“I want to try an experiment . . . ”

“What now?”

“I want to test the boundaries of how the human mind views reality. I want to see if the lines can be forcibly blurred; see if it is possible to lose oneself completely to fantasy.”

“Forcibly, and knowingly? Who would knowingly, basically lose their mind? It doesn’t make sense. If you know what you’re doing, you’re sane.”

“At first, yes, but like a habit, is it possible to change the way your mind sees facts, to alter them to fit better with ‘your’ reality? Trauma patients do it all the time . . . replace facts with nonsense to comfort themselves. I want to do that.”

“But, that’s counterproductive, don’t you think? We have medicine to help with that, why would you want to enter such a mind set.”

“Maybe we should leave this alone, these people cause no harm to others, lost in their delusions. They are making their minds work better so they may survive. What right do we have to take that away?”

“Maybe . . . but still, why would anyone want to do that to their mind, and destroy their sense of reality?”

“That’s simple.”

“Huh?”

“To escape.”

Define Real.

“Something horrible happened,” she said with a mater-o-fact tone. Despite her words she was siting calmly in the grass, her knees folded and pulled to her chest. She seemed at peace, as she looked out at the red sun rising beyond the chain fence. She said horrible, but she seemed content with herself. I couldn’t see her face, but I got the feeling she was smiling. I honestly did not know what to make of her. I’d heard rumors about her, I’d read her file, but I had never spoken to her. Until a moment ago, I was sure she didn’t know I existed, and even as I spoke with her I got the feeling that my presence did not fully register to her mind.

I came closer; she was one of the only residents of the institute I had yet to have any contact in my three years interning here. She never caused problems, she was calm and collected, almost normal at first glance. I sat down next to her, ignoring the wet dew coated grass as the moister seeped through my jeans. I noticed that even with her thin nightgown, the condensation didn’t seem to bother her. That was somewhere in her file, nothing bothered her. Nothing affected her.

“I don’t know what to make of her sometimes,” The head doctor, Addison Gavnes was telling me about a week ago. We stood on the observation deck, watching the residents move around and interact. She had found a chair in the corner and was sitting quietly, even when another resident came over and started to taunt her, even spilling a cup of water all over her, before the orderlies came to take him back to his room. She sat, still, dazed off.

“Is she drugged?” I asked; to my surprise, Gavnes laughed.

“Not literally. She can slip away from reality, for weeks at a time, it seems. She is here, but she isn’t. Nothing seems to get through to her, even when she is ‘here’ so to speak.”

“Ah, well, is she just zoned out, or is it neurological?” I asked, eyes locked onto her as orderlies first tried offering towels, but when she didn’t respond, resorted to drying her themselves.

“No. She has explained to me where she ‘goes.’ She says she can control it. It’s a fantasy world she’s created in her head. When she was explaining it . . . I couldn’t grasp the idea that one human’s mind could possibly create so much.” Gavnes, closed his eyes and shock his head before saying sadly. “She does pay a price, I don’t think she feels any emotion, at least as we do. She’s one of the them.”

I focused back to now, and the girl sitting next to me, staring out at the chain fence that enclosed the asylum. I’d watched her a bit closer than before after the conversation with Gavnes. It was true, nothing ever seemed to affect her. She was beyond it; whatever it was, it wasn’t real to her, she had reality, all the reality she needed, locked away in her own mind.

“What do you mean?” I asked softly, afraid that should I talk too loud I might scare her back into her fantasy land.

“She died.” Her voice was soft, but still calm, like she was reporting something as trivial as the weather.

“Who?” I asked, racking my mind to try and figure out whom she was talking about. The only people she had contact with were other residents and doctors, and I couldn’t think of any deaths among either group. Maybe it was someone in her fantasy world.

“She died. I’m sad, but she’s dead, not like she has a choice in the matter.” Again, her voice was nonchalant. Whoever had died hadn’t meant too much to her, but if I had read her file correctly, she did have issues with correct forms of emotion. Maybe on the inside she was upset, but because she was one of the Desensitized she couldn’t properly show it.

“Who was she?” I asked, and she didn’t respond, but kept staring out at the rising sun and the chain fence. I sighed and figured the conversation over and studied the surrounding land. Behind us was the monster of a building, sprawled out in the center of a valley of manmade hills, all but on one side, where a single road scratched out into the woods. One way in. But circling the hills and even the nice neat, flat lawn in the front, was a tall chain fence. No barbed wire; it wasn’t needed. The woods around the monster were thick, and an escape had never been attempted, no one was worried. This place was like some strange fantasy world of it’s own. Though I hate to think of the twisted mind who thought the place up.

“You knew her,” she said suddenly, making me jump slightly. “ She was here two days ago. Remember? I saw you talking to her.” There was a slight edge to her voice, could it possibly be emotion? Was it sadness or anger? That was the one thing that scared me most about working with the Desensitized, it was impossible to tell how they felt, when they were upset, and made their lash outs seem completely unpredictable.

“I don’t . . . ”

“She died!” Her voice broken, and she slammed her fists on the ground. “She was here two days ago!” They took her to that place...hospital... never came back...she said...” Her voice dropped to a low murmur that was impossible to make out, though I could still see her lips moving. She was clutching her legs tightly to her body, and staring intently at her knees as she continued to speak only to herself.

Suddenly I caught on— and it scared me. I had been here two long. But then again, a single day was too long to be in this place. The mere fact that I could force my mind to understand the inane rambles of a Desensitized mental resident scared me. I knew that should I continue my goal of going into Neo-Psychiatry, that doing just that would essentially become my job, but it worried me. I wasn’t so naive to believe mental illness and traits like Desensitization to be contagious, but I was concerned for my own grasp of reality. Would I become entrapped in my patients’ fantastic worlds and fictional stories? Would I in turn end up wandering the grounds of some distance, unworldly monster not unlike this one, for they all were alike, as a resident, rather than doctor?

The girl was shaking, and I didn’t want to try and guess from what. I didn’t know what would happen in the future, but now one of my jobs was to watch out for these residents. I would just go from there, wishing I was still as lost as my first, untainted day here. I reached out and carefully draped my arm over her small trembling shoulders.

“She’s not dead,” I said, gently. “She’s out; she’s gotten better.”

The girl pulled away violently. “NO!” she shrieked. “She is DEAD! She has no choice if she is DEAD!” The girl was sitting on her knees staring at me. I was unnerved by her eyes. She wanted to cry, I could tell. She was angry that was evident enough in her voice, but her eyes still seemed unfazed. Calm as ever. She pounded at the ground before tearing at the grass. She was frustrated; she wanted to be so much, sad, hurt, to feel true anger, but being what she was, she was only left with the twinge of emotion, frustration.

“No, I saw her leave, they made her better, cured her, she was sick, but they made her better, she is out there,” I said and motioned out beyond the forest that encased the monster. “She is with everyone else.”

“They,” she said, obviously struggling to make her voice sound angry, but all she managed was a volume level louder. “Killed her. Took her away! Killed her!”

I didn’t know what to say more to convince her. I knew she was talking about another resident, or rather, ex-resident. She had been about the same age as the girl, if not a year or two older. Yesterday morning she had been discharged after whoever it was that was paying for her, decided it was time to cough up the twelve grand it costs to administer the K-42 serum. The stuff had been a break through to Neo-Psychiatry when it was discovered nearly ten years ago, and seemed to cure most of the old mental disorders in one or two dosages. The only problem was that it was so pricey, that most insurance companies insisted that people try at least five years of the traditional treatment before they will even think about paying. The girl in question had only been here two years, but her care givers had gotten frustrated and found the money themselves. I forgot what the girl had. It was an older illness, Depression maybe? Or maybe it was a bad case of Bipolar? I couldn’t recall, but she qualified for the procedure, which in its self was complex and painful. I had only seen it once and had to step out of the room only half way through. It was an ugly sight of long needles poking around at a shaved head, while the patient was awake through it. The serum seemed more like a poison than a cure to me.

I studied the girl before me, tearing at the grass in frustration, and was glad the serum had yet to show any success in combating Desensitization.

“She isn’t dead. Listen, she is better, cured!” I said, and moved closer, trying to comfort her.

“She is DEAD!” The girl screamed, and threw a handful of grass blades at me. “She has to be dead...” Her voice dropped to a soft mutter, almost a whimper. I reached for her again and she flinched, but still allowed me to drape my arm over her.

I opened my mouth to comfort her, to try and reassure that her friend was not dead, but suddenly stopped, as once again this monster showed how it had tainted my mind in my time here. She needed her friend to be dead. In her fantasy world, her friend had died when she was taken off to the infirmary of the monster. That explained why she was gone. The girl needed her to be dead, rather than simply gone. I got it. If she was dead, she had no choice. I understood it! She was frustrated already, before I had started challenging her reality. She wanted to feel sad for someone who was dead, but besides the fact that she could not feel, but she wasn’t even able to leech off of the emotions of others, as her kind normally do. Everyone else, that knew and understood the case was happy.

“You’re right,” I said , and I felt the girl jump. She looked up, cautiously, as though she wasn’t quite sure if I was really still there.

“I know,” she said softly. “She’s dead.” I smiled down at her sadly.

“Dead. I was confusing her with someone else. I am sorry,” I said.

“Dead, she’s dead. Are you sad?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, and I was, though not necessarily over the imaginary death of a young woman. The girl pulled closer to me.

“Can you...” she said, softly, “can you be sad for both of us?”

“I can try,” I said, staring out at the sun, now shining down strongly over the chain fence. “I can try.”