Ah, Fridays... Usually a joyous day for people yes? Well, I hope your Friday is going well.
I had intended to release another Digital Artwork today to keep up my cycle of delivering one each day, however impossible such a goal sounds. Unfortunately, due to the need to relocate my computer and all it's information to a new Harddrive, supplied by GITR, I have not been able to begin work on today's artwork. In all likelihood I'm going to end up Photoshopping things late into the night regardless, but I figured it fair to deliver something that people could look at and see sometime before 12pm, so instead of a Digital Artwork, I give you a short story I wrote 2 years back. If you decide to look, you may find this story uploaded by someone referring to themselves as "The Ostentatious Wordsmith". That's another one of my plentiful nicknames.
So without further ado: "This Morning"
(I must warn that this story is not for the faint or easily disgusted. If you are easily put off by subjects such as death and mental instability, then I suggest finding a lovely Kitten video on YouTube or something similarly entertaining with which to inure yourself from the harsh realities of our world. You have been warned.)
They say that the world is a great place. That anyone can get anything if they have the passion and the desire to get it. They say that life is great and you should enjoy every moment of it. They never did say anything about how you were meant to achieve that, especially not when you’re a paraplegic in an Asylum…
I was lying in my bed at the PleasantVista home for those of youth and age plus the unlucky sods in between that need to be taken care of. It’s basically an orphanage, asylum and a rest home for the coffin dodgers. I’d woken up this morning like I did every morning, dreaming about how I lost my house, my parents… my sister. Then I would wake up in a sweat, feeling like the heat of the flames was about me again, seeking to claim the half of me it didn’t take the first time. Of course by that point I’ve realized that there are no flames and I start to calm down, just as I do every morning.
My days tend to proceed in the same way, every day. For some reason that self-same dream will always have me awake just before 6:00. Then I wait for 2 hours in the semi-silence as I wait for the people around me, in the rooms around me, to start waking up. Some did as I did and awoke quietly, others had a rather more… interesting… way of starting their days. Admittedly the screams and groans are hardly a welcoming way to start your day but hey, it’s not my fault the “doctors” as they call themselves deemed me to be “of ill mental health,” and dumped me in the side of PleasantVista I refer to as “Hell”. No matter, I forgive them for their shortsightedness. After all, not everyone has lost their parents. Not everyone has lost their sister and listened to her scream as she burnt. Not everyone has been trapped in a burning house for 3 hours with a burning support laying on top of your shattered legs as you scream for help. But no help came… Nobody helped me. Nobody saved my parents. NOBODY saved my sister. Eventually, I pulled myself free from the support after it had burnt my legs off. No. Burnt isn’t the right word for it. Cooked. Slow cooked and then carbonized as it burnt my legs. In hindsight it is interesting that I didn’t pass out from the pain. Perhaps it was my sister’s endless screams that kept me conscious, kept my eyes opened as I watched the flames claim my legs. But I pulled myself free of the support. Or rather, I pulled myself free of my legs. They “fell off the bone” if that’s a suitable analogy. I dragged myself, slowly, to the window which had, by this point, shattered from the heat, and threw myself out of it. I was on the second floor but I didn’t care. I had to escape. I had to get away from the fire. I had to get away from my sister’s screams.
Next thing I knew, I was in hell… Or PleasantVista’s version of it. Not that I’m complaining. I get to lie in bed for half a day as I dream about what I could be doing if I had legs. Then I get to spend an hour being rubbed down with a sponge by a nurse that’s hardly older than I am. The joy of it is tantamount as I expose myself to the squishy, tactless and completely inhuman touch as she furiously scrubs the parts of me that still exist, not excluding the parts that I’d likely have preferred unseen. And then she leans in to dry me with a towel I’m not entirely sure is clean, yet again touching what I would have preferred untouched with about as much grace as a wounded dog. You would think that I would be allowed to bathe and dry myself but no, due to my “ill mental health” I may be liable to drown myself, so no such luck.
After “bath time” they strap me to a wheelchair and drag me to the “interaction area” for some one on one with: A. The psychologist who tells me a bunch of useless things to which I reply with more useless things, B. The broken who either can’t structure sentences that make sense or simply can’t structure a sentence or my favorite C. which includes all manner of the deranged. They don’t tell me useless things and they can create a sentence that makes sense. On good days they even manage to hold a conversation with me. I’ve yet to actually conclude any of said conversations for obvious reasons but beggars can’t be choosers.
After that I get carted back to my room to either watch TV or sleep. If I’m lucky there might be something of worth on TV. Otherwise I get to call it a day early and lengthen the amount of time I get to spend watching my legs be cooked. You would expect someone to crack with such a mundane life but not me. Oh no. Not me. I will survive and I will escape “Hell”.
And so I was lying in bed. I’d just woken up after my “favorite” iteration of my dream, the one where it would appear that the devil himself comes just to push that support onto my legs and then, just for added sport, makes sure I can see my sister burn. My mind can be so “kind” to me. Lying there, I waited as my fellow compatriots in suffering began to arise from their own “dreams”. First came the gasps. Then the moans and then my absolute favorite, the screams. Sometime I like to think that if I listen close enough they all sort of come together to make a song of sorts. The Music of the mad.
As it does, the cacophony died down to a murmur as those lovely things called sedatives are dealt out to the ever so slightly more deranged than the rest of us. Then my favorite person came to deal out her daily dose of inhuman dishonor in the form of, you guessed it, bath time. Not that there is a bath. After an ever so lovely sponging down and drying, she pulled my freshly cleaned clothes onto my body, strapped me into the wheelchair and called for some other nurse to wheel me down to the “interaction area”. Did I mention who I get to speak to here? There’s the psychologist that speaks a lot but says nothing, there are the broken that say a lot but don’t speak and then there are the deranged who do a little bit or a lot of both. Today I managed to have a semi-comprehensible conversation with a fellow called “Frank” about how he came to be in “Hell”. He told me that his mother loved him. He then told me that he loved her too. He also told me he never meant to beat her head in with a rock. Of course, who am I to judge?
Then it was back to my room. Nothing on TV… so I decided to call it a day early. Maybe my mind will be “kind” to me tonight again.
This morning I didn’t wake up in bed. Once in a while I roll out of bed while I dream. Normally this only happens when the dream gets to where I jump out the window. This morning’s version was quite funny, the window was so high up I couldn’t see the ground. I’m not sure if it counts as a falling dream if you throw yourself out of a window to begin with. Anyway. I woke up on the ground and spent a couple minutes dragging myself back onto the bed. Wouldn’t like the nurse to think I was trying to kill myself on the floor. Oh no. I’ve seen the other rooms. I’ve seen those leather straps. I’m quite happy with being able to fall on the floor and get back up then not be able to at all.
So today the cacophony started a little differently, instead of a gradual start from groans to screams, they all just started at once, much to my surprise. What on earth caused that I wonder? Or rather, what in “Hell”. Not that it mattered. A couple minutes later the sedatives were administered and all my comrades in suffering were back to their dreams of… well, suffering. Along came my favorite old nurse with that sponge and the unclean towel and along came another stripping of my dignity. Ah… Good times. I had to congratulate the nurse today, not only did she successfully do he duties in record time but she also managed to manhandle me enough, much to my ironic surprise, that the skin on my legs, which is ever so thin thanks to the fire, began to bleed. How kind. No problem, a quick swab of iodine and a bandage later, good as new. Well done nurse for finding a new level of inhumanity. I never knew you had it in you.
Then it was time to go to the “interaction area”. Today the psychologist didn’t say very much, which is, I thought, noteworthy in itself. The broken seemed even quieter than usual and the deranged were almost sounding sane. Either that or I’m falling further into insanity than I thought. In any case, I managed to speak to a woman called “Carole” as she told me how her family all died on Christmas day. Might just be a cosmic coincidence of comic proportions but a woman called “Carole” had her family slaughtered on Christmas day by a man dressed as an Elf. I laughed in her face. I wasn’t being cruel. It was not a cruel laugh but she started screaming. Of course, screaming in the “interaction area” is prohibited, so out came those lovely nurses to take Ms. Christmas Carole back to her room.
Back in my room I was lucky; today there was a new show on. Barney. Oh joy. Lucky me. Always wanted to watch Barney. So I did. For 3 hours I watched the incessant singing and teachings of a Goddamned Purple Dinosaur. Eventually though, hearing “I love you” sung for the how-ever-manyeth time lost its appeal, and I fell asleep.
This morning I woke up on my stomach. Pushing myself up with my arms, I swung myself in a well-practiced motion to place myself onto my back. Lying in my usual position, I noticed something very odd about my room. The window was open? Why was the window open? Dropping down to the floor, I dragged myself to that complementary chair that they always leave in your room but never gets used. Noisily, I pulled it over to the window so that I could see outside. Climbing somewhat laboriously onto the chair, I realized that I was still too low to see outside. Deciding not to waste the opportunity, I pulled myself up onto the windowsill to watch the sun rise.
Slowly, that giant ball of fire pulled itself over the horizon in much the same way I did over the windowsill. Watching the sunrise, I realized that the groans were beginning. “Maybe I should get back to my bed. What if the nurse catches me like this? She might never open the window again.” Just as I thought those thoughts, as if the very thought of the nurse brought her running at speed, she opened the door to my room. Alarmed by her sudden arrival… I twisted myself around on the ledge to look at her… and let go of the windowsill. Realizing my error, I attempted to grab at windowsill again in a last effort to save myself. Too late. I watched in slow motion as the ledge fell away from me. The wind was whistling in my ears. I twisted my head up and watched the sun on the horizon as it passed over some trees. The visual effect was ironic in that it looked like the trees were on fire but not actually burning. Suddenly, I hit the ground…
This morning I woke up later than usual. That’s very odd. Normally I wake up before the moaning begins but for some reason the screaming had already begun by the time I awoke. Strange. Hmm. Maybe, just maybe, today… Maybe today is going to be different…
Fin
This Morning by Gregory Havenga is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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