Blind Insanity

3 - Chapter Three - 3

3 – Chapter Three – 3

‘Where has the light gone?’

When I woke up the next morning, I knew something was wrong.  Living for so long here, I knew the routine of the place.  What the air felt like whenever someone had just been tortured and what the nurses and doctors were doing.  Today was different though, even though I could still feel Marvin’s anguish fresh in the air.

‘You feel what was left behind.’

I lifted my head from the flat pillow and looked towards the door as if I was waiting for something.  Today wasn’t one of the days that the dragged me to the back, they wanted to make sure that after the electro shock that I got enough energy back before they did another one.  There were so many people whispering on the other side of the door that I sat up and waited for it to open again.  Whispering on the other side usually wasn’t a good sign.

‘Do you feel the pain?  Do you hear the anguish?’

Slowly, I stood up and walked over towards the door.  The doorknob underneath my hand was cold when I touched it.  It wasn’t like they used the heater or anything for the patients.  They usually kept the temperature in the hospital in the low sixties.  We had all gotten used to it by now, so the cold didn’t affect us as much as it had once.  That didn’t stop us from getting sick because of it though.

‘Whispers of something, of someone.’

Cracking the door slowly, I saw that the patients were all roaming around again.  Their familiar blank faces and slack jaws the only hello that I got in the morning.  But that wasn’t the strange part, I opened the door further and caught a glimpse of some nurses and doctors huddled together in the hall.  They were all whispering to each other, but of what?  I was too far away to hear them and I didn’t dare open the door any further for fear that they would see me trying to eavesdrop on them.

‘Someone is coming.’

I ducked back inside my room, closing my door.  Going over towards my cot, I sat down and continued to stare at the door.  The soft rattle of my breathing, the dripping, the continuous hum of the electricity was the other sounds in the room.  The whispering from outside had gotten softer.  It was like they had stopped whispering for a moment for something.  It was then that I heard it and I cocked my head to the side.

‘Hide us away from the world, but we will always fight back.’

It was crunching of gravel.  I had not heard that sound in a long time.  The sound of tires coming up the long gravel road to the asylum did not happen often.  When I did hear the sound of a car or truck it was usually one of the doctors going to and from the hospital for something or an emergency.  That was the only reason for a car to go through that gravel.  They even left for medical supplies, such as medications, but even that wasn’t very often.

But I had not heard a car leave, not in the last two weeks.  Even if I was asleep, I would have heard the crunching of the gravel as the car pulled away.  My mind automatically focused on any noise that was other from the three noises that filled my room constantly.  The alien sound of a car going from the hospital was one of the sounds that my ears intently listened to even if it woke me up in the dead of night.

‘Who comes?  Who comes to this place of torture?’

Curiosity got the best out of me.  I stood up and went towards the window where I stood on my tiptoes and used my fingers to pry some of my weight up off of them.  The desk that was in the room was too far away from the window for me to use it as a stand to look out of.  The doctors wanted to make sure that we didn’t get to see much when we were in our rooms.  So they had placed it far enough away that if we tried, our hopes were dashed the moment that we would slip and fall.