Asylum

I took a deep breath and snapped the photo. The behemoth of a structure stared me down. I must have seemed so small to it, like an ant. Like something it could easily crush without a second thought. But I had been staring at those blackhole windows set against the yellow stained cream bricks, (they had certainly seen better days), for too long. “Get unique pieces for your portfolio, so you stand out,” they said. Well, that advice sounded a lot better 60 miles ago.

The path to the entrance was gravel. It was wide enough for a horse-drawn carriage to travel down it with room to spare. Shrubbery that I’m sure was supposed to lend a well kept and welcoming atmosphere did the exact opposite. There were more bare branches and yellowing leaves than healthy green. I crouched down to get an upward angle shot with my camera.

The crunching of the gravel beneath my feet was the only thing that filled the still air. That and the caw of a raven or two. I reached the steps that led up to the doors. They were so short even a rat would have no issue bounding up. More display over function, similar to those sad bushes. 

The front porch of the institution was covered, and the patio was bordered with wooden railings and slats that were painted with the same creme as the bricks. The paint had peeled off the wood in many places leaving it striped like a zebra. The two giant doors in front of me matched the deep black of the windows. They stood twice the size of me and bore gold handles to knock with. I reached out to do just that, but the door swung open before I had a chance. A woman stood before me in a gray, short-sleeved dress fitted at the waist with a pencil skirt style bottom. A scarlet red nurse’s hat sat like a crown on her roller curled brunette hair. 

“Oh, hi, sorry,” I said, laughing because I normally have nothing that useful to say but dread silence.

“Mr. Shaw,” She said, looking up at me with a rather blank expression. I held up a finger.

“Uh, yeah. That’s me.”

“You’re five minutes late now, you know?” The blank expression remained. Her face didn’t match the flat voice. She reminded me of an android.

“Yes, yes, I – uh – got distracted. There’s lots of things to photograph,” I said, lifting up my camera. 

“You’re not allowed to just be snappin photos of anything your heart desires, sonny boy,” she said and put her hands on her hips. “I may not know everything, but I know some things, and that’s one of em.”

“Well of course – I didn’t mean to -,”

“Come inside now. The doors aren’t meant to stay open.” 

I stepped into the entry room. It was colossal, fit for a T-Rex museum exhibit. A beautiful Moroccan rug spanned the floor. The ceilings stretched tall, and I craned my neck upwards. Chandeliers glowed yellow and there were paintings of deer, bunnies, and other forest creatures on the ceiling. I assumed there must be some sort of psychological benefit to the images, but then again, someone could’ve chosen the design for shits and giggles. Certainly not the woman that stood before me though. Despite the light fixtures, the majority of light in the building came from the rectangles of sunshine that fell through the windows. There were games of chess being played, (maybe more stared at or thrown), by patients clad in black jumpsuits.

“I’ll bring you to the head Doctor. No more photos tell he tells you the rules, Mr. Shaw,” the nurse said.

I followed her through the long hall, staying behind her and lifted my camera to capture a photo of the ceiling. 

“Are you deaf?” The nurse asked without turning around.

I dropped my camera to dangle on its strap again without a word.

We turned down a corridor and I saw beds lined against both sides of the wall that were being attended to by nurses dressed identically to the one I was following. There were patients in the beds who grumbled, thrashed, or screamed. My chaperone didn’t acknowledge the commotion, but it was hard for me not to startle at every wretched sound. We passed the doors to a cafeteria where black jumpsuits dotted the white dining area like ink splotches on paper. One of them was rocking and another was having a conversation with his fork. I had fallen behind the woman’s quick pace, and I did a quick shuffle to pick up the slack. 

She took a right and rapt on a metal door with no windows.

“Dr. Gerome,” The woman called. “Mr. Shaw, the photography student, is here.”

The door swung open and a tall man with a bald egg head and round, metal-rimmed spectacles stood before us. He had bushy brown eyebrows and a goatee. He wore a lab coat in the same elephant-skin grey as the nurses that fell below his knees and hung off his tall and reedy body. I’m not one for understanding energies, but he felt ominous.

I looked past him and into the room without him noticing my wandering eyes. There were cabinets overflowing with files and lab tables where I could’ve sworn a jar held a head suspended in a green liquid. My eyes shot open and my head cocked to the side. Doctor Gerome finally noticed my staring and closed the door with grace, blocking my eyes from whatever secrets were inside.

“Mr. Shaw,” said the Doctor, as if testing out how the name felt on his tongue rather than addressing me. He looked through me with piercing blue eyes. I tried smiling but it felt very wrong.

“I’ll leave you to it then,” the nurse said. She turned and walked away, her heels clicking and adding to the cacophony of noises.

The doctor began walking. I scrambled to keep up again. These people only believed in speed walking.

“You may not go into the patient’s rooms. You may not photograph anyone without their knowledge or permission. No photographs in therapy rooms or sessions. Before you leave we will be reviewing your photos, no questions asked. You should be paying to be here, but your school did that for you. How lucky for you.”

I thought about saying something, but then I looked in his eyes again and changed my mind.

“We should have sent you a more exhaustive list in the mail. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”

The way he said the latter left me believing he didn’t mean that one bit. Doctor Gerome came to a stop in front of a glass door. Inside was the black, smooth flooring dance studios tend to have.

“You may go in here and get to know some of the patients if you want to be photographing them. Nurse Terry will lead you to the next class after and show you a few places we discussed you could photograph,” Gerome said. He squinted his eyes and peered into the room with a look approaching disgust. Then he righted himself and bid me farewell.

A sign read Dance Therapy. I looked in once more and saw the patients. Some were fashioned in straight jackets. One was rocking back and forth with his hands pulling his head down like he was trying to rip the flesh off the back of his skull. A woman dressed in the patient uniform with scraggly hair caught my eyes and gave me a smirk and a little wave. I tried to smile in response, but once again it felt very wrong.

A nurse, Miss Terry I gathered, was in the room and motioned me to come in. I opened the door and shook her hand.  She had golden blonde hair that was curled identically to the nurse who greeted me. 

“Welcome! You must be the student. I know the Doc is a bit intimidating. I can see it on your face, but I’m so glad you’re here now. This is our dance therapy, Mr…”

“Shaw.”

“Yes, Mr. Shaw. Dance therapy is quite a good time for our patients. Some can’t stand the opera or sewing and always love dance instead. You should take the class!”

“Oh,” I paused, my mouth dropping a little as I tried to concentrate. 

I guess this is just how it’s going to be, I thought.

“Okay, sure,” I said.

The blonde nurse clasped her hands together above her bosom.

“Oh, thank you so much, darling!” She said. The therapy director walked away without another word and grabbed a mic. Terry began explaining the rules and really emphasized how important it is to just have fun and be loose like it was some Hawaii vacation excursion.

While she continued talking, the patient with the ginger scraggly hair and pale blue eyes I had made awkward eye contact with came up to me. She kept her hands intertwined behind her back. She saw me staring at her odd stance.

“It’s so no one thinks I’ll hurt you,” she said.

“Thanks then, — do you have a name?”

“I’m sure I did, but you can call me Scarlett,” she said.

“Okay, Scarlett.”

Music started up and Scarlett slipped an arm around my waist. I was concerned as this was physical contact, but everyone was assuming the same position. It was a slower, swaying-is-still-classified-as-dancing type of song where breaking a sweat isn’t necessary. We held onto each other in a couple’s embrace, but I made sure to keep her at arm’s distance as much as possible. The entire time her eyes never strayed from mine until I felt like her stare would drive me as insane as the people stuck in that place.

“Photographer?” She asked.

My camera hung between us two.

“Yeah, I-”

“Do we fascinate you?” My dancing partner continued. “I’m sure our lives and our faces and our screams will make you a pretty penny, huh?”

“Oh, no, no. Trust me, the last thing I want to do is disrespect anyone here.”

I tensed up like a scorpion was crawling on my skin as she laid her head on my shoulder. Her reptilian stare never faltered. 

The song finished and I said goodbye as if sad to be leaving. I slipped out of the therapy session, closing the door as slow as possible in case there was any creaking. The nurse didn’t even notice my departure since the man on the floor rocking back and forth began screaming some woman’s name and her focus was on getting him to resume silent rocking status.

In the hall, the familiar wails of pain and paranoia continued echoing and floating down the corridor. There were no doctors or nurses in sight to babysit me. I snapped a photo, capturing the heaven-bound ceilings and deserted wheelchairs that sat crooked in corners. The Doc may have threatened to go through my photos, but there was nothing damning about the shot. The mantra “do now, ask for forgiveness later” had always struck a chord with me.

Down the hallway in the direction I hadn’t gone yet, the corridor ended at a wooden door. I swiveled my head back to see if anyone was watching me, but the hallway was still deserted. I broke into a hybrid of walking and jogging until I reached the entry. Paranoid, I checked over my shoulder once again.

Still clear.

I pushed the door open as little as possible, praying there would be no screeching. There wasn’t. I tried to peek through the little sliver of space I had made, but it was very dark.

With my Tetris skills, I wedged myself in. Another hallway, but this one with no end in sight, shrouded by shadow. On my left and my right were single black doors, marking what I imagined would be rooms if opened. It looked like this wing of the asylum wasn’t in use at all. Parts of the roof had crumbled in, providing the only light this area received. Debris littered the floor, and chunks of flooring were cracking into geometric shapes. The air was so filthy I could see the dust particles choking out the oxygen. One breath and I was sure to get lung cancer. I grimaced involuntarily, but my expression turned to confusion as I heard a muted sobbing.

I went to the first room on the right. I pictured the door electrocuting me if touched, but I forced myself to press my ear against it. Though the sobbing was still audible, it wasn’t coming from within that room. I continued down the hallway, stopping at every door I passed by and listening in. I kept my footsteps as light as a mouse, so as not to be known. The sobs crescendoed as I reached the eighth door on the rightl. I didn’t have to do my listening routine to know this was my lucky winner.

I dropped to all fours and tried to peer through the crack at the bottom of the door, but there was less than a centimeter of space between the wood and the crumbling floor. I wrapped my hand around the door’s rust speckled handle and took a deep breath of mildew stench. I tried the knob and to my surprise and relative dismay, it turned with a click. 

My hand stayed frozen, wrapped around the knob. A part of me – well, ninety-nine percent of me – had very much wanted an excuse to not have to investigate the cries. The other one percent of me, however, was very curious about who or what could be behind the door. The musty smell was overwhelmed by the trademark sweetness decay. Without another thought, because if I did I certainly wouldn’t have done it, I pushed the door open and left myself vulnerable to whatever awaited me.

A figure was hunched over on the floor and paid no attention to me intruding. It was a person, secured in a straightjacket stained with splotches of various shades of yellow, red, and brown. I didn’t have to use much imagination as to why. Greasy hair reached the floor and I realized it was a woman. She continued to scream and sob. I had been too rapt by her appearance to have seen the culprit of her distress. 

“My baby!” She screeched. “My baby, my baby, my baby, my baby…” 

Whatever was on the ground was so mangled it was almost impossible to identify what it was, but I saw paws that had curled in distress and legs that had stiffened like hard candy due to rigor mortis.  Entrails and guts littered the floor. 

“No, no, no,” I whispered to myself, drowned out by the ear-shattering declarations of the woman.

It was a jet black cat, though that was difficult to believe. The feline was on its back, a long gash sliced straight down and through the poor creature’s midsection like an overly eager high school boy dissecting a frog in science class. The visible organs and bones were very unwelcome. Flies buzzed around the feline, illuminated by the light filtering in, and maggots dove in and out of the cat’s insides.

A nightmare I was convinced, but I was reassured of reality when the woman silenced, leaving suffocating nothingness, and stiffened straight like the poor animal’s legs. Her head swiveled to meet my eyes in one swift motion, swallowing me with slate grey eyes.

She whispered something too soft to hear.

“What?” I squeaked. 

“You.” She said a decibel louder. “You. You, you, you. You did this. You. YOU!”

My brain was melting in overdrive trying to think of what one’s supposed to say when you’re standing in front of a psycho and a mutilated cat. With the speed of a viper, she was inches within my face, her straightjacket more of a second skin than a setback. She gnashed her teeth and lunged towards my shoulder, and sunk her tusks in. Warmth sprouted and sprawled down my arm. I screamed in horror rather than pain. I was a little too preoccupied to be rating my pain on a scale of one to ten. My body acted on autopilot as my palms shoved her back. She stampeded forward once again, her mouth snapping open and closed like a rabid dog. The madwoman was aiming for my nose. I had only the span of a short breath to duck as she tripped over my crouched body. A solid thud echoed in the room as her legs tangled over me and she went timber. I scrambled to my feet and couldn’t resist stealing a glance at her. She laid prone on her back, eyes still glued open. Blood oozed onto the concrete underneath her sheet of hair. 

My mind spiraled like a tornado, no clear thought to cling to except one.

Run. 

And so I did. I slammed the door behind me and sprinted from that demented hallway, past the dance class, past the entry room, and to my car without ever stopping to ease my screaming lungs or address my nurse friend who called my name in confusion and alarm. She could check my photos all she wanted because I realized my camera was no longer around my neck. I also noticed blood painted my arm. My blood. I guess I had just gotten a little too occupied to notice.