Hillcrest

The Bloody Clothesline

     As he lay on the cold hard floor of his cell, Clyde could hear the muffled sounds of scheduled yells cutting through the concrete walls. With each curdling scream and pain-driven shrill, most likely coming from a patient undergoing a trephination procedure, he thought of the screams he had once given upon his arrival to the asylum. The last year he remembered was 1896, but it could be the twentieth century for all he knew. Hillcrest Asylum for the Mentally Insane, or Hillcrest as it has been called, was located 11 miles south of Hartsville, South Carolina surrounded by grass-covered plains. The institution was made up of three stories with burnt yellow bricks as its outer walls. Its architect must have been a lover of all things gothic or was a madman himself. Though fairly new, the building looked as though it were already haunted. And in ways it was, but not by spirits or apparitions, by its stories. 

     As Clyde began to retell his grim story of his arrival to the asylum, he was abruptly interrupted by a harsh "Aahumm." This interjection came from the lips of Deklin Creller. 

     "If you're going to keep telling your fickle and banausic story of your first days here at Hillcrest day after day to the same audience, then you might as well be faithful about something. Perhaps the beginning, you know, the reasons why you were brought", he said with his head cocked to one side peering down the end of his reading spectacles at Clyde who had been laying prostrate beneath his own bed frame staring at the mangled springs protruding from the under side of the mattress. He rarely got to lay here. Some days he was either restrained to his bed with leather straps and buckles, leaving his wrists and ankles raw and bloody from continuous twisting and pulling, or he was subject to a straitjacket and tied to a chair. 

Creller had only been, so called, room buddies with Clyde for a few months and during that time had proved to be a rather understanding fellow. Though, at times he could be quite sharp and shrewd, as he was currently being. Clyde was kind of used to his morning mood and took to mind what he said and ignored the how.

"Well," started Clyde again. "I don't REALLY understand why. She was yelling, and you know how I...I..I can't, take yelling." With each "I", came more tensed breaths and whiter knuckles. "Her, and, and the kids, the kids too, they were all, staring at me with this, this, look. And I, I, couldn't... couldn't... So, I stopped them. I stopped them. I could, finally breath without them staring, and yelling at me. I stopped them," he said with wide eyes and a sickly smirk cut across his face as he slowly twisted his head to align with Deklin's.

     "Perhaps it was the fact that you, without any mental resentment whatsoever, murdered your wife and three kids with a garden hoe then strung them up by their ankles to the clothesline just because they had yelled for you to come inside for dinner. Maybe that's why."

"Auh," Clyde grunted, shrugging as if it wasn't. He grabbed the side of the bed frame with his white bony hands and pulled himself out from under it. He stood to his normal stature, looking as though there was something on the ground and was attempting to pick it up. He only stood approximately 5'8" with black mangy hair that brushed his shoulders. He had pale white skin that hadn't received the sun's attention in years. He was physically no more than 38, but was visually beaten in age. His roommate, Creller, on the other hand looked his appropriate age. Most days while Jekobs is talking to Deklin, in a slightly amusing position, Creller is stretched out in his dark wooden rocking chair with his reading glasses perched at the end of his nose and a book in his hand, without a care that he's being spoken to.