Home. That's what this place smells like. Not that comfy smell that's associated with tv homes, where everything's artfully messy and filled with designer furniture. In our apartment, my dad had me take out the garbage every week and stuff it in the chute. Our first week, I hadn't taken the garbage out on the right day and the bag had too much stuff in it. So every week after, I'd take the garbage out but it would never show up in the bin it was supposed to. Nothing did. It sure stunk, though. Stuck to your clothes, clung to your skin. One day everything just fell out and it smelled like real shit, rats squealing and scampering away, rotten peels and food, diapers too.
The smell wasn't as strong, though. It was fainter. Scrubbed away piss and shit, bleached rooms in bleached halls and bland food, cold clothes stiff with disinfectant. It was always cold. They didn't give us sheets, since we might hang ourselves with them. I've been talking with this little girl who tried to slit her wrists. The cuts are deep, scabbed over and someone's gotta feed her because she nearly severed her flexor tendons and if she doesn't allow enough time, they might snap and she'll lose the use of her arms for the rest of her life. So I sit and talk with her. She's younger than Angie, at least twelve, and I think one of her parent's Japanese. She never talks, just sits and reads. I think I make her nervous, since she thought that depression was something you only caught in your teens and went away once you hit eighteen, like there was some booster shot for it that her mom wouldn't let her get it since she thinks that vaccines give you autism or some other such bullshit.
Surprise!
Not a very nice one, though. "You know, I haven't read it yet, but I bet its good. What's it about?" She just stares at me with her inky brown eyes. They remind me of Margaret's. It was hard to believe she wasn't Angie's real mom. Stacey called me up and told me, but I didn't completely believe it since I was kinda hammered when she called. Then I listened to the voicemail. And it made sense. There was some stuff I picked up on even when I was drunk that didn't line up. Like locks on the windows and how they looked nothing alike. Sure, kids can look a little different, but she didn't have anything of Margaret's.
Dr. Reeves is nice. She sees through all my excuses, though, so I gotta be clever. Otherwise she'll see how nasty Nancy is. I haven't been able to talk to Stace yet. Talked to Dr. Reeves about the cuts, though. She thinks its self-inflicted. Asked lots of question about why I did this to myself. And I can't let her see how I get them otherwise that'll get me sent to a whole new ward. So I tell the truth. Sorta. I say that they happen when I lie. When I lie to women, particularly. She's thinking mommy issues, since she left when I was young. But its not. Its Nancy Walker, but I can't tell them that. On and on the loop goes, evading questions and telling half-truths so Nancy doesn't get to use her knife to carve me up again. And the voices have gotten worse, every night they get more distinct. Sometimes its just screaming and crying. Most nights it's voices asking for the flashlight. Always with the flashlight, that shitty flashlight that I have to buy batteries for every other week.
Even the government can't get me out of this one. They tried, though. Within the first hour some suits showed up flashing legal papers but the doctors just waved them off. Said that they'd need to hold me for another seventy one hours before they could release me, which is unusual since most hospitals bend over backwards to accommodate the FBI.
Martha's broken watch is the only thing I have. It's still broken. At night it's deafening, tick, tick, ticking away. It's constant. Relaxes me. I know she's disappointed. Stacy, I mean. Concerned, obviously. But disappointed. How I am gonna explain this one to her? She won't believe that I didn't do it. And she'll send Angie back to foster parents so she can deal with me. God, that must've messed her up, seeing her mom's friend - Margaret, I mean - cut themselves like that. I must've triggered something, otherwise she would've come and visit me. She always was stubborn. She only remembers me from the Halloween party, but I was the agent who brought her in. It was bizarre, chasing down Rodger only after finding out that she was staring me in the face for years. Kids started popping up, after she'd done things to them. Not always sexual. Sometimes we'd find the kids after she was done with them.
