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PROLOGUE
Oak Hill Insane Asylum, 1958
If these walls could talk, I wonder what they’d tell me.
I wonder if they’d tell me that I’m certifiably insane. That the pills that are shoved down my throat every day are poison. That there’s no need for this room with padded walls, straightjackets, metal restraints, barred windows, and boxed up dreams. That maybe I’m not as crazy as everyone thinks I am.
No…
I don’t care what the staff tells me.
I .Am. Not. Crazy.
That’s just ludicrous.
Ridiculous.
There’s an internal tug of war going on inside of me between what’s real and what’s not. Perhaps I’m in denial or perhaps the pills I’m force-fed everyday are making me delusional.
If I wasn’t crazy they wouldn’t have locked me up. I wouldn’t shriek violently in the dead of night. The employees wouldn’t stampede down the halls with syringes full of mind-numbing drugs to silence my violent screams and erase my memories.
But I keep telling myself that I am not crazy. That what the employees of the asylum keep telling me is complete and total bull shit.
No, I am not crazy.
I can’t be.
But if I wasn’t I wouldn’t be here, right?
So maybe…
I am.
Chapter 1
I remember my first night here.
I remember the flickering lights on the ceiling that reminded me of bug zappers. The disenchanting vibe that was set from the way the dim lights danced along the neutral colored walls. More than anything, I remember the way they dragged me in here. Two orderlies, dressed from head to toe in white, clutching my elbows escorting me down the darkened hall, barefoot and sobbing. Dirt and blood caked up and ratted through my midnight colored locks, and smeared around the edges of my lime green dress.
I screamed in hysteria.
Cried with devotion.
And kicked with conviction.
They led me to a sanitation area, ripped my clothes from my body, then hosed me down like a pig before it was sent to the slaughterhouse. A bar of soap whacked me in the side of the head after an orderly chucked it at me and told me to wash myself. I was too afraid to do anything. Too afraid to move. So I sat there for five minutes, sobbing so hard I could barely breathe, legs and arms twitching with spasms. Finally, out of impatience and anger the orderly stomped over and washed me instead.
I’d never felt more hopeless, more pitiful, or violated in a dirty kind of way.
After my seven-minute shower, without letting me dry off, they plastered a hospital gown on my wet body and led me to my room. Freezing I shivered, teeth chattering, and pumped warmth back into my body with the friction from my hands. Nauseous, I swallowed the vomit inching up the back of my throat. Numb, I stared blankly ahead, unable to concentrate. I remembered thinking; if they kill people at this place, I hope they kill me soon.
They put me in solitary confinement. A small shoebox of a room with padded walls. They strapped me into a straightjacket. I fought the restraints. I screamed for help. I kicked one of the orderlies in the jaw.
You’re a danger to yourself and others , they told me.
This is for your own good, your safety, they told me.
Here’s the first thing I’ve learned since I arrived at the Oak Hill Asylum; when everyone thinks you’re crazy, no one is going to listen to you. Either that or they’ll make you their own personal pincushion and fill your veins with the kind of tranquilizing medicine they use on horses.
That night, my first night here, I’d shrieked all night long, tucked into a ball on my small thin cot, I sobbed harder than I’ve ever sobbed before.
The funny thing is; I haven’t stopped since then.
Three weeks.
It has been three weeks.
I still don’t know why I’m here.
What did I do to wind up in this place?
I ask myself this question multiple times everyday and I can never find the answer.
Sometimes I hear a familiar voice inside my head. Daddy’s voice. “You stay out of her head, you little fucker. You stay out of her bed, you little fucker.”
But who is the little fucker he’s talking about?
My daddy was a bad man. He was best friends with Jimmy, Jack, and a Mexican named Jose. He liked to drink with his three best friends. Sometimes he’d even get piss ass drunk with them. On rare occasions he was nice; usually when his friends weren’t around. Sometimes he even led me to believe he loved me. I think.
