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It was worse now. The visions came so often in this cold place. They were no more certain than they had ever been, but they came more often now that I was watched, even though I tried even harder to hide them. The people here didn't keep me locked up like I thought they would. I was at least given a little freedom and was allowed to go to the cafeteria, walk around the common room, and sit outside, but that was all. No matter where I went, they watched me constantly. Most of them held looks of pity on their faces. I hated them. They wouldn't talk to me much at all, and I felt like an animal in a zoo.
"Would you like to play a game, Mary Alice?" asked a kind nurse I had not seen before. I nearly jumped right out of the chair. I had been here three weeks, and this was the first person to ask me to do something with her. I was in the common room just sitting and looking out the window since there wasn't anything else to do.
"Alice...just Alice," I corrected her when I got over the shock.
"Well, Alice, I'm Nancy, and I love to play games. Would you like to play one with me?"
"Yes," I nearly smiled back. I hadn't smiled in the three weeks, and it felt very strange on my face, almost like the muscles had forgotten how to do it. She seemed very nice, and the common room suddenly felt much lighter.
"What games do you like?" she asked, still very friendly.
"Dominoes. I like Chicken Foot. Do you know it?"
"Of course, sweetie."
As we played, she talked about her life. I was so grateful that she didn't ask me any questions.
I was a freak, and a crazy freak at that. I was one of the youngest ones here, and everyone looked at me like I had the plague. I didn't want to prove how much of a freak I really was by talking about the visions.
We played several rounds, and I found myself enjoying the game with this nurse. She was an older woman, pretty but not beautiful. Her hair was only starting to gray, but the laugh lines by her eyes were deep. To my young eyes, she looked old, but maybe that was just because I was young.
Her stories made my giggle and I felt like a huge weight had lifted from my chest. I felt like I could somehow live.
"You look better, Alice," she said when our game finished.
"Thank you ma'am, I feel better," I sighed, and it wasn't even a lie. I usually lied in this place, because the truth would get me locked up in the lower levels where the screams came from.
"I will be back to tomorrow, and I hope we can play again. I don't usually have this much fun on my shift. You have a lovely spirit to you, but you somehow seem too old for thirteen."
"I feel older, a lot older. I had fun. Thank you so much," I let the emotion in my voice try to carry how thankful I was.
The next day was just as fun. We played poker, and I won. By the end of the game I felt more normal than I had in almost a year.
We played games like that for almost two weeks. It didn't help the visions stay away, but it comforted me to have someone treat me like a normal young girl rather than a patient.
The end of the second week, though, was strange. I could feel something in my mind warning me, but just like the visions, it was foggy and unclear. I hoped that Nancy's company would cheer me up because I didn't want to have a fit in her presence. I didn't want her to see me like that.
"Hi honey, ready for our game?" she cheerfully asked me.
She taught me Canasta, the endless game, she called it, and we played for nearly two hours. She still didn't ask me about my family or visions like the other white coat adults here. I was so grateful to her for that.
Just before dinner time, the vision hit me. I tensed up as the horror of it caught me off guard. It was Nancy, and some men. She was walking, but I couldn't see where, and they were ready to jump on her. They had on uniforms, and were very big. They were going to hurt her. Then I saw her blood flowing down the street with the rain. When I came back to myself, Nancy was holding me in her arms and calling for help.
"Don't go Nancy! Don't go!" I yelled at her as I grabbed her white dress and pulled her to me.
"Let go Alice, honey it's all right. Just let go."
"No! They're going to kill you! They are going to kill you! Don't go!" My voice was reaching the pitch of hysteria, and I knew it, but I couldn't stop screaming. Suddenly, my hands pulled too hard, and the buttons on the front of her white dress gave way. Her dress pulled apart. I grabbed her hair by her face still screaming at her.
Dozens of hands were on me all at once. They pulled me off of her and held me down. I was kicking and thrashing against them. She had to understand. She couldn't be killed. I needed to save her.
Something sharp pushed into my arm and cold, painful pressure began to spread up my arm and directly into my head and eyes. The room tilted and twisted, and I blacked out.
When I opened my eyes, the people were gone, but the sun was out. The sun was directly above me, but there was also a room that was weaving about me in a sickening way. I thought maybe I was on a boat in the room. I blinked several times, and the swaying stopped. The sun shrank into an electric light bulb directly over me. I tried to rub my eyes to help me focus, but my hands would only move a few inches. I went all cold inside as I looked down to see that my wrists and ankles had leather bands wrapped around them.
They had chained me!
"No!" I screamed. "Don't do this to me! I didn't do anything! Help me! Momma, help me!" Terror froze me into the last three words. "Momma, help me!" I screamed it over and over until my lungs and throat burned and my voice was gone.
After a while, I simply lay there and cried silent tears of rage and shame. My mother would never come again. I had done this to myself, or at least my madness had done it. I was insane, that I was sure of, and I grieved for the life I would never have.
The door opened, and I saw that the hall had no windows. With a shock I realized I was probably below ground, I was one of the screamers now. The man who came in had on a white coat and did not even look at me as he raised the silver thing and sank it into my arm. At first, I thought it was a knife, and wondered if he would kill me, but I was too tired and scared to yell, besides my voice was gone. Then the cold pressure spread again. "Such a pity," I heard him say as the darkness took me.
The darkness never left.
