she insisted.

He looked at her, at the sweater, and back to her. He reached out and took the sweater, pulling it on over the cotton long sleeve shirt he currently was wearing. “Thanks,” he said when he started feeling the warmth from the cotton jersey material seep into him. They both sat down on the unnaturally bright green grass and watched the water pass silently for a bit. “I’m Trevor.”

“Jennifer,” she said quietly. She felt content, comfortable telling Trevor that she lived not far from the park, in this godforsaken city, under the dimly lit sky, the cool breeze rustling their hair and the grass in the same movement.