Lost Horizons

Chapter One

Chapter One

“Word can be like knives, they can cut you open”-Stateless

Sienna had zero interest to leave her beloved hospital. The place had grown on her. It was like her second home now. Actually zero was too neutral of a number for her. It was more like a negative thirteen amount of motivation to leave. Because when she thought about it, what did she actually have to look forward to out there? Probably more crazies that wouldn’t accept her because she was a different kind of crazy. She would rather stay here where everyone knew and accepted who she was. Scared nurses and crazy patients she could deal with but people pretending to be normal and judging her not so much.

She could tell what the nurses were thinking just by staring at their faces. They feared her because they thought she was contagious. They hated her because they were so close to her condition and yet they were jealous that she was free to shout about it while they have to hide it in their minds. Too bad they weren’t good at hiding it because to her it was as plain as day.  We are all crazy, that much I am certain of, Sienna thought to herself. That was about the only thing she could be sure of these days. She couldn’t tell you what day it was, couldn’t remember what color underwear she was wearing and she couldn’t tell you when the last time she felt happy was. She seemed to erase unimportant things from her mind yet she remembered things that were not part of reality. Her psychiatrist said it had to do with her condition.

Oh yeah, another perk of being here? She got her very own private shrink to express her feelings to. How could the outside world beat that?

She was a rare patient. She was one of the few that actually wanted to stay here. Most of the patients were just too afraid to leave or were desperate to get out. She wasn’t scared of the outside world, the monsters in her head were scarier than that and she handled that daily. She also didn’t really care that much what people thought of her. She just had no incentive at all to leave. Her parents came to visit her here anyways so it wasn’t like she missed them. The food wasn’t half bad. She didn’t have many friends out there and the few that she had never understood her. At least here the people got her. It was hard to explain to the people who weren’t diagnosed crazy that her brain didn’t work like theirs. While their biggest problem could be that they didn’t know what to wear she was concerning herself with the various voices in her head.

 She knew for a fact that she wouldn’t get along with other girls her age. They were interested in boys and clothes and she was into drawing scary monsters and talking to herself. No, that was a joke! She didn’t draw scary monsters that was just creepy…

“Sienna! Lunch is served. Let’s go down to the cafeteria,” one of the nurses on ward B suggested startling the girl out of her thoughts. Sienna didn’t reply but she did as she was told. She’d gotten good at following instructions. If you didn’t things usually ended up badly. It was easier to just listen to them and let them escort you everywhere than to fight it.

She still remember that first day she was here and they had wanted to escort her to the bathroom fearing that she would harm herself in the process if she was left alone. Sienna threw a tantrum, kicked, screamed and hit anyone who came near her. They locked her up in the padded room until she calmed down and they never did take her to the bathroom. It was the first time she had ever peed herself.  It was funny how selective memories were. The shrink had said it was her own head that choose what to remember and what to discard.

Everyone was waiting on line to grab their tray of food. The menu wasn’t too bad today. Mashed potatoes, fried chicken and salad. Of course the salad was soggy by the time she got her plate, the fried chicken was no longer hot and the mashed potatoes tasted bland.